We aimed to create high-moisture plant-based meat alternatives (HPMAs) that closely mimic the fibrous structure found in conventional meat. To achieve this goal, we focused on the impact of modulating the heating and cooling die temperatures during the extrusion process on the structural properties of HPMAs. The optimal temperatures for the heating and cooling dies were determined to be 160 and 50 °C, respectively, following a comprehensive analysis of various quality characteristics. These included assessments of cutting strength, texturization degree, moisture content, and microstructure. Analyzing the correlation coefficients between heating and cooling die temperatures and the quality characteristics of HPMAs revealed that modulating the cooling die temperature has a greater impact on quality characteristics than modulating the heating die temperature. The quality characteristics of HPMAs were also compared with those of boiled and sous-vide cooked chicken breasts. The optimal HPMA exhibited the most similar fibrous macro- and micro-structure to sous-vide cooked chicken breast. Consequently, our study highlights the importance of modulating the heating die and cooling die temperatures, among various process parameters of high-moisture extrusion cooking, which is crucial for producing HPMAs closely resembling conventional meat.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.136456 | DOI Listing |
Heliyon
January 2025
Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Ewha Womans University, South Korea.
A path to carbon neutrality requires the development of refrigeration units that use no refrigerant or emit less greenhouse gas (GHG), such as Thermoelectric coolers (TECs). Using the life cycle inventory assessment (LCIA), the environmental impacts of the manufacturing process of TECs were analyzed, including greenhouse gas emissions, human carcinogenic toxicity (HCT), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), freshwater ecotoxicity (FE), mineral resource scarcity (MRS), and fossil resource scarcity (FRS). The alumina plate manufacturing process produces the most GHG emissions because it uses a lot of electricity in the sintering process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Institute of Humanoid Robots, School of Engineering Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
A human hand has 23-degree-of-freedom (DOF) dexterity for managing activities of daily living (ADLs). Current prosthetic hands, primarily driven by motors or pneumatic actuators, fall short in replicating human-level functions, primarily due to limited DOF. Here, we develop a lightweight prosthetic hand that possesses biomimetic 19-DOF dexterity by integrating 38 shape-memory alloy (SMA) actuators to precisely control five fingers and the wrist.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Prosthodont Res
January 2025
Advanced Prosthodontics, Oral Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Purpose: This study was aimed at investigating the thermal stresses in monolithic zirconia crowns (MZC) of various thicknesses and elucidating their thermal behavior under cooling or heating changes in the oral cavity. Additionally, the clinical availability and potential issues of MZC were examined by comparing them with other crown materials.
Methods: Finite element models comprising MZC (0.
Soft Matter
January 2025
Physics Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459, USA.
We examine the collective motion in computational models of a two-dimensional dusty plasma crystal and a charged colloidal suspension as they approach their respective melting transitions. To unambiguously identify rearrangement events in the crystal, we map the trajectory of configurations from an equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation to the corresponding sequence of configurations of local potential energy minima ("inherent structures"). This inherent structure (IS) trajectory eliminates the ambiguity that arises from localized vibrational motion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
School of Politics and Public Administration, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China.
Urban vegetation provides essential ecosystem services and benefits to support biodiversity and human well-being in urban areas. However, the dynamic trends, driving factors, and their implications to urban heat mitigation at the global scale remain largely unclear. Here, we used a high-resolution enhanced vegetation index (EVI) dataset to examine the vegetation dynamics in 11,235 urban areas worldwide, identify the driving factors behind its changes, and estimate the potential urban heat mitigation benefits of these changes.
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