Changes in sensory properties and consumer acceptance of reduced fat pork Lyon-style and liver sausages containing inulin and citrus fiber as fat replacers

The effects of fat reduction in Lyon-style (25% fat) and liver sausages (30% fat) using inulin, citrus fiber and partially rice starch were studied in terms of sensory properties and consumer acceptance. Fat reduced Lyon-style sausages (3 to 17% fat) and liver sausages (3 to 20% fat) were respectively compared to the full-fat controls. Reducing fat in Lyon-style sausages decreased meat flavor, aftertaste meat flavor, greasiness and juiciness, and enhanced color intensity, spiciness, spicy aftertaste, raspy throat, coarseness and firmness scores. But adding inulin and citrus fiber led to sensory characteristics similar to the full-fat reference. Regarding liver sausages, attribute scores in greasiness, creaminess, lumpiness and foamy were decreased with fat reduction and simultaneous addition of fibers. Color intensity, spiciness, firmness and attribute furred tongue were increased. Consumer tests revealed acceptable fat reduced (32 to 90% less than control) and fiber enriched (1.0 to 5.6%) sausages. Drivers of liking were found to relate not only to high-fat but also to low-fat samples.     

The Clinical Data Intelligence Project

This article is about a new project that combines clinical data intelligence and smart data. It provides an introduction to the “Klinische Datenintelligenz” (KDI) project which is founded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi); we transfer research and development results (R&D) of the analysis of data which are generated in the clinical routine in specific medical domain. We present the project structure and goals, how patient care should be improved, and the joint efforts of data and knowledge engineering, information extraction (from textual and other unstructured data), statistical machine learning, decision support, and their integration into special use cases moving towards individualised medicine. In particular, we describe some details of our medical use cases and cooperation with two major German university hospitals.     

Genome-wide mapping of 10 calving and fertility traits in Holstein dairy cattle with special regard to chromosome 18

Over the last decades, a dramatic decrease in reproductive performance has been observed in Holstein cattle and fertility problems have become the most common reason for a cow to leave the herd. The premature removal of animals with high breeding values results in both economic and breeding losses. For efficient future Holstein breeding, the identification of loci associated with low fertility is of major interest and thus constitutes the aim of this study. To reach this aim, a genome-wide combined linkage disequilibrium and linkage analysis (cLDLA) was conducted using data on the following 10 calving and fertility traits in the form of estimated breeding values: days from first service to conception of heifers and cows, nonreturn rate on d 56 of heifers and cows, days from calving to first insemination, days open, paternal and maternal calving ease, paternal and maternal stillbirth. The animal data set contained 2,527 daughter-proven Holstein bulls from Germany that were genotyped with Illumina's BovineSNP50 BeadChip (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA). For the cLDLA, 41,635 sliding windows of 40 adjacent single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) were used. At each window midpoint, a variance component analysis was executed using ASReml. The underlying mixed linear model included random quantitative trait locus (QTL) and polygenic effects. We identified 50 genome-wide significant QTL. The most significant peak was detected for direct calving ease at 59,179,424 bp on chromosome 18 (BTA18). Next, a mixed-linear model association (MLMA) analysis was conducted. A comparison of the cLDLA and MLMA results with special regard to BTA18 showed that the genome-wide most significant SNP from the MLMA was associated with the same trait and located on the same chromosome at 57,589,121 bp (i.e., about 1.5 Mb apart from the cLDLA peak). The results of 5 different cLDLA and 2 MLMA models, which included the fixed effects of either SNP or haplotypes, suggested that the cLDLA method outperformed the MLMA in accuracy and precision. The haplotype-based cLDLA method allowed for a more precise mapping and the definition of ancestral and derived QTL alleles, both of which are essential for the detection of underlying quantitative trait nucleotides.     

Product-specific adaption of conformity assessment criteria and their financial consequences

The conformity of products is usually assessed on the basis of Gaussian distributions of the test results. For wire screen products, as an example, this assumption is only valid if the apertures are quite close to the nominal value and if the dispersion of the apertures is small compared to the tolerance band. In cases where these provisions are not given beta distributions are better distribution approaches. The application of a modified beta distribution leads to significantly lower producer’s and consumer’s risks allowing to expand safeguard limits without changing the levels of confidence. A financial model enables the user to create scenarios for such different input data as the effort for testing, the number of products in line with the production target, the prices of products and scrap prices as well as quality classifications of products. The pivots chosen for the model are the producer’s and consumer’s risks. For reasons of comparison the risks were determined both on the basis of normal and modified beta distributions. Product-specific conformity assessment procedures may have apparent financial benefits if the parameters of the model can be well defined.     

Systematic approach to study temperature and time effects on yield of pasta filata cheese

A batch cooker‐stretcher for pasta filata cheese production was developed based on the kitchen machine ‘Thermomix’. With this batch model system, the effect of kneading time (180, 420 and 600 s) and temperature (55, 60 and 70 °C) on the chemical composition of the pasta filata cheese and the yield was investigated. An increase in temperature from 55 to 70 °C reduced the yield of the pasta filata cheese production from 0.88 to 0.59 g/g, compared to initial curd weight. A correlation between process temperature and the water‐holding properties of protein (casein micelles) is proposed.     

Direct automated inversion of logic grammars

Reversibility of logic grammars in natural language processing is desirable for both theoretical and practical reasons. This paper addresses this topic in describing a new approach to automated inversion of logic grammars: the Direct Inversion Approach (dia). A logic grammar is inverted by automatically altering the order of literals in the grammar and reformulating certain recursive procedures at compile time. The inversion process results in a new executable grammar, which is evaluated top-down and left-to-right (using a standard Prolog interpreter), but not left-to-right with respect to the original grammar. Thedia improves upon related approaches not only in being fully automated and computationally tractable, but also with respect to the class of grammars it is able to invert and the performance of the new executable grammar produced. The presented research was sponsored by Teilprojekt B4 “Constraints on Grammar for Efficient Generation” of the Sonderforschungsbereich 340 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.     

Prediction of Water Activity in Aqueous Polyol Solutions

In intermediate moisture foods polyols are added to decrease the water activity. However, an easily readable diagram for industrial use describing combined effects of different polyols on the final water activity of the food product is, to our knowledge, missing. Therefore, in this study the influence of sorbitol and glycerol on the water activity in the range of 0.6 – 0.8 in monomeric and binary polyol solutions was examined and predicted using combinations of the Raoult, Norrish and Ross equations. A ternary diagram describing the combined effects for the use in confectionery was developed.