Development of a Wine Metabolomics Approach for the Authenticity Assessment of Selected Greek Red Wines

Wine metabolomics constitutes a powerful discipline towards wine authenticity assessment through the simultaneous exploration of multiple classes of compounds in the wine matrix. Over the last decades, wines from autochthonous Greek grape varieties have become increasingly popular among wine connoisseurs, attracting great interest for their authentication and chemical characterization. In this work, 46 red wine samples from Agiorgitiko and Xinomavro grape varieties were collected from wineries in two important winemaking regions of Greece during two consecutive vintages and analyzed using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QToF-MS). A targeted metabolomics methodology was developed, including the determination and quantification of 28 phenolic compounds from different classes (hydroxycinnamic acids, hydroxybenzoic acids, stilbenes and flavonoids). Moreover, 86 compounds were detected and tentatively identified via a robust suspect screening workflow using an in-house database of 420 wine related compounds. Supervised chemometric techniques were employed to build an accurate and robust model to discriminate between two varieties.     

Towards High Performance Chemical Vapour Deposition V2O5 Cathodes for Batteries Employing Aqueous Media

The need for clean and efficient energy storage has become the center of attention due to the eminent global energy crisis and growing ecological concerns. A key component in this effort is the ultra-high performance battery, which will play a major role in the energy industry. To meet the demands in portable electronic devices, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage systems, it is necessary to prepare advanced batteries with high safety, fast charge ratios, and discharge capabilities at a low cost. Cathode materials play a significant role in determining the performance of batteries. Among the possible electrode materials is vanadium pentoxide, which will be discussed in this review, due to its low cost and high theoretical capacity. Additionally, aqueous electrolytes, which are environmentally safe, provide an alternative approach compared to organic media for safe, cost-effective, and scalable energy storage. In this review, we will reveal the industrial potential of competitive methods to grow cathodes with excellent stability and enhanced electrochemical performance in aqueous media and lay the foundation for the large-scale production of electrode materials.     

WIMP event rates in directional experiments: The diurnal variation signature

The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Modern particle theories provide viable cold dark matter candidates with masses in the GeV-TeV region. All such candidates will be called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). The nature of dark matter can only be unraveled by its direct detection in the laboratory. In this work we present some theoretical elements relevant to the direct dark matter detection experiments, paying particular attention to directional experiments, i.e. experiments in which not only the energy but the direction of the recoiling nucleus is observed. Since the direction of observation is fixed with respect to the Earth, while the Earth is rotating around its axis, in a directional experiment the angle between the direction of observation and the Sun’s direction of motion will change during the day. So, since the event rates sensitively depend on this angle, the observed signal in such experiments will exhibit very interesting and characteristic periodic diurnal variation.     

Incompressible surfaces in handlebodies and isotopies

It is shown that every properly embedded incompressible surface in a handlebody can be constructed by a canonical gluing process. A simple condition is given which asserts that the result of the gluing process is an incompressible surface. A new notion of isotopy is introduced in order to distinguish surfaces belonging to distinct isotopy classes. Several examples (known and new) are constructed.     

The gauge theory of dislocations: conservation and balance laws

We derive conservation and balance laws for the translational gauge theory of dislocations by applying Noether's theorem. We present an improved translational gauge theory of dislocations including the dislocation density tensor and the dislocation current tensor. The invariance of the variational principle under the continuous group of transformations is studied. Through Lie's infinitesimal invariance criterion we obtain conserved translational and rotational currents for the total Lagrangian made up of an elastic and dislocation part. We calculate the broken scaling current. Looking only on one part of the whole system, the conservation laws are changed into balance laws. Because of the lack of translational, rotational and dilatation invariance for each part, a configurational force, moment and power appears. The corresponding J , L and M integrals are obtained. Only isotropic and homogeneous materials are considered and we restrict ourselves to a linear theory. We choose constitutive laws for the most general linear form of material isotropy. Also we give the conservation and balance laws corresponding to the gauge symmetry and the addition of solutions. From the addition of solutions we derive a reciprocity theorem for the gauge theory of dislocations. Also, we derive the conservation laws for stress-free states of dislocations.     

Trigonometric fitted modification of RADAU5

Implicit Runge-Kutta (RK) methods are in common use when addressing stiff initial value problems (IVP). They usually share the property of A-stability that is of crucial importance in solving the latter type of IVP. Radau IIA family of implicit RK methods is among the preferred ones. Especially its fifth-order representative named RADAU5 has received a lot of attention for use with lax accuracies. Here, we try the lesser possible perturbation of its coefficients. Then, we derive a trigonometric fitted modification that is intended to be applied in periodic IVPs. Numerical tests over a variety of problems with oscillatory solutions justify our effort.     

Dilepton rapidity distribution in the Drell-Yan process at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD

We compute the rapidity distribution of the virtual photon produced in the Drell-Yan process through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. We introduce a powerful new method for calculating differential distributions in hard scattering processes. This method is based upon a generalization of the optical theorem; it allows the integration-by-parts technology developed for multiloop diagrams to be applied to noninclusive phase-space integrals, and permits a high degree of automation. We apply our results to the analysis of fixed-target experiments.