About 48 million cases of Foodborne illnesses (FBIs) are estimated to occur every year in the US. These are diseases caused by contamination of foods with bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasites and toxic chemicals. Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) are an important health-care and community associated problem. Since C. difficile spores have...
The use of edible coatings in combination with antimicrobial
agents enhances the microbial stability of foods. In this study we
evaluated the potassium sorbate and sorbic acid permeability of an
edible methylcellulose (MC) - palmitic acid (PA) film with a MC:PA
ratio of 3:1.
Permeability cell measurements were used to...
Citizen science work has built the foundation of much of our knowledge on regional-scale large cetacean spatial patterns through historical whaling data. Historical whaling data on sperm whales was used as an example to show the type of ecological questions large-scale, long-term citizen science datasets can address. Results from the...
Spores of foodborne pathogens such as Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium perfringens and Bacillus cereus are widely distributed in nature. Presence of those spores in food products, particularly C. botulinum spores in vacuum packed, ready-to-eat low-acid products, is a great safety concern. The research here described is a first effort towards understanding...
Analytical chemistry is an essential qualitative and quantitative tool to describe foods and biomaterials and their changes during production, processing and distribution. In this work, rapid analytical procedures for the extraction and quantification of components in fluid milk and diatom fermentation broth were developed. Analytical methods to measure the concentration...
A commercially important polyelectrolyte, xanthan, was chosen for
a systematic analysis of the relationship between molecular
conformation and surface properties. In the first study the effects
of ionic strength, xanthan concentration and temperature on the
xanthan molecular conformation were investigated by potentiometric
titration. The effects of the same factors and...
Equipment and procedures for the rapid measurement of the water vapor
permeability of polymer films and food coatings has been evaluated. The
method uses an electronic sensor to measure the concentration increase in
water vapor diffusing through a film into a chamber of known volume. Air of
known humidity is...
Quantitative procedures were developed to determine the effect of variability in the model parameters required for the estimation of microbial shelflife and thermal processing time. Monte Carlo simulations combined with these predictive models were implemented in Microsoft Excel™. In the first study,
predictive models were used for shelf-life predictions based...