Glass transition and enthalpy relaxation of amorphous food saccharides: A review

Many food materials exist in a disordered amorphous solid state due to processing. Therefore, understanding the concept of amorphous state, its important phase transition (i.e., glass transition), and the related phenomena (e.g., enthalpy relaxation) is important to food scientists. Food saccharides, including mono-, di-, oligo-, and polysaccharides, are among the most important major components in food. Focusing on the food saccharides, this review covers important topics related to amorphous solids, including the concept and molecular arrangement of amorphous solid, the formation of amorphous food saccharides, the concept of glass transition and enthalpy relaxation, physical property changes and molecular mobility around the glass transition, measurement of the glass transition and enthalpy relaxation, their mathematical descriptions and models, and influences on food stability

Study on stomach content of fish to update databases and analyse possible changes in diet or food web interactions

Fish stomach content is a compelling data source, as stomachs can provide information about diet of predators, distribution of prey fish, predator-prey preference or changes in diet over time. For instance, stomach samples have historically been used to inform the natural mortality of stock assessments in the Baltic and North Seas. Since stomach samples tend to vary substantially over time, due to differences in biomass of predator and prey, time series must be constructed to provide critical information on food web interactions in time and space. In this project, we aimed (1) to analyse new stomach samples, from the North and Baltic Seas; (2) to continue historical time series; (3) to update and create an online ICES database for the broader community to explore new and old data in conjunction; and (4) to perform preliminary analysis on the newly added data. In total, 10 087 new stomachs will be provided from the two case study areas. We analysed and uploaded 5 512 new stomach samples so far. Additionally, 27 744 historical Baltic cod stomach data have been uploaded. The analysis provided here show that the predation on saduria and sprat by cod in the Baltic Sea has changed over the last 30 years. In the North Sea, the new samples consisted primarily of unidentified matter, benthic food and crustaceans, whereas the historical samples contain a larger number of commercial fish