A standardised approach towards PROving the efficacy of foods and Food Constituents for Health CLAIMs (PROCLAIM: providing guidance

Diet is well known to have beneficial health properties that extend beyond traditionally accepted nutritional effects. The approach involved in elucidating these beneficial physiological effects is becoming more important, as reflected by increasing research being undertaken. With growing consumer awareness of foods and food constituents and their relationship to health, the key questions for regulators, scientists and the food industry continue to relate to: (1) how consumers could be protected and have confidence that the health claims on foods are well supported by the evidence; (2) how research on physiological effects of food (constituents) and their health benefits could be stimulated and supported; (3) how research findings could be used in the development of innovative new food products. The objectives of this paper are to provide a set of recommendations on the substantiation of health claims for foods, to develop further guidance on the choice of validated markers (or marker patterns) and what effects are considered to be beneficial to the health of the general public (or specific target groups). Finally, the case for developing a standardised approach for assessing the totality of the available scientific data and weighing the evidence is propose

Towards a method to compare and to evaluate fast pixel gathering mechanisms for real time robotic vision systems

International audienc

Actuator Model, Identification and Differential Dynamic Programming for a TALOS Humanoid Robot

International audienceIn this experimental paper, we would like to validate a non linear optimal control solver to realize torque control on actuators embedded in a TALOS humanoid robot. The targeted application involves high payload, thus, it is necessary to handle the mechanical limitations of the system. To this extent, we propose a method to model, identify and control the TALOS humanoid actuators. The model includes the actuator drive chain and the corresponding inertial parameters that are identified at once using two experimental dataset. The identified model is then used by a Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) optimal control solver to take into account the actuator limits. We demonstrated that the DDP can decrease the quality of the tracking to avoid physical limits in angular position, velocity and current in extreme conditions such as carrying large loads. Because of the solver high computational time, we validate our method on one actuator of the robot, the elbow joint, using its main CPU. In the experiments, we charge up to 34 kg on the arm of the robot at 5cm of the elbow joint, corresponding to 16 N at the joint level. The proposed implementation is working on this specific joint at 300µs and provide an effective solution to a real-world control problem. In the future, we will implement it over dedicated and embedded electronics board attached to each actuator

How to extract and to exploit vision data for autonomous mobile robots to operate in known environments

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Tolerance to the fungal pathogen Rhizoctonia solani AG4 of transgenic tobacco expressing the maize ribosome-inactivating protein b-32

The maize b-32 protein is a functional ribosome-inactivating protein (RIP), inhibiting in vitro translation in the cell-free reticulocyte-derived system and having specific N-glycosidase activity on 28S rRNA. Previous results indicated that opaque-2 (o2) mutant kernels, lacking b-32, show an increased susceptibility to fungal attack and insect feeding and that ectopic expression in plants of a barley and a pokeweed RIP leads to increased tolerance to fungal and viral infection. This prompted us to test whether b-32 might function as a protectant against pathogens. The b32.66 cDNA clone under the control of the potato wunI gene promoter was introduced into tobacco by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation. Out of 23 kanamycin resistant regenerated shoots, 16 contained a PCR fragment of the correct size spanning the boundary between the promoter used and the coding region of the b-32 gene. Eight independently transformed tobacco lines were randomly chosen for protein analysis: all of them expressed b-32 protein. The data presented indicate that transgenic tobacco plants expressing b-32 show an increased tolerance against infection by the soil-borne fungal pathogen Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn

Effect of inclusion of citrus pulp in the diet of finishing swines

The aim of this work was to study the effect of inclusion of citrus pulp in the diet of finishing pigs. In the first trial, 16 Topigs barrows with 80.5&plusmn;4.7 kg of initial BW were used to evaluate the digestibility of citrus pulp. Having 18.85% of neutral detergent fiber and 41.18% of neutral detergent soluble fiber, citrus pulp showed as a feasible alternative ingredient to be added in the diets of feed restricted finishing pigs. Second trial tested the use of 0, 10, 20, 30% of citrus pulp in the diets of 36-feed-restricted barrows with initial BW of 83.7&plusmn;5.1 kg. A quadratic trend (P<0.05) as function of citrus pulp levels was observed for daily weight gain and number of experimental days to reach 130kg BW, being the best estimated inclusion levels of citrus pulp 10.79 and 10.97%, respectively. For urea and triacylglycerol serological parameters, no effects of citrus pulp were observed (P>0.05), but a quadratic trend existed on cholesterol serological content.<br>No primeiro ensaio foram utilizados 16 suínos machos castrados da linhagem Topigs, com peso inicial de 80,5&plusmn;4,7 kg, para a avaliação biológica da polpa cítrica. Por apresentar 18,85% de fibra em detergente neutro e 41,18% de fibra solúvel em detergente neutro, a polpa cítrica mostrou-se como um ingrediente viável a ser utilizado em programas de restrição alimentar qualitativa. No segundo ensaio foram utilizados 36 suínos machos castrados, com peso inicial de 83,7&plusmn;5,1 kg, recebendo rações com níveis de 0, 10, 20 e 30% de polpa cítrica. Os animais foram abatidos com peso próximo de 130 kg, sendo avaliados quanto ao desempenho e parâmetros séricos. Houve resposta quadrática (P<0,05) para ganho diário de peso e número de dias para atingir o peso de 130 kg, em função dos níveis de polpa cítrica na dieta, sendo observados melhores resultados com níveis de inclusão de 10,79 e 10,97%, respectivamente. Para os parâmetros séricos avaliados, não foi observado efeito (P>0,05) dos níveis de polpa cítrica sobre a uréia e triacilgliceróis, porém houve resposta quadrática (P<0,05) para o colesterol em função dos níveis de polpa cítrica