Final Count Research Articles

Growth and survival of Listeria monocytogenes during the manufacture and storage of artisanal kefir.

This study aimed to evaluate the behavior of Listeria monocytogenes during the manufacture and storage of artisanal kefir. A five-strain cocktail of L. monocytogenes was introduced (at ca. 3.0 log10 CFU/mL) into UHT milk as a pre-fermentation contaminant. The growth of L. monocytogenes, lactic acid bacteria and yeasts was monitored during the 24-h fermentation period of milk with two types of kefir grains at 20 °C and the subsequent storage of kefir under adequate (4 °C) and inadequate (10 °C) refrigerated-storage conditions. L. monocytogenes grew into much higher cell densities (5.3-5.8 log10 CFU/mL) by the end of the fermentation period, but the final (24-h) counts were substantially lower than those obtained in the corresponding control trials with unfermented milk (7.2 log10 CFU/mL). The growth rate of L. monocytogenes during fermentation differed depending on the type of kefir grain used. During the subsequent 11-day storage of the kefir filtrates at 4 °C or 10 °C, the behavior of L. monocytogenes varied from no growth to further population increases (of up to 1.1 log10 CFU/mL), depending on the storage temperature, but also depending on the type of kefir grain and the grain surface-to-weight ratio that had been used to ferment the milk. This study highlights the need for strict adherence to good hygiene practices during artisanal kefir making and shows that L. monocytogenes can sustain considerable growth during milk fermentation and further grow during the subsequent cold storage of kefir, particularly under inadequate refrigerated storage conditions.

Banana leathers as influenced by polysaccharide matrix and probiotic bacteria

Concerns abouth diet-health relationships have led many people to include healthier snacks in their diets, including those with functional (including probiotic) properties. This study was focused on development of probiotic-loaded banana leathers. Two probiotic bacteria (the spore-forming Bacillus coagulans and the conventional non-spore-forming Lactobacillus acidophilus) and two polymeric matrices (digestible cassava starch and non-digestible bacterial cellulose - BC) have been used. The presence of probiotic bacteria (mainly L. acidophilus) reduced the tensile strength, elastic modulus and shear force of the leathers, while the BC-based leathers were stronger, stiffer and more resistant to shear stress than the starch-based ones. While a high probiotic viability was kept on fruit leathers loaded with B. coagulans during drying and room-temperature storage, those loaded with L. acidophilus suffered high viability losses upon drying, which was ascribed to osmotic stress. The nature of the biopolymeric matrix has not significantly influence the bacterial viability losses along processing and storage, or the final viable cell count released into the intestine (as assessed using an INFOGEST static in vitro simulated digestion model). The banana leathers loaded with B. coagulans were well accepted, irrespectively of being produced from BC or starch, although some negative comments on the texture and flavor of the BC-based ones have been more frequent than with the starch-based ones.

People Counting in Crowd: Faster R-CNN

Abstract-Because of its vast range of operations, people counting in crowds is a significant challenge in the field of computer vision. To achieve further dependable results of crowd counting, head discovery grounded ways are used rather than viscosity chart grounded crowd counting ways. This is because, in case of viscosity charts, it isn't always the correct position which contributes to final crowd count. This leads to unreliable results especially in case of false positives. This makes the entire task of head discovery in crowded scenes a grueling one to be solved. While face discovery has reached maturity, the more general task of chancing people in images and videotape still remains to be veritably challenging. Count of people may also be demanded for the statistical purposes which help to concoct marketing strategies or it may be used for crowd control in colorful situations image processing is a fashion for applying operations on an image in order to ameliorate it or prize precious information from it. In our design, input to the system is an image/ videotape of the surveillance system which further divided into image frames. Our proposed system gives the count of people in the scene using the Faster R- CNN object discovery algorithm.

