Corn arabinoxylan biopolymers as materials for biodegradable films for food packaging

Corn fiber is a by-product of the starch industry, currently used as animal feed. It contains in its composition arabinoxylan, with film-forming properties, thus this material has a great interest in being valorized. Arabinoxylan was extracted with an alkaline solution and centrifuged. The resulting extract was purified with an ultrafiltration membrane hollow-fiber unit, in a continuous diafiltration process, at two different Reynolds number at the feed side (129 and 267), under controlled temperature and permeate flux conditions. At the final diavolume of 10, rejections were higher at Reynolds number 267, (91±2)% of NaCl equivalents, NaCleq, and (97±1)% of ferulic acid equivalents, FAeq, than at Reynolds number 129, where rejections were (87±3)% and (95±1)% of NaCleq and of FAeq, respectively. At both Reynolds numbers, the removal of small compounds was similar (97.0±0.3)% in NaCleq and (91±1)% in FAeq, meaning that the final extracts had a similar quality. The discoloration of the purified extract was then evaluated with activated charcoal and hydrogen peroxide treatments, in which only the latter resulted in a lighter colored solution. Various formulations were applied to the decolorized extract: glycerol was used as a plasticizer and different non-hazardous diacids (succinic, malonic and citric acids) were used as cross-linkers. The resulting films were characterized in terms of their antioxidant properties, solubility in water and mechanical properties. It was found that a decolorized film formulated with glycerol and citric acid had a lower antioxidant activity (0.053±0.001)μmol Trolox/mg film than a pure arabinoxylan film (0.091±0.002)μmol Trolox/mg film. Films were still very soluble in water, with the minimum solubility being around 70%. The decolorized film with glycerol and citric acid showed the highest tension of perforation (1.28±0.14)MPa and deformation (6.4±1.7)%

Decolorization of a corn fiber arabinoxylan extract and formulation of biodegradable films for food packaging

UID/AGR/04129/2020Corn fiber from the corn starch industry is a by-product produced in large quantity that is mainly used in animal feed formulations, though it is still rich in valuable components, such as arabinoxylans, with proven film-forming ability. During arabinoxylans’ recovery under alkaline extraction, a dark-colored biopolymer fraction is obtained. In this work, a purified arabinoxylan extract from corn fiber with an intense brownish color was decolorized using hydrogen peroxide as the decolorizing agent. Biodegradable films prepared by casting the decolorized extract exhibited a light-yellow color, considered more appealing, envisaging their application in food packaging. Films were prepared with glycerol as plasticizer and citric acid as cross-linker. Although the cross-linking reaction was not effective, films presented antioxidant activity, a water vapor permeability similar to that of non-decolorized films, and other polysaccharides’ and mechanical properties that enable their application as packaging materials of low-water-content food products.publishersversionpublishe

Purification of Arabinoxylans from corn fiber and preparation of bioactive films for food packaging

Corn fiber, a by-product of the starch industry, is presently incorporated in animal feed. However, it has arabinoxylans as added-value components (besides ferulic acid) that should be valorized. In this work, the raw material, a fraction enriched in arabinoxylans from corn fiber, previously produced by alkaline extraction from corn fiber and pre-concentrated by ultrafiltration, was further purified. The use of ultrafiltration operated in diafiltration mode (dia-ultrafiltration) was evaluated for the purification of the arabinoxylans fraction. The objective was to maximize the removal of the small contaminants from the fraction and to maximize the permeability and/or the permeate flux, by selecting the relevant operating conditions involved in this process. The removal of contaminants (%) was estimated when their apparent rejection stabilized. Edible films were produced, from the resultant purified arabinoxylans fraction, using glycerol as plasticizer (30% dry basis). Additionally, films with the incorporation of ferulic acid were developed, in order to obtain barriers with antioxidant activity. The films were characterized in terms of mechanical properties, antioxidant activity and permeability to water vapor. The films prepared presented a good potential to be used as packaging for food products with low water contentinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Relating Bioactivities with the Phenolic Compounds

