Food-based indices for the assessment of nutritive value and environmental impact of meals and diets: A systematic review protocol.

Current food production and consumption practices are impacting both human and planetary health. Though these challenges are multifaceted, shifting to healthy dietary choices from sustainable food systems is one solution. Food-based labelling is a common public-health strategy aimed at influencing consumption practices, primarily displaying front-of-pack nutrition labelling to encourage healthier choices.

How financial mechanisms can incentivize provision of ecosystem services from land restoration: A systematic review protocol.

The current food chain both contributes to, and is affected by, climate change. While GHG emissions and emissions to water and soil are a problem for the whole food chain, the majority of such emissions and the major solutions to them can be found in the farming and land use sector. The farming system needs to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt its supply chain to cope with climate change.

Food inauthenticity: Authority activities, guidance for food operators, and mitigation tools.

Historically, food fraud was a major public health concern which helped drive the development of early food regulations in many markets including the US and EU market. In the past 10 years, the integrity of food chains with respect to food fraud has again been questioned due to high profile food fraud cases. We provide an overview of the resulting numerous authoritative activities underway within different regions to counter food fraud, and we describe the guidance available to the industry to understand how to assess the vulnerability of their businesses and implement appropriate mitigation.

Fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) in virgin olive oil: A shorter and full validated approach as an alternative to the EU Official Method.

In this work a SPE/GC-FID method, incorporating the use of a 1-g silica cartridge, for the determination of FAEE in olive oils is presented. The procedure has been fully validated, initially 'in-house' and subsequently by an international validation study involving sixteen laboratories from Europe, the United States of America, and China. Key performance parameters of the method are: (1) Linearity in the 10-134 mg/kg range (R > 0.

The Ethics of Geoengineering: A Literature Review.

Geoengineering as a technological intervention to avert the dangerous climate change has been on the table at least since 2006. The global outreach of the technology exercised in a non-encapsulated system, the concerns with unprecedented levels and scales of impact and the overarching interdisciplinarity of the project make the geoengineering debate ethically quite relevant and complex. This paper explores the ethical desirability of geoengineering from an overall review of the existing literature on the ethics of geoengineering.

The use of trade data to predict the source and spread of food safety outbreaks: An innovative mathematical modelling approach.

Food is traded across the global markets to satisfy consumer demands, mainly from developed countries, for year-round access to a wide range of foods. This has resulted in an increasingly complex network of food trade and has made importing countries vulnerable to the spread of foodborne disease outbreaks originating from "foreign" food networks. Analysis of these networks can provide information on potential food safety risks and also on the potential spread of these risks through the food network in question.

The use of bibliography enriched features for automatic citation screening.

Context: Citation screening (also called study selection) is a phase of systematic review process that has attracted a growing interest on the use of text mining (TM) methods to support it to reduce time and effort. Search results are usually imbalanced between the relevant and the irrelevant classes of returned citations. Class imbalance among other factors has been a persistent problem that impairs the performance of TM models, particularly in the context of automatic citation screening for systematic reviews.

Financial implications of laparoscopic hot gallbladder service in a nontertiary District General Hospital.

Introduction: The service of providing index admission laparoscopic cholecystectomy (IALC), as recommended by NIC guidelines, often falls short in nontertiary centres because of a combination of limited resources and financial constraints.

Methods: This retrospective study in a single-centre District General Hospital included 50 patients, eligible to undergo IALC, and calculated potential savings from performing IALC on the day of admission by considering admission tariffs, bed, and operating costs.

Results: The IALC was provided in 19 patients (38%), with a mean delay from admission to operation of (median) 3 days.

Food fraud and the perceived integrity of European food imports into China.

Background/aims: Persistent incidents of food fraud in China have resulted in low levels of consumer trust in the authenticity and safety of food that is domestically produced. We examined the relationship between the concerns of Chinese consumers regarding food fraud, and the role that demonstrating authenticity may play in relieving those concerns.