P1331: CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL VENOUS ACCESSES SHOW NO DIFFERENCES IN EFFICIENCY OF CD34 + CELLS COLLECTION BY APHERESIS

Background: Cytokine-mobilized peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) are the most common source in autologous and allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) at present, displacing bone marrow harvest. Through apheresis we can obtain PBSCs, process that may be performed by different types of vascular accesses, either peripheral veins (PV) or central venous catheter (CVC). Nowadays there is no consensus on the superiority of one access over another in terms of quality of harvesting. Aims: The goal of this study is to compare both techniques in order to discover differences between them in the scope of efficiency. Methods: Our single-center study retrospectively revised and compared 155 apheresis process performed between July/2016 and October/2021. We defined collection efficiency, as the CD34+ cellularity obtained in relation to the expected (according to the processed volemia and the CD34+ pre-apheresis cells concentration in blood determined on a flow cytometer). Haematocrit, leukocytes, platelets and total proteins were compared in both groups to rule out differences, since several studies have shown that can influence in the collection efficiency. In our study CVC employed were Shaldon or Hickman. Results: Of 155 apheresis, 71 (45.81%) were performed through CVC, and 84 (54.19%) through PV. We also divided our sample according to sex and pathology (“sample” of Table 1). Differences in Haematocrit, leukocytes, platelets and total proteins are also showed at “pre-apheresis results” in Table 1. Finally, we focused in post-apheresis data. We analyzed: the efficiency of the procedure, the volume of collected product and the final count of CD34+ collected. We also analyzed the possible differences between both groups of patients, using the Student’s T technique, looking for statistically significant differences (p) between them (“post-apheresis results” of Table 1). Image:Summary/Conclusion: The results of our study reveal a similar efficiency regardless of the type of access used for apheresis. Therefore, taking into account the possible complications of central catheter venous access, as a higher rate of infection, thrombosis, pneumothorax, bleeding or the recirculation rate risk, it should be used only in patients with poor peripheral accesses.

The primary pharmacology of ceftazidime/avibactam: in vivo translational biology and pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD).

This review describes the translational in vivo and non-clinical pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) research that supported clinical trialling and subsequently licensing approval of ceftazidime/avibactam, a new β-lactam/β-lactamase inhibitor combination aimed at the treatment of infections by Enterobacterales and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The review thematically follows on from the co-published article, Nichols et al. (J Antimicrob Chemother 2022; 77: 2321-40). Avibactam protected ceftazidime in animal models of infection with ceftazidime-resistant, β-lactamase-producing bacteria. For example, a single subcutaneous dose of ceftazidime at 1024 mg/kg yielded little effect on the growth of ceftazidime-resistant, blaKPC-2-carrying Klebsiella pneumoniae in the thighs of neutropenic mice (final counts of 4 × 108 to 8 × 108 cfu/thigh). In contrast, co-administration of avibactam in a 4:1 ratio (ceftazidime:avibactam) was bactericidal in the same model (final counts of 2 × 104 to 3 × 104 cfu/thigh). In a rat abdominal abscess model, therapy with ceftazidime or ceftazidime/avibactam (4:1 w/w) against blaKPC-2-positive K. pneumoniae resulted in 9.3 versus 3.3 log cfu/abscess, respectively, after 52 h. With respect to PK/PD, in Monte Carlo simulations, attainment of unbound drug exposure targets (ceftazidime fT>8 mg/L and avibactam fT>1 mg/L, each for 50% of the dosing interval) for the labelled dose of ceftazidime/avibactam (2 and 0.5 g, respectively, q8h by 2 h IV infusion), including dose adjustments for patients with impaired renal function, ranged between 94.8% and 99.6% of patients, depending on the infection modelled.

