Texture changes during chilled storage of wild and farmed blacspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo) fed different diets

The impact of changes in dietary lipids and protein sources on texture was evaluated on farmed blackspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo) throughout 14 days of ice storage and compared with wild fish. A commercial diet formulated with a high proportion of lipids, and two diets formulated with an important reduction of lipid levels by 60% and adding either plant protein sources (LL diet) or fishmeal (LL + diet) were supplied during growth until commercial size was attained. In the wild fish, the raw fillet hardness was significantly higher than in farmed fish during the entire ice-storage period. In the farmed fish, an increase of muscle lipid accumulation and change of fiber density were responsible for the variations in texture in the raw fillet. The highest reduction was found in fish fed with diets LL+ and LL. The texture parameters studied on the cooked fillets showed no significant differences, neither attributable to the diets nor to the ice-storage period.JUNTA ASESORA DE CULTIVOS MARINOS (JACUMAR)Postprin

Application of the Fisher-Rao metric to ellipse detection

The parameter space for the ellipses in a two dimensional image is a five dimensional manifold, where each point of the manifold corresponds to an ellipse in the image. The parameter space becomes a Riemannian manifold under a Fisher-Rao metric, which is derived from a Gaussian model for the blurring of ellipses in the image. Two points in the parameter space are close together under the Fisher-Rao metric if the corresponding ellipses are close together in the image. The Fisher-Rao metric is accurately approximated by a simpler metric under the assumption that the blurring is small compared with the sizes of the ellipses under consideration. It is shown that the parameter space for the ellipses in the image has a finite volume under the approximation to the Fisher-Rao metric. As a consequence the parameter space can be replaced, for the purpose of ellipse detection, by a finite set of points sampled from it. An efficient algorithm for sampling the parameter space is described. The algorithm uses the fact that the approximating metric is flat, and therefore locally Euclidean, on each three dimensional family of ellipses with a fixed orientation and a fixed eccentricity. Once the sample points have been obtained, ellipses are detected in a given image by checking each sample point in turn to see if the corresponding ellipse is supported by the nearby image pixel values. The resulting algorithm for ellipse detection is implemented. A multiresolution version of the algorithm is also implemented. The experimental results suggest that ellipses can be reliably detected in a given low resolution image and that the number of false detections can be reduced using the multiresolution algorithm

Loss of caveolin-1 is associated with a decrease in beta cell death in mice on a high fat diet

Indexación: Scopus.Elevated free fatty acids (FFAs) impair beta cell function and reduce beta cell mass as a consequence of the lipotoxicity that occurs in type 2 diabetes (T2D). We previously reported that the membrane protein caveolin-1 (CAV1) sensitizes to palmitate-induced apoptosis in the beta pancreatic cell line MIN6. Thus, our hypothesis was that CAV1 knock-out (CAV1 KO) mice subjected to a high fat diet (HFD) should suffer less damage to beta cells than wild type (WT) mice. Here, we evaluated the in vivo response of beta cells in the pancreatic islets of 8-week-old C57Bl/6J CAV1 KO mice subjected to a control diet (CD, 14% kcal fat) or a HFD (60% kcal fat) for 12 weeks. We observed that CAV1 KO mice were resistant to weight gain when on HFD, although they had high serum cholesterol and FFA levels, impaired glucose tolerance and were insulin resistant. Some of these alterations were also observed in mice on CD. Interestingly, KO mice fed with HFD showed an adaptive response of the pancreatic beta cells and exhibited a significant decrease in beta cell apoptosis in their islets compared to WT mice. These in vivo results suggest that although the CAV1 KO mice are metabolically unhealthy, they adapt better to a HFD than WT mice. To shed light on the possible signaling pathway(s) involved, MIN6 murine beta cells expressing (MIN6 CAV) or not expressing (MIN6 Mock) CAV1 were incubated with the saturated fatty acid palmitate in the presence of mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors. Western blot analysis revealed that CAV1 enhanced palmitate-induced JNK, p38 and ERK phosphorylation in MIN6 CAV1 cells. Moreover, all the MAPK inhibitors partially restored MIN6 viability, but the effect was most notable with the ERK inhibitor. In conclusion, our results suggest that CAV1 KO mice adapted better to a HFD despite their altered metabolic state and that this may at least in part be due to reduced beta cell damage. Moreover, they indicate that the ability of CAV1 to increase sensitivity to FFAs may be mediated by MAPK and particularly ERK activation. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/15/522

Exploring the Potential of Metal–Organic Frameworks for the Separation of Blends of Fluorinated Gases with High Global Warming Potential

