The application of gibberellic acid increases berry size of ‘Emperatriz’ seedless grape

Gibberellic acid (GA3) increases berry size of "Emperatriz" seedless grape, the response depending on the phenological stage of vine at treatment date and on the concentration applied. From berry fruit set to 21 days later, 80 mg/L GA3 increased commercial berry weight by 50%-90%, depending on the year, reaching similar size to that of "Aledo" seeded grape, used as comparison. This effect takes place through: a) a larger berry growth rate; b) an early glucose, fructose and sucrose uptake; c) an increase of absolute glucose and fructose content (mg/berry) of seedless berries up to similar values to those of seeded berries; and d) an increase of absolute berry water content but not of relative content to fresh weight, thus water potential and osmotic potential are not significantly modified by treatments. GA3 does not affect berry pericarp cell number but increases pericarp cell diameter

Improved method for determination of waxes in olive oils: Reduction of silica and use of a less hazardous solvent

The evaluation of the content of waxes is request both by IOC Trade Standard and by Regulation (EEC) 2568/91 and its further amendments. The official method uses 15 g of silicic acid and elutes several fractions by using huge volumes of dangerous solvent (n-hexane). The developed method uses 1 g of silicic acid with a different particle size and less than 20 mL of solvent mixture, substituting n-hexane with less toxic isooctane. Briefly, after spiking with a suitable internal standard, oil sample is fractionated by SPE (Solid Phase Extraction) cartridge with 1 g of silica, waxes are eluted with 14 mL of isooctane/ethyl ether 99/1 (6 mL discarded and 8 mL collected), then, after elution sample is reconstitute in 200 \u3bcL of n-heptane and analysed by capillary GC. Data of "In home" validation, (repeatability, accuracy and recovery) and relative chromatograms are reported in this paper

Simulation-Based Evaluation of the Impact of an Electrochromic Glazing on the Energy Use and Indoor Comfort of an Office Room

Funding Information: The first author wishes to acknowledge the support of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for funding her PhD Grant FCT PD/BD/150576/2020 (DOI: 10.5449/PD/BD/150576/2020). The authors thank FCT for funding the Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability (CERIS) research unit through UIDB/04625/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/UIDB/04625/2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.Electrochromic glazing alters its optical properties in the absence/presence of an electrical charge, varying from clear to dark to control daylighting and solar heat gains. This study aims to evaluate the impact of an electrochromic glazing, with indoor glare or temperature control, on the energy performance and thermal and visual comfort of an office room under three European climates, using a calibrated simulation model. The novelty of the paper lies in its combined performance assessment, using different standards and metrics. The results showed reduced climatization energy requirements with temperature control, but significantly increased artificial lighting energy use. Glare control achieved useful illuminance levels during 74–80% of working hours. Concerning temperature control, working hours within thermal comfort increased (21–43%) under a free-float regime. Moreover, the performance of this glazing was compared to that of a clear glazing with/without a reflective film and a thermochromic glazing for different solar orientations. The electrochromic glazing with glare control showed the highest energy savings (14–36%) for a western orientation, and the lowest negative impact on daylighting for a northern orientation. The best glare reduction was achieved with the reflective film. Considering the free-float regime, the electrochromic glazing, with temperature control, showed the highest increase in working hours within thermal comfort (6–9%) for a western orientation.publishersversionpublishe

Experimental analysis of the impact of photochromic glazing on indoor thermal and luminous conditions

