Fish and vegetable protein sources are relatively underutilized for human consumption in comparison to meat, dairy and egg protein sources. Only part of the available fish proteins is used: fish is to small for human consumption and fish has a high proportion of by-products, up to 50% of fish weight is not used. This project aims to develop products and processes for creating healthy high valued consumer products based upon vegetable proteins and fish/crustacean proteins from by-products or from neglected fish. Three innovative processes are developed:1) Iso-electric solubilization and precipitation of fish/crustacean proteins from by-products,2) Networked vegetable/fish protein textures based upon low moisture extrusion processes3) Fibrous vegetable/fish protein textures produced with high moisture extrusion processes.Two innovative processes are applied:1) Food products with water-oil-water emulsions with isolated fish proteins2) Food products with sous-vide prepared fish fillets in semi industrial context.Different consumer product prototypes will be developed like fish nuggets, fish flakes and fish crackers.The Nuprotex project created successfully two new processes. Hanzehogeschool developed the process for fish protein isolation based upon iso electric solubilization and precipitation. With this process it was possible to recover about 15% weight of additional proteins from fish by-products. Please be aware that the yield of fish fillets from the fish is only about 30% of fish weight. So this is an important increase in food grade proteins! These Isolated Fish Proteins are successfully converted into several consumer prototype products like multiple emulsions for savory liquid products and fish cake/cracker applications. A sous-vide cooking process for fish fillets was developed with respect to microbial safety. It was shown that a microbial safe route could be developed, however further research is necessary to confirm these preliminary results.DIL has developed successfully an high moisture extrusion process for isolated fish proteins, grinded fish by products and vegetable proteins. This semi-finished product is successfully applied by for developing deep fried fish nuggets and fish burgers. DIL produced fish pellets which are suitable for applications as fish feed as is demonstrated in actual trials. Further research must demonstrate the quality of the feed product in actual growth experiments with fish.This project has clearly demonstrated that it is possible to produce with fish by-products added value consumer products. A possible increase of food-grade fish protein of about 15% on fresh weight base of processed fish is possible.
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It has been shown that the identification of many foods including vegetables based on flavour cues is often difficult. The effect of providing texture cues in addition to flavour cues on the identification of foods and the effect of providing taste cues only on the identification of foods have not been studied. The aim of this study was to assess the role of smell, taste, flavour and texture cues in the identification of ten vegetables commonly consumed in The Netherlands (broccoli, cauliflower, French bean, leek, bell pepper, carrot, cucumber, iceberg lettuce, onion and tomato). Subjects (n ¼ 194) were randomly assigned to one smell (orthonasal), flavour (taste and smell) and flavour-texture (taste, smell and texture). Blindfolded subjects were asked to identify the vegetable from a list of 24 vegetables. Identification was the highest in the flavour-texture condition (87.5%). Identification was significantly lower in the flavour condition (62.8%). Identification was the lowest when only taste cues (38.3%) or only smell cues (39.4%) were provided. For four raw vegetables (carrot, cucumber, onion and tomato) providing texture cues in addition to flavour cues did not significantly change identification suggesting that flavour cues were sufficient to identify these vegetables. Identification frequency increased for all vegetables when perceived intensity of the smell, taste or flavour cue increased. We conclude that providing flavour cues (taste and smell) increases identification compared to only taste or only smell cues, combined flavour and texture cues are needed for the identification of many vegetables commonly consumed in The Netherlands.
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Manure application can spread antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from manure to soil and surface water. This study evaluated the role of the soil texture on the dynamics of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in soils and surrounding surface waters. Six dairy farms with distinct soil textures (clay, sand, and peat) were sampled at different time points after the application of manure, and three representative ARGs sul1, erm(B), and tet(W) were quantified with qPCR. Manuring initially increased levels of erm(B) by 1.5 ± 0.5 log copies/kg of soil and tet(W) by 0.8 ± 0.4 log copies/kg across soil textures, after which levels gradually declined. In surface waters from clay environments, regardless of the ARG, the gene levels initially increased by 2.6 ± 1.6 log copies/L, after which levels gradually declined. The gene decay in soils was strongly dependent on the type of ARG (erm(B) < tet(W) < sul1; half-lives of 7, 11, and 75 days, respectively), while in water, the decay was primarily dependent on the soil texture adjacent to the sampled surface water (clay < peat < sand; half-lives of 2, 6, and 10 days, respectively). Finally, recovery of ARG levels was predicted after 29–42 days. The results thus showed that there was not a complete restoration of ARGs in soils between rounds of manure application. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that rather than showing similar dynamics of decay, factors such as the type of ARG and soil texture drive the ARG persistence in the environment.
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This study examined the effect of meals varying in amount, size, and hardness of food pieces on the development of the chewing capabilities of 8-month-old infants. The study also examined changes in shivering, gagging, coughing, choking, and their ability to eat from a spoon. In an in-home setting two groups were given commercially available infant meals and fruits, purees with either less, smaller and softer or more, larger and harder pieces. Both groups were given these foods for 4 weeks and were monitored several times during this period. After the 4-week exposure period infants in both groups were given the same five test foods. Structured questionnaires with questions on eating behavior and the child's development were conducted 6 times in the 4 to 12-month period and video analyses of feedings were conducted 4 times between 8 and 9 months. After the 4-week exposure period, the group that had been exposed to the foods with more, larger and harder pieces showed a significantly higher rating for chewing a piece of carrot and potato for the first time, but not for a piece of banana nor for mashed foods. Shivering, gagging, coughing, choking, and ability to eat from a spoon were not different between the two groups. These results contribute to the insight that exposure to texture is important for young children to learn how to handle texture. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: (a) The study shows the feasibility of testing the effects of texture interventions on chewing capability and oral responses such as gagging, coughing, and choking in infants. (b) The study contributes to the insight that exposure to food texture to learn how to handle texture is important for infants and showed that exposing children to a higher amount of larger pieces improves their chewing capability for a piece of carrot and potato, at least immediately after the intervention.
