1,720,964 research outputs found
Potential use of scotta, the by-product of the ricotta cheese manufacturing process, for the production of fermented drinks
No full textIn the present work, the use of scotta as substrate for bacterial fermentation was studied with the objective of obtaining a drink from transformation of this by-product. Scotta retains most of the lactose of the milk and it is normally colonized by a natural microbiota. A treatment was devised to reduce the autochthonous microbial populations in order to reduce competition towards the inoculated bacterial strains. Nine lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were assessed for their capability to develop in scotta. They evidenced different behaviors regarding growth rate, acidification capability and nitrogen consumption. A co-inoculum of three LAB, namely a Streptococcus thermophilus, a Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and a Lb. acidophilus strains, chosen among those giving the best performances in single-strain fermentation trials, gave abundant (close to 109 cfu/ml) and balanced growth and lowered pH to 4·2, a value similar to that of yogurt. These results show that scotta may have potential as a substrate for bacterial growth for the production of a fermented drink. Further studies are needed to optimize the organoleptic aspects of the final product
Sweet Ingredients
No full textSweet foods and drinks are enjoyed by most people and have become very popular in western diets. There are however health concerns associated with overconsumption of sugared high caloric products and on the other hand, some consumers fear their non-caloric counterparts as well. This article analyses the health issues regarding natural and artificial sweeteners and discusses the concerns as well as the safety of the compounds currently in the market.JRC.I.2 - Public Health Policy Suppor
How can science support policy makers in addressing the nutritional challenges of Europe? : A workshop organised within the frame of the JRC Enlargement and Integration Action programme
Full text linkThere is a clear albeit complex link between nutrition and health. This workshop brought together nutrition and public health experts from EU-Enlargement and Integration Action (E&IA) countries as well as current member states to discuss this link and attempt to answer the question "How can science support policy makers in addressing the nutritional challenges of Europe?".
In line with one of the workshop aims, we report here on nutritional issues that affect the E&IA countries and that, not surprisingly, are similar to those affecting EU-27 nations and other developed countries. The most obvious examples are nutritional excesses such as high energy, salt or fat intake but several countries also reported micronutrient deficiencies, e.g. Vitamin D or iron. While there are many actions already in place to promote healthy and sustainable eating at all levels, from European to local level, the fact that nutrition challenges like obesity still prevail indicates that there is a need to further refine and improve these actions. Focused and targeted research is needed both on the effectiveness of particular measures or interventions as well as on how to best implement them. The participants of the workshop identified four areas where further research is required to successfully refine and improve obesity-targeting measures in a way that is based on scientific methodologies and conclusive results. These four areas are 1) Address limitations commonly found in nutrition and lifestyle interventions and trials 2) Assess the effectiveness of obesity childhood interventions 3) Research further on reduction of portion size as a means to limit caloric intake 4) Explore and identify effective means to translating obesity research findings into actions and policies. It was not the aim of the workshop nor of this report to propose these as four priorities for research but rather to alert to the gaps in these areas and present them as four possible directions where research efforts could converge.JRC.I.5 - Systems Toxicolog
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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