Digestive utilisation of protein and amino acids from raw and heated lentils by growing rats

The effect of autoclave treatment on the digestive utilisation of protein and amino acids from lentils was studied in growing rats. Twenty 3‐week‐old Wistar rats (mean live weight 59 ± 4.8 g) were fed two experimental diets (n = 10 rats per diet) consisting of raw lentils (Lens culinaris M, var vulgaris, cv magda‐20) (diet RL) or lentils autoclaved at 120 °C and 1 atm for 30 min (diet AL). An additional group of 10 animals was fed a low‐protein (4%) diet and used to estimate metabolic nitrogen and amino acid excretion. Autoclaving caused a 76% reduction in the levels of trypsin inhibitor activity, but failed to improve the faecal digestive utilisation of protein or total amino acids. Lowest essential amino acid true digestibility in diets RL and AL was found for cysteine (60.2 vs 60.1%) and methionine (68.9 vs 66.6%). The protein digestibility‐corrected amino acid score was 71.2 and 66.4% and the availability of sulphur amino acid‐corrected amino acid score was 57.1 and 52.1% for diets RL and AL respectively. Sulphur amino acids were the first limiting ones. Overall, autoclave treatment did not improve protein or total amino acid digestibility from lentils, but caused a significant improvement in leucine and lysine digestibility and a significant decrease in the digestive utilisation of tyrosine and methionine. © 2002 Society of Chemical Industry     

Nutrients and antinutritional factors in faba beans as affected by processing

 The influence on the nutrients content (soluble sugars, starch, dietary fibre and calcium) and antinutritional factors (α-galactosides and phytic acid) of faba beans (Vicia faba, L. major) of soaking in different solutions (distilled water, citric acid, and sodium bicarbonate solutions), cooking the presoaked seeds, dry-heating and germination have been studied. Soaking brought about a decrease in starch, sucrose, fructose, α-galactoside, dietary fibre and calcium content. Glucose was detected in soaked faba beans and soaking did not modify the phytic acid content. Cooking the presoaked faba beans produced a slight decrease in starch, and caused a general drop in α-galactosides, dietary fibre, calcium and phytic acid, with the exception of seeds presoaked in sodium bicarbonate in which cooking did not cause any appreciable changes in comparison with the unprocessed faba beans. Germination caused a sharp reduction in α-galactoside and phytic acid content after 6 days, whilst starch and dietary fibre decreased slightly. Calcium, however, enjoyed a slight increment during germination which was related to the decrease in the content of hemicellulose and phytic acid. Dry-heating caused a noticeable reduction in all the nutrients and antinutritional factors investigated. Of all the treatments studied, germination appears to be the best processing method to obtain nutritive faba bean flour, since it caused a minor decrease in starch content (15% loss), the largest α-galactoside and phytic acid removal (94% and 45%, respectively) and provided an appreciable amount of dietary fibre. Received: 21 December 1997 / Revised version: 19 February 1998     

Test suite minimization for testing in context

Testing a component embedded into a complex system, in which all other components are assumed fault‐free, is known as embedded testing. This paper proposes a method for minimizing a test suite to perform embedded testing. The minimized test suite maintains the fault coverage of the original test suite with respect to faults within the embedded component. The minimization uses the fact that the system is composed of a fault‐free context and a component under test, specified as communicating, possibly non‐deterministic finite state machines (FSMs). The method is illustrated using an example of telephone services on an intelligent network architecture. Other applications of the proposed approach for testing a system of communicating FSMs are also discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A citation analysis of Catalan literary studies (1974–2003): Towards a bibliometrics of humanities studies in minority languages

A citation analysis was carried out on the most important research journals in the field of Catalan literature between 1974 and 2003. The indicators and qualitative parameters obtained show the value of performing citation analysis in cultural and linguistic areas that are poorly covered by the A&HCI. Catalan literature shows a similar pattern to that of humanities in general, but it could still be in a stage of consolidation because too little work has as yet been published.     

