Predicted Shelf-Life, Thermodynamic Study and Antioxidant Capacity of Breadsticks Fortified with Grape Pomace Powders

Grape pomace (GP), is the main winemaking by-product and could represent a valuable functional food ingredient being a source of bioactive compounds, like polyphenols. Polyphenols prevent many non-communicable diseases and could contrast the oxidation reaction in foods. However, the high content in polyunsaturated fatty acid, the described pro-oxidant potential action of some polyphenols and the complex interactions with other components of matrices during food processing must be considered. Indeed, all these factors could promote oxidative reactions and require focused and specific assay. The aims of this study were to evaluate the effects of GP powder (GPP) addition (at 0%, 5% and 10% concentrations) in breadsticks formulations both on the antioxidant activity at room temperature during storage and on the shelf-life by the OXITEST predictive approach. GPP fortification increased the total polyphenols content and the antioxidant activities of breadsticks. FRAP reduced during the first two days of storage at room temperature, TPC increased during the 75 days, while ABTS showed a slight progressive decrease. However, GP negatively influenced OXITEST estimated shelf-life of breadsticks, incrementing the oxidation rate. In conclusion, even if GP fortification of breadsticks could improve the nutritional value of the products, the increased commercial perishability represents a drawback that must be considered

Cross-lingual Contextualized Topic Models with Zero-shot Learning

Many data sets (e.g., reviews, forums, news, etc.) exist parallelly in multiple languages. They all cover the same content, but the linguistic differences make it impossible to use traditional, bag-of-word-based topic models. Models have to be either single-language or suffer from a huge, but extremely sparse vocabulary. Both issues can be addressed by transfer learning. In this paper, we introduce a zero-shot cross-lingual topic model. Our model learns topics on one language (here, English), and predicts them for unseen documents in different languages (here, Italian, French, German, and Portuguese). We evaluate the quality of the topic predictions for the same document in different languages. Our results show that the transferred topics are coherent and stable across languages, which suggests exciting future research directions.Comment: Updated version. Published as a conference paper at EACL202

Durum Wheat Fresh Pasta Fortification with Trub, a Beer Industry By-Product

Trub is a brewing by-product rich in proteins and fibers. We used trub, after a debittering step, at 5, 10, and 15 g/100 g (PT5, PT10, and PT15, respectively) to fortify durum wheat fresh pasta. Technological and physical-chemical properties, in vitro digestibility, and sensorial characteristics of fortified pasta were determined. The technological aspects of the products were peculiar, suggesting the existence of complex interactions between the gluten network and starch with debittered trub powder. The fortified pasta samples showed a lower glucose release than the control at the end of in vitro starch hydrolysis. Furthermore, in vitro protein digestion rose only in PT15. PT5 and PT10 samples overcame the sensory acceptability threshold of 5, while PT15 showed the lowest acceptability. Debittered trub represents a suitable ingredient in fortified fresh pasta formulation with an up to 10% substitution level without compromising the quality and sensory characteristics of the final product

Molecular epidemiology and genotyping of Chlamydia trachomatis infection in a cohort of young asymptomatic sexually active women (18-25 years) in Milan, Italy.

IntroductionChlamydia trachomatis (Ct) is the most common bacterial cause of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and is associated with severe long-term sequelae in female populations.In Italy Ct infections are not submitted to a screening programme, and its epidemiological profile is understudied. Even scarcer information is available about the genetic diversity on ompA gene, whose sequence defines 18 different genovars.This study aims at evaluating the prevalence of Ct infection in young sexually active asymptomatic women aged 18-25, and characterizing the molecular epidemiology of the different circulating genovars in this population. MethodsCervical samples collected from 909 sexually-active-young women (mean age 21.5 years) were analyzed through molecular assay for the detection of Ct infection. Phylogenetic analysis on the ompA gene was performed on Ct positive samples to identify the circulating genovars. ResultsThe overall prevalence of Ct-infection was 4.4% (95%CI: 3.2-5.9%): 5.3% among women aged 18-21 years and 3.5% among those aged 22-25 years. Phylogenetic analysis has identified 5 different genovars: D, E, F, G, and H. The most common genovar was the E (46%), followed by genovar F and G (18.9% each), D (13.5%), and H (2.7%). ConclusionsThis study underlines the high prevalence of asymptomatic Ct-infections among young women. Overall, about half of asymptomatic infections is sustained by genovar E. The introduction in Italy of a systematic screening program should be considered to allow a better understanding of Ct spreading and providing women with an opportunity for early treatment to protect their sexual and reproductive health

Draft genome sequences of four Yersinia enterocolitica strains, isolated from wild ungulate carcasses

This study describes the draft genome sequences of four Yersinia enterocolitica strains, originally isolated from ungulate carcasses. These isolates were typed biochemically and two were determined to be highly virulent (biotype 1B). The draft genome sequences had a mean size of 4.77 Mb and a mean G+C content of 47.1%