Bottle Neck Research Articles

Consumers' perception of Prosecco wine packaging: A pilot study in Padua and Milan

This paper aims to illustrate and discuss the importance of packaging attributes in the wine market. A survey was conducted in the north of Italy to assess how different attributes affect the probability of choosing a bottle of Prosecco wine. Two hundred face-to-face interviews based on a structured questionnaire were administered in Milan and Padua supermarkets to elicit preferences. Each respondentranked three new bottles of Prosecco wine and expressed the importance of different packaging characteristics in its choice.Product attributes include Label's form, Label's colours, the Label in its entirety, the Writing "Prosecco", the Band on the bottle's neck and the Bottle's shape. The interviews allowed us to recognise the bottle customers found the most attractive, and rank-ordered logistic regression was able to disentangle whichpackaging characteristic led to their decision.

Genesis of Antibiotic Resistance (AR) LXX: Mechanism(s) of heterogeneity due to Fickle vaccine campaign prodded selection of epitope pool confer vaccine resistance consequent AR Pandemic (ARP) ‐ An Episodic selection pressure provoked Bottle neck event driven genetic drift in gene flow

The precise evolutionary mechanisms underlying vaccination campaign followed by serotype surveillance, serotype (Antigenic) multiplicity, serotype(Antigenic) variation, serotype conversion, serotype replacement, serotype diversity, and ultimate vaccine break potential and their role in vaccine resistance is not well understood at present. It is known that vaccination does not protect a host against all known serotypes of the target pathogen while it is known that all hosts do not generate an identical immune response (PMCID: PMC6304978 / PMID: 30559199; PMID: 28356449 / PMCID: PMC5378080 ). For example, Yersinia ruckeri, the causative agent of enteric red mouth disease, was known to have two biotypes, a motile type with a flagellum [biotype 1(Bt1)] and a non-motile type that lacks a flagellum (Bt2) (J Fish Dis. 1989;12:357–365). An outbreak in vaccinated populations implied that the vaccine resistance could have been caused by Bt2 (PMID: 18236630). The flagellin, a defining difference between Bt1 and Bt2, (PMID: 26719024), was attributed to conferring vaccine resistance against Yersinia ruckeri. On the contrary, it was shown that bacterial isolates differ in their ability to cause disease in vaccinated hosts, regardless of the presence of a flagellum. Here we present a plausible evolutionary mechanism(s) for the evolution of novel serotypes, antigenic loss, antigenic drift and life-history modifications, pathogen adaptation which will eventually undermine existing and next-generation vaccines directed at a multitude of epitopes of a target pathogen. It is suggested that subsequent to the vaccination campaign, the pathogenic potential of the target epitope(s) of a given pathogen is subjected to natural selection process altering the pattern of distribution of antigenic variants by either one or more process: directional selection favoring the antigenic variants at the extreme either genotype of dominant or recessive traits, disruptive selection favoring the antigenic variants at both ends dominant/recessive traits, and stabilizing selection favoring the elimination of extreme variants either dominant or recessive from the pool of epitopes and preserving the intermediate variants mounting the resistance to any given type of vaccination protocol (p497 – 498: ISBN: 978 013 518 8743. Pearson, NY .2020). Persisters (PMID: 20528688; PMID: 28529326; PMID: 29857815; PMID: 30414937; PMID: 30082460; PMID: 31036343) subjected to vaccine exposure and evolutionary selection pressure would acquire adaptive evolution endowed with unpredictable fluctuation of antigenic variation from one generation to next generation (Genetic Drift), forming a totally new genotype and phenotype variation (Founder effect) with altered “gene flow” impeding the prophylactic efficacy of vaccines. Taken together, the aforesaid mechanisms suggested to play a pivotal role in the processes of hyper mutation-induced affinity maturation of epitope(s) pool of persisters conferring vaccine resistance.

Deep-Learning Approach to First-Principles Transport Simulations.

