The serious health risks posed by bone fractures create a growing need for accurately diagnosing fracture risk. The Reference Point Indentation instrument (RPI) directly measures key mechanical properties in vivo to assess bone fracturability. There is a wealth of information that could be obtained from measuring cryopreserved bone samples with the RPI. Since it is unknown how freezing affects ...

Winter damage, especially in northern climates, is a major limitation of the utilization of perennial forages such as alfalfa. Therefore, improving freezing tolerance is imperative in alfalfa genetic breeding. However, freezing tolerance is a complex trait that is determined by many genes. To understand the complex regulation mechanisms of freezing tolerance in alfalfa, we performed small RNA s...

BACKGROUND The effects of exposure time (20 versus 45 s) to a high concentration of cryoprotectant (7.0 mol/l ethylene glycol with 0.5 mol/l sucrose) and freezing rates (1200-10 300 degrees C/min) during rapid freezing of mouse pronuclear stage embryos on survival and development to blastocysts were investigated. Different freezing rates were achieved by directly plunging the straws (rapid free...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Woody plants can suffer from winter embolism as gas bubbles are formed in the water-conducting conduits when freezing occurs: gases are not soluble in ice, and the bubbles may expand and fill the conduits with air during thawing. A major assumption usually made in studies of winter embolism formation is that all of the gas dissolved in the xylem sap is trapped within the con...

The product to be handled in a refrigerated facility defines the building's function. Will the incoming product be fresh or frozen? If the product is fresh, how much and what kind of further processing will there be done in the facility? This consideration will define the need for ice production and handling, special cutting, portioning, or other processing and/or cooking machinery. Will the fu...

The freezing of freely suspended supercooled water droplets with a diameter of bigger than a few micrometers splits into two rather different freezing stages. Within the first very fast dendritic freezing stage a spongy network ice with an ice portion of less than one-third forms and more than two-thirds of liquid water remain. In the present work the distribution of the ice portion in the drop...

This paper reviews new developments in methods of freezing (high-pressure freezing, dehydrofreezing and applications of antifreeze protein and ice nucleation protein) and thawing (high-pressure and microwave thawing, ohmic thawing and acoustic thawing) for foods. With a good understanding of the solid–liquid phase diagram of water, the effects of pressure on food freezing– thawing cycles are hi...

Germinating conidiospores of Neurospora crassa that were exposed to 45 degrees C, a temperature that induces a heat shock response, were protected from injury caused by freezing in liquid nitrogen and subsequent thawing at 0 degrees C. Whereas up to 90% of the control spores were killed by this freezing and slow thawing, a prior heat shock increased cell survival four- to fivefold. Survival was...

OBJECTIVES To document and characterize freezing temperatures in the Indonesian vaccine cold chain and to evaluate the feasibility of changes designed to reduce the occurrence of freezing. METHODS Data loggers were used to measure temperatures of shipments of hepatitis B vaccine from manufacturer to point of use. Baseline conditions and three intervention phases were monitored. During each of...