Edible Objects Research Articles

Design and Experimental Study of a Cleaning Device for Edible Sunflower Harvesting

Existing cleaning devices for edible sunflower have a low cleaning efficiency, high cleaning loss rate, and high impurity rate; therefore, a wind-sieve-type cleaning device for edible sunflower harvesting was designed. According to the characteristics of dislodged objects, a vibrating screen for the device was designed, and the dislodged edible sunflower objects in the device were used for a mechanical analysis of the force conditions to determine the displacement of the different edible sunflower objects dislodged by the action of airflow. Using FLUENT-DEM gas–solid coupling simulation technology, the velocity of the flow field, the velocity vector, and the trajectory of the dislodged objects inside the cleaning device were analyzed, and the law of motion applied to the airflow and the dislodged objects inside the device was clarified. According to the results of the coupled simulation analysis, the key factors affecting the operation of the cleaning device were wind speed, vibration frequency, and amplitude. Based on the key factors of wind speed, vibration frequency, and amplitude, an orthogonal rotary combination test was carried out with the loss rate and impurity rate of cleaned grains as the evaluation indexes, and the test parameters were optimized to obtain the optimal combination of operating parameters of the device, which were as follows: wind speed: 30 m·s−1; vibration frequency: 8.44 Hz; and amplitude: 41.35 mm. With this combination of parameters, the seed loss rate and impurity rate reached 3.47% and 6.17%, respectively. Based on the optimal combination of operating parameters, a validation test was performed, and the results of this test were compared with the results of the test bench using this combination of parameters. The results show that the relative errors of the loss rate and impurity rate between the bench test and the simulation test were 3.45% and 3.07%, respectively, which are less than 5%, proving the reliability of the simulation analysis and the reasonableness of the design of the test bench.

SCOBY: an alternate solution to develop cheap and nutritious food by food layered manufacturing (FLM)

PurposeIn pursuit of affordable and nutrient-rich food alternatives, the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) emerged as a selected food ink for 3D printing. The purpose of this paper is to harness SCOBY’s potential to create cost-effective and nourishing food options using the innovative technique of 3D printing.Design/methodology/approachThis work presents a comparative analysis of the printability of SCOBY with blends of wheat flour, with a focus on the optimization of process variables such as printing composition, nozzle height, nozzle diameter, printing speed, extrusion motor speed and extrusion rate. Extensive research was carried out to explore the diverse physical, mechanical and rheological properties of food ink.FindingsAmong the ratios tested, SCOBY, with SCOBY:wheat flour ratio at 1:0.33 exhibited the highest precision and layer definition when 3D printed at 50 and 60 mm/s printing speeds, 180 rpm motor speed and 0.8 mm nozzle with a 0.005 cm3/s extrusion rate, with minimum alteration in colour.Originality/valueFood layered manufacturing (FLM) is a novel concept that uses a specialized printer to fabricate edible objects by layering edible materials, such as chocolate, confectionaries and pureed fruits and vegetables. FLM is a disruptive technology that enables the creation of personalized and texture-tailored foods, incorporating desired nutritional values and food quality, using a variety of ingredients and additions. This research highlights the potential of SCOBY as a viable material for 3D food printing applications.

Deep Learning based Automated Billing Cart

Nowadays, shopping malls have become an integralpart of life and people in cities often go shopping malls in order to purchase their daily requirements. In such a place, the environment must be made hassle-free. Our system is mainly designed for edible objects like fruits and vegetables. For edible products like vegetables and fruits, bar-codes and RFID tags cannot be used as they have to be stuck on each of the items and the weight of each item has to be individually measured. The proposed system consists of a camera which detects the commodity using Deep Learning techniques and a load cell which measures the weight of the commodity attached to the shopping cart. This system will generate the bill when the customer scans the item in front of the camera which is fixed on to the Cart. There are many methods for implementation of object detection. Methods like R-CNN use region proposal to generate bounding box and then run a classifier throughout the bounding box. Then the duplications are eliminated using post-processing technique. R-CNN is a slow method for object detection. For this reason, we use YOLO model

Improvement of hyperorality after using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor in hypoxic brain damage

Hyperorality is a compulsive symptom to place both edible and inedible objects in one’s mouth that was first reported in the Kluver-Bucy syndrome. It is often associated with damage of the brain caused by traumatic brain injuries, infections, stroke, degenerative brain diseases including frontotemporal dementia. There are a few reports of using antidepressants for treatment to control hyperorality. We report cases in which symptoms recovered by administrating selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor in patients with solitary hyperorality after hypoxic brain damage.

