The aim of this systematic review study was to investigate the causal relationship between environmental factors and gastric cancer (GC) in Iran. In a narrow definition, the environment includes water, soil, air, and food. This definition was the main criterion for the inclusion of articles in this study. In addition, exposure to radiation and geographical conditions were considered as less investigated environmental factors in the literatures. International (PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Cochran) and national (Scientific Information Database) databases were searched for articles on GC and environmental risk factors in Iran. Twenty-six articles were found to meet the inclusion criteria after title, abstract, and full text review. Risk factors identified for GC include consumption of red meat; high fat, fried, and salted meat; smoked, salted, and fried foods; some dairy products; roasted and fried seeds; strong and hot tea; and un-piped and unchlorinated drinking water, as well as exposure to radiation, loess sediment, soft and grassy soil, soil containing low concentration of molybdenum, and proximity to volcanos. Fresh fruits and vegetable, fresh fish, and honey consumption were recognized as protective agents. Given the risk factors identified, strategies to prevent GC would be educating people to choose a healthy diet and to cook and store food properly, providing access to safe drinking water, taking into account topographical and geographical conditions in choosing a right location to build residential areas, and regulating the use of radiation-emitting devices.

Dehydration is one of the oldest food processing operations. It continues to be extensively employed today, and all indications point to its continued use in the foreseeable future. There are several dehydration techniques available for use in domestic and commercial practice. The main objective of this thesis is to focus on novel and less studied variants of two specific dehydrating methods: 1. Osmotic dehydration and 2. Frying. Osmotic dehydration is a natural process where water loss occurs by osmosis when food is brought into contact with a concentrated salt or sugar solution. Although this process consumes lower energy than other drying methods - which predominantly involve supplying the necessary latent heat for water evaporation from the food - a key problem is the high salt/sugar uptake which potentially poses health issues. In this thesis, a novel variant of osmotic dehydration called post-dipping dehydration – has been developed and studied. The technique involves dipping, say, potato slices, briefly in an osmotic solution, withdrawing it and allowing the water released to evaporate and/or drain under ambient conditions. The aim is to promote water loss just as in osmotic dehydration, but at the same time, minimize the uptake of the osmotic solute. The effects of osmotic medium concentration and dipping time on the water loss were initially investigated. Dipping potatoes in a higher concentration of osmotic solution was found to enhance post-dripping water loss, but the dipping time had no significant effect. Post dipping dehydration was also conducted as a multi-stage operation by repeatedly dipping potato slices in the osmotic solution followed by ambient exposure for a time period. The resulting water loss was comparable to osmotic dehydration but the uptake of the osmotic solute was significantly lower (less than 50%). In the next part of the research, multi-stage dip dehydration was investigated as a pre-treatment prior to frying potato chips, in order to evaluate its effect on the product quality. Multistage dip dehydration was found to decrease the frying time considerably which also resulted in about 17% lesser oil in the product. Colour measurements showed that the pre-treated samples were brighter and suffered lesser browning than blanched samples. The final part of this thesis is dedicated to gaining insights into shallow frying of potato and chicken cubes – an extensively employed but less understood dehydration operation in relation to deep-fat frying. The experimental investigations involved determining transient temperature variations during the process, moisture loss, oil uptake and the development of product texture. A key outcome of this research was the observation that the significant amount of water released initially from the food tended to form an oil-in-water emulsion, which subsequently boiled off to result in a phase inversion (i.e. the formation of water-in-oil emulsion). The temperature clearly increased after the phase inversion when the crust and texture of the end-product were formed.

A new bio-MSPE sorbent based on the use of C. micaceus and γ-Fe₂O₃ magnetic nanoparticle was prepared for the preconcentrations of Co(II) and Hg(II). Critical parameters including pH, flow rate, quantity of C. micaceus, quantity of γ-Fe₂O₃ magnetic nanoparticle, eluent (type, concentration and volume), sample volume, and foreign ions were examined. Surface structure and variations after interaction with Co(II) and Hg(II) of bio-MSPE sorbent were investigated by FT-IR, SEM, and EDX. The impact of bio-MSPE column reusage was also tested. The biosorption capacities were determined as 24.7 mg g⁻¹ and 26.2 mg g⁻¹, respectively for Co(II) and Hg(II). Certified reference materials were utilized to find out the accuracy of the prepared bio-MSPE method. This novel bio-MSPE method was accomplished by being applied to real food and water samples. In particular, it will be possible to make use of C. micaceus as new alternatives, in environmental biotechnology applications.

