Physical and physiological characteristics, as well as miRNA concentrations, are affected by the storage time of tomatoes.

This study aims to investigate the potential of miRNA measurements in indicating tomato quality during transportation and storage. The impact of storage temperature, duration, and mechanical loading on tomato senescence, carotenoid content, total soluble solids, fruit firmness, and relevant miRNA concentrations were examined. Significant two-way or three-way interactions were observed between storage conditions and physical/physiological characteristics (excluding carotenoids). Remarkably, significant three-way interactions were found between storage conditions and miRNA concentrations. Strong correlations were observed between the physiological characteristics of the tomatoes and their miRNA concentrations. These findings suggest that measuring miRNAs could serve as a convenient and portable method for evaluating postharvest fruit quality, reducing reliance on labor-intensive laboratory techniques.

The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor's Elderly Hospitalisations.

Global climate change has contributed to the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwave events. The association between heatwaves and elderly mortality is highly researched in developed countries. In contrast, heatwave impact on hospital admissions has been insufficiently studied worldwide due to data availability and sensitivity. In our opinion, the relationship between heatwaves and hospital admissions is worthwhile to explore as it could have a profound impact on healthcare systems. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the associations between heatwaves and hospitalisations for the elderly by age group in Selangor, Malaysia, from 2010 to 2020. We further explored the impact of heatwaves on the risks of cause-specific hospital admissions across age groups within the elderly. This study applied generalized additive models (GAMs) with the Poisson family and distributed lag models (DLMs) to estimate the effect of heatwaves on hospitalisations. According to the findings, there was no significant increase in hospitalisations for those aged 60 and older during heatwaves; however, a rise in mean apparent temperature (ATmean) by 1 °C significantly increased the risk of hospital admission by 12.9%. Heatwaves had no immediate effects on hospital admissions among elderly patients, but significant delay effects were identified for ATmean with a lag of 0-3 days. The hospital admission rates of the elderly groups started declining after a 5-day average following the heatwave event. Females were found to be relatively more vulnerable than males during heatwave periods. Consequently, these results can provide a reference to improve public health strategies to target elderly people who are at the greatest risk of hospitalisations due to heatwaves. Development of early heatwave and health warning systems for the elderly would assist with preventing and reducing health risks while also minimising the burden on the whole hospital system in Selangor, Malaysia.

A study on the energy and exergy of Ohmic heating (OH) process of sour orange juice using an artificial neural network (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM).

The nonmodern statistical methods are often unusable for modeling complex and nonlinear calculations. Therefore, the present research modeled and investigated the energy and exergy of the ohmic heating process using an artificial neural network and response surface method (RSM). The radial basis function (RBF) and the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) networks were used for modeling using sigmoid, linear, and hyperbolic tangent activation functions. The input consisted of voltage gradient; weight loss percentage, duration ohmic, Input flow, Power consumption, electrical conductivity and system performance coefficient and the output included the energy efficiency, exergy efficiency, exergy loss, and improvement potential. The response surface method was also used to predict the data. According to the result, the best prediction amount for energy and exergy efficiencies, exergy loss and improvement potential were in RBF network by sigmoid activation function and after this network, RSM had the best amount for energy efficiency, Also for exergy efficiencies, exergy loss and improvement potential obtained acceptable results in MLP network by a linear activation function. The worst amount was at MLP network by tangent hyperbolic. In general, the neural network can have more ability than the response surface method.

The use of CT scan imaging technique to determine pear bruise level due to external loads.

X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an effective noninvasive tool to visualize fresh agricultural commodities' internal components and quality attributes, also imaging via X-ray CT is a non-destructive and well-developed method applied in measuring the internal effects of agricultural products. In the present research, 120 healthy pears with their health verification through the CT were selected. Next, 81 healthy pears were selected and subjected to quasi-static and dynamic loading. The impact of the incoming pressures was investigated within 5, 10, and 15 days of storage. After loading and storing with the use of CT method, the total volume and the bruise volume of the pears were measured and the ratio of the bruise volume to the volume of each pear was calculated. Quasi-static loads were pressurized over a period of two ways; the pressure of wide edge was exerted at three force levels of 70, 100, and 130 N while the pressure of the thin edge was applied at 15, 20, and 25 N. Dynamic loading was performed by utilizing a pendulum and 300, 350, and 400 g mass. The results of the experiments indicated that in the quasi-static loading, the maximum and minimum amounts of pear bruise were 45.138% and 0.094% of the fruit, respectively. Besides, in the case of thin edge pressures, the minimum and maximum bruise levels were 0.007% and 19.88%, respectively. These values were obtained through 5 and 15 days of storage, respectively. In the dynamic loading, the maximum and minimum amounts of pear bruise were 47.36% and 0.21% of the total fruit, respectively, occurring at 400 and 300 g mass impact.