Funding Information: V.W. acknowledges the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for PhD fellowship 2021.08511.BD. This work was supported by the Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry—LAQV, which is financed by national funds from FCT/MCTES (UIDB/50006/2020). The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Portugal 2020 to the Portuguese Mass Spectrometry Network (LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-402-022125). This work was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (FCT/MCTES, Portugal) through national funds to iNOVA4Health (UIDB/04462/2020 and UIDP/04462/2020) and the Associate Laboratory LS4FUTURE (LA/P/0087/2020). A.T.S. also thanks FCT/MCTES for the individual grant CEECIND/04801/2017. This research was also funded by the Sociedade Ponto Verde—Sociedade de Resíduos de Embalagens, S.A., through the project entitled “Bioplastics and Edible, Vegan Films”. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Arabinoxylan has prebiotic properties, as it is able to resist digestion in the small intestine and undergoes fermentation in the large intestine. In this work, arabinoxylan was extracted from corn fiber using an alkaline solution and further purified with membrane processing. It was found that the extracts were mainly composed of xylose (50–52%), arabinose (37–39%), galactose (9%) and glucose (1–4%), with an A/X ratio of 0.72–0.77. All the extracts were composed of phenolic compounds, including ferulic acid derivatives such as dimers, trimers and tetramers. The purified extract had a lower concentration of ferulic and p-coumaric acid (0.004 and 0.02 mg/mgdry_weight, respectively) when compared to raw extract (19.30 and 2.74 mg/mgdry_weight, respectively). The same effect was observed for the antioxidant activity, with purified extracts having a lower value (0.17 ± 0.02 µmol TEAC/mg) when compared to the raw extract (2.20 ± 0.35 µmol TEAC/mg). The purified extract showed a greater antiproliferative effect against the HT29 cell line with EC50 = 0.12 ± 0.02 mg/mL when compared to the raw extract (EC50 = 5.60 ± 1.6 mg/mL). Both raw and purified extracts did not show any cytotoxicity to the Caco-2 cell line in the maximum concentration tested (10 mg/mL).publishersversionpublishe

Global fine-resolution data on springtail abundance and community structure

Springtails (Collembola) inhabit soils from the Arctic to the Antarctic and comprise an estimated ~32% of all terrestrial arthropods on Earth. Here, we present a global, spatially-explicit database on springtail communities that includes 249,912 occurrences from 44,999 samples and 2,990 sites. These data are mainly raw sample-level records at the species level collected predominantly from private archives of the authors that were quality-controlled and taxonomically-standardised. Despite covering all continents, most of the sample-level data come from the European continent (82.5% of all samples) and represent four habitats: woodlands (57.4%), grasslands (14.0%), agrosystems (13.7%) and scrublands (9.0%). We included sampling by soil layers, and across seasons and years, representing temporal and spatial within-site variation in springtail communities. We also provided data use and sharing guidelines and R code to facilitate the use of the database by other researchers. This data paper describes a static version of the database at the publication date, but the database will be further expanded to include underrepresented regions and linked with trait data.</p

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Decolorization of a corn fiber Arabinoxylan extract and formulation of biodegradable films for food packaging

CommunicationCorn fiber from the corn starch industry is a by-product produced in large quantity that is mainly used in animal feed formulations, though it is still rich in valuable components, such as arabinoxylans, with proven film-forming ability. During arabinoxylans’ recovery under alkaline extraction, a dark-colored biopolymer fraction is obtained. In this work, a purified arabinoxylan extract from corn fiber with an intense brownish color was decolorized using hydrogen peroxide as the decolorizing agent. Biodegradable films prepared by casting the decolorized extract exhibited a light-yellow color, considered more appealing, envisaging their application in food packaging. Films were prepared with glycerol as plasticizer and citric acid as cross-linker. Although the cross-linking reaction was not effective, films presented antioxidant activity, a water vapor permeability similar to that of non-decolorized films, and other polysaccharides’ and mechanical properties that enable their application as packaging materials of low-water-content food productsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Patient and physician expectations of add-on treatment with golimumab for rheumatoid arthritis: relationships between expectations and clinical and quality of life outcomes.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) management involves improving clinical outcomes and quality of life (QOL). Golimumab is used as add-on therapy for patients who have failed disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). This GO-MORE subanalysis investigated relationships between patient and physician expectations and outcomes