Non-intrusive parallelization of multibody system dynamic simulations

This paper evaluates two non-intrusive parallelization techniques for multibody system dynamics: parallel sparse linear equation solvers and OpenMP. Both techniques can be applied to existing simulation software with minimal changes in the code structure; this is a major advantage over Message Passing Interface, the standard parallelization method in multibody dynamics. Both techniques have been applied to parallelize a starting sequential implementation of a global index-3 augmented Lagrangian formulation combined with the trapezoidal rule as numerical integrator, in order to solve the forward dynamics of a variable-loop four-bar mechanism. Numerical experiments have been performed to measure the efficiency as a function of problem size and matrix filling. Results show that the best parallel solver (Pardiso) performs better than the best sequential solver (CHOLMOD) for multibody problems of large and medium sizes leading to matrix fillings above 10. OpenMP also proved to be advantageous even for problems of small sizes. Both techniques delivered speedups above 70% of the maximum theoretical values for a wide range of multibody problems.     

Providing standard-oriented data models and interfaces to eGovernment services: A semantic-driven approach

As eGovernment becomes a very active research area, a lot of solutions to solve citizens' needs are being deployed. These solutions, even of a high quality, suffer from some drawbacks. Most of them related to the lack of interoperability among different Public Administrations or the difficulties to locate or invoke the desired service. To deal with these issues, a semantic-based approach centered in citizens is proposed. This paper tackles the provision of a front-end solution to access services in Public Administrations. A complete software interface within a holistic model of service is deeply discussed.     

SMA Numerical Modeling Versus Experimental Results: Parameter Identification and Model Prediction Capabilities

In this work, we briefly review the one-dimensional version of a well-known phenomenological shape memory alloy (SMA) constitutive model able to represent the main macroscopic SMA macroscopic behaviors (i.e., superelasticity and shape-memory effect). We then show how to identify the needed parameters from experimental results and, in particular, from strain-temperature tests. We finally use the obtained material parameters to test the prediction properties of the model, comparing numerical results with some experiments (different from those used for the identification), and we discuss model capabilities and further required enhancements.     

Changing the hydroisomerization to hydrocracking ratio of long chain alkanes by varying the level of delamination in zeolitic (ITQ-6) materials

Several delaminated ITQ-6 acid samples have been synthesized and tested in the isomerization of n-hexadecane. It has been found that the swelling time is a decisive parameter to prepare ITQ-6 catalytic materials with different ratios of micro to mesoporous surface area. n-Hexadecane hydroisomerization results indicate that the appropriate control of the delamination conditions can drive to obtain optimized ITQ-6 materials highly active for the hydroisomerization/hydrocracking of long chain alkanes to produce lube oils, diesels or gasolines.     

Hair root versus red cell individual phenotype in Sardinian heterozygotes for G6PD deficiency (Mediterranean type)

G6PD activity was assayed in 20 Sardinian heterozygotes for G6PD deficiency and related to that of LDH and MDH. One of these heterozygotes showed a deficient phenotype in all her follicles, while the remaining 19 had different proportions of deficient, intermediate, and normal follicles. This is in accordance with a previous estimate. Because of the broad fiducial limits at the 5% level and because of some developmental considerations, this value cannot be interpreted as indicative of the number of primordial cells for scalp epidermis at the time of X-chromosome inactivation, as previously stated. The assay of single hair follicles is, however, a very valuable tool for establishing the role of cell selection in the same or in a different tissue, like peripheral blood.     

Lentil Starch Content and its Microscopical Structure as Influenced by Natural Fermentation

Lentil seeds (Lens culinaris var. vulgaris, cultivar Magda-20) were allowed to ferment naturally at different lentil flour concentrations (79 g/L, 150 g/L and 221 g/L) and temperatures (28 °C, 35 °C and 42 °C). During fermentation, samples were taken at 24 h intervals. The changes in starch content in all samples were studied. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate changes in samples fermented for 96 h at two different concentrations (79 g/L and 221 g/L) and two different temperatures (28 °C and 42 °C). A considerable decrease in starch content was observed at 0 h of fermentation, defined as the time when the lentil flour was completly suspended at the established temperature. Once fermentation began, flour concentration and temperature modified starch content. Fermentation brought about a general decrease in starch content and a 32—37 % dry matter content was found in the samples after 96 h. Microscopical studies showed that endocorrosion, i.e., breakdown starting from the center of starch granules, was the main pattern observed during lentil fermentation.