Variables influencing food perception reviewed for consumer-oriented product development

Consumer wishes have to be translated into product characteristics to implement consumer-oriented product development. Before this step can be made, insight in food-related behavior and perception of consumers is necessary to make the right, useful, and successful translation. Food choice behavior and consumers' perception are studied in many disciplines. Models of food behavior and preferences therefore were studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. Nearly all models structure the determinants related to the person, the food, and the environment. Consequently, the overview of models was used as a basis to structure the variables influencing food perception into a model for consumer-oriented product development. To this new model, referred to as food perception model, other variables like time and place as part of consumption moment were added. These are important variables influencing consumers' perception, and therefore of increasing importance to consumer-oriented product development nowadays. In further research, the presented food perception model is used as a tool to implement successful consumer-oriented product development.     

Haven or hell? Telework,flexibility and family in the e-society: a Marxist analysis

The reconfiguration of the home-work boundary that at-home telework entails has significant implications for gender issues and the use of ubiquitous information and communications technologies (ICTs). By presenting a Marx-inspired dialectical analysis of the family and home as both ‘haven and hell’, we develop a critique of proposed advantages for women home workers. Not only do we question the ability of ICTs to deliver the promises made on their behalf – we show how this socio-technical innovation may in fact contribute to compounding the double-burden of work associated with gender roles within the home. Contemporary critical understanding of the e-society should incorporate the influence of at-home teleworking because of its implications for the use of ubiquitous ICTs in the home environment, the shaping of work relations and its impact on gender issues. This increasing use of ICTs outside of the workplace is matched by the growing consensus within the European Union on the desirability of flexible working coupled with family friendly policies. This paper explores some of the rhetoric and research surrounding the proposed benefits of at home ‘telework’ and the likely cost–benefits, from an employee's perspective, in terms of increased freedom, reduced burden and ‘flexibility’.     

Paper and plastic in daily diary research: Comment on Green, Rafaeli, Bolger, Shrout, and Reis (2006).

The authors applaud A. S. Green, E. Rafaeli, N. Bolger, P. E. Shrout, and H. T. Reis's (2006) response to one-sided comparisons of paper versus electronic (plastic) diary methods (see record 2006-03820-006) and hope that it will stimulate more balanced considerations of the issues involved. The authors begin by highlighting areas of agreement and disagreement with Green et al. The authors review briefly the broader literature that has compared paper and plastic diaries, noting how recent comparisons have relied on study designs and methods that favor investigators' allegiances. The authors note some sorely needed data for the evaluation of the implications of paper versus plastic for the internal and external validity of research. To facilitate evaluation of the existing literature and assist in the design of future studies, the authors offer a balanced comparison of paper and electronic diary methods across a range of applications. Finally, the authors propose 2 study designs that offer fair comparisons of paper and plastic diary methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A knowledge-based approach for task allocation in heterogeneous distributed computer systems

Abstract: This paper presents a knowledge-based system for task allocation in a network of processors. Since the problem is NP-complete, optimisation techniques are computationally prohibitive and impractical. Our approach reduces computational burden by using (1) a two-level hierarchical scheduling model to alleviate the problem complexity, and (2) a search strategy that uses knowledge from the knowledge base to limit the search space to a manageable size. The major goal of our approach is to generate good but not necessarily optimal solutions quickly. The system is implemented on a Sun SPARCstation 1 + using Common Lisp. Our computational experience in using this system for task allocation indicates that the two-level hierarchical approach generates better schedules in shorter computational time than a non-hierarchical approach.     

"Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours": Consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness.

