Interactions between the cholinergic and dopaminergic system during the production of ultrasonic vocalizations in rats

Rats produce ultrasonic vocalizations that can be categorized into two types of ultrasonic calls based on their sonographic structure. One group contains 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalization (USVs), characterized by relatively constant (flat) frequency with peak frequency ranging from 19 to 28-kHz, and a call duration ranging between 100 – 3000 ms. These vocalization can be induced by cholinomimetic agents injected into the ascending mesolimbic cholinergic system that terminates in the anterior hypothalamic-preoptic area (AH-MPO) and lateral septum (LS). The other group of USVs contains 50-kHz USVs, characterized by high peak frequency, ranging from 39 to 90-kHz, short duration ranging from 10-90 ms, and varying frequency and complex sonographic morphology. These vocalizations can be induced by dopaminergic agents injected into the nucleus accumbens, the target area for the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. 22-kHz USVs are emitted in situations that are highly aversive, such as proximity of a predator or anticipation of a foot shock, while 50 kHz USVs are emitted in rewarding and appetitive situations, such as juvenile play behaviour or anticipation of rewarding electrical brain stimulation. The activities of these two mesolimbic systems were postulated to be antagonistic to each other. The current thesis is focused on the interaction of these systems indexed by emission of relevant USVs. It was hypothesized that emission of 22 kHz USVs will be antagonized by prior activation of the dopaminergic system while emission of 50 kHz will be antagonized by prior activation of the cholinergic system. It was found that injection of apomorphine into the shell of the nucleus accumbens significantly decreased the number of carbachol-induced 22 kHz USVs from both AH-MPO and LS. Injection of carbachol into the LS significantly decreased the number of apomorphine-induced 50 kHz USVs from the shell of the nucleus accumbens. The results of the study supported the main hypotheses that the mesolimbic dopaminergic and cholinergic systems function in antagonism to each other.

Development of a New Assessment System to Evaluate Students' English Communicative Capacities in China

The purpose of this study was to develop a new English assessment system to evaluate Chinese students' English communicative capacities. Since there is more interaction with people from English-speaking countries, Chinese people attach more importance to English oral skills, and a lot of Western English teaching methods were introduced into China to improve students' English communicative capacities. However, traditional paper-written examinations, like the English test of higher education entry examination, cannot evaluate it effectively. This study explored the perceptions of two Chinese English-language teachers and two Chinese students about English assessment system. A qualitative research method using telephone interviews was conducted in this study. The findings showed that the most possible ways to assess Chinese students' English communicative capacities were paper-written examination and person-machine conversations, although measures should be taken to improve these two models. On the other hand, the model of person-person conversation was the ideal assessment tool but was hard to achieve at the current stage.

The Effects of Pro-inflammatory Cytokines on the L-type Calcium Current in Mouse Ventricular Myocytes

