HISPANIC AND NON-HISPANIC RESPONSES TO CONCEPTS FOR FOUR FOODS

Hispanics and non‐Hispanics Americans participated in four sets of studies dealing with health‐oriented foods, with the goal to identify how they respond to food categories relevant in any cuisine. Each study comprised a conjoint analysis using 36 elements followed by a self‐profiling questionnaire to learn more about Hispanic and non‐Hispanic food responses to concepts for four different product categories (morning bread, bottled water, healthful salad dressing and popcorn as a snack). The study identified patterns of preference of marketing statements in the areas of health information, sensory characteristics, emotional benefits and endorsements. Conjoint utility values generated by both Hispanics and non‐Hispanic respondents correlated highly, suggesting that their food attitudes are quite similar for“non‐signature”products despite the differences in their original cuisines.     

USING HIGH-LEVEL CONSUMER-RESEARCH METHODS TO CREATE A TOOL-DRIVEN GUIDEBOOK AND DATABASE FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING

We present aspects and data for a tool‐driven database for marketing and product development, which are publicly accessible. The objective is to create a method whereby knowledge of concepts and products can be archived using overviews of a specific product category. The first phase of the database comprises systematic analysis of product concepts, which contain elements dealing both with features and emotions. The concept phase provides an idea about responses to statements about product features, along with responses to emotional elements and brands. The second phase comprises an analysis of the competitive frame of products, even before systematic product development is initiated. This second phase identifies expected and thus reasonable ranges of product‐sensory features, levels of acceptance of typical products, relations between liking and sensory attributes and segmentation of sensory preferences. Together, the two phases provide a guide to product developers new in a category, archive current knowledge and provide a sourcebook for marketers and developers alike, which is accessible using research tools. The two phases allow product development to become more scientific, more based on common experience rather than individual expertise and thus more efficient, without compromising corporate knowledge of specific ingredients, processes or business opportunities.     

A marketing approach to agar

Agar has, with the exception of certain retail markets in the Far East, specifically Japan, traditionally been sold to the industrial user. Small quantities are consumed in Islamic countries during Ramadan and in the Germanic countries as a food thickener and a laxative. However, outside of Japan, no significant marketing effort has ever been undertaken with a view to increase the demand for agar by consumers.A marketing plan is suggested to change this situation. All possible uses for agar by the consumer have been identified and studied. The special features of the product, together with certain packaging, are highlighted. Potential markets for these features are identified. Strategies for the development of these markets have been developed. The overall plan is now in a state of final review and just prior to implementation. The product launch should generate a significant consumer awareness which will translate into demand, thereby increasing the market for agar in various forms, formulations and packagings.     

SENSORY PROPERTIES AFFECTING ACCEPTABILITY OF "BRESAOLA" FROM PODOLIAN YOUNG BULLS

Three muscles ( Semimembranosus, Quadriceps femoris, Adductor ) from Podolian young bulls (aged 18 months) were processed into bresaolas, which were compared with commercial products, in terms of sensory profile and preference expressed by consumers. Slope analysis was conducted to study the preference drivers. The preference of homogeneous groups of consumers and the relationships with sensory properties of bresaola were investigated using partial least squares (PLS) regression analysis. The products differed for several sensory properties, such as sweetness, flavor intensity ( P <  0.001), saltiness ( P <  0.01), peppered, seasoned and tenderness ( P <  0.05). The slope analysis showed that taste/flavor ( k =  0.86) and appearance ( k =  0.76) play an important role in orienting consumer preference, while texture ( k =  0.54) is less important. No general trend was found for product liking. Conversely, PLS regression clustered the consumers in homogeneous groups: one preferred the commercial products characterized by sensory properties such as peppered, saltiness, seasoned and marbling, another one was more oriented toward properties such as sweetness, odor and chewiness, which characterized Podolian bresaolas.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Partial least squares regression analysis clustered the consumers in homogeneous groups according to their liking: those preferring peppered, salty, seasoned and marbling bresaolas versus those oriented toward sweet and odorous products. In addition, the relationship between overall liking and attribute liking (appearance, taste/flavor and texture) was analyzed by linear regression analysis. This may be helpful in order to establish meaningful criteria for grading bresaolas and identify the particular attributes that move its acceptance (i.e., taste/flavor and appearance rather than texture).     

