No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The steel industry, comprising one of Ut ah's largest payrolls, is a highly significant industry in the economic structure of the state. Furthermore, a highly specialized steel fabrication industry has developed as a subsidiary of the steel industry in Utah.

This study evaluated innovations in beef wholesale carcass fabrication that may have potential for improving subprimal yield and overall value of the beef carcass. Thirty beef carcasses, equally representing USDA Choice and Select and USDA yield grade 1 and 2, were selected from a commercial processing facility and transported to Texas A&M University for subsequent fabrication. Beef sides were utilized in comparing a conventional carcass fabrication style to a more innovative method. Innovative forequarter subprimal yields were greater (P < 0.001) for the brisket, ribeye roll, blade meat, and back ribs. The innovative method resulted in greater subprimal yield and less lean trim (P < 0.001) from the forequarter. Innovative hindquarter subprimal yields were greater (P < 0.001) for the tenderloin, top sirloin cap, bottom sirloin tri-tip, and round tip. Hindquarter subprimal yield and lean trim were not affected (P > 0.05). Value was greater for the innovative forequarter (P < 0.001) and hindquarter (P < 0.01); value was increased by more than seven dollars per beef side, thus greater than fourteen dollars per beef carcass. Selected subprimals were evaluated in a retail cutting test. Experienced retail professionals were utilized in fabricating the retail cuts. In general, the innovative retail subprimals performed equally or better than the conventional subprimals. The M. Serratus ventralis fabricated from the innovative side, comprising over 4.5% of the innovative forequarter, generated greater than 57% steak yield and 94% saleable yield. Innovative carcass fabrication techniques resulted in greater subprimal yield and increased the value of the entire beef carcass. These results were verified by retail cutting tests conducted on selected subprimals.

Thèse de doctorat : Automatique et traitement du signal : INPL : 2007. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre.

Plasmonics is a promising field of nanophotonics dealing with light interaction with metallic nanostructures. In such material systems, hybridizationof photons and collective free-electron oscillation can result in sub-wavelength light confinement. The strong light-matter interaction can be harnessed for,among many applications, high-density photonic integration, metamaterial design, enhanced nonlinear optics, sensing etc. In the current thesis work, we focus on experimental fabrication and characterization of planar plasmonic metamaterials and waveguide structures. The samples are fabricated based on the generic electron beam lithography and characterizations are done with our home-made setups. Mastering and refinement of fabrication techniques as well as setting up the characterization tools have constituted as a majorpart of the thesis work. In particular, we experimentally realized a plasmonic absorber based on a 2D honeycomb array of gold nano-disks sitting on top of a reflector through a dielectric spacer. The absorber not only exhibits an absorption peak which is owing to localized surface plasmon resonance and is insensitive to incidence’s angle or polarization, but also possesses an angle- and polarization-sensitive high-order absorption peak with a narrow bandwidth. We also demonstrated that the strong light absorption in such plasmonic absorbers can be utilized to photothermally re-condition the geometry of gold nanoparticles. The nearly perfect absorption capability of our absorbers promises a wide range of potential applications, including thermal emitter, infrared detectors, and sensors etc. We also fabricated a plasmonic strip waveguide in a similar metal-insulator-metal structure. The strip waveguide has a modal confinement slightly exceeding that of the so-called plasmonic slot waveguide. We further thermally annealed the waveguide. It is observed that the propagation loss at 980 nm has been decreased significantly,which can be attributed to the improvement in gold quality after thermal annealing. / <p>QC 20140203</p>