L’inflammation: Une réponse adaptative du système immunitaire face à une insulte est aujourd’hui reconnue comme une composante essentielle à presque toutes les maladies infectieuses ou autres stimuli néfastes, tels les dommages tissulaires incluant l’infarctus du myocarde et l’insuffisance cardiaque. Dans le contexte des maladies cardiovasculaires, l’inflammation se caractérise principalement par une activation à long terme du système immunitaire, menant à une faible, mais chronique sécrétion de peptides modulateurs, appelés cytokines pro-inflammatoires. En effet, la littérature a montré à plusieurs reprises que les patients souffrant d’arythmies et de défaillance cardiaque présentent des taux élevés de cytokines pro-inflammatoires tels le facteur de nécrose tissulaire alpha (TNFα), l’interleukine 1β (IL-1β) et l’interleukine 6. De plus, ces patients souffrent souvent d’une baisse de la capacité contractile du myocarde. Le but de notre étude était donc de déterminer si un lien de cause à effet existe entre ces phénomènes et plus spécifiquement si le TNFα, l’IL-1β et l’IL-6 peuvent affecter les propriétés électriques et contractiles du cœur en modulant le courant Ca2+ de type L (ICaL) un courant ionique qui joue un rôle primordial au niveau de la phase plateau du potentiel d’action ainsi qu’au niveau du couplage excitation-contraction. Les possibles méchansimes par lesquels ces cytokines exercent leurs effets seront aussi explorés. Pour ce faire, des cardiomyocytes ventriculaires de souris nouveau-nées ont été mis en culture et traités 24 heures avec des concentrations pathophysiologiques (30 pg/mL) de TNFα, IL-1β ou IL-6. Des enregistrements de ICaL réalisés par la technique du patch-clamp en configuration cellule entière ont été obtenus par la suite et les résultats montrent que le TNFα n’affecte pas ICaL, même à des concentrations plus élevées (1 ng/mL). En revanche, l’IL-1β réduisait de près de 40% la densité d’ICaL. Afin d’examiner si le TNFα et l’IL-1β pouvaient avoir un effet synergique, les cardiomyocytes ont été traité avec un combinaison des deux cytokines. Toutefois aucun effet synergique sur ICaL n’a été constaté. En outre, l’IL-6 réduisait ICaL significativement, cependant la réduction de 20% était moindre que celle induite par IL-1β. Afin d’élucider les mécanismes sous-jacents à la réduction de ICaL après un traitement avec IL-1β, l’expression d’ARNm de CaV1.2, sous-unité α codante pour ICaL, a été mesurée par qPCR et les résultats obtenus montrent aucun changement du niveau d’expression. Plusieurs études ont montré que l’inflammation et le stress oxydatif vont de pair. En effet, l’imagerie confocale nous a permis de constater une augmentation accrue du stress oxydatif induit par IL-1β et malgré un traitement aux antioxydants, la diminution de ICaL n’a pas été prévenue. Cette étude montre qu’IL-1β et IL-6 réduisent ICaL de façon importante et ce indépendamment d’une régulation transcriptionelle ou du stress oxydatif. De nouvelles données préliminaires suggèrent que ICaL serait réduit suite à l’activation des protéines kinase C mais des études additionelles seront nécessaires afin d’étudier cette avenue. Nos résultats pourraient contribuer à expliquer les troubles du rythme et de contractilité observés chez les patients souffrant de défaillance cardiaque.

Study of baleen whales’ ecology and interaction with maritime traffic activities to support management of a complex socio-ecological system

Thesis written in co-mentorship with Robert Michaud.

New insights into small molecules inhibitors and protein-protein interactions of VirB8 : a critical conserved component of the type IV secretion system.

Les systèmes bactériens de sécrétion de type IV (T4SS) sont constitués d’un ensemble de 8 à 12 protéines conservées. Ces dernières sont utilisées lors de la translocation de protéines, la translocation de complexes ADN-protéines mais aussi pour le transport de ces derniers au travers de la membrane cellulaire. Les T4SS, en tant que facteurs de virulence pour beaucoup de pathogènes comme Brucella suis, sont donc d’excellents modèles cibles pour le développement de médicaments d’antivirulence. Ces médicaments, en privant le pathogène de son facteur essentiel de virulence : le T4SS, constituent une alternative ou encore une amélioration des traitements antibiotiques utilisés actuellement. VirB8, un facteur d’assemblage conservé dans le T4SS, forme des dimères qui sont importants pour la fonction des T4SS dans ces pathogènes. De par ses interactions multiples, VirB8 est un excellent modèle pour l’analyse des facteurs d’assemblage mais aussi en tant que cible de médicaments qui empêcheraient son interaction avec d’autres protéines et qui, in fine, désarmeraient les bactéries en les privant de leur fonctions essentielles de virulence. À ce jour, nous savons qu’il existe un équilibre monomère-dimère et un processus d’homodimerization de VirB8 dont l’importance est vitale pour la fonctionnement biologique des T4SSs. En se basant sur des essais quantitatifs d’interaction, nous avons identifié (i) des sites potentiels d’interaction avec d’autres protéines VirB du T4SS mais aussi (ii) isolé des petites molécules inhibitrices afin de tester la fonction protéique de VirB8. Afin de déterminer les acides aminés importants pour l’hétérodimérization de VirB8 avec VirB10, nous avons effectué des expériences de mutagenèse aléatoire, de phage display et d’arrimage moléculaire in silico. Ces expériences ont démontré l’importance de trois acides aminés localisés sur le feuillet β : R160, S162, T164 et I165. Ces derniers seraient importants pour l’association de VirB8 avec VirB10 étant donné que leur mutagenèse entraine une diminution de la formation du complexe VirB8-VirB10. L’objectif actuel de notre projet de recherche est de pouvoir mieux comprendre mais aussi d’évaluer le rôle de VirB8 dans l’assemblage du T4SS. Grace à un méthode de criblage adaptée à partir de la structure de VirB8, nous avons pu identifié une petite molécule inhibitrice BAR-068, qui aurait un rôle prometteur dans l’inhibition du T4SS. Nous avons utilisé la spectroscopie par fluorescence, l’essai à deux hybrides, le cross-linking et la cristallographie afin de déterminer le mécanisme d'interaction existant entre VirB8 et BAR-068. Ces travaux pourraient permettre de nombreuses avancées, notamment en termes de compréhension des mécanismes d’inhibition du T4SS. Notre objectif ultime est de pouvoir caractériser la séquence d’évènements essentiels à l’assemblage et au fonctionnement du T4SS. De manière globale, notre projet de recherche permettrait de révéler les grands principes d’assemblage des protéines membranaires, les processus de sécrétion de protéines chez les bactéries mais aussi de proposer une nouvelle stratégie lors du développement de drogues antimicrobiennes.

