Idalia Flores

Development of a liquid nutritional supplement using a Sesamum indicum L. protein isolate

This work presents some functional properties and the potential use of a new protein isolate from sesame seed flour, Sesaprot® (SP), as protein source in a liquid nutritional supplement. It was compared to a commercial soybean isolate and results showed that its emulsifying properties are better than those of its soybean counterpart. Lysine content is lower than FAO recommendations for children, but is adequate for adults. Other essential amino acids, however, are present in adequate amounts for any kind of consumer. Osmolality, pH and emulsion stability of an experimental formulation were similar to those of commercial beverages. A consumer sensory test indicated that the product was preferred to one prepared with a soybean isolate and to a commercial brand that was assayed.

Emulsifying Properties of Chemically Deamidated Corn (Zea Mays) Gluten Meal

Corn gluten meal is a by-product of starch production that is readily available. Corn protein isolates have limited applications due to their hydrophobic nature, low solubility and limited functionality as emulsifiers. In this study, a mild acidic treatment of corn gluten meal was performed in order to achieve deamidation of asparagine and glutamine residues and modify the interfacial behavior of this byproduct. A 0.1 N HCl treatment for 6 h at 70 °C rendered a deamidation degree of 20.4%, which increased the emulsification activity index of corn gluten meal from 6.8 to 16.8 m2/g protein, with a remarkable increase in emulsion stability from 0 to 90.6% oil retention. Proteins participating in the emulsion were separated by SDS-PAGE and the main polypeptides were identified as alpha and beta-zeins. After deamidation, protein dissociation and unfolding due to the obtained negative charges resulted in enhanced functionality.

Algoritmo recocido simulado para el problema de la programación del tamaño del lote económico bajo el enfoque de ciclo básico

The problem considered is that of scheduling the production of several different items over the same machine with restricted capacity and on a repetitive basis. The problem is NP-hard and there exist several methods for the problem. In this research we worked with Bomberger’s basic cycle approach, for which there are reported several solution proposals, among which are found so far only genetic algorithms in regard to the implementation of metaheuristic techniques to solve the problem. We solved Bomberger’s classical example problem, applying simulated annealing metaheuristic. The contributions of this research consist on how to obtain bounds for search space of the variables, and a strategy to control the search along the solution space performed by the algorithm. Because this is a first implementation, we tested several values of the parameters. The algorithm achieves the same cost in almost all tests and the algorithm performs better where the ratio D P i i  is high, improving some of the results reported in the literature.