Upcoming food matrix stable isotope reference materials from the USGS: honeys, vegetable oils, flours, and collagens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An international project developed, quality-tested, and measured isotope−delta values of 10 new food matrix reference materials (RMs) for hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur stable isotope-ratio measurements to support food authenticity testing and food provenance verification. These new RMs will enable users to normalize measurements of samples to isotope−delta scales. The RMs span a range of δ2HVSMOW values from −207.4 to −43.3 mUr or ‰, for δ13CVPDB from −30.60 to −13.72 mUr, for δ15Nair from +1.78 to +14.96 mUr, for δ18OVSMOW from +18.20 to +26.33 mUr, and for δ34SVCDT from −20.25 to +17.49 mUr. The RMs include (i) a pair of honeys from Canada and tropical Vietnam, (ii) flours from C3 (rice) and C4 (millet) plants, (iii) four vegetable oils from C3 (olive, peanut) and C4 (corn) plants, and (iv) collagen powders from marine fish and terrestrial mammal origins. After thorough homogenization of the bulk materials, multiple aliquots were sealed in glass under vacuum or noble gas to exclude oxygen and to potentially extend the shelf life to decades when stored at –18 °C in the dark. A total of six laboratories from five countries used various analytical approaches and instrumentation for two- or multiple-point isotopic normalization against international RMs. The use of reference waters and organic liquids in silver tubes allowed direct normalization of δ2H values of organic materials against isotopic reference waters following the principle of identical treatment, minimizing interference from atmospheric moisture. An errors-in-variables regression model that included the uncertainty associated with the measured and assigned values of the RMs was applied centrally to normalize results and obtain consensus values and measurement uncertainties reported here for new RMs USGS82 to USGS91. Because of exchangeable hydrogen and H2O in some RMs (especially in honeys, collagens, and flours), sample loading in contact with laboratory air and different types of pre-treatment can result in significant bulk δ2H variance. Utilization of these new RMs should foster mutual compatibility of δ2H values if harmonized technical/analytical approaches are followed and documented in data reports.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.020 | 0.018 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".