The authors would like to thank the occupants of the office rooms (DEM-IST) for supporting the study. The authors gratefully appreciate the technical support given by the IMPERSOL Company. The authors would like to express their gratitude to CERIS (Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability) research unit of IST-ID (Association of Instituto Superior T\u00E9cnico for Research and Development). The first author wishes to acknowledge the support of FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) PhD Grant FCT PD/BD/150576/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/PD/BD/150576/2020). The authors gratefully thank FCT for funding CERIS research unit through UIDB/04625/2020 (DOI: 10.54499/UIDB/04625/2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s)The application of films on conventional glazing aims at increasing the glazing performance by reducing energy needs and increasing indoor comfort. Photochromic films in particular can alter their optical properties due to a chromatic change in response to solar radiation, allowing for reduced glare levels and solar heat gains. However, despite the potential of application, this refurbishment solution is still poorly explored. Therefore, the main purpose of this work was to experimentally evaluate the thermal and luminous performance of a double glazing with and without a photochromic film installed, using two office rooms in Lisbon as case study. An extended field experimental campaign was conducted simultaneously in both offices, where temperature, solar radiation and illuminance levels were collected. The key contribution and novelty of this research lies on the experimental assessment of the thermal and visual comfort conditions with the photochromic film under real-occupancy. Even though the photochromic film significantly increased the surface temperatures of the glazing, the indoor air temperature was not negatively affected, with an increase up to 14 % of working hours with comfortable temperature during the heating period. Illuminance levels on vertical/horizontal plane were reduced by 24/36 % in the presence of the photochromic film, when compared to the clear glazing without film, resulting in an increase of 7 % of working hours with useful illuminance during the heating period, and large areas in the office room with imperceptible daylight glare levels when facing the glazing system. The impact of the film was less noticeable during the cooling period.publishersversionpublishe

Occurrence of n-Alkanes in vegetable oils and their analytical determination

Vegetable oils contain endogenous linear hydrocarbons, namely n-alkanes, ranging from n-C21 to n-C35 with odd chain lengths prevalent. Different vegetable oils, as well as oils of the same type, but of different variety and provenience, show typical n-alkane patterns, which could be used as a fingerprint to characterize them. In the first part of this review, data on the occurrence of n-alkanes in different vegetable oils (total and predominant n-alkanes) are given, with a focus on obtaining information regarding variety and geographical origin. The second part aims to provide the state of the art on available analytical methods for their determination. In particular, a detailed description of the sample preparation protocols and analytical determination is reported, pointing out the main drawbacks of traditional sample preparation and possible solutions to implement the analysis with the aim to shift toward rapid and solvent-sparing methods

Heuristics for the inversion median problem

Background: The study of genome rearrangements has become a mainstay of phylogenetics and comparative genomics. Fundamental in such a study is the median problem: given three gene arrangements, find a fourth that minimizes the sum of the evolutionary distances between itself and the given three. Many exact algorithms and heuristics have been developped for the inversion median problem, of which the best known is MGR. Results: We present a unifying framework for median heuristics, which enables us to clarify existing strategies and to place them in a partial ordering. Analysis of this framework leads to a new insight: the best strategies continue to refer to the input data rather than just to updated estimates. Using this insight, we develop a new heuristic for inversion medians that uses input data to the end of its computation and leverages our previous work with DCJ medians. Finally, we present the results of extensive experimentation showing that our new heuristic outperforms all others in accuracy and, especially, in running time: the heuristic typically returns solutions within 1 % of optimal and runs in seconds to minutes even on genomes with 25’000 genes—in contrast, MGR can take days on instances of 200 genes and cannot be used beyond 1’000 genes. Conclusions: Finding good rearrangement medians, in particular inversion medians, had long been regarded as the computational bottleneck in whole-genome studies. Our new heuristic for inversion medians, ASM, which dominates all others in our framework, puts that issue to rest by providing near-optimal solutions within seconds to minutes on even the largest genomes

Simultaneous Orthogonal Planarity

We introduce and study the $\textit{OrthoSEFE}-k$ problem: Given $k$ planar graphs each with maximum degree 4 and the same vertex set, do they admit an OrthoSEFE, that is, is there an assignment of the vertices to grid points and of the edges to paths on the grid such that the same edges in distinct graphs are assigned the same path and such that the assignment induces a planar orthogonal drawing of each of the $k$ graphs? We show that the problem is NP-complete for $k \geq 3$ even if the shared graph is a Hamiltonian cycle and has sunflower intersection and for $k \geq 2$ even if the shared graph consists of a cycle and of isolated vertices. Whereas the problem is polynomial-time solvable for $k=2$ when the union graph has maximum degree five and the shared graph is biconnected. Further, when the shared graph is biconnected and has sunflower intersection, we show that every positive instance has an OrthoSEFE with at most three bends per edge.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016