The strength and stiffness of perimysial connective tissue isolated from cooked beef muscle

Thick transverse slices of bovine M. semitendinosus were cooked for 1 h at 50°–90° and then cooled. Perimysial connective tissue was dissected from the cooked meat and subjected to mechanical testing in a small-scale device. The initial ‘toe’ region of the J-shaped load-extension curve was progressively lost with increasing temperature, the curve becoming more nearly linear after cooking at 90°C. These effects are explained on the basis of the progressive straightening out of the crimps from the collagen fibres, the crimps becoming finally lost at approximately 70°C. The final stiffness of the perimysium at greater extensions was unchanged at higher temperatures. Breaking strength increased from raw to cooked at 50°C, thereafter decreasing at cooking temperatures up to 90°C. it is proposed that this technique of testing isolated perimysium gives a valuable means of directly measuring the effects of cooking, or other treatments, on the intrinsic properties of perimysial collagenous material. Quantitative knowledge of these will help to determine its contribution to the overall mechanical properties, and hence eating quality, of cooked meat.     

Studies on the lipids of sheep red blood cells. II. The incorporation of phosphorus into phospholipids of HK and LK cells

The incorporation of inorganic phosphate (as NaH₂PO₄) into the phospholipids of sheep red blood cells was studied in vitro in blood samples from five highpotassium (HK) and five low-potassium (LK) sheep. The erythrocytes from HK sheep incorporated more activity in 4 hr than those from the LK sheep. However no activity was incorporated into the major phospholipids of the cells (phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl serine, and sphingomyelin) of either group. The phosphatidic acid fraction was labeled in both groups and to a significantly greater extent in the HK samples. However the highest activity in the phospholipid of sheep red-cells was located in three unknown compounds not previously detected. Their specific activities were the same in the HK and the LK samples although they were present in slightly larger amounts in the HK samples. In general, incorporation was at a rather low level, and from stoichiometric considerations it was concluded that the metabolism in the red-cell phospholipids could not be directly involved in the active transport of ions across the cell membrane. This work also confirmed a previous report that no quantitative differences exist among the major phospholipid classes in the two types of cells.     

Rapid consolidation of powdered materials by induction hot pressing

A rapid hot press system in which the heat is supplied by RF induction to rapidly consolidate thermoelectric materials is described. Use of RF induction heating enables rapid heating and consolidation of powdered materials over a wide temperature range. Such rapid consolidation in nanomaterials is typically performed by spark plasma sintering (SPS) which can be much more expensive. Details of the system design, instrumentation, and performance using a thermoelectric material as an example are reported. The Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity, and thermal diffusivity of thermoelectric PbTe material pressed at an optimized temperature and time in this system are shown to agree with material consolidated under typical consolidation parameters.     

A high temperature apparatus for measurement of the Seebeck coefficient

A high temperature Seebeck coefficient measurement apparatus with various features to minimize typical sources of error is designed and built. Common sources of temperature and voltage measurement error are described and principles to overcome these are proposed. With these guiding principles, a high temperature Seebeck measurement apparatus with a uniaxial 4-point contact geometry is designed to operate from room temperature to over 1200 K. This instrument design is simple to operate, and suitable for bulk samples with a broad range of physical types and shapes.     

Anomalous diffraction by arbitrarily oriented ellipsoids: applications in ektacytometry

Anomalous diffraction by an arbitrarily oriented ellipsoid with three different axes is derived. From the resulting expression the relationship between the shape of the ellipsoid and the intensity pattern is immediately evident: The axial ratio of the elliptical isointensity curve equals the axial ratio of the elliptical projected area of the ellipsoid. A comparison of anomalous diffraction with calculations performed with the T-matrix method reveals that the anomalous diffraction approximation is highly accurate for single ellipsoidal red blood cells. Application of the expression for anomalous diffraction by ellipsoids to a population of red blood cells shows that, even in a red-cell suspension as examined in an ektacytometer, the axial ratio of the isointensity curves is equal to the mean axial ratio of the red blood cells in the population. In ektacytometry this relationship between cell shape and intensity pattern is commonly assumed to hold true without reference to the light-scattering properties of the cells. The results presented here show that this assumption is valid, and we offer a profound theoretical basis for it by considering in detail the light scattering by the red blood cells.