Permutation Entropy Based Analysis of Complex Signals for Characterising Change in System Dynamics

Timely detection of sudden change in dynamics that adversely affect the performance of systems and quality of products has great scientific relevance. This work focuses on effective detection of dynamical changes of real time signals from mechanical as well as biological systems using a fast and robust technique of permutation entropy (PE). The results are used in detecting chatter onset in machine turning and identifying vocal disorders from speech signal.Permutation Entropy is a nonlinear complexity measure which can efficiently distinguish regular and complex nature of any signal and extract information about the change in dynamics of the process by indicating sudden change in its value. Here we propose the use of permutation entropy (PE), to detect the dynamical changes in two non linear processes, turning under mechanical system and speech under biological system.Effectiveness of PE in detecting the change in dynamics in turning process from the time series generated with samples of audio and current signals is studied. Experiments are carried out on a lathe machine for sudden increase in depth of cut and continuous increase in depth of cut on mild steel work pieces keeping the speed and feed rate constant. The results are applied to detect chatter onset in machining. These results are verified using frequency spectra of the signals and the non linear measure, normalized coarse-grained information rate (NCIR).PE analysis is carried out to investigate the variation in surface texture caused by chatter on the machined work piece. Statistical parameter from the optical grey level intensity histogram of laser speckle pattern recorded using a charge coupled device (CCD) camera is used to generate the time series required for PE analysis. Standard optical roughness parameter is used to confirm the results.Application of PE in identifying the vocal disorders is studied from speech signal recorded using microphone. Here analysis is carried out using speech signals of subjects with different pathological conditions and normal subjects, and the results are used for identifying vocal disorders. Standard linear technique of FFT is used to substantiate thc results.The results of PE analysis in all three cases clearly indicate that this complexity measure is sensitive to change in regularity of a signal and hence can suitably be used for detection of dynamical changes in real world systems. This work establishes the application of the simple, inexpensive and fast algorithm of PE for the benefit of advanced manufacturing process as well as clinical diagnosis in vocal disorders.

An Alternative Approach To Computer System Security Monitoring And Enhancement Through System Call Sequence Analysis

Modern computer systems are plagued with stability and security problems: applications lose data, web servers are hacked, and systems crash under heavy load. Many of these problems or anomalies arise from rare program behavior caused by attacks or errors. A substantial percentage of the web-based attacks are due to buffer overflows. Many methods have been devised to detect and prevent anomalous situations that arise from buffer overflows. The current state-of-art of anomaly detection systems is relatively primitive and mainly depend on static code checking to take care of buffer overflow attacks. For protection, Stack Guards and I-leap Guards are also used in wide varieties.This dissertation proposes an anomaly detection system, based on frequencies of system calls in the system call trace. System call traces represented as frequency sequences are profiled using sequence sets. A sequence set is identified by the starting sequence and frequencies of specific system calls. The deviations of the current input sequence from the corresponding normal profile in the frequency pattern of system calls is computed and expressed as an anomaly score. A simple Bayesian model is used for an accurate detection.Experimental results are reported which show that frequency of system calls represented using sequence sets, captures the normal behavior of programs under normal conditions of usage. This captured behavior allows the system to detect anomalies with a low rate of false positives. Data are presented which show that Bayesian Network on frequency variations responds effectively to induced buffer overflows. It can also help administrators to detect deviations in program flow introduced due to errors.

Current-density-functional approach to large quantum dots in intense magnetic fields

Within current-density-functional theory, we have studied a quantum dot made of 210 electrons confined in a disk geometry. The ground state of this large dot exhibits some features as a function of the magnetic field (Beta) that can be attributed in a clear way to the formation of compressible and incompressible states of the system. The orbital and spin angular momenta, the total energy, ionization and electron chemical potentials of the ground state, as well as the frequencies of far-infrared edge modes are calculated as a function of Beta, and compared with available experimental and theoretical results.

