Significance of official food control in food safety : food business operators' perceptions

Finnish food business operators' (FBOs) opinions of the food control inspections performed by local authorities were evaluated, using a questionnaire. The production types of FBOs included were slaughterhouses, meat, fish and milk plants, egg-packing plants and storage facilities dealing with foods of animal origin. Based on a total of 459 responses, we noted that the impacts of official controls were considered valuable for food safety, since 78.8% of the respondents saw that the actions taken based on inspections had enhanced the safety of the products. The results also highlighted the importance of inspectors being familiar with the production processes to increase the efficacy of food control. More frequent visits by official inspectors correlated positively with FBOs' conceptions of noncompliances being relevant for food safety. The FBOs saw local inspectors as the most important sources of new information concerning food safety legislation and 89.1% of the respondents confirmed that discussions with local inspectors had helped them understand the food safety risks within their processes. We also noted that the bigger the FBO, the more clearly they seem to perceive the risks associated with their processes (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient r = 0.127, P = 0.009)

Mixed-Monolayer-Protected Au 25

Peer reviewe

Metallophilic interactions in polymeric group 11 thiols

Three polymeric group 11 transition metal polymers featuring metallophilic interactions were obtained directly via self-assembly of metal ions and 4-pyridinethiol ligands. In the cationic [Cu2(S-pyH)4]n2+ with [ZnCl4]n2− counterion (1) and in the neutral [Ag(S-py) (S-pyH)]n (2) 4-pyridinethiol (S-pyH) and its deprotonated form (S-py) are coordinated through the sulfur atom. Both ligands are acting as bridging ligands linking the metal centers together. In the solid state, the gold(I) polymer [Au(S-pyH)2]Cl (3) consists of the repeating cationic [Au(S-pyH)2]+ units held together by aurophilic interactions. Compound 1 is a zig-zag chain, whereas the metal chains in the structures of 2 and 3 are linear. The protonation level of the thiol ligand had an impact on the crystallization of polymers. Both nature of the metal center and reaction conditions affected the polymerization. QTAIM analysis confirmed direct metal-metal contacts only in polymers 1 and 3. In polymer 2, no theoretical evidence of argentophilic contacts was obtained even though the Ag⋅⋅⋅Ag distance was found to be less than sum of the Bondi's van der Waals radius of silver.peerReviewe

Selective gas adsorption by calixarene-based porous octahedral M32 coordination cages

Giant octahedral M32 coordination cages were prepared via self-assembly of sulfonylcalix[4]arene-supported tetranuclear M(II) clusters (M = Co, Ni) with hybrid linker based on tris(dipyrrinato)cobalt(III) complexes appended with peripherical carboxylic groups. Due to intrinsic and extrinsic porosity, the obtained solid-state supramolecular architectures demonstrated good performance as adsorbents for the separation of industrially important gases mixtures.peerReviewe