This paper presents the architecture of Almond, an open, crowdsourced, privacy-preserving and programmable virtual assistant for online services and the Internet of Things (IoT). Included in Almond is Thingpedia, a crowdsourced public knowledge base of open APIs and their natural language interfaces. Our proposal addresses four challenges in virtual assistant technology: generality, interoperab...

BACKGROUND Nut consumption may reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The aim of the current study was to measure the acute and second-meal effects of morning almond consumption and determine the contribution of different nut fractions. METHODS Fourteen impaired glucose tolerant (IGT) adults participated in a randomized, 5-arm, crossover design study where whole almonds (WA), almond b...

Background: Almonds are extremely rich sources of lipids and flavonoids, and their consumption is associated with several health benefits. However, there are no analytical methods available to document compliance with prescribed or self-reported chronic almond consumption. Objective: The aim was to use an analytical approach that identifies metabolic profiles associated with long-term almond co...

in the first experiment, the chemical composition, apparent metabolizable energy (ame), ame corrected for nitrogen (amen), true metabolizable energy (tme), tme corrected for nitrogen (tmen) values of the sweet almond meal were determined in adult leghorn cockerels. the second experiment was performed to evaluate the effects of different levels of sweet almond meal at 0, 100, 200 and 300 g/kg on...

The finding of new self-compatible cultivars in local population is a breeder’s objective in order to increase the sources of self-compatibility for the almond (Prunus amygdalus Batsch) breeding programmes. ‘AS-1’, a local Spanish selection, was considered to be self-compatible according to its self pollen tube growth and was incorporated in the almond breeding programme of Zaragoza as a source...

Frost damage to the flowers and early developing fruits is one of the most limiting factors in almond cultivation regions of the world. This study was undertaken to understand almond response to frost damage concerning ion leakage in order to develop a criterion for the selection of frost-resistant cultivars in field experiments. In this work, 60 almond cultivars and genotypes on the basis fros...

The almond, Prunus dulcis Miller which belongs to Rosaceae family, is one of the most important commercial and oldest cultivated tree nut crops. Almonds are classified as a ‘nut’ in which the edible seed is the commercial product. Therefore, pollination and fertilization are necessary in almond. The characteristic of cultivated almond to express gametophytic self- incompatibility discourages se...

This study examined if pre-germination altered the water content and water activity, contents of phytate, total phenolic, (±)-catechin, quercetin and total antioxidant capacity of almond  (Prunus dulcis)kernel. Raw almond kernels were submerged for 15 hours in water, 0.02 mol dm-3 phosphate buffer solution (pH 5.0) and 0.02 mol dm-3 phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.0) at 25 and 40ºC, respectivel...