Recent Developments in Minimal Processing: A Tool to Retain Nutritional Quality of Food

The modernization during the last century resulted in urbanization coupled with modifications in lifestyles and dietary habits. In the same era, industrial developments made it easier to meet the requirements for processed foods. However, consumers are now interested in minimally processed foods owing to increase in their awareness to have fruits and vegetables with superior quality, and natural integrity with fewer additives. The food products deteriorate as a consequence of physiological aging, biochemical changes, high respiration rat,e and high ethylene production. These factors contribute substantially to discoloration, loss of firmness, development of off-flavors, acidification, and microbial spoilage. Simultaneously, food processors are using emerging approaches to process perishable commodities, along with enhanced nutritional and sensorial quality. The present review article is an effort to utilize the modern approaches to minimize the processing and deterioration. The techniques discussed in this paper include chlorination, ozonation, irradiation, photosensitization, edible coating, natural preservative use, high-pressure processing, microwave heating, ohmic heating, and hurdle technology. The consequences of these techniques on shelf-life stability, microbial safety, preservation of organoleptic and nutritional quality, and residue avoidance are the limelight of the paper. Moreover, the discussion has been made on the feasibility and operability of these techniques in modern-day processing.     

Mutation of aspartate-233 to valine in mouse ornithine decarboxylase reduces enzyme activity

Ornithine decarboxylase is the first and key enzyme in mammalian polyamine biosynthesis. All eukaryotic ornithine decarboxylases contain several highly conserved regions and the amino acid residues 232-238 form one of the most highly conserved sequences. This region contains a glycine-rich sequence typically found in a number of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate-dependent or nucleotide-binding proteins. We mutated aspartate-233 which is the only acidic residue within this region to valine. This mutation causes striking sequence similarity with the guanine nucleotide binding domain of c-H-ras. Mutated ornithine decarboxylase cDNA with a mouse mammary tumor virus long terminal repeat promoter has been transfected for stable expression into ornithine decarboxylase-deficient C55.7 cells. Ornithine decarboxylase activity of the mutated enzyme was about 20% of wild-type ornithine decarboxylase activity and it was not activated by guanosine triphosphate like the ornithine decarboxylase isoform found in some tumors and rat brain. The mutation caused an increase in K(m) value of about 20-fold both for the substrate L-ornithine and for the cofactor pyridoxal 5'-phosphate. The Ki value for the irreversible inhibitor alpha-difluoromethylornithine was also increased, whereas the half-life of the enzyme was shortened. These results suggest that the region containing aspartate-233 is essential for binding of the cofactor and thus forms part of enzymatic active site, and the mutation of aspartate-233 to valine cannot, at least alone, cause the activation of ornithine decarboxylase by guanosine triphosphate (230).     

Localization of estrogen-receptor-related antigen in human odontoblasts

Estrogen receptors have been demonstrated in many osteogenic cell lines. Recently, we showed that estrogen deficiency induced by ovariectomy caused enhanced dentin formation in adult rats, suggesting that estrogen receptors may be present in dental tissues. Nothing is known about estrogen receptors in human teeth. We used immunohistochemical staining and immuno-blotting to demonstrate the presence of estrogen receptors in human pulp and/or the pulpo-dentinal border. Unerupted human wisdom teeth were surgically removed, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and prepared for immunological studies. Western blot analysis with monoclonal antibodies specific for human estrogen-receptor-related antigens demonstrated an approximately 29-kDa clear double band in the material scraped from the predentin-odontoblast border and in the fluid that emerged into the pulpal chamber, evidently from the odontoblasts. A weaker double band was also present in pulpal tissue samples. By immunohistochemical staining, estrogen-receptor-related antigens were visualized in the predentinal-odontoblast region and in the pulpal blood vessels. Our results suggest the presence of estrogen receptors in human teeth, and thus the previously reported enhancement of the dentin formation in rats after ovariectomy may be mediated via these receptors.     

Effect of Physical Structure on the Phase Development of Aluminosilicate Gels

The surface area and density of aluminosilicate xerogels containing a one-to-one Al/Si molar ratio (47 wt% alumina) can be varied dramatically by changing the pore fluid prior to drying. The surface area of ethanol-washed 47 wt% alumina gels was more than 500 m²/g, while gels dried from the mother liquor (approximately 75 vol% ethanol, 25 vol% water) had less than 1 m²/g surface area. Changes in the physical structure of the dried gels had dramatic effects on subsequent phase evolution and densification behavior during heat treatment. NMR, X-ray diffraction, and DTA were used to follow the phase evolution of different gels. Differences in the amorphous gel structure were identified using ²⁷Al and ²⁹Si MAS NMR. Gels of identical composition prepared from the same precursor solutions crystallized to different phases, depending upon the surface area of the gel prior to heating. The high surface material (ethanol washed) formed mullite and amorphous silica, while the low surface area gel (unswashed) crystallized to mullite and cristobalite. These gels were prepared from alkoxide precursors. A low surface area gel with a different degree of chemical homogeneity was prepared by the nitrate method for comparison. Results indicate that the physical structure of aluminosilicate gels, i.e., pore structure and chemical homogeneity, has a dramatic influence on phase evolution.     

