Food Chemistry: Food quality and new analytical approaches

Peer Reviewe

Identificación de los pólenes en la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada (I)

Se ha confeccionado una clave dicotómica para identificar los pólenes de la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada, y un glosario de términos que incluye los rasgos morfológicos más destacables de los mismos.A dichotomous key has been designed to identify the pollens from ornamental flora found in the city of Granada, as well as a glossary of terms describing the most outstanding !TIorphological characteristics of each

Identificación de los pólenes en la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada (I)

A dichotomous key has been designed to identify the pollens from ornamental flora found in the city of Granada, as well as a glossary of terms describing the most outstanding morphological characteristics of each.Se ha confeccionado una clave dicotómica para identificar los pólenes de la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada, y un glosario de términos que incluye los rasgos morfológicos más destacables de los mismos

Evaluation of a Multicommuted Flow System for Photometric Environmental Measurements

A portable flow analysis instrument is described for in situ photometric measurements. This system is based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a photodiode detector, coupled to a multipumping flow system. The whole equipment presents dimensions of 25  cm × 22  cm × 10  cm, weighs circa 3 kg, and costs 650 €. System performance was evaluated for different chemistries without changing hardware configuration for determinations of (i) Fe3+ with SCN-, (ii) iodometric nitrite determination, (iii) phenol with sodium nitroprusside, and (iv) 1-naphthol-N-methylcarbamate (carbaryl) with p-aminophenol. The detection limits were estimated as 22, 60, 25, and 60 ng mL -1 for iron, nitrite, phenol, and carbaryl at the 99.7% confidence level with RSD of 2.3, 1.0, 1.8, and 0.8%, respectively. Reagent and waste volumes were lower than those obtained by flow systems with continuous reagent addition. Sampling rates of 100, 110, 65, and 72 determinations per hour were achieved for iron, nitrite, phenol, and carbaryl determination

Molecular beacon strategies for sensing purpose

The improvement of nucleic acid probes as vital molecular engineering devices will cause a noteworthy contribution to developments in bioimaging, biosensing, and disorders diagnosis. The molecular beacon (MB) which was designed by Tyagi and Kramer in 1996, are loop-stem hairpin-designed oligonucleotides armed with a quencher and a dye (also named reporter groups) at the 30 or 50 ends. This construction allows that MBs in the absence of their target complementary molecules do not fluoresce. Through hybridization with their specific targets a spontaneous configuration change on MBs occur and the dye and quencher separate from each other, resulting in emitting the fluorescence. MBs are effective probes for biosensing because of their extraordinary target-specificity, unique structure, inherent fluorescent signal transduction mechanism, low background fluorescence emission, recognition without separation, and favorable thermodynamic properties. In comparison to other probes (such as linear DNA sequences), MBs with the same number of complementary nucleotides matching their target, are multitasking probes. They have advantages of thermodynamic and photostability, flexible ability for conjugation, higher efficient intrinsic signal switching, and ultra-sensitivity. MBs not only are useful for identifying a nucleic acid target but can also be employed for recognition of various non-nucleic acid goals, including heavy metals and cations, enzymes, cells, ATP, etc. Hence, this review highlights the potential of MBs in the improvement of biosensors and their usage in detection of different analytes such as miRNA, mRNA, cocaine, methamphetamine, actin, thrombin, heavy metal and cations and so on. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Olive phenology as a sensitive indicator of future climatic warming in the Mediterranean

Experimental and modelling work suggests a strong dependence of olive flowering date on spring temperatures. Since airborne pollen concentrations reflect the flowering phenology of olive populations within a radius of 50 km, they may be a sensitive regional indicator of climatic warming. We assessed this potential sensitivity with phenology models fitted to flowering dates inferred from maximum airborne pollen data. Of four models tested, a thermal time model gave the best fit for Montpellier, France, and was the most effective at the regional scale, providing reasonable predictions for 10 sites in the western Mediterranean. This model was forced with replicated future temperature simulations for the western Mediterranean from a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (GCM). The GCM temperatures rose by 4·5 °C between 1990 and 2099 with a 1% per year increase in greenhouse gases, and modelled flowering date advanced at a rate of 6·2 d per °C. The results indicated that this long-term regional trend in phenology might be statistically significant as early as 2030, but with marked spatial variation in magnitude, with the calculated flowering date between the 1990s and 2030s advancing by 3–23 d. Future monitoring of airborne olive pollen may therefore provide an early biological indicator of climatic warming in the Mediterranean

Author Correction: A consensus-based transparency checklist.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper