Application of CO2 Gas Hydrates as Leavening Agents in Black-and-White Cookies.

In this unprecedented study, the application of CO2 gas hydrates (GH) as a leavening agent to produce black-and-white cookies by replacing ammonium bicarbonate is investigated. Ammonium bicarbonate, the principal leavening ingredient in black-and-white cookies, has been linked to the creation of a carcinogenic substance known as acrylamide. Three distinct GH concentrations, 20%, 40%, and 50%, were utilized to determine the necessary amount to obtain a good leavening effect. However, the abrupt reduction in temperature brought on by the addition of GH had an inadmissible effect on the cookie dough. Consequently, an innovative kneading method carried out in a closed mixing unit at a high temperature was developed. The specific volume of the cookies when employing 50% GH as a baking agent was more than half that produced when using ammonium bicarbonate. In the cookies with GH, the springiness and hardness, which are the quality-determining textural characteristics of the pastry, remained within an acceptable range. The amount of acrylamide was reduced from 24.8 µg/Kg to around 18 µg/Kg by this research. Therefore, the presented study demonstrates the possibility of using CO2 GH as a leavening agent in black-and-white cookies and in other products for a healthier future.

Improving the Leavening Effect of Ice like CO2 Gas Hydrates by Addition of Gelling Agents in Wheat Bread.

This article brings together the application of ice-like CO2 gas hydrates (GH) as a leavening agent in wheat bread along with the incorporation of some natural gelling agents or flour improvers into the bread to enhance the textural properties of the wheat bread. The gelling agents used for the study were ascorbic acid (AC), egg white (EW), and rice flour (RF). These gelling agents were added to the GH bread containing different amounts of GH (40, 60, and 70% GH). Moreover, a combination of these gelling agents in a wheat GH bread recipe was studied for each respective percentage of GH. The combinations of gelling agents used in the GH bread were as follows: (1) AC, (2) RF + EW, and (3) RF + EW + AC. The best combination of GH wheat bread was 70% GH + AC + EW + RF combination. The primary goal of this research is to gain a better understanding of the complex bread dough created by CO2 GH and its influence on product quality when certain gelling agents are added to the dough. Moreover, the prospect of managing and modifying wheat bread attributes by the use of CO2 GH with the addition of natural gelling agents has not yet been researched and is a fresh idea in the food industry.

An Innovative Approach in the Baking of Bread with CO2 Gas Hydrates as Leavening Agents.

Gas (guest) molecules are trapped in hydrogen-bonded water molecules to form gas hydrates (GH), non-stoichiometric solids that resemble ice. High pressure and low temperature are typical conditions for their development, with van der Waals forces joining the host and guest molecules. This article study investigates the application of CO2 gas hydrates (CO2 GH) as a leavening agent in baking, with particular reference to the production of wheat bread. The main intention of this study is to better understand the complex bread dough formed by CO2 GH and its impact on product quality. This may enable the adaptation of CO2 GH in baking applications, such as those that can specifically influence wheat bread properties, and so the final bread quality. The present research further examines the comparative evaluation of yeast bread with the GH bread's impact on bread quality parameters. The amount of GH was varied from 10 to 60%/amount of flour for the GH breads. The GH breads were compared with the standard yeast bread for different quality parameters such as volume, texture, and pore analysis. The results show that the bread with 20% and 40% GH obtained the best results in terms of volume and pore size. Moreover, this article also sheds some light on the future applications of the use of CO2 GH as leavening agents in foods. This knowledge could help to create new procedures and criteria for improved GH selection for applications in bread making and other bakery or food products.

Experimental investigation of CO2 uptake in CO2 hydrates formation with amino acids as kinetic promoters and its dissociation at high temperature.

The dissociation of CO2 gas hydrates (GH) with amino acid kinetic promoters and without promoters was studied at a high temperature of 90 °C for a period of 20 min to understand the percentage of CO2 gas and to select the best promoter that aids CO2 gas entrapment along with stability at a high temperature. The possibility of using four hydrophobic food grade amino acids, namely cysteine, valine, leucine, and methionine, and one surfactant, lecithin, as kinetic promoters for CO2 GH has been studied. The amino acids were added 0.5 g (wt%), and lecithin was added 5 g for the GH production. Furthermore, the amino acids leucine and methionine gave some positive results, therefore, these amino acids were carried further for the experimentation purpose in the production of CO2 GH. Also, a combinational use of these amino acids was studied to investigate the effect on % CO2 retention in comparison to the normal GH. From the results, it was observed that the stability of GH decreases with an increase in temperature, but the addition of promoters, especially leucine + methionine + lecithin increased the CO2 uptake during GH formation.

