PRELUDIUM BIS 3 funding for UPWr scientists

• Professor Tomasz Janeczko will study dihydrochalcones in search of so-called healthy sweeteners
• Professor Paulina Nowicka wants to use seeds, leaves and shoots as valuable sources of bioactive compounds
• Professor Krzysztof Sosnica will work on improving multi-GNSS positioning through stochastic modelling of a receiver clock

The PRELUDIUM BIS 3 competition is addressed to entities running doctoral schools. Its purpose is to support the education of doctoral students through a scholarship, and finance research projects carried out by them as part of their doctoral dissertations. In addition, they are obliged to carry out a foreign research internship lasting from 3 to 6 months, financed by the National Agency for Academic Exchange.

Under the third edition, 228 scientists applied for funding. 97 promoters will receive grants with a total value of over PLN 55 million. Three of them are scientists from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences: Prof. Paulina Nowicka, Prof. Tomasz Janeczko and Prof. Krzysztof Sośnica.

The research team in the PRELUDIUM BIS competition consists of two people - a promoter, who is the project manager, and a doctoral student, who will be selected in the ongoing recruitment to the UPWr Doctoral School. The projects will start in October, together with the new academic year.

In search of so-called healthy sweeteners

Professor Tomasz Janeczko from the Department of Food Chemistry and Biocatalysis of the UPWr is leading a project called 'Chemical-enzymatic synthesis of dihydrochalcone glycosides and their pro-health activity'. In the planned research, the scientist wants to use chemical and enzymatic synthesis methods, as well as genetic engineering techniques, to obtain a library of chalcones, dihydrochalcones and their glycosides. The cytotoxicity of the obtained compounds, organoleptic properties and their impact on the human intestinal flora will be determined.

Numerous studies confirm the link between the consumption of sucrose-sweetened products and health disorders, including civilisation diseases. Hence the search for so-called healthy sweeteners.

- Dihydrochalcones, which are naturally found in fruits and vegetables, are of great interest, and are therefore already an integral part of the human diet. They are safe for the human body and, what's more, are an important factor in the prevention of many diseases, including diabetes, atherosclerosis and even depression. In addition, they are an ingredient in many dietary supplements, and possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, anti-allergic or antiviral properties - explains Prof. Tomasz Janeczko.

The aim of the UPWr scientist's project is to obtain a library of dihydrochalcones with increased bioavailability and activity – so that these compounds can be used in the food industry as sweeteners with health-promoting properties, beneficial to the human intestinal flora and supporting many therapeutic therapies.

Using valuable compounds from seeds, leaves and shoots

Professor Paulina Nowicka will be carrying out a project called 'The possibility of creating plant micromatrices from different morphological parts of a single species and modulating their health-promoting features in a combined emulsification and drying process'.

Its purpose is to assess the possibility of using combined emulsification and drying techniques (vacuum drying or freeze-drying) to obtain multi-component stable plant microstructures with programmed health-promoting properties and bioavailability. A variety of berries (raspberry, blackcurrant), pome fruit (quince, apple) and stone fruit (cherry, peach) are planned to be used in the study. Fruit juice obtained from these plants, as well as leaves and oils from seeds of these species, are to be used to form an emulsion. Fruit are only a part of the whole species. There are also seeds, leaves, bark and shoots, which are also valuable sources of bioactive compounds, but the profile and composition of these compounds is completely different than that of the fruit or its products.

- The leaves or seeds thus form a separate plant matrix with specific health-promoting properties. However, these compounds are sensitive to environmental factors, under the influence of which they undergo transformation or degradation, and are characterised by poor bioavailability in the human body. Therefore, for several years now, effective methods have been sought to protect these compounds, one of them being the emulsification process - explains Prof. Paulina Nowicka.

The scientist from the Department of Technology of Fruits, Vegetables and Plant Nutraceuticals at the UPWr emphasises that the aim of her research is to verify hypotheses that assume, among other things, that the combination of emulsification techniques with an appropriately selected drying process is an optimal method for creating multicomponent, complex microstructures bearing features of various metabolic parts of the plant. In addition, emulsification techniques combined with drying techniques are excellent tools to protect unstable plant compounds from environmental degradation and modulate their health-promoting properties and bioavailability.

- One of the desired outcomes is to study the interactions that may take place between the fruit juice and the fruit seed oil ; oil - bioactive compounds isolated from leaves; juice - bioactive compounds isolated from leaves, as well as the interaction of the above matrices with emulsifiers, which will be an extremely interesting aspect of this project - concludes the UPWr scientist.

Improving multi-GNSS positioning

The author of the project entitled 'Precise multi-GNSS positioning based on stochastic clock modelling' is Prof. Krzysztof Sośnica, Head of the Department of Surveying at the Institute of Surveying and Geoinformatics. According to the UPWr scientist, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as GPS, Galileo and BeiDou are used to determine the position, speed and timing of the receiver. Previous standard approaches for precise positioning of GNSS points assumed an independent clock parameter for each observation epoch.

– Such an assumption impairs the result of positioning, in particular the determined height. This is why in surveying measurements it is not possible to measure the height of many terrain elements using standard satellite observation techniques, e.g. utility networks, as they are not accurate to two centimetres - says Prof. Sośnica, adding that in multi-GNSS solutions the clock parameters are determined separately for each satellite system - due to inter-system errors.

The UPWr scientist's project aims to improve multi-GNSS positioning by stochastically modelling the receiver clock, especially for those receivers that are connected to ultra-stable atomic clocks.

As part of the project, satellite receivers connected to rubidium, quartz, caesium clocks and hydrogen masers controlled by a caesium fountain will be studied. By modelling clock corrections, the height determination of GNSS receivers will be improved, potentially resulting in improved surveying using satellite observations. An experiment will also be carried out to improve the positioning of low satellites that track GPS and Galileo signals, also by stabilising the clocks onboard satellites. New opportunities will therefore arise for precise ground positioning of GNSS receivers as well as satellites in low orbit, such as remote sensing and altimetry missions for sea level monitoring, which require the most accurate positions.