Effects of health labels on expected and actual taste perception of soup

Health labels such as "reduced in salt" or the "healthy choices" logo aim to facilitate consumers' healthy food choices. However, they may act as a warning sign for those consumers who are more worried about the taste of the products, rather than healthiness. This study assessed the potential effect of front-of-pack health labels on consumers' expectations and actual perceived taste quality of a chicken soup. Participants ranging from 19 to 67. years of age (28 females, 18 males, mean age 45.3 ± 13.7. years) were invited to come to a central location to taste a variety of soups. Consumers tasted the same soup with different labels (e.g. now reduced in salt, healthy choices-tick logo) in a within-subjects design. Before and after consumers tasted the soup, they were asked to rate liking, saltiness, and desire to consume the soup. The results suggest that consumers expected the salt taste intensity (P< 0.001) to be lower when the label stated "now reduced in salt", compared to the soup without such label. Furthermore, consumers expected the soup with the tick logo to be more liked than the same soup with the tick logo and the "now reduced salt" label (P= 0.1). After consumers tasted the soups, no differences in liking or desire were found between the soups with the different labels.This study suggests that labels which notify consumers of a reduction in salt may have an adverse effect on consumers' expectation and potentially on the actual perceived taste of products.

Condition assessment of timber utility poles based on a hierarchical data fusion model

This paper proposes a novel hierarchical data fusion technique for the non-destructive testing (NDT) and condition assessment of timber utility poles. The new method analyzes stress wave data from multisensor and multiexcitation guided wave testing using a hierarchical data fusion model consisting of feature extraction, data compression, pattern recognition, and decision fusion algorithms. The researchers validate the proposed technique using guided wave tests of a sample of in situ timber poles. The actual health states of these poles are known from autopsies conducted after the testing, forming a ground-truth for supervised classification. In the proposed method, a data fusion level extracts the main features from the sampled stress wave signals using power spectrum density (PSD) estimation, wavelet packet transform (WPT), and empirical mode decomposition (EMD). These features are then compiled to a feature vector via real-number encoding and sent to the next level for further processing. Principal component analysis (PCA) is also adopted for feature compression and to minimize information redundancy and noise interference. In the feature fusion level, two classifiers based on support vector machine (SVM) are applied to sensor separated data of the two excitation types and the pole condition is identified. In the decision making fusion level, the Dempster–Shafer (D-S) evidence theory is employed to integrate the results from the individual sensors obtaining a final decision. The results of the in situ timber pole testing show that the proposed hierarchical data fusion model was able to distinguish between healthy and faulty poles, demonstrating the effectiveness of the new method.

Australian prosecutors perceptions of the utility of child investigative interview protocols

Investigative interviews with alleged victims form the central plank of evidence in the prosecution of child sexual abuse. Despite interviewers being provided with a guiding framework, child sexual abuse cases are often not prosecuted because of poor-quality evidence. The purpose of this study was to elicit feedback from prosecutors about the structure and format of current interview protocols and the ways in which these could potentially be improved from an evidential perspective. Focus group discussions (ranging in length from 180 to 190 minutes) were conducted with 13 Crown prosecutors representing every jurisdiction of Australia. Thematic analysis of the focus group discussions revealed that prosecutors were supportive of the structure of interview protocols, however, concerns were raised about four of the interview elements. These elements were the oath and truth–lie competency test, the ground rules, the practice narrative and eliciting a disclosure. The prosecutors’ concerns and their implications for protocol developers and trainers are discussed.

A framework for implementing asynchronous replication scheme in utility-based computing environment

This paper addresses a problem on implementing an asynchronous replication scheme in utility-based computing environment. The problem needs a special attention as most of the existing replication scheme in this computing system whether implicitly support synchronous replication and/or only consider read-only job. Therefore, we propose an intelligent framework that can reinforce an effective resource selection scheme by allowing the components that give impact on the performance such as resource/data freshness of the replicated system in such environment to be considered. We exploit an Update Ordering (UO) approach and reconcile these components in designing the framework. Important issues such as job propagation delay and job propagation rules are especially addressed. Our experiments show that the proposed framework is capable to become a platform of an effective resource selection scheme and achieve a good result with good system performance as compared to existing algorithms.

Utility of the multi-component training distress scale to monitor swimmers during periods of training overload

The purpose of the present study was to determine the efficacy of the multi-component training distress scale (MTDS), in monitoring swimmers prior to national competition. Twenty-one national-level adolescent swimmers completed eight weeks of testing. Once a week participants completed an 8 × 50 m sprint test,
vertical jump test, sit-and-reach test, the MTDS and the
Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes (REST-Q). All testing
was incorporated into the swimmers’ normal training programme.
The REST-Q accounted for the following variances in performance:
flexibility (14.6%,p= 0.009), power output (17.7%,p= 0.003),swimming speed (15.5%,p
= 0.006) and swimming endurance(17.5%,p= 0.002). In comparison, the MTDS accounted for thefollowing variances in performance:
flexibility (12.1%, p= 0.095),power output (16.4%,p= 0.023), swimming speed (20.5%,p = 0.003) and swimming speed endurance (23.8%,p= 0.001).The findings of the current study suggest that both the REST-Q Sport and the MTDS have the capacity to predict performance on a range of fitness components associated with swimming.

Sexual segregation in habitat use is smaller than expected in a highly dimorphic marine predator, the southern sea lion

Sexual segregation in habitat use is widely reported in many taxa and can profoundly influence the distribution and behaviour of animals. However, our knowledge of the mechanisms driving sexual segregation is still in its infancy (particularly in marine taxa) and the influence of extrinsic factors in mediating the expression of sex differences in foraging behaviour is underdeveloped. Here, we combine data from biologging tags, with stable isotope analysis of vibrissae, to assess sexual segregation in southern sea lions (SSL) (Otaria flavescens) breeding at the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. We found evidence to support segregation, most notably in δ13C and δ15N values. However, in spite of extreme sexual size dimorphism and differing constraints related to female-only parental care, adult male and adult female SSL overlapped considerably in isotopic niches and foraging area, and shared similar foraging trip characteristics (such as distance and duration). This is in contrast to SSL breeding in Argentina, where prior studies report sexual differences in foraging locations and foraging trip characteristics. We posit that sexual segregation in SSL is influenced by habitat availability (defined here as the width of the Patagonian Shelf) and individual foraging preferences, rather than commonly invoked individual-based limiting factors per se.