Improvement of turkey breast meat quality and cooked gel functionality using hot-boning, quarter sectioning, crust-freeze-air-chilling and cold-batter-mincing technologies

The effect of rapid carcass chilling on breast meat quality was evaluated using commercial (COMM) and random-bred (RB) turkeys. Immediately after slaughter, 48 turkeys from COMM or RB line were randomly subjected to one of four chilling methods: 1) water-immersion chilling (WIC) of the carcasses at 0°C ice slurry, 2) WIC after temperature abuse (TA) of the carcasses at 40°C for 30 min (TA-WIC), 3) hot-boning, quarter sectioning, and crust-freeze-air-chilling (HB-(1)/4CFAC) of breast fillets at -12°C, and 4) HB-(1)/4CFAC of fillets after TA of carcasses (TA-HB-(1)/4CFAC). The TA increased carcass and fillet temperatures by ∼1.3 and ∼4.1°C, respectively, regardless of turkey line, whereas HB-(1)/4CFAC of fillets required 28 and 33% of carcass chilling time for COMM and RB, respectively. During chilling, COMM breast pH rapidly reduced from 6.04 to 5.82, resulting in a significantly lower pH than RB after chilling (P < 0.05), whereas COMM R-value sharply increased from 1.17 to 1.43, causing no difference from RB (P > 0.05). Significantly higher L* value and cooking yield (P < 0.05) were seen in the samples of TA and WIC than those of no TA and HB-(1)/4CFAC, respectively, with no difference observed between COMM and RB fillets (P > 0.05). Higher values of hardness, gumminess, and chewiness were found for RB, no TA, and HB-(1)/4CFAC gels than COMM, TA, and WIC, respectively. These results generally indicated that protein quality and textural properties of turkey fillets were improved, regardless of strains or temperature abuse, using HB-(1)/4CFAC technology.

Spectrum of the cavity-QED microlaser: strong coupling effects in the frequency pulling at off resonance

We report the first experimental observation of the cavity-QED microlaser spectrum, specifically the unconventional frequency pulling brought by a strong atom-cavity coupling at off resonance. The pulling is enhanced quadratically by the atom-cavity coupling to result in a sensitive response to the number of pumping atoms (2.1 kHz per atom maximally). Periodic variation of the pulling due to the coherent Rabi oscillation is also observed as the number of pumping atoms is increased across multiple thresholds.

Prescribed nondegenerate high-order modes in an axial-asymmetric high-finesse Fabry-Perot microcavity

We report an axial-asymmetric high-Q Fabry-Perot cavity supporting nondegenerate Hermite-Gaussian modes of the same mode order. Axial asymmetry of mirror surface was introduced by mechanically grinding off one side of a cylindrical mirror substrate without degrading the original mirror quality. The bases of the resulting Hermite-Gaussian modes were aligned with respect to the direction of grinding, making it possible to prescribe the mirror principal axes.