Molding and Encoding Carbon Nitride-Containing Edible Oil Liquid Objects via Interfacial Toughening in Waterborne Systems.

Charge interaction-driven jamming of nanoparticle monolayers at the oil–water interface can be employed as a method to mold liquids into tailored stable 3D liquid objects. Here, 3D liquid objects are fabricated via a combination of biocompatible aqueous poly(vinyl sulfonic acid, sodium salt) solution and a colloidal dispersion of highly fluorescent organo-modified graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) in edible sunflower oil. The as-formed liquid object shows stability in a broad pH range, as well as flexible pathways for efficient exchange of molecules at the liquid–liquid interphase, which allows for photodegradation of rhodamine B at the interface via visible light irradiation that also enables an encoding concept. The g-C3N4-based liquid objects point toward various applications, for example, all-liquid biphasic photocatalysis, artificial compartmentalized systems, liquid–liquid printing, or bioprinting.

Food 3D printing: Effect of heat transfer on print stability of chocolate

Abstract Food 3D Printing is a novel technology which allows manufacturing three dimensional edible objects with customized shape and structure, by extruding and depositing progressively several layers. The overall process is complex since many phenomena occurs simultaneously: non-Newtonian flows, heat transfer, sintering between different layers and solidification of the printed material after deposition. This study focuses on the interplay between the rheological and thermal properties of chocolate products, and printing conditions, in order to predict the stability of 3D printed structures. The effect of printing velocity ( V p ) and environmental temperature ( T e ) on chocolate printed structure was investigated using IR thermography to characterize the local cooling dynamics.3D edible structures can be manufactured successfully only below a critical print velocity which depends on the environmental temperature. At T e = 18 ° C , V p should be lower than 16 mm/s while at 20 ° C lower than 8 mm/s. This conditions ensure a sufficient cooling and solidification of the cocoa butter, which is needed for print stability. A stability criterion based on the local yield stress is proposed to explain the stability or collapse of the 3D printed structures. The understanding provided by this work can help optimising food 3D printing conditions and product formulation.

Differential neural dynamics underlying pragmatic and semantic affordance processing in macaque ventral premotor cortex

Premotor neurons play a fundamental role in transforming physical properties of observed objects, such as size and shape, into motor plans for grasping them, hence contributing to “pragmatic” affordance processing. Premotor neurons can also contribute to “semantic” affordance processing, as they can discharge differently even to pragmatically identical objects depending on their behavioural relevance for the observer (i.e. edible or inedible objects). Here, we compared the response of monkey ventral premotor area F5 neurons tested during pragmatic (PT) or semantic (ST) visuomotor tasks. Object presentation responses in ST showed shorter latency and lower object selectivity than in PT. Furthermore, we found a difference between a transient representation of semantic affordances and a sustained representation of pragmatic affordances at both the single neuron and population level. Indeed, responses in ST returned to baseline within 0.5 s whereas in PT they showed the typical sustained visual-to-motor activity during Go trials. In contrast, during No-go trials, the time course of pragmatic and semantic information processing was similar. These findings suggest that premotor cortex generates different dynamics depending on pragmatic and semantic information provided by the context in which the to-be-grasped object is presented.

Development of edible environmental enrichment objects for weaned pigs

Studies on environmental enrichment for weaned pigs have predominantly focused on stimulating exploration through “nonedible toys.” The research on edible enrichment objects is very limited. For this reason, the aim of this study was to develop and characterize edible environmental enrichment objects (EOs) for weaned pigs and to determine behavioral and weight gain responses of pigs. Two types of EOs were evaluated, a cookie form (EO-C) and a donut-shape (EO-D). The EOs were formulated with dried whey (40% w/v) and sodium alginate (2% w/v) in distilled water. Blends were homogenized, molded, refrigerated, gelled, and dried. The EOs were characterized by dimensions, color, mechanical properties, and proximal chemical analysis. To study the interaction of pigs with EOs, 30 hybrid pigs, weaned at 21 days of age, were distributed into 3 groups (5 pairs of pigs per group): (1) control: pigs without EOs, (2) EO-D group, and (3) EO-C group. The interaction time was video-recorded for 3 days for 3 hours per day and then analyzed with the Observer XT 2011 program. The live weight of pigs and the total consumption of the EOs were also determined. The EOs were yellow in color and had different dimensions, with larger sizes for EO-D (height: 2.5 mm, width: 7.6 cm, and weight: 42 g). The EOs were composed mainly of carbohydrates (67-73%) and proteins (10-11%). The pigs consumed the EOs in high percentages, between 75 and 100% for EO-D and 38 and 60% for EO-C. There were no differences in consumption between EOs. The consumption of the EOs did not have an effect on live weight of the pigs; the final weights in the groups were as follows: 7.4 ± 0.2 kg (control group), 7.6 ± 0.2 kg (EO-C group), and 7.3 ± 0.4 kg (EO-D group). The results of the interaction showed that the pigs interacted with both EOs, that on day 2 they spent more time interacting with EO-D, and that the interaction time through the days was reduced for EO-D and remained constant for EO-C. The interactions of the pigs with the EOs included sniffing, manipulation with nose or extremities, licking, and nibbling or consumption of EOs.