Large-scale first-principles transport calculations, while essential for device modeling, remain computationally demanding. To overcome this bottle neck, we combine first-principles transport calculations with machine learning-based nonlinear regression. We calculate the electronic conductance through first-principles based nonequilibrium Green's function techniques for small systems and map the transport properties onto local properties using local descriptors. We show that using the local descriptor as input features for deep learning-based nonlinear regression allows us to build a robust neural network that can predict the conductance of large systems beyond that of the current state-of-the-art first-principles calculation algorithms. Our protocol is applied to alkali metal nanowires, i.e., potassium, which have unique geometrical and electronic properties and hence nontrivial transport properties. We demonstrate that within our approach we can achieve qualitative agreement with experiment at a fraction of the computational effort as compared to the direct calculation of the transport properties using conventional first-principles methods.

Reporters of Cancer Stem Cells as a Tool for Drug Discovery.

In view of the importance of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in chemoresistance, metastasis and recurrence, the biology of CSCs were explored in detail. Based on that, several modalities were proposed to target them. In spite of the several clinical trials, a successful CSC-targeting drug is yet to be identified. The number of molecules screened and entered for clinical trial for CSC-targeting is comparatively low, compared to other drugs. The bottle neck is the lack of a high-throughput adaptable screening strategy for CSCs. This review is aimed to identify suitable reporters for CSCs that can be used to identify the heterogeneous CSC populations, including quiescent CSCs, proliferative CSCs, drug resistant CSCs and metastatic CSCs. Analysis of the tumor microenvironment regulating CSCs revealed that the factors in CSC-niche activates effector molecules that function as CSC markers, including pluripotency markers, CD133, ABCG2 and ALDH1A1. Among these factors OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, ABCG2 and ALDH1A1 are ideal for making reporters for CSCs. The pluripotency molecules, like OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG, regulate self-renewal, chemoresistance and metastasis. ABCG2 is a known regulator of drug resistance while ALDH1A1 modulates self-renewal, chemoresistance and metastasis. Considering the heterogeneity of CSCs, including a quiescent population and a proliferative population with metastatic ability, we propose the use of a combination of reporters. A dual reporter consisting of a pluripotency marker and a marker like ALDH1A1 will be useful in screening drugs that target CSCs.

Self-segmentation of pass-phrase utterances for deep feature learning in text-dependent speaker verification

In this paper, we propose a novel method to segment and label pass-phrase utterances for training deep neural network (DNN) bottleneck (BN) features for text-dependent speaker verification (TD-SV). Specifically, gender-dependent hidden Markov models (HMMs) for monophones are first trained using the pass-phrase utterances that are disjoint from evaluation. Next, the trained HMMs are speaker-adapted and then used for segmenting and labeling these training utterances at the phone level. The resulted labeled data is subsequently used for training DNN models to discriminate gender-dependent phones for the purpose of extracting phone-discriminant BN features. This is in contrast to conventional approaches that apply a general-purpose, speaker-independent automatic speech recognition (ASR) system for generating segmentation and labels. The proposed method eliminates the need for a separate ASR system, which can additionally have the disadvantage of mismatch with the pass-phrase utterances in terms languages, dialects, domains, acoustic conditions and so on. Experiments are conducted on the RedDots challenge 2016 database of TD-SV using short utterances with Gaussian mixture model-universal background model and i-vector techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method yields lower error rates in TD-SV when compared to a set of existing methods. A thorough ablation study further confirms the effectiveness of the method. Fusion in both score and feature levels also shows the complementary nature of the proposed features.

Plasmidome AMR screening (PAMRS) workflow: a rapid screening workflow for phenotypic characterization of antibiotic resistance in plasmidomes

