Growth and development impact of sustainable nutrition education: An experimental study

Healthy societies are formed by learning and maintaining sustainable healthy eating behaviors from childhood. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of short-term sustainable nutrition education on growth and development parameters of preschool children. This study is an experimental design with pretest–posttest control group. This study was carried out in two kindergartens between February 2022 and June 2023 in Turkey. The education group received 4 months of dietary behavior training. The dietary scale and anthropometric measurements were administered at the first and last meetings. Data were analyzed with 95% confidence interval. The study was completed with 174 children. A statistically significant difference was found, especially in body weight (p < 0.05) and body weight percentile values (p < 0.05) in the posttest of the education group. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was found between the groups in the eating behavior scale posttest score. Nutrition education in schools is important in promoting healthy eating habits. Nutrition education improves eating behavior positively. To maintain healthy eating behaviors, however, the continuity of education is necessary. In addition, as growth and development are physical processes, it is recognized that growth and development cannot be assessed by nutrition alone.     

Comparison of a competitive ELISA with an HPLC method for the determination of aflatoxin M1 in Turkish White, Kasar and Tulum cheeses

AFM1 is a hydroxylated metabolite produced when ruminants ingest contaminated feed with AFB1 and transferred to dairy products such as cheese, which represents an important risk factor for consumers. Turkish White, Kashar and Tulum cheeses are traditional cheese types in Turkey. This study was planned to compare the performance of a competitive ELISA for the determination of AFM1 in Turkish White, Kasar and Tulum cheeses against a new HPLC method. For this purpose, different AFM1 concentrations (50–400 ng/kg) were added to the cheese samples and the toxin levels were determined by ELISA and HPLC. Also, both methods were performed in 24 real samples obtained from different markets. In conclusion, the results obtained by ELISA in this study were related to those by HPLC for AFM1.     

Fuzzy portfolio selection using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Financial problems have been the subject of much research. A widely used approach in recent work on these problems is the use of fuzzy set theory, where fuzzy terms are used to model the uncertain environments. The purpose of this work is to combine the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with the portfolio selection problem. More specifically, the decision-making problem is to decide which stocks are to be chosen for investment and in what proportions they will be bought. To do this, we first dealt with two constrained fuzzy AHP methods given by Enea and Piazza [M. Enea, T. Piazza, Project selection by constrained fuzzy AHP, Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making 3 (2004) 39–62]. We revised the first of these methods, addressing some of its fallacies, and called it revised constrained fuzzy AHP method (RCFAHP). Then we applied these two methods, namely, RCFAHP and the second- method of Enea and Piazza (2004), to the problem of choosing stocks on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). The methodology used for the hierarchy construction is based on the paper of Satty et al. [T.L. Saaty, P.C. Rogers, R. Bell, Portfolio selection through hierarchies, The Journal of Portfolio Management (1980) 16–21].In this paper, we show that both of the models provide both ranking and weighting information, via fuzzy AHP, to the investors in this financial scenario. Finally, we discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of these methods in comparison to existing methods in the literature.