TECH PRIOR

This was a historic year, but not always in a good way. Trump was elected, Brexit happened, there were repeated terror attacks in Europe, Aleppo was turned to rubble and David Bowie died. These were events that shook the world, but it was also a year in which the media itself became the news. Post-truth, the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, reflects a world where “objective facts have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion”. Experts and commentators were denigrated and at least some the news itself turned out to be not just biased but fake. BuzzFeed’s forensic uncovering of the mechanics of this phenomenon1 marked giant steps for this emerging news brand and a huge statement too about how journalistic investigations are now increasingly about following and interrogating data. In sharp contrast, we saw intense soul-searching by traditional media over how they could have become so out of touch and how they missed/misjudged these stories – with trust amongst old and young falling to historic lows. For many this was evidence of the corrupting nature of the internet. Were media companies too distracted by trends and technology? Were they part of their own filter bubble? Did they forget to talk to real people? But part of the analysis also reminded us of the structural and economic backdrop; how hollowed out journalism has become, particularly outside metropolitan centres. A double-digit drop in print advertising revenues in many markets led to consolidation, job cuts and closures in the traditional media while it has become ever clearer throughout the year how big tech platforms are able to leverage their scale to drive the majority of online advertising revenue. In the United States, almost all the growth (99%) in digital advertising went to Google or Facebook between the third quarter of 2015 and the same period in 2016. Publishers ended the year desperately trying to work out how they can make money as we move faster than ever from print to digital and from an internet of websites to an internet of smartphone apps and social platforms.

Textural parameters of fruits and vegetables are perceived with the sense of touch, either when the product is picked up by hand or placed in the mouth and chewed. In contrast to flavor attributes, these characteristics are fairly easily measured using instrumental methods. Most plant materials contain a significant amount of water and other liquid-soluble materials surrounded by a semi-permeable membrane and cell wall. The texture of fruits and vegetables is derived from their turgor pressure, and the composition of individual plant cell walls and the middle lamella “glue” that holds individual cells together. Cell walls are composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, pectic substances, proteins, and in the case of vegetables, lignin. Tomatoes are an example of a fruit vegetable that is approximately 93–95% water and 5–7% total solids, the latter comprised of roughly 80–90% soluble and 10–20% insoluble solids. The greatest contributor to the texture of tomato products are the insoluble solids, which are derived from cell walls. The three-dimensional network of plant cell walls is still unresolved, but is a topic of great interest to scientists in that to a large degree it dictates the perception of consistency, smoothness, juiciness etc. in fruit and vegetable tissues (Waldron et al., 2003). According to Bourne (1982) the textural properties of a food are the “group of physical characteristics that arise from the structural elements of the food, are sensed by the feeling of touch, are related to the deformation, disintegration and flow of the food under a force, and are measured objectively by functions of mass, time, and distance.” The terms texture, rheology, consistency, and viscosity are often used interchangeably, despite the fact that they describe properties that are somewhat different. In practice the term texture is used primarily with reference to solid or semi-solid foods; however, most fruits and vegetables are viscoelastic, implying that they exhibit combined properties of ideal liquids, which demonstrate only viscosity (flow), and ideal solids, which exhibit only elasticity (deformation)