Background: Phenotypic characterization of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria has remained the gold standard for investigation and monitoring of what resistance is present in an organism. However, the process is laborious and not attractive for screening multiple plasmids from a microbial community (plasmidomes). Instead, genomic tools are used, but a major bottle neck that presence of genes does not always translate into phenotypes. Methods: We designed the plasmidome AMR screening (PAMRS) workflow to investigate the presence of antibiotic resistant phenotypes in a plasmidome using Escherichia coli as a host organism. Plasmidomes were extracted from the faecal matter of chicken, cattle and humans using commercial plasmid extraction kits. Competent E. coli cells were transformed and evaluated using disk diffusion. Thirteen antibiotic resistant phenotypes were screened. Results: Here, we show that multiple antibiotic resistant phenotypes encoded by plasmids can be rapidly screened simultaneously using the PAMRS workflow. E. coli was able to pick up to 7, 5 or 8 resistant phenotypes from a single plasmidome from chicken, cattle or humans, respectively. Resistance to ceftazidime was the most frequently picked up phenotype in humans (52.6%) and cattle (90.5%), whereas in chickens, the most picked up resistant phenotype was resistance to co-trimoxazole, ceftriaxone and ampicillin (18.4% each). Conclusions: This workflow is a novel tool that could facilitate studies to evaluate the occurrence and expression of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance in microbial communities and their associated plasmid-host ranges. It could find application in the screening of plasmid-encoded virulence genes.

Exploration of new quality refractory to improve hot metal ladle refractory performance

Refractory performance of hot metal ladle is the repercussion of several combined activities. Amidst the distance travelled by the ladle during transportation of hot metal, the desulphurisation process that took place inside the ladle, has the most deleterious effects on refractory health. Desulfurization activity in hot metal ladle does intensify the wear rate of refractories many folds & leads to severe thermo mechanical failure. There are sporadic evidences of premature failure of refractory lining in steel making shop which is not only flouting stringent safety requirements of any steel plants but also exaggerate the process hazards. This paper does investigate all the contributing factors starting form refractory quality to substantial operational parameter to analyse their effect on refractory health. For decades high Alumina (Al2O3), ASC (Al2O3-SiC-C) are the preferred industrial choices for hot metal ladle refractory lining application. For regular maintenance purpose alumina or basic gunning materials are the available acceptable options, use abundantly by different industries. Due to lack of approaches of gunning position in the side wall area of hot metal ladle, the wall needs to sustain with its own potential throughout its full campaign, almost without any maintenance. This is the most vulnerable area that triggers uncertainty to overall refractory health, and it is the bottle neck for higher life. In this paper wear mechanism of ASC bricks has been studied with desulphurisation slag & accordingly new quality has been suggested to improve the overall refractory performance of hot metal ladle. Furthermore, the potency of the developed material has corroborated through multiple field trials and learnings from each trial has encouraged towards the reinforcement of suitable material to ensure zero refractory failure in future.

Overview on Microbial Enzymatic Production of Algal Oligosaccharides for Nutraceutical Applications.

Global requirement for algal foods is increasing, as they are progressively consumed for its nutrition and health. Macroalgae is a proven source of metabolites, proteins, pigments, bioactive compounds, and algal polysaccharides. The unique polysaccharides such as agar, carrageenan, porphyran, alginate, fucoidan, laminarin, and ulvan are known for its wide range of bioactivities and extensively used for applications from tissue engineering to drug delivery. However, there are few limitations due to its high molecular size, low compatibility, and hydrocolloid nature. Hence, the enzymatically produced algal oligosaccharides have drawn tremendous attention due to its green synthesis, solubility, and lower molecular size. They are reported to have bioactivities including antioxidant, antiglycemic, immunostimulatory, anti-inflammatory, and prebiotic activities, which can be used in the healthcare and nutraceutical industry for the manufacture of functional foods and dietary supplements. However, identification of potential microorganisms, producing polysaccharide hydrolyzing enzymes, remains a major bottle neck for efficient utilization of bioactive algal oligosaccharides. This review summarizes the recent developments in the identification and characterization of microbial enzymes for the production of bioactive algal oligosaccharides. This can improve our understanding of bioactive algal oligosaccharides and pave way for efficient utilization of macroalgae to prevent various chronic diseases.