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The recent success of Machine Learning encouraged research using artificial neural networks (NNs) in computer graphics. A good example is the bidirectional texture function (BTF), a data-driven representation of surface materials that can encapsulate complex behaviors that would otherwise be too expensive to calculate for real-time applications, such as self-shadowing and interreflections. We propose two changes to the state-of-the-art using neural networks for BTFs, specifically NeuMIP. These changes, suggested by recent work in neural scene representation and rendering, aim to improve baseline quality, memory footprint, and performance. We conduct an ablation study to evaluate the impact of each change. We test both synthetic and real data, and provide a working implementation within the Mitsuba 2 rendering framework. Our results show that our method outperforms the baseline in all these metrics and that neural BTF is part of the broader field of neural scene representation. Project website: https://traverse-research.github.io/NeuBTF/.
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Purpose The purpose of this research was to explore women’s experiences after breast surgery with scar characteristics and symptoms, and its impact on their health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Material andmethods A qualitative study using semi-structured face-to-face interviewswas conducted among women following prophylactic, oncologic, or reconstructive breast surgery in the Netherlands. A directed content analysis was performed using guiding themes. Themes were “physical and sensory symptoms,” “impact of scar symptoms,” “personal factors,” “impact of scar interventions,” and “change over time.” Results The study population consisted of 26 women after breast surgery. Women experienced a wide range of symptoms like adherence, stiffness, pain, and uncomfortable sensations. Scar characteristics as visibility, location, texture, and size, influenced satisfaction with their appearance. The impact of scar symptoms is reflected in physical, social, emotional, and cognitive functioning, thereby affecting HRQOL. The experienced impact on HRQOL depended on several factors, like personal factors as the degree of acceptance and environmental factors like social support. Conclusion Women can experience a diversity of scar characteristics and symptoms, which play a central role in the perceived impact on HRQOL. Since scarring can have a considerable impact on HRQOL, scarring after prophylactic, oncologic and reconstructive breast surgery should be given more attention in clinical practice and research. Implications for Cancer Survivors Considering scarring as a common late effect after breast surgery and understanding the variety of experiences, which could impact HRQOL of women, can be beneficial in sufficient information provision, expectation management, and informed decision making.
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Fast and successful searching for an object in a multimedia database is a highly desirable functionality. Several approaches to content based retrieval for multimedia databases can be found in the literature [9,10,12,14,17]. The approach we consider is feature extraction. A feature can be seen as a way to present simple information like the texture, color and spatial information of an image, or the pitch, frequency of a sound etc. In this paper we present a method for feature extraction on texture and spatial similarity, using fractal coding techniques. Our method is based upon the observation that the coefficients describing the fractal code of an image, contain very useful information about the structural content of the image. We apply simple statistics on information produced by fractal image coding. The statistics reveal features and require a small amount of storage. Several invariances are a consequence of the used methods: size, global contrast, orientation.
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Starting with finger foods is recommended from 7 months in typically developing children. However, information on which finger foods are appropriate and accepted for which age is largely lacking. The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine whether chewing skills, hand motor skills, and other personal and food characteristics influence the intake of finger foods in early life. Thirty children aged 12 to 18 months participated in this study. All children were offered four finger foods in a fixed order on four consecutive days at their home. Two finger foods varied mainly in texture (fresh banana vs. freeze-dried banana) and two other finger foods mainly in shape (stick vs. heart shaped cracker). The intake was measured after ten minutes of exposure to the product. Chewing skills were measured with the Mastication Observation and Evaluation instrument and fine motor skills with selected items of the Bayley-III-NL scales. The results suggest that texture but not shape was found to affect intake, as fresh banana was eaten more than freeze-dried banana and the consumed quantity of the two crackers was not significantly different. Hand motor skills affected the intake of fresh banana only and chewing skills did not affect intake of any of the finger foods. Age and experience with chewable foods were associated with an increased intake of some of the finger foods. In conclusion, the intake of the four finger foods in this study was found to be mainly affected by texture, hand motor skills, age and experience.
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Obesity and other lifestyle-related diseases are, amongst others, the result of an unbalanced diet and lifestyle. Excessive intake of energy, salt, saturated fat and sugar are leading to increased risk of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes (WHO/FAO). Therefore, a healthier food intake (diet) is needed. But when is a food product healthier? From a nutritional perspective it is clear: the lower the levels of nutrients with a negative public health impact, the better the product fits in a healthy diet. However, when it comes to improving the health impact of the food supply through reformulation, other aspects are important as well. This article describes the ‘framework for product reformulation’, which integrates four essential disciplines: Nutrition & health, Foodtechnology, Legislation and Consumer perspective.
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In contemporary image databases one finds many images with the same image content but perturbed by zooming, scaling, rotation etc. For the purpose of image recognition in such databases we employ features based on statistics stemming from fractal transforms gray-scale images. We show how the features derived from these statistical aspects can be made invariant to zooming or rescaling. A feature invariance measure is defined and described. The method is especially suitable for images of textures. We produce numerical results which validate the approach.
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