Physicochemical and functional properties of short-chain fatty acid starch modified with different acyl groups and levels of modification.

Rice and quinoa starches are modified with short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) with different SCFA acyl chain lengths and levels of modification. This work is aimed to investigate the impact of modifying rice and quinoa starches with short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) on various physicochemical properties, including particle size, protein and amylose content, thermal behavior, pasting characteristics, and in vitro digestibility. Both native and SCFA-starches showed comparable particle sizes, with rice starches ranging from 1.58 to 2.22 µm and quinoa starches from 5.18 to 5.72 µm. SCFA modification led to lower protein content in both rice (0.218-0.255 %) and quinoa starches (0.537-0.619 %) compared to their native counterparts. Esterification led to the reduction of gelatinization and pasting temperatures as well as the hardness of the paste of SCFA-starches were reduced while paste clarity increased. The highest level of modification in SCFA-starch was associated with the highest amount of resistant starch fraction. Principal component analysis revealed that modification levels exerted a greater influence on starch properties than the types of SCFA used (acetyl, propionyl, and butyryl). These findings is importance in considering the degree of substitution or level of modification when tailoring starch properties through SCFA modification, with implications for various applications in food applications.

Malaysian parental attitudes toward medicine use in children.

INTRODUCTION: Parental attitudes can have a significant impact on the use of medicines in children. This study aimed to investigate parental attitudes towards medicines used in children in Malaysia and the sociodemographic factors associated with it. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study using convenience sampling was conducted among 230 parents with children aged 12 years and below in Malaysia. Data were collected between November 2020 and January 2021 through online platforms. RESULTS: The majority of respondents were mothers (67.8%) and aged between 40-49 years (43.0%). The results showed that antipyretics were the most commonly used medicines followed by cough and cold medicines, antibiotics, and analgesics. The results further revealed that parents have neutral attitudes toward the use of medicines in children (69.90 ± 12.12 from a total score of 105), and mothers and younger parents having a significantly more positive attitude than fathers and older parents, respectively (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: This study provided insights into the types of medicines commonly used in children and parental attitudes towards medicines used in children in Malaysia.

A New Discrete Analog of the Continuous Lindley Distribution, with Reliability Applications.

In this paper, we propose and study a new probability mass function by creating a natural discrete analog to the continuous Lindley distribution as a mixture of geometric and negative binomial distributions. The new distribution has many interesting properties that make it superior to many other discrete distributions, particularly in analyzing over-dispersed count data. Several statistical properties of the introduced distribution have been established including moments and moment generating function, residual moments, characterization, entropy, estimation of the parameter by the maximum likelihood method. A bias reduction method is applied to the derived estimator; its existence and uniqueness are discussed. Applications of the goodness of fit of the proposed distribution have been examined and compared with other discrete distributions using three real data sets from biological sciences.

Characterization and stability of short-chain fatty acids modified starch Pickering emulsions.

Acetylated, propionylated and butyrylated rice and quinoa starches at different levels of modification and starch concentrations, were used to stabilize oil-in-water starch Pickering emulsions at 10% oil fraction. Short-chain fatty acid modified starch Pickering emulsions (SPEs) were characterized after emulsification and after 50 days of storage. The particle size distribution, microstructure, emulsion index, and stability were evaluated. An increase in starch concentration led to a decrease of emulsion droplet sizes. Quinoa starch has shown the capability of stabilizing Pickering emulsions in both the native and modified forms. The emulsifying capacity of SPEs was improved by increasing the chain length of SCFA. Modified quinoa starch with higher chain lengths (i.e. propionylated and butyrylated), at higher levels of modification, showed higher emulsion index (>71%) and stability over the entire 50 days storage. At optimized formulation, SCFA-starch particles have the potential in stabilizing emulsions for functional foods, pharmaceutical formulations, or industrial food applications.

HLA genotypes and variant alleles in Sudanese families of Arab-Negroid tribal origin.

The indigenous population of the Blue Nile Province, Sudan, is an Arab-Negroid admixture, although some isolates of west African origin (Fallata) have begun to intermix with the indigenous population. Consanguineous marriages are common in these Muslim families. Members of 22 nuclear families were typed for HLA class I and II antigens using complement-dependent microcytotoxicity with Ninth International Workshop (9th WS) and local reagents. Considerable polymorphism was observed at each locus with a majority of the World Health Organization (WHO)-recognized alleles represented in the parental sample, albeit at low frequency. Seven parental haplotypes carried A locus alleles which were not identical to WHO-recognized specificities. All appeared to be Aw19-related specificities. Five B locus serologic variants were observed; all appeared distinct from WHO-recognized specificities. In one family we observed a new DR-DQ association; DR4 segregated with DQw2, rather than with DQw3. As has been observed for several other genetic systems in these tribes, considerable polymorphism was found for all class I and class II gene products in spite of a high level of consanguinity. Tribal admixture and/or a selective advantage in protecting the population against disease may account for this unexpectedly high level of heterozygosity.