Ecotoxic Metal Records and its Degree of Geochemical Symphony in the Niche of Cochin Estuarine System- A Theraptic Perspective

The heavy metal contamination in the environment may lead to circumstances like bioaccumulation and inturn biomagnification. Hence cheaper and effective technologies are needed to protect the precious natural resources and biological lives. A suitable technique is the one which meets the technical and environmental criteria for dealing with a particular remediation problem and should be site-specific due to spatial and climatic variations and it may not economically feasible everywhere. The search for newer technologies for the environmental therapy, involving the removal of toxic metals from wastewaters has directed attention to adsorption, based on metal binding capacities of various adsorbent materials. Therefore, the present study aim to identify and evaluate the most current mathematical formulations describing sorption processes. Although vast amount of research has been carried out in the area of metal removal by adsorption process using activated carbon few specific research data are available in different scientific institutions. The present work highlights the seasonal and spatial variations in the distribution of some selected heavy metals among various geochemical phases of Cochin Estuarine system and also looked into an environmental theraptic/remedial approach by adsorption technique using activated charcoal and chitosan, to reduce and thereby controlling metallic pollution. The thesis has been addressed in seven chapters with further subdivisions. The first chapter is introductory, stating the necessity of reducing or preventing water pollution due to the hazardous impact on environment and health of living organisms and drawing it from a careful review of literature relevant to the present study. It provides a constricted description about the study area, geology, and general hydrology and also bears the major objectives and scope of the present study.

Studies On Preparation And Characterization Of Hts Current Leads Using Multifilamentary Ag And Ag-Alloy Sheathed (Bi,Pb)-2223 Superconducting Tapes

The application vistas of superconductors have widened very much since the discovery of high TC superconductors (HTS) as many of the applications can be realised at 77 K rather than going down to 4.2 K, the liquid He temperature. One such application is the HTS current lead which is used to connect a superconducting system with a room temperature power source. Minimising heat leak to the cryogenic environment is the main advantage of introducing current leads into superconducting systems. The properties of HTSS likes zero resistance (avoiding joule heating) and very low thermal conductivity (minimized conductive heat transfer) make them ideal candidates to be used as current leads. There are two forms of HTS current leads. (i) bulk form (tube or rod) prepared either from YBCO or BSCCO and (ii) tape form prepared from Bi-2223 multifilamentary tapes. The tape form of current leads has many advantages with respect to the mechanical and thermal stability related criteria. Crucial information on various aspects of HTS current lead development are not available in the literature as those are kept proprietary by various companies around the world. The present work has been undertaken to tailor the properties of multifilamentary tapes for the current lead application and to optimise the processing parameters of the same for enhanced critical current density and field tolerance. Also it is the aim of the present investigation is to prepare prototype current leads engineered for operation in conduction cooled mode and test them for operational stability

A marine actinomycete nocardiopsis mccb 110 as source of novel drugs to manage vibriosis

Aquaculture is a form of agriculture that involves the propagation, cultivation and marketing of aquatic plants and animals in a controlled environment (Swann, 1992). After growing steadily, particularly in the last four decades, aquaculture is for the first time set to contribute half of the fish consumed by the human population worldwide. Given the projected population growth over the next two decades, it is estimated that at least an additional 40 million tonnes of aquatic food will be required by 2030 to maintain the current per capita consumption (FAO, 2006). Capture fisheries and aquaculture supplied the world with about 110 million tonnes of food fish in 2006. Of this total, aquaculture accounted for 47 percent (FAO, 2009). Globally, penaeid shrimp culture ranks sixth in terms of quantity and second in terms of value amongst all taxonomic groups of aquatic animals cultivated (FAO, 2006). In places where warm-water aquaculture was possible black tiger shrimp, Penaeus monodon became the preferred variety of shrimp cultivar owing to its fast growth, seed availability and importantly due to high prices it fetches (Pechmanee, 1997). World shrimp production is dominated by P.monodon, which accounted for more than 50 % of the production in 1999 (FAO, 2000). In the last few years the whiteleg shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, has replaced P.monodon in many countries. Indian shrimp culture is dominated by P.monodon with the East Coast accounting for 70% of the production (Hein, 2002). Intensive culture, apart from other problems, results in enhanced susceptibility of the cultured species to diseases (Jory, 1997), which in fact have become the biggest constraint in shrimp aquaculture (FAO, 2003).

