The Impact of Household Refrigeration Storage Conditions on the Shelf Life of Fruits and Vegetables

Approximately 20% of fruit and vegetable production is lost annually due to post-harvest spoilage. Technologies exist that reduce the spoilage during transport and storage, such as ethylene-permeable bags and controlled environment crispers. Although methods exist for controlling environmental conditions to a closer tolerance, these are currently cost-prohibitive. This research focused on the direct relationship between produce spoilage and tightly controlled humidity and temperature settings, with the goal of generating new information capable of driving innovation in the field. The objectives of this research were to store a model fresh fruit (strawberries) and a vegetable (romaine lettuce) in an environmental chamber capable of maintaining and reporting specified humidity and temperature conditions, and quantifying spoilage effects at various temperature and humidity levels. Ultimately, the goal is to provide the industry with a better understanding of the intersection between controllable food storage conditions, microbial spoilage, and food safety. Nine spoilage tests were completed at 7yC, 5yC and 3yC at relative humidities of 95%, 75% and 50% (see Figure 1). The overall results can be seen in Table 2 and the summary is as follows: Romaine lettuce heads lasted the longest, and stayed the freshest at high humidity (~95%), with temperature having a lesser impact. If humidity control is not possible, aseptically separating leaves and storing them individually in sterile, sealable bags will enhance organoleptic quality at low temperatures (~3yC), although this is probably not possible in practice. Strawberries stored at low temperature and humidity (~3yC and ~50%) resisted molding the longest, and lost firmness after 1-2 weeks. To balance the preservation of freshness and firmness, storage at low temperature and high humidity (~3yC and ~95%) was found to be ideal. Initial microbial count had important impacts on mold growth rate. Either high mold inoculum or metabiotic interactions between spoilage bacteria and molds may be responsible for these effects

Joint officer supportability model : joint education and training of U.S. Navy aviators

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the current joint education and training track of Joint Specialty Officers (JSOs) for U.S. Navy aviators in order to forecast the number of future JSO eligible officers within this community. This thesis will consider two separate training paths for officers to complete in order to become JSO eligible. The mos preferred educates officers prior to assignment to a joint billet. The second path allows officers to complete their joint assignment prior to entering joint education. Recent historical transition, continuation and promotion rates by years of service and pay grade are used to forecast future officer output. These various rates and variables are applied within a PC-based spreadsheet to provide a user friendly joint officer management tool.http://archive.org/details/jointofficersupp1094532177NAU.S. Navy (U.S.N.) authorApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Uncertainty Analysis of Experimental Discharge Coefficients in Additively Manufactured Liquid Injector Elements

Screening of two additively manufactured liquid injector designs was conducted in the UAH high pressure spray facility. Four variants of each geometry with slightly different dimensions were obtained from eleven separate commercial additive manufacturing services. The devices were manufactured from Inconel 625 using the selective laser melting (SLM) powder bed process. The devices were cold flowed with water over a range of relevant pressure drops (75 psi to 1500 psi) to produce water flow rates from 0.037 to 1.75 lbm/s into ambient back pressure. Discharge coefficients determined from the testing along with the associated uncertainties provide insight into characteristic flow performance variabilities that can be expected from the SLM process for similar geometries

Uncertainty Analysis of Experimental Discharge Coefficients in Additively Manufactured Liquid Injector Elements

No abstract availabl

Government in America: people politics and policy

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