Particularidades regionais da difusão e atendimento do paciente com COVID-19 na rede urbana da cidade de Imperatriz, Maranhão, Brasil

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo discutir a dinâmica de difusão da covid-19 a partir da mobilidade de pacientes na rede urbana da cidade de Imperatriz, no estado do Maranhão. O período analisado compreende os 100 primeiros dias de pandemia, tendo a rede urbana de Imperatriz como recorte espacial. São considerados dados da espacialização de UTIs, leitos hospitalares e respiradores/ventiladores mecânicos no estado, bem como informações sobre a evolução viral nesse período. As principais fontes de dados são o Datasus e a Secretaria de Estado da Saúde do Maranhão. As particularidades estudadas sugerem que a concentração de equipamentos médico-hospitalares em poucas cidades maranhenses, em especial Imperatriz, configura-se como expressivo gargalo no enfrentamento da pandemia de Sars-CoV-2, na medida em que desencadeia mobilidades de pessoas dos centros com menor oferta de serviços de saúde para aqueles com maior oferta, resultando em amplas áreas de contágio. Assim, a difusão da doença dá-se de forma hierarquizada na rede urbana da cidade, o que nem sempre fica claro nos dados apresentados pelos boletins epidemiológicos.

Research on The Implementation of Smart Factories through Bottleneck improvement on extrusion production sites using NFC

Research on The Implementation of Smart Factories through Bottleneck improvement on extrusion production sites using NFC

The Crossed Legs, “Ballerina” (or “Johnnie Walker”) Configuration: A Solution or Bottle Neck in Endovascular Aneurysm Repair?

In this issue of EJVES, Wang et al.1 describe their experience of endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) with the crossed limb configuration vs. the standard limb configuration. This report is of interest because the authors included a significant number of patients, with a weighted analysis, and also provide a sufficient length of follow up, extending >5 years in some patients. However, the report deals with a single device experience and therefore the findings need to be interpreted with caution.

Solid State Conversion: Microstructuring of Crystalline Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> (Sapphire) by Annealing of Patterned Aluminium Films

Surface structuring on the nano/micro level is important for a huge range of areas. A critical bottle neck for many industrial applications is upscaling; that is to say it must be possible to do the structuring in a comparatively simple and inexpensive manner. However, this is a challenge for many industrially important materials, including sapphire. A few years ago, solid state conversion was introduced as a relatively simply nanoscale structuring method for sapphire. Here we show that the method, by careful choice of parameters, can be extended to work also on the micron scale. We show that a microstructured aluminium film deposited on a Al2O3 (0001) surface is converted into a crystalline Al2O3 surface, when thermally annealed in air, using optimized parameters.

Effects of forest gap disturbance on forest ecosystem.

Forest gap disturbance has important consequences on plant species assemblage, stand structure and ecosystem functions of forests via changing micro-scale heterogeneity and community succession. Here, we reviwed research progress in the effects of forest gap disturbance on forest ecosystem. The effects of forest gap disturbance on plant species assemblage was analyzed based on the intrinsic biological characteristics and external environmental factors. The effects of forest gap disturbance on stand structure was discussed from the perspectives of texture and architecture of plant community. Forest gap disturbance effect on forest ecosystem functions was reviewed. After analyzing the theoretical shortcomings and the key bottleneck of forest ecosystem management practices, the following research directions were proposed, including the methods of determining threshold of forest gap, the mechanism of canopy closure, the effect of forest gap disturbance on forest ecosystem processes, and the relationship between forest gap disturbance and forest productivity. The advantage of forest gap disturbance in accelerating plant species regeneration and structure complexities could provide scientific evidence for enhancing the quality of low yield and low function plantations in China.