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support from the LIFE‐4‐Fgases project, LIFE20 CCM/ES/001748, funded by EU LIFE Programme. This work was also financed by national funds from FCT/MCTES (Portugal) through Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry–LAQV (UIDB/50006/2020 | UIDP/50006/2020), the contracts of Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus 2020.00835.CEECIND (J.M.M.A.)/2021.01432.CEECIND (A.B.P.), and the Norma Transitória DL 57/2016 Program Contract (R.P.P.L.R.). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Global Challenges published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.The research on porous materials for the selective capture of fluorinated gases (F-gases) is key to reduce their emissions. Here, the adsorption of difluoromethane (R-32), pentafluoroethane (R-125), and 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (R-134a) is studied in four metal–organic frameworks (MOFs: Cu-benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylate, zeolitic imidazolate framework-8, MOF-177, and MIL-53(Al)) and in one zeolite (ZSM-5) with the aim to develop technologies for the efficient capture and separation of high global warming potential blends containing these gases. Single-component sorption equilibria of the pure gases are measured at three temperatures (283.15, 303.15, and 323.15 K) by gravimetry and correlated using the Tóth and Virial adsorption models, and selectivities toward R-410A and R-407F are determined by ideal adsorption solution theory. While at lower pressures, R-125 and R-134a are preferentially adsorbed in all materials, at higher pressures there is no selectivity, or it is shifted toward the adsorption R-32. Furthermore, at high pressures, MOF-177 shows the highest adsorption capacity for the three F-gases. The results presented here show that the utilization of MOFs, as tailored made materials, is promising for the development of new approaches for the selective capture of F-gases and for the separation of blends of these gases, which are used in commercial refrigeration.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

Electromagnetic properties of graphene junctions

A resonant chiral tunneling (CT) across a graphene junction (GJ) induced by an external electromagnetic field (EF) is studied. Modulation of the electron and hole wavefunction phases $\varphi$ by the external EF during the CT processes strongly impacts the CT directional diagram. Therefore the a.c. transport characteristics of GJs depend on the EF polarization and frequency considerably. The GJ shows great promises for various nanoelectronic applications working in the THz diapason.Comment: 4 pages 3 figure

Phonon-mediated anisotropic superconductivity in the Y and Lu nickel borocarbides

We present scanning tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy measurements at low temperatures in the borocarbide materials RNi2B2C (R=Y, Lu). The characteristic strong coupling structure due to the pairing interaction is unambiguously resolved in the superconducting density of states. It is located at the superconducting gap plus the energy corresponding to a phonon mode identified in previous neutron scattering experiments. These measurements also show that this mode is coupled to the electrons through a highly anisotropic electron-phonon interaction originated by a nesting feature of the Fermi surface. Our experiments, from which we can extract a large electron-phonon coupling parameter lambda (between 0.5 and 0.8), demonstrate that this anisotropic electron-phonon coupling has an essential contribution to the pairing interaction. The tunneling spectra show an anisotropic s-wave superconducting gap function.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Low Complexity Regularization of Linear Inverse Problems

Inverse problems and regularization theory is a central theme in contemporary signal processing, where the goal is to reconstruct an unknown signal from partial indirect, and possibly noisy, measurements of it. A now standard method for recovering the unknown signal is to solve a convex optimization problem that enforces some prior knowledge about its structure. This has proved efficient in many problems routinely encountered in imaging sciences, statistics and machine learning. This chapter delivers a review of recent advances in the field where the regularization prior promotes solutions conforming to some notion of simplicity/low-complexity. These priors encompass as popular examples sparsity and group sparsity (to capture the compressibility of natural signals and images), total variation and analysis sparsity (to promote piecewise regularity), and low-rank (as natural extension of sparsity to matrix-valued data). Our aim is to provide a unified treatment of all these regularizations under a single umbrella, namely the theory of partial smoothness. This framework is very general and accommodates all low-complexity regularizers just mentioned, as well as many others. Partial smoothness turns out to be the canonical way to encode low-dimensional models that can be linear spaces or more general smooth manifolds. This review is intended to serve as a one stop shop toward the understanding of the theoretical properties of the so-regularized solutions. It covers a large spectrum including: (i) recovery guarantees and stability to noise, both in terms of $\ell^2$-stability and model (manifold) identification; (ii) sensitivity analysis to perturbations of the parameters involved (in particular the observations), with applications to unbiased risk estimation ; (iii) convergence properties of the forward-backward proximal splitting scheme, that is particularly well suited to solve the corresponding large-scale regularized optimization problem

the WAF method for non-homogeneous SWE with pollutant

This paper deals with the extension of the WAF method to discretize Shallow Water Equations with pollutants. We consider two different versions of the WAF method, by approximating the intermediate waves using the flux of HLL or the direct approach of HLLC solver. It is seen that both versions can be written under the same form with different definitions for the approximation of the velocity waves. We also propose an extension of the method to non-homogeneous systems. In the case of homogeneous systems it is seen that we can rewrite the third component of the numerical flux in terms of an intermediate wave speed approximation. We conclude that – in order to have the same relation for non-homogeneous systems – the approximation of the intermediate wave speed must be modified. The proposed extension of the WAF method preserves all stationary solutions, up to second order accuracy, and water at rest in an exact way, even with arbitrary pollutant concentration. Finally, we perform several numerical tests, by comparing it with HLLC solver, reference solutions and analytical solutions

Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter

Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, \nobreak{$6\times 10^{19}$eV}. The anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less than $3.1^\circ$ from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc (using the V\'eron-Cetty and V\'eron $12^{\rm th}$ catalog). An updated measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009. The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more precise measurement. The correlating fraction is $(38^{+7}_{-6})$, compared with $21$ expected for isotropic cosmic rays. This is down from the early estimate of $(69^{+11}_{-13})$. The enlarged set of arrival directions is examined also in relation to other populations of nearby extragalactic objects: galaxies in the 2 Microns All Sky Survey and active galactic nuclei detected in hard X-rays by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope. A celestial region around the position of the radiogalaxy Cen A has the largest excess of arrival directions relative to isotropic expectations. The 2-point autocorrelation function is shown for the enlarged set of arrival directions and compared to the isotropic expectation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics on 31 August 201