Block freeze-concentration of coffee extract: Effect of freezing and thawing stages on solute recovery and bioactive compounds

Coffee extract was freeze-concentrated using the total block technique. The effects of four parameters were evaluated: the initial coffee mass fraction (5 and 15% w/w), the cooling temperature ( 10 and 20 C), the heating temperature (20 and 40 C) and the freezing direction (parallel and counter-flow to the thawing direction). The solid concentration was measured during the thawing stage to quantify the solute recovery and the concentration index for one stage of freeze concentration. The coffee mass fraction, the freezing direction and the cooling temperature significantly influenced the solute recovery. A concentration index between 1 and 2.3 was obtained in one cycle. The effect of block freeze concentration on the bioactive compound concentration and the antioxidant activity was measured. The coffee bioactive compounds were distributed in proportion to the total solid content in the ice and liquid. Therefore, block freeze concentration is an effective technique to preserve functional properties of coffee extracts.Postprint (published version

Neutrino masses from operator mixing

We show that in theories that reduce, at the Fermi scale, to an extension of the standard model with two doublets, there can be additional dimension five operators giving rise to neutrino masses. In particular there exists a singlet operator which can not generate neutrino masses at tree level but generates them through operator mixing. Under the assumption that only this operator appears at tree level we calculate the neutrino mass matrix. It has the Zee mass matrix structure and leads naturally to bimaximal mixing. However, the maximal mixing prediction for solar neutrinos is very sharp even when higher order corrections are considered. To allow for deviations from maximal mixing a fine tuning is needed in the neutrino mass matrix parameters. However, this fine tuning relates the departure from maximal mixing in solar neutrino oscillations with the neutrinoless double beta decay rate.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, revte

Inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms for black-hole binaries with non-precessing spins

We present the first analytical inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveforms from binary black holes (BBHs) with non-precessing spins, that is based on a description of the late-inspiral, merger and ringdown in full general relativity. By matching a post-Newtonian description of the inspiral to a set of numerical-relativity simulations, we obtain a waveform family with a conveniently small number of physical parameters. These waveforms will allow us to detect a larger parameter space of BBH coalescence, including a considerable fraction of precessing binaries in the comparable-mass regime, thus significantly improving the expected detection rates.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. Significant new results. One figure removed due to page limitatio

Robust Application of New Deep Learning Tools: An Experimental Study in Medical Imaging

El trabajo forma parte de la tesis doctoral del primer autor, Dr. Laith Alzubaidi, siendo José Santamaría investigador invitado por el autor del artículo en la co-supervision de dicha tesis doctoral, correspondiendo este con uno de los varios artículos científicos que fueron desarrollados y publicados durante y después de la tesis doctoral del Dr. Alzubaidi.Nowadays medical imaging plays a vital role in diagnosing the various types of diseases among patients across the healthcare system. Robust and accurate analysis of medical data is crucial to achieving a successful diagnosis from physicians. Traditional diagnostic methods are highly time-consuming and prone to handmade errors. Cost is reduced and performance is improved by adopting computer-aided diagnosis methods. Usually, the performance of traditional machine learning (ML) classification methods much depends on both feature extraction and selection methods that are sensitive to colors, shapes, and sizes, which conveys a complex solution when facing classification tasks in medical imaging. Currently, deep learning (DL) tools have become an alternative solution to overcome the drawbacks of traditional methods that make use of handmade features. In this paper, a new DL approach based on a hybrid deep convolutional neural network model is proposed for the automatic classification of several different types of medical images. Specifically, gradient vanishing and over-fitting issues have been properly addressed in the proposed model in order to improve its robustness by means of different tested techniques involving residual links, global average pooling layers, dropout layers, and data augmentation. Additionally, we employed the idea of parallel convolutional layers with the aim of achieving better feature representation by adopting different filter sizes on the same input and then concatenated as a result. The proposed model is trained and tested on the ICIAR 2018 dataset to classify hematoxylin and eosin-stained breast biopsy images into four categories: invasive carcinoma, in situ carcinoma, benign tumors, and normal tissue. As the experimental results show, our proposed method outperforms several of the state-of-the-art methods by achieving rate values of 93.2% and 89.8% for both image- and patch-wise image classification tasks, respectively. Moreover, we fine- tuned our model to classify foot images into two classes in order to test its robustness by considering normal and abnormal diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) image datasets. In this case the model achieved an F1 score value of 94.80% on the public DFU dataset and 97.3% on the private DFU dataset. Lastly, transfer learning (TL) has been adopted to validate the proposed model with multiple classes with the aim of classifying six different wound types. This approach significantly improves the accuracy rate from a rate of 76.92% when trained from scratch to 87.94% when TL was considered. Our proposed model has proven its suitability and robustness by addressing several medical imaging tasks dealing with complex and challenging scenarios

