Final Action Research Articles

Handling Transportation Accidents caused by Human Error

Human error is often stated as the main factor causing transportation accidents. For the general public, news about transportation accidents with human errors as the cause is often interpreted as human error by system operators such as machinists, pilots, ship captains, and other professionals. This perception is not correct. There are many factors that can directly or indirectly encourage an operator to take inappropriate actions. Error itself is generally defined as failure to perform the ‘correct’ and desired action in a given situation. In addition, an error can be defined as such when the final action or result may not be that which was intended. This study employs qualitative research methods to evaluate the best methods of dealing with transportation accidents caused by human error.
 Keywords: Accidents, Human error, Others Factor

Medical claims paid by workers' compensation insurance among US Medicare beneficiaries, 1999-2016.

Workers' compensation claims among Medicare beneficiaries have not been described previously. To examine the healthcare burden of work-related injury and illness among Medicare beneficiaries, we assessed the characteristics, healthcare utilization, and financial costs among Medicare beneficiaries with claims for which workers' compensation was the primary payer. We extracted final action fee-for-service Medicare claims from 1999 to 2016 where workers' compensation had primary responsibility for claim payment and beneficiary, claim type, diagnoses, and cost information from these claims. During 1999-2016, workers' compensation was the primary payer for 2,010,200 claims among 330,491 Medicare beneficiaries, and 58.7% of these beneficiaries had more than one claim. Carrier claims submitted by noninstitutional providers constituted the majority (94.5%) of claims. Diagnosis codes indicated 19.4% of claims were related to diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue and 12.9% were related to disease of the circulatory system. Workers' compensation insurance paid $880.4 million for these claims while Medicare paid $269.7 million and beneficiaries paid $37.4 million. Workers' compensation paid 74% of the total amount to providers for these work-related medical claims among Medicare beneficiaries. Claim diagnoses were similar to those of all workers' compensation claims in the United States. Describing these work-related claims helps identify the healthcare burden due to occupational injury and illness among Medicare beneficiaries resulting from employment and identifies a need for more comprehensive collection and surveillance of work-related medical claims.

Chemical lean determination of boneless beef and lamb using a halogen moisture analyser

Context Chemical lean (CL) is an important metric used by the Australian meat industry to describe fat content of meat product. It is a minimum meat specification included in contracts between Australian vendors of bulk packed boneless manufacturing meat and overseas or domestic buyers and can be regarded as the complement of chemically determined fat in meat (% fat, CL = 100-% fat). The microwave moisture method is commonly used for measuring CL content of meat in Australian abattoirs, relying on a relationship between CL and moisture content of boneless meat. It is regarded as a quick and easy method to use. More recently, newer methods for moisture analysis have become available which may also be suitable for CL determination, including commercial halogen moisture analysers (HMAs). HMAs use a halogen lamp as a source of infrared radiation that is absorbed by a sample, which then results in moisture loss. Aims This study aimed to compare the use of HMAs for CL determination of beef and lamb to that obtained from Soxhlet extraction technique, which is the AOAC Final Action Method for determining fat in meat and accepted as the reference method for fat determination. Additionally, the study sought to validate the use of HMAs as a method for CL determination in the Australian meat industry. Methods HMAs were used to determine the moisture content of six beef and one lamb samples, which were used to calculate the CL content. The fat content of the samples was also determined using Soxhlet fat extraction. Passing-Bablok regression and Bland-Altman plot analysis were used to identify any differences and bias between the methods, respectively. Key results Passing-Bablok regression showed that there was no difference between methods, while Bland-Altman plot analysis indicated no bias was evident between the methods. While some differences were apparent between approaches either due to using moisture as a proxy for fat/CL compared with continual solvent extraction or sample heterogeneity, sufficient agreement existed between results to lie within an acceptance criterion of 1.2 CL units. Conclusion The use of HMAs was substantiated as a method for CL determination in the Australian meat industry and has been accredited by AUS-MEAT Ltd as a method for boneless beef and lamb. Implications HMAs can be used in the Australian meat industry for CL determination and represent a relatively simpler and easier approach for this important industry metric.