Numerical Simulation of Two-Part Underwater Towing System

The motion instability is an important issue that occurs during the operation of towed underwater vehicles (TUV), which considerably affects the accuracy of high precision acoustic instrumentations housed inside the same. Out of the various parameters responsible for this, the disturbances from the tow-ship are the most significant one. The present study focus on the motion dynamics of an underwater towing system with ship induced disturbances as the input. The study focus on an innovative system called two-part towing. The methodology involves numerical modeling of the tow system, which consists of modeling of the tow-cables and vehicles formulation. Previous study in this direction used a segmental approach for the modeling of the cable. Even though, the model was successful in predicting the heave response of the tow-body, instabilities were observed in the numerical solution. The present study devises a simple approach called lumped mass spring model (LMSM) for the cable formulation. In this work, the traditional LMSM has been modified in two ways. First, by implementing advanced time integration procedures and secondly, use of a modified beam model which uses only translational degrees of freedoms for solving beam equation. A number of time integration procedures, such as Euler, Houbolt, Newmark and HHT-α were implemented in the traditional LMSM and the strength and weakness of each scheme were numerically estimated. In most of the previous studies, hydrodynamic forces acting on the tow-system such as drag and lift etc. are approximated as analytical expression of velocities. This approach restricts these models to use simple cylindrical shaped towed bodies and may not be applicable modern tow systems which are diversed in shape and complexity. Hence, this particular study, hydrodynamic parameters such as drag and lift of the tow-system are estimated using CFD techniques. To achieve this, a RANS based CFD code has been developed. Further, a new convection interpolation scheme for CFD simulation, called BNCUS, which is blend of cell based and node based formulation, was proposed in the study and numerically tested. To account for the fact that simulation takes considerable time in solving fluid dynamic equations, a dedicated parallel computing setup has been developed. Two types of computational parallelisms are explored in the current study, viz; the model for shared memory processors and distributed memory processors. In the present study, shared memory model was used for structural dynamic analysis of towing system, distributed memory one was devised in solving fluid dynamic equations.

IRIS BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION SYSTEM EMPLOYING CANNY OPERATOR

Biometrics has become important in security applications. In comparison with many other biometric features, iris recognition has very high recognition accuracy because it depends on iris which is located in a place that still stable throughout human life and the probability to find two identical iris's is close to zero. The identification system consists of several stages including segmentation stage which is the most serious and critical one. The current segmentation methods still have limitation in localizing the iris due to circular shape consideration of the pupil. In this research, Daugman method is done to investigate the segmentation techniques. Eyelid detection is another step that has been included in this study as a part of segmentation stage to localize the iris accurately and remove unwanted area that might be included. The obtained iris region is encoded using haar wavelets to construct the iris code, which contains the most discriminating feature in the iris pattern. Hamming distance is used for comparison of iris templates in the recognition stage. The dataset which is used for the study is UBIRIS database. A comparative study of different edge detector operator is performed. It is observed that canny operator is best suited to extract most of the edges to generate the iris code for comparison. Recognition rate of 89% and rejection rate of 95% is achieved

FEM based Virtual Prototyping and Design of Third Harmonic Excitation System for Low Voltage Brushless Alternators

