This book is an essential manual for professionals and students who wish to deepen their knowledge of food additives that modify the texture of food, thickeners and gelling agents. When it comes to food technology, hydrocolloids are generally introduced as additives. Other ingredients, not considered additives, are also hydrocolloids, for example proteins and starches. This manual only focuses on those considered additives, except modified starches. Newly translated from Spanish to English, Hydrocolloids in Food Product Development is written by four experts in their field who are familiar with offering technical advice to companies related to the manufacturing of food. After an introductory chapter that reviews chemical characteristics, the hydration and solubilization of hydrocolloids, the preparation of hydrocolloids solutions, and technological functions, subsequent chapters present different hydrocolloids used in food technology and describe its technical features and its most common uses. Key Features: Describes technical and utilization characteristics of thickeners and gelling agents Details the origin, physical-chemical characteristics, form of use, function, synergies, incompatibilities and examples of use Graphs, tables, photographs and diagrams provided in full color for easy reading comprehension This practical manual is designed so that food industry technicians and chefs may easily consult while doing their daily work, or so that students of degrees related to food technology may use it as a reference book.

Nanomaterials for Food Applications highlights recent developments in nanotechnologies, covering the different food areas where these novel products or technologies can be applied. The book covers five major themes, showing how nanotechnology is used in food, the use of ingredients in nanoform to improve bioavailability or nanoencapsulation technologies, nanotechnologies for food processing, nanosensors for food quality and safety, nanotechnologies for food packaging, and methods to evaluate potential risks and regulatory issues. This is an important research reference that will be of great value to academic and industrial readers, as topics of importance, both at a research level and for commercial applications, are covered. Regulatory agencies will also be interested in the latest developments covered in the book as they will help set the foundation for further regulations.

In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gomez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world's fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation? Through detailed empirical analyses of several key trade disputes between the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil, Gomez-Mera proposes an explanation that emphasizes the tension between and interplay of two sets of factors: power asymmetries within and beyond the region, and domestic-level politics. Member states share a common interest in preserving MERCOSUR as a vehicle for increasing the region's leverage in external negotiations. Gomez-Mera argues that while external vulnerability and overlapping power asymmetries have provided strong and consistent incentives for regional cooperation in the Southern Cone, the impact of these systemic forces on regional outcomes also has been crucially mediated by domestic political dynamics in the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the unequal distribution of power within the bloc has had a positive effect on the sustainability of cooperation. Despite Brazil's reluctance to adopt a more active leadership role in the process of integration, its offensive strategic interests in the region have contributed to the durability of institutionalized collaboration. However, as Gomez-Mera demonstrates, the tension between Brazil's global and regional power aspirations has also added significantly to the bloc's ineffectiveness.

This edited volume brings together voices of Latinx students, teachers, teacher educators, and education allies in Latinx communities to reveal ways in which today's sociopolitical context has given rise to politically-sanctioned hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Contributors--key stakeholders in the education of immigrant Latinx children, youth, and college students--share how this rhetoric has exacerbated existing systemic injustices on K-Higher Education. They draw attention to counternarratives that speak to leadership and strength of community. Our contributors include high school and college students and faculty, community organizers, and early career academics, whose voices are too often underrepresented in academic conversations. This book highlights professional and personal acts of courage, community organization, and the transformation of students and educators who are stepping into leadership roles to effect change. Understanding that teaching and learning are political acts, we call all those vested in Latinx communities to engage in small and large acts of agency to collectively impact change in our K-Higher Education systems.