Search results

The margin between a deficient (∼0.02mg day^‐1), an adequate (∼0.2mg day^‐1) and toxic (∼2.4mg day^‐1) intake of selenium is quite narrow, and this study sought to establish whether fruits grown in the Jordan Valley were safe for consumers, and yet capable of supplying a likely dietary requirement for the mineral. The mean levels of soil selenium were 0.64, 0.74 and 0.63mg kg^–1 in three different growing regions of the Valley, while the highest levels in citrus fruits were 2.5mg kg^–1 in clementines (Citrus mitis) and 3.31mg kg^–1 in the bomali (Citrus paradisi). As the latter values were on a dry weight basis, the risk of selenosis would appear to be minimal but, equally important, deficiency diseases should not be manifest either.

Probiotics are known to extend health benefits and therefore may be included during yoghurt manufacture to enhance its prophylactic properties. Different probiotic strains may exhibit diverse biotechnological behaviour in association with yoghurt cultures, therefore interactive behaviour amongst probiotic and yoghurt cultures must be evaluated prior to their commercial application. This paper aims to assess the effect of inclusion of different probiotic cultures on various biotechnological (technological, dietetic and prophylactic) characteristics of yoghurt cultures.

Yoghurt was assessed for technological characteristics based on acidification and flavour production, dietetic characteristics based on proteolytic activity, vitamin synthesis and L (+) lactic acid production and prophylactic characteristics based on β‐galactosidase activity, antibacterial spectrum, viability in product as well as during gastro‐intestinal transit, intestinal colonization, immunomodulation, anti‐carcinogenicity and hypocholesterolemic effect.

Different probiotic cultures exhibited diverse technological, dietetic and prophylactic behaviour in association with yoghurt cultures. Functional properties of traditional yoghurt could be enhanced with the combined introduction of probiotic cultures such as Bifidobacterium bifidum, Bifidobacterium infantis and Lactobacillus acidophilus and the resultant product may be recommended for consumption as a dietary adjunct.

The paper shows that combined introduction of probiotic cultures such as B. bifidum, B. infantis and L. acidophilus, as microbial additives during the manufacture of yoghurt would result in a product with enhanced functional properties.

Stirred yoghurt made using probiotic bacteria which are usually called Rayeb milk in the Arab countries is one of the most important functional fermented milk products. Tamr (dried dates) is commonly consumed in various parts of the world and is believed to represent a vital component of the diet in the Arab world. Tamr and honey characterize with high nutritional and healthful benefits. The purpose of this paper is to manufacture functional fermented dairy food (Rayeb milk) which has the nutritional and health effects of goat’s milk, Tamr, honey and probiotic.

Rayeb milk was made from goat’s milk fortified with Tamr (10 and 15 percent) with or without honey (1, 2, and 3 percent) using ABT culture (S. thermophiles, L. acidophilus, and Bifidobacterium). Samples of Rayeb milk were studied for their chemical composition, starter bacteria populations, and sensory attributes during 14 days of storage period.

Supplementation of goat’s milk with Tamr and honey decreased saturated fatty acids concentrations in Rayeb milk. The levels of carbohydrate, total solids, dietary fiber, ash, total protein (TP), unsaturated fatty acids, omega-3, omega-6, omega-9 fatty acids and antioxidants activity were higher in Rayeb milk contained Tamr and honey than those of control. Also, numbers of probiotic bacteria (L. acidophilus and Bifidobacterium) greatly increased in Rayeb milk supplemented with Tamr and honey. The recommended level of 107 cfu.g-1 of bifidobacteria as a probiotic was exceeded for these treatments. Adding Tamr and honey highly improved the sensory attributes of Rayeb milk.

Adding 10 percent Tamr with 3 percent honey or 15 percent Tamr with 1 or 2 percent honey to goat’s milk highly improved the nutritional, healthy and sensory properties of Rayeb milk.