Effects of high-pressure on the structural, vibrational, and electronic properties of monazite-type PbCrO4

We have performed an experimental study of the crystal structure, lattice-dynamics, and optical properties of PbCrO4 (the mineral crocoite) at ambient and high pressures. In particular, the crystal structure, Raman-active phonons, and electronic band-gap have been accurately determined. X-ray-diffraction, Raman, and optical-absorption experiments have allowed us also to completely characterize two pressure-induced structural phase transitions. The first transition is isostructural, maintaining the monoclinic symmetry of the crystal, and having important consequences in the physical properties; among other a band-gap collapse is induced. The second one involves an increase of the symmetry of the crystal, a volume collapse, and probably the metallization of PbCrO4. The results are discussed in comparison with related compounds and the effects of pressure in the electronic structure explained. Finally, the room-temperature equation of state of the low-pressure phases is also obtained.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, 3 table

Majorons and supernova cooling

We consider the role of Majoron emission in supernova cooling and its implications for the neutrino mass and lifetime in generic single Majoron models. It is found that, for ντ with mass m, if the lifetime for the decay ντ→Majoron+νe,μ is shorter than 10−7 (m/MeV) sec, then Majorons are so strongly trapped by the inverse process that the resulting Majoron luminosity is small enough not to destabilize the observed νe pulse from SN 1987A. For ντ with a longer lifetime, the Majoron luminosity can be large enough to destroy or significantly shorten the duration of the neutrino pulse. We then find the range of parameters, e.g., the ντ mass m and the B−L-breaking scale v, that is excluded by giving such a large Majoron luminosity. Our results imply that, for v between 1 GeV and 1 TeV, a wide range of m allowed by terrestrial experiments can be excluded in view of the observed νe, pulse from SN 1987A

KATANA - a charge-sensitive triggering system for the Sπ\piRIT experiment

KATANA - the Krakow Array for Triggering with Amplitude discrimiNAtion - has been built and used as a trigger and veto detector for the S$\pi$RIT TPC at RIKEN. Its construction allows operating in magnetic field and providing fast response for ionizing particles, giving the approximate forward multiplicity and charge information. Depending on this information, trigger and veto signals are generated. The article presents performance of the detector and details of its construction. A simple phenomenological parametrization of the number of emitted scintillation photons in plastic scintillator is proposed. The effect of the light output deterioration in the plastic scintillator due to the in-beam irradiation is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Suppressing the μ\mu and neutrino masses by a superconformal force

The idea of Nelson and Strassler to obtain a power law suppression of parameters by a superconformal force is applied to understand the smallness of the $\mu$ parameter and neutrino masses in R-parity violating supersymmetric standard models. We find that the low-energy sector should contain at least another pair of Higgs doublets, and that a suppression of \lsim O(10^{-13}) for the $\mu$ parameter and neutrino masses can be achieved generically. The superpotential of the low-energy sector happens to possess an anomaly-free discrete R-symmetry, either $R_3$ or $R_6$, which naturally suppresses certain lepton-flavor violating processes, the neutrinoless double beta decays and also the electron electric dipole moment. We expect that the escape energy of the superconformal sector is \lsim O(10) TeV so that this sector will be observable at LHC. Our models can accommodate to a large mixing among neutrinos and give the same upper bound of the lightest Higgs mass as the minimal supersymmetric standard model.Comment: 24 page

Probing neutrino properties with charged scalar lepton decays

Supersymmetry with bilinear R-parity violation provides a predictive framework for neutrino masses and mixings in agreement with current neutrino oscillation data. The model leads to striking signals at future colliders through the R-parity violating decays of the lightest supersymmetric particle. Here we study charged scalar lepton decays and demonstrate that if the scalar tau is the LSP (i) it will decay within the detector, despite the smallness of the neutrino masses, (ii) the relative ratio of branching ratios Br({tilde tau}_1 --> e sum nu_i)/ Br({tilde tau}_1 --> mu sum nu_i) is predicted from the measured solar neutrino angle, and (iii) scalar muon and scalar electron decays will allow to test the consistency of the model. Thus, bilinear R-parity breaking SUSY will be testable at future colliders also in the case where the LSP is not the neutralino.Comment: 24 pages, 8 ps figs Report-no.: IFIC/02-33 and ZU-TH 11/0