This review focused on the historical, technological, and analytical characteristics of ricotta cheese available in the literature. Ricotta cheese is a typical dairy product that originated from ...Italy, used in the preparation of several traditional dishes, both sweet and salted. The available studies pertaining to ricotta cheese revealed a considerable biodiversity in the production with a large number of varieties produced, whose production varies according to the local uses and customs. The review shows the main chemical and microbial characteristics of the product and also the several parameters that affect the mechanism of the production process and the final characteristics of the product, including the raw materials, the processing methods, the season, the animals' diet, the animals' species, and breeds. Ricotta production can be artisanal or industrial, with differences in the making process. New trends in ricotta cheese production have been developed, with particular attention to the functional effect on human health and the novel technologies applied to extend the shelf-life of the products. Currently, it is not easy to find these new developments in the market, probably related to the cost of production, which is not always bearable by the farms. However, despite the large classification reported and the great interest by the cheese industry, just a few numbers of studies were found for artisanal ricotta productions, which still need to be characterized and studied.
Neutron sources are increasingly employed in a wide range of research fields. For some specific purposes an alternative to existing large-scale neutron scattering facilities, can be offered by the ...new generation of portable neutron devices.
This review reports an overview for such recently available neutron generators mainly addressed to biophysics applications with specific reference to portable non-stationary neutron generators applied in Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA).
The review reports a description of a typical portable neutron generator set-up addressed to biophysics applications.
New generation portable neutron devices, for some specific applications, can constitute an alternative to existing large-scale neutron scattering facilities. Deuterium-Deuterium pulsed neutron sources able to generate 2.5MeV neutrons, with a neutron yield of 1.0×106n/s, a pulse rate of 250Hz to 20kHz and a duty factor varying from 5% to 100%, when combined with solid-state photon detectors, show that this kind of compact devices allow rapid and user-friendly elemental analysis. "This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Science for Life" Guest Editor: Dr. Austen Angell, Dr. Salvatore Magazù and Dr. Federica Migliardo".
•An overview on most recent applications of Neutron Generator is presented.•Several informations about different Portable Fast Neutron Generators manufacturers are showed.•Some examples of the neutron biophysical applications are cited.•Neutron Activation Analysis techniques are presented with references to experimental setup.
The aim of the present study was to assess the dietary supplementation of tannins to grazing dairy cows in 2 seasons characterized by a good quality pasture (spring) or a poor-quality pasture ...(summer). The effects of dietary tannins were assessed on plasma antioxidant status and cytokines profile and on the antioxidant properties of cheese and cheese in vitro digestates. Fourteen lactating dairy cows were divided into 2 homogeneous groups (n = 7): a control group (CON), and an experimental group (TAN) receiving 150 g/head per day of tannins supplementation. The experiment was performed twice, in spring and in summer. The animals were free to graze on spontaneous pasture (spring) or on dry stubble (summer). Blood was sampled at the beginning (d 0), at the midpoint (d 11), and at the end (d 22) of the trial. Individual cheese was produced before the beginning (d −1) and at the end (d 22) of the trial from the milk collected from each cow. On blood plasma, the reactive oxygen metabolites (ROM), biological antioxidant potential (BAP), nonesterified fatty acids quantification, and cytokines profile in terms of IL-10, IL-8, IL-1β, and IFN-γ were determined. Data on ROM demonstrated that tannins supplementation lowered oxidative stress both in spring and in summer. Accordingly, TAN diet increased BAP levels compared with the CON during summer trial. Thus, feeding tannins resulted in lower ratio between ROM and BAP (oxidative stress index) in both spring and summer. Cytokines' profile showed lower IL-1β values in TAN group at d 22 during spring season, with a concomitant higher IL-10 level, during summer season. Moreover, TAN group had a lower level of IFN-γ in plasma than CON group, both in spring and in summer. On cheese samples, the in vitro digestion was performed and on cheese and cheese digestates (gastric and intestinal digestate) the free radical scavenging antioxidant activity was evaluated. The intestinal digestate fraction registered the highest antioxidant activity compared with cheese and gastric digestate, in both spring and summer seasons. Furthermore, an improvement of the antioxidant property of cheese and cheese digestates was found. Present data demonstrated that tannins supplementation contributed to reduce the oxidative stress of lactating dairy cows and showed an increase of anti-inflammatory cytokines ratio.
The list of standard abbreviations for JDS is available at adsa.org/jds-abbreviations-24. Nonstandard abbreviations are available in the Notes.