Camel as a livestock plays an important role in desert ecosystem and its milk has potential contribution in human nutrition in the hot and arid regions of the world. This milk contains all the essential nutrients as found in other milk. Fresh and fermented camel milk has been used in different regions in the world including India, Russia and Sudan for human consumption as well as for treatment of a series of diseases such as dropsy, jaundice, tuberculosis, asthma and leishmaniasis or kala-azar. The present paper aims to explore the possibility of camel milk as an alternative milk for human consumption.

Recently, camel milk and its components were also reported to have other potential therapeutic properties, such as anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive and renoprotective potential; and for autism, and has been recommended to be consumed by children who are allergic to bovine milk.

It has also been reported to alleviate oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in rats. Camel milk differs from bovine milk in composition. It contains low total solids and fat; however, proteins and lactose are in equal amount but of higher quality than cow milk. Because of the high percentage of β-casein, low percentage of α-casein, deficiency of β-lactoglobulin and similarity of the immunoglobulins, it become safer for persons who are allergic to bovine milk. It contains protective proteins in higher amount which contributes to its functionality. The fermentation and enzymatic hydrolysis of camel protein produce different types of bioactive peptides which exerts different activity in in vitro and in vivo conditions.

Because of its unique quality and functionality, this milk has potential application in management of different diseases and application in food industries.

This study aims to produce a new type of healthy functional kefir by adding olive (Olea europaea) leaf extract and to determine its potential effect on the quality (physicochemical, sensory, phenolic contents and antioxidant properties) of kefir samples during storage at 4°C for 21 days.

For this purpose, four kefir samples were produced by using olive leaf extract in different amounts (A: 0% (control), B: 0.1%, C: 0.15% and D: 0.35%). The physicochemical, sensory, phenolic contents and antioxidant properties of kefir samples were investigated during Days 1, 7, 14 and 21 of storage. The study was conducted to optimize the olive leaf extract addition level to obtain better-quality kefir functional food.

From the results, it was determined that the addition of olive leaf extract affected the entire chemical components of the kefir samples (p < 0.05). It was found that the pH value decreased during storage. By contrast, it was observed that titration acidity values increased. The kefir sample with 0.35% olive leaf extract (D) had the highest total phenolic and antioxidant activity content (1,292.75 mg GAE/L and 10.20 mM TE, respectively) among the samples (p < 0.05). In the sensory analyses, the kefir sample with the highest score – in terms of sensory attributes – was the kefir sample containing 0.15% olive leaf extract (C).

Thus, it was concluded that kefir with added olive leaf extract could serve as a functional kefir of benefit to human health. When we looked at the enrichment studies on kefir as a functional product, no study has been found on the use of olive (Olea europaea) leaf extract, especially with kefir. In this sense, it is thought that the study will contribute to published literature.

The purpose of this paper is to report a survey in random-selected supermarkets in Italy in order to identify the attitudes and perceptions of consumers toward milk and in particular toward donkey milk.

The analysis was conducted through Google Forms platform of docs.google interviews with a sample of 705 consumers who were given a questionnaire to collect information about their economic status and their attitudes toward milk and special milk consumption.

The results were analyzed in order to identify the socio-economic and behavioral characteristics of homogeneous groups of consumers. They consume milk mainly because it is not expensive and it is possible to easily buy it in the supermarket. They consume special milk mainly because of food allergies or intolerances. They would like to buy special milk at large-scale retail trade outlets; they underline difficulties in finding and purchasing it. They think that the price of special milk is very high.

The results showed that those who occasionally consume special milk choose it because it is more nourishing or for health reasons; there is also a significant association between the judgment on prices of special milk and the frequency of purchase. The estimation of a generalized linear model allowed to highlight that only age and the presence of health problems/intolerances are significant predictors of special milk consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach to determine the optimal parameters and tolerances in concurrent product and process design in the early design stages utilizing fuzzy goal programming. A wheelchair design is provided for illustration.

The product design is developed on the basis of both customer and functionality requirements. The critical product components are then determined. The design and analysis of experiments are performed by using simulation, and then the probability distributions are adopted to determine the values of desired responses under each combination of critical product parameters and tolerances. Regression nonlinear models are then developed and inserted as constraints in the complete optimization model. Preferences on product specifications and process settings, as well as process capability index ranges, are also set as model constraints. The combined objective functions are finally formulated to minimize the sum of positive and negative deviations from desired targets and maximize process capability. The optimization model is applied to determine the optimal wheelchair design.