Trichothecenes in food and feed: Occurrence, impact on human health and their detection and management strategies.

Trichothecenes (TCNs) are the mycotoxins produced by many fungal species such as Fusarium, Myrothecium, and Stachybotrys and pose a considerable health risk. Based on their characteristic functional moieties, they are divided into four categories: Type A (T-2, HT-2, diacetoxyscirpenol (DAS), harzianum A, neosolaniol (NEO) and trichodermin), Type B (deoxynivalenol (DON), nivalenol (NIV), trichothecin and fusarenon X), Type C (crotocin) and Type D (satratoxin G & H, roridin A and verrucarin A) with types A and B being the most substantial. TCNs cause growth retardation in eukaryotes, suppress seedling growth or regeneration in plants and could be a reason for animal reproductive failure. Due to the increased frequency of occurrence and widespread distribution of TCNs in food and feed, knowledge of their sources of occurrence is essential to strategise their control and management. Hence, this review provides an overview of various types and sources of TCNs, the associated biosynthetic pathways and genes responsible for production in food and feed. Further, various processing and environmental effects on TCNs production, detection techniques and management strategies are also briefly outlined.

Introduction to the urban ecologies open collection: A call for contributions on methods, ethics, and design in geographical research with urban animals.

This Open Collection proposes innovative research directions for both urban and beyond/more-than-/non-human geographies with animals. We are seeking papers for this Open Collection across three themes: (1) methods; (2) ethics and politics; and (3) planning and design. Specifically, we are interested in papers that pose questions of and reflect upon emergent tensions in researching with urban animals in each of these themes. This Open Collection aims to explore urban space beyond the human lens and to offer new modalities and frameworks for geographical research with urban animals. We are interested in papers that explore urban geographies with animals from a range of different theoretical, methodological, and empirical locations and perspectives. In this introduction to the Open Collection, we briefly summarise existing research in this field, before outlining the three thematic areas of the Collection.

Sperm Cell Driven Microrobots-Emerging Opportunities and Challenges for Biologically Inspired Robotic Design.

With the advent of small-scale robotics, several exciting new applications like Targeted Drug Delivery, single cell manipulation and so forth, are being discussed. However, some challenges remain to be overcome before any such technology becomes medically usable; among which propulsion and biocompatibility are the main challenges. Propulsion at micro-scale where the Reynolds number is very low is difficult. To overcome this, nature has developed flagella which have evolved over millions of years to work as a micromotor. Among the microscopic cells that exhibit this mode of propulsion, sperm cells are considered to be fast paced. Here, we give a brief review of the state-of-the-art of Spermbots - a new class of microrobots created by coupling sperm cells to mechanical loads. Spermbots utilize the flagellar movement of the sperm cells for propulsion and as such do not require any toxic fuel in their environment. They are also naturally biocompatible and show considerable speed of motion thereby giving us an option to overcome the two challenges of propulsion and biocompatibility. The coupling mechanisms of physical load to the sperm cells are discussed along with the advantages and challenges associated with the spermbot. A few most promising applications of spermbots are also discussed in detail. A brief discussion of the future outlook of this extremely promising category of microrobots is given at the end.

Application of an expert system of X- ray micro computed tomography imaging for identification of Sitophilus oryzae infestation in stored rice grains.

BACKGROUND: The plausibility of image texture analysis to assess X-ray images of S. oryzae-infested rice after variable storage days (fresh, 45, 90, 135, 180 and 225 days) was investigated using an X-ray micro computed tomography instrument. Subsequently, image acquisition, pre-processing, and the extraction of the image textural features was done using volume graphics VGL 2.2 software. Morphological features (radius, diameter, volume, compactness, sphericity, defect volume, and voids) were extracted from the x, y, and z views of the rice grain and used as inputs for principal component analysis (PCA). RESULTS: Clear grouping was observed between the fresh, 45 and 225-day-old S. oryzae-infested rice grains with a classification accuracy of 88.34%. The voids (884 248.53 µm3 ) and defect volume distribution (137 428.04 µm3 ) were found to be the maximum in 225-day-old samples. The similarity or the distance indices values between fresh and 255-day-old S. oryzae-infested rice samples were found to be 35 038.08, which resulted in clear discrimination between different storage days in S. oryzae-infested rice grains. CONCLUSION: This work contributes to the potential use of image texture analysis to aid in distinguishing S. oryzae-infested rice grains from fresh rice grains. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.

Disinfestation of stored wheat grain infested with Rhyzopertha dominica by ozone treatment: process optimization and impact on grain properties.