Testing the Feasibility of a Multi-Model Fusion Method for Monitoring the Action of Rehabilitating Stroke Patients in Care Management

Post-stroke care encounters challenges, including high cost, lack of professionals, and insufficient rehabilitation state evaluation. Computer technology can alleviate these issues, as it allows health care professionals (HCP) to quantify the workload and thus enhance rehabilitation care quality. In this paper, a novel multi-model fusion method, terms as pose dual-stream network (PDSN), is devised, aiming to test the feasibility of monitoring the training actions of rehabilitating stroke patients in care management. In particular, this deep-learning-based algorithm combines human pose estimation and dual-stream networks in an innovative way. We utilize an improved OpenPose to estimate human pose from videos obtained by the low-cost monocular camera. In dual-stream networks, the spatial and motion streams are flexibly integrated. The spatial stream network combines the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and attention mechanism to extract spatiotemporal data, while the motion stream network is composed of improved multi-layer 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), which enhanced by causal and dilated convolution skillfully. Additionally, an adaptive weight fusion strategy is used to fuse the two networks for the final action classification. Results show high accuracy on two public datasets and a dataset created by us, which validate the superiority and feasibility of our method.

Deciphering the Molecular Details of the Lipoxin Formation Mechanism in the 5(S),15(S)-DiHpETE Biosynthetic Pathway Catalyzed by Reticulocyte 15-Lipoxygenase-1.

Chronic inflammation is now widely recognized to play important roles in many commonly occurring diseases, including COVID-19. The resolution response to this chronic inflammation is an active process governed by specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) like the lipid mediators known as lipoxins. The biosynthesis of lipoxins is catalyzed by several lipoxygenases (LOXs) from arachidonic acid. However, the molecular details of the mechanisms involved are not well known yet. In this paper, we have combined molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations to analyze how reticulocyte 15-LOX-1 catalyzes the production of lipoxins from 5(S),15(S)-diHpETE. Our results indicate that the dehydration mechanism from 5(S),15(S)-diHpETE, via the formation of an epoxide, presents huge energy barriers even though it was one of the two a priori synthetic proposals. This result is compatible with the fact that no epoxide has been directly detected as an intermediate in the catalytic formation of lipoxins from 5(S),15(S)-diHpETE. Conversely, the oxygenation of 5(S),15(S)-diHpETE at C14 is feasible because there is an open channel connecting the protein surface with this carbon atom, and the energy barrier for oxygen addition through this channel is small. The analysis of the following steps of this mechanism, leading to the corresponding hydroperoxide at the 15-LOX-1 active site, indicates that the oxygenation mechanism will lead to the formation of lipoxinB4 after the final action of a reductase. In contrast, our calculations are in agreement with experiments that lipoxinA4 cannot derive from 5(S),15(S)-diHpETE by either of the two proposed mechanisms and that 5(S),15(S)-diHETE is not an intermediate of lipoxin biosynthesis catalyzed by 15-LOX-1.

The impact of nature documentaries on public environmental preferences and willingness to pay: entropy balancing and the blue planet II effect

In this study, the discrete choice experiment approach was employed in a survey of the Scottish general public to analyze how respondents make tradeoffs between blue growth potential and marine ecosystem service delivery associated with the Mingulay cold water reef complex. Results indicate a higher willingness to pay for management options associated with the highest possible levels of marine litter control followed by the highest possible levels of fish health. Using entropy balancing, a multivariate reweighting method to produce balanced samples in observational studies, we also test the impact that having watched the BBC Blue Planet II documentary series may have had on individuals’ willingness to support marine conservation activity. Whether or not respondents had seen the BBC Blue Planet II series was found to have a significant impact on people’s preferences. Despite this, the willingness to pay (WTP) does not differ between the two groups, suggesting that such documentaries may impact preferences but not the final action of WTP. It is argued that the entropy weighting approach can be a useful tool in discrete choice modeling when the researcher is concerned with estimating differences in preferences between a group of interest and a comparison group.

An Experimental Investigation of Trust And Reciprocity In Double-Shot Investment Games

When there are multiple interactions between two individuals, trust and reciprocal behaviour are guided by the plausible cost of risking future collaborations. However, in case of single transaction, there is no risk of retaliation. We examine this through two investment experiments - the original Berg et al. (1995) investment game and a modified version which emulates a protocol to capture trust and reciprocal behaviour of paired subjects through double interactions. Double interaction subjects display higher level of trust and reciprocity than single interaction subjects. Women are more strategic than men and are more trusting and trustworthy. Reciprocity is also identified as a determinant of trust. Another important contribution of the study is importance of recent behaviour in guiding final reciprocal action. This is the first paper where double-shot interaction has been introduced to study trust and reciprocal behaviour in an experimental setting.

