Hundreds of compounds contribute to the flavor and aroma of meat. Complex interactions between various compounds influence the perception of meat flavor. Inherent flavor of a meat product can be ...influenced by oxidation, lipid content, feeding/diet, myoglobin, and pH. Diet plays an important role in both ruminants and nonruminants. New research reveals important relationships in flavor among multiple muscles within a single animal carcass. This animal effect includes the presence of off-flavors. Diets high in polyunsaturated fatty acids may be contributing to the appearance of off-flavors in beef. Compounds associated with liver-like off-flavor notes in beef have been identified in raw tissue.
There is ample evidence that visible matter cannot account for a large component of the mass in the universe. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one popular hypothesis to account for ...the missing mass. The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment is designed to directly detect WIMPs through interactions with a nucleus in a target crystal. The SuperCDMS detectors are instrumented with phonon and charge sensors, enabling excellent rejection of electron-recoil backgrounds. Approximately 3000 kg-days of exposure have been collected with the SuperCDMS Soudan experiment. We will describe the search for WIMPs with masses between 10-100 GeV and work towards the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment.
The CDMS low ionization threshold experiment (CDMSlite) uses cryogenic germanium detectors operated at a relatively high bias voltage to amplify the phonon signal in the search for weakly interacting ...massive particles (WIMPs). Results are presented from the second CDMSlite run with an exposure of 70 kg day, which reached an energy threshold for electron recoils as low as 56 eV. A fiducialization cut reduces backgrounds below those previously reported by CDMSlite. New parameter space for the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross section is excluded for WIMP masses between 1.6 and 5.5 GeV/c^{2}.
Exogenous enzymes tenderize meat through proteolysis.
Triceps brachii and
Supraspinatus were randomly assigned to the seven enzyme treatments, papain, ficin, bromelain, homogenized fresh ginger,
...Bacillus subtilis protease, and two
Aspergillus oryzae proteases or control to determine the extent of tenderization (Warner–Bratzler shear and sensory evaluation) and mode of action (myofibrillar or collagen degradation). Sensory evaluation showed improvement (
P
<
0.0009) for tenderness and connective tissue component and all except ginger had a lower shear force than the control (
P
<
0.003). Ginger produced more off-flavor than all other treatments (
P
<
0.0001). Only papain increased soluble collagen (
P
<
0.0001). Control samples were only significantly less than ficin for water soluble (
P
=
0.0002) and
A. oryzae concentrate for salt soluble proteins (
P
=
0.0148). All enzyme treatments can increase tenderness via myofibrillar and collagenous protein degradation with no difference among high and low-connective tissue muscles.
To quicken the pace of quality improvement in health care, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) launched the 100, 000 Lives Campaign--a national initiative with a goal of saving 100,000 ...lives among patients in hospitals through improvements in the safety and effectiveness of health care. Berwick, et al discuss the program.
Beef tenderness is an important quality attribute for consumer satisfaction. The current beef quality grading system does not incorporate a direct measure of tenderness because there is currently no ...accurate, rapid, nondestructive method for predicting tenderness available to the beef industry. The objective of this study was to develop and test a visible/near-infrared hyperspectral imaging system to predict tenderness of 14-day aged, cooked beef from hyperspectral images of fresh ribeye steaks acquired at 14-day post-mortem. A pushbroom hyperspectral imaging system (wavelength range: 400–1000
nm) with a diffuse-flood lighting system was developed and calibrated. Hyperspectral images of beef-steak (
n
=
111) at 14-day post-mortem were acquired. After imaging, steaks were cooked and slice shear force (SSF) values were collected as a tenderness reference. All images were corrected for reflectance. After reflectance calibration, a region-of-interest (ROI) of 200
×
600 pixels at the center was selected and principal component analysis was carried out on the ROI images to reduce the dimension along the spectral axis. The first five principal components explained over 90% of the variance of all spectral bands in the image. Gray-level textural co-occurrence matrix analysis was conducted to extract second-order statistical textural features from the principal component images. These features were then used in a canonical discriminant model to predict three beef tenderness categories, namely tender (SSF
≤
205.80
N), intermediate (205.80
N
<
SSF
<
254.80
N), and tough (SSF
≥
254.80
N). With a leave-one-out cross-validation procedure, the model predicted the three tenderness categories with a 96.4% accuracy. All of the tough samples were correctly identified. Our results indicate that hyperspectral imaging has considerable promise for predicting beef tenderness.
