Review: Authentication and traceability of foods from animal origin by polymerase chain reaction-based capillary electrophoresis

This work presents an overview of the applicability of PCR-based capillary electrophoresis (CE) in food authentication and traceability of foods from animal origin. Analytical approaches for authenticating and tracing meat and meat products and fish and seafood products are discussed. Particular emphasis will be given to the usefulness of genotyping in food tracing by using CE-based genetic analyzers.     

Separation, concentration and determination of chloramphenicol in environment and food using an ionic liquid/salt aqueous two-phase flotation system coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography

Ionic liquid–salt aqueous two-phase flotation (ILATPF) is a novel, green, non-toxic and sensitive samples pretreatment technique. ILATPF coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed for the analysis of chloramphenicol, which combines ionic liquid aqueous two-phase system (ILATPS) based on imidazolium ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride, [C₄mim]Cl) and inorganic salt (K₂HPO₄) with solvent sublation. In ILATPF systems, phase behaviors of the ILATPF were studied for different types of ionic liquids and salts. The sublation efficiency of chloramphenicol in [C₄mim]Cl–K₂HPO₄ ILATPF was influenced by the types of salts, concentration of K₂HPO₄ in aqueous solution, solution pH, nitrogen flow rate, sublation time and the amount of [C₄mim]Cl. Under the optimum conditions, the average sublation efficiency is up to 98.5%. The mechanism of ILATPF contains two principal processes. One is the mechanism of IL–salt ILATPS formation, the other is solvent sublation. This method was practical when applied to the analysis of chloramphenicol in lake water, feed water, milk, and honey samples with the linear range of 0.5–500 ng mL⁻¹. The method yielded limit of detection (LOD) of 0.1 ng mL⁻¹ and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.3 ng mL⁻¹. The recovery of CAP was 97.1–101.9% from aqueous samples of environmental and food samples by the proposed method. Compared with liquid–liquid extraction, solvent sublation and ionic liquid aqueous two-phase extraction, ILATPF can not only separate and concentrate chloramphenicol with high sublation efficiency, but also efficiently reduce the wastage of IL. This novel technique is much simpler and more environmentally friendly and is suggested to have important applications for the concentration and separation of other small biomolecules.     

Overcoming matrix effects using the dilution approach in multiresidue methods for fruits and vegetables

During recent years matrix effects in liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) have quickly become a major concern in food analysis. The phenomenon of ion suppression can lead to errors in the quantification of the analytes of interest, as well as can affect detection capability, precision, and accuracy of the method. Sample dilution is an easy and effective method to reduce interfering compounds, and so, to diminish matrix effects. In this work, matrix effects of 53 pesticides in three different matrices (orange, tomato and leek) were evaluated. Several dilutions of the matrix were tested in order to study the evolution of signal suppression. Dilution of the extracts led to a reduction of the signal suppression in most of the cases. A dilution factor of 15 demonstrated to be enough to eliminate most of the matrix effects, opening the possibility to perform quantification with solvent based standards in the majority of the cases. In those cases where signal suppression could not be reduced, a possible solution would be to use stable isotope-labelled internal standards for quantification of the problematic pesticides.     

Determination of phenylureas herbicides in food stuffs based on matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction and capillary electrophoresis with electrochemiluminescence detection

A new method based on matrix solid phase dispersion-capillary electrophoresis with electrochemiluminescence detection (MSPD-CE-ECL) has been developed for the simultaneous determination of three kinds of phenylurea herbicides (PHUs). Poly-β-cyclodextrin (poly-β-CD) was used as an additive in the running buffer to improve the separation of three analytes. The conditions for CE separation, ECL detection and effect of poly-β-CD were investigated in detail. Under the optimal conditions, three kinds of herbicides (isoproturon, linuron and diuron) were well separated and detected within 8 min. The linear ranges of the standard solution for isoproturon and linuron were 1-300 μg L(-1) with a detection limit (S/N=3) of 0.1 μg L(-1), and for diuron was 2-500 μg L(-1) with a detection limit of 0.2 μg L(-1). The average recoveries were in the range of 86.9-102.8%, and all relative standard deviation of the migration time and the ECL intensity in intraday and interday were less than 9.0%. The proposed method was also applied to the determination of three kinds of herbicides in green vegetable and rice samples with recoveries in the range from 78.1 to 93.8%.     

Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography in food analysis

The use of hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) in food analysis in the last decade is reviewed. The HILIC mechanism is briefly discussed, but main emphasis is put on the use of HILIC for separation of different food matrices. The food matrices are divided into food of animal origin and related products, vegetables, fruits and related compounds, and other food-related matrices. A list on important applications is provided for each category including experimental conditions and a brief summary of the results. The 100 references included will provide the reader a comprehensive overview and insight into HILIC applications to food analysis.     

Single courier single restaurant meal delivery (without routing)

We investigate optimization models for meal delivery that do not involve routing. We focus on the simplest case, with a single restaurant and a single courier, and reduce it to the throughput maximization single machine scheduling problem, with release times and bounded slacks. In the meal delivery setting, slacks are small for QoS purposes and we indeed show that the scheduling problem can be solved in polynomial time when slacks are bounded. We discuss extensions to more couriers and restaurants.     

Food safety issues of high pressure processed fruit/vegetable juices

The food safety issues of the high pressure pasteurized fruit/vegetable juices are the focus of this paper. The development of Hazard analysis and critical control points system for production of carrot, red beet and apple/broccoli/orange juice is given together with results of analysis of samples, challenge testing and storage tests. The anti-mutagenic activity in vitro tests are also presented. Procedures have been established for the start-up of experimental production of mentioned juices for the Czech food market. The development of other types of juices based on cruciferous vegetables is mentioned. The aim of this work is to provide the Czech population with information on functional foods that act against chemical mutagens, limiting carcinogenesis.     

The Uniformly 3-Homogeneous Subsets of PGL(2, q)

We use the character-table of PGL(2, q) to determine the subsets of that group acting uniformly 3-homogeneously on the projective line.     

一种移动Agent的安全认证方案的设计与实现

针对移动Agent的安全问题，简要介绍了几种常用的安全认证技术，并在公钥密码体制认证方案的基础上，提出并实现了一种可用于移动Agent和Agent平台之间安全认证的方案。证书采用X.509证书格式，使用RSA和IDEA混合加密的算法，密钥管理采用PGP算法中公私钥环的方式，使该认证方案具有很高的安全性。文中详细说明了方案的实现流程，并深入分析了其安全性。结果表明，采用该方案能有效改善移动Agent的安全性。     

Permanence for non-autonomous food chain systems with delay

In this paper we first establish a new general criterion for the permanence of Kolmogorov-type systems of nonautonomous functional differential equations. Then, as applications of this criterion we study the permanence of a class of n-species general nonautonomous food chain systems with delay and new sufficient condition are established.