BACKGROUND: Ozone is a highly oxidative gas that has a long history of safe use as a disinfectant and sanitizer from producers of pharmaceuticals and many other organic compounds. In the current work, disinfestation of stored wheat grain infested with a common insect, Rhyzopertha dominica, was attempted through ozone (O3 ) treatment as an alternative to chemical fumigants. RESULTS: The optimized treatment conditions for ozone fumigation of stored wheat grain were 12% (w/w) grain moisture, 2.5 g m-3 ozone concentration and 8 h of treatment. The mortality of R. dominica adults, pupae, larvae and eggs was 97, 100, 99 and 100%, respectively. Moisture and protein content of the ozone-treated wheat was found to be lower as compared to infested wheat. Microstructural changes in the treated samples were clearly visible on scanning electron microscopy images, whereas minimal changes at the molecular level and of rheological parameters were evident based on Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy peak and rheometry data. CONCLUSION: Ozone was found to be an effective reagent for disinfestation, aimed at all life stages of R. dominica in stored wheat grain, that leaves no residue behind. Rotational strategies can be applied to obtain increased mortality while maintaining the usability of the grain for different purposes. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.

Fuzzy controller based E-nose classification of Sitophilus oryzae infestation in stored rice grain.

Fuzzy controller artmap based algorithms via E-nose selective metal oxides sensor (MOS) data was applied for classification of S. oryzae infestation in rice grains. The screened defuzzified data of selective sensors was further applied to detect S. oryzae infested rice with PCA and MLR techniques. Reliability of data was cross validated with reference methods of protein and uric acid content. Out of 18 MOS, 6 sensors namely P30/2, P30/1, T30/1, P40/2, T70/2 and PA/2 showed maximum resistivity change. Defuzzified score of 62.17 for P30/2 and 59.33 for P30/1 MOS further confirmed validity studies of E-nose sensor response with reference methods. The PCA plots were able to classify up to 84.75% of rice with variable degree of S. oryzae infestation. The MLR values of predicted versus reference values of protein and uric acid content were found to be fitting with R2 of 0.972, 0.997 and RMSE values of 2.08, 1.05.

Identification and differentiation of insect infested rice grains varieties with FTNIR spectroscopy and hierarchical cluster analysis.

The potential and practicality of FTNIR as a screening tool, with ward's algorithms, was performed for two different varieties of rice namely, 'badshah bhog' and 'swarna', followed by cluster, dendrogram, histogram, and conformity analysis with different storage periods (0-225) and insect infestation. Dendrogram analysis resulted in a clear differentiation between infested rice varieties with non-infested ones while hierarchical cluster analysis, lead to detection of different levels of infestations. Histograms analysis of averaged FTINR spectra of rice grains samples provided 100% classification between infested and non-infested samples. Dissimilarities between rice grains were calculated using Pearson's correlation coefficients which were further converted to D values, and heterogeneity among the different varieties of rice along with a different level of infestation was identified. The results further revealed that the percentage accuracy (%) of classification for badshah bhog varied from 93.10 to 98.84%, while that for the swarna rice was between 95.75 and 99.74%.

Small RNA-mediated regulation in bacteria: A growing palette of diverse mechanisms.

Small RNAs (sRNAs) in bacteria have evolved with diverse mechanisms to balance their target gene expression in response to changes in the environment. Accumulating studies on bacterial regulatory processes firmly established that sRNAs modulate their target gene expression generally at the posttranscriptional level. Identification of large number of sRNAs by advanced technologies, like deep sequencing, tilling microarray, indicates the existence of a plethora of distinctive sRNA-mediated regulatory mechanisms in bacteria. Types of the novel mechanisms are increasing with the discovery of new sRNAs. Complementary base pairing between sRNAs and target RNAs assisted by RNA chaperones like Hfq and ProQ, in many occasions, to regulate the cognate gene expression is prevalent in sRNA mechanisms. sRNAs, in most studied cases, can directly base pair with target mRNA to remodel its expression. Base pairing can happen either in the untranslated regions or in the coding regions of mRNA to activate/repress its translation. sRNAs also act as target mimic to titrate away different regulatory RNAs from its target. Other mechanism includes the sequestration of regulatory proteins, especially transcription factors, by sRNAs. Numerous sRNAs, following analogous mechanism, are widespread in bacteria, and thus, has drawn immense attention for the development of RNA-based technologies. Nevertheless, typical sRNA mechanisms are also discovered to be confined in some bacteria. Analysis of the sRNA mechanisms unravels their existence in both the single step processes and the complex regulatory networks with a global effect on cell physiology. This review deals with the diverse array of mechanisms, which sRNAs follow to maintain bacterial lifestyle.