A system for defining reference materials applicable to all food matrices

Recently the subcommittee on Food Definition of the AOAC INTERNATIONAL Task Force on Methods for Nutrition Labeling proposed a Food Matrix Organizational System [4] to systematically judge the applicability of collaboratively studied methods over a range of food matrices. This system describes a food matrix by its location in one of nine sectors in a triangle, with each point of the triangle defined as representing 100% and the opposite side representing 0% of the normalized contents of each of three major components of FAT, PROTEIN and CARBOHYDRATE. Foods falling within the same sector would be chemically similar and thus should behave in a similar analytical manner. This same scheme can be used to select one or two food matrices representing each sector, for development of a series of reference materials representing all foods. The list of 5250 foods contained in the USDA Nutrient Data Base for Standard Reference has been sorted and matched to this schematic to determine the scope of the selection process. In addition the list of foods in the USDA Data Base for Food Consumption Surveys has been examined. Results and progress of this selection process are reported.     

PHOTOINHIBITION OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS IN NATURAL WATERS*

Abstract— A quantitative analysis of the wavelength-dependent influence of solar irradiance on natural phytoplankton photosynthesis has been made. The effect on productivity due to several different UV radiation regimes has been measured. In the course of this analysis, it has been shown that the biological weighting function for photoinhibition of chloroplasts (Jones and Kok, 1966) allows the calculation of a biologically effective dose which is consistent with the measured photoinhibition in natural phytoplankton populations. The ecological implications of a change in available UV radiation, possibly due to anthropogenic altering of the ozone layer, are explored and it is found that the present static bottle ^l4C technique of measuring in situ phytoplankton productivity does not lend itself to assessing accurately the potential ecological consequences of possible increased MUV (middle ultraviolet radiation in the 280–340 nm region) on phytoplankton populations. A small change in MUV has a relatively minor effect on photoinhibition dose rates whereas it has a large potential effect on DNA dose rates.     

An investigation into causes and effects of high cyanide levels in the palladium-catalyzed cyanation reaction

[reaction: see text] The palladium-catalyzed cyanation reaction is known to be sensitive to dissolved cyanide. Investigation into some causes of high levels of dissolved cyanide is presented here, along with a robust solution to this problem.     

Quantitative x-ray phase-contrast imaging using a single grating of comparable pitch to sample feature size

The ability to quantitatively retrieve transverse phase maps during imaging by using coherent x rays often requires a precise grating or analyzer-crystal-based setup. Imaging of live animals presents further challenges when these methods require multiple exposures for image reconstruction. We present a simple method of single-exposure, single-grating quantitative phase contrast for a regime in which the grating period is much greater than the effective pixel size. A grating is used to create a high-visibility reference pattern incident on the sample, which is distorted according to the complex refractive index and thickness of the sample. The resolution, along a line parallel to the grating, is not restricted by the grating spacing, and the detector resolution becomes the primary determinant of the spatial resolution. We present a method of analysis that maps the displacement of interrogation windows in order to retrieve a quantitative phase map. Application of this analysis to the imaging of known phantoms shows excellent correspondence.     

Tracking extended mucociliary transport activity of individual deposited particles: longitudinal synchrotron X‐ray imaging in live mice

To assess potential therapies for respiratory diseases in which mucociliary transit (MCT) is impaired, such as cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a novel and non‐invasive MCT quantification method has been developed in which the transit rate and behaviour of individual micrometre‐sized deposited particles are measured in live mice using synchrotron phase‐contrast X‐ray imaging. Particle clearance by MCT is known to be a two‐phase process that occurs over a period of minutes to days. Previous studies have assessed MCT in the fast‐clearance phase, ～20 min after marker particle dosing. The aim of this study was to non‐invasively image changes in particle presence and MCT during the slow‐clearance phase, and simultaneously determine whether repeat synchrotron X‐ray imaging of mice was feasible over periods of 3, 9 and 25 h. All mice tolerated the repeat imaging procedure with no adverse effects. Quantitative image analysis revealed that the particle MCT rate and the number of particles present in the airway both decreased with time. This study successfully demonstrated for the first time that longitudinal synchrotron X‐ray imaging studies are possible in live small animals, provided appropriate animal handling techniques are used and care is taken to reduce the delivered radiation dose.     

