Simultaneous detection of DNA from 10 food allergens by ligation-dependent probe amplification

The simultaneous detection of DNA from different allergenic food ingredients by a ligation-dependent probe amplification (LPA) system is described. The approach allows detection of several targets in a one-tube assay. Synthetic oligonucleotides were designed to detect DNA from peanuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, macadamia nuts, almonds, walnuts and brazil nuts. The specificity of the system was tested with DNA from more than 50 plant and animal species. The sensitivity of the method was suitable to detect allergenic ingredients in the low mg kg^?1 range. The limit of detection (LOD) for single allergens in different food matrices was 5 mg kg^?1. The novel analytical strategy represents a useful tool for the surveillance of established legislation on food allergens within the European Union.     

The Role of Folic Acid Fortification in Neural Tube Defects: A Review

The worldwide prevalence of neural tube defects (NTDs) has fallen noticeably during the past 30 years, but the specific etiology and causative mechanism of NTDs remain unknown. Since introduction of mandatory fortification of grains with folic acid, a further decrease in NTD prevalence has been reported in North America and other countries with large variations among ethnic subgroups. However, a significant portion of NTDs still persists. Population data suggest that women of childbearing age may not yet be adequately targeted, while the general population may be overfortified with folic acid. While an excessive folate intake may be associated with adverse effects, there remains uncertainty about the minimum effective folate intake and status required for NTD prevention, and the safe upper folate level. Besides folate, several other lifestyle and environmental factors as well as genetic variations may influence NTD development, possibly by affecting one-carbon metabolism and thus epigenetic events.

In conclusion, mandatory folic acid fortification plays a significant part in the reduction of NTD prevalence, but possibly at a cost and with a portion of NTDs remaining. More effective preventive strategies require better understanding of the etiology of this group of birth defects.     

Change detection for new food labels

The amount of information on food packages (e.g., environment- and health-related) has increased in Europe and other regions in recent years. It is therefore important to understand to what extent this information attracts the attention of and is processed by consumers, considering characteristics of the product information as well as person-specific variables such as age. In two studies we tested whether the change detection task is a useful paradigm for studying how individuals attend to and process recently introduced formats and contents of food labels. In the change detection tasks presented here, 133 participants were shown two photographs of a food package that differed in one label and were asked to identify as quickly as possible which information was constantly changing. We found systematic differences in change detection times for different types of product label content and format, representing the amount of attention habitually paid to the specific labels. Interestingly, the detection times for each label did not correlate with participants’ self-report measures of how much attention they give to this specific label during typical grocery shopping. In both studies we also found a positive correlation between age and time needed to detect change in label format and content, but only for labels that were introduced on packages in recent years (such as the ‘organic’ label) not on longer established information (such as the ‘best-before’ date).     

Experimental and numerical analysis of a lean premixed stratified burner using 1D Raman/Rayleigh scattering and large eddy simulation

A joint experimental and numerical approach is conducted to investigate a turbulent lean premixed stratified flame (flame TSF-A of the Darmstadt stratified burner). First, the distribution of the temperature and main species is obtained experimentally by 1D Raman/Rayleigh scattering. These measurements are used to provide insight into the physics of stratified combustion and to serve as validation data for numerical models. As a second step Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are carried out using tabulated chemistry combined with a thickened flame approach. The chemistry table uses the progress variable and additionally the mixture fraction as a second controlling variable to account for the variation in equivalence ratio. To test the applicability of the model, the influence of artificial thickening on the simulation of stratified flames is investigated by means of a one-dimensional test case. Furthermore, two different grids are used in the three-dimensional simulations to assess the modeling impact. The data obtained from the measurements and simulations are presented and compared along radial profiles at several axial positions. Further information about the interaction of the reaction zone with the mixing layer has been extracted from the LES which is currently not accessible by experiments.     

Characterisation of the most odour-active compounds in a peel oil extract from Pontianak oranges (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Citrus nobilis</Emphasis> var. Lour. <Emphasis Type="Italic">microcarpa</Emphasis> Hassk.)

Isolation of the volatile fraction from the peel of Pontianak orange (Citrus nobilis var. Lour. microcarpa Hassk.) by a careful solvent extraction/vacuum distillation process followed by application of an aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA) revealed 32 odour-active compounds in the flavour dilution (FD)-factor range of 4–2048, 26 of which could be identified. On the basis of high FD-factors, (R)/(S)-linalool, myrcene, (R)-limonene, and 1,8-cineole were characterised as the most potent odorants, followed by octanal, (E,E)-2,4-decadienal, nerol, (E)-2-dodecenal, geraniol, and (E,E)-2,4-nonadienal. In addition, one odorant resembling the characteristic sulphurous, resinous aroma of the Pontianak peel oil was detected with a quite high FD-factor of 128. By mass spectrometry followed by synthesis, 1-phenylethanethiol exhibiting an intense sulphurous, resinous smell at the very low odour threshold of 0.005 ng/L in air, was found to be responsible for the odour impression detected in the extract. 1-Phenylethanethiol occurring as a mixture of the (R)-(76%) and the (S)-enantiomer (24%) has previously not been reported as odorant in foods. Application of static headspace aroma dilution analysis (SHA) on Pontianak peel revealed the green, grassy smelling odour-active compounds hexanal and (Z)-3-hexenal as further important odorants in the headspace above the peels.     

Water quality retrievals from combined Landsat TM data and ERS-2 SAR data in the Gulf of Finland

This paper presents the applicability of combined Landsat Thematic Mapper and European Remote Sensing 2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to turbidity, Secchi disk depth, and suspended sediment concentration retrievals in the Gulf of Finland. The results show that the estimated accuracy of these water quality variables using a neural network is much higher than the accuracy using simple and multivariate regression approaches. The results also demonstrate that SAR is only a marginally helpful to improve the estimation of these three variables for the practical use in the study area. However, the method still needs to be refined in the area under study.     

Comparison and Extension of Existing 3D Propagation Models with Real-World Effects Based on Ray-Tracing

The next generation of cellular network deployment is heterogeneous and temporally changing in order to follow the coverage and capacity needs. Active Antenna Systems allows fast deployment changes by cell shaping and tilt adaptation which have to be controlled in self-organized manner. However, such kind of automated and flexible network operations require a Self Organizing Network (SON) algorithm that works based on network performance parameters being partly derived from the radio measurements. Thus, appropriate radio propagation models are not only needed for network planning tools but also for simulative lab tests of the developed SON algorithm controlling the flexible deployment changes enabled by Active Antenna Systems. In this paper, an extension of the existing 3D propagation model is proposed in order to incorporate the propagation condition variation effects, not considered so far, by changing antenna beam orientation like antenna tilting or when users are distributed in the third dimension (height) in multi-floor scenarios. Ray tracing based generated propagation maps that show the realistic propagation effect are used as 3D real world reference for investigation and model approval.