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Total or partial replacement of traditional durum wheat semolina (DWS) by alternative flours, such as legumes or wholegrain cereals in pasta improves their nutritional quality and can make them interesting vector for fortification. Climate-smart gluten-free (C-GF) flours, such as legumes (bambara groundnut, chickpea, cowpea, faba bean, and pigeon pea), some cereals (amaranth, teff, millet, and sorghum), and tubers (cassava and orange fleshed sweet potato), are of high interest to face ecological transition and develop sustainable food systems. In this review, an overview and a critical analysis of their nutritional potential for pasta production and processing conditions are undertaken. Special emphasis is given to understanding the influence of formulation and processing on techno-functional and nutritional (starch and protein digestibility) properties. Globally C-GF flours improve pasta protein quantity and quality, fibers, and micronutrients contents while keeping a low glycemic index and increasing protein digestibility. However, their use introduces anti-nutritional factors and could lead to the alteration of their techno-functional properties (higher cooking losses, lower firmness, and variability in color in comparison to classical DWS pasta). Nevertheless, these alternative pasta remain more interesting in terms of nutritional and techno-functional quality than traditional maize and rice-based gluten free pasta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally accepted in neuroscience that anatomy and function go hand in hand. Accordingly, a local morphological variability could lead to a corresponding functional variability. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by linking the variability of the cortical folding pattern of 252 right-handed subjects to the localization or the pattern of functional activations induced by hand motion or silent reading. Three regions are selected: the central sulcus, the precentral sulcus and the superior temporal sulcus (STS). 'Essential morphological variability traits' are identified using a method building upon multidimensional scaling. The link between variability in anatomy and function is confirmed by the perfect match between the central sulcus morphological 'hand knob' and the corresponding motor activation: as the location of the hand knob moves more or less dorsally along the central sulcus, the motor hand activation moves accordingly. Furthermore, the size of the left hand activation in the right hemisphere is correlated with the knob location in the central sulcus. A new link between functional and morphological variability is discovered relative to the location of a premotor activation induced by silent reading. While this reading activation is located next to the wall of the central sulcus when the hand knob has a ventral positioning, it is pushed into a deep gyrus interrupting the precentral sulcus when the knob is more dorsal. Finally, it is shown that the size of the reading activation along the STS is larger when the posterior branches are less developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a universal and often unconscious tendency to mentally associate the number sequence with a spatial continuum (the mental number line). Here we study one individual who reports a strong and vivid sense of space when processing numbers. For him, the number sequence has a precise spatial form: a curvilinear right-to-left oriented line. We used various tasks to demonstrate that this numerical–spatial association is not a mere figment of his imagination, but a constrained experiential phenomenon consistent across sessions and automatically triggered by the visual presentation of numbers. We also show that this idiosyncratic representation can coexist with another implicit association, the SNARC effect (Spatial–Numerical Association of Response Codes, where small numbers are associated with the left side of space). This effect is present in individuals without explicit number forms and is not affected in the present subject in spite of his reversed subjective representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) have been considered to be a functionally homogeneous population of cells. However, in peripheral blood, only 80% of the PMN bear a Fc receptor and form EA-rosettes (Wong & Wilson, 1975). In vitroy these EA-rosette forming cells have superior adhesiveness and aggregation and present better functional capacities of migration and phagocytosis (Klempner et al., 1980). In vivo, leukocyte migration through the skin barrier can be measured using a migration chamber (Dubertret et al., 1982), allowing the study of the active migration of PMN. This method enables the selection of a migrating PMN subpopulation. This seems important to assess the expression of the Fc receptor in the migrating PMN, compared with the peripheral PMN. The percentage of positive PMN forming EA-rosettes was thus evaluated in 19 controls, both in peripheral blood and in the migration chamber sera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]