Flavor has been defined (Anon, 1959) as: A mingled but unitary experience which includes sensations of taste, smell, and pressure, and often cutaneous sensations such as warmth, color, or mild pain. Flavor is typically described by aroma (odor) and taste. Aroma compounds are volatile—they are perceived primarily with the nose, while taste receptors exist in the mouth and are impacted when the food is chewed. While color and appearance may be the initial quality attributes that attract us to a fruit or vegetable product, the flavor may have the largest impact on acceptability and desire to consume it again. Taste has been divided into five primary tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Umami can be described as a taste associated with salts of amino acids and nucleotides (Yamaguchi and Ninomiya, 2000). Odors are much more diverse and difficult to classify, but an attempt by Henning (Gould, 1983) includes the following— spicy, flowery, fruity, resinous or balsamic, burnt, and foul. Stevens (1985) stated that it is possible to classify vegetables into two major groups, depending on their flavor characteristics. The first group of fruits and vegetables has a strong flavor that can be attributed to a single compound or group of related compounds. Bananas with isoamylacetate, onions with characteristic sulfide compounds, and celery, with distinctive phthalides are examples of this group. The second group of fruits and vegetables includes those whose flavor is determined by a number of volatiles, none of which conveys the specific characteristic aroma. Examples in this group include snap beans, muskmelons, and tomatoes. In the evaluation of fruit and vegetable flavor, it is important to consider “off-flavors” as well as desirable ones. These off- flavors may be produced through the action of enzymes such as lipoxygenase or peroxidase, which form reactive free radicals and hydroperoxides that may catalyze the oxidation of lipid compounds. When these reactions occur, the result may be the development of undesirable flavors described as rancid, cardboard, oxidized, or wet dog. However, there are instances of enzyme-catalyzed reactions that result in desirable flavors. For example, hydroperoxide lyase catalyzes the production of typical tomato flavors (Anthon and Barrett, 2003).

Color is derived from the natural pigments in fruits and vegetables, many of which change as the plant proceeds through maturation and ripening. The primary pigments imparting color quality are the fat soluble chlorophylls (green) and carotenoids (yellow, orange, and red) and the water soluble anthocyanins (red, blue), flavonoids (yellow), and betalains (red). In addition, enzymatic and non-enzymatic browning reactions may result in the formation of water soluble brown, gray, and black colored pigments. The enzymes involved in browning reactions include polyphenol oxidase, which catalyzes the oxidation of polyphenolic compounds, and phenylalanine ammonia lyase, which catalyzes the synthesis of precursors to phenolic substrates. The chlorophylls are sensitive to heat and acid, but stable to alkali whereas their counterpart carotenoids are sensitive to light and oxidation but relatively stable to heat. Carotenoids may be bleached by an enzyme called lipoxygenase, which catalyzes the oxidation of lipid compounds. Anthocyanins are sensitive to both pH and heat, while the flavonoids are sensitive to oxidation but relatively stable to heat. Betalains are heat sensitive as well (Clydesdale and Francis, 1976). Appearance is determined by physical factors including the size, the shape, the wholeness, the presence of defects (blemishes, bruises, spots, etc.), finish or gloss, and consistency. Size and shape may be influenced by cultivar, maturity, production inputs, and the growing environment. It is important for fruits and vegetables to be of uniform size and characteristic shape (Mitcham et al., 1996). Some consumers associate larger size with higher quality. The wholeness and absence of defects will be affected by exposure to disease and insects during the growing period and the harvest and postharvest handling operations. Mechanical harvesting, for example, may incur more bruises and cracks in fruits and vegetables than hand harvesting. Fruit and vegetable gloss are related to the ability of a surface to re- flect light and freshly harvested products are often more glossy (Mitcham et al., 1996). Gloss is affected by moisture content, wax deposition on the surface, and handling practices postharvest. Consistency or smoothness may be used as an appearance term, but is typically applied to semi-solid products, where it indicates the product thickness.

Cancer is a genetic disease:

– Inherited cancer – Sporadic cancer • Cancer typically involves a change in gene expression/function: – Qualitative change – Quantitative change • Any cancer causing genetic alteration typically results in loss of cell growth control.

What is Cancer? Malignant Vs. Benign growth

• Benign: called a tumor – Well circumscribed, slow growing, noninvasive, nonmetastatic. • Malignant: called a cancer – Not well organized, irregularly shaped, fast growing, infiltrative growth, metastatic. • Initial stages of malignant cancer may typically show benign growth; – further accumulation of mutations may make it malignant.

Properties of Cancer Cells

• Cancer cells exhibit several characteristics that are distinct from normal cells. • Multiple changes are involved in the conversion of a normal cell to a cancer cell: – Autocrine stimulation; grow in the absence of growth factors – Lack of gap junctions; – lack of contact inhibition – Resistance to cell death; persistent telomerase activity – Rapid growth; overtake population, invade other tissues. – Angiogenesis – Clonal nature of cancer – Genomic Instability: Accumulation of successive mutations • A germline mutation causes a hereditary cancer. • A somatic mutation causes a sporadic cancer.

