Effects of feeding elevated concentrations of monounsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E to swine on characteristics of dry cured hams

Thirty Large White×Great York gilts were fed six experimental diets containing three levels of poly and monounsaturated fatty acids. Within each dietary fat treatment, one group was fed a basal level of vitamin E (20 mg α-tocopheryl acetate/kg diet) and the other group received a supplemented level (200 mg α-tocopheryl acetate/kg diet). Concentration of α-tocopherol was significantly higher in hams from pigs fed supplemented dietary levels of vitamin E (P<0.0001), but no significant effect of dietary fat was observed. Dietary vitamin E supplementation reduced the concentration of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances after 9 days storage of sliced samples (P<0.0001), while dietary fat source showed no significant effect. Significantly lower oxidation was observed in ham homogenates from pigs fed higher concentrations of monounsaturated fatty acids after 120 min of incubation under pro-oxidant conditions (P=0.013). No effect of dietary treatment was observed in ham volatile aldehyde profile. No significant effect of dietary vitamin E was observed on surface redness during storage, but a significant effect was observed for luminosity after 7 days of storage (P=0.033). Hams from pigs fed diets enriched in monounsaturated fatty acid showed higher ‘a’ values (P=0.040) in stored sliced samples. Sensory evaluation revealed a significant effect of dietary vitamin E on redness of ham slices (P<0.001). Dietary supplementation with vitamin E also produced a significantly higher odour and flavour intensity (P=0.006 and P=0.01 respectively). Dry cured ham samples from pigs fed higher amounts of monounsaturated fatty acids showed a significantly higher consistency fat than those from pigs fed polyunsaturated fatty acids.     

Sustainability of meat production beyond carbon footprint: a synthesis of case studies from grazing systems in Uruguay

Livestock production has been challenged as a large contributor to climate change, and carbon footprint has become a widely used measure of cattle environmental impact. This analysis of fifteen beef grazing systems in Uruguay quantifies the range of variation of carbon footprint, and the trade-offs with other relevant environmental variables, using a partial life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Using carbon footprint as the primary environmental indicator has several limitations: different metrics (GWP vs. GTP) may lead to different conclusions, carbon sequestration from soils may drastically affect the results, and systems with lower carbon footprint may have higher energy use, soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, pesticide ecotoxicity, and impact on biodiversity. A multidimensional assessment of sustainability of meat production is therefore needed to inform decision makers. There is great potential to improve grazing livestock systems productivity while reducing carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, and conserving biodiversity.     

Impact of Essential Oils on the Taste Acceptance of Tomato Juice,Vegetable Soup,or Poultry Burgers

Despite the vast body of available literature on the possibilities of essential oils (EOs) as food preservatives or functional ingredients, the sensory impact of their addition to foods has barely been approached. This work focuses on the hedonic taste acceptance of 3 food products (tomato juice, vegetable soup, and poultry burgers) when they are incorporated with potentially antimicrobial concentrations (20 to 200 μL/L) of 6 selected EOs (lemon, pennyroyal mint, thyme, and rosemary) and individual compounds (carvacrol, p‐cymene). Although addition of 20 μL/L of pennyroyal mint or lemon EO did not change the taste acceptance of tomato juice, higher concentrations of these compounds or any concentration of the other 4 compounds did. In vegetable soup, the tolerance limit for rosemary EO, thyme EO, carvacrol, or p‐cymene was 20 μL/L, while the addition of 200 μL/L of lemon EO was accepted. Tolerance limits in poultry burgers were established in 20 μL/L for carvacrol and thyme EOs, 100 μL/L for pennyroyal mint EO and p‐cymene, and 200 μL/L for lemon and rosemary EOs. Moreover, incorporation of pennyroyal mint EO to tomato juice or poultry burgers, and enrichment of vegetable soup with lemon EO, could contribute to the development of food products with an improved sensory appeal.     

Hydration/dehydration behaviour of geosynthetic clay liners in the Antarctic environment

This paper examines the hydration/dehydration behaviour of geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) under polar conditions for four simulated conditions experienced at Australia's Casey Station in Antarctica: (a) hydration during summer, (b) dehydration during a winter-summer cycle, (c) hydration through a fine Antarctic soil, and (d) hydration through a coarse Antarctic soil. Hydration during the summer is found to occur if there is direct contact with the water table. In contrast, the low relative humidity of the environment tends to dehydrate the GCL along a path that depends on the field conditions the GCL is exposed to. Hydration from either fine or coarse Antarctica soil is function of the original gravimetric water content of the subgrade soil and its grain size distribution as well as the low relative humidity prevailing in Antarctica.     

Are human beings humean robots?

David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, conceives reason as the slave of the passions, which implies that human reason has predetermined objectives it cannot question. An essential element of an algorithm running on a computational machine (or Logical Computing Machine, as Alan Turing calls it) is its having a predetermined purpose: an algorithm cannot question its purpose, because it would cease to be an algorithm. Therefore, if self-determination is essential to human intelligence, then human beings are neither Humean beings, nor computational machines. We examine also some objections to the Turing Test as a model to understand human intelligence.     

Design of a holonic remote monitoring and diagnosis system for fleet management

The main challenges in sensor network based monitoring systems are the control and management of complex modules and elements interacting among them and with the environment. This work presents and validates a design model for monitoring and diagnosis systems based on sensor networks exploiting potentialities of the holonic approach. The holonic structure is designed with the final goal to guarantee the performances and the functionalities required by the application scenario of road and work vehicles rental companies. Actually they are interacting and geographically distributed systems. The capabilities of cooperation among modules, hierarchical organization, modularity and reliability of holonic design are exploited. Diagnosis of monitored events is coded and validated through an ad hoc ontology. The design does not give assumption on the physical architecture of holons but only on their capacities/properties, therefore it can be reused in different physical and hardware resources. The case studies confirm the capability of our design to be quickly transferred to programmers and coded in firmware and software.     

MASMICRO micro-/nano-materials processing, analysis, inspection and materials knowledge management

The main goals of the ‘Material Innovation and Testing’ within MASMICRO are the identification of the miniature/micro-materials which are formable, development of new materials for forming and machining, development of an integrated material-testing system and study of material properties for design/analysis applications. Examples of collaborative work and results are presented regarding the processing of functional electrospun polymer micro-/nano-fibre structures and the characterization of their interface properties with tribological testing. By means of optical coherence tomography, a non-destructive inspection approach for these micro-/nano-structured webs was developed and it is also documented in the paper. Further, an application example of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is given, concerning the modelling of nano-fibres material behaviour under tensile testing. It is shown how artificial intelligence approaches (knowledge-based systems—KBS and ANNs) can support, significantly, the representation and processing of materials’ knowledge of both, symbolic type, in the case of KBS, and algorithmic type, in the case of ANNs, for the cases dealt within the MASMICRO.