Antioxidant capacity,phenolic compound content and sensory properties of cookies produced from organic grape peel (Vitis labrusca) flour

The by-products of the food industry can be used as nutrient source to improve the nutritional characteristics of other food products. This study aimed to investigate the chemical composition, antioxidant activity and phenolic compound content of organic grape peel flour in cookies using response surface methodology. Composition analysis using different assays (DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, ORAC) revealed that this flour was low in calories (180.22 ± 0.25 kcal%), with low dietary fibre content (50.10 ± 0.01 g%) and high antioxidant capacity. The total phenolic compound analysis showed high values of phenolic compounds (1063.58 ± 8.09 mg%), consisting of resveratrol (54.27 ± 0.79 mg%), epicatechin (43.94 ± 0.90 mg%) and chlorogenic acid (35.70 ± 1.47 mg%). A 2³ factorial experimental design was formulated to optimise the ingredients for cookie production. The resulting cookies presented high acceptance and good sensory properties, confirming that organic grape flour did not interfere with product acceptability. Thus, cookies with an acceptable quality and improved nutrition can be prepared using organic grape peel flour.     

Vitamin D and skeletal muscle: A narrative review focusing on chronic kidney disease and dialysis

Morphological, molecular, and physiological effects of vitamin D on skeletal muscle have been analyzed both in animals and humans. Vitamin D may be a potential therapeutic for increasing muscle mass and function. The presence of vitamin D receptors in skeletal muscle cells is already established. However, there is still need for more evidence about the effect of vitamin D on muscle. Some studies have associated vitamin D and skeletal muscle in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients; most of these studies enrolled hemodialysis patients. FGF-23 and Klotho were recently described in mineral and bone disorders in CKD, resulting in reductions in calcitriol levels. Therefore, both Klotho and FGF-23 may play a role in muscle loss in CKD, which is related to morbidity and mortality risk. Therefore, this article presents a narrative review, aiming to discuss the available information associating skeletal muscle and vitamin D, highlighting the results in CKD and dialysis patients.     

NIR spectroscopy and chemometric tools to identify high content of deoxynivalenol in barley

ABSTRACT

Deoxynivalenol (DON) is one of the mycotoxins produced mainly by the Fusarium graminearum species complex in small grain cereals, including barley. This toxin can cause alimentary disorders, immune function depression and gastroenteritis. The negative health effects associated with DON coupled to the increasing concern about green and rapid methods of analysis motivated this study. In this context, near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy data were applied for exploratory analysis to distinguish barley with high and low levels of DON contamination (> or <1250 µg/kg according to the European Union threshold), by Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA), and to verify the performance of Partial Least Squares-Regression (PLS-R) to predict DON concentration in barley samples. Maximum values of specificity and sensitivity were achieved in the calibration set; 90.9% and 81.9% were observed in the cross-validation set for the PLS-DA classification model. PLS-R quantification of DON in barley presented low values of error (RMSEC = 101.94 µg/kg and RMSEP = 160.76 µg/kg). Thus, we found that NIR in combination with adequate chemometric tools could be applied as a green technique to monitor DON contamination in barley.     

A Shape-Aware Retargeting Approach to Transfer Human Motion and Appearance in Monocular Videos

International Journal of Computer Vision - Transferring human motion and appearance between videos of human actors remains one of the key challenges in Computer Vision. Despite the advances from...     

A methodology to forecast some attributes of an automatic storyteller’s outputs

ABSTRACT

This paper reports an extension of the program MEXICA, an automatic plot generator. The purpose of this project is to build a framework that permits studying the relations between MEXICA’s processes, its knowledge structures and the features of the produced narratives. We describe a methodology to analyse the features of the agent’s knowledge-base, to further establish correlations between such features and a set of general characteristics of the tales that they produce. Next, we make use of those correlations to forecast some properties of the future tales to be developed by different MEXICAs agents with different knowledge-bases. For this task, we introduce the S-graphs, representations of the similarity and organisation of the knowledge-structures. The results we obtained indicate that we are able to correctly forecast some of the features of tales to be produced; however, much more work is required.     

Modeling and accomplishing the BEREC network neutrality policy

Network neutrality (NN) is a principle of equal treatment of data in network infrastructures with fairness and universality being the primary outcomes of the NN management practice. For networks, the accomplishment of NN management practice is essential to deal with heterogeneous user requirements and the ever-increasing data traffic. Current tools and methods address the NN problem by detecting network neutrality violations and detecting traffic differentiation. This paper proposes the NN-PCM (Network Neutrality Policy Conformance Module) that deploys the BEREC network neutrality policy using a bandwidth allocation model (BAM). The NN-PCM new approach allocates bandwidth to network users and accomplishes the BEREC NN policy concomitantly. Network neutrality is achieved by grouping users with similar traffic requirements in classes and leveraging the bandwidth allocation model's characteristics. The conceptual analysis and simulation results indicate that NN-PCM allocates bandwidth to users and accomplishes BEREC network neutrality conformance by design with transparent, nondiscriminatory, exceptional, and proportional management practices.