Honey bees store landmarks in an egocentric frame of reference

Honey bees are well known to rely on stored landmark information to locate a previously visited site. While various mechanisms underlying insect navigation have been thoroughly explored, little is yet known about the degree of integration of spatial parameters to form higher-level spatial representations. In this paper we explore the basic interactions between landmark cues and directional cues, which stand at the basis of our understanding of piloting mechanisms. A novel experimental paradigm allowed us independent manipulation of each parameter in a highly controlled environment. The approach taken was twofold: cue-conflict experiments were first conducted to examine the interactions between positional cues and directional cues. The bees were then successively deprived of sensory cues to question the dependence of landmark navigation on context cues. Our results confirm previous findings that landmark cues are used in concert with external directional cues if present. Conversely, the bees' ability to locate a food site was not disrupted in the absence of an external directional reference. Thus, bees store landmark memories in an egocentric frame of reference and only loose and facultative associations between visual memories and compass cues are formed.     

Sensory feedback in a bump attractor model of path integration

Mammalian spatial navigation systems utilize several different sensory information channels. This information is converted into a neural code that represents the animal’s current position in space by engaging place cell, grid cell, and head direction cell networks. In particular, sensory landmark (allothetic) cues can be utilized in concert with an animal’s knowledge of its own velocity (idiothetic) cues to generate a more accurate representation of position than path integration provides on its own (Battaglia et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 24(19):4541–4550 (2004)). We develop a computational model that merges path integration with feedback from external sensory cues that provide a reliable representation of spatial position along an annular track. Starting with a continuous bump attractor model, we explore the impact of synaptic spatial asymmetry and heterogeneity, which disrupt the position code of the path integration process. We use asymptotic analysis to reduce the bump attractor model to a single scalar equation whose potential represents the impact of asymmetry and heterogeneity. Such imperfections cause errors to build up when the network performs path integration, but these errors can be corrected by an external control signal representing the effects of sensory cues. We demonstrate that there is an optimal strength and decay rate of the control signal when cues appear either periodically or randomly. A similar analysis is performed when errors in path integration arise from dynamic noise fluctuations. Again, there is an optimal strength and decay of discrete control that minimizes the path integration error.     

A novel approach to reducing disparities in health outcomes by enhancing interpretation of cancer clinical trials for underrepresented patient groups

There has been a growing realization, based on emerging evidence from the point of care, that real-world outcomes of patients with cancer are often inferior to those reported in conventional clinical trials. This phenomenon can be attributed in part to deficits in external validity that are present in many studies. Several factors contribute to external validity deficits, including: narrow eligibility criteria; differences between protocol-specified procedures and routine care; and inadequate access to clinical trial participation among underrepresented and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. As a result, the current body of clinical evidence derived from conventional clinical trials can be inadequate to inform patient-specific treatment decisions at the point of care. Furthermore, lack of practical guidance on how to evaluate the impact of external validity deficits can impede both the design of more generalizable clinical trials and efforts to personalize treatment decisions for individual patients. In this methodological review, we suggest an approach to aid clinicians in such evaluations, providing visual and quantitative methods for assessing the magnitude of, and adjusting for, the impact of external validity deficits in conventional clinical trials. Our methods and visualizations have broad applicability across important areas of real-world medical decision-making and research, providing opportunities to design clinical studies that are more reflective of the diverse needs of patients with cancer, including those excluded from traditional clinical trials due to narrow eligibility criteria, socioeconomic disadvantages, and other systemic barriers to equitable access to healthcare resources.     

Effect of intrahippocampal administration of anti-melanin-concentrating hormone on spatial food-seeking behavior in rats

Melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) is a hypothalamic peptide that plays a critical role in the regulation of food intake and energy metabolism. In this study, we investigated the potential role of dense hippocampal MCH innervation in the spatially oriented food-seeking component of feeding behavior. Rats were trained for eight sessions to seek food buried in an arena using the working memory version of the food-seeking behavior (FSB) task. The testing day involved a bilateral anti-MCH injection into the hippocampal formation followed by two trials. The anti-MCH injection did not interfere with the performance during the first trial on the testing day, which was similar to the training trials. However, during the second testing trial, when no food was presented in the arena, the control subjects exhibited a dramatic increase in the latency to initiate digging. Treatment with an anti-MCH antibody did not interfere with either the food-seeking behavior or the spatial orientation of the subjects, but the increase in the latency to start digging observed in the control subjects was prevented. These results are discussed in terms of a potential MCH-mediated hippocampal role in the integration of the sensory information necessary for decision-making in the pre-ingestive component of feeding behavior.     

