Recent Progresses in Stable Isotope Analysis of Cellulose Extracted from Tree Rings

In this work, the challenges and progression in stable isotope investigation, from the analytical tools and technical sample preparation procedures to the dendroclimatological experiments, were reviewed in terms of their use to assess tree physiological responses to environmental changes. Since the isotope signature of whole wood is not always a reliable tool in studying the climate changes, cellulose is often preferred as the study material in paleoclimatic studies. Nevertheless, the isotope analysis of cellulose is challenging due to the difficulty to remove the other wood components (extractives, lignin, pectin, and hemicelluloses). Additionally, in the case of hydrogen isotope analysis, about 30% of the hydrogen atoms of cellulose are exchanged with the surrounding water, which complicates the isotope analysis. In recent years, more automated isotope analysis methods were developed based on high temperature pyrolysis of cellulose, followed by the chromatographic separation of H2 from CO and by their individual isotope analysis using isotope ratio mass spectrometry. When used to investigate climate factors, the combined isotope analysis δ13C and δ18O appears to be the most promising isotope tool. In contrast, the role of δ2H values is yet to be elucidated, together with the development of new methods for hydrogen isotope analysis.

Network Analysis Based on Unique Spectral Features Enables an Efficient Selection of Genomically Diverse Operational Isolation Units

Culturomics-based bacterial diversity studies benefit from the implementation of MALDI-TOF MS to remove genomically redundant isolates from isolate collections. We previously introduced SPeDE, a novel tool designed to dereplicate spectral datasets at an infraspecific level into operational isolation units (OIUs) based on unique spectral features. However, biological and technical variation may result in methodology-induced differences in MALDI-TOF mass spectra and hence provoke the detection of genomically redundant OIUs. In the present study, we used three datasets to analyze to which extent hierarchical clustering and network analysis allowed to eliminate redundant OIUs obtained through biological and technical sample variation and to describe the diversity within a set of spectra obtained from 134 unknown soil isolates. Overall, network analysis based on unique spectral features in MALDI-TOF mass spectra enabled a superior selection of genomically diverse OIUs compared to hierarchical clustering analysis and provided a better understanding of the inter-OIU relationships.

Theatre festival as a tourist attraction: a case study of Almagro International Classical Theatre Festival, Spain

Purpose Researchers have become aware of the importance of festivals as a phenomenon worthy of studying, but in-depth studies of cultural festivals are lacking. The purpose of this study is to describe the attributes of cultural festivals, specifically theatre festivals and examine the motivations to organise them. Similarly, this study seeks to discover the type of tourist that attends these types of festivals. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was applied to a representative sample of tourists who visited one of the most prestigious festivals in the international panorama: Almagro International Festival of Classical Theatre. A non-probabilistic technical sample was used. Tabulation of the data was performed by the study group using the SPSS, v. 23. Findings This study makes a segmentation of the tourists who attend the festival based on their motivations. Using this segmentation, the authors analyse the socio-demographic characteristics and tourists’ behaviour, as well as their experience at the festival. Amongst the higher-rated attributes of the festival are care and service organisation and interpretative quality of the actors and/or theatre company. Research limitations/implications The main practical application of this study is to help understand the peculiarities of each segment of visitors and their evaluation of the destination to create tourist and cultural products that provide greater satisfaction with respect to their needs. Originality/value The main value is the novelty of studying this kind of cultural event. The authors analyse the reasons to visit it in relation to the motivations that move the visitors. The authors also study the assessment the tourist does of the qualities of the festival.

Polyethylene terephthalate technical sample [The Lost Archive Digitalization Program; OCR Report Index: 181906].

OCR Report Index: 181906; Object: Polyethylene terephthalate film sample. DEFIN.: Polyethylene terephthalate (sometimes written poly(ethylene terephthalate)), commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P, is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods, thermoforming for manufacturing, and in combination with glass fibre for engineering resins.

Evaluation of LabRespond, a New Automated Validation System for Clinical Laboratory Test Results

Background: Manual validation of laboratory test results is time-consuming, creating a demand for expert systems to automate this process. We have started to set up the program “LabRespond”, which covers five validation levels: administrative, technical, sample, patient, and clinical validation. We present the evaluation of a prototype of an automated patient validation system based on statistical methods, in contrast to the commercially available program “VALAB”, a rule-based automated validation system. Methods: In the present study, 163 willfully altered, erroneous test results out of 5421 were submitted for validation to LabRespond, VALAB, and to a group of clinical chemists (n = 9) who validated these test results manually. The test results rejected by three or more clinical chemists (n = 281) served as a secondary reference standard. Results: The error recovery rates of clinical chemists ranged from 23.9% to 71.2%. The recovery rates of LabRespond and VALAB were 77.9% and 71.8%, respectively (difference not significant). The false-positive rates were 82.7% for LabRespond, 83.6% for VALAB, and 27.8–86.7% for clinical chemists. Using the consensus of three or more clinical chemists as the secondary reference standard, we found error recovery rates of 64.8% for LabRespond and 72.2% for VALAB (P = 0.06). Compared with VALAB, LabRespond detected more (P = 0.003) erroneous test results of the type that were changed from abnormal to normal. Conclusions: The statistical plausibility check used by LabRespond offers a promising automated validation method with a higher error recovery rate than the clinical chemists participating in this study, and a performance comparable to VALAB.

Gas-Liquid Chromatographic Method for the Analysis of Technical Dichlobenil and Its Formulations:1 Collaborative Study

A gas-liquid chromatographic method for determining dichlobenil in technical material and formulations was collaboratively studied by 7 laboratories. Five samples were chromatographed on a 10% Carbowax 20M column with methyl myristate as the internal standard and flame ionization detection. The estimates of the repeatability (different analysts) and the reproducibility, expressed as coefficients of variation, were, respectively, 0.8 and 1.0% for the technical sample, 1.4 and 1.7% for the wettable powder, and 3.5 and 4.6% for the granular formulations. This method was adopted as a full CIPAC-AOAC method.