The possibility of inclusion of agro-industrial ...byproducts in the diet of small ruminants represents both an economic and an environmental strategy for reducing waste management by industries and costs of feeding as well as the impact of livestock farming. Large amounts of wastes from the cocoa industry are produced annually, with a considerable part represented by cocoa bean shells, considered a suitable ingredient to be included in the diet of ruminants within the limits established by European legislation. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of including cocoa bean shells in the diet of dairy sheep on the sensory, volatile, and antioxidant properties of cheese. To this purpose, 20 lactating Comisana ewes were randomly assigned to 2 experimental groups: control (CTRL) and cocoa bean shells (CBS), and received alfalfa hay ad libitum and 800 g of conventional (CTRL) or experimental (CBS) concentrate containing 11.7% CBS to partially replace corn and barley of the CTRL concentrate. Bulk milk collected from each group was used to produce a total of 15 cheeses per group, obtained in 5 different days of cheesemaking (3 cheeses a day per group). After 60 d of aging, each cheese of each experimental group was sampled for the analyses. The results on chemical composition revealed a greater content of monounsaturated fatty acids and an increase in the nutritional indices, suggesting a favorable role of cocoa bean shell dietary inclusion on the nutritive value of cheese. The cheese sensory profile was affected by the cocoa bean shell inclusion, with more pronounced appearance, odor, aroma, and taste attributes in the product. The volatile profile showed only a few significant differences, mainly related to the cheese ripening process, and no differences were found in α-tocopherol contents in cheese fat between the 2 groups. Therefore, the inclusion of coca bean shells in the diet of dairy sheep allowed us to obtain a good-quality cheese, without altering the characteristics associated with the typical profiles of sheep cheese. Furthermore, the use of this byproduct could contribute to decreasing feed costs and waste management, representing a good practice for increasing the sustainability of dairy products.
Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is a native raw-milk enzyme used in many countries as the standard assay for rapidly validating the milk pasteurization process. Due to the increased restrictions on the ...production or import of cheeses produced from unpasteurized milk, ALP activity (<10 mU/g) in cheese was measured as a simple and reliable method to check proper milk pasteurization in cheese for both safety inspection and trading controls. In Sicily, the artisanal cheesemaking of the Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) semi-hard cheeses made with raw sheep milk, includes the cooking of the curd, after whey separation, in a wooden vat under hot Scotta whey (≥80°C), for 3 to 4 h, and finally is left to cool at ambient temperature. Thus, the temperatures adopted during cheesemaking may inactivate the ALP enzyme. To this purpose, the aim of this study was to demonstrate how different temperatures of Scotta whey (35°C T35, 60°C T60, 70°C T70, 80°C T80, 90°C T90, and 100°C T100) used during the second cooking of Pecorino cheeses after molding for 3 h, influence the ALP activity in fresh and 3-mo aged cheese, both at core and outside. The results highlight that the rate of reduction of ALP was greater with increasing temperature of the second cooking, in particular for T 80°C curd, indicating that the use of Scotta whey >80°C could be a breakpoint able to reduce the ALP activity to values <10 mU/g. Different effects between the core and the outside portions of the experimental cheeses were found, with a decrease in ALP activity more on the outside than in the core portions, in both fresh and 3-mo aged cheeses, for T80, T90, and T100 treatments. Care must be taken in using ALP to control the use of pasteurized milk in the production of PDO cheeses without considering the cheesemaking processes, such as the second cooking, which could be equal to pasteurization, and an adequate interaction of time and temperature can reduce the ALP activity to values comparable with cheeses produced with pasteurized milk.
Infrared and Raman spectra on pure ethylene glycol (EG) and on low molecular weight polyethylene glycols (PEGs) with increasing chain length have been collected and analysed in a wide spectral range ...in order to determine the oligomer-to-polymer regime crossover. Previous spectroscopic crossover determinations reported in literature dealt only with Raman investigation of the Disordered Longitudinal Acoustic Mode (D-LAM). The IR and Raman contribution features, when analysed in different spectral ranges, show a dramatic change as a function of the polymer chain length, signaling an oligomer-polymer crossover for a polymerization degree of m=13. An innovative Wavelet Transform (WT) approach allows to confirm the above reported physical picture. In particular WT, differently from standard Principal Component Analysis (PCA) allows a multiscale analysis which permits to quantify the spectral shape modifications of different spectral regions of the collected IR and Raman spectra. It is shown that the wavelet cross-correlation parameters evaluated between each couple of the registered data, from EG to PEG 1000, change as a function of the polymer chain length, confirming that a plateau value is reached for m=13.
