Miguel Pires

Diogo B Gonçalves, Carla S P Santos, Teresa Pinho, Rafael Queirós, Pedro D Vaz, Mark Bloore, Paolo Satta, Zoltán Kovács, Susana Casal, Isabel Hoffmann.
Fish fraud is a problematic issue for the industry. For it to be properly addressed will require the use of accurate, rapid, and cost-effective tools. In this work, near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) was used to predict nutritional values (protein, lipids, and moisture) as well as to discriminate between sources (farmed vs. wild fish) and conditions (fresh or defrosted fish). Samples of five whitefish species—Alaskan pollock (Gadus chalcogrammu), Atlantic cod (G. morhua), European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), common sole (Solea solea), and turbot (Psetta maxima)—including farmed, wild, fresh, and frozen ones, were scanned by a low-cost handheld near infrared reflectance spectrometer with a spectral range between 900 and 1700 nm. Several machine learning algorithms were explored for both regression and classification tasks, achieving precisions and coefficients of determination higher than 88% and 0.78, respectively. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to cluster samples according to classes where good linear discriminations were denoted. Loadings from PCA revealed bands at 1150, 1200, and 1400 nm as the most discriminative spectral regions regarding classification of both source and condition, suggesting the absorbance of OH, CH, CH2, and CH3 groups as the most important ones. This study shows the use of NIRS and both linear and non-linear learners as a suitable strategy to address fish fraud and fish QC.

Carla S P Santos, Rebeca Cruz, Diogo B Gonçalves, Rafael Queirós, Mark Bloore, Zoltán Kovács, Isabel Hoffman, Susana Casal. (2020)
The citrus industry has grown exponentially as a result of increasing demand on its consumption, giving it high standing among other fruit crops. Therefore, the citrus sector seeks rapid, easy, and non-destructive approaches to evaluate in real time and in situ the external and internal changes in physical and nutritional quality at any stage of fruit development or storage. In particular, vitamin C is among the most important micronutrients for consumers, but its measurement relies on laborious analytical methodologies. In this study, a portable near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensor was used in combination with chemometrics to develop robust and accurate models to study the ripeness of several citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, clementines, tangerines, and Tahiti limes) and their vitamin C content. Ascorbic acid, dehydroascorbic acid, and total vitamin C were determined by HILIC-HPLC-UV, while soluble solids and total acidity were evaluated by standard analytical procedures. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) was used to build regression models which revealed suitable performance regarding the prediction of quality and ripeness parameters in all tested fruits. Models for ascorbic acid, dehydroascorbic acid, total vitamin C, soluble solids, total acidity, and juiciness showed R2cv = 0.77–0.87, R2cv = 0.29–0.79, R2cv = 0.77–0.86, R2cv = 0.75–0.97, R2cv = 0.24–0.92, and R2cv = 0.38–0.75, respectively. Prediction models of oranges and Tahiti limes showed good to excellent performance regarding all tested conditions. The resulting models confirmed that NIRS technology is a time- and cost-effective approach for predicting citrus fruit quality, which can easily be used by the various stakeholders from the citrus industry.

Deidda, R. et al. (2020)
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains one of the major public health challenges over the world. In 2018, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, nearly
37.9 million people are living with HIV [1]. Antiretroviral therapy has shown a great effectiveness in reducing mortality and morbidity related to AIDS and has thus allowed AIDS to evolve from a deadly disease to a chronic one [2]. However, most of the antiretroviral drugs are still under patent protection, and therefore their price is a major barrier to their access in low- and middle-income countries. In this context, the “Doha Declaration” was adopted in 2001 allowing these countries to produce certain patented drugs, by giving them contractual licenses. These “unapproved generic drugs” present the same active principal ingredients (APIs), galenic form and dosage, but can differ in used excipients or additives [3].
In Switzerland, people living in prison (PLP) are often not covered by compulsory insurance and their access to treatment is therefore limited. In this context, Swiss Buyer’s clubs have been created with the aim of importing “unapproved generic drugs” via recognized suppliers based in low- and middle-income countries. Consequently, quality control tests have to be performed in order to guarantee the quality and safety of these pharmaceutical products [2, 3, 4].