Analysis of 8-oxooctanoate, 9-oxononanoate, fatty acids, oxidative stability, and iodine value during deep-frying of French fries in edible oils blended with palm oil.

Four blended oils including palm + corn oil (PC), palm + grapeseed oil (PG), corn + grapeseed oil (CG), and palm + corn + grapeseed oil (PCG) were used as frying media. The 8-oxo and 9-oxo content, fatty acid composition, oxidative stability index, and iodine value of samples (n = 42) were analyzed. As the frying cycles increased, the content of 8-oxo and 9-oxo also increased significantly (p < 0.05) and showed the highest content of 965.56 ± 0.706 µg/g in 100 frying cycles of PCG. After 20-40 frying cycles in CG, the amount of palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic acid increased up to 15.5% (p < 0.05). The oxidative stability of palm oil was the highest at 16.76-18.33 h (p < 0.05). The iodine value of grapeseed oil was the highest at 144.96 ± 2.569-153.64 ± 2.233 g iodine/100 g oil (p < 0.05). Among the examined oils, PC was the most suitable alternative to palm oil.

Ssu72 phosphatase is essential for thermogenic adaptation by regulating cytosolic translation.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays a pivotal role in maintaining body temperature and energy homeostasis. BAT dysfunction is associated with impaired metabolic health. Here, we show that Ssu72 phosphatase is essential for mRNA translation of genes required for thermogenesis in BAT. Ssu72 is found to be highly expressed in BAT among adipose tissue depots, and the expression level of Ssu72 is increased upon acute cold exposure. Mice lacking adipocyte Ssu72 exhibit cold intolerance during acute cold exposure. Mechanistically, Ssu72 deficiency alters cytosolic mRNA translation program through hyperphosphorylation of eIF2α and reduces translation of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) subunits, resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction and defective thermogenesis in BAT. In addition, metabolic dysfunction in Ssu72-deficient BAT returns to almost normal after restoring Ssu72 expression. In summary, our findings demonstrate that cold-responsive Ssu72 phosphatase is involved in cytosolic translation of key thermogenic effectors via dephosphorylation of eIF2α in brown adipocytes, providing insights into metabolic benefits of Ssu72.

Toward a No-Reference Image Quality Assessment Using Statistics of Perceptual Color Descriptors.

Analysis of the statistical properties of natural images has played a vital role in the design of no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) techniques. In this paper, we propose parametric models describing the general characteristics of chromatic data in natural images. They provide informative cues for quantifying visual discomfort caused by the presence of chromatic image distortions. The established models capture the correlation of chromatic data between spatially adjacent pixels by means of color invariance descriptors. The use of color invariance descriptors is inspired by their relevance to visual perception, since they provide less sensitive descriptions of image scenes against viewing geometry and illumination variations than luminances. In order to approximate the visual quality perception of chromatic distortions, we devise four parametric models derived from invariance descriptors representing independent aspects of color perception: 1) hue; 2) saturation; 3) opponent angle; and 4) spherical angle. The practical utility of the proposed models is examined by deploying them in our new general-purpose NR IQA metric. The metric initially estimates the parameters of the proposed chromatic models from an input image to constitute a collection of quality-aware features (QAF). Thereafter, a machine learning technique is applied to predict visual quality given a set of extracted QAFs. Experimentation performed on large-scale image databases demonstrates that the proposed metric correlates well with the provided subjective ratings of image quality over commonly encountered achromatic and chromatic distortions, indicating that it can be deployed on a wide variety of color image processing problems as a generalized IQA solution.

Towards a Full-Reference Quality Assessment for Color Images Using Directional Statistics.

This paper presents a novel computational model for quantifying the perceptual quality of color images consistently with subjective evaluations. The proposed full-reference color metric, namely, a directional statistics-based color similarity index, is designed to consistently perform well over commonly encountered chromatic and achromatic distortions. In order to accurately predict the visual quality of color images, we make use of local color descriptors extracted from three perceptual color channels: 1) hue; 2) chroma; and 3) lightness. In particular, directional statistical tools are employed to properly process hue data by considering their periodicities. Moreover, two weighting mechanisms are exploited to accurately combine locally measured comparison scores into a final score. Extensive experimentation performed on large-scale databases indicates that the proposed metric is effective across a wide range of chromatic and achromatic distortions, making it better suited for the evaluation and optimization of color image processing algorithms.