Energy dissipation and efficiency of exploding stainless steel wires of various lengths and diameters

Electrical exploding wires have found many applications in industry and research. Some of the most promising applications include high-speed sheet metal forming and explosive welding. Most research to date has been conducted using thin highly conductive, pure metal wires at relatively low energies. In contrast, experimental trials are performed in air, on relatively thick AISI 304 stainless steel wires with diameters 600–800 µm and lengths ranging from 40 to 160 mm. The test wire produces circuit damping in a series RLC circuit with C = 150 µF and L = 4.36 µH, which yields a maximum theoretical discharge energy of 2.7 kJ at 6 kV. The energy absorbed in the wire and the wire plasma respectively, is calculated to determine the fraction of absorbed energy, i.e. the energy transfer efficiency, for each case and the optimum wire dimensions for the circuit. Longer wires attain a lower action integral and absorb more energy with respect to short wires resulting in a higher energy transfer efficiency to the wire. Thicker wires attain a lower final action integral despite lower initial resistance and absorb more energy with respect to thin wires resulting in a higher energy transfer efficiency to the wire. The total efficiency of dissipated energy in the wire is analysed depending on the wire length and diameter, together with an introduction of the time-averaged wire resistance.

Kinematic joint descriptor and depth motion descriptor with convolutional neural networks for human action recognition

Human Action Recognition has gained a huge research interest due to its widespread applications in various fields. However, due to several challenges like noisy and occluded data, view-point variations, body sizes etc., still the action recognition remains a challenging task. Most of the existing action recognition methods focused on the single data type thereby the recognition system has limited performance. To improve the recognition performance, we have modeled a new approach for human action recognition from two different data types; they are depth images and skeleton joints. Two different descriptors are developed for action representation; they are Differential Depth Motion History Image for depth maps and Motion Kinematic Joint Descriptor for skeleton joints. To attain a discriminative feature set, we have trained three different Convolutional Neural Network Models and the results are fused for final action classification. Simulation is carried out over two public datasets and the obtained results indicate that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-art methods.

Research on action sequence optimization method of Micro-Crystal resonator spot welding device

To realize spot welding process of the id and base for micro-crystal resonator quickly and accurately, the action sequence is need to be designed for its spot welding device reasonably. The device’s performance indexes are proposed and its preliminary action sequence is designed based the functional structure and process flow. Stateflow tool is used to the device’s simulation model is established and the state transition diagram is obtained by Stateflow with the finite state machine theory. According to the simulation result, the action sequence for the spot welding device is optimized, and its final action sequence is determined. It shows that he optimized design can meet the function requirements for micro-crystal resonator spot welding device through the simulation analysis and prototype test.

Quercetin Inhibits Adenomyosis by Attenuating Cell Proliferation, Migration and Invasion of Ectopic Endometrial Stromal Cells.

PurposeTo evaluate the effects of quercetin on proliferation, invasion and migration of endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) from adenomyosis patients.MethodsPrimary ectopic ESCs (EESCs) and eutopic ESCs (EuESCs) were obtained and purified from patients undergoing total hysterectomy for adenomyosis and identified by immunocytochemistry staining. The cytotoxicity and inhibition rate were determined by CCK-8 assay to obtain the IC50 value. Cell proliferative, migratory, and invasive abilities were detected by BrdU, wound scratch, transwell assays, respectively. Western blot analysis was employed to explore the effects of quercetin on the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, Ezrin and Fascin proteins in cells.ResultsBoth EESCs and EuESCs were characterized with strongly positive staining for vimentin and almost negative for cytokeratin. Quercetin inhibited the viability of EESCs and EuESCs in a dose- and time-dependent manner, with an IC50 = 33.00 μM for EuESCs and IC50 = 74.88 μM for EESCs at 72 h. Thus, the final concentrations and action time of quercetin in EuESCs (0, 20, 40, and 80 μM for 72 h) and EESCs (0, 40, 80, and 160 μM for 72 h) were selected. BrdU assay showed that quercetin dose-dependently suppressed the proliferation of EESCs and EuESCs, while the inhibition rate in EESCs was higher. Similarly, administration of quercetin in EESCs and EuESCs significantly decreased the motility and invasiveness in a dose-dependent fashion, with stronger inhibitory effects on EESCs. Finally, Western blot analysis demonstrated that invasion- and migration-related proteins (MMP-2, MMP-9, Erzin, and Fascin) were significantly downregulated with the quercetin concentration increasing. Moreover, the decreased level of these proteins in EESCs under quercetin exposure was greater than that in EuESCs.ConclusionQuercetin can inhibit the proliferation of EESCs in adenomyosis and reduce their mobility and invasiveness. These inhibitory effects may be related to the downregulation of MMP-2, MMP-9, Fascin, and Erzin proteins.

