Sensory evaluation of various lamb meat foods by judging consumers

Four kinds of lamb meat foods (Wiener sausage, ham, roasted meat, and roasted leg) were developed based on 8 different genotypes to improve lamb meat quality and quantity, and to study the differences among them. The stringiness, flavour, and odour of the products were judged in food sensory evaluation by a total of 265 (60% male and 40% female) randomly selected consumers. In stringiness and flavour five (from 1 to 5), and concerning odour three (from 1 to 3) categories were created according to decreasing quality. The consumers represented different age groups: below 20 years, between 21–30, 31–40, 41–50, 51–60, 61–70, and above 70 years. The groups of consumers were involved in sheep farming, other animal farming, other agriculture sector, industry, catering, education, other service; administrative department of the state, were students, and others. Analyses of variance were calculated to estimate the effects of the genotype of lamb, the gender, age, and occupation of judging consumers on the sensory evaluation of the meat foods. In conclusion, new lamb meat foods were highly appreciated by consumers, who made definite distinctions among genotypes according to flavour, stinginess, and odour. There were significant interactions between gender, age, and occupation of consumers as well as sensory evaluation of various lamb meat foods

Guest editors' note

The introduction of the volume by the guest editors

Guest editors' note

The introduction of the volume by the guest editors

Visualizing Process Design, Operation and Failure Impacts through State Space Representations

PresentationVisualization can improve insights into choices made in early stages of design, particularly in relation to the impact of system related failures. Improved decision making can lead to higher commitment to inherently safer designs, more fault tolerant systems and increased operational resilience. This paper proposes a means to visualize the function of a design in terms of the state space defined by multiple capabilities possessed by the individual components that constitute the system. Capability is related to the abilities of the component to affect the states of the system, primarily the properties of mass and energy streams that flow through the system. A representation that is constructed from these capability vectors maps out the potential space in which the system can normally operate. It also shows the impact on that space when selected capabilities are degraded or lost. The visualization benefits of the proposed methodology will be displayed with an industrial case study. A typical supply line configuration to a fuel storage facility is investigated to show the fundamental concepts and to assess the utility of the ideas within conceptual process design and operations

Occurrence of Grey Mould on Bucida buceras, a Tree of Subtropical Origin, under Indoor Conditions - A Disease Note

In December 2012 then in the following winter season, the occurrence of whitish mycelial coat was observed on the collar of 3- to 6-m high Bucida buceras trees grown in hydrocultures to decorate a spacious indoor community space in Vienna. (This plant [shown in Fig. 1] belongs to Combretaceae, Myrtales and commonly named black olive tree, bullet tree, gregorywood and oxhorn bucida.) The mycelium-infested area of the bark appeared to be water-soaked. Near the surface of the potting mix (earth ball embedded in clay pebbles), the roots were also covered with whitish mycelia (Fig. 2). Over the winter season when the indoor temperature increased from 20 °C to 25 °C, these symptoms were unnoticeable. Regardless of the season, the rhizosphere contained numbers of sclerotia, dark-grey, globose and 8–12 mm in diameter that occasionally developed rhizomorph-like mycelial cords. Direct plating of mycelium fragments from the bark and sclerotia from the rhizosphere onto potato dextrose agar amended with ampicillin (500 mg/l) eventually yielded pure fungal cultures of similar characteristics. Cultures routinely incubated in the dark developed white and submerged colonies with sparse aerial mycelia. The fungus grew well between 10 °C and 25 °C, and failed to grow at either 5 °C or 32 °C. The optimal growth was measured at 20 °C with an average radial growth rate of 11 mm per day. After 10 to 12 days, a ring of sclerotia begun to develop near the edge of the colonies; they turned dark grey and sized 3–8 mm. Rather misleadingly, neither conidia, nor sexual spores were observed in these cultures. However, when the fungus was cultured in natural light under laboratory conditions at 25 °C, a completely different colony pattern was observed; it was cottony, greyish then dark grey, and produced abundant hyaline conidia borne on grey, branching tree-like conidiophores. Conidia were one-celled and egg-shaped, and their dimensions fell in the range of 9.89–14.63 (11.48±0.31) µm×7.05–10.05 (8.31±0.20) µm. These features concurred with those characterising the polyphagous grey mould fungus Botryotinia fuckeliana (anamorph: Botrytis cinerea) (Elad et al., 2007). The ITS1/ITS2 including the 5.8S subunit of rDNA of one of the isolates were amplified with primers ITS1-F/ITS4, then the PCR products were sequenced. The ITS sequence determined in this way was identical to known sequences of B. fuckeliana strains, e.g. that of CBS 131.28 (GenBank accession number: KF859918), the type material of Botrytis cinerea f. lini, DAOM 231372 (GenBank accession number: KF859924) and so on. Pathogenicity tests resulted in rapidly (within 2 weeks) developing disease symptoms around the site of wound inoculation with a 5-mm-diametre mycelial agar plug: fruit rot on apple and lemon in the laboratory, and sunken lesions on stems of hydrocultured ornamental plants such as the herbaceous Monstera deliciosa and the woody Dracena marginata. To fulfill Koch’s postulates, the fungus was re-isolated from symptomatic apple fruit, and was found to exhibit the afore-mentioned morpho-physiological characteristics. Inoculation test on Bucida was not performed because of the costly risk i.e., the sale price of the trees is € 3 to 10 thousand. Consequently, the actual sensitivity of Bucida to grey mould remains uncertain, so much the more because this plant species has not been recorded as a host of the pathogen or other important parasitic fungi in natural (subtropical) environment (e.g. Whelburg et al., 1975). To our knowledge, this report is the first description of Botryotinia fuckeliana on Bucida buceras. In addition to the fact that periodic emergence of fungal mycelia on the trunk impairs the tree’s aesthetic appearance, the sclerotia resting in the potting mix may cause more serious problems in the long term. However, it cannot be precluded that the elevated indoor temperature reduces disease progression and thus the economic importance of the pathogen on this plant

