Effect of vaginal douching and different semen extenders on bacterial load and fertility in turkeys. "A study on artificial insemination of Beltsville Small White turkeys investigated the effect on bacterial load and fertility of vaginal douching with diluents containing Gentamicin 400 microg/ml and different semen extenders. Irrespective of the extenders used, vaginal douching with Gentamicin reduced the microbial load of the vagina with resultant improvement in fertility and hatchability and corresponding reduction in embryonic mortality. Eggs from hens inseminated with semen extended with Beltsville Poultry Semen Extender (BPSE) diluent along with vaginal douching showed a trend towards higher per cent fertility and per cent hatchability of total and fertile eggs set compared to other extenders, though this was non-significant."

Happy Thanksgiving from NCBI ROFL!

And if you are still hungry after that abstract, here are a couple of side dishes to round out the feast:Exploratory sensory profiling of three culinary preparations of potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.). "BACKGROUND: A consumer-oriented description of potato quality with regard to culinary preparation could increase potato consumption. The aim of this study was to investigate the sensory attributes in 11 potato varieties grown at two locations and used for three culinary preparations. RESULTS: Sensory evaluation of the potatoes served either as boiled, oven-fried or mashed were performed using 15-19 descriptors for appearance, flavour and texture attributes. A principal component analysis revealed that 45% of the variation in the sensory data was related to variety differences, which was ascribed to variation in appearance, dry matter content and texture. Growing location also significantly affected appearance and texture. CONCLUSION: The sensory panel judged the sensory attributes 'yellowness', 'hardness', 'adhesiveness' and 'moistness' to be important quality descriptors in all three culinary preparations. Internal references showed the high reproducibility of the sensory evaluations. The potatoes grown in a sandy location had higher content of dry matter compared to those grown in a clay location, affecting the quality. This study showed that it was possible to do reliable and reproducible sensory profiles in a potato material with a large span in quality. Sensory information based on few attributes can be used to describe culinary quality of potato varieties." Blanching of green bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). "Experiments with one and two steps blanching of green beans have been carried out. Inactivation of the peroxydase requires more heating than inactivation of the enzymes which gives rise to off flavour from aldehydes. When blanching for about one minute to inactivate lipoxygenase, aldehyde formation of flavour ceases. The content of vitamin C decreases during blanching according to a first order reaction. Since considerable loss of vitamin C occurs during blanching, the treatment time should be reduced to a minimum. During preblanching at 65-75 degrees C and final blanching, chlorophyll is degraded to pheophytin and the surface colour expressed by the Hunter-values (-a/b) increases with time which means that the colour of the beans changes from green to yellow. The firmness of beans, which was measured by use of a tenderometer, decreases during blanching according to a first order reaction with 40 kcal/mole activation energy. Preblanching at 65-75 degrees C increases the firmness of the beans linearly with treatment time. This increase in firmness is stable after final blanching at 95 degrees C and even after thawing of frozen beans."

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