Encapsulation can be defined as a process of entrapping one substance within another substance producing particles with diameters of a few nm to a few mm. The entrapped material is usually a liquid, but may be a solid or a gas. The main reason of using encapsulation is the fact that some nutrients do not remain in the food for a significant amount of time or may react with the other food components causing undesirable effects. It is possible to use micro- and nanoencapsulation techniques. The first one, microencapsulation, is a technology that can improve the retention time of the nutrient in the food and allow controlled release at specific times, during food consumption or in the intestinal gut (microencapsulation of vitamin). Nanoencapsulation has the potential to protect sensitive bioactive food ingredients from unfavourable environmental conditions, enhance solubilisation, improve taste and odour masking, and enhance bioavailability of poorly absorbable function ingredients. In this review, some relevant aspects of encapsulation methodologies, coating materials and their uses in food technology were discussed.

Significant socio-economic shifts, such as the emergence of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ have transformed the transition from adolescence to adulthood, as youth are expected to garner a considerable amount of personal, cognitive, social, and educational skills in order to successfully enter adult society and prosper within the market economy. An additional determinant of the successful transition of youth into adult society is the availability of social capital through relationships and networks that can provide access to valuable resources and information and contribute to the development of a social identity. Employment programs are a mechanism for providing youth with workforce exposure and skill development in the absence of market opportunities. These programs are also a potential source of social capital, through the exposure to new environments and the development of relationships and networks that can provide resources that youth may not have access to through traditional means. Using a qualitative approach, we explored the perspectives of youth participants in a summer employment program in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. We propose that the opportunity to develop social capital is an under-recognized benefit of employment programs, and may be a particularly important aspect for disadvantaged youth. 

Orthopedic surgical judgment and a decision-making process in peace is a topic that has been discussed and written about for decades, but the wartime surgical judgment is something that cannot be predicted or prepared for. There is no wartime surgery class in any medical school worldwide that can prepare a surgeon for his/her work under a wartime environment applying all of their knowledge, skill and effort to achieve the best possible result for a patient. With this short note, authors would like to raise awareness on all surgical and medical staff worldwide working under wartime conditions and giving their super-human efforts to save patients.

ZnO nanopowders were produced using microwave processing of a precipitate and applied as a photoanode for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Two different surfactants, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the cationic and Pluronic F127 as the non-ionic one, were employed to in situ adjust the surface-to-bulk defect ratio in the ZnO crystal structure and further to modify the photo(electro)catalytic activity of the ZnO photoanode. The crystal structure, morphological, textural, optical and photo(electro)catalytic properties of ZnO particles were studied in detail to explain the profound effects of the surfactants on the photoanode activity. The ZnO/CTAB photoanode displayed the highest photocurrent density of 27 mA g−1, compared to ZnO (10.4 mA g−1) and ZnO/F127 photoanodes (20 mA g−1) at 1.5 V vs. SCE in 0.1 M Na2SO4 under visible illumination of 90 mW cm−2. A significant shift of the overpotential toward lower values was also observed when photoanodes were illuminated. The highest shift of the overpotential, from 1.296 to 0.248 V vs. SCE, was recorded when the ZnO/CTAB photanode was illuminated. The ZnO/CTAB photoanode provides efficient charge transfer across the electrode/electrolyte interface, with a longer lifetime of photogenerated electron–hole pairs and reduced possibility of charge recombination. The photoconversion efficiency was improved from 1.4% for ZnO and 0.9% for ZnO/F127 to 4.2% for ZnO/CTAB at 0.510 mV. A simple procedure for the synthesis of ZnO particles with improved photo(electro)catalytic properties was established and it was found that even a small amount of CTAB used during processing of ZnO increases the surface-to-bulk defect ratio. Optimization of the surface-to-bulk defect ratio in ZnO materials enables increase of the absorption capacity for visible light, rendering of the recombination rate of the photogenerated pair, as well as increase of both the photocurrent density and photoconversion efficiency.

By using KAM theory we investigate the stability of equilibrium points of the class of difference equations of the form xn+1=f(xn)xn−1,n=0,1,…$x_{n+1}=\frac{f(x _{n})}{x_{n-1}}, n=0,1,\ldots $ , f:(0,+∞)→(0,+∞)$f:(0,+\infty )\to (0,+\infty )$, f is sufficiently smooth and the initial conditions are x−1,x0∈(0,+∞)$x_{-1}, x _{0}\in (0,+\infty )$. We establish when an elliptic fixed point of the associated map is non-resonant and non-degenerate, and we compute the first twist coefficient α1$\alpha _{1}$. Then we apply the results to several difference equations.

By using KAM theory we investigate the stability of equilibrium points of the class of difference equations of the form xn+1=f(xn)xn−1,n=0,1,…\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$x_{n+1}=\frac{f(x _{n})}{x_{n-1}}, n=0,1,\ldots $\end{document} , f:(0,+∞)→(0,+∞)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$f:(0,+\infty )\to (0,+\infty )$\end{document}, f is sufficiently smooth and the initial conditions are x−1,x0∈(0,+∞)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$x_{-1}, x _{0}\in (0,+\infty )$\end{document}. We establish when an elliptic fixed point of the associated map is non-resonant and non-degenerate, and we compute the first twist coefficient α1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$\alpha _{1}$\end{document}. Then we apply the results to several difference equations.

