Search results for " TESTI"
showing 10 items of 1926 documents
Influence of an evoked pleasant consumption context on consumers’ hedonic evaluation for minimally processed cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruit
2016
Awareness of the need to consider a consumption context when measuring the consumer's hedonic evaluation of a food product led researchers to investigate differences among responses given by consumers in different contexts. Previous studies measured the effects of evoking a consumption context, by using photographs or a written scenario, on hedonic evaluations of consumers for food products. This study investigated the influence of evoking a consumption context on hedonic evaluation of minimally processed cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruit, using pictures and memories of pleasant personal experiences. A hedonic scale method for measuring food preferences was used. Hedonic evaluation o…
World-wide variation in Drosophila melanogaster sex pheromone: behavioural effects, genetic bases and potential evolutionary consequences
1996
0016-6707 (Print) Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; In Drosophila melanogaster, male wing vibration, a key element of courtship behaviour, is most efficiently induced by a female-specific contact pheromone cis, cis 7,11 heptacosadiene (7,11 HD), which is the main mature female cuticular hydrocarbon in the CS laboratory strain. A study of 63 strains from around the world revealed that flies from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are unique in showing low levels 7,11 HD and high levels of the position isomer 5,9 HD. This difference maps to chromosome III, perhaps indicating a simple genetic control of the 7,11 HD:5,9 HD ratio. Females from strains with high levels of 7,11 H…
Zeolite-silver-zinc nanoparticles : biocompatibility and their effect on the compressive strength of mineral trioxide aggregate
2016
Background This study was carried out to evaluate the biocompatibility of zeolite-silver-zinc (Ze-Ag-Zn) nanoparticles and their effect on the compressive strength of Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA). Material and Methods Biocompatibility was evaluated by an MTT assay on the pulmonary adenocarcinoma cells with 0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1 and 5 mg/mL concentrations of Ze-Ag-Zn. For compressive strength test, four groups containing 15 stainless-steel cylinders with an internal diameter of 4 and a height of 6 mm were prepared and MTA (groups 1 and 2) or MTA + 2% Ze-Ag-Zn (groups 3 and 4) were placed in the cylinders. The compressive strength was evaluated using a universal testing machine 4 days a…
Fruit quality evaluation of affirmed and local loquat (Eriobotrya japonicaLindl) cultivars using instrumental and sensory analyses
2016
Introduction. Fruit quality can be evaluated by combining instrumental and sensory analyses. These methodologies have been affirmed and tested on different fruit tree species, but loquat is still little known from this point of view. Materials and methods. In this trial, conducted in Palermo and Catania (Sicily, Italy), both instrumental and sensory analyses were carried out on fruit of 8 loquat affirmed cultivars (‘Golden Nugget’, ‘Peluche’) and local cultivars (‘Marceno’, ‘Sanfilippara’, ‘Nespolone di Trabia’, ‘Virticchiara’, ‘Bianco Dolce’ and ‘BRT20’) with the aim of assessing their quality traits. Results and discussion. The sensory results agreed quite well with the physicochemical da…
Lung function assessment in the Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) while resting on land and submerged in water
2020
In the present study, we examined lung function in healthy resting adult (born in 2003) Pacific walruses (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) by measuring respiratory flow ([Formula: see text]) using a custom-made pneumotachometer. Three female walruses (670-1025 kg) voluntarily participated in spirometry trials while spontaneously breathing on land (sitting and lying down in sternal recumbency) and floating in water. While sitting, two walruses performed active respiratory efforts, and one animal participated in lung compliance measurements. For spontaneous breaths, [Formula: see text] was lower when walruses were lying down (e.g. expiration: 7.1±1.2 l s-1) as compared with in water (9.9±1.4 l s-…
Self-assembled multivalent (SAMul) ligand systems with enhanced stability in the presence of human serum
2019
Self-assembled cationic micelles are an attractive platform for binding biologically-relevant polyanions such as heparin. This has potential applications in coagulation control, where a synthetic heparin rescue agent could be a useful replacement for protamine, which is in current clinical use. However, micelles can have low stability in human serum and unacceptable toxicity profiles. This paper reports the optimi- sation of self-assembled multivalent (SAMul) arrays of amphiphilic ligands to bind heparin in competitive conditions. Specifically, modification of the hydrophobic unit kinetically stabilises the self-assembled nanostructures, preventing loss of binding ability in the presence of…
Broker and Federation Based Cloud Networking Architecture for IaaS and NaaS QoS Guarantee
2016
International audience; Today, the Cloud networking aspect is a critical factor for adopting the Cloud computing approach. The main drawback of Cloud networking consists in the lack of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee and management in conformance with a corresponding Service Level Agreement (SLA). This paper presents a framework for resource allocation according to an end-to-end SLA established between a Cloud Service User (CSU) and several Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) in a Cloud networking environment. We focus on QoS parameters for Network as a Service (NaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services. In addition, we propose algorithms for the best CSPs selection to allocate Vi…
A validity and reliability study of Conditional Entropy Measures of Pulse Rate Variability
2019
In this work, we present the feasibility to use a simpler methodological approach for the assessment of the short-term complexity of Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Specifically, we propose to exploit Pulse Rate Variability (PRV) recorded through photoplethysmography in place of HRV measured from the ECG, and to compute complexity via a linear Gaussian approximation in place of the standard model-free methods (e.g., nearest neighbor entropy estimates) usually applied to HRV. Linear PRV-based and model-free HRV-based complexity measures were compared via statistical tests, correlation analysis and Bland-Altman plots, demonstrating an overall good agreement. These results support the applicabil…
Autonomous ultrasonic inspection using Bayesian optimisation and robust outlier analysis
2020
The use of robotics is beginning to play a key role in automating the data collection process in Non Destructive Testing (NDT). Increasing the use of automation quickly leads to the gathering of large quantities of data, which makes it inefficient, perhaps even infeasible, for a human to parse the information contained in them. This paper presents a solution to this problem by making the process of NDT data acquisition an autonomous one as opposed to an automatic one. In order to achieve this, the robotic data acquisition task is treated as an optimisation problem, where one seeks to find locations with the highest indication of damage. The resulting algorithm combines damage detection tech…
Vision guided robotic inspection for parts in manufacturing and remanufacturing industry
2020
AbstractEnvironmental and commercial drivers are leading to a circular economy, where systems and components are routinely recycled or remanufactured. Unlike traditional manufacturing, where components typically have a high degree of tolerance, components in the remanufacturing process may have seen decades of wear, resulting in a wider variation of geometries. This makes it difficult to translate existing automation techniques to perform Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) for such components autonomously. The challenge of performing automated inspections, with off-line tool-paths developed from Computer Aided Design (CAD) models, typically arises from the fact that those paths do not have the r…