The duration of the outdoor rearing period of pigs influences Iberian ham characteristics

peer-reviewedThe effect of outdoor rearing duration (75 v 50 days) and rearing system (outdoor v indoor based systems) of Iberian pigs on the chemical composition (fatty acid composition of fat and intramuscular fat, moisture, salt, pigment concentrations and water activity of lean meat), the instrumental colour (CIEL*a*b* system) and the sensory characteristics (descriptive analysis) of dry-cured hams were investigated. The fatty acid composition of subcutaneous fat was weakly affected by outdoor rearing duration, but greatly affected by rearing system with the indoor hams showing larger proportion of saturated fatty acids than outdoor rearing. Rearing system also affected L* of subcut aneous fat (the indoor hams were lighter than the outdoor ones). The instrumental colour of lean was only affected by outdoor rearing duration (scores for a* and its derived variables were larger in the long-outdoor group than in the short-outdoor one). The effect of outdoor rearing duration on the sensory characteristics of Iberian hams was marked, 13 sensory characteristics being affected. Among them, odour intensity, flavour intensity, and flavour persistence were greater in the long-outdoor hams than in the short-outdoor ones, whereas these characteristics were not affected by rearing system. However, rearing system also had a large effect influencing 12 sensory characteristics

Extraordinary transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect in a superlens

It has been shown that a slab of a negative index material can behave as a superlens enhancing the imaging resolution beyond the wavelength limit. We show here that if such a slab possesses in addition some magneto-optical activity, it could act as an ideal optical filter and exhibit an extraordinary transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect. Moreover, we show that losses, which spoil the imaging resolution of these lenses, are a necessary ingredient to observe this effect.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Enhancement of entanglement in one-dimensional disordered systems

The pairwise quantum entanglement of sites in disordered electronic one-dimensional systems (rings) is studied. We focus on the effect of diagonal and off diagonal disorder on the concurrence $C_{ij}$ between electrons on neighbor and non neighbor sites $i,j$ as a function of band filling. In the case of diagonal disorder, increasing the degree of disorder leads to a decrease of the concurrence with respect to the ordered case. However, off-diagonal disorder produces a surprisingly strong enhancement of entanglement. This remarkable effect occurs near half filling, where the concurrence becomes up to 15% larger than in the ordered system.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

On the spectrum of a matrix model for the D=11 supermembrane compactified on a torus with non-trivial winding

The spectrum of the Hamiltonian of the double compactified D=11 supermembrane with non-trivial central charge or equivalently the non-commutative symplectic super Maxwell theory is analyzed. In distinction to what occurs for the D=11 supermembrane in Minkowski target space where the bosonic potential presents string-like spikes which render the spectrum of the supersymmetric model continuous, we prove that the potential of the bosonic compactified membrane with non-trivial central charge is strictly positive definite and becomes infinity in all directions when the norm of the configuration space goes to infinity. This ensures that the resolvent of the bosonic Hamiltonian is compact. We find an upper bound for the asymptotic distribution of the eigenvalues.Comment: 11 pages, LaTe

Edge and waveguide THz surface plasmon modes in graphene micro-ribbons

Surface plasmon modes supported by graphene ribbon waveguides are studied and classified. The properties of both modes with the field concentration within the ribbon area (waveguiding modes) and on the edges (edge modes) are discussed. The waveguide and edge modes are shown to be separated from each other by a gap in wavenumbers. The even-parity hybridized edge mode results to be the fundamental electromagnetic mode of the ribbon, possessing also the lowest losses. All the plasmonic modes in the ribbons have an optimum frequency, at which the absorption losses are minimum, due to competition between the plasmon confinement and the frequency dependence of absorption in graphene.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Entanglement of two qubits mediated by one-dimensional plasmonic waveguides

We investigate qubit-qubit entanglement mediated by plasmons supported by one-dimensional waveguides. We explore both the situation of spontaneous formation of entanglement from an unentangled state and the emergence of driven steady-state entanglement under continuous pumping. In both cases, we show that large values for the concurrence are attainable for qubit-qubit distances larger than the operating wavelength by using plasmonic waveguides that are currently available.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Minor Changes. Journal Reference added. Highlighted in Physic