Oleogels—Their Applicability and Methods of Characterization

Oleogels or, more precisely, non-triglyceride structured lipid phases have been researched excessively in the last decade. Yet, no comprehensive knowledge base has emerged, allowing technology elevation from the laboratory bench into the industrial food application. That is partly due to insufficient characterization of the structuring systems studied. Examining a single composition decided upon by arbitrary methods does not stimulate progress in the research and technology area. A framework that gives much better guidance to product applications can easily be derived. For example, the incremental structure contribution concept is advocated as a parameter to compare the potency of structuring systems. These can straightforwardly be determined by combining solubility data and structural measurements in the recommended manner. The current method to determine the oil-binding capacity suffers from reproducibility and relevance. A newly developed method is suggested to overcome these shortcomings. The recommended new characterization of oleogels should contribute to a more comprehensive knowledge base necessary for product innovations.     

Recent Advances in Recovery of Lycopene from Tomato Waste: A Potent Antioxidant with Endless Benefits

Growing attention to environmental protection leads food industries to adopt a model of “circular economy” applying safe and sustainable technologies to recover, recycle and valorize by-products. Therefore, by-products become raw material for other industries. Tomato processing industry produces significant amounts of by-products, consisting of skins and seeds. Tomato skin is very rich in lycopene, and from its seeds, high nutritional oil can be extracted. Alternative use of the two fractions not only could cut disposal costs but also allow one to extract bioactive compounds and an oil with a high nutritional value. This review focused on the recent advance in extraction of lycopene, whose beneficial effects on health are widely recognized.     

Preparation and Characterization of Semi-IPN Cryogels Based on Polyacrylamide and Poly(N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate); Functionalization of Carrier with Monochlorotriazinyl-β-cyclodextrin and Release Kinetics of Curcumin

Curcumin (CCM) is a natural hydrophobic polyphenol known for its numerous applications in the food industry as a colorant or jelly stabilizer, and in the pharmaceutical industry due to its anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-cancer, and anti-Alzheimer properties. However, the large application of CCM is limited by its poor solubility in water and low stability. To enhance the bioavailability of CCM, and to protect it against the external degradation agents, a novel strategy, which consists in the preparation of semi-interpenetrating polymer networks, (s-IPNs) based on poly(N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate) entrapped in poly(acrylamide) networks, by a cryogelation technique, was developed in this work. All s-IPN cryogels were characterized by SEM, EDX, FTIR, and swelling at equilibrium as a function of pH. Functionalization of semi-IPN cryogel with monochlorotriazinyl-β-cyclodextrin (MCT-β-CD) led to IPN cryogel. The release profile of CCM from the composite cryogels was investigated at 37 °C, in pH 3. It was found that the cumulative release increased with the increase of the carrier hydrophobicity, as a result of increasing the cross-linking degree, the content and the molar mass of PDMAEMA. Fitting Higuchi, Korsmeyer–Peppas, and first order kinetic models on the CCM release profiles indicated the diffusion as the main driving force of drug release from the composite cryogels.     

Sediment Assessment of the Pchelina Reservoir,Bulgaria

The temporal dynamics of anthropogenic impacts on the Pchelina Reservoir is assessed based on chemical element analysis of three sediment cores at a depth of about 100–130 cm below the surface water. The ¹³⁷Cs activity is measured to identify the layers corresponding to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The obtained dating of sediment cores gives an average sedimentation rate of 0.44 cm/year in the Pchelina Reservoir. The elements’ depth profiles (Ti, Mn, Fe, Zn, Cr, Ni, Cu, Mo, Sn, Sb, Pb, Co, Cd, Ce, Tl, Bi, Gd, La, Th and U_nat) outline the Struma River as the main anthropogenic source for Pchelina Reservoir sediments. The principal component analysis reveals two groups of chemical elements connected with the anthropogenic impacts. The first group of chemical elements (Mn, Fe, Cr, Ni, Cu, Mo, Sn, Sb and Co) has increasing time trends in the Struma sediment core and no trend or decreasing ones at the Pchelina sampling core. The behavior of these elements is determined by the change of the profile of the industry in the Pernik town during the 1990s. The second group of elements (Zn, Pb, Cd, Bi and U_nat) has increasing time trends in Struma and Pchelina sediment cores. The increased concentrations of these elements during the whole investigated period have led to moderate enrichments for Pb and U_nat, and significant enrichments for Zn and Cd at the Pchelina sampling site. The moderately contaminated, according to the geoaccumulation indexes, Pchelina Reservoir surface sediment samples have low ecotoxicity.     

Isoflavonoid-Antibiotic Thin Films Fabricated by MAPLE with Improved Resistance to Microbial Colonization

Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Gram-negative) bacteria represent major infectious threats in the hospital environment due to their wide distribution, opportunistic behavior, and increasing antibiotic resistance. This study reports on the deposition of polyvinylpyrrolidone/antibiotic/isoflavonoid thin films by the matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) method as anti-adhesion barrier coatings, on biomedical surfaces for improved resistance to microbial colonization. The thin films were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, infrared microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. In vitro biological assay tests were performed to evaluate the influence of the thin films on the development of biofilms formed by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains. In vitro biocompatibility tests were assessed on human endothelial cells examined for up to five days of incubation, via qualitative and quantitative methods. The results of this study revealed that the laser-fabricated coatings are biocompatible and resistant to microbial colonization and biofilm formation, making them successful candidates for biomedical devices and contact surfaces that would otherwise be amenable to contact transmission.     

Highly Conjugated Bis(benzo[b]phosphole)-P-oxides: Synthesis and Electrochemical,Optical, and Computational Studies

The first examples of a π-conjugated benzo[b]phosphole P-oxide in which two phosphole P-oxide units are connected by a carbon-carbon double bond are described. The molecules are synthesized as E isomers with respect to the carbon-carbon double bond and exist as stable cis and trans isomers (chiral and meso one respectively) relatively to the two stereogenic P atoms. The optical and electrochemical properties of both isomers have been investigated by experiment and computations.     

Single-commodity robust network design problem: Complexity,instances and heuristic solutions

We study a single-commodity Robust Network Design problem (RND) in which an undirected graph with edge costs is given together with a discrete set of balance matrices, representing different supply/demand scenarios. In each scenario, a subset of the nodes is exchanging flow. The goal is to determine the minimum cost installation of capacities on the edges such that the flow exchange is feasible for every scenario. Previously conducted computational investigations on the problem motivated the study of the complexity of some special cases and we present complexity results on them, including hypercubes. In turn, these results lead to the definition of new instances (random graphs with {−1, 0, 1} balances) that are computationally hard for the natural flow formulation. These instances are then solved by means of a new heuristic algorithm for RND, which consists of three phases. In the first phase the graph representing the network is reduced by heuristically deleting a subset of the arcs, and a feasible solution is built. The second phase consists of a neighborhood search on the reduced graph based on a Mixed-Integer (Linear) Programming (MIP) flow model. Finally, the third phase applies a proximity search approach to further improve the solution, taking into account the original graph. The heuristic is tested on the new instances, and the comparison with the solutions obtained by Cplex on a natural flow formulation shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.