ABSTRACT
In the United States, state and local agencies administering government assistance programs have in their administrative data a powerful resource for policy analysis to inform evaluation and guide improvement of their programs. Understanding different aspects of their administrative data quality is critical for agencies to conduct such analyses and to improve their data for future use. However, state and local agencies often lack the resources and training for staff to conduct rigorous evaluations of data quality. We describe our efforts in developing tools that can be used to assess data quality as well as the challenges encountered in constructing these tools. The toolkit focuses on critical dimensions of quality for analyzing an administrative dataset, including checks on data accuracy, the completeness of the records, and the comparability of the data over time and among subgroups of interest. State and local administrative databases often include a longitudinal component which our toolkit also aims to exploit to help evaluate data quality. In addition, we incorporate data visualization to draw attention to sets of records or variables that contain outliers or for which quality may be a concern. While we seek to develop general tools for common data quality analyses, most administrative datasets have particularities that can benefit from a customized analysis building on our toolkit.
ABSTRACT
The potential antioxidant power of basil essential oil under frying conditions was explored. Two concentrations (200 or 500 ppm) were added to palm olein (PO) to evaluate their effect on fat oxidation/degradation during repeated frying of French fries at 180 °C. A higher oxidative stability index was detected for PO with basil essential oil at 200 ppm. Both concentrations showed lower p-anisidine values than PO without basil essential oil after 5 d of frying. Addition at 500 ppm resulted in the lowest total polar compounds and free fatty acids contents. Thus, the addition of basil essential oil improved the performance of PO during repeated frying of French fries.
Subject(s)
Cooking/methods , Oils, Volatile/chemistry , Plant Oils/chemistry , Solanum tuberosum , Aniline Compounds/analysis , Antioxidants/chemistry , Fatty Acids, Nonesterified/analysis , Hot Temperature , Ocimum , Ocimum basilicum/chemistry , Oxidation-Reduction , Oxidative Stress , Palm OilABSTRACT
Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) has been recognized as a technique with several advantages over other extraction methods, such as reduction of costs, extraction time, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions. In this study, MAE was performed to obtain essential oils from two different herbs (basil and epazote). A factorial design was conducted in order to determine the effect of solvent quantity, power, and heating time on essential oil yields. Chemical composition, physical properties and yield percentage of essential oils from MAE were compared with essential oils obtained by steam distillation (SD). Amount of solvent and heating time significantly affected the yields (p < 0.05). Chemical composition and physical properties of the essential oils from basil and epazote were not affected by the extraction method (MAE or SD), with similar yielding obtained by both methods (p < 0.05).