Integrating Gaussian mixture model and dilated residual network for action recognition in videos

Action recognition in video is one of the important applications in computer vision. In recent years, the two-stream architecture has made significant progress in action recognition, but it has not systematically explored spatial–temporal features. Therefore, this paper proposes an integrated approach using Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and dilated convolution residual network (GD-RN) for action recognition. This method uses ResNet-101 as spatial and temporal stream ConvNet. On the one hand, this paper first sends the action video into the GMM for background subtraction and then sends the video marking the action profile to ResNet-101 for identification and classification. Compared with the baseline, ConvNet takes the original RGB image as input, which not only reduces the complexity of the video background, but also reduces the amount of computation of the learning space information. On the other hand, using the stacked optical flow images as the input of the ResNet-101 added to the dilated convolution, the convolution receptive field is expanded without lowering the resolution of the optical flow image, thereby improving the classification accuracy. The two ConvNet-independent learning spatial and temporal features of the GD-RN network finally fine-tune and fuse the spatio-temporal features to obtain the final action recognition accuracy. The action recognition method proposed in this paper is tested on the challenging UCF101 and HMDB51 datasets, and accuracy rates of 91.3% and 62.4%, respectively, are obtained, which proves the proposed method with the competitive results.

Argentum Pharm. LLC v. Novartis Pharm. Corp. United States Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit, 2020 956 F.3d 1374

Argentum Pharm. LLC v. Novartis Pharm. Corp. United States Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit, 2020 956 F.3d 1374

Serum chemerin in a cohort of Colombian patients with primary osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is considered the most common degenerative joint pathology in the adult population, being an important cause of disability worldwide, and its prevalence is increasingly associated with different factors, including obesity. Obesity together with metabolic syndrome have been associated with a pro-inflammatory state due to the release of cytokines that induce changes in cartilage metabolism. Chemerin is an adipokine secreted mainly by adipocytes and its final action is to increase the production of IL-6, IL-8, IL-1b, TNF-α and metalloproteinases by macrophages, dendritic cells and chondrocytes, which are responsible for damage to the articular cartilage. This is one of the reasons that obesity and inflammation have been linked to OA. The main objective of this study is to determine whether the serum chemerin concentrations of a group of patients with primary OA are higher when compared with control individuals. A further purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between the presence of obesity/overweight with the severity of the disease measured by a radiological scale. An analytical cross-sectional study was carried out where serum chemerin levels were quantified by enzyme-linked immunoadsorption assay (ELISA), in patients with primary OA of the hip, knee and hand with criteria from the American College Of Rheumatology (ACR) and controls. Radiological studies of patients and controls were analysed to determine the severity of joint involvement using the Kellgren and Lawrence (KL) classification system. The statistical significance of the difference in serum chemerin values between the two groups was verified and the correlation between the variables of body mass index (BMI) with radiological severity, number of joint regions and serum chemerin levels was analysed. During the period from July 2015 to July 2016, serum samples and radiographs of compromised joints were collected from 40 patients with primary OA who met the inclusion criteria, as well as serum samples from 20 controls. The average concentration of chemerin was higher in the group of patients with OA compared to that of the control group, being 373 ng / ml and 175.55 ng / ml respectively (p<2.2×10-16). No significant associations were found between the different degrees of disease severity measured by the KL radiological scale, such as the number of involved joint regions and BMI. In a group of patients with primary OA of the hand, knee or hip, the values of chemerin were higher than those found in controls, without significant association with the severity of the disease established radiologically by K/L scale, the number of involved joint regions, and the BMI.

