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The Fisheries Research Institute (IFL) is looking for people to take part in consumer surveys of fish. The surveys will be conducted in mid-October and will run until November next year.

There are two surveys:

1) a survey that takes place at IFL on Thursday 19 October and people, 18 years and older, are requested to come to us at Skúlagata 4 that day and taste fish,

2) a survey where people bring fish home for cooking a total of 6 times over a 6-week period (every Tuesday) from October 17 to November 21. Here we are looking for families, where at least 2 are 18 years or older.

Further information and registration of participation:

fisk@rf.is  and by phone: 530 8667

Two employees started working at IFL earlier this month, one in Reykjavík and the other in Höfn in Hornafjörður. Björn Þorgilsson will work at the Environment and Quality Department of IFL Research and Guðmundur Heiðar Gunnarsson at Höfn in Hornafjörður.

Björn Þorgilsson will mainly work on databases and risk assessment in the Environment and Quality Division of the IFL Research Division. He completed his M.Sc. degree in Toxicology from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA in 2000. For the last four years, Björn was an employee of the Marine Research Institute and worked at the Laboratory of Stock Genetics, Keldnaholt.

Guðmundur Heiðar Gunnarsson is an employee at IFL's new office in Höfn in Hornafjörður. This is another of IFL's new offices, but earlier this year IFL's office in Sauðárkrókur was opened and IFL now operates in six locations in the country, outside Reykjavík. Guðmundur is a biochemist by education, took a BS degree in biochemistry at the University of Iceland in 1997 and will soon finish his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland. Guðmundur has facilities in New worlds, Little Bridge 2 in Höfn, a magnificent building that was inaugurated in 2002 and houses various activities. 

Friday 22 September Rannís stands for sk Science Week - - Dating with scientists at the Reykjavík Art Museum at Tryggvagata. IFL will be involved and will present how the senses can be used in science.

As stated Rannís website The aim of Science Week is to arouse public interest in science and increase awareness of the work of scientists and their importance.

As previously stated, the Science Week will be held on Friday 22 September and will start at 18 - 21. The science week will have a similar format as last year, when scientists from companies, research institutes and universities took part and about 700 guests came to visit.

During the Science Week, emphasis will be placed on putting the scientist himself in the foreground by making the scientists visible and accessible to the public. During the vigil, scientists will have the opportunity to present their research and results in an easy-to-understand and entertaining way, as the Science Week should appeal to the general public, both young and old.

The title of Rf's presentation will be "The senses as measuring instruments in science" and will be presented there, among other things sky food, but in sensory evaluation are the senses of man, viz. visual, olfactory, taste, hearing and touch senses used to assess food quality. A project that IFL has worked on in collaboration with other parties will also be presented Attitudes and fish consumption of young people: Improving the image of seafood.

Vísindavökun is free and admission is open to everyone and there is reason to encourage people to visit the Reykjavík Art Museum next Friday night.

IFL has secured the purchase of equipment that is hoped to open up the possibility of new research projects, both domestic and foreign. The aim is to build a new research division at IFL around the equipment, and a foreign expert has been hired to lead that work.

There are two new devices, namely the Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) device and the Hydraulic Analyzer (HPLC) that can be used separately. The ICP-MS instrument will be used, among other things, to measure inorganic trace elements and the instrument has various advantages over older methods, such as measuring atomic absorption (AA) with a flame device and graphite furnace. The new device offers a much faster method when looking at many substances in each sample, and with this method the detection limits of the trace elements are generally much lower than with older methods.  

The hydraulic manifold (HPLC) can be connected to the front of the ICP-MS instrument and the HPLC-ICP-MS instrument assembly is installed.

According to Helgi Gunnlaugsdóttir, head of the IFL Research Division, the goal is to build a new research field within inorganic trace element analysis, which involves research and measurements of the form analysis of different chemical forms of metals in food, and HPLC-ICP-MS technology will be used in this research. The reason why the form analysis of metals is considered a special field of research is that different chemical forms of metals have different toxicity. What is driving the progress in this area of trace element analysis is related to the authorities' concern about the toxicity of certain chemical forms of metals in food and their impact on human health.

Last March, a specialist was hired, Dr Ernst Schmeisser from Austria, and he will lead the development of this new research area at IFL. Dr. Schmeisser has previously performed diagnostics of, for example, arsenic by HPLC-ICP-MS in organic samples.

Read more about the ICP-MS device here

Today, the establishment of a new limited company, Matís ohf, was announced, which will merge three government agencies, the Fisheries Research Institute, the Keldnaholt Food Research Institute (MATRA) and finally the Environment Agency's Laboratory. This is reported on the website of the Ministry of Fisheries.

Next weekend, 15 - 17 Sept. There will be a big fish feast at about 80 restaurants all over the country, and the intention is to encourage both young and old to go out to eat seafood during the festival. This is a special initiative at the Ministry of Fisheries in collaboration with the Chefs' Club in Iceland. It is safe to encourage Icelanders to join in the fun!

In Dalvík, Fiskidagurinn mikli has already established itself thoroughly and in a few years has become one of the main town festivals held in this country, where fish has been offered as guests and pedestrians have been able to enjoy. The festival Fishing is not a town festival but a national initiative, which aims to promote the consumption of fish in this country.

As stated in an interview with the Minister of Fisheries Einar K. Guðfinnsson on the occasion of the Fiskirí festival, studies show that the consumption of fish has been decreasing in Iceland in recent years, and mainly among young people. Because of this, the Ministry of Fisheries has therefore decided to organize a special initiative in mid-September under the name Fiskirí. The intention is to draw the attention of citizens of all ages to how healthy and good fish is and to make it clear to people that it can be both simple and quick to cook fish."