Effect of acetic acid treatments and storage on the quality of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) seeds

Seedborne fungi negatively affect the quality of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) seeds and they are impact on their storability. Using the acetic acid can be an alternative to chemical treatment. Seeds were soaked for 30 minutes in a solution of acetic acid at concentrations of 0.25%, 0.5%, and 2%. Untreated seeds, seeds soaked for 30 minutes with distilled water and seeds treated with Dithane NeoTec 75 were controls. Seeds germination, vigour and seed health before and after 18 months of storage at 4 and 20 °C were tested. Before storage the acetic acid solution at concentrations of 0.25 and 0.5% significantly decreased number of dead seeds and increased germination at first and final counts, 2.0% solution worsened germination and vigour of seeds of both samples. Generally acetic acid solutions limited occurrence of fungi. Seeds stored at a lower temperature (4 °C) were characterized by significantly higher percentages of total germinating seeds (Gmax) and percentage of germination at first and final counts. Deterioration of the germination at first and final counts was found only after soaking the seeds in acetic acid solution at a concentration of 2%. Acetic acid solutions at concentration 0.5 and 2.0% effectively reduced occurrence of Alternaria alternata.

Mapping of Microbial Diversity of Gautala Reserve Forest in Aurangabad (District) (M.S.), India

Microorganisms help in the fertility and endurance of soil. Additionally supporting the growth of several biological systems, soil and soil microorganisms fill in as the best mode for plant growth. Soil microbes are essential for recycling old plant material and decaying organic matter. In the upkeep of the Environment microbial diversity plays a dominant role. The current paper is focused on the seasonal variations in the microbial count, which are increased or decreased (Impact on counts) in the Gautala reserve forest. In the present study, soil samples from Gautala Reserve Forest were collected from 15 different sites during the rainy, winter, and summer seasons. The present study was attempted to cover the microbial diversity of the whole Gautala forest through covering maximum sampling spots. The average total microbial count (TMC) in the rainy season for plate 1 and plate 2 was 36.73 and 35.46 respectively and the final count was 36.4 × 106. The average TMC in the winter season for plate 1 and plate 2 was 32.4 and 31.93 respectively and the final count was 32.46 × 105. The average TMC in the summer season for plate 1 and plate 2 was 37.13 and 36.4 and the final count was 37.6 × 104. The bacterial colony at sampling points 1, 4, and 7 exhibits presence of Gram-Negative Bacteria; whereas the rest of the sampling spots showed presence of Gram - Positive Bacteria. There were three types of Gram-negative and 12 were found to be Gram-positive bacteria with three genera i.e. Pseudomonas spp., Bacillus spp., and micrococcus spp. This paper discusses seasonal fluctuations in microbial counts and associated laboratory culture techniques and statistical analysis methods.

Reverse total shoulder arthroplasty baseplate stability with locking vs. non-locking peripheral screws

BackgroundThere are many options for glenosphere baseplate fixation commercially available, yet there is little biomechanical evidence supporting one type of fixation over another. In this study, we compared the biomechanical fixation of a reverse total shoulder glenoid baseplate secured with locking or non-locking peripheral screws. MethodsBoth a non-augmented mini baseplate with full backing support and an augmented baseplate were testing after implantation in solid rigid polyurethane foam. Each baseplate was implanted with a 30 mm central compression screw and four peripheral screws, either locking or non-locking (15 mm anterior/posterior and 30 mm superior/inferior). A 1 Hz cyclic force of 0-750 N was applied at a 60o angle for 5000 cycles. Throughout the test, the displacement of the baseplate was measured using a 3D Digital Image Correlation System. FindingsThe amount of migration measured in the both the non-augmented and augment cases shows no significant differences between locking and non-locking cases at the final cycle count (non-augment: 5.66 +/− 2.29 μm vs. 3.71 +/− 1.23 μm; p = 0.095, augment: 15.43 +/− 8.49 μm vs. 12.46 +/− 3.24 μm; p = 0.314). Additionally, the amount of micromotion measured for both sample types shows the same lack of significant difference (non-augment: 10.79 +/− 5.22 μm vs. 10.16 +/− 7.61 μm; p = 0.388, augment: 55.03 +/− 10.13 μm vs. 54.84 +/− 10.65 μm; p = 0.968). InterpretationThe presence of locking versus non-locking peripheral screws does not make a significant difference on the overall stability of a glenoid baseplate, in both a no defect case with a non-augmented baseplate and a bone defect case with an augmented baseplate.

