A Process Calculus for Expressing Finite Place/Transition Petri Nets

We introduce the process calculus Multi-CCS, which extends conservatively CCS with an operator of strong prefixing able to model atomic sequences of actions as well as multiparty synchronization. Multi-CCS is equipped with a labeled transition system semantics, which makes use of a minimal structural congruence. Multi-CCS is also equipped with an unsafe P/T Petri net semantics by means of a novel technique. This is the first rich process calculus, including CCS as a subcalculus, which receives a semantics in terms of unsafe, labeled P/T nets. The main result of the paper is that a class of Multi-CCS processes, called finite-net processes, is able to represent all finite (reduced) P/T nets.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS'10, arXiv:1011.601

Predicting calcium in grape must and base wine by FT-NIR spectroscopy

Calcium content in sparkling wines may not exceed 80 mg/L due to the risk of aggregation with alginate capsules. The high calcium content usually found in wine and must emphasizes the need to develop alternative and appropriate techniques faster and cleaner than atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). To obtain a robust model to predict calcium content, FT-NIR spectroscopy was used in 98 base white wine samples and 60 must samples from an Alentejo winery. The reference method for calcium determination was AAS technique, with a dry ashing sample procedure, as a prior treatment. Results confirmed the ability of FT-NIR as an alternative technique to AAS, to predict calcium content in grape must and base wine. Advance knowledge of the calcium content in the grape must will help avoid obtaining a mixture of musts with a high calcium content in the same container

Intra-regional classification of grape seeds produced in Mendoza province (Argentina) by multi-elemental analysis and chemometrics tools

The feasibility of the application of chemometric techniques associated with multi-element analysis for the classification of grape seeds according to their provenance vineyard soil was investigated. Grape seed samples from different localities of Mendoza province (Argentina) were evaluated. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used for the determination of twenty-nine elements (Ag, As, Ce, Co, Cs, Cu, Eu, Fe, Ga, Gd, La, Lu, Mn, Mo, Nb, Nd, Ni, Pr, Rb, Sm, Te, Ti, Tl, Tm, U, V, Y, Zn and Zr). Once the analytical data were collected, supervised pattern recognition techniques such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA), partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) were applied to construct classification/discrimination rules. The results indicated that nonlinear methods, RF and SVM, perform best with up to 98% and 93% accuracy rate, respectively, and therefore are excellent tools for classification of grapes.Fil: Canizo, Brenda Vanina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Química Analítica para Investigación y Desarrollo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Escudero, Leticia Belén. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Química Analítica para Investigación y Desarrollo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Pérez, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Química Analítica para Investigación y Desarrollo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Pellerano, Roberto Gerardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Química Básica y Aplicada del Nordeste Argentino. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Química Básica y Aplicada del Nordeste Argentino; ArgentinaFil: Wuilloud, Rodolfo German. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Química Básica y Aplicada del Nordeste Argentino. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Química Básica y Aplicada del Nordeste Argentino; Argentin

An innovative solid liquid extraction technology: use of the naviglio extractor for the production of lemon liquor.

This document is a review on solid-liquid extractive techniques and describes an innovative solid-liquid extraction technology using the Naviglio Extractor®. Also explained is an application for the production of alcoholic extract from lemon peel. The alcoholic extract, mixed with a sugar and water solution in the right proportions is used to make a well known Italian lemon liquor commonly named "limoncello". Lemon liquor is obtained utilizing the Naviglio Extractor®; the procedure used is fast and efficient and uses about half the weight of lemon peel per volume of ethyl alcohol used for the extraction of the odorous and taste responsible compounds, compared to the commonly used extraction procedures. To test the consumer’s preference and compare the taste of the liquor obtained with that obtained by peel maceration from the same lot of lemons and obtained using the traditional recipe, a consumer test has been carried out. One hundred people, chosen from among frequent consumers of limoncello, tasted the two lemon liquors, and evaluated intensity of aroma, colour, alcohol taste and sweetness. In about 81% of the preferences, the liquor obtained using the Naviglio Extractor® was preferred. The extraction process used allows the ethanol from used up lemon peel to be totally recovered so that these can be disposed of as non toxic waste or used in agriculture or as cattle feed

A criterion for separating process calculi

We introduce a new criterion, replacement freeness, to discern the relative expressiveness of process calculi. Intuitively, a calculus is strongly replacement free if replacing, within an enclosing context, a process that cannot perform any visible action by an arbitrary process never inhibits the capability of the resulting process to perform a visible action. We prove that there exists no compositional and interaction sensitive encoding of a not strongly replacement free calculus into any strongly replacement free one. We then define a weaker version of replacement freeness, by only considering replacement of closed processes, and prove that, if we additionally require the encoding to preserve name independence, it is not even possible to encode a non replacement free calculus into a weakly replacement free one. As a consequence of our encodability results, we get that many calculi equipped with priority are not replacement free and hence are not encodable into mainstream calculi like CCS and pi-calculus, that instead are strongly replacement free. We also prove that variants of pi-calculus with match among names, pattern matching or polyadic synchronization are only weakly replacement free, hence they are separated both from process calculi with priority and from mainstream calculi.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS'10, arXiv:1011.601

Wine, Fraud and Expertise

While fraud has existed in various forms throughout the history of wine, the establishment of the fine and rare wine market generated increased opportunities and incentives for producing counterfeit wine. In the contemporary fine and rare wine market, wine fraud is a serious concern. The past several decades witnessed significant events of fine wine forgery, including the infamous Jefferson bottles and the more recent large-scale counterfeit operation orchestrated by Rudy Kurniawan. These events prompted and renewed market interest in wine authentication and fraud detection. Expertise in wine is characterized by the relationship between subjective and objective judgments. The development of the wine fraud expert draws attention to the emergence of expertise as an industry response to wine fraud and the relationship between expert judgment and modern science

Priorities Without Priorities: Representing Preemption in Psi-Calculi

Psi-calculi is a parametric framework for extensions of the pi-calculus with data terms and arbitrary logics. In this framework there is no direct way to represent action priorities, where an action can execute only if all other enabled actions have lower priority. We here demonstrate that the psi-calculi parameters can be chosen such that the effect of action priorities can be encoded. To accomplish this we define an extension of psi-calculi with action priorities, and show that for every calculus in the extended framework there is a corresponding ordinary psi-calculus, without priorities, and a translation between them that satisfies strong operational correspondence. This is a significantly stronger result than for most encodings between process calculi in the literature. We also formally prove in Nominal Isabelle that the standard congruence and structural laws about strong bisimulation hold in psi-calculi extended with priorities.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2014, arXiv:1408.127

Do university students know how they perform?

The aim of the research is to study the capacity for self-evaluation of University studentsundergoing tests involving mathematics, linguistic and formal reasoning. Subjects wereasked to estimate the number of correct answers and subsequently to compare theirperformance with that of their peers. We divided the subjects into three groups on the basisof performance: poor, middle and top performers. The results demonstrate that all thesubjects in all tests showed good awareness of their level of actual performance. Analyzingcomparative assessments, the results reported in literature by Kruger and Dunning wereconfirmed: poor performers tend to significantly overestimate their own performance whilst top performers tend to underestimate it. This can be interpreted as a demonstration thatthe accuracy of comparative self-evaluations depends on a number of variables: cognitiveand metacognitive factors and aspects associated with self-representation. Our conclusion is that cognitive and metacognitive processes work as “submerged” in highly subjectiverepresentations, allowing dynamics related to safeguarding the image one has of oneself toplay a role