The Influence of Stunning Method, Refrigeration and Freezing Time on the Rheological and Textural Properties of Raw Meat

The present research was conducted to provide information on the influence of stunning methods in conjunction with refrigeration and freezing time on the textural and rheological properties of raw meat. Pork raw meat, commercially available, was analyzed for textural properties such as hardness, cohesiveness, adhesiveness and fracture force. Sample were analyzed fresh, after 3 days of refrigeration, and 15 days, 30days and 60 days freezing time in commercially available refrigerators mimicking the storing conditions used by consumers. For pork raw meat, hardness increased sharply after 3 days of refrigeration and showed no significant differences after 15days of freezing compared to 3days refrigeration time. After 30 days of freezing the raw pork meat samples’ hardness decreased significantly compared to the hardness of the samples freeze for15 days. Hardness of gas stunning raw pork meat samples compared to electrical stunning raw pork meat samples was 2.57 times higher indicating a better firmness of the gas stunning raw pork meat. The cohesiveness of the raw pork meat from gas stunned animals maintained its levels after 60 days of freezing while the meat from electrically stunned animals showed significant modificati

THREE ESSAYS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF SOCIALISM

The idea of economic planning and state ownership of the means of production, which had been central to socialist economic thought for a century and a half, suddenly fell out of favor even among socialists after the fall of the Soviet Union. The three essays of this dissertation are in essence critiques of this 21st century orthodoxy. The first essay addresses the idea of market socialism, as proposed by several academic works in the decades before and after the fall of the USSR. The essay questions whether market socialism would be substantially different from capitalism in practice. It aims to show that any economic system which is based on market relations and atomized ownership of the means of production would feature a type of exploitation very similar to that found under capitalism, meaning that such a system would not be substantially different from a capitalist society with a welfare state. The second essay is a study of a problem that may be faced by all planned economies. Historically, planned economies faced pressure to maintain old industries, old workplaces and old jobs, so as not to cause social disruption. There is a tradeoff between technological progress and job stability. This creates a dilemma: Can socialism keep pace with capitalist innovation while providing full job security? The essay explores this question and answers in the affirmative, with some qualifications. The third essay aims to challenge the notion that socialist economic planning failed in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe. It is an empirical study of the economic performance of the Soviet-type socialist economies under the stagnation conditions of their worst-performing decade, compared with the experiences of the same countries after the transition to capitalism. The findings suggest that although a few countries saw a net benefit from the transition to capitalism, the majority saw a net loss. The region as a whole also saw a net loss, and its current economic trajectory makes it unlikely that this loss would be offset by higher gains in the foreseeable future

Economy of Interaction in Program Visualization: Designing Effective Visualization Tools for Reducing User\u27s Cognitive Effort - Doctoral Dissertation, August 2002

Program visualization has the potential to be an important tool for people who seek to observe and understand the behavior of a running computation. This thesis focuses on alleviating barriers to the realization of this potential that pertain to the design of a visualization system and to insufficient knowledge about how people take advantage of program visualizations. Our major contribution is the design of a visualization approach capable of improving user’s performance through the use of economy of information and tasks. We present evidence from our empirical studies that this type of economy promotes animations capable of significantly improving people’s understanding of the computation. We apply this knowledge to develop a system for creating application-specific visualizations solely through interactions with program visualizations and textual views of the computation, thus promoting economy of interaction. The system is built around the principle that animation viewers are also the creators of animations and systematically refine the visualizations to suit their momentary goal