Psycholinguistic variables matter in odor naming

People from Western societies generally find it difficult to name odors. In trying to explain this, the olfactory literature has proposed several theories that focus heavily on properties of the odor itself but rarely discuss properties of the label used to describe it. However, recent studies show speakers of languages with dedicated smell lexicons can name odors with relative ease. Has the role of the lexicon been overlooked in the olfactory literature? Word production studies show properties of the label, such as word frequency and semantic context, influence naming; but this field of research focuses heavily on the visual domain. The current study combines methods from both fields to investigate word production for olfaction in two experiments. In the first experiment, participants named odors whose veridical labels were either high-frequency or low-frequency words in Dutch, and we found that odors with high-frequency labels were named correctly more often. In the second experiment, edibility was used for manipulating semantic context in search of a semantic interference effect, presenting the odors in blocks of edible and inedible odor source objects to half of the participants. While no evidence was found for a semantic interference effect, an effect of word frequency was again present. Our results demonstrate psycholinguistic variables—such as word frequency—are relevant for olfactory naming, and may, in part, explain why it is difficult to name odors in certain languages. Olfactory researchers cannot afford to ignore properties of an odor’s label.

Counting by Tens: Specific Counting in Southeast Solomonic Languages

Southeast Solomonic (SES) languages have retained the Proto-Oceanic decimal system for general counting, and also show evidence of a supplementary specific counting system, based on the number ten. These languages have lexemes that refer, for example, to 'ten pigs' or 'ten coconuts' (numerically specific nouns), as well as lexemes that refer to 'pig' and 'coconut'. This paper describes the linguistic and cultural context of this counting system. It describes the syntactic behavior of numerically specific nouns and the cultural context in which they were used. This specific counting system is not widely used today, and in any individual language there may be only a small number of numerically specific nouns. However, by looking at the languages as a group, with shared cultural and trading practices, the specific counting system and its uses can be better understood. In the specific counting systems of the SES, speakers count edible and nonedible objects of value and exchange by tens to calculate and remember large numbers during times of feasting and exchange.

A neural signature of food semantics is associated with body-mass index

Visual recognition of objects may rely on different features depending on the category to which they belong. Recognizing natural objects, such as fruits and plants, weighs more on their perceptual attributes, whereas recognizing man-made objects, such as tools or vehicles, weighs more upon the functions and actions they enable. Edible objects are perceptually rich but also prepared for specific functions, therefore it is unclear how perceptual and functional attributes affect their recognition.Two event-related potentials experiments investigated: (i) whether food categorization in the brain is differentially modulated by sensory and functional attributes, depending on whether the food is natural or transformed; (ii) whether these processes are modulated by participants’ body mass index. In experiment 1, healthy normal-weight participants were presented with a sentence (prime) and a photograph of a food. Primes described either a sensory feature (‘It tastes sweet’) or a functional feature (‘It is suitable for a wedding party’) of the food, while photographs depicted either a natural (e.g., cherry) or a transformed food (e.g., pizza). Prime-feature pairs were either congruent or incongruent. This design aimed at modulating N400-like components elicited by semantic processing. In experiment 1, N400-like amplitude was significantly larger for transformed food than for natural food with sensory primes, and vice versa with functional primes. In experiment 2, underweight and obese women performed the same semantic task. We found that, while the N400-like component in obese participants was modulated by sensory-functional primes only for transformed food, the same modulation was found in underweight participants only for natural food. These findings suggest that the level of food transformation interacts with participants’ body mass index in modulating food perception and the underlying brain processing.

Printing a blend of fruit and vegetables. New advances on critical variables and shelf life of 3D edible objects

A printed smoothie of selected fruit and vegetables was obtained. The morphological and microstructural properties were analyzed as affected by print speed and flow. Also, the changes in microbiological, antioxidant and sensorial attributes were monitored for 8 days at 5 °C. The best reproduction of the virtual model was observed at flow of 101.4%. Actual and estimated printing times did not match because the common firmware and slicing software are still unable to predict the food behaviour during printing. The appearance of 3D printed samples was more appreciated than the no-printed smoothie. Antioxidant capacity was constant during storage at 10.9 mg trolox/100 g while total phenolic content reduced from 18.8 to 10.5 mg GAE/100 g. A concentration in bacteria of 4.28 Log CFU/g was observed after printing suggesting that 3D food printing will have to consider the sanitization of each part in contact with food before its application in restaurants and at industrial scale.

