Quality assessment of corn snacks enriched with soybean ferritin among young healthy people and patient with Crohn’s disease: the effect of extrusion conditions

Fortified extruded snacks are convenient products to supplement malnourished patients’ diet, e.g. suffering from Crohn’s disease. The snacks were extruded with different additions of iron-biofortified sprouts under varying process conditions (temperature and humidity). The sensory profiling showed the correlation between extrusion temperature and snack stickiness (R = 0.835), crispiness (R = 0.727), hardness (R=−0.485), as well as the intensity of corn (R = 0.888), powder (R=−0.795), metallic (R=−0.606) and bitter (R=−0.901) tastes. The sprouts addition affected metallic taste (R = 0.606) and aroma (R = 0.666) intensity. The product desirability was compared between healthy people (HP) and Crohn’s patients (CP). Overall desirability positively correlated with taste desirability in both groups. In the HP group, taste desirability was associated with metallic taste (R=−0.857) and Fe(III) content (R=−0.717). Also, aroma desirability (connected with pyrazines) was more significant to HP. Higher tolerance of CP to metallic and bitter flavours was observed. This confirms that the taste and aroma preferences of CP and HP are different.     

Identification of diffusive transport properties of poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels from reservoir test

In this paper the identification of diffusion coefficient, retardation factor and surface distribution coefficient for selected salts in poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels is performed. The identification of the transport parameters is based on the previously developed inverse problem technique using experimental data from the reservoir test and the solution of the diffusive transport equation with linear equilibrium sorption. The estimated values of diffusion coefficient are: for physiological fluid (6.30 ± 0.10) × 10^? 10 m²/s, for 1 M NaCl (6.42 ± 0.39) × 10^? 10 m²/s, and for 1 M KCl (7.94 ± 0.38) × 10^? 10 m²/s. The retardation factor for all tested materials and salts is equal or close to one. The average value of the effective surface distribution coefficient is equal to 0.5.     

A general first-order global sensitivity analysis method

Fourier amplitude sensitivity test (FAST) is one of the most popular global sensitivity analysis techniques. The main mechanism of FAST is to assign each parameter with a characteristic frequency through a search function. Then, for a specific parameter, the variance contribution can be singled out of the model output by the characteristic frequency. Although FAST has been widely applied, there are two limitations: (1) the aliasing effect among parameters by using integer characteristic frequencies and (2) the suitability for only models with independent parameters. In this paper, we synthesize the improvement to overcome the aliasing effect limitation [Tarantola S, Gatelli D, Mara TA. Random balance designs for the estimation of first order global sensitivity indices. Reliab Eng Syst Safety 2006; 91(6):717–27] and the improvement to overcome the independence limitation [Xu C, Gertner G. Extending a global sensitivity analysis technique to models with correlated parameters. Comput Stat Data Anal 2007, accepted for publication]. In this way, FAST can be a general first-order global sensitivity analysis method for linear/nonlinear models with as many correlated/uncorrelated parameters as the user specifies. We apply the general FAST to four test cases with correlated parameters. The results show that the sensitivity indices derived by the general FAST are in good agreement with the sensitivity indices derived by the correlation ratio method, which is a non-parametric method for models with correlated parameters.     

The effect of oat hulls,added to the basal ration for pregnant sows,on reproductive performance,apparent digestibility,rate of passage and plasma parameters

Thirty-five Large White x Landrace sows were housed in individual stalls during gestation and were fed a standard diet (DE, 13.2 MJ kg^?1) supplemented with oat hulls (OH), such that the ratios of basal diet to OH were 1:0, 9:1, 7:3 or 1:1. Digestibility and balance measurements were made during 7-day periods beginning on days 45 and 90 of gestation. During a 3-week lactation all sows were fed a standard diet (calculated DE, 12.5 MJ kg^?1, CP, 152 g kg^?1). Increasing OH intake increased mean net maternal weight gains and P2 fat depths during pregnancy and tended to increase total litter weight at birth. Sow-milk solids content and litter weight gain during the 3-week suckling period also tended to increase (nonsignificant), following increasing OH supplementation during gestation. Increasing OH intake tended to increase VFA and reduce cholesterol concentration in blood plasma at 56 days of gestation. The time taken to consume the once-daily feed allowance increased and gastrointestinal transit time decreased as OH intake increased. The apparent digestibilities of the major nutrients were significantly depressed with increasing levels of OH in the diet but the total amounts of nutrients absorbed increased. The following values were calculated for OH by the difference method: apparent digestibility of DM, 0.31; apparent digestibility of ADF, 0.17; DE, 6.25 MJ kg^?1; ME 6.01 MJ kg^?1.     

Straightforward energetic approach to studies of the corrosion behaviour of nano-copper thin-layer coatings

This paper presents a one-period energy method of studying the electrochemical corrosion phenomena that occur on metal surfaces. The method employs the energy state variables (time functions) to determine whether the material is susceptible to corrosion. The main feature of this approach is the elimination of the frequency analysis, and thereby gives significant simplifications of the corrosion rate measurement. Another important feature is that the method is based on an analysis of the appropriate loops on the energy phase plane which results in the corrosion process being easily estimated through the evaluation of the loop area. The physical results obtained by this method are easily interpretable with robust properties. The usefulness of the proposed technique was examined in microcrystalline and nanocrystalline copper layers deposited on a polycrystalline substrate by the electrocrystallization method. The quantitative results obtained from the measurements of the one-period energy loops are used for controlling the corrosion resistances of the micro- and nano-copper thin-layer coatings. Several experiments performed on real specimens verified the effictiveness of the method as used for analysing the electrochemical corrosion in many practical systems. We have shown that the corrosion resistance of the nanocrystalline copper layers is worse than that of microcrystalline copper layers even when the layers of the two types are produced by the same electrochemical method.     

Pattern identification as a function of stimulation on a fingertip-scanned electrotactile display

Two studies were conducted to determine the effect of stimulation current on pattern perception on a 49-point fingertip-scanned electrotactile (electrocutaneous) display. Performance increased monotonically from near chance levels at the lowest subthreshold current levels tested to approximately 90% at the highest comfortable current levels. This suggests the existence of a tradeoff between spatial performance and usable "gray scale" range in electrotactile presentation of graphical information.