The results showed that the proposed approach is effective in determining the optimal values of the design parameters and tolerances of the critical components of the wheelchair with their related process means and standard deviations that enhance desired multiple quality responses under uncertainty.

This work provides a general methodology that can be applied for concurrent optimization of product design and process design in a wide range of business applications. Moreover, the methodology is beneficial when uncertainty exists in quality responses and the parameters and tolerances of product design and its critical processes.

The fuzziness is rarely considered in research and development stage. This research considers membership functions for parameters and tolerances of a product and its related processes rather than crisp values. Moreover, presented optimization model considers multiple objective functions, sum of deviations and process capability. Finally, the indirect quality responses are calculated from the best-fit probability distributions rather than assuming a normal distribution.

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since the founding of new ventures is largely a resourceful founder-driven enterprise, entrepreneurship education has largely centred on galvanising and shifting the mindsets and cognition of the entrepreneur. Yet, despite over 60 years of delivering entrepreneurship education programmes, hard evidence of the generation of high-growth-oriented and sustainable ventures has been scarce as student entrepreneurship intentions do not always translate into successful venture creation. This is largely because of the complexities of the practicality of entrepreneurial education particularly, the dissonance between acquired education in business schools and the knowledge and competencies needed in the entrepreneurial field. Such dissonance can be attributed to the lack of clarity on the pedagogical approach that most resonates with entrepreneurial action, the diversity in assessment methods and the scholarly illusion pertaining to how pedagogical approaches can be channelled to the generation of growth-oriented ventures. Drawing on Girox's concepts of transformative critical pedagogy (including pedagogy of repression), Socratic dialogue, Hegelian dialectic and Yrjö Engeström's transformative expansive agency, I demonstrate how a flipped transformative critical pedagogy can be harnessed in digitally enhanced learning environments to create new entrepreneurial possibilities for facilitating critical inquiry, complex problem-solving, innovation for the market and fostering tolerance for failure in ambiguous entrepreneurial contexts.

This paper aims to improve the accuracy of robot payload identification and decrease the complexity in its industrial application by developing a new method based on the actuator current.

Instead of previous general robot dynamic modeling of the actuators, links, together with payload inertial parameters, the paper discovers that the difference of the actuator torque between the robot moving along the same trajectory with and without carrying payload can be described as a function of the payload inertial parameters directly. Then a direct dynamic identification model of payload is built, a set of specialized novel exciting trajectories are designed for accurate identification and the least square method is applied for the estimation of the load parameters.

The experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method in robot payload identification. The identification accuracy is greatly improved compared with that of existing methods based on the actuator current and is close to the accuracy of the methods that direct use the wrist-mounted force-torque sensor.

As the provided experiments indicate, the proposed method expands the application range and greatly improves the accuracy, hence making payload identification fully operational in the industrial application.

The novelty of such an identification method is that it does not require the rotor inertias and inertial parameters of links as a prior knowledge, and the specially designed trajectories provide completed decoupling of the load parameters.

This paper aims to purpose an improved sensorless position-based force controller in gravitational direction for applications including polishing, milling and deburring.

The first issue is the external force/torque estimation at end-effector. By using motor’s current information and Moore-Penrose generalized inverse matrix, it can be derived from the external torques of every joints for nonsingular cases. The second issue is the force control strategy which is based on position-based impedance control model. Two novel improvements were made to achieve a better performance. One is combination of impedance control and explicit force control. The other one is the real-time prediction of the surface’s shape allowing the controller adaptive to arbitrary surfaces.

The result of validation experiments indicates that the estimation of external force and prediction of surface’s shape are credible, and the position-based constant contact force controller in gravitational direction is functional. The accuracy of force tracking is adequate for targeted applications such as polishing, deburring and milling.

The value of this paper lies in three aspects which are sensorless external force estimation, the combination of impedance control and explicit force control and the independence of surface shape information achieved by real-time surface prediction.