Raisins and Currants as Conventional Nutraceuticals in Italian Market: Natural Occurrence of Ochratoxin A

The healthy consumers make a strong pressure to natural products that can prevent the chronic diseases and improve the general health status, and therefore an important aspect that have to be considered is the safe level of the nutraceuticals. This study reports the occurrence of Ochratoxin A (OTA) and associated fungal contamination in 35 samples of dried vine fruits imported in the European community potentially used for the development of new nutraceutical supplements. High pressure liquid chromatography analysis identified 18 samples as contaminated by OTA with an average level of 2.6 μg/kg. OTA was measured in 4 samples of currants (mean value of 6.6 μg/kg) and 13 samples of raisins (mean value of 1.4 μg/kg). In one sample of currants and one of raisins from Turkey OTA exceeded the limits set by European Commission of 10 μg/kg, being contaminated with 12.61 and 15.99 μg/kg, respectively. All the positive samples were confirmed by Orbitrap Q Exactive through their molecular weight and the corresponding fragmentation. The worldwide consumption of dried vine fruits contributed to OTA exposure in several group of consumers. In particular, considering the potential nutraceutical approach, this consumption may be represent a severe risk for healthy consumers that consider these products like healthy and salutistic for their contents in antioxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols. Data reported in this study confirmed the need to regularly monitor mycotoxin levels in these food products and optimize the process of fruits drying in order to reduce the development of toxigenic molds.     

How Important Are Genes to Achieve Longevity?

Several studies on the genetics of longevity have been reviewed in this paper. The results show that, despite efforts and new technologies, only two genes, APOE and FOXO3A, involved in the protection of cardiovascular diseases, have been shown to be associated with longevity in nearly all studies. This happens because the genetic determinants of longevity are dynamic and depend on the environmental history of a given population. In fact, population-specific genes are thought to play a greater role in the attainment of longevity than those shared between different populations. Hence, it is not surprising that GWAS replicated associations of common variants with longevity have been few, if any, as these studies pool together different populations. An alternative way might be the study of long-life families. This type of approach is proving to be an ideal resource for uncovering protective alleles and associated biological signatures for healthy aging phenotypes and exceptional longevity.     

Modelling the evolution of oxidative browning during storage of white wines: effects of packaging and closures

Shelf life of products is a key parameter for any company at local and international level that wish to improve their competitiveness; thus, there is a need to search for methods that allow one to predict the shelf life of bottled wines. In this view, the progress of chemical oxidative reactions of six Italian white wines during storage (10 months after bottling), in different packaging, was monitored by means of selected oenological parameters. The optical density at 420 nm, an index of browning, showed a progressive increase that fitted the zero‐order kinetic rate. The onset of wine browning was further tested by means of accelerated ageing in controlled temperature conditions which results, modelled using the rate constants approach, showed an Arrhenius‐like dependence from temperature, allowing to estimate apparent activation energies of oxidative chemical browning (range: 46.8–88.3 kJ mol^?1). Kinetic and thermodynamic approach provided a useful tool to predict quality changes of white wines during storage with respect to packaging conditions.     

Specificity of Infant Digestive Conditions: Some Clues for Developing Relevant In Vitro Models

Digestion of nutrients is an essential function of the newborn infant gut to allow growth and development and understanding infant digestive function is essential to optimize nutrition and oral drug delivery. Ethical considerations prohibit invasive in vivo trials and as a consequence in vitro assays are often conducted. However, the choice of in vitro model parameters are not supported by an exhaustive analysis of the literature and do not mimic precisely the digestive conditions of the infant. This review contains a compilation of the studies which characterized the gastroduodenal conditions in full-term or preterm infants of variable postnatal age from birth up to six months. Important data about healthy full-term infants are reported. The enzymatic (type of enzymes and level of activity) and nonenzymatic (milk-based diet, frequency of feeding, bile salt concentrations) conditions of digestion in infants are shown to differ significantly from those in adults. In addition, the interindividual and developmental variability of the digestive conditions in infants is also highlighted.     

On the role of the calcination step in the preparation of active (superacid) sulfated zirconia catalysts

In the preparation of active SO₄-ZrO₂ catalysts, several steps involving various chemical and/or physical processes are necessary. In particular it has been reported that, after sulfation of amorphous Zr hydrates, a calcination atT _calc>773 K is needed to guarantee the crystallization of ZiO₂ in the tetragonal phase. By the use of a stabilized tetragonal ZrO₂, it is here demonstrated that a calcination atT _calc>773 K is indeed necessary for all SO₄-ZrO₂ systems, and that its actual role is the selective elimination of sulfates from highly energetic crystallographic defects. The calcination step atT _calc>773 K so creates the conditions for the formation of strong Lewis acid centres, that are necessary in the catalytic process, and the presence of which is here monitored spectroscopically by the reversible adsorption of carbon monoxide.     

GUEST EDITORIAL: PAPERS IN SENSING AND IN REASONING (MARCO SOMALVICO MEMORIAL ISSUE)

Recently, we observed a great movement of Internet users from blogs and wiki to Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk. To increase profit margins, identifying the service factors that attract customers to join a new virtual community is crucial for website enterprises. Most works focus on social networks, success factors, and reasons for participating. Relatively few works have attempted to address this issue. Additionally, feature selection techniques have been widely used to extract crucial attributes. However, domain knowledge, which is hard to obtain, is needed to select meaningful features. Therefore, this work proposes a Kano's model based Neural Network (KANN) method combining Kano's model and neural networks to identify the key service factors. Finally, a real case study of a survey of virtual community users is provided to identify the key service factors.     

Stochastic maximum principle for SPDEs with noise and control on the boundary

In this paper we prove necessary conditions for optimality of a stochastic control problem for a class of stochastic partial differential equations that is controlled through the boundary. This kind of problem can be interpreted as a stochastic control problem for an evolution system in a Hilbert space. The regularity of the solution of the adjoint equation, that is a backward stochastic equation in infinite dimension, plays a crucial role in the formulation of the maximum principle.     

Oxidative transformation of aqueous phenolic mixtures by birnessite-mediated catalysis

The catalytic efficiency of birnessite in the removal of catechol, hydroxytyrosol, methylcatechol and m-tyrosol, four phenols commonly present in polluted wastewaters, was studied in mono-substrate solutions or in mixtures of two, three, and four substrates. In single phenolic solutions the transformation order of phenols was catechol>hydroxytyrosol>methylcatechol>m-tyrosol. With phenolic mixtures different responses were observed and the amount of each phenol transformed and the crossing effects among the various phenols depended on the type and number of phenols present in the mixture. In particular, general inhibitory effects were observed for hydroxytyrosol and m-tyrosol that were transformed less when present in combination with the other phenols. By contrast the effects by the presence of more than one phenol were basically annulled for catechol and methylcatechol at 24 h incubation in all the mixtures. A simultaneous, but often no stoichiometric, release of soluble Mn2+ in the reaction mixtures occurred. The multi-substrate systems were designed to mimic birnessite-mediated oxidative processes that could occur under field conditions. Therefore they could be of great interest to environmental and soil science. The use of birnessite as a potential tool for an effective detoxification and recovery of phenol-polluted systems could be also envisaged.