Abstract. The article discusses the emergence of a functional literacy construct and the rediscovery of illiteracy in industrialized countries during the second half of the 20th century. It offers a short explanation of how the construct evolved over time. In addition, it explores how functional (il)literacy is conceived differently by research discourses of cognitive and neural studies, on the one hand, and by prescriptive and normative international policy documents and adult education, on the other hand. Furthermore, it analyses how literacy skills surveys such as the Level One Study (leo.) or the PIAAC may help to bridge the gap between cognitive and more practical and educational approaches to literacy, the goal being to place the functional illiteracy (FI) construct within its existing scale levels. It also sheds more light on the way in which FI can be perceived in terms of different cognitive processes and underlying components of reading. By building on the previous work of other authors and previous definitions, the article brings together different views of FI and offers a perspective for a needed operational definition of the concept, which would be an appropriate reference point for future educational, political, and scientific utilization.

Myopericytoma is a benign tumor with the most common presentation as a well-circumscribed, slow-growing mass. It is frequently misdiagnosed as a sarcoma. We presented a 23-year-old patient with a history of a sciatic pain of the right leg. A careful physical examination discovered tumor-like mass in the posterior part of the thigh. Neurological finding showed a reduction of myotatic reflexes on the right leg with a weaker muscle strength on the right leg. The right leg musculature was slightly hypotrophic in the range of 2-3 cm comparing to left leg. Initially electrophysiological and radiological diagnostic with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lumbar spine, pelvis and thighs were normal. Magnetic resonance imaging of the right thigh discovered a slow growing 2.1 × 3.8 cm sized mass that was initially described by radiologist as a neurinoma. Patient was admitted to department of neurosurgery and operated on for a tumor removal. Tumor was located intimately to femur and sciatic nerve and after careful dissection completely removed. Patient was doing well after surgery and discharge after three days from the hospital. In the postoperative period the symptoms disappeared. Histopathology showed a myopericitoma. Postoperative MRI after three months of follow up showed no tumor residues, and after 6 and 12 months there was no tumor recurrence. Myopericytoma behave in a benign fashion, but, because local recurrences and rarely metastases may occur in atypical and malignant neoplasms, a careful follow-up after radical resection is recommended.

ABSTRACT A novel, efficient method to account for multivariate probability density functions (PDFs) in the context of the flamelet generated manifolds (FGM) approach in a large eddy simulation (LES) framework is presented and discussed. It consists of applying the ‘Correlation Set by Simulated Annealing (CSSA)’ algorithm on univariate samples of each control variable to recombine them into multivariate samples in joint space, while accounting for the needed covariances. This is done on the fly and on a cell-by-cell basis. Thereby, the assumption of statistical independence of the control variables has been relaxed. The PDF is represented in a discrete manner and the integration is replaced through ensemble averaging. Consequently, the shape of the PDF no longer appears in the look-up table. The algorithm has been validated in the context of LES calculations of two configurations. Compared to a conventional pre-integrated FGM approach, the required CPU time has increased only modestly.

Petri nets are a formalism for modelling and reasoning about the behaviour of distributed systems. Recently, a reversible approach to Petri nets, Reversing Petri Nets (RPN), has been proposed, allowing transitions to be reversed spontaneously in or out of causal order. In this work we propose an approach for controlling the reversal of actions of an RPN, by associating transitions with conditions whose satisfaction/violation allows the execution of transitions in the forward/reversed direction, respectively. We illustrate the framework with a model of a novel, distributed algorithm for antenna selection in distributed antenna arrays.

Distributed antenna selection for distributed massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication systems reduces computational complexity compared to centralized approaches, and provides high fault tolerance while retaining diversity and spatial multiplexity. We propose a novel distributed algorithm for antenna selection and show its advantage over existing centralized and distributed solutions. The proposed algorithm is shown to perform well with imperfect channel state information, and to execute a small number of simple computational operations per node, converging fast to a steady state. We base it on reversing Petri nets, a variant of Petri nets inspired by reversible computation, capable of both forward and backward execution while obeying conservation laws.

Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed many principles about neural processing. In particular, many biological systems were found to reconfigure/recruit single neurons to generate multiple kinds of decisions. Such findings have the potential to advance our understanding of the design and optimization process of artificial neural networks. Previous work demonstrated that dense neural networks are needed to shape complex decision surfaces required for AI-level recognition tasks. We investigate the ability to model high dimensional recognition problems using single or several neurons networks that are relatively easier to train. By employing three datasets, we test the use of a population of single neuron networks in performing multi-class recognition tasks. Surprisingly, we find that sparse networks can be as efficient as dense networks in both binary and multi-class tasks. Moreover, single neuron networks demonstrate superior performance in binary classification scheme and competing results when combined for multi-class recognition.

The problem related to the inadequate position of workers during lifting heavy loads is the everyday life of many environments, such as industrial halls or warehouses, which often results in the deepening of the worker's spine load problem. An analysis of such a workplace was carried out in this paper. The workloads at specific body zones were determined, whether they were within the prescribed limits or exceeded it, and on that basis a redesign of the workspace was made in accordance to the anthropological values of the model.