Editorial: Sustainable food systems in Ibero-America

Sustainability and the search for products with improved functionalities that address the demands of the consumer for a healthier diet are the main challenges facing the development of a new trustworthy and healthy food production system. These topics, also addressed by the participants in the 3rd BioIberoAmerica 2022 conference (Braga, Portugal), have allowed for the publication of four original articles in this SI.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cheese whey: a cost-effective alternative for hyaluronic acid production by Streptococcus zooepidemicus

This study focuses on the optimization of cheese whey formulated media for the production of hyaluronic acid HA by Streptococcus zooepidemicus. Culture media containing whey (W; 2.1 g/L) or whey hydrolysate (WH; 2.4 g/L) gave the highest HA productions. Both W and WH produced high yields on protein consumed, suggesting cheese whey is a good nitrogen source for S. zooepidemicus production of HA. Polysaccharide concentrations of 4.0 g/L and 3.2 g/L were produced in W and WH in a further scale-up to 5 L bioreactors, confirming the suitability of the low-cost nitrogen source. Cheese whey culture media provided high molecular weight (> 3000 kDa) HA products. This study revealed replacing the commercial peptone by the low-cost alternative could reduce HA production costs by up to a 70%compared to synthetic media.Isabel Rodriguez was funded by a postdoctoral contract from the Xunta de Galicia, Spain (Plan I2C, 2012). This research was financially supported by projects: MAT 2010-21509-C03-01 (Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain) and FP7 Project BiValBi. Biotechnologies to Valorise the regional food Biodiversity in Latin America (PIRSES-GA-2013-611493). The authors want to thank Benigno Pereira, the manager of Queizuar S.L. (A Coruna, Spain) for providing the cheese whey utilised to conduct this research. We also wish to thank Ana Duran and Margarita Nogueira (IIM-CSIC) for their excellent technical assistance

Multidisciplinary Development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Fleet

Eco-Dolphin – Cooperative Fleet for Surveillance Mission SIAM, Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics, members have been working for two years on the design, construction and testing of three highly integrated and streamlined autonomous underwater vehicles called Eco-Dolphins. This project is being developed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach campus. The Leverage lab is used to create detailed mathematical models and conduct preliminary research for both electrical and mechanical systems. The campus Composites lab is used for the fabrication of structural and aesthetic components used by the high adaptable platform. The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle testing is conducted in the Universities Nonlinear Waves lab. The first phase of design, production and assembly of the yellow Eco-Dolphin prototype has been done in twelve months. The design includes an internal attitude control system, combined with internal propulsion from brushless direct current thrusters, thus allowing the vehicle to ascend and descend. The Eco-Dolphins promise is to be a unique, highly optimized and a competitive underwater vehicle fleet. The team has also successfully completed the second phase of the program, which involved tracking the Eco-Dolphins while submerged underwater. Work has been conducted to add a GPS system for surface tracking. Converting the acoustic system from tethered to wireless to make the ground station more robust. The Eco-Dolphin is configured with recently developed control system software that utilizes a relay combination of Wireless, Sonar and GPS radio wave communication. The current progress on the blue Eco-dolphin will be completed by the summer of 2014, for testing in littoral waters of central Florida. Through the addition of three sequential (yellow, blue, red) vehicles, therefore allows for better position and orientation data to be sent to the teams buoy network. The three vehicles, three buoy communication structure, multiply the data points collected for surveillance and underwater mapping purposes. This additional complexity improves the reliability and increases the application of the product through error elimination software. The team gives hands on research experience to SIAM members through applied mathematics. The outcome of the research goals, results in the application of many fields of study beyond mathematics. When combined the fleet can cooperatively fulfill multitask missions, advanced surveillance and environmental monitoring can be conducted. This opportunity opens the way for better balance between sustainable developments of the coastline

Production of natural nano-gel from pineapple polysaccharides complexes for controlled release of bioactive compounds