Extensive farming systems are characterized by seasons with different diet quality along the year, as pasture availability is strictly depending on climatic conditions. A number of problems for ...cattle may occur in each season. Tannins are natural polyphenolic compounds that can be integrated in cows' diet to overcome these seasonal problems, but little is known about their effect on milk quality according to the season. This study was designed to assess the effects of 150 g/head × day of tannin extract supplementation on proximate composition, urea, colour, cheesemaking aptitude, antioxidant capacity, and fatty acid (FA) profile of cow milk, measured during the wet season (WS) and the dry season (DS) of Mediterranean climate. In WS, dietary tannins had marginal effect on milk quality. Conversely, in DS, the milk from cows eating tannins showed 10% lower urea and slight improvement in antioxidant capacity, measured with FRAP and TEAC assays. Also, tannin extract supplementation in DS reduced branched-chain FA concentration, C18:1 t10 to C18:1 t11 ratio and rumenic to linoleic acid ratio. Tannins effect on rumen metabolism was enhanced in the season in which green herbage was not available, probably because of the low protein content, and high acid detergent fibre and lignin contents in diet. Thus, the integration of tannin in the diet should be adapted to the season. This could have practical implications for a more conscious use of tannin-rich extracts, and other tannin sources such as agro-industrial by-products and forages.
Wavelet analysis has recently found a wide range of applications in Physics, Mathematics, and signal processing. This is mainly due to its ability to locally resolve a nonstationary signal in terms ...of functional forms, called mother wavelets, and to firmly locate trend anomalies in the signal. In the present paper, some examples of the application of wavelet analysis to elastic incoherent neutron scattering (EINS) data collected by the IN13 spectrometer at the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) on water mixtures of the three homologous disaccharides, trehalose, maltose, and sucrose, and on literature data of dry and hydrated lysozyme and myoglobine as a function of temperature and of exchanged wave vector are presented. The experimental findings have been analyzed by means of a wavelet analysis that allows one to characterize the scattered elastic intensity behavior on different scales and to locate the discontinuities and the trend anomalies in the registered signal. This latter procedure is made possible thanks to the multiscale analysis, which allows, by decreasing the scale, one to localize the peculiar trend features. The entire body of the experimental findings reveals different transition temperatures for the three investigated disaccharides together with a stronger temperature dependence of the maltose/H2O and sucrose/H2O systems in comparison with the trehalose/H2O mixture, which signals a stronger character of this latter in comparison with the other two homologous disaccharides. These results justify the better ability of trehalose, with respect to maltose and sucrose, to encapsulate biostructures in a more rigid matrix.
A wavelet analysis of Elastic Incoherent Neutron Scattering (EINS) intensity data collected, as a function of wavevector, on three glass forming systems, i.e. on the homologous disaccharides ...trehalose, maltose and sucrose, is presented. The wavelet transform allows to explore the wavevector behavior of the scattered intensity at different scales highlighting the correlation between the signal and the set of the scaled and translated mother functions. The analysis performed in the wavevector range of Q=0.28Å−1÷4.28Å−1 reveals the existence of different kinds of protons dynamics which cover different spatial scales. It emerges that, differently from previous analyses, for trehalose the intensity data at all the investigated temperature values are constantly lower and sharper in respect to those of maltose and sucrose, giving rise to a global spectral density along the wavevector range markedly less extended. Furthermore, the application of an interpretative model for the partial and global EINS intensity temperature behavior allows to put into evidence both the different wavevector dependence of the system relaxation times, extracted from the intensity vs. temperature inflection point, and the higher thermal restrain of trehalose in respect to the other two homologous disaccharides.
•Elastic Incoherent Neutron Scattering measurements on homologues disaccharides.•EINS wavevector analysis.•EINS temperature analysis.•Innovative multiresolution wavelet analysis of elastic incoherent neutron scattering.
•InfraRed and Raman spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering on polyethylene oxide.•The D-LAM spectral contribution depends on the polymerization degree.•The results show an oligomer–polymer ...transition.
In the present paper the experimental findings obtained by different spectroscopic techniques on water mixtures of a protein model system, i.e. PolyEthylene Oxide (PEO), are reported. By increasing the polymerization degree m, the D-LAM spectral contribution shows a behavior of the centre frequency and of linewidth which tends to reach a constant value. Also the intramolecular OH stretching contribution, by increasing m, shows a shift which tends to flatten for polymers with molecular weight higher than Mw=600. These results can be connected with the oligomer–polymer transition, at m=13. When in aqueous solutions the D-LAM frequency increases towards the value corresponding to that of the crystal phase; similarly one observes also a sharpening of the D-LAM spectral contribution. These evidences suggest the presence of a more ordered conformation of PEO in water in respect to the melt phase.
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