Influence on meat colour of spray-chilling the surface of pig carcasses

The present study examines the influence of spray-chilling on the surface colour of the musculature, skin and spinal spongiosa of swine carcass halves. Thirty swine halves, of the commercial classification U, were divided into six experimental groups and chilled under varying conditions over a period of 20 h. Three of the experimental groups were sprayed periodically with 810 g drinking water within a 4-h chilling phase. The other three served as unsprayed control groups. Oxygenation of the myoglobin to oxymyoglobin was accelerated by spraying the surface of the musculature. Spray-chilling conditions had no influence on the formation of metmyoglobin. The colour of the sprayed ham musculature became lighter after 4 h of chilling. Red- and yellow-values decreased. There were no significant differences in the colour values after 20 h of chilling. The surface of the skin became lighter after spray-chilling. The spraying had no influence on the colour of the spinal spongiosa.     

Write between the lines: Electronic outlining and the organization of text ideas

Writing is an important, complex skill which could be enhanced through the effective use of writing tools that are incorporated in word processors. The main objective of this study was to examine the effect of (repeated) electronic outlining on the quality of students’ writing products and perceived mental effort. The study also investigated how students appropriate and appreciate the outline tool. Data were collected from 58 ninth-grade students who wrote two argumentative texts about a topic they had previously discussed during several class sessions, meaning that ideas were generated and clustered beforehand. Students’ writing products were scored for Total Text Structure, Structure Presentation, and Hierarchical Elaboration of Arguments. Results reveal that first-time tool-use had no significant effect on students’ writing products and perceived mental effort. However, repeated use positively affected Structure Presentation and led to decreased perceived mental effort, but no significant effect was found on Total Text Structure and Hierarchical Elaboration of Arguments. Answers to a retrospective questionnaire showed that students quickly appropriated the tool with tool appreciation increasing with repeated use. This study suggests that in order to profit from electronic outlining, it is important to practice using the outline tool and to use it for complex tasks, requiring idea generation and organization.     

Opening up the “black box” of medical image segmentation with statistical shape models

The importance of medical image segmentation increases in fields like treatment planning or computer aided diagnosis. For high quality automatic segmentations, algorithms based on statistical shape models (SSMs) are often used. They segment the image in an iterative way. However, segmentation experts and other users can only asses the final segmentation results, as the segmentation is performed in a “black box manner”. Users cannot get deeper knowledge on how the (possibly bad) output was produced. Moreover, they do not see whether the final output is the result of a stabilized process. We present a novel Visual Analytics method, which offers this desired deeper insight into the image segmentation. Our approach combines interactive visualization and automatic data analysis. It allows the expert to assess the quality development (convergence) of the model both on global (full organ) and local (organ areas, landmarks) level. Thereby, local patterns in time and space, e.g., non-converging parts of the organ during the segmentation, can be identified. The localization and specifications of such problems helps the experts creating segmentation algorithms to identify algorithm drawbacks and thus it may point out possible ways how to improve the algorithms systematically. We apply our approach on real-world data showing its usefulness for the analysis of the segmentation process with statistical shape models.     

Designing on‐demand education for simultaneous development of domain‐specific and self‐directed learning skills

On‐demand education enables individual learners to choose their learning pathways according to their own learning needs. They must use self‐directed learning (SDL) skills involving self‐assessment and task selection to determine appropriate pathways for learning. Learners who lack these skills must develop them because SDL skills are prerequisite to developing domain‐specific skills. This article describes the design of an on‐demand learning environment developed to enable novices to simultaneously develop their SDL and domain‐specific skills. Learners received advice on their self‐assessments and their selections of subsequent learning tasks. In the domain of system dynamics – a way to model a dynamic system and draw graphs depicting the system's behaviour over time – advice on self‐assessment is provided in a scoring rubric containing relevant performance standards. Advice on task selection indicates all relevant task aspects to be taken into account, including recommendations for suitable learning tasks which meet the individual learner's needs. This article discusses the design of the environment and the learners' perceptions of its usefulness. Most of the times, the learners found the advice appropriate and they followed it in 78% of their task selections.     

Antibacterial polyamide obtained by the incorporation of glass microparticles doped with ionic zinc and by zinc oxide nanoparticle: Evaluation with Salmonella typhimurium and Staphylococcus aureus

Food security is very important in all processes executed for the manufacture of meat in meatpacking industries. Meat security can be improved by the use of accessories produced with antimicrobial materials in the manufacture lines. In this work, the antibacterial property was incorporated in the plates of polyamide 6 by the addition of two antibacterial compounds and the antimicrobial characteristics were studied. The antibacterial materials used were glass microparticles doped with ionic zinc and zinc oxide nanoparticles. The antibacterial polyamide 6 was produced containing different percentages of antibacterial compound and its microbiological characterization was realized with the bacteria Salmonella typhimurium and Staphylococcus aureus. The distribution of the antimicrobial compound in polyamide 6 matrix was evaluated by scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy. Atomic absorption spectrometry was applied to study the migration capacity of the antibacterial compound in the aqueous medium. The results demonstrated that the polyamide 6 containing glass microparticles doped with ionic zinc present better antibacterial action than the polyamide 6 containing zinc oxide nanoparticles. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 45005.