Fusing and refining convolutional neural network models for assembly action recognition in smart manufacturing

Assembly carries paramount importance in manufacturing. Being able to support workers in real time to maximize their positive contributions to assembly is a tremendous interest of manufacturers. Human action recognition has been a way to automatically analyze and understand worker actions to support real-time assistance for workers and facilitate worker–machine collaboration. Assembly actions are distinct from activities that have been well studied in the action recognition literature. Actions taken by assembly workers are intricate, variable, and may involve very fine motions. Therefore, recognizing assembly actions remains a challenging task. This paper proposes to simply use only two wearable devices that respectively capture the inertial measurement unit data of each hand of workers. Then, two convolutional neural network models with an identical architecture are independently trained using the two sources of inertial measurement unit data to respectively recognize the right-hand and the left-hand actions of an assembly worker. Classification results of the two convolutional neural network models are fused to yield a final action recognition result because the two hands often collaborate in assembling operations. Transfer learning is implemented to adapt the action recognition models to subjects whose data have not been included in dataset for training the models. One operation in assembling a Bukito three-dimensional printer, which is composed of seven actions, is used to demonstrate the implementation and assessment of the proposed method. Results from the study have demonstrated that the proposed approach effectively improves the prediction accuracy at both the action level and the subject level. Work of the paper builds a foundation for building advanced action recognition systems such as multimodal sensor-based action recognition.

Simultaneous Determination of Total Vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B6 in Infant Formula and Related Nutritionals by Enzymatic Digestion and LC-MS/MS-A Multi-Laboratory Testing Study Final Action: AOAC Method 2015.14.

A multi-laboratory study was completed for AOAC First Action Method 2015.14. Ten laboratories from eight countries participated. Each laboratory analyzed (in duplicate) a placebo and 14 fortified nutritionals. Product matrices analyzed included milk, soy, partially hydrolyzed milk, partially hydrolyzed soy, and elemental-based infant formula powders, milk based infant formula ready-to-feed liquids, adult low-fat powders, and adult high fat and high protein ready-to-drink nutritionals. Data was then compared to standard method performance requirements (SMPR). Samples were prepared by enzymatic digestion with papain, α-amylase, and phosphatase to hydrolyze protein and complex carbohydrate and to free phosphorylated vitamin forms respectively. Stable-isotope labeled internal standards were incorporated into the sample preparation to correct for variability in both the sample preparation and instrument response. Prepared samples and working standard solutions were injected onto an ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatograph, interfaced to a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer (MS/MS). Reverse phase gradient chromatography, using mobile phases of methanol and 20 mM ammonium formate in water on a C-18 column, were used for the analysis. The MS/MS was configured to monitor precursor-fragment ion pairs for each analyte and internal standard. Vitamins B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), and B6 (pyridoxine) were quantified by least squares regression using the response ratio of the analyte to its internal standard. Total vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B6 had average repeatability of 2.3%, 3.9%, 2.7%, and 2.2% RSD, and reproducibility of 8.2%, 6.9%, 6.7%, and 5.8% RSD, respectively. Repeatability and reproducibility SMPR were met for 53/56 and 50/56 fortified-product/analyte pairs analyzed, respectively.

Determination of Free and Total Choline and Free and Total Carnitine in Infant Formula and Adult/Pediatric Nutritional Formula by Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS): A Multi-laboratory Testing Study, Final Action 2015.10.

A multi-laboratory study was conducted on AOAC First Action Method 2015.10 "Determination of Free and Total Choline and Free and Total Carnitine in Infant Formula and Adult/Pediatric Nutritional Formula by Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)." In this study, nine laboratories participated in the performance testing of the method using ten nutritional products tested as blind duplicates. Both free and total carnitine and free and total choline content of the samples were determined using separate extractions for the free and total results. For free choline and carnitine analysis, samples are diluted in water. For total choline and carnitine analysis, samples are extracted using acid-assisted microwave hydrolysis with nitric acid. For both the free and total methods, samples are then diluted with acetonitrile and analyzed using strong cation exchange (SCX) liquid chromatography coupled to a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer (LCMS). Stable isotope labeled internal standards were utilized in all analyses to compensate for extraction inefficiencies and ionization suppression.

Determination of Curcuminoids in Turmeric Dietary Supplements by HPLC-DAD: Multi-laboratory Study Through the NIH-ODS/NIST Quality Assurance Program.