FORMAN–RICCI CURVATURE FOR HYPERGRAPHS

Hypergraphs serve as models of complex networks that capture more general structures than binary relations. For graphs, a wide array of statistics has been devised to gauge different aspects of their structures. Hypergraphs lack behind in this respect. The Forman–Ricci curvature is a statistics for graphs based on Riemannian geometry, which stresses the relational character of vertices in a network by focusing on the edges rather than on the vertices. Despite many successful applications of this measure to graphs, Forman–Ricci curvature has not been introduced for hypergraphs. Here, we define the Forman–Ricci curvature for directed and undirected hypergraphs such that the curvature for graphs is recovered as a special case. It quantifies the trade-off between hyperedge (arc) size and the degree of participation of hyperedge (arc) vertices in other hyperedges (arcs). Here, we determine upper and lower bounds for Forman–Ricci curvature both for hypergraphs in general and for graphs in particular. The measure is then applied to two large networks: the Wikipedia vote network and the metabolic network of the bacterium Escherichia coli. In the first case, the curvature is governed by the size of the hyperedges, while in the second example, it is dominated by the hyperedge degree. We found that the number of users involved in Wikipedia elections goes hand-in-hand with the participation of experienced users. The curvature values of the metabolic network allowed detecting redundant and bottle neck reactions. It is found that ADP phosphorylation is the metabolic bottle neck reaction but that the reverse reaction is not similarly central for the metabolism. Furthermore, we show the utility of the Forman–Ricci curvature for quantification of assortativity in hypergraphs and illustrate the idea by investigating three metabolic networks.

Theory of constraints case study in the make to order environment

Purpose: The theory of constraints (TOC) drum-buffer-rope methodology is appropriate when managing a production plant in complex environments, such as make-to-order (MTO) scenarios. However, some difficulties have been detected in implementing this methodology in such changing environments. This case study analyses a MTO company to identify the key factors that influence the execution of the third step of TOC. It also aims to evaluate in more depth the research started by Lizarralde et al. (2020) and compare the results with the existing literature.Design/methodology/approach: The case study approach is selected as a research methodology because of the need to investigate a current phenomenon in a real environment.Findings: In the case study analysed, the protective capacity of non-bottleneck resources is found to the key factor when subordinating the MTO system to a bottleneck (BN). Furthermore, it coincides with one of the two key factors defined by the literature, namely protective capacity and protective inventory.Originality/value: The three key contributions of this study focus on the MTO environment as follows. The first is about identifying the key factors in subordinating the system to the BN (step 3, TOC) according to the existing literature which have been identified through a systematic literature review. The second focuses on identifying the key factors in subordinating the system to the BN through a case study. Finally, the last contribution compares the results obtained in the case study with those obtained in the literature review.

First-principles explorations on P8 and N2 assembled nanowire and nanosheet

‘Bottom-up’ method is a powerful approach to design nanomaterials with desired properties. The bottle neck of being oxidized of phosphorous structures may be conquered by cluster assembling method. Here, we used P8 and N2 as assembling units to construct one-dimensional (1D) nanowire (NW) and two-dimensional (2D) nanosheet (NS), the stability, electronic and magnetic properties of these assembled nanomaterials are investigated using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The assembled 1D-P8N2 NW and 2D-P8N4 NS are identified to possess good stability, as demonstrated by their high cohesive energies, positive phonon dispersions, and structural integrity through molecular dynamics simulations at 300 and 500 K. Moreover, they also exhibit good anti-oxidization property. The 2D-P8N4 NS is a direct bandgap semiconductor with the HSE06 gap of 2.61 eV, and shows appropriate band-edge aliments and moderate carrier mobility for photocatalyzing water splitting. The 1D-P8N2 NW is an indirect bandgap semiconductor, and Mn doping could convert it into a dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) with one Dirac cone in the spin-up channel, while the vdW-type sheet composed of Mn1@1D-P8N2 NWs is a ferromagnetic metal. Our theoretical study is helpful to design stable phosphorus-based nanomaterials with diverse properties and potential applications.