Diffusion in normal and critical transient chaos

In this paper we investigate deterministic diffusion in systems which are spatially extended in certain directions but are restricted in size and open in other directions, consequently particles can escape. We introduce besides the diffusion coefficient D on the chaotic repeller a coefficient ${\hat D}$ which measures the broadening of the distribution of trajectories during the transient chaotic motion. Both coefficients are explicitly computed for one-dimensional models, and they are found to be different in most cases. We show furthermore that a jump develops in both of the coefficients for most of the initial distributions when we approach the critical borderline where the escape rate equals the Liapunov exponent of a periodic orbit.Comment: 4 pages Revtex file in twocolumn format with 2 included postscript figure

Source apportionment of carbonaceous chemical species to fossil fuel combustion, biomass burning and biogenic emissions by a coupled radiocarbon-levoglucosan marker method

An intensive aerosol measurement and sample collection campaign was conducted in central Budapest in a mild winter for 2 weeks. The online instruments included an FDMS-TEOM, RT-OC/EC analyser, DMPS, gas pollutant analysers and meteorological sensors. The aerosol samples were collected on quartz fibre filters by a low-volume sampler using the tandem filter method. Elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), levoglucosan, mannosan, galactosan, arabitol and mannitol were determined, and radiocarbon analysis was performed on the aerosol samples. Median atmospheric concentrations of EC, OC and PM2.5 mass were 0.97, 4.9 and 25 mu g m(-3), respectively. The EC and organic matter (1.6 x OC) accounted for 4.8 and 37 %, respectively, of the PM2.5 mass. Fossil fuel (FF) combustion represented 36% of the total carbon (TC = EC + OC) in the PM2.5 size fraction. Biomass burning (BB) was a major source (40 %) for the OC in the PM2.5 size fraction, and a substantial source (11 %) for the PM10 mass. We propose and apply here a novel, straightforward, coupled radiocarbon-levoglucosan marker method for source apportionment of the major carbonaceous chemical species. The contributions of EC and OC from FF combustion (ECFF and OCFF to the TC were 11.0 and 25 %, respectively, EC and OC from BB (ECBB and OCBB were responsible for 5.8 and 34 %, respectively, of the TC, while the OC from biogenic sources (OCBIO made up 24% of the TC. The overall relative uncertainty of the OCBIO and OCBB contributions was assessed to be up to 30 %, while the relative uncertainty for the other apportioned species is expected to be below 20 %. Evaluation of the apportioned atmospheric concentrations revealed some of their important properties and relationships among them. ECFF and OCFF were associated with different FF combustion sources. Most ECFF was emitted by vehicular road traffic, while the contribution of non-vehicular sources such as domestic and industrial heating or cooking using gas, oil or coal to OCFF was substantial. The mean contribution of BB to EC particles was smaller by a factor of approximately 2 than that of road traffic. The main formation processes of OCFF, OCBB and OCBIO from volatile organic compounds were jointly influenced by a common factor, which is most likely the atmospheric photochemistry, while primary organic emissions can also be important. Technological improvements and control measures for various BB appliances, together with efficient education and training of their users, in particular on the admissible fuel types, offer an important potential for improving the air quality in Budapest, and likely in other cities as well