São Paulo School of Advanced Sciences on Reverse Engineering of Processed Foods[Excerpt] Pineapple (Ananas cosmosus) is the third most important tropical fruit in world production, seventy percent of the pineapple produced in the world is consumed as fresh fruit. In the agro-food sector, several materials are eliminated as waste throughout production and processing chain. These residues (skins, seed and pulp remnants) contain high content of bioactive compounds, but in generally not directly available, and for that reason is necessary to extract and characterize the feasible bioactive compounds (do Espírito Santo et al., 2012). Therefore, the study of the wastes and by-products generated during pineapple production and post-harvest processing is relevant and interesting to valorise them and reduce their environmental impact. The development of vehicles using these residues that deliveries the compounds as well promotes the maintenance of bioactivity, has been widely study, but lacks the search of new structures that could be easily used in food industry. Therefore, the focus of this research work was to developed nanocarriers using pineapple residues to extract pineapple polysaccharides for delivery of bioactive compounds. Frozen pineapple wastes were submitted to a milling and pressing processes, creating a pineapple juice and a solid semi-dried extract. Characterization was made for both parts comprised proteins, sugars, fibers, lipids and polyphenol contents. The soluble fraction was fractionated by centrifuge filter tubes with cut-off of 50 kDa and after by cut-off of 3 kDa, and three fractions were obtained: above 50 kDa, between 50 and 3 kDa and below 3 kDa. The insoluble part was submitted to hot aqueous extraction. The supernatant and the pellet of this extraction were separated and studied separately. Pineapple polysaccharides were identified and quantified by HPLC method and phenol-sulphuric method, respectively. [...]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A nested decision tree for event detection in smart grids

Procedings of: 20th International Conference on Renewable Energies and Power Quality (ICREPQ'22), 27-29 July 2022, Vigo, Spain.Digitalization process experienced by traditional power networks towards smart grids extend the challenges faced by power grid operators to the field of cybersecurity. False data injection attacks, one of the most common cyberattacks in smart grids, could lead the power grid to sabotage itself. In this paper, an event detection algorithm for cyberattack in smart grids is developed based on a decision tree. In order to find the most accurate algorithm, two different decision trees with two different goals have been trained: one classifies the status of the network, corresponding to an event, and the other will classify the location where the event is detected. To train the decision trees, a dataset made by co-simulating a power network and a communication network has been used. The decision trees are going to be compared in different settings by changing the division criteria, the dataset used to train them and the misclassification cost. After looking at their performance independently, the best way to combine them into a single algorithm is presented.This research was funded by Fundación Iberdrola España, within the 2020 research support scholarship program

Evaluation of a chitosan-based edible film as carrier of natamycin to improve the storability of saloio cheese

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of the application of chitosan coating containing natamycin on the physicochemical and microbial properties of semi-hard cheese. Three cheese groups were prepared: samples without coating, samples coated with chitosan and with chitosan containing 0.50 mg mL−1 of natamycin, whose minimum inhibitory concentration was previously determinated on cheese surface. Microbiological analyses showed that natamycin coated samples presented a decrease on moulds/yeasts of 1.1 log (CFU g−1) compared to control after 27 days of storage. Addition of natamycin also affected O2 and CO2 permeability, increasing from 7.12 to 7.68 × 10−15 g·(Pa s m)−1, and from 10.69 to 64.58 × 10−14 g·(Pa s m)−1, respectively. The diffusion coefficient values of natamycin from the film to phosphate buffered saline solution and to the cheese were 3.60 × 10−10 and 1.29 × 10−12 cm2 s−1, respectively. This study demonstrated that chitosan-based coating/films can be used as release system containing natamycin to create an additional hurdle for moulds/yeasts in cheese thus contributing to extend its shelf-life.Plan Galego de Investigación, Desenvolvemento e Innovación Tecnolóxica-Incite (Xunta de GaliciaFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Sex-partitioning of the <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> stage V gametocyte proteome provides insight into <i>falciparum</i>-specific cell biology

One of the critical gaps in malaria transmission biology and surveillance is our lack of knowledge about Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte biology, especially sexual dimorphic development and how sex ratios that may influence transmission from the human to the mosquito. Dissecting this process has been hampered by the lack of sex-specific protein markers for the circulating, mature stage V gametocytes. The current evidence suggests a high degree of conservation in gametocyte gene complement across Plasmodium, and therefore presumably for sex-specific genes as well. To better our understanding of gametocyte development and subsequent infectiousness to mosquitoes, we undertook a Systematic Subtractive Bioinformatic analysis (filtering) approach to identify sex-specific P. falciparum NF54 protein markers based on a comparison with the Dd2 strain, which is defective in producing males, and with syntenic male and female proteins from the reanalyzed and updated P. berghei (related rodent malaria parasite) gametocyte proteomes. This produced a short list of 174 male- and 258 female-enriched P. falciparum stage V proteins, some of which appear to be under strong diversifying selection, suggesting ongoing adaptation to mosquito vector species. We generated antibodies against three putative female-specific gametocyte stage V proteins in P. falciparum and confirmed either conserved sex-specificity or the lack of cross-species sex-partitioning. Finally, our study provides not only an additional resource for mass spectrometry-derived evidence for gametocyte proteins but also lays down the foundation for rational screening and development of novel sex-partitioned protein biomarkers and transmission-blocking vaccine candidates