BackgroundTurmeric is a medicinal herb containing curcuminoids, used as quality markers in dietary supplements. In 2016, an AOAC First Action Official MethodSM was adopted for quantitation of curcuminoids and requires multi-laboratory reproducibility data for Final Action status.ObjectiveTo collect reproducibility data for the quantitation of curcuminoids in dietary supplements through the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements/National Institute of Standards and Technology Quality Assurance Program (QAP).MethodLaboratories that participated in the QAP by following the Official Methods of AnalysisSM Method 2016.16, submitted data for ten turmeric products. The data were analyzed for mean, repeatability, and reproducibility standard deviations, repeatability, and reproducibility.ResultsThe initial data collection resulted in insufficient replicates (five) for each test sample to determine reproducibility, therefore laboratories were provided additional materials resulting in an incremental data approach. For homogenous products, reproducibility for curcumin ranged from 3.4 to 10.3%, bisdemethoxycurcumin with reproducibility ranging from 6.4 to 14.8%, and demethoxycurcumin ranging from 5.6 to 9.9%. The method was unsuitable for the quantitation of curcuminoids in complex smoothie products, products containing microbeads, or tinctures based on interlaboratory variances. Recommendations were provided for future multi-laboratory studies performed through QAPs and incremental approaches.ConclusionsMethod 2016.16 is suitable for the quantitation of curcuminoids and should be adopted for Final Action status for single and multi-ingredient dietary supplements containing dried roots, dried powders/extracts in bulk material, capsules, and softgels.HighlightsReproducibility for Method 2016.16 was collected through a non-traditional incremental data multi-laboratory study. The method is suitable for quantitation of curcuminoids in most common dietary supplements.

Determination of Fructans in Infant Formula and Adult/Pediatric Nutritional Formula by Anion-Exchange Chromatography with Pulsed Amperometric Detection after Enzymatic Treatment: Collaborative Study, Final Action 2016.14

Fructans are added to infant formula and adult nutritionals for their prebiotic effect. A method (AOAC 2016.14) was developed for their analysis which has already demonstrated excellent performance during single laboratory validation. To determine repeatability and reproducibility of the method through a collaborative study. Fourteen laboratories from 11 different countries enrolled for the study. Participants analyzed a practice sample, then 8 formula or adult nutritionals in blind duplicate. Results and any method modifications were reported to the study director. Twelve laboratories provided results on time for reporting. Precision results for five samples met the requirements of the Standard Method Performance Requirements (SMPR 2014.002), with RSDr ranging from 3.60 to 4.25% and RSDR ranging from 5.90 to 11.7%. The practice sample also met the requirements of SMPR 2014.002, with RSDr and RSDR of 2.53% and 6.70% respectively. Precision results for three test samples did not fully meet the SMPR, with RSDr ranging from 2.27 to 7.65% and RSDR ranging from 12.8 to 15.1%. After review, the AOAC Stakeholder Panel for Infant Formula and Adult Nutritional Expert Review Panel (SPIFAN ERP) concluded that the data presented mostly met the SMPR and hence recommended that the method to be advanced for adoption as an AOAC Final Action method. The method described in AOAC 2016.14 is suitable for the determination of fructans in infant formula and adult nutritionals.

Determination of Lutein, β-Carotene, and Lycopene in Infant Formula and Adult Nutritionals by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography: Collaborative Study, Final Action 2016.13 for β-Carotene and Lycopene Only.

Lutein, β-carotene, and lycopene are among the most common carotenoids present in human milk and are frequently added to infant formula and adult nutritionals. A collaborative study was conducted to assess the interlaboratory performance of AOAC Official MethodSM2016.13 for the determination of lutein, β-carotene, and lycopene in infant formula and adult nutritionals. Thirteen laboratories agreed to participate in the study and 10 laboratories from seven different countries reported results. The study samples included blind duplicates of 6 matrices fortified with lutein, 7 matrices fortified with β-carotene, and 1 fortified with lycopene. NIST SRM 1869 was included in the sample set as a reference material. After the removal of outliers and invalid data, the repeatability (RSDr) data was ≤10.0% for all-trans-lutein, ≤12.0% for total lutein, ≤4.2% for all-trans-β-carotene, ≤6.0% for total β-carotene, and 1.6% for total lycopene. Reproducibility (RSDR) was ≤14.8% for all-trans-lutein, ≤19.9% for total lutein, ≤15.3% for all-trans-β-carotene, ≤13.7% for total β-carotene, and 7.4% for total lycopene. The repeatability and reproducibility values met the criteria in the Standard Method Performance Requirements (SMPRs) for β-carotene and lycopene and it was recommended that the method be approved as a Final Action for these analytes. Since the method did not meet the SMPR for lutein, it was recommended that it remain a First Action method for this analyte. AOAC Official MethodSM2016.13 was validated through a collaborative study to be accurate and reproducible for the determination of β-carotene and lycopene in infant formula and adult nutritionals.