Water and oil signal assignment in low-moisture mozzarella as determined by time-domain NMR T2 relaxometry

A time-domain H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry method was elaborated for the rapid microstructural characterization of mozzarella cheese. For this purpose, there is a strong need to know how the experimentally determined T-2 relaxation time distribution can be related to specific constituents in mozzarella. In this study, a detailed investigation is offered for fresh and aged low-moisture mozzarella cheese, often applied as a pizza cheese, by application of both a conventional Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) sequence and a free-induction decay CPMG (FID-CPMG) sequence. The relaxation behavior was further elucidated by addition of deuterium oxide and by mild heat treatment of samples. The relaxation times of water protons in mozzarella were found to range from a few microseconds to some tens of milliseconds (in aged mozzarella) or to about hundred milliseconds (in fresh mozzarella). The upper limit of the T-2 distribution can even be extended to the seconds range upon releasing water protons from the mozzarella matrix using a mild heat treatment or upon addition of deuterated water. Both stimuli also provided evidence for the absorption of water into the cheese matrix. The potential release and uptake of water demonstrated that mozzarella acts as a very dynamic system during production and storage. The detected differences in the behavior of the water fraction between fresh and aged low-moisture mozzarella might be utilized to study the influence of either production and/or storage conditions on the cheese ripening process

Ontologies for a Global Language Infrastructure

Given a situation where human language technologies have been maturing considerably and a rapidly growing range of language data resources being now available, together with natural language processing (NLP) tools/systems, a strong need for a global language infrastructure (GLI) is becoming more and more evident, if one wants to ensure re-usability of the resources. A GLI is essentially an open and web-based software platform on which tailored language services can be efficiently composed, disseminated and consumed. An infrastructure of this sort is also expected to facilitate further development of language data resources and NLP functionalities. The aims of this paper are twofold: (1) to discuss necessity of ontologies for a GLI, and (2) to draw a high-level configuration of the ontologies, which are integrated into a comprehensive language service ontology. To these ends, this paper first explores dimensions of GLI, and then draws a triangular view of a language service, from which necessary ontologies are derived. This paper also examines relevant ongoing international standardization efforts such as LAF, MAF, SynAF, DCR and LMF, and discusses how these frameworks are incorporated into our comprehensive language service ontology. The paper concludes in stressing the need for an international collaboration on the development of a standardized language service ontology

Ontology Lexicalisation: The lemon Perspective

Ontologies (Guarino1998) capture knowledge but fail to capture the structure and use of terms in expressing and referring to this knowledge in natural language. The structure and use of terms is the concern of terminology as well as lexicology. In recent years, the relevance of terminology in knowledge representation has been recognized again (for example the advent of SKOS1) but less consideration has been given to lexical and linguistic issues in knowledge representation (Buitelaar2010)

Ontology Lexicalization: The lemon perspective

Buitelaar P, Cimiano P, McCrae J, Montiel-Ponsoda E, Declerck T. Ontology Lexicalization: The lemon perspective. In: Proceedings of the Workshops - 9th International Conference on Terminology and Artificial Intelligence (TIA 2011). 2011: 33-36

Interchanging lexical resources on the Semantic Web

Lexica and terminology databases play a vital role in many NLP applications, but currently most such resources are published in application-specific formats, or with custom access interfaces, leading to the problem that much of this data is in ‘‘data silos’’ and hence difficult to access. The Semantic Web and in particular the Linked Data initiative provide effective solutions to this problem, as well as possibilities for data reuse by inter-lexicon linking, and incorporation of data categories by dereferencable URIs. The Semantic Web focuses on the use of ontologies to describe semantics on the Web, but currently there is no standard for providing complex lexical information for such ontologies and for describing the relationship between the lexicon and the ontology. We present our model, lemon, which aims to address these gap

Rheo-NMR to investigate fat crystallization under shear

It is well known that shear has an effect on fat crystallization. Whereas rheo-NMR has been used to study the impact of shear on the crystallization kinetics in the past, these methods mostly used a simple Teflon mixing shaft inside a sophisticated NMR instrument to apply shear to the sample. However, this method did not enable the determination of rheological parameters. In this work, a custom made low-field rheo-NMR device was evaluated, consisting of a commercial rheometer combined with a low-field permanent magnet to enable simultaneous rheological and NMR measurements. Two fats, i.e. partially hardened sunflower oil (PHSO) and soft palm mid fraction (sPMF), were submitted to several rheo-NMR experiments. The results of these experiments clearly indicated that these fats crystallized differently. First, PHSO crystallized faster than sPMF. Moreover, the latter seemed to crystallize in two steps. Initially a weak structure was formed when a low amount of solids was present, but this structure was replaced by a stronger network once more crystals were present. Both fats were studied under stagnant conditions, but also when submitted to low shear rates (1 s−1 and 5 s−1). It was shown that the amount of solids necessary to obtain a viscosity of 10 ​Pa ​s was higher when the shear rate was higher. The strength of the formed crystal network at a given percentage of solids was also weaker as the shear rate during crystallization increased. Whereas these experiments were done non-isothermally, it was shown that rheo-NMR can also perfectly be used for isothermal measurements

The market of biopharmaceutical medicines: A snapshot of a diverse industrial landscape

Background: Biopharmaceutical medicines represent a growing share of the global pharmaceutical market, and with many of these biopharmaceutical products facing loss of exclusivity rights, also biosimilars may now enter the biopharmaceutical market. Objectives: This study aims to identify and document which investment and development strategies are adopted by industrial players in the global biopharmaceutical market. Methods: A descriptive analysis was undertaken of the investment and development strategies of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies according to 2015 worldwide prescription drug sales. Strategies were documented by collecting data on manufacturing plans, development programs, acquisition and collaboration agreements, the portfolio and pipeline of biosimilar, originator and next-generation biopharmaceutical products. Data were extracted from publicly available sources. Results: Various investment and development strategies can be identified in the global biopharmaceutical market: (a) development of originator biopharmaceuticals, (b) investment in biotechnology, (c) development of next-generation biopharmaceuticals, (d) development of biosimilars, (e) investment in emerging countries, and (f) collaboration between companies. In the top 25 pharmaceutical companies almost every company invests in originator biopharmaceuticals and in biotechnology in general, but only half of them develops next-generation biopharmaceuticals. Furthermore, only half of them invest in development of biosimilars. The companies' biosimilar pipeline is mainly focused on development of biosimilar monoclonal antibodies and to some extent on biosimilar insulins. A common strategy is collaboration between companies and investment in emerging countries. Conclusions: A snapshot of investment and development strategies used by industrial players in the global biopharmaceutical market shows that all top 25 pharmaceutical companies are engaged in the biopharmaceutical market and that this industrial landscape is diverse. Companies do not focus on a single strategy, but are involved in multiple investment and development strategies. A common strategy to market biopharmaceuticals is collaboration between companies. These collaborations can as well be used to gain access in regions the company has less experience with. With patents expiring for some of the highest selling monoclonal antibodies, this snapshot highlights the interest of companies to invest in the development of these molecules and/or enter into collaborations to create access to these molecules