Cooperation among Norway Rats: The Importance of Visual Cues for Reciprocal Cooperation,and the Role of Coercion

Some animals reciprocate help, but the underlying proximate mechanisms are largely unclear. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) have been shown to cooperate in a variant of the iterated prisoner's dilemma paradigm, yet it is unknown which sensory modalities they use. Visual information is often implicitly assumed to play a major role in social interactions, but primarily nocturnal species such as Norway rats may rely on different cues when deciding to reciprocate received help. We used an instrumental cooperative task to compare the test rats' propensity to reciprocate received help between two experimental conditions, with and without visual information exchange between social partners. Our results show that visual information is not required for reciprocal cooperation among social partners because even when it was lacking, test rats provided food significantly earlier to partners that had helped them to obtain food before than to those that had not done so. The mean decision speed did not differ between the two experimental conditions, with or without visual information. Social partners sometimes showed aggressive behaviour towards focal test individuals. When including this in the analyses to assess the possible role of aggression as a trigger of cooperation, aggression received from cooperators apparently reduced the cooperation propensity, whereas aggression received from defectors increased it. Hence, in addition to reciprocity, coercion seems to provide additional means to generate altruistic help in Norway rats.     

The chemical interactions underlying tomato flavor preferences

Although human perception of food flavors involves integration of multiple sensory inputs, the most salient sensations are taste and olfaction. Ortho- and retronasal olfaction are particularly crucial to flavor because they provide the qualitative diversity so important to identify safe versus dangerous foods. Historically, flavor research has prioritized aroma volatiles present at levels exceeding the orthonasally measured odor threshold, ignoring the variation in the rate at which odor intensities grow above threshold. Furthermore, the chemical composition of a food in itself tells us very little about whether or not that food will be liked. Clearly, alternative approaches are needed to elucidate flavor chemistry. Here we use targeted metabolomics and natural variation in flavor-associated sugars, acids, and aroma volatiles to evaluate the chemistry of tomato fruits, creating a predictive and testable model of liking. This nontraditional approach provides novel insights into flavor chemistry, the interactions between taste and retronasal olfaction, and a paradigm for enhancing liking of natural products. Some of the most abundant volatiles do not contribute to consumer liking, whereas other less abundant ones do. Aroma volatiles make contributions to perceived sweetness independent of sugar concentration, suggesting a novel way to increase perception of sweetness without adding sugar.     

CONSULTANT'S CORNER PROPOSING THE INTERNATIONAL SENSORY JUDGES DAY

A panel of trained sensory judges is a sensitive and valuable instrument. and a lot of time and work is invested in their selection and training. The importance of internal motivation and external stimulation to maintain the interest and wellbeing of these human instruments is supported by major food scientists and behavioral psychologists. Current stimulation procedures for sensory judges are listed. A new procedure is proposed, consisting of an annual celebration party on November 20 in recognition of sensory judges. Advantages of holding this day on an international level are discussed: mainly, promotion of fellowship among sensory judges from different groups and countries, and also its help in increasing cooperation in sensory evaluation. Actions to promote International Sensory Judges Day are listed. Suggestions for the actual celebration party are put forward: an open house luncheon, presentation of awards, greeting cards and letters from other sensory panels; and last but not least, a set of proven “sensory” games where everyone joins in.     

The potential of microalgae and their biopolymers as structuring ingredients in food: A review

Microalgae are considered promising functional food ingredients due to their balanced composition, containing multiple nutritional and health-beneficial components. However, their functionality in food products is not limited to health aspects, since microalgae can also play a structuring role in food, for instance as a texturizing ingredient. Photoautotrophic microalgae are actually rich in structural biopolymers such as proteins, storage polysaccharides, and cell wall related polysaccharides, and their presence might possibly alter the rheological properties of the enriched food product. A first approach to benefit from these structural biopolymers consists of isolating the cell wall related polysaccharides for use as food hydrocolloids. The potential of extracted cell wall polysaccharides as food hydrocolloids has only been shown for a few microalgae species, mainly due to an enormous diversity in molecular structure and composition. Nevertheless, with intrinsic viscosities comparable or higher than those of commercial thickening agents, extracellular polysaccharides of red microalgae and cyanobacteria could be a promising source of novel food hydrocolloids. A more sustainable approach would be to incorporate the whole microalgal biomass into food products, to combine health benefits with potential structuring benefits, i.e. providing desired rheological properties of the enriched food product. If microalgal biomass would act as a thickening agent, this would actually reduce the need for additional texturizing ingredients. Even though only limitedly studied so far, food processing operations have been proven successful in establishing desired microstructural and rheological properties. In fact, the use of cell disruption techniques allows the release of intracellular compounds, which become available to create strong particle aggregates resulting in an improved viscosity and network structure. Food processing operations might not only be favorable in terms of rheological properties, but also for enhancing the bioaccessibility of several bioactive compounds. However, this research area is only very scarcely explored, and there is a demand for more standardized research studies to draw conclusions on the effect of processing on the nutritional quality of food products enriched with microalgae. Even though considered as promising food ingredients, some major scientific challenges have been pointed out throughout this review paper for the successful design of microalgal based food products.     