Eat what you hear: Gustasonic discourses and the material culture of commercial sound recording

This article analyzes discursive linkages between acts of listening and eating within a combined multisensory regime that the authors label the gustasonic. Including both marketing discourses mobilized by the commercial music industry and representations of record consumption in popular media texts, gustasonic discourses have shaped forms and experiences of recorded sound culture from the gramophone era to the present. The authors examine three prominent modalities of gustasonic discourse: (1) discourses that position records as edible objects for physical ingestion; (2) discourses that preserve linkages between listening and eating but incorporate musical recordings into the packaging of other foodstuffs; and (3) discourses of gustasonic distinction that position the listener as someone with discriminating taste. While the gustasonic on one hand serves as an aid to consumerism, it can also cultivate a countervailing collecting impulse that resists music’s commodity status and inscribes sound recording within alternative systems of culture value.

Anticipation in Real-World Scenes: The Role of Visual Context and Visual Memory.

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip-art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye-movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. In Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real-world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real-world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate (e.g., a table upon hearing eat). Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co-presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real-world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations (such as scene type) to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object-based visual indices.

Digesting Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor

Abstract: This article considers the project Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor, created by interdisciplinary artists Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton. Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor attempts to reveal how planted and indigenous flora affects social and spatial relationships within a city. Through a process of urban foraging, the artists create edible art objects using ingredients from specific communities as a way of tasting class differences and geography. The article reflects on how the experience of creating the project was one of misconception and discovery, and it relates the artists’ experience of collecting vegetation in different communities in Edmonton, Alberta, and elsewhere in Canada. Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor proposes the mouth as a stage for performance, a site where the artist’s research about the city can be enacted and digested by residents of a community and participants of the project.

Evaluation of oral stereognostic ability after rehabilitating patients with complete dentures: in vivo study.

Stereognosis has been defined as the appreciation of the form of objects by palpation. Whilst this definition holds good for the manual exploration of objects, it is possible for the shape of objects to be explored intra orally referred to as oral stereognosis. To better understand patients' relative satisfaction with complete dentures, differences in oral stereognostic perception, based on the identification of 6 edible objects was analyzed in a group of 30 edentulous individuals at 3 stages, namely, just before (pre-treatment), 30min after (30min post-treatment) and 1month after (1month post-treatment) the insertion of new dentures. The time required to identify each object was recorded and the correctness of identification of each object was scored using oral stereognostic score. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Spearman's rank correlation test, Pearson Chi square test was used to statistically analyze the data obtained. OSA scores was significantly increased 1month post-treatment compared to 30min post-treatment (p<0.05). It was found that Oral stereognostic test is reliable for measuring patients' oral stereognostic perception and may be used as one of the clinical aids in appreciating the functional limitations imposed by the prostheses.

J042014 ポリアミド11の降伏応力に及ぼすひずみ速度の影響([J042-01]工業材料の力学応答)

Polyamide 11 (PA11) is one of bioplastics (plant-derived plastics or recyclable-resource-based plastics). It is produced from renewable castor seeds. The castor seeds are inedible. This is important for food security issues and starvation issues because many bioplastics and biodegradable plastics are made from edible objects such as corn. In general, because yield condition of plastics depends on the hydrostatic pressure, the yield stress of compression is larger than that of tension. The yield stresses of PA 11 were measured at high and low strain rates by using a split Hopkinson pressure bar method and a universal testing machine. We determined constants of Druker-Prager yield criterion for PA11, and drew the yield curves in the plane of the equivalent stress and the hydrodynamic pressure and in the plane of principle stresses. The strain rate dependence of the yield condition of PA 11 was examined.

SINs and SOMs: neural microcircuits for size tuning in the zebrafish and mouse visual pathway

In many animals, a fast and reliable circuit for discriminating between predator-sized objects and edible (prey-sized) objects is necessary for survival. How are receptive fields (RFs) in visual brain areas organized to extract information about size? Recent studies from the zebrafish optic tectum and the mouse visual cortex suggest de novo shaping of RFs by subtypes of inhibitory neurons. Del Bene et al. (2010) describe a population of GABAergic neurons in the zebrafish optic tectum (superficial interneurons, SINs) that are necessary for size filtering during prey capