Cooking- and juiciness-related quality characteristics of goat and sheep meat

Significant differences exist between the quality characteristics of meat obtained from 27 sheep, Angora and Boer goat carcases, when compared. Sheep meat showed greater drip loss than goat meat and was more juicy than that of Angora and Boer goat meat. In general, Angora goat meat was found to be more juicy than Boer goat meat. Drip loss increased significantly with increased animal age. Meat of younger animals (no permanent incisors) was more juicy (initial and sustained) than that of older animals (7–8 permanent incisors). This was irrespective of whether it was obtained from sheep, Angora or Boer goats and was confirmed by the expressible moisture measurements. Higher drip, evaporation and total cooking loss were reported when carcases had increased fat content. With increasing fatness of carcases, the juiciness of the cooked cuts decreased and the expressible moisture content of the meat increased.     

Boron implantation and epitaxial regrowth studies of 6H SiC

Implantation of B has been performed into an epitaxially grown layer of 6H SiC, at two different B concentrations, 2×10¹⁶ cm⁻³ and 2×10¹⁸ cm⁻³. Subsequently, an epitaxial layer was regrown on the B implanted layer. The samples were investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). In the highly B-doped layers plate-like defects were found, associated with large strain fields, and an increased B concentration. These defects were stable at the originally implanted region during regrowth and at anneal temperatures up to 1700°C. In the samples implanted with the lower B concentration, no crystal defects could be detected by TEM. No threading dislocations or other defects were observed in the regrown epitaxial layer, which shows the possibility to grow a layer with high crystalline quality on B implanted 6H SiC. By SIMS, it was found that B piles up at the interface to the regrown layer, which could be explained by enhanced diffusion from an increased concentration of point defects created by implantation damage in the region. B is also spread out into the original crystal and in the regrown layer at a concentration of below 2×10¹⁶ cm⁻³, with a diffusion constant estimated to 1.3×10⁻¹² cm²s⁻¹. This diffusion is most probably not driven by implantation damage, but by intrinsic defects in the grown crystal. Our investigation shows that the combination of implantation and subsequent regrowth techniques could be used in SiC for building advanced device structures, with the crystal quality in the regrown layer not being deteriorated by crystal defects in the implanted region. A device process using B implantation and subsequent regrowth could on the other hand be limited by the diffusion of B.     

Au@Hg Nanoalloy Formation Through Direct Amalgamation: Structural,Spectroscopic, and Computational Evidence for Slow Nanoscale Diffusion

Dynamic core–shell nanoparticles have received increasing attention in recent years. This paper presents a detailed study of Au–Hg nanoalloys, whose composing elements show a large difference in cohesive energy. A simple method to prepare Au@Hg particles with precise control over the composition up to 15 atom% mercury is introduced, based on reacting a citrate stabilized gold sol with elemental mercury. Transmission electron microscopy shows an increase of particle size with increasing mercury content and, together with X‐ray powder diffraction, points towards the presence of a core–shell structure with a gold core surrounded by an Au–Hg solid solution layer. The amalgamation process is described by pseudo‐zero‐order reaction kinetics, which indicates slow dissolution of mercury in water as the rate determining step, followed by fast scavenging by nanoparticles in solution. Once adsorbed at the surface, slow diffusion of Hg into the particle lattice occurs, to a depth of ca. 3 nm, independent of Hg concentration. Discrete dipole approximation calculations relate the UV–vis spectra to the microscopic details of the nanoalloy structure. Segregation energies and metal distribution in the nanoalloys were modeled by density functional theory calculations. The results indicate slow metal interdiffusion at the nanoscale, which has important implications for synthetic methods aimed at core–shell particles.     

Lone‐Pair‐Induced Covalency as the Cause of Temperature‐ and Field‐Induced Instabilities in Bismuth Sodium Titanate

Bismuth sodium titanate (BNT)‐derived materials have seen a flurry of research interest in recent years because of the existence of extended strain under applied electric fields, surpassing that of lead zirconate titanate (PZT), the most commonly used piezoelectric. The underlying physical and chemical mechanisms responsible for such extraordinary strain levels in BNT are still poorly understood, as is the nature of the successive phase transitions. A comprehensive explanation is proposed here, combining the short‐range chemical and structural sensitivity of in situ Raman spectroscopy (under an applied electric field and temperature) with macroscopic electrical measurements. The results presented clarify the causes for the extended strain, as well as the peculiar temperature‐dependent properties encountered in this system. The underlying cause is determined to be mediated by the complex‐like bonding of the octahedra at the center of the perovskite: a loss of hybridization of the 6s² bismuth lone pair interacting with the oxygen p‐orbitals occurs, which triggers both the field‐induced phase transition and the loss of macroscopic ferroelectric order at the depolarization temperature.     

Variational optical flow computation in real time.

This paper investigates the usefulness of bidirectional multigrid methods for variational optical flow computations. Although these numerical schemes are among the fastest methods for solving equation systems, they are rarely applied in the field of computer vision. We demonstrate how to employ those numerical methods for the treatment of variational optical flow formulations and show that the efficiency of this approach even allows for real-time performance on standard PCs. As a representative for variational optic flow methods, we consider the recently introduced combined local-global method. It can be considered as a noise-robust generalization of the Horn and Schunck technique. We present a decoupled, as well as a coupled, version of the classical Gauss-Seidel solver, and we develop several multgrid implementations based on a discretization coarse grid approximation. In contrast, with standard bidirectional multigrid algorithms, we take advantage of intergrid transfer operators that allow for nondyadic grid hierarchies. As a consequence, no restrictions concerning the image size or the number of traversed levels have to be imposed. In the experimental section, we juxtapose the developed multigrid schemes and demonstrate their superior performance when compared to unidirectional multgrid methods and nonhierachical solvers. For the well-known 316 x 252 Yosemite sequence, we succeeded in computing the complete set of dense flow fields in three quarters of a second on a 3.06-GHz Pentium4 PC. This corresponds to a frame rate of 18 flow fields per second which outperforms the widely-used Gauss-Seidel method by almost three orders of magnitude.     

Progress on large area n‐type silicon solar cells with front laser doping and a rear emitter

We report on the progress of imec's n‐type passivated emitter, rear totally diffused rear junction silicon solar cells. Selective laser doping has been introduced in the flow, allowing the implementation of a shallow diffused front surface field and a reduction of the recombination current in the contact area. Simplifications have been implemented towards a more industrial annealing sequence, by replacing expensive forming gas annealing steps with a belt furnace annealing. By applying these improvements, together with an advanced texturing process and emitter passivation by atomic layer deposition of Al₂O₃, 22.5% efficient cells (three busbars) have been realized on commercial 156 · 156 mm² Czochralski‐Si. This result has been independently confirmed by ISE CalLab. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatio-Temporal Correlations in Memristive Crossbar Arrays due to Thermal Effects

Memristive valence change memory (VCM) cells show a strong non-linearity in the switching kinetics which is induced by a temperature increase. In this respect, thermal crosstalk can be observed in highly integrated crossbar arrays which may impact the resistance state of adjacent devices. Additionally, due to the thermal capacitance, a VCM cell can remain thermally active after a pulse and thus influence the temperature conditions for a possible subsequent pulse. By using a finite element model of a crossbar array, it is shown that spatio-temporal thermal correlations can occur and are capable of affecting the resistive state of adjacent cells. This new functional behavior can potentially be used for future neuromorphic computing applications.     

Ray contribution masks for structure adaptive sinogram filtering

The patient dose in computed tomography (CT) imaging is linked to measurement noise. Various noise-reduction techniques have been developed that adapt structure preserving filters like anisotropic diffusion or bilateral filters to CT noise properties. We introduce a structure adaptive sinogram (SAS) filter that incorporates the specific properties of the CT measurement process. It uses a point-based forward projector to generate a local structure representation called ray contribution mask (RCM). The similarities between neighboring RCMs are used in an enhanced variant of the bilateral filtering concept, where the photometric similarity is replaced with the structural similarity. We evaluate the performance in four different scenarios: The robustness against reconstruction artifacts is demonstrated by a scan of a high-resolution-phantom. Without changing the modulation transfer function (MTF) nor introducing artifacts, the SAS filter reduces the noise level by 13.6%. The image sharpness and noise reduction capabilities are visually assessed on in vivo patient scans and quantitatively evaluated on a simulated phantom. Unlike a standard bilateral filter, the SAS filter preserves edge information and high-frequency components of organ textures well. It shows a homogeneous noise reduction behavior throughout the whole frequency range. The last scenario uses a simulated edge phantom to estimate the filter MTF for various contrasts: the noise reduction for the simple edge phantom exceeds 80%. For low contrasts at 55 Hounsfield units (HU), the mid-frequency range is slightly attenuated, at higher contrasts of approximately 100 HU and above, the MTF is fully preserved.     

Windenergieausbau als Teil der Ökostromentwicklung

The new law for the support of electricity produced by renewable sources in Austria (Ökostromgesetz) which came into force with the beginning of 2003, shows its impacts already after the first months. Investments into wind power have increased considerably. These will be accompanied by activities for electricity production by biomass and biogas. The 4%-target quota will probably be reached earlier than the 2008 target period of the law.