Veolia Water Technologies has recently launched its new Orion product, offering reliable and proven purified water technology in the age of sustainability. This new Orion combines its pedigree of providing compendial purified water through tried and tested process excellence with additional sustainability features creating an unrivalled water technology package.

Sustainability at the core

Delivering critical high performance in a sustainable manner is key to this high technology product, the Orion comes with a number of sustainability features including low energy membranes Reverse Osmose (RO), integral recovery RO and concentrate recycle. All products and materials have been selected for optimum recyclability. As microbial control is paramount in any purified water treatment system the Orion retains the proven Hot Water Sanitisation (HWS) of the main treatment system as well as the pre-treatment softeners. An evolution in modular water treatment Available in three models with an expanded range of flow rates from 0.5 to 20m³/hr the Orion is an evolution in modular water treatment. S-Series - The premier Orion meets the ultimate in sustainability, optimising our technology we can reduce overall water and energy consumption whilst also delivering long term operational efficiencies. E-Series - The mid-range Orion provides standard features of reduced water to waste during the recycle process and conserves both water and energy use for environmental best practices. C-Series - The Classic Orion offers the core Orion technology within the most economical investment package whilst continuing to produce industry standard purified water. All three models come with 15” widescreen TFT HMI with the options of Siemens and Allen Bradley PLC units. This updated HMI technology now allows for key sustainable parameters to be displayed such as CO2 water and energy savings. The latest Integrated Smart Module (ISM) sensors have also been used for monitoring and control aspects, which you can also take advantage of and the skid design has been reviewed with a cleaner look and feel, in addition to this, operational coloured status lights have been added to each corner of the skid for improved health and safety and easy operator monitoring.

The popular imagination has long foreseen a world where robots take over all manner of everyday tasks. This robotic future has stubbornly refused to materialize, however, with robots still limited to factory assembly lines and other controlled tasks. Although heavily used (in the automotive industry, for instance) these robots are large and dangerous to human co-workers; they have to be separated by safety cages. Advances in robotics technology are making humanmachine collaboration an everyday reality. Better and cheaper sensors make a robot more able to understand and respond to its environment. Robot bodies are becoming more adaptive and flexible, with designers taking inspiration from the extraordinary flexibility and dexterity of complex biological structures, such as the human hand. And robots are becoming more connected, benefiting from the cloud-computing revolution by being able to access instructions and information remotely, rather than having to be programmed as a fully autonomous unit. The new age of robotics takes these machines away from the big manufacturing assembly lines, and into a wide variety of tasks. Using GPS technology, just like smartphones, robots are beginning to be used in precision agriculture for weed control and harvesting. In Japan, robots are being trialled in nursing roles: they help patients out of bed and support stroke victims in regaining control of their limbs. Smaller and more dextrous robots, such as Dexter Bot, Baxter and LBR iiwa, are designed to be easily programmable and to handle manufacturing tasks that are laborious or uncomfortable for human workers. Indeed, robots are ideal for tasks that are too repetitive or dangerous for humans to undertake, and can work 24 hours a day at a lower cost than human workers. In reality, new-generation robotic machines are likely to collaborate with humans rather than replace them. Even considering advances in design and artificial intelligence, human involvement and oversight will remain essential. There remains the risk that robots may displace human workers from jobs, although previous generations of automation have tended to lead to higher productivity and growth with benefits throughout the economy. Decadesold fears of networked robots running out of control may become more salient with next generation robotics linked into the web - but more likely familiarization as people employ domestic robots to do household chores will reduce fears rather than fan them. And new research into social robots – that know how to collaborate and build working alliances with humans – means that a future where robots and humans work together, each to do what it does best – is a strong likelihood. Nevertheless, however, the next generation of robotics poses novel questions for fields from philosophy to anthropology about the human relationship to machines.