Characterization of PHBV films loaded with FO1 bacteriophage using polyvinyl alcohol-based nanofibers and coatings: a comparative study

There is a current demand for novel active food packaging solutions using biodegradable materials and no chemical antimicrobial compounds, to ensure food quality and safety. This work involved the incorporation of Salmonella Enteritidis bacteriophage Felix O1, for potential use as an anti-Salmonella agent, into polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) coatings and fibers deposited by casting and electrospinning on polyhydroxybutyrate/polyhydroxyvalerate (PHBV) films. PHBV films (pristine, with coating, and with nanofibers) were characterized in terms of water sensitivity, mechanical performance, morphology, and thermal properties. Additionally, X-ray diffraction and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy were performed to assess possible chemical modifications on PHBV films after PVOH deposition and the presence of bacteriophage. PVOH increased the moisture content from 5.98% (PHBV) to 8.94% and 8.28% for PHBV/coating films and PHBV/nanofiber films respectively, increased the solubility from 0% (PHBV) to 30.32% (PHBV/coating films) and to 32.42% (PHBV/nanofiber films), and increased the hydrophilicity of the films (contact angle of 76.31° for PHBV, 64.01° for PHBV/coating films and 30.90° for PHBV/nanofiber films), leading to an increased water affinity of their surface. Felix O1 was successfully added and maintained antimicrobial activity (106 titer) after the formation of the coating and nanofibers, demonstrating that these solutions can potentially be used in future packaging materials to avoid Salmonella contamination.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/ BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER 006684). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agree ment No 713640. Maria Jos´e Costa is recipient of a fellowship supported by a Doctoral Program (SFRH/BD/122897/2016) funded by the Portu guese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, POPH-QREN and FSE Portugal). All the bacteriophage solutions were kindly supplied by Micreos (Netherlands).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Identification and evaluation of fungal strains with fucoidan degradation potential

Ten fungal strains isolated of Mexican semi-desert were screened for ability to hydrolyze fucoidan in order to search microorganism capable to produce sulfated fucans-degrading enzymes. Plate assay and liquid fermentation experiments were carried out using Laminaria japonica fucoidan as only carbon source, testing three nitrogen sources. Growth was observed only in Aspergillus niger PSH, Mucor sp., and Penicillum purpurogenum GH2 in fucoidan-urea medium. The activity of fucoidanases was determined by reduced sugars. Aspergillus niger PSH showed the highest activity titles. This research indicate that filamentous fungi, using specific medium, are sources enable to induce active metabolism that act toward this class of polysaccharide

Natamycin-loaded poly(n-isopropylacrylamide) nanohydrogels for smart edible packaging : development and characterization

The development of new formulations for antimicrobial agents release has attracted great attention due to the possibility of using such formulations in several applications (e.g. food packaging and surface treatments in biomedical devices). Smart packaging appears in the last years as one of the most promissory application to food packaging in order to enhance the capacity to maintain food quality and safety. Moreover, edible packaging, using edible and biodegradable biopolymers, has been stated as one of the promises in packaging science (e.g. fresh-cut products, cheese, fruits, fish). Based on this and in the fact that no work has been reported with the incorporation of smart nanohydrogels in edible packaging, a smart delivery device consisting in poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) nanohydrogels and polysaccharide- based films was developed. Polysaccharide-based films with and without the incorporation of natamycin-loaded poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) nanohydrogels were charactherized in terms of: transport (water vapour, oxygen and carbon dioxide permeabilities) and mechanical properties (tensile strength and elongation-at-break), opacity, water sensitivity (moisture content and contact angle) and thermal properties (differential scanning calorimetry - DSC and thermogravimetric analyses - TGA). Chemical interactions were studied by means of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy was used to verify the presence of nanohydrogel in the film matrix. [...