Salient pole brushless alternators coupled to IC engines are extensively used as stand-by power supply units for meeting in- dustrial power demands. Design of such generators demands high power to weight ratio, high e ciency and low cost per KVA out- put. Moreover, the performance characteristics of such machines like voltage regulation and short circuit ratio (SCR) are critical when these machines are put into parallel operation and alterna- tors for critical applications like defence and aerospace demand very low harmonic content in the output voltage. While designing such alternators, accurate prediction of machine characteristics, including total harmonic distortion (THD) is essential to mini- mize development cost and time. Total harmonic distortion in the output voltage of alternators should be as low as possible especially when powering very sophis- ticated and critical applications. The output voltage waveform of a practical AC generator is replica of the space distribution of the ux density in the air gap and several factors such as shape of the rotor pole face, core saturation, slotting and style of coil disposition make the realization of a sinusoidal air gap ux wave impossible. These ux harmonics introduce undesirable e ects on the alternator performance like high neutral current due to triplen harmonics, voltage distortion, noise, vibration, excessive heating and also extra losses resulting in poor e ciency, which in turn necessitate de-rating of the machine especially when connected to non-linear loads. As an important control unit of brushless alternator, the excitation system and its dynamic performance has a direct impact on alternator's stability and reliability. The thesis explores design and implementation of an excitation i system utilizing third harmonic ux in the air gap of brushless al- ternators, using an additional auxiliary winding, wound for 1=3rd pole pitch, embedded into the stator slots and electrically iso- lated from the main winding. In the third harmonic excitation system, the combined e ect of two auxiliary windings, one with 2=3rd pitch and another third harmonic winding with 1=3rd pitch, are used to ensure good voltage regulation without an electronic automatic voltage regulator (AVR) and also reduces the total harmonic content in the output voltage, cost e ectively. The design of the third harmonic winding by analytic methods demands accurate calculation of third harmonic ux density in the air gap of the machine. However, precise estimation of the amplitude of third harmonic ux in the air gap of a machine by conventional design procedures is di cult due to complex geome- try of the machine and non-linear characteristics of the magnetic materials. As such, prediction of the eld parameters by conven- tional design methods is unreliable and hence virtual prototyping of the machine is done to enable accurate design of the third har- monic excitation system. In the design and development cycle of electrical machines, it is recognized that the use of analytical and experimental methods followed by expensive and in exible prototyping is time consum- ing and no longer cost e ective. Due to advancements in com- putational capabilities over recent years, nite element method (FEM) based virtual prototyping has become an attractive al- ternative to well established semi-analytical and empirical design methods as well as to the still popular trial and error approach followed by the costly and time consuming prototyping. Hence, by virtually prototyping the alternator using FEM, the important performance characteristics of the machine are predicted. Design of third harmonic excitation system is done with the help of results obtained from virtual prototype of the machine. Third harmonic excitation (THE) system is implemented in a 45 KVA ii experimental machine and experiments are conducted to validate the simulation results. Simulation and experimental results show that by utilizing third harmonic ux in the air gap of the ma- chine for excitation purposes during loaded conditions, triplen harmonic content in the output phase voltage is signi cantly re- duced. The prototype machine with third harmonic excitation system designed and developed based on FEM analysis proved to be economical due to its simplicity and has the added advan- tage of reduced harmonics in the output phase voltage.

Development of thermo-analytical prediction and classification models for food in thermal devices using a multi sensor system and artificial neural networks

Die thermische Verarbeitung von Lebensmitteln beeinflusst deren Qualität und ernährungsphysiologischen Eigenschaften. Im Haushalt ist die Überwachung der Temperatur innerhalb des Lebensmittels sehr schwierig. Zudem ist das Wissen über optimale Temperatur- und Zeitparameter für die verschiedenen Speisen oft unzureichend. Die optimale Steuerung der thermischen Zubereitung ist maßgeblich abhängig von der Art des Lebensmittels und der äußeren und inneren Temperatureinwirkung während des Garvorgangs. Das Ziel der Arbeiten war die Entwicklung eines automatischen Backofens, der in der Lage ist, die Art des Lebensmittels zu erkennen und die Temperatur im Inneren des Lebensmittels während des Backens zu errechnen. Die für die Temperaturberechnung benötigten Daten wurden mit mehreren Sensoren erfasst. Hierzu kam ein Infrarotthermometer, ein Infrarotabstandssensor, eine Kamera, ein Temperatursensor und ein Lambdasonde innerhalb des Ofens zum Einsatz. Ferner wurden eine Wägezelle, ein Strom- sowie Spannungs-Sensor und ein Temperatursensor außerhalb des Ofens genutzt. Die während der Aufheizphase aufgenommen Datensätze ermöglichten das Training mehrerer künstlicher neuronaler Netze, die die verschiedenen Lebensmittel in die entsprechenden Kategorien einordnen konnten, um so das optimale Backprogram auszuwählen. Zur Abschätzung der thermische Diffusivität der Nahrung, die von der Zusammensetzung (Kohlenhydrate, Fett, Protein, Wasser) abhängt, wurden mehrere künstliche neuronale Netze trainiert. Mit Ausnahme des Fettanteils der Lebensmittel konnten alle Komponenten durch verschiedene KNNs mit einem Maximum von 8 versteckten Neuronen ausreichend genau abgeschätzt werden um auf deren Grundlage die Temperatur im inneren des Lebensmittels zu berechnen. Die durchgeführte Arbeit zeigt, dass mit Hilfe verschiedenster Sensoren zur direkten beziehungsweise indirekten Messung der äußeren Eigenschaften der Lebensmittel sowie KNNs für die Kategorisierung und Abschätzung der Lebensmittelzusammensetzung die automatische Erkennung und Berechnung der inneren Temperatur von verschiedensten Lebensmitteln möglich ist.