Methods: A two-stage mixed method design research design was adopted.

Reproducibility of studies on text mining for citation screening in systematic reviews: Evaluation and checklist.

Context: Independent validation of published scientific results through study replication is a pre-condition for accepting the validity of such results. In computation research, full replication is often unrealistic for independent results validation, therefore, study reproduction has been justified as the minimum acceptable standard to evaluate the validity of scientific claims. The application of text mining techniques to citation screening in the context of systematic literature reviews is a relatively young and growing computational field with high relevance for software engineering, medical research and other fields.

Spin-cavity interactions between a quantum dot molecule and a photonic crystal cavity.

The integration of InAs/GaAs quantum dots into nanophotonic cavities has led to impressive demonstrations of cavity quantum electrodynamics. However, these demonstrations are primarily based on two-level excitonic systems. Efforts to couple long-lived quantum dot electron spin states with a cavity are only now succeeding.

Leveraging crystal anisotropy for deterministic growth of InAs quantum dots with narrow optical linewidths.

Crystal growth anisotropy in molecular beam epitaxy usually prevents deterministic nucleation of individual quantum dots when a thick GaAs buffer is grown over a nanopatterned substrate. Here, we demonstrate how this anisotropy can actually be used to mold nucleation sites for single dots on a much thicker buffer than has been achieved by conventional techniques. This approach greatly suppresses the problem of defect-induced line broadening for single quantum dots in a charge-tunable device, giving state-of-the-art optical linewidths for a system widely studied as a spin qubit for quantum information.

Coherent optical control of the spin of a single hole in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot.

We demonstrate coherent optical control of a single hole spin confined to an InAs/GaAs quantum dot. A superposition of hole-spin states is created by fast (10-100 ps) dissociation of a spin-polarized electron-hole pair. Full control of the hole spin is achieved by combining coherent rotations about two axes: Larmor precession of the hole spin about an external Voigt geometry magnetic field, and rotation about the optical axis due to the geometric phase shift induced by a picosecond laser pulse resonant with the hole-trion transition.

Population inversion in a single InGaAs quantum dot using the method of adiabatic rapid passage.

Preparation of a specific quantum state is a required step for a variety of proposed quantum applications. We report an experimental demonstration of optical quantum state inversion in a single semiconductor quantum dot using adiabatic rapid passage. This method is insensitive to variation in the optical coupling in contrast with earlier work based on Rabi oscillations.

Development and single-laboratory validation of an HPLC method for the determination of cyclamate sweetener in foodstuffs.

A method for the determination of cyclamate has been developed and single-laboratory validated for a range of foodstuffs including carbonated and fruit-juice drinks, fruit preserves, spreads, and dairy desserts. The method uses the peroxide oxidation of cyclamate to cyclohexylamine followed by derivatization with trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid and analysis by a modified reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet light (HPLC-UV). Cycloheptylamine is used as an internal standard.

The first agmatine/cadaverine aminopropyl transferase: biochemical and structural characterization of an enzyme involved in polyamine biosynthesis in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus.

We report here the characterization of the first agmatine/cadaverine aminopropyl transferase (ACAPT), the enzyme responsible for polyamine biosynthesis from an archaeon. The gene PF0127 encoding ACAPT in the hyperthermophile Pyrococcus furiosus was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli, and the recombinant protein was purified to homogeneity. P.

A data-gathering broker as a future-orientated approach to supporting EPR users.

With the continued expansion of electronic patient record systems ahead of comprehensive evidence, metrics, or future-proofing, health informatics in Europe and beyond is embarking on a faith-driven adventure that also risks data swamping of end-users. An alternative approach is an information broker system, drawing from departmental data sources. A 3-year study in health and social care has produced a first demonstrator which can search for specified information in heterogeneous distributed data stores, with source-specific permission can copy it, and then merge the search results into one integrated picture in a real-time process which is also captured in an audit system.