Sensory pathways and their modulation in the control of locomotion

Recent experiments have extended our understanding of how sensory information in premotor networks controlling motor output is processed during locomotion, and at what level the efficacy of specific sensory—motor pathways is determined. Phasic presynaptic inhibition of sensory transmission combined with postsynaptic alterations of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission from interneurons of the premotor networks contribute to the modulation of reflex pathways and to the generation of reflex reversal. These mechanisms play an important role in adapting the operation of central networks to external demands and thus help optimize sensory—motor integration.     

Spiking networks for Bayesian inference and choice

Systems neuroscience traditionally conceptualizes a population of spiking neurons as merely encoding the value of a stimulus. Yet, psychophysics has revealed that people take into account stimulus uncertainty when performing sensory or motor computations and do so in a nearly Bayes-optimal way. This suggests that neural populations do not encode just a single value but an entire probability distribution over the stimulus. Several such probabilistic codes have been proposed, including one that utilizes the structure of neural variability to enable simple neural implementations of probabilistic computations such as optimal cue integration. This approach provides a quantitative link between Bayes-optimal behaviors and specific neural operations. It allows for novel ways to evaluate probabilistic codes and for predictions for physiological population recordings.     

The medial periareolar approach to submuscular augmentation mammaplasty under local anesthesia

The medial approach to submuscular augmentation mammaplasty under local anesthesia begins with a medial periareolar incision around one-half or more of the areola. A subcutaneous tunnel is made toward the medial breast border, avoiding mammary ducts and sensory nerves to the nipple. The breast is reflected laterally, exposing a patch of pectoralis major muscle. A submuscular pocket is then created beneath portions of the pectoralis major, rectus abdominis, external oblique abdominis, and serratus anterior muscles, after which the implant is inserted and the muscle, dermis, and skin are closed sequentially. The periareolar incision allows for favorable scars without compromising the access or exposure necessary for accurate implant placement. Complete muscle coverage of the implant should contribute to a lower rate of capsular contracture. With a medial submuscular approach, nipple sensation is rarely altered, and revisions, if necessary, can be done through the same incision, still under local anesthesia, for increased safety, economy, and convenience. The medial approach to breast augmentation is a highly versatile, safe, and consistent method of achieving excellent results in breast augmentation in terms of scar, symmetry, and softness.     

Crossmodal integration for perception and action.

The integration of information from different sensory modalities has many advantages for human observers, including increase of salience, resolution of perceptual ambiguities, and unified perception of objects and surroundings. Several behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging data collected in various tasks, including localization and detection of spatial events, crossmodal perception of object properties and scene analysis are reviewed here. All the results highlight the multiple faces of crossmodal interactions and provide converging evidence that the brain takes advantages of spatial and temporal coincidence between spatial events in the crossmodal binding of spatial features gathered through different modalities. Furthermore, the elaboration of a multimodal percept appears to be based on an adaptive combination of the contribution of each modality, according to the intrinsic reliability of sensory cue, which itself depends on the task at hand and the kind of perceptual cues involved in sensory processing. Computational models based on bayesian sensory estimation provide valuable explanations of the way perceptual system could perform such crossmodal integration. Recent anatomical evidence suggest that crossmodal interactions affect early stages of sensory processing, and could be mediated through a dynamic recurrent network involving backprojections from multimodal areas as well as lateral connections that can modulate the activity of primary sensory cortices, though future behavioral and neurophysiological studies should allow a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms.     

Incorporating Functional Information in Tests of Excess De Novo Mutational Load

A number of recent studies have investigated the role of de novo mutations in various neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. These studies attempt to implicate causal genes by looking for an excess load of de novo mutations within those genes. Current statistical methods for assessing this excess are based on the implicit assumption that all qualifying mutations in a gene contribute equally to disease. However, it is well established that different mutations can have radically different effects on the ultimate protein product and, as a result, on disease risk. Here, we propose a method, fitDNM, that incorporates functional information in a test of excess de novo mutational load. Specifically, we derive score statistics from a retrospective likelihood that incorporates the probability of a mutation being damaging to gene function. We show that, under the null, the resulting test statistic is distributed as a weighted sum of Poisson random variables and we implement a saddlepoint approximation of this distribution to obtain accurate p values. Using simulation, we have shown that our method outperforms current methods in terms of statistical power while maintaining validity. We have applied this approach to four de novo mutation datasets of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders: autism spectrum disorder, epileptic encephalopathy, schizophrenia, and severe intellectual disability. Our approach also implicates genes that have been implicated by existing methods. Furthermore, our approach provides strong statistical evidence supporting two potentially causal genes: SUV420H1 in autism spectrum disorder and TRIO in a combined analysis of the four neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders investigated here.