Bayesian imputation of COVID-19 positive test counts for nowcasting under reporting lag.

Obtaining up to date information on the number of UK COVID‐19 regional infections is hampered by the reporting lag in positive test results for people with COVID‐19 symptoms. In the UK, for ‘Pillar 2’ swab tests for those showing symptoms, it can take up to five days for results to be collated. We make use of the stability of the under reporting process over time to motivate a statistical temporal model that infers the final total count given the partial count information as it arrives. We adopt a Bayesian approach that provides for subjective priors on parameters and a hierarchical structure for an underlying latent intensity process for the infection counts. This results in a smoothed time‐series representation nowcasting the expected number of daily counts of positive tests with uncertainty bands that can be used to aid decision making. Inference is performed using sequential Monte Carlo.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) facing an evolving technological era: a systematic literature review on the adoption of technologies in SMEs

PurposeThis paper aims to map the influential concepts on technology adoption in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through conducting a systematic literature review and finding a better understanding of the current body of knowledge.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review approach is taken here, which includes the following steps: Determination of keywords and strings, selection of databases, setting inclusion and exclusion criteria, conducting the search in chosen databases over a specific period of time. This process has led to the final count of 349 peer-reviewed articles being studied, and the results are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.FindingsAs a result of the study, 11 categories of influential concepts on technology adoption are identified by reviewing literature from the past decade. This article indicates how fragmented the literature is and how it concentrates on studying the impact of only a limited number of categories of concepts. The scatted frameworks (theoretical and conceptual) and weak application of the used theories found in this research also highlight the need for the development of a framework that looks into technology adoption as a dynamic process due to the dynamic nature of new technologies today.Research limitations/implicationsBased on the above findings, future research avenues are to look into technology adoption from a process perspective, to dig into less researched influencing concepts such as infrastructure, regulations, strategy and resources and their role in adoption of technology in SMEs as well as development of a framework for technology adoption that is aligned with these elements.Practical implicationsPractitioners and policymakers will benefit from finding a helicopter view of the barriers and supporting factors throughout their technology adoption journey. The knowledge they gain from this study will better prepare them in building tools they need for adopting technology in their organizations and provide an in-depth insight to what elements can affect their journey.Originality/valueThis review provides an insight into the current body of knowledge on the topic, which researchers can benefit from constructing an in-depth understanding of the state of research as well as influencing concepts of technology adoption in SMEs. Moreover, it adds value in building up the knowledge of technology adoption in today's dynamic world of digitalization.

Susceptibility status of Aedes aegypti to pyrethroids in Usmanu Danfodiyo University main campus, Sokoto, Nigeria

Study was conducted to assess the level of insecticide resistance in Aedes aegypti to different pyrethroids in four different locations within the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) main campus. Larvae and pupae of the mosquito were obtained from Biological Garden, Gidan Yaro, Adarawa and Gidan Yunfa communities. The collected larvae and pupae were taken to the Entomology Laboratory of Usmanu Danfodiyo University and reared on plastic containers. The newly emerged adults were aspirated into separate containers and fed with sugar solution. The 2-5 days old adult females of Aedes mosquitoes were subjected to WHO bioassays to assess the mortality effects of Alphacypermethrin, Deltamethrin, and Lambdacyhalothrin and Permethrin insecticides on Ae. Aegypti mosquitoes. The knockdown mosquitoes were counted and recorded for an hour. Final mortality count was done24 hours post-exposure. Results obtained revealed that the tested mosquitoes yielded different level of resistance to the insecticides. Maximum efficacy of 98-100% mortality was recorded on treatment with Alphacypermethrin across all the sites. Permethrin was susceptible to mosquitoes from Gidan Yunfa and Gidan Yero. Mosquitoes across all the sites were resistance to Lambdacyhalothrin and Deltamethrin with mortality ranging from 76-84%. The least mortality of 68% was recorded on mosquito population from Adarawa treated with Permethrin.