Socioeconomic dynamics and characterization of land-based aquaculture in Western Kenya

Abstract With the global decline in capture fisheries, aquaculture remains alternative in bridging the gap and meeting the demand for fisheries products. Currently, aquaculture contributes approximately 50% of world total fishery production, hence becoming an important intervention in promoting food and nutritional security, and employment creation. Western Kenya is suitable for aquaculture production due to favorable climate and good soil as well as high demand for fish. The present survey purposed to assess the Socio-demographic characteristics of fish farmers, fish feed and seed producers in 9 Counties within Western Kenya. The information obtained included socio economic dynamics and challenges to fish farming. Fish farming mainly occur in rural areas in Western Kenya where the most dominant system is earthen ponds, measuring 300 m2. Aquaculture in the region is male dominated and majority of players practice individual enterprises. The majority of the hatcheries are authenticated and the lack of credit facility was mentioned as the most important challenge. However, for feed producers lack of adequate raw materials was the most important bottle neck. From this study, both environmental and social factors in the region must be synergized to achieve aquaculture sustainability. There is need for empowerment of farmers through capacity building and availability of credit facilities whereas hatcheries and feed producers must be empowered with adequate skills and infrastructure in order to adhere to good standards.

Vocal Tract Length Perturbation for Text-Dependent Speaker Verification With Autoregressive Prediction Coding

In this letter, we propose a vocal tract length (VTL) perturbation method for text-dependent speaker verification (TD-SV), in which a set of TD-SV systems are trained, one for each VTL factor, and score-level fusion is applied to make a final decision. Next, we explore the bottleneck (BN) feature extracted by training deep neural networks with a self-supervised objective, autoregressive predictive coding (APC), for TD-SV and compare it with the well-studied speaker-discriminant BN feature. The proposed VTL method is then applied to APC and speaker-discriminant BN features. In the end, we combine the VTL perturbation systems trained on MFCC and the two BN features in the score domain. Experiments are performed on the RedDots challenge 2016 database of TD-SV using short utterances with Gaussian mixture model-universal background model and i-vector techniques. Results show the proposed methods significantly outperform the baselines.

Evaluating the Genetic Variations Among Improved Haricot Bean Varieties (<i>Phaseolus vulgaris</i> L.) Based on Their Agronomic Traits and Performing Their Half Diallel Cross

Haricot bean, often known as Boleqe in Ethiopia. It is a major legume crop produced widely all over the world. Depending on the variety, it may adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions, from sea level to almost 3000 meters above sea level. It thrives commonly in warm climates with temperatures ranging from 18 to 24°C. Despite its importance for nutrition and export, haricot bean production in Ethiopia is limited to small regions and small-scale growers, with little or no fertilizer or soil amendments being employed. The responses of the haricot bean varieties to each limitation varied, although they are mostly determined by the environmental conditions. The main bottle neck of haricot bean production is the lack of improved high producing cultivars that suit to each agroecology. The current experiment was carried out on six released haricot bean varieties with half diallel without reciprocal crosses on the field to make F1 hybrids in all possible combinations and with the objective of evaluation of agronomic traits of haricot bean varieties and performing their half diallel cross by using complete block design. An analysis of variance revealed a highly significant difference in yield contributing components among these released varieties at 5% probability level for most of the traits. This suggests that the released haricot bean varieties have a high genetic variation.

Synerging of Root Traits and Agronomic Practices in Common Bean Production Improvement under Acidic Soil

The most challenging in twenty first century is the cause and consequences of Climate change and variability. It is hastening frequently by over population more in developing countries. Thus, it is affected several sectors, while Agriculture is the most vulnerable for climate change. As a result both biotic and abiotic factors are bottle neck for food security and sustainability. From abiotic factor, soil acidity is the frequently observed at area where received intensive rainfall due to top soil and metallic elements washed out. Soil acidity is arsenic, and causes abortion of expected production, especially susceptible crops such as Common bean. To overcome this problem, agronomic practices such as lime application, soil conservation techniques and appropriate root traits were reported. Root system architectures traits such as higher basal root number between 12 to 16, basal root whorl number of around 4, and shallow root angle of less than 15° were reported suitable to withstand soil acidity. Agronomic practices alone reported as it is tedious and also difficult to get complete genotypes with full of desired acidity resistance root traits. Hence several reported explained that using the desired root traits for acidity resistance genotypes and important agronomic practices obtained more valuable results as form of integration. Therefore, using the appropriate root traits and agronomic practices support with each other to reduces the syndrome of soil acidity impacts.