It should be noted in this connection that IFL has recently been working on a special project in collaboration with the Laboratory of Nutrition, the Social Sciences Institute and the Icelandic Health Service, which aims to find ways to strengthen young people's interest in fish as healthy options. The project is called Attitudes and fish consumption of young people: Improving the image of seafood.

On the website you can read more about this needed effort and the restaurants participating in the project.

The book was recently published Seafood research from fish to dish- Qality, safety and processing of wild and farmed fish, which contains a number of summaries (abstracts) from the 35th meeting of the WEFTA Association which took place in Antwerp, Belgium on 19-22. September 2005. IFL staff is somewhat involved in this big book.

It is published by the scientific publishing house Wageningen Academic Publishers in the Netherlands, which is growing rapidly or 567 pages. The book is divided into eight chapters of different lengths, which deal with issues such as the quality of farmed fish, the knowledge and expectations of consumers of marine products, the full utilization of marine catch, etc.

IFL's experts were the main or co - authors in the following presentations made at the conference: 

• Capelin oil for human consumption  
• Quality seafood 
• Evaluation of antioxidant activities in by-product hydrolysates, fractionation and concentration of active molecules using separation technologies (ultra- and nanofiltartion technologies
• Effect of catch location, season and quality defects on value of Icelandic cod (Gadus morhua) products  

IFL researchers have taken an active part in the collaboration WEFTA almost from the beginning. You can view the table of contents of the book at website Wageningen Academic Publishers and also order the book for those who are interested in acquiring it.

Yesterday, an excerpt from an IFL article will be published on the Sciencedirect.com website, which will soon be published in the prestigious scientific journal Journal of Food Engineering. The article is called Influencing factors on yield, gaping, bruises and nematodes in cod (Gadus morhua) fillets.  

The article is the first to appear in this forum from the doctoral project of Sveinn Margreirsson, who is the main author of the article. The doctoral project is related to a large project Processing forecast, which started at IFL in 2003 and is scheduled to end next year.

The aim of the project is to investigate the main factors that affect the quality and processing utilization of cod catches, and measurements are made in collaboration with fishing companies. The proportion of cod products that have been processed into frozen and fresh fillets is about 45% of the total catch in the Icelandic fishing jurisdiction. Increased knowledge and understanding of the properties of a raw material that can be linked to the value of the product are therefore very important.

 The authors of the article are, apart from Sveinn, Guðmundur R. Jónsson, Sigurjón Arason and Guðjón Þorkelsson. Guðmundur is a professor at Véla and the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Iceland, while the others are IFL employees. In fact, Sigurjón and Guðjón are also associate professors at H.Í.

Read the article

Many Danes are now following with interest the expedition of the Danish patrol ship Vædderen, which Icelanders know well, as the ship has had regular calls in Iceland in recent years on its way to and from Greenland. The ship is currently on an eight-month scientific expedition, called the Galatha 3 project, where it sails around the earth and various research is done.

The Danish parliament provided DKK 80 million, about ISK 960 million, for the project, mainly to make the necessary improvements and changes to Vædderen before embarking on the expedition, which began in mid-August and is scheduled to end at the end of April 2007. In addition, private parties and research funds have contributed a total of over ISK 1 billion to the various scientific studies that are planned to be carried out during the expedition.

Although only half a month has passed since the expedition began, scientists on board believe they have already made some interesting discoveries. This is what dr. Lone Gram, who works for Danmarks Fiskeriundersögelser (DFU), in an interview with Politiken's website that the expedition has found an interesting microbe at a depth of 30 meters in the sea off the Faroe Islands and that can possibly be used, either in the development of new antibiotics or as a preservative. It is worth mentioning that DFU is a sister institution of IFL and the institutes' researchers have had considerable collaboration in recent years.

According to dr. Gram is this micro-organism "military" i.e. it inhibits growth or simply kills other bacteria it comes in contact with. Dr. Gram says in an interview with Politiken.dk that it is clear that the Faroese bacterium, which she temporarily calls S 191, is therefore interesting and that she is looking forward to cultivating it and researching its type better when she returns to Denmark.   

This trip Vædderen is the third world tour with this format that the Danes are responsible for. The first was taken on the ship Galatheu I in the years 1845-1847, but then most of the research took place on land. From 1950 to 1952, Galatheu II went on a global voyage, exploring the deep water. You can follow the expedition on the web, at politiken.dk

Sources:

Politiken.dk

skip.is

The company Prokaria invited IFL employees to visit the company today to introduce them to the activities that take place at Gylfaflöt in Grafarvogur, but as previously stated on this page, a special company owned by IFL will soon take over Prokaria's genetic and enzyme division.

An announcement of the planned merger was published on IFL's news website earlier this summer, stating that the new company will continue to be called Prokaria, as the company has built up strong research and utilization of natural genetic resources in the field of genetic analysis and enzyme development in recent years. The company has development agreements with large international companies in the food industry such as Nestlé and Roquette.

During today's visit, Guðmundur Hreggviðsson, Prokaria's Director of Research, traced the company's history and reported on the main research that takes place there. Sólveig Pétursdóttir, supervisor of microbiological research from the main research that falls under her field, also talked, and finally Sigríður Hjörleifsdóttir talked about genetic research on behalf of Prokaria.

After the presentation, IFL staff inspected Prokaria's premises and finally accepted light refreshments.