Publications by authors named "Alvarez-Ramirez J"

This study aimed to explore the effects of egg albumin protein addition (5, 15 and 20 g/100 g db) on the textural characteristics, as well as in the in vitro digestibility of protein and starch of wheat bread. Egg albumin addition resulted in smoother bread loaves as compared to traditional wheat bread. Reduced hardness and increased cohesiveness were correlated to the protein secondary structure, mainly with the content of β-sheets.

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Starch structure determination is crucial for understanding its properties and applications. However, method-dependent variations in size determination can lead to ambiguous interpretations. This study investigates the ambiguities in starch structure determination by evaluating the variation in size of four commercial branched starches as determined by average molar mass, gyration radius, hydrodynamic radius, and chain-length distribution.

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Background: Wasted food produced for human consumption is estimated at 33% globally, and bread is the food product with the highest percentage. There is an ongoing drive to reincorporate food waste still useful and safe into the production chain of food for human consumption. This work aims to contribute to the study of the feasibility of recycling stale bread waste flour (BWF) into fresh oven-baked white bread, by replacing 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 g/100 g of the wheat flour with BWF.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study used fractal scaling analysis via detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to examine the genomic structure of SARS-CoV-2, comparing it to the SARS-CoV-1 strain, specifically focusing on long-range correlations in nucleotide sequences.
  • Different mapping rules (such as amino-keto and hydrophobicity patterns) revealed that the Wuhan Hu-1 sequence had a more random organization compared to SARS-CoV-1, indicating a potentially more efficient structure for replication and infection in SARS-CoV-2.
  • Early isolates from India and Italy exhibited increased order in their genomic sequences, particularly in the spike region, suggesting that certain variants may have developed improved mechanisms for spreading and infecting hosts
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Unlabelled: A coarse canola oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion (dispersed mass fraction 0.1) was prepared by adding oil to whey protein hydrolysate (WPH)-citric pectin (CP) soluble complex (1% total biopolymer weight; WPH to CP mass ratio 6:1; pH 4.25) aqueous phase using a high shear homogenizer (4000 rpm, 2 min).

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Monte Carlo dynamics were used to simulate the enzymatic starch digestion. Enzyme and starch molecules were distributed on a periodic grid and allowed to stochastically interact according to the kinetics scheme S + E → P + E. Digestion of gelatinized dispersions was simulated by assuming limited mobility of starch and complete mobility of enzymes and products.

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This work investigates the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on crude oil market efficiency. The approach is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) entropy. Iso-distributional surrogate data test was used to contrast the results against random patterns, and phase randomization based on Fourier transform was used to assess nonlinearities.

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Unlabelled: Wheat dough added with baking dried yeast (BDY, 5 g) or baking powder (BP, 5 g) was leavened for 0, 2, 4 and 6 h for producing white bread (B or B, respectively). The specific volume of B was higher than for B. FTIR analysis revealed that B reduced the short-range crystallinity of starch granules, an effect magnified by the leavening time.

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Normal corn starch (∼26% amylose content) was subjected to different degrees of extrusion-based pregelatinization (55, 75, and 95%) to improve the efficiency of octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA) esterification. The partial disruption of the native semi-crystalline structure was verified with X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared analysis. It was found that partial gelatinization (pregelatinization) reduced the relative crystallinity, which is an effect that was magnified by OSA esterification.

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The effects of gelatinization degree (GD) and octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA) esterification in the sorption-desorption characteristics of normal corn starch (NCS) were studied. NCS was subjected to different GD (53, 70, and 96%) with an extruder and lyophilized. FTIR analysis revealed that GD increased the hydrated (995/1022 ratio) and decreased the short-range ordered (1022/1047 ratio).

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The main aim of the present study was to characterize banana starch films reinforced with nanoparticles from plantain rachis. Nanoparticles were obtained by acid hydrolysis and sonication, exhibiting a mean hydraulic diameter of about 60 nm. Scanning electron microscopy micrographs showed that the nanoparticle thickness ranged between 9.

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The influence of the pasta preparation stages on starch, proteins, and water structures of semolina and chickpea pasta was studied. The hydrated starch structures (995/1022 FTIR ratio) increased in semolina and reduced in chickpea pasta. The processing stages in semolina pasta led to a significant increase of β-sheet structures (~50% to ~68%).

