Effects of Baking, Roasting and Frying on Total Polyphenols and Antioxidant Activity in Colored Chickpea Seeds

ABSTRACT Chickpea lines with colored testa (seed coat) contain high levels of polyphenolic compounds that exhibit high levels of antioxidant activity. In a previous study, we showed that common processing procedures, such as soaking and cooking, decrease the levels of these bioactive compounds and subsequent overall antioxidant activity. The observed reduction in total phenolic content was due to the movement of polyphenols from the seed coat to the soaking or cooking water. Here, the effects of baking, roasting and frying processes were examined in relation to total phenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content (TFC) and ferric-reducing ability of plasma antioxidant activity (FRAP AA) of colored chickpea seeds. Baked, fried and roasted colored chickpea seeds had significantly higher levels of TPC, TFC and FRAP AA than regular cream-and beige-colored seeds subjected to the same treatments. In contrast to our previous results with soaking and cooking, baking, frying and roasting retained most of the TPC, TFC and FRAP AA in the final products. Thus, colored chickpeas subjected to these three processing methods might be considered a functional food in addition to its traditional role of providing dietary proteins

Non-Malleable Extractors with Short Seeds and Applications to Privacy Amplification

Motivated by the classical problem of privacy amplification, Dodis and Wichs (STOC ’09) introduced the notion of a non-malleable extractor, significantly strengthening the notion of a strong extractor. A non-malleable extractor is a function nmExt: {0, 1} n × {0, 1} d → {0, 1} m that takes two inputs: a weak source W and a uniform (independent) seed S, and outputs a string nmExt(W, S) that is nearly uniform given the seed S as well as the value nmExt(W, S ′) for any seed S ′ ̸ = S that may be determined as an arbitrary function of S. The first explicit construction of a non-malleable extractor was recently provided by Li, Wooley and Zuckerman (arXiv:1102.5415 ’11). Their extractor works for any weak source with min-entropy rate 1/2 + δ, where δ> 0 is an arbitrary constant, and outputs up to a linear number of bits, but suffers from two drawbacks. First, the length of its seed is linear in the length of the weak source (which leads to privacy amplification protocols with high communication complexity). Second, the construction is conditional: when outputting more than a logarithmic number of bits (as required for privacy amplification protocols) its efficiency relies on a longstanding conjecture on the distribution of prime numbers

The effect of changes in the skill premium on college degree attainment and the choice of major

We study the impact of financial incentives on higher education decisions and the choice of major. We rely on a reform whereby Israeli kibbutzim shifted from their traditional policy of equal sharing to productivity-based wages, using for identification the staggered implementation of this reform. In this setting of very low initial returns to education, we find that the dramatic increase in the rate of return and its sharp variation across fields of study led to a large increase in the probability of receiving a Bachelor’s degree, especially in STEM fields of study that are expected to yield higher financial returns. men and women

Culture Of The Australian Red-Claw Crayfish (Cherax Quadricarinatus) In Israel Crayfish Incorporation Into Intensive Tilapia Production Units

This study tested the suitability of the Australian red-claw crayfish Cherax quadricarinatus for rear- ing in an intensive culture system as a supplement to Oreochromis niloticus. Fish were grown in twelve 5.5 m3 tanks at high density (33/m3) for 133 days, alone or with crayfish at two stocking den- sities (10/m2 and 20/m2) with added shelters or with crayfish at the lower density (10/m2) without shelters. Tilapia survival ranged 90.3-95.0% with no significant differences among treatments. The growth rate of the tilapia raised with crayfish (2.05 g/day) was significantly higher than that of tilapia grown alone (1.88 g/day) probably because the fish were feeding on part of the crayfish pellets. Among treatments, there were no significant differences in fish yield. Crayfish survival was extremely low in the ‘no shelter’ treatment (2.9±2.7%) but reasonable (approximately 60%) when raised with shelters. The growth rate of the crayfish raised with shelters was significantly higher at the lower density (0.21 g/day) than at the higher density (0.18 g/day). Further research is needed on rearing tilapia and crayfish to market size in intensive systems, to establish the economic prof- itability of this culture strategy