BACKGROUND: Quantification of spray deposition on a target crop is of vital importance to optimize pesticide application. In traditional determinations of spray deposition, a large amount of organic solvent is used to extract pesticides from the target crops. In this study, a water‐soluble food dye of Allura Red was developed as a tracer to determine pesticide spray deposition on a rice target crop. RESULTS: The addition of Allura Red does not obviously alter the physicochemical properties of pesticides (viscosity, density and surface tension) and droplet spectra. An ultra‐performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) analytical method was developed and validated to determine the deposition amount of Allura Red on rice plants. Method accuracy and precision for Allura Red were found to be satisfactory with recoveries of 96.07% to 107.48%. To validate the method, comparative deposition analyses were carried out using representative systematic and non‐systematic pesticides (nitenpyram and chlorothalonil) under the same spraying scenarios using a Potter spray tower. Allura Red and pesticides showed comparable deposition under the same application conditions with ratios from 0.98 to 1.21. A field trial using an unmanned aerial vehicle sprayer further indicated that the deposition rates for Allura Red and nitenpyram on rice seedling were 13.04% and 11.07%, with corresponding relative standard deviation values (n = 5) of 16.39% and 18.79%. CONCLUSION: A laboratory test and field trial confirmed that the developed method of using Allura Red as a tracer for spray deposition assessment is feasible and practicable. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry

Health benefits are associated with polyunsaturated fatty acids, but their sensitivity to oxidation may generate toxic oxidation species. The objective of this study was to compare the effect of milk proteins (casein, whey protein) and surfactants (Citrem, Tween 20) on the in vitro digestion and oxidation of linseed oil emulsions. The emulsion produced with Tween 20 resisted coalescence in the gastric phase and showed the highest concentrations of free fatty acids and reactive carbonyl compounds in the intestinal digestion phase. The Citrem-stabilized emulsion showed extensive coalescence in the gastric environment, which reduced lipolysis and the formation of advanced oxidation species. The protein-stabilized emulsions showed aggregation with some coalescence in the gastric phase, and casein provided better protection than whey protein against oxidation. This study suggests that the mechanism of emulsion destabilization in the gastric environment and the type of protein can modulate lipolysis and oxidation during in vitro digestion.

The packaging-food partition coefficient (Kₚf) is a key parameter to estimate the chemical migration from packaging to food and resulting ingestion exposures. As a particular case of Kₚf, the solid material-water partition coefficient (Kₘw) is also important in relating the material to the water phase-based skin permeation coefficient to further assess dermal contact exposure to chemicals in solid consumer products. Existing correlations to estimate Kₚf or Kₘw are applicable for a limited number of chemical-food-packaging or chemical-material combinations without considering the temperature effect. The present study develops a combined quantitative property-property relationship (QPPR) to predict Kₚf and Kₘw with a wide applicability. We compiled a dataset of 1846 measured Kₚf or Kₘw for 232 chemicals in 19 consolidated material types. A regression model predicts Kₚf or Kₘw as a function of chemical's Kₒw, food or water's ethanol equivalency, temperature and material type, which shows good fitting performance with R²ₐdⱼ of 0.93, and has been verified by internal and external validations to be robust, stable and has good predicting ability (R²ₑₓₜ > 0.80). A generic QPPR is also developed to predict Kₚf or Kₘw from chemical's Kₒw, food or water's ethanol equivalency, and temperature only (R²ₐdⱼ = 0.90), without the need to assign a specific material type. These QPPRs provide a comprehensive correlation method to estimate Kₚf for diverse chemical-food-packaging combinations or to estimate Kₘw for materials other than food packaging, which will facilitate high-throughput assessments of consumer exposures to chemicals in food packaging and in other solid materials such as building materials, furniture and toys.