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Article Synopsis
  • * Higher temperatures resulted in less hydrated starch, increased crystallinity, and altered gluten structure, affecting how the starch was digested.
  • * Results showed that as DHT temperature rose, rapidly digestible starch decreased while bread hardness increased significantly, especially at temperatures above 100°C, changing the bread's texture compared to controls.
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This paper is aimed at designing a class of model based extremum-seeking feedback controllers (ESC) for the on-line optimization of biomethane production rate in continuous anaerobic digestion (AD) processes. The ESC scheme is based on the modelling error compensation approach coupled with a first-order gradient estimator. The feedback control law is able to keep the concentration of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) near the unknown optimal setpoint while the methane production rate is maximized.

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Tamarind seed mucilage (TSM) was evaluated as a novel wall material for microencapsulation of sesame oil (SO) by spray-drying method. Wall material:core ratios of 1:1 (M1) and 1:2 (M2) were considered, and the corresponding physical and flow properties, thermal stability, functional groups composition, morphology, encapsulation efficiency, and oxidative stability were evaluated. Powder of M1 and M2 microcapsules exhibited free-flowing characteristics.

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Background: Maize tortilla staling is a major drawback that affects its commercialization and consumption, and so novel methods for retarding staling are continuously being explored. The present study evaluated the effect of adding a canola oil/candelilla wax oleogel (CWO; 0. 2, 4 and 6 g 100 g ) to a basic masa formulation (water, 60 g 100 g ; nixtamalized maize flour, 40 g 100 g ) on the texture, staling and in vitro starch digestibility of maize tortillas made using a hot plate (200 °C).

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The effect of amylose content in the in vitro digestibility of non-modified and OSA-modified corn starch was studied. Corn starches with different amylose content (waxy, normal and Hylon VII) were treated with 3% OSA solution. In vitro digestibility tests showed that OSA treatment reduced the fraction of fastly digestible starch, an effect that was more pronounced for cooked starch.

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Plantain is a climacteric fruit having economic relevance in several tropical regions. Unripe plantain is an alternative source of indigestible carbohydrates (dietary fibre) and undigestible starch fraction. Unripe plantain flour was explored in this work as an alternative ingredient (whole and pulp) in spaghetti formulations.

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The inhibitory effect of glucose on the activity of α‑amylase used for starch hydrolysis was explored in this study. Four gelatinized corn starch dispersions (5 g/100 mL) containing different glucose concentrations (0.5, 1.

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The development of starch granules of a banana cultivar (morado variety - Musa AAA subgroup Red dacca) from filamentous shape to semi-spherical and finally to oval shape, was studied. The purity of the extracted starch changed from 83.5% (6 weeks) to 95.

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Recently the structuring of liquid oils with low molecular weight organogelators has received much attention. Food products devoid of trans fats, with tailored rheological and textural properties can be designed for desired applications by properly selecting the organogelator and cooling rate used in their formation. Nevertheless, studies regarding these points are still scarce.

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Simple exponential decaying functions are commonly used for fitting the kinetics of starch digested by amylolytic enzymes. A common assumption is that a sole exponential function can account for the kinetics of the whole digestible starch. Recent studies using logarithm-of-slope (LOS) plots showed that digestion kinetics can exhibit multi-scale behavior, an effect reflecting starch fractions with different digestion characteristics.

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This study considered the effect of the nopal mucilage (NM) fraction on the physical, barrier and mechanical properties of citric pectin-based (CP) films. Pectin aqueous dispersion 75 mL (2.0 g/100 g water) were mixed with 5 mL of glycerol and 20 mL of NM aqueous dispersions at different concentrations; namely, 5, 10, 12, 14 16, 18 and 20 g/100 g water.

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Taro starch spherical aggregates have been considered as wall material for the microencapsulation of bioactive compounds. The distribution of particle size, morphology, stability, glass transition temperature, ζ-potential, physical properties and flowability and compression indexes, and functional properties (water, oil and dye retention capacity) were measured. The average diameter was 17.

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Taro starch has the ability of producing spherical aggregates under spray-drying without the addition of binding agents. This property makes taro starch suitable for microencapsulation of dietary compounds. This study addressed the physical stability of hydrophilic and hydrophobic core materials microencapsulated by spray-drying into taro starch spherical aggregates determined from a thermodynamic standpoint via vapor adsorption isotherms.

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