Tuberculosis Bacteria Detection and Counting in Fluorescence Microscopy Images Using a Multi-Stage Deep Learning Pipeline

The manual observation of sputum smears by fluorescence microscopy for the diagnosis and treatment monitoring of patients with tuberculosis (TB) is a laborious and subjective task. In this work, we introduce an automatic pipeline which employs a novel deep learning-based approach to rapidly detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) organisms in sputum samples and thus quantify the burden of the disease. Fluorescence microscopy images are used as input in a series of networks, which ultimately produces a final count of present bacteria more quickly and consistently than manual analysis by healthcare workers. The pipeline consists of four stages: annotation by cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (GANs), extraction of salient image patches, classification of the extracted patches, and finally, regression to yield the final bacteria count. We empirically evaluate the individual stages of the pipeline as well as perform a unified evaluation on previously unseen data that were given ground-truth labels by an experienced microscopist. We show that with no human intervention, the pipeline can provide the bacterial count for a sample of images with an error of less than 5%.

Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG Survival and Quality Parameters in Kefir Produced from Kefir Grains and Natural Kefir Starter Culture.

The study aimed to determine the effect of starter cultures (kefir grains and natural kefir starter culture without grains) on Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) survival and on the quality characteristics of kefir. To this end, the viability of probiotic L. rhamnosus GG strain and the rheological properties and quality parameters of kefir beverages were tested during storage over 21 days at 4 °C. The final LGG counts were 7.71 and 7.55 log cfu/mL in natural kefir starter culture and kefir grain, respectively. When prepared with probiotic bacteria, the syneresis values of kefir prepared using natural kefir starter culture was significantly lower (p < 0.05) than that of kefir made using grains. However, the viscosity indices, hysteresis loop, and dynamic moduli were similar between kefir made with natural kefir starter culture and other kefir formulations (p > 0.05). Moreover, all samples showed shear-thinning behavior. The flavor scores for kefir prepared using natural kefir starter culture were significantly higher than for the other samples (p < 0.05), but overall acceptability was similar at the 10-day assessment across both starters (with and without grain) after the addition of probiotic bacteria (p > 0.05). Overall, the results indicate that natural kefir starter culture could be a potential probiotic carrier.

Comparison of Intracoronary Epinephrine and Adenosine for No-Reflow in Normotensive Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome (COAR Trial)

Background:Intracoronary epinephrine has been effectively used in treating refractory no-reflow, but there is a dearth of data on its use as a first-line drug in normotensive patients in comparison to the widely used adenosine.Methods:In this open-labeled randomized clinical trial, 201 patients with no-reflow were randomized 1:1 into intracoronary epinephrine as the treatment group and intracoronary adenosine as the control group and followed for 1 month. The primary end points were improvement in coronary flow, as assessed by TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) flow, frame counts, and myocardial blush. Secondary end points were in-hospital and short-term mortality and major adverse cardiac events.Results:In all, 101 patients received intracoronary epinephrine and 100 patients received adenosine. Epinephrine was generally well tolerated with no immediate table death or ventricular fibrillation. No-reflow was more effectively improved with epinephrine with final TIMI III flow (90.1% versus 78%, P=0.019) and final corrected TIMI frame count (24±8.43 versus 26.63±9.22, P=0.036). However, no significant difference was observed in final grade III myocardial blush (55.4% versus 45%, P=0.139), mean reduction of corrected TIMI frame count (−25.71±11.79 versus −26.08±11.71, P=0.825), in-hospital and short-term mortality, and major adverse cardiac events.Conclusions:Epinephrine is relatively safe to use in no-reflow in normotensive patients. A significantly higher frequency of post-treatment TIMI III flow grade and lower final corrected TIMI frame count with relatively better achievement of myocardial blush grade III translate into it displaying relatively better efficacy than adenosine.Registration:URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT04699110.

Seed Vigour Tests on seven Cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris Grown in Chamoli District of Uttarakhand, India

Rajmash (Phaseolus vulgaris L. family; fabaceae) is also known as kidney bean/ French bean. It is an annual plant and cultivated throughout the world for their edible beans. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of seed vigour by germination test of different cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris grown in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand. The experimental material constituted a collection of 7 cultivars (Red small, Red big, Grey, Pink, Yellow, Brown, White) of Phaseolus vulgaris. The seed samples of seven cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris were taken from Joshimath, District Chamoli Garhwal Uttarakhand. Morphological aspects viz; seed weight, seed moisture content, seed density and seed diameter were recorded prior to germination test of Phaseolus vulgaris at Seed Testing Laboratory, Department of Seed Science and Technology, H.N.B Garhwal University. Seeds were sterilized with 0.2% sodium hypochlorite solution for germination test. Two replicates of each variety and 25 seeds in each replicates were kept in petriplates on whatman filter paper. Petriplates were kept in seed germinator at 25 ± 2 °C until final count. The number of normal seedling was counted at the final count, higher the number of normal seedlings greater is the seed vigour. The germination percentage was found 100% in five cultivars, and the other two cultivars showed 96.66% in yellow seeds and 68.33% in Grey cultivar of Phaseolus vulgaris. Brown cultivars represented maximum dry weight of root (0.029 g) while minimum dry weight of root has been recorded in yellow cultivar (0.01353 g). Maximum vigour index were recorded in brown cultivar and minimum was recorded in pink cultivar. The findings from the study indicate that brown cultivar of Phaseolus vulgaris is highly vigours.

Multi-Scale Network with Integrated Attention Unit for Crowd Counting

Estimating the crowd count and density of highly dense scenes witnessed in Muslim gatherings at religious sites in Makkah and Madinah is critical for developing control strategies and organizing such a large gathering. Moreover, since the crowd images in this case can range from low density to high density, detection-based approaches are hard to apply for crowd counting. Recently, deep learning-based regression has become the prominent approach for crowd counting problems, where a density-map is estimated, and its integral is further computed to acquire the final count result. In this paper, we put forward a novel multi-scale network (named 2U-Net) for crowd counting in sparse and dense scenarios. The proposed framework, which employs the U-Net architecture, is straightforward to implement, computationally efficient, and has single-step training. Unpooling layers are used to retrieve the pooling layers’ erased information and learn hierarchically pixel-wise spatial representation. This helps in obtaining feature values, retaining spatial locations, and maximizing data integrity to avoid data loss. In addition, a modified attention unit is introduced and integrated into the proposed 2U-Net model to focus on specific crowd areas. The proposed model concentrates on balancing the number of model parameters, model size, computational cost, and counting accuracy compared with other works, which may involve acquiring one criterion at the expense of other constraints. Experiments on five challenging datasets for density estimation and crowd counting have shown that the proposed model is very effective and outperforms comparable mainstream models. Moreover, it counts very well in both sparse and congested crowd scenes. The 2U-Net model has the lowest MAE in both parts (Part A and Part B) of the ShanghaiTech, UCSD, and Mall benchmarks, with 63.3, 7.4, 1.5, and 1.6, respectively. Furthermore, it obtains the lowest MSE in the ShanghaiTech-Part B, UCSD, and Mall benchmarks with 12.0, 1.9, and 2.1, respectively.

Physiological changes associated with hydropriming in maize hybrids

A study was undertaken in the laboratory of National Seed Project Shalimar and in the laboratory of Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Wadura during 2019-2021. The objective of the present study was to standardize the hydro-priming technique in two maize hybrids SMH-3 and SMH-5 and to know the physiological changes associated with the priming in maize seeds. Different combinations of temperature and duration of soaking were tested and the most efficient priming temperature was 25±1ºC and the ideal duration of soaking was 24 h. All the physiological attributes like first count, final count of germination, T50, BRI, MSL, MSDW, SVI-I, SVI-II were significantly higher in both hybrids and their parental lines than the non-primed maize seeds.

Systematic segmentation method based on PCA of image hue features for white blood cell counting.

Leukocyte (white blood cell, WBC) count is an essential factor that physicians use to diagnose infections and provide adequate treatment. Currently, WBC count is determined manually or semi-automatically, which often leads to miscounting. In this paper, we propose an automated method that uses a bioinspired segmentation mimicking the human perception of color. It is based on the claim that a person can locate WBCs in a blood smear image via the high chromatic contrast. First, by applying principal component analysis over RGB, HSV, and L*a*b* spaces, with specific combinations, pixels of leukocytes present high chromatic variance; this results in increased contrast with the average hue of the other blood smear elements. Second, chromaticity is processed as a feature, without separating hue components; this is different to most of the current automation that perform mathematical operations between hue components in an intuitive way. As a result of this systematic method, WBC recognition is computationally efficient, overlapping WBCs are separated, and the final count is more precise. In experiments with the ALL-IDB benchmark, the performance of the proposed segmentation was assessed by comparing the WBC from the processed images with the ground truth. Compared with previous methods, the proposed method achieved similar results in sensitivity and precision and approximately 0.2% higher specificity and 0.3% higher accuracy for pixel classification in the segmentation stage; as well, the counting results are similar to previous works.

Effect of process parameters on quality attributes of Lben: Correlation between physicochemical and sensory properties

The aim of this work is to investigate for the first time, the interaction effect between process parameters (starter level: 0–1.30 × 101 g/L, time: 7.30–21.70 h and temperature: 18.60–35.40 °C) as well as the effect of each parameter on physicochemical properties, the final count of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) and sensory attributes of Lben. A Central Composite Rotatable Design using Response Surface Methodology was applied to determine individual and mutual effects between process variables. Starter level and temperature are the most influencing parameters of measured properties (p < 0.05). Principal Components Analysis allows the distinction of different groups of products having similar physicochemical and overall acceptability. Viscosity, color, acidity, appearance, and odor of Lben are positively correlated with overall appreciation. The optimized product was prepared using processing parameters combination determined by desirability function (temperature: 18.5 °C, fermentation duration: 20.6 h, and starter level: 1.1 × 101 g/L). Corresponding responses are pH = 4.2, LAB = 1.5 × 109 CFU/mL, viscosity = 3.6 × 10−1 Pa s and global appreciation = 3.6. Twenty and fifteen fatty acids were identified in raw milk and optimized Lben, respectively. The myristic, palmitic, and stearic saturated fatty acids, oleic mono-unsaturated fatty acid, and linoleic polyunsaturated fatty acid are the most abundant in raw milk, traditional, and optimized Lben.

The Effect of Microwave Treatment on Germination and Health of Carrot (Daucus carota L.) Seeds

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of microwave treatment on seed germination and health of carrot seeds using two seed lots naturally infected with the pathogens Alternaria dauci and A. radicina. Seeds of cv. Amsterdam and cv. Berlikumer varied in seed germination at the final count (50% and 29%, respectively), and seed infestation with A. radicina (38% and 5%, respectively). For treatment, seeds were placed in a Petri dish (dry treatment) or in a beaker with distilled water (wet treatment) and irradiated at power output levels 500, 650 and 750 W for 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 s. Germination and health were determined in treated and untreated (control) seed samples. Wet treatment controlled seed-borne fungi more efficiently than dry treatment. However, the exposure duration longer than 60 s frequently resulted in deterioration of seed germination. The highest seed germination in cv. Amsterdam was observed after microwave wet treatment at power output levels of 500 W for 75 s (81%), 650 W for 45 s (85%), and 750 W for 60 s (77%), whereas in the case of cv. Berlikumer this occurred when wet seeds were treated at 500 and 650 W for 60 s (46% and 43% respectively). Treating seeds soaked in water with microwaves for a period longer than 30 s, regardless of the power output, significantly decreased seed infestation with Alternaria spp. in both samples.