Abstract: An apparatus for heat treatment of a product, in particular food product, and especially food product in a container such as a can, bottle or plastic pouch is disclosed. The apparatus comprises an unloading and loading section, a first treatment section having an inner wall defining a processing volume within which product is heated, a transfer section and a second treatment section having an inner wail defining a processing volume within which product is cooled, multiple carriers for retaining product during treatment designed to provide multi-stage pressure reductions that collectively reduce the maximum over-pressure within the apparatus to ambient pressure and thereby eliminate the need for sealable pressure doors or gate valves. The loading section incorporates means of linear movement of said product carriers in a continuous fashion.

Abstract: A method, a system, and an article are provided for determining how active users and groups of users are in an online game and, based thereon, generating recommendations for users to join one or more of the groups. The method can include, for example, generating a representation of a health of each of a plurality of users of a virtual environment, and aggregating the user health representations to generate an aggregated health representation for each group. Based on the aggregated health representations, a recommendation to a selected user of the virtual environment can be generated for joining a recommended group from the plurality of groups.