Effects of formulation and baking process on acrylamide formation in Kolompeh, a traditional cookie in Iran

Thermal treatments and recipes are two critical aspects for the formation of acrylamide at ordinary household cooking conditions and industrial level. Kolompeh is a traditional Iranian cookie, and the aim of this study was to monitor acrylamide formation in four different recipes: traditional sugary Kolompeh (TSK), traditional simple Kolompeh (TSIK), industrial sugary Kolompeh (ISK), and industrial simple Kolompeh (ISIK). Along with the measurement of reducing sugars, moisture, and pH, acrylamide was quantified by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Results indicated that acrylamide content was 1758, 1048, 888, and 560 μg/kg for TSK, TSIK, ISK, and ISIK, respectively, revealing that the kind of thermal treatment in combination with higher concentrations of reducing sugars were the major driver for acrylamide formation. In particular, acrylamide concentration in TSIK direct heating was 1.87 times higher than industrial indirect heating treatment, highlighting that domestic preparation of Kolompeh required a specific attention as a source of potential toxic molecule formation

Fast Shadow Detection from a Single Image Using a Patched Convolutional Neural Network

In recent years, various shadow detection methods from a single image have been proposed and used in vision systems; however, most of them are not appropriate for the robotic applications due to the expensive time complexity. This paper introduces a fast shadow detection method using a deep learning framework, with a time cost that is appropriate for robotic applications. In our solution, we first obtain a shadow prior map with the help of multi-class support vector machine using statistical features. Then, we use a semantic- aware patch-level Convolutional Neural Network that efficiently trains on shadow examples by combining the original image and the shadow prior map. Experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate the proposed method significantly decreases the time complexity of shadow detection, by one or two orders of magnitude compared with state-of-the-art methods, without losing accuracy.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to IROS 201

Staphylococcus aureus typing by digestion of protein A coding gene using Bsp143I

Background: Protein A is the virulence factors of Staphylococcus aureus rolling in its pathogenesis, and its gene is used for typing. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) with different enzymes has been used for this action. Objectives: In this study, we used Bsp143I enzyme for digestion of the gene, coding protein A (spa gene) in S. aureus. The bacteria were isolated from patients and healthy carriers in Gorgan, north of Iran. Patients and Methods: DNAs of 128 S. aureus subjects (53 from healthy carriers and 75 from patients) were extracted and amplified using specific primers of the spa gene. The product was digested by Bsp143I enzyme and its pattern was assessed by gel electrophoresis. Results: There were seven spa types among the tested S. aureus samples, among which six types differed in the repeated X region of the spa gene, but the seventh type had a deletion on one of BSP143I restriction sites. The frequency of spa types among isolated S. aureus samples as well as healthy carriers was six and five, respectively. S. aureus isolated from wounds showed the most diverse spa types (five) among clinical samples. Types 1, 2 and 4 were observed in all clinical samples, while only one case of type 3 was identified among patients, whereas this type constituted over 32% of the isolates among carriers. We found seven and four spa types among methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) isolates, respectively. Conclusions: Our results showed that typing the spa gene using PCR-RFLP using Bsp143I was an acceptable method for typing S. aureus. Furthermore, this survey showed that the types in healthy carriers and MSSA were more variable than patient and MRSA isolates, respectively. We used the Bsp143I enzyme, which was not used in any previous studies on the spa gene. The results of this study suggested that we can use PCR-RFLP of spa gene by Bsp143I for molecular typing and sequencing of S. aureus, instead of relatively expensive methods. This method is relatively rapid and inexpensive, and can be accomplished in centers with conventional molecular facilities. © 2014, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Solar extreme ultraviolet variability of the quiet Sun

The last solar minimum has been unusually quiet compared to the previous minima (since space-based radiometric measurements are available). The Sun's magnetic flux was substantially lower during this minimum. Some studies also show that the total solar irradiance during the minimum after cycle 23 may have dropped below the values known from the two minima prior to that. For chromospheric and coronal radiation, the situation is less clear-cut. The Sun's 10.7\,cm flux shows a decrease of $\sim4\%$ during the solar minimum in 2008 compared to the previous minimum, but \ion{Ca}{II} K does not. Here we consider additional wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV), specifically transitions of \ion{He}{I} at 584.3\,\AA\ and \ion{O}{V} at 629.7\,\AA , of which the CDS spectrometer aboard SOHO has been taking regular scans along the solar central meridian since 1996. We analysed this unique dataset to verify if and how the radiance distribution undergoes measurable variations between cycle minima. To achieve this aim we determined the radiance distribution of quiet areas around the Sun centre. Concentrating on the last two solar minima, we found out that there is very little variation in the radiance distribution of the chromospheric spectral line \ion{He}{I} between these minima. The same analysis shows a modest, although significant, 4\% variation in the radiance distribution of the transition region spectral line \ion{O}{V}. These results are comparable to those obtained by earlier studies employing other spectral features, and they confirm that chromospheric indices display a small variation, whereas in the TR a more significant reduction of the brighter features is visible

Inequalities for the Polar Derivative of a Polynomial

In this paper we obtain new results concerning maximum modulus of the polar derivative of a polynomial with restricted zeros. Our results generalize and refine upon the results of Aziz and Shah [An integral mean estimate for polynomial, Indian J. Pure Appl. Math. 28 (1997) 1413--1419] and Gardner, Govil and Weems [Some result concerning rate of growth of polynomials, East J. Apporox. 10(2004) 301--312]