Skeletal lesions of the feet in diabetics and their relationship to cutaneous erythema with or without necrosis on the feet

Seventy patients with cutaneous erythema of the feet with or without necrosis were the subjects of this investigation. Sixty-five of them had open diabetes. The glucose tolerance of the remaining five patients was altered in a diabetic direction. Twenty-seven of the 70 patients had roentgenologically demonstrable destruction in the bones of the feet. These 70 patients were compared with 61 diabetic control patients of corresponding age and duration of diabetes but without these skin lesions of the feet. Only four of the 61 control patients had destruction in the bones of the feet and all these destructions were small. Precipitating factors were identified in general for the skin lesions, the most common being cardiac decompensation. A higher frequency of precipitating factors was seen in patients with skeletal destructions than in those without. The skeletal destructions and cutaneous necrosis are supposed to be equivalent lesions, localized to different tissues in the feet. When patients presenting skin lesions of the feet in the form of distal gangrene were compared with those who had cutaneous erythema and necrosis of the feet, but no distal gangrene, no differences were found with respect to age, duration of diabetes, occurrence of precipitating factors and the occurrence of skeletal destruction. Cutaneous erythema without necrosis is understood to be incipient diabetic gangrene.     

Nuclear Data Sheets for A=75

The experimental nuclear data for mass=75 have been reviewed, superceding 1981 evaluation by Ekstrom (81Ek02). Detailed level and decay schemes together with summary (adopted), arguments for Jπ assignments and experimental data of the known nuclei (Cu, Zn, Ga, Ge, As, Se, Br, Kr, Rb) are presented. ⁷⁵Cu has been identified as a β⁻ delayed neutron emission precursor while ⁷⁵Ga has been studied in detail in ⁷⁵Zn β⁻ decay recently. In ⁷⁵Ge, there are quite a few new data available, specially on particle-transfer reactions. Not much new information is known for ⁷⁵As except for a particle transfer reaction and ⁷⁵Se ε decay. The same is true for ⁷⁵Se except for a neutron capture study. New data have been reported for ⁷⁵Kr and ⁷⁵Br.     

Hybrid pyramid-DWT-SVD dual data hiding technique for videos ownership protection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This paper proposes a hybrid pyramid Discrete-Wavelet-Transform (DWT) Singular-Value-Decomposition (SVD) data hiding scheme for video authentication and...     

A semi-supervised approach to sentiment analysis using revised sentiment strength based on SentiWordNet

Emergence of MapReduce (MR) framework for scaling data mining and machine learning algorithms provides for Volume, while handling of Variety and Velocity needs to be skilfully crafted in algorithms. So far, scalable clustering algorithms have focused solely on Volume, taking advantage of the MR framework. In this paper we present a MapReduce algorithm—data aware scalable clustering (DASC), which is capable of handling the 3 Vs of big data by virtue of being (i) single scan and distributed to handle Volume, (ii) incremental to cope with Velocity and (iii) versatile in handling numeric and categorical data to accommodate Variety. DASC algorithm incrementally processes infinitely growing data set stored on distributed file system and delivers quality clustering scheme while ensuring recency of patterns. The up-to-date synopsis is preserved by the algorithm for the data seen so far. Each new data increment is processed and merged with the synopsis. Since the synopsis itself may grow very large in size, the algorithm stores it as a file. This makes DASC algorithm truly scalable. Exclusive clusters are obtained on demand by applying connected component analysis (CCA) algorithm over the synopsis. CCA presents subtle roadblock to effective parallelism during clustering. This problem is overcome by accomplishing the task in two stages. In the first stage, hyperclusters are identified based on prevailing data characteristics. The second stage utilizes this knowledge to determine the degree of parallelism, thereby making DASC data aware. Hyperclusters are distributed over the available compute nodes for discovering embedded clusters in parallel. Staged approach for clustering yields dual advantage of improved parallelism and desired complexity in \(\mathcal {MRC}^0\) class. DASC algorithm is empirically compared with incremental Kmeans and Scalable Kmeans++ algorithms. Experimentation on real-world and synthetic data with approximately 1.2 billion data points demonstrates effectiveness of DASC algorithm. Empirical observations of DASC execution are in consonance with the theoretical analysis with respect to stability in resources utilization and execution time.