Variability and uncertainty in masking by competing speech

This study investigated the role of uncertainty in masking of speech by interfering speech. Target stimuli were nonsense sentences recorded by a female talker. Masking sentences were recorded from ten female talkers and combined into pairs. Listeners' recognition performance was measured with both target and masker presented from a front loudspeaker (nonspatial condition) or with a masker presented from two loudspeakers, with the right leading the front by 4 ms (spatial condition). In Experiment 1, the sentences were presented in blocks in which the masking talkers, spatial configuration, and signal-to-noise (S-N) ratio were fixed. Listeners' recognition performance varied widely among the masking talkers in the nonspatial condition, much less so in the spatial condition. This result was attributed to variation in effectiveness of informational masking in the nonspatial condition. The second experiment increased uncertainty by randomizing masking talkers and S-N ratios across trials in some conditions, and reduced uncertainty by presenting the same token of masker across trials in other conditions. These variations in masker uncertainty had relatively small effects on speech recognition.     

The Relationship Between VHI Scores and Specific Acoustic Measures of Mildly Disordered Voice Production

This study was designed to examine the relationship between the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) and acoustic measures of voice samples common in clinical practice. Fifty participants, 38 women and 12 men, ranging in age from 19 to 80 years, with a mean age of 49 years, served as participants. Of these 50 participants, 17 participants could be included in the acoustic analysis of voice based on measures of error calculated with the TF32 software. All participants completed the VHI and provided voice samples including three trials of the sustained vowel /A/ at a comfortable loudness level as well as a connected speech sample consisting of the Zoo Passage. Acoustic measures were made with TF32 and Cool Edit software and included fundamental frequency, jitter %, shimmer %, signal-to-noise ratio, mean root-mean-square intensity, fundamental frequency standard deviation, aphonic periods, and breath groups. Results indicate that these measures were not predictive of overall VHI score, and no cohesive or predictable pattern was identified when comparing individual measures with overall VHI or with each subscale item. Likely contributions to this lack of correlation and subsequent clinical implications are discussed, as well as the direction for further research.     

Organization of matter into one-dimensional units on designed media

The organization of magnetic materials into one-dimensional micro- and nanowires on designed media is discussed, exemplified by two experiments on the microscale and nanoscale, with regard to particles as basic building blocks for the growth and development of matter.     

Reduced field-of-view DTI segmentation of cervical spine tissue

The number of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies regarding the human spine has considerably increased and it is challenging because of the spine’s small size and artifacts associated with the most commonly used clinical imaging method. A novel segmentation method based on the reduced field-of-view (rFOV) DTI dataset is presented in cervical spinal canal cerebrospinal fluid, spinal cord grey matter and white matter classification in both healthy volunteers and patients with neuromyelitis optica (NMO) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Due to each channel based on high resolution rFOV DTI images providing complementary information on spinal tissue segmentation, we want to choose a different contribution map from multiple channel images. Via principal component analysis (PCA) and a hybrid diffusion filter with a continuous switch applied on fourteen channel features, eigen maps can be obtained and used for tissue segmentation based on the Bayesian discrimination method. Relative to segmentation by a pair of expert readers, all of the automated segmentation results in the experiment fall in the good segmentation area and performed well, giving an average segmentation accuracy of about 0.852 for cervical spinal cord grey matter in terms of volume overlap. Furthermore, this has important applications in defining more accurate human spinal cord tissue maps when fusing structural data with diffusion data. rFOV DTI and the proposed automatic segmentation outperform traditional manual segmentation methods in classifying MR cervical spinal images and might be potentially helpful for detecting cervical spine diseases in NMO and MS.     

Simulation of front motion in a reacting condensed two phase mixture

The computational technique is developed in order to provide the scale capturing for numerical simulation of the thermal processes. The thermal front motion and gas flow dynamics as well as the rate of particle growth during the Carbon Combustion Synthesis of Oxides (CCSO) were predicted using the numerical simulation. In CCSO the exothermic oxidation of carbon nanoparticles generates a self-sustained thermal reaction front that propagates through the solid reactant mixture converting it to the desired complex oxides. The combusted carbon is emitted from the sample as carbon dioxide and its high rate of release increases the product porosity and friability. It was shown that the complicated finger front instability can be developed during the carbon combustion synthesis. This phenomenon results from a vortex gas flow in the reaction zone fed by the carbon dioxide co-flow and oxygen counter-flow filtration.