Recent breakthroughs in cryogenic silicon detector technology allow for the observation of single electron-hole pairs released via particle interactions within the target material. This implies ...sensitivity to energy depositions as low as the smallest band gap, which is ∼ 1.2 eV for silicon, and therefore sensitivity to eV / c2-scale bosonic dark matter and to thermal dark matter at masses below 100 MeV / c2. Various interaction channels that can probe the lowest currently accessible masses in direct searches are related to standard photoelectric absorption. In any of these respective dark matter signal models any uncertainty on the photoelectric absorption cross section is propagated into the resulting exclusion limit or into the significance of a potential observation. Using first-time precision measurements of the photoelectric absorption cross section in silicon recently performed at Stanford University, this article examines the importance having accurate knowledge of this parameter at low energies and cryogenic temperatures for these dark matter searches.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of feeding high-protein corn distillers grains on fresh beef quality. Steers (n = 60) were fed one of five diets for 190 d (six pens ...with 10 cattle/pen/diet): a corn control (Control), 40% high-protein dry distillers grains plus solubles (HP-DDGS), 40% dry distillers grains plus solubles (DDGS), 40% wet distillers grains plus solubles (WDGS), or 40% bran plus solubles (Bran). Eighteen Choice carcasses (three cattle per pen) were randomly selected within each treatment; however, two carcasses were lost during carcass selection. Strip loins (Longissimus lumborum, IMPS # 180) were collected, divided into three equal portions, and aged for 2, 9, or 23 d. Steaks were fabricated following each aging period and placed under retail display (RD) conditions for 0, 4, or 7 d. Pen was the experimental unit. Hot carcass weight at harvest was 391 kg (SD 31.6 kg). Dietary treatment had no effect on tenderness (Warner–Bratzler shear force) within each aging period (P > 0.05). After 7 d of RD, following all aging periods, steaks from cattle fed HP-DDGS had the greatest visual discoloration except for DDGS and Bran after 23 d (P < 0.05). The steaks from cattle fed HP-DDGS had lower (P < 0.05) redness (a*) values than all other treatments following 7 d of RD. Lipid oxidation increased (P < 0.001) during RD at all aging periods, as measured via thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBARS). A day of RD-by-dietary treatment effect (P < 0.001) was observed for lipid oxidation. After 7 d of RD, steaks from cattle fed HP-DDGS had higher TBARS than all other treatments except WDGS (P < 0.01). A trend was found for sarcomere length (P = 0.07), with steaks from cattle fed Bran having the longest sarcomere length compared with all other treatments. An aging effect was found for free calcium content (P < 0.001) where steaks aged 9 and 23 d had significantly higher levels of free calcium than those aged 2 d. There was a tendency (P = 0.07) that steaks from cattle fed WDGS contained more free calcium than steaks from cattle fed DDGS or Bran. Although there were no statistical differences, there was a trend (P = 0.07) that steaks from cattle fed HP-DDGS had higher levels of PUFAs and C18:2. These results suggest that feeding high protein distillers grains has no detriment on tenderness, but may alter the lipid profile of the muscle, resulting in decreased color stability, increased lipid oxidation, and decreased shelf life.
To fully characterize properties of the muscles of the beef chuck and round, and to reveal potential opportunities to upgrade the value, 39 different muscles were dissected from 142 beef carcasses ...differing in carcass weight, yield grade, and quality grade. Numerous physical and chemical properties of the muscles were determined. Muscle effects were observed for all traits (objective color, expressible moisture, proximate composition, emulsion capacity, pH, total collagen content, total heme-iron concentration, and Warner–Bratzler shear force). USDA quality grade generally had the most effect on muscle traits, with carcass weight and yield grade having lesser effects. These muscle profile data will allow for more informed decisions to be made in the selection of individual muscles from the beef chuck and round for the production of value-added products.
•Hyperspectral images of ribeye muscle on hanging beef carcasses were acquired in packing plants.•On an average, hyperspectral beef image acquisition time was twelve seconds.•Images acquired at 2-day ...postmortem predicted the 14-day tenderness classes.•Per a third-party validation, the tenderness certification accuracy was 87.6%.•Successful implementation of this technology will add value to beef products.
A prototype hyperspectral image acquisition system (λ=400–1000nm) was developed to acquire images of exposed ribeye muscle on hanging beef carcasses in commercial beef packing or slaughter plants and to classify beef based on tenderness. Hyperspectral images (n=338) of ribeye muscle on hanging beef carcasses of 2-day postmortem were acquired in two regional beef packing plants in the U.S. After image acquisition, a strip steak was cut from each carcass, vacuum packaged, aged for 14days, cooked, and slice shear force values were collected as a measure of tenderness. Different hyperspectral image features namely descriptive statistical features, wavelet features, gray level co-occurrence matrix features, Gabor features, Laws’ texture features, and local binary pattern features, were extracted after reducing the spectral dimension of the images using principal component analysis. The features extracted from the 2-day images were used to develop tenderness classification models for forecasting the 14-day beef tenderness. Evaluation metrics such as tender certification accuracy, overall accuracy, and a custom defined metric called accuracy index were used to compare the tenderness classification models. Based on a third-party true validation with 174 samples, the model developed with the gray level co-occurrence matrix features outperformed the other models and achieved a tenderness certification accuracy of 87.6%, overall accuracy of 59.2%, and an accuracy index of 62.9%. The prototype hyperspectral image acquisition system developed in this study shows promise in classifying beef based on tenderness.
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