The consistency of physical attractiveness ratings across cultural groups was examined. In Study 1, recently arrived native Asian and Hispanic students and White Americans rated the attractiveness of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White photographed women. The mean correlation between groups in attractiveness ratings was r?=?.93. Asians, Hispanics, and Whites were equally influenced by many facial features, but Asians were less influenced by some sexual maturity and expressive features. In Study 2, Taiwanese attractiveness ratings correlated with prior Asian, Hispanic, and American ratings, mean r?=?.91. Supporting Study 1, the Taiwanese also were less positively influenced by certain sexual maturity and expressive features. Exposure to Western media did not influence attractiveness ratings in either study. In Study 3, Black and White American men rated the attractiveness of Black female facial photos and body types. Mean facial attractiveness ratings were highly correlated (r?=?.94), but as predicted Blacks and Whites varied in judging bodies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Magnetic resonance diffusion imaging of ovarian masses: a first experience with 12 cases

Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the feasibility of using apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measurement for the differential diagnosis of malignancy in ovarian masses. Materials and methods: Twelve cases involving ovarian masses were imaged using spin echo diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Five cases involved malignant ovarian masses, on the basis of postoperative histologic examination, and the rest involved benign masses. The ovarian masses were imaged in vivo (10 cases) before surgery and ex vivo (8 cases) after surgical resection. Diffusion-weighted data were corrected for motion using the phase data from unweighted data in nine cases. Multifactorial analysis of variance was used to evaluate the effects of malignancy, location (in vivo versus ex vivo), and motion correction on the measurement of ADC intensity and texture. Results: Motion correction caused an undesirable spatial smoothing of the ADC maps and a significant interaction ( ) was found between location and motion correction. ADC value ( ) and texture ( ) differences were found between malignant and nonmalignant ovarian masses. Conclusion: Measurement of ADC intensity and texture has the potential to differentially diagnose malignancy in individual ovarian masses if the problem of image motion artifact can be eliminated through the use of faster imaging sequences.Acknowledgements. The cooperation of Dr. Vance Chow in the acquisition of the in vivo diffusion MRI data is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks to Ron Borowsky for discussions on the statistical data analysis. Data management, final data analysis, and figure preparation was completed by Jennifer Hadley. This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and the Saskatchewan Health Services Utilization and Research Commission (HSURC).     

Piroxicam benzoate--synthesis,HPLC determination,and hydrolysis

An improved method of piroxicam benzoate synthesis was described, and an isocratic reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography method for its determination was developed and fully validated. The method was found to be specific, precise (relative standard deviation 0.3%), accurate (mean recovery 99.9%), and robust. Limit of detection was estimated at 0.055 µg mL^-1 and limit of quantification at 0.185 µg mL^-1. The kinetics of piroxicam benzoate hydrolysis in aqueous buffer solutions (pH 1.1 and 10), simulated gastric and intestinal fluids was studied. The hydrolysis followed first-order kinetics. The following rate constants were obtained at pH 10: k = 1.8 × 10^-3 hr^-1 at 37°C and k = 3.4 × 10^-2 hr^-1 at 60°C. In acidic media, no significant hydrolysis was observed after 24 hr. During the 24-hr period in simulated intestinal fluid, only 10.9% of the starting ester was hydrolyzed.     

Improving the modulo simplex algorithm for large-scale periodic timetabling

The periodic event scheduling problem (PESP), in which events have to be scheduled repeatedly over a given period, is a complex and well-known discrete problem with numerous real-world applications. The most prominent of them is to find periodic timetables in public transport. Although even finding a feasible solution to the PESP is NP-hard, recent achievements demonstrate the applicability and practicability of the periodic event scheduling model. In this paper we propose different approaches to improve the modulo network simplex algorithm (Nachtigall and Opitz, 2008 [17]), which is a powerful heuristic for the PESP problem, by exploiting improved search methods in the modulo simplex tableau and larger classes of cuts to escape from the many local optima. Numerical experiments on large-scale railway instances show that our algorithms not only perform better than the original method, but even outperform a state-of-the-art commercial MIP solver.     

Nonsmooth data error estimates for damped single step methods for parabolic equations in Banach space

We consider a time discretization method for a parabolic initial boundary value problem obtained from a combination of an A-stable single step method of order p and a lower order method with good smoothing properties. Such methods, including the Crank–Nicolson method combined with the backward Euler method, were analyzed in Hilbert space by Luskin and Rannacher, and nonsmooth data error estimates of order p were obtained. We extend this result to Banach space, and also consider approximations of the time derivative. Further, we apply the results to obtain error estimates in the supremum norm for fully discrete methods obtained by discretizing the space variable by a finite element method. Received: February 1998/ Accepted: November 1998