Effect of a beating process,as a means of reducing salt content in Chinese-style meatballs (kung-wan): A physico-chemical and textural study

Two different meat-cutting methods were used to prepare kung-wans in an attempt to produce low-salt products while retaining the same, or improved, textural and physicochemical properties of the standard high-salt formulation. The level of salt and the processing method significantly affected color, cooking yield, texture and changes in the secondary structures of proteins. Improved salt levels resulted in firmer texture. At the same salt levels, compared with chopping, the beating method resulted in higher L^?-values, improved cooking yields and changes in the β-sheet content of the proteins, which resulted in an improved product with better texture. Using the beating process, the kung-wans prepared with 1% and 2% salt had similar L^?-values, cooking yield and texture, and were better than those prepared by chopping with 2% salt. Overall, the beating process enabled lowering of the salt content, making the kung-wans more hard, brittle and elastic.     

Stress effects on stability and diffusion of H in W: A first-principles study

We perform first-principles calculations to investigate the stress effects on stability and diffusion of H in W. Both the solution energy and the diffusion barrier of H decrease with increasing tensile stress. We show that the stress will not alter the site preference and the relative stability, with ∼0.4 eV stress-independent energy difference between the TIS and the OIS. We demonstrate the solution and the diffusion of H in W becomes more difficult under the applied compressive stress, which theoretically provides a possible way to suppress the H retention in W.     

Effect of O impurity on structure and mechanical properties of NiAl intermetallics: A first-principles study

We have investigated the effects of O on the structure and mechanical properties of NiAl intermetallics using a first-principles pseudopotential total-energy method based on the density functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation. We found that the impurity O atom can either replace Ni atom or go into the tetrahedron interstitial site depending on the surrounding environment. In both cases, O tends to form an Al₂O₃-like tetrahedron structure with its nearest Al or Ni atoms, leading to the formation of the stronger O–Al bond containing covalent component. We demonstrate that the presence of O will cause an increase of the brittleness and a decrease of the ductility of NiAl based on the calculated elastic constants and the empirical criterions for both substitutional and interstitial cases. Our calculations provide a way to suppress the negative effect of O by adding the alloying element with lower electronegativity than that of Al.     

A comprehensive review on molecular mechanism of defective dry-cured ham with excessive pastiness,adhesiveness, and bitterness by proteomics insights

Excessive bitterness, pastiness, and adhesiveness are the main organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham, which often cause a lot of financial losses to manufacturers and seriously damage the quality of the product. These sensory and textural defects are related to the protein degradation of dry-cured ham. Proteomics shows great potential to improve our understanding of the molecular mechanism of sensory and textural defects and identify biomarkers for monitoring their quality traits. This review presents some of the major achievements and considerations in organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham by proteomics analysis in the recent decades and gives an overview about how to correct sensory and textural defects of dry-cured ham. Proteomics reveals that muscle proteins derived from myofibril and cytoskeleton and involved in metabolic enzymes and oxygen transport have been identified as potential biomarkers in defective dry-cured ham. Relatively high residual activities of cathepsin B and L are responsible for the excessive degradation of these protein biomarkers in defective dry-cured ham. Ultrasound-assisted mild thermal or high-pressure treatment shows a good correction for the organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham by changing microstructure and conformation of muscle proteins by accelerating degradation of proteins and polypeptides into free amino acids.     

Reliable guaranteed variance filtering against sensor failures

This paper presents a solution to a reliable filtering problem with error variance specifications for both continuous- and discrete-time systems. The filtering error variance in the sensor failure cases is guaranteed to be less than a given upper bound while the performance in the nominal case is optimized. A convergent iterative algorithm based on linear matrix inequality (LMI) is given to obtain the solution. The algorithm solves the problem without introducing additional conservativeness, and it is shown to get better performance and be less conservative compared with traditional LMI approaches. A numerical example is given to show the advantages of our approach over existing techniques.     

State feedback control of continuous-time T-S fuzzy systems via switched fuzzy controllers

This paper studies the problem of state feedback control of continuous-time T-S fuzzy systems. Switched fuzzy controllers are exploited in the control design, which are switched based on the values of membership functions, and the control scheme is an extension of the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme. Sufficient conditions for designing switched state feedback controllers are obtained with meeting an H_∞ norm bound requirement and quadratic D stability constraints. It is shown that the new control design method provides less conservative results than the corresponding ones via the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Raman spectroscopic study of heat-induced gelation of pork myofibrillar proteins and its relationship with textural characteristic

Structural changes, textural properties and their relationships in pork myofibrillar proteins (PMP) were studied by Raman spectroscopy, texture profile analysis (TPA) and principal component analysis (PCA). Raman spectroscopy analysis revealed the occurrence of secondary structural changes in myofibrillar proteins. Modifications in the amide I (1600-1700 cm(-1)) and amide III (1200-1300 cm(-1)) regions indicated a significant (p<0.05) decrease in α-helix content, accompanied by a significant (p<0.05) increase in β-sheets, β-turns and random coil content. Texture property changes were also determined by TPA. All these features contributed to the formation of strong, irreversible heat-induced gels. The application of a dimensionality reducing technique such as PCA proved to be useful to determine the most influential properties of heat-induced gel. Significant (p<0.05) correlations were found between these structural changes and the textural characteristic (hardness) in the pork myofibrillar proteins system by PCA.