The sustainable development goals and the Paris agreement target a global cleaner energy transition with wider adaptation, poverty reduction and climate resilience benefits. Hydropower development in the transboundary Koshi river basin presents an intervention that can support the sustainable development goals while meeting the regional commitments to the Paris agreement This study aims to quantify the benefits of eleven proposed water resource development projects in the transboundary basin (4 storage and 7 run-of-the-river hydropower dams) in terms of hydroelectric power generation, crop production and flood damage reduction. A modular hydro-economic model is constructed by soft coupling hydrological and crop growth simulation models to an economic optimization model. It assesses the potential of the interventions to break the vicious cycle of poverty and water, food, and energy insecurity. Unlike previous studies, the model a) incorporates the possibility of using hydropower to lift groundwater for irrigation as well as flood regulation and b) quantifies the resilience of the stated benefits under future climatic scenarios (from downscaled general circulation models) affecting both river flows and crop growth. The results show significant potential economic benefit generated from electricity production, increased agricultural production, and flood damage control at the basin scale. The estimated annual benefits are around USD 2.3 billion under the baseline scenario and USD 2.4 billion under a future (RCP 4.5) climate scenario, compared to an estimated annual investment cost of USD 0.7 billion. The robustness of the estimated benefits illustrates the climate resilience of the water resource development projects. Contrary to the commonly held view that the benefits of these proposed projects in the Koshi river basin are limited to hydropower, the irrigation and flood regulation benefits account for 40 percent of the total benefits. The simulated scenarios also show substantial irrigation gains from the construction of the ROR schemes, provided the generated power is used for groundwater irrigation. The integrated modelling framework and results provide useful policy insights for evidence-based decision-making in transboundary river basins around the globe facing the challenges posed by the water-food-energy nexus.

Our research contributes to understanding actionable knowledge for sustainability using a before-after intervention with fishing and farming community representatives in a situation of conflicting water, energy, food, and livelihoods priorities in rural Cambodia. We explain why reducing uncertainty and building consensus on action through participatory research could potentially catalyze new behavior that promotes sustainability and test how this happens in our intervention. The result is a new and much needed evaluation framework and method for behavioral change outcomes in sustainability interventions.

To develop an accurate and precise method for separation and pre-concentration of Hg(II), a novel thionin functionalised core shell structure magnetic material has been prepared and characterised. The extraction ability of the material was evaluated by magnetic solid-phase extraction coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry determination of Hg(II) in food and water samples. Combining the advantages of magnetic separation with selective extraction of thionin towards Hg(II), the material exhibits enhanced enrich selectivity and efficiency for Hg(II). The experimental parameters influencing Hg(II) extraction efficiency, including pH of the aqueous solution, the dosage of the adsorbent, extraction time and sample volume, were systematically investigated. Under the optimised conditions, concentration of Hg(II) at 1.0 μg L⁻¹ can be successfully enriched by the material without the interference of the common co-existing ions. The enrichment factor and adsorption capacity were 250 and 75.2 mg g⁻¹, and precise of the method was confirmed by analysing the spiked food, water samples and standard water reference samples with the recoveries of 92.5–101.8%.

Germ-free (GF) mice are useful models for the examination of host–microbe interactions in health and disease. We recently reported on the maintenance of individual GF mice for more than 1 year in a sealed positive-pressure cage. However, no useful system exists to automatically record basic behavioral patterns, such as activity and the intake of water and food, under GF status. In this study, we examined basic behavior by combining the sealed positive-pressure cage with a behavioral monitoring system and observed the gross morphology of GF mice at 4 weeks and 8 months of age. GF mice exhibited cecal enlargement and had lower body and adipose tissue weights compared with age-matched specific pathogen–free (SPF) mice. Although both strains had similar circadian rhythms, GF mice exhibited decreased activity compared with age-matched SPF mice. GF mice also exhibited increased levels of water intake compared with age-matched SPF mice. Although GF mice demonstrated decreased food intake levels at the age of 4 weeks, they exhibited increased food intake levels compared with age-matched SPF mice at the age of 8 months. The present research indicates that automated measurement systems that record the basic behaviors of GF mice for long periods are useful for the acceleration of the study of metabolic functions and host–microbe interactions.