Critical assessment of the delivery methods of chemical and natural postharvest preservatives for fruits and vegetables: a review.

For years, researchers have been tirelessly searching for efficient postharvest preservatives to ensure a sustainable and healthy supply chain of fresh fruits and vegetables. However, the effectiveness of preservatives is significantly influenced by delivery methods employed for preservatives. This work centers on delivery methods of diverse preservatives. It delves into the mechanisms of penetration and internalization that facilitate preservatives diffusion into fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, the study comprehensively reviews various delivery methods and their impact on postharvest quality of these fresh food. Methods include liquid surface impregnation (soaking, vacuum infiltration, spraying) and gaseous fumigation. Additionally, unconventional delivery measures, such as fruit stem delivery, microbubble, and edible coating, are discussed in detail for the first time. It is expected that our work will provide inspiration for future development in academia, industry, and supervision.Through a comprehensive review on preservative delivery methods in fruits and vegetables preservation, it becomes evident that majority of existing studies concentrate on the development and mechanisms of preservatives. However, a notable gap lies in comparative analysis of different delivery methods, despite the direct impact of delivery methods on preservation outcomes. Additionally, emerging delivery techniques have displayed promising potential in enhancing delivery efficiency and likewise preservation effectiveness.

Preservative delivery methods (soaking, vacuum infiltration, spraying, fumigation) directly impact their effectiveness.Delivery efficiency is linked to fruit epidermis, including cuticle, intercellular spaces, and stomata.Research uses varied delivery methods, concentrations, and times for preserving different fruits.Promising preservative delivery methods: microbubble, fruit stem delivery, and edible coating.

Exploring the real contribution of socioeconomic variation to urban PM2.5 pollution: New evidence from spatial heteroscedasticity.

Making cities safe, resilient and sustainable is one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Health risk, productivity loss and climate change caused by air pollution obstacles the present urban sustainable development, especially people living in middle-and low-income countries areas are most affected. The spatial models (such as SAR and SEM) are often considered to examine the driven factors and the spatial spillover effect of PM2.5 concentrations. Given that these spatial models assume spatially dependent second-order moments of the dependent variable without considering the possible autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. This present study empirically examines the heterogeneous effects of economic development, secondary industry, FDI, population density, number of buses and urbanization on PM2.5 concentrations in 269 Chinese cities using the SAR, spARCH and SARspARCH, respectively. This newly proposed Spatial ARCH model is the first attempt to be applied to environmental research. The empirical results indicate that an increasing spatial correlation with PM2.5 concentration was observed among 269 cities during 2004-2016, and the most influential cities in high-high clustering are mainly located in North China. Furthermore, except for population density, the effects of other factors are heterogeneous on the time scale. Among those socioeconomic factors, population density shows the largest contribution to urban PM2.5 pollution, the effects of secondary industry, GDP and FDI may be overestimated in the absence of spatial neighbouring effects in mean or variance. The comparative analysis could provide new enlightenments for a deeper understanding of the socioeconomic impact on PM2.5 pollution.

The anti-obesogenic effects of dietary berry fruits: A review.

The prevalence of obesity in the world is fearsomely climbing, which has brought about heavy threats on human health and economic development. For coping with this problem, researchers have looked at the profound potentials of natural products for resolving obesity because of their high efficiencies and few undesirable outcomes in the recent years. Berry fruits are huge reservoirs of bioactive components, and their anti-obesity potentials are arousing much interests. In this review, the current main strategies to manage obesity were summarized, including inhibiting appetite and lowering the food intake, improving energy expenditure and thermogenesis, suppressing absorption and digestion, reducing lipid synthesis and storage as well as modulating composition of gut microbiota. In addition, this review discussed the potentials of dietary berry fruits (blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries, mulberries, lingonberries, blackberries, black chokeberries, elderberries, bilberries, grape, blackcurrants, jaboticabas, red bayberries, sea-buckthorns, goldenberries and goji berries) to counteract obesity or obesity-associated complications based on recent animal experiments and human studies. Then, the bioaccessibility of phenolic compounds present in berry fruits was discussed. On the other hand, several challenges including securing effective dosage, further understanding their interaction with human tissues, improving bioavailability and protection of functional ingredients during delivery should be taken into account and conquered in the coming years.

Uric acid played a role in the association between gender and deep vein thrombosis in patients with stroke.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Gender-specific differences were found in serum uric acid (SUA) levels and the risk of isolated distal deep vein thrombosis (IDDVT). This study aimed to explore the association among gender, SUA, and IDDVT in stroke patients. METHODS AND RESULTS: Finally, 3404 patients were recruited and divided into two groups: IDDVT (n = 1233) and Non-IDDVT (n = 2171) groups. Propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to match the patients. Binary logistic regression was adopted to explore the association between SUA and IDDVT, with the SUA divided into quartiles. After PSM, 975 patients were included in each group. Non-IDDVT group had a larger proportion of male than IDDVT group (64.9% vs. 52.7%, p < 0.001). Moreover, males showed higher SUA levels than females (316.7 ± 102.1 vs. 261.8 ± 94.0 µmol/L, t = 12.1, p < 0.001). The highest quartile of SUA (≥346 µmol/L) showed a lower risk of IDDVT (OR = 0.629, p = 0.001), while the lowest quartile (≤225 µmol/L) showed a higher risk of IDDVT (OR = 1.361, p = 0.022). CONCLUSION: In patients with stroke, SUA played a protective role in IDDVT. Females had a higher risk of IDDVT, which may be owing to the lower SUA levels than males. In clinical practice, more attention should be paid to the risk of IDDVT in females, especially those with lower SUA levels.

Multiple 1-MCP treatment more effectively alleviated postharvest nectarine chilling injury than conventional one-time 1-MCP treatment by regulating ROS and energy metabolism.

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of different 1-MCP treatment patterns on alleviating chilling injury (CI) of postharvest nectarine stored at 0 ± 1 °C. Nectarine fruits were subjected to the following treatments: Single-High dose 1-MCP treatment (S-H): 1 µL L-1 application before storage; Multi-low dose 1-MCP treatment: (M-L) Five 0.25 µL L-1 applications after 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 d of storage; Multi-high dose 1-MCP treatment (M-H): Five 1 µL L-1 applications after 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 d of storage. The results showed that although all 1-MCP treatments alleviated CI, M-H 1-MCP treatment is the most effective pattern in alleviating CI of nectarine fruit in S-H, M-L, and M-H 1-MCP treatments. Moreover, this study indicated that the reduction of CI in nectarine by 1-MCP application was related to its regulations of ROS and energy metabolism.

Catalytic transient leaving group for atom-economic synthesis of allenes from 2-alkynols.

An atom economic approach from readily available propargylic alcohols to allenes, the first carboxylation of propargylic alcohols, has been established. Through the cooperative binary catalysis of Pd and a phosphoric acid, the reaction afforded multi-substituted allenoates with a broad scope tolerating useful functional groups. The synthetic potential of the obtained products has been demonstrated.