Structure determination of a new protein from backbone-centered NMR data and NMR-assisted structure prediction.

Targeting of proteins for structure determination in structural genomic programs often includes the use of threading and fold recognition methods to exclude proteins belonging to well-populated fold families, but such methods can still fail to recognize preexisting folds. The authors illustrate here a method in which limited amounts of structural data are used to improve an initial homology search and the data are subsequently used to produce a structure by data-constrained refinement of an identified structural template. The data used are primarily NMR-based residual dipolar couplings, but they also include additional chemical shift and backbone-nuclear Overhauser effect data.

Quantitation of the main constituents of some authentic sesame seed oils of different origin.

This paper describes the composition of sesame seed oils obtained from seeds collected from five countries that are major suppliers of traded sesame seed oil. Oils were extracted from the seeds using small-scale industry pressing equipment and analyzed using standard methods for fatty acids, fatty acids in the triglyceride 2-position, tocopherols and tocotrienols, triglycerides, sterols, steradienes, and iodine value. Values for the composition of the sterols, triglycerides, fatty acids, iodine value, and tocopherol composition were generally in good agreement with the results published elsewhere.

Quantitation of the main constituents of some authentic grape-seed oils of different origin.

This paper describes the composition of 30 grape-seed oils obtained from France, Italy, and Spain during 2002-2003. Oils were extracted from the seeds using small-scale industrial solvent extraction equipment and analyzed in their unrefined state using standard methods for fatty acids, fatty acids in the triacylglycerol 2-position, tocopherols and tocotrienols, triglycerides, sterols, steradienes, and iodine value. Values for the composition of the sterols, triglycerides, fatty acids, iodine value, and tocopherol composition were generally in good agreement with the results of previous similar surveys.

Determination of zearalenone in barley, maize and wheat flour, polenta, and maize-based baby food by immunoaffinity column cleanup with liquid chromatography: interlaboratory study.

An interlaboratory study was performed on behalf of the UK Food Standards Agency to evaluate the effectiveness of an affinity column cleanup liquid chromatography (LC) method for the determination of zearalenone (ZON) in a variety of cereals and cereal products at proposed European regulatory limits. The test portion is extracted with acetonitrile:water. The sample extract is filtered, diluted, and applied to an affinity column.

Statistical modelling as an aid to the design of retail sampling plans for mycotoxins in food.

A study has been carried out to assess appropriate statistical models for use in evaluating retail sampling plans for the determination of mycotoxins in food. A compound gamma model was found to be a suitable fit. A simulation model based on the compound gamma model was used to produce operating characteristic curves for a range of parameters relevant to retail sampling.

Comparison of small- and large-scale expression of selected Pyrococcus furiosus genes as an aid to high-throughput protein production.

As the natural extension of the genomic sequencing projects, the goal of the various world-wide Structural Genomics projects is development of techniques for high throughput (HTP) cloning, protein overexpression, purification and structural determination, with the ultimate goal of determining all possible protein structures. Rapid (small-scale) screening of potential expression clones under different growth conditions is presumed to be possible and a viable way to increase throughput of protein expression. In order to test the utility of screening for soluble, heterologous protein expression, we have compared the production of recombinant proteins on a small scale (1 ml cultures in 96-well plates) in Escherichia coli under two growth conditions [a rich medium and a defined (minimal) medium] using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) against the affinity tag, with the amount of recombinant protein produced during the large-scale (500 ml) growth of E.

The Data-Gathering Broker--A User-Based Approach to Viable EPR Systems.

With the continued expansion of Electronic Patient Record systems ahead of comprehensive evidence, metrics, or future-proofing, European health informatics is embarking on a faith-driven adventure that also risks data swamping of end-users. An alternative approach is an information broker system, drawing from departmental data sources. A three-year study in health and social care has produced a first demonstrator which can search for specified information in heterogeneous distributed data stores, with source-specific permission can copy it, and then merge the search results in a real-time process.