Effect of Surface Freezing on Ascorbic Acid Retention in Water Blanched Potato Strips

The average retention of ascorbic acid in potato strips (10 × 10 × 80 mm) blanched in water at 50°C and 65°C over various blanching times, with and without surface freezing pre-treatment was determined. The strips were frozen in Freon Freezant-12 for 15 sec, with the freezing front penetrating 0.4–0.5 mm. Average retention of ascorbic acid in the surface-frozen potato strips was significantly lower than that in fresh strips and lower at 65°C than at 50°C. At an equal average retention of ascorbic acid, at 50°C the fresh strips required a blanching time four times higher than that for the surface-frozen strips; at 65°C it was twice as high.     

Optimizing Processing Conditions for Chemical Peeling of Potatoes using Response Surface Methodology

Using Response Surface Methodology the effects of NaOH concentration (4–20%), process temperature (55–95°C) and time (1–7 min) was determined on the yield, peeling quality, unpeeled skin and total usage of NaOH. Also evaluated were titratable NaOH in the potato tissue, NaOH penetration and “heat ring” depths during one stage chemical peeling of potatoes (Huincul variety). The best peeling quality, maximum yield and minimum total usage of NaOH was obtained for the following ranges: concentration, 11–13%, time 5–5.70 min and temperature, 90–95°C. The maximum temperature for which the “heat ring” and NaOH penetration depths were equal was 72°C where, at 20% NaOH and 7 min, peeling quality was very good and “heat ring” was absent.     

Effect of Roasting on the Chemical Composition and Protein Quality of Lupin Seeds (Lupinus albus cv Multolupa)

The effect of roasting lupin seeds (Lupinus albus cv Multolupa) for 10, 20, 30, and 40 min at 80–90°C was studied. Raw lupin was shown to be markedly deficient in the S-amino acids. These were not affected by roasting for 10 min, although a mild loss was observed for isoleucine and valine. However, heating for up to 40 min caused important losses in lysine and methionine + cystine. PER for raw lupin was 0.80 (casein 2.93) and that of the 10 min heated sample was 0.92 (NS), while roasting for 20, 30 and 40 min caused a severe reduction in protein quality (PER 0.59, 0.53 and 0.46 respectively). All these values improved significantly (p<0.01) by supplementation with 0.1% DL-methionine. Heating lupin seeds for 10 min may help to remove the “beany” flavor of this legume.     

Remarks on the periodic orbits of the matrix Riccati equation

We investigate certain questions concerning the periodic structure of the matrix Riccati differential equation with constant coefficients. A closed-form expression for the periodic solutions is obtained for both the cases involving distinct or repeated eigenvalues in the associated linear hamiltonian system. Previous results are extended by establishing that periodic solutions are bounded if and only if the span of their range does not intersect the orthogonal complement of the controllable subspace of the associated linear system.     

Microbiological and physicochemical characteristics and aminopeptidase activities during ripening of Serrano cheese

The physicochemical and microbiological characteristics and the aminopeptidase activity variation of Serrano cheese during winter and summer were investigated. Samples from different producers varied significantly, showing nonstandardized procedures for the manufacturing and ripening of this product. There were no significant changes in aminopeptidase activity during maturation and most of the enzyme activity found in the water extracts of cheese would have their origin in lactobacillus and enterococci, suggesting autolysis of these micro-organisms. Results show an increase in free amino acids during maturation, with higher amounts in the summer product.     

PATTERN RECOGNITION APPROACHES FOR SPEECH-TO-SPEECH TRANSLATION

We propose a statistical approach to speech-to-speech translation that uses finite-state models in all levels. Acoustic hidden Markov models (HMMs) model the pronunciation of the input-language phonemes and words, while the input–output word mapping, along with the syntax of the output language, are jointly modeled by means a large stochastic finite-state transducer. This allows for a complete integration of all the models so that the translation process can be performed by searching for an optimal path of states through the integrated network. As in speech recognition, HMMs can be trained from an input-language speech corpus, and the translation model is learned automatically from a parallel (text) training corpus. This approach has been assessed in the framework of the EuTrans project, funded by the European Union. Extensive experiments have been carried out with speech-input translations from Spanish to English and from Italian to English in applications involving the interaction (by telephone) of a customer with the front desk of a hotel. A summary of the most relevant results is presented.