Use of pediocin with other barriers for control of Listeria monocytogenes on ready-to-eat (RTE) processed meats

Frankfurters, in 1-link, 5-link and 10-link packages, were surface-inoculated with a 5-strain mixture of Listeria monocytogenes (3.40 or 5.20 log CFU/g) after treatment with 3,000 or 6,000 AU pediocin (in ALTA(TM) 2341) per link (Pdn-3000 or Pdn-6000). The frankfurters were vacuum-packaged, after which the packages were heated in hot water at 71°C, 81°C or 96°C for 30, 60 or 120 s or irradiated at 1.2 or 2.3 (single-link or 5-link packages), and 1.4 or 3.5 kGy (10-link packages). L. monocytogenes was enumerated following the treatments. Selected treatments were subsequently evaluated during storage at 4°C, 10°C and 25°C for up to 12 weeks.;L. monocytogenes on frankfurters was reduced by pediocin alone, by pediocin combined with post-packaging thermal pasteurization (PPTP) or by irradiation pasteurization (PPIP) for all package types. To achieve a 50% reduction or more of initial inoculation numbers, the following treatments were necessary: Pdn-6000 alone, Pdn-6000 plus PPTP (≥81°C, ≥60 s), Pdn-3000 and PPIP (≥1.2 kGy), or PPIP (≥2.3 kGy) alone. Frankfurters treated with Pdn-6000 alone inhibited the growth of L. monocytogenes at 4°C for 12 weeks. Significant antilisterial, and even listericidal, effects for the combinations of Pdn-6000 and PPTP (96°C, ≥60 s) or PPIP (≥2.3 kGy) were observed. PPTP and PPIP treatments significantly (P \u3c 0.05) enhanced the antilisterial effects of pediocin. There was a significant (P \u3c 0.05) synergistic effect between pediocin and irradiation that was not observed for pediocin and thermal treatments.;Use of pediocin and other barriers (PPTP or PPIP) are effective means to control the growth of L. monocytogenes during storage at refrigeration temperatures. These treatments had greater antilisterial effects during storage at 4°C than 10°C and 25°C thus temperature remains a critical point for control of this pathogen. Smaller package types (≤5 links per packages) resulted in greater antilisterial effectiveness for PPTP treatments. While dipping or spraying are effective methods for surface treatment of frankfurters with antimicrobials, other methods such as coated casings or co-extrusion systems are much easier to use. Further work with these systems to increase the microbial impact of the antimicrobials is recommended

The Economical feasibility of computer-to-plate technology for use in magazine production

Computer-to-Plate (CTP) technology has been used for newspaper and book production and been proved successful by several print houses. However these publications are mostly printed with less color and advertisments. Therefore, these fit into the niche market of CTP technolo gy. What about magazine production? Since magazine production normally requires more color, more advertisements, higher quality, can we still make profits from this new idea without a resulting loss of quality? State-of-the-art CTP technology is capable of producing high quality images, and large format. The time savings and labor savings are the biggest advantages. In addition to this, side profits like environmental improvement may bring the graphic arts industry a new face. However, instant change of workflow for magazine production is not possible. Meantime, advertising suppliers are still providing films for combining with editorial pages. The process of translating analog format to digital format is the biggest drawback. This translation step will be continued until the change over of production workflow, which will involve advertising suppliers providing digital file instead of films. For this purpose, lots of efforts have been made through the development of Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publications (DDAP), a graphic arts industry initiative whereby public domain accredited standards for the open process integration inherent to the structure of developing and delivering digital advertising material For example, the file standard for data compression and data transfer has been specified. This will help to promote the development of CTP technology. Many articles have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of CTP technology and promoted that CTP is definitely the future of graphic arts technology. Few of them really go into detail to provide the real figures of how much savings we can make from CTP compared to conventional methods, or how much capital investments are needed for this system. The objective of this paper is to find the cost differences of capital invest ment, material cost, labor savings and time savings. Data of material costs will mainly be collected from library research, or interviews with manufacturers. Data then will be organized and analyzed. The conclusion will provide a clear picture of economic realities of CTP through these calculations and comparisons

An Indoor Video Surveillance System with Intelligent Fall Detection Capability

This work presents a novel indoor video surveillance system, capable of detecting the falls of humans. The proposed system can detect and evaluate human posture as well. To evaluate human movements, the background model is developed using the codebook method, and the possible position of moving objects is extracted using the background and shadow eliminations method. Extracting a foreground image produces more noise and damage in this image. Additionally, the noise is eliminated using morphological and size filters and this damaged image is repaired. When the image object of a human is extracted, whether or not the posture has changed is evaluated using the aspect ratio and height of a human body. Meanwhile, the proposed system detects a change of the posture and extracts the histogram of the object projection to represent the appearance. The histogram becomes the input vector of K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) algorithm and is to evaluate the posture of the object. Capable of accurately detecting different postures of a human, the proposed system increases the fall detection accuracy. Importantly, the proposed method detects the posture using the frame ratio and the displacement of height in an image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can further improve the system performance and the fall down identification accuracy

Learning performance assessment approach using learning portfolio for e-learning systems

Learning performance assessment aims to evaluate what learners learnt during the learning process. In recent years, how to perform the learning performance assessment is a critical issue in the web-based learning field. The traditional summative evaluation can be applied to evaluate the learning performance both for the conventional classroom learning and web-based learning. However, it only considers final learning outcomes without considering the learning progress of learners. This paper proposes a learning performance assessment approach which combines four computational intelligence theories including grey relational analysis, K-means clustering method, fuzzy association rule mining and fuzzy inference to perform this task based on the learning portfolio of individual learner. Experimental results indicate that the evaluation result of proposed method is positive relevance with those of summative assessment. Namely, this method can help teachers to precisely perform the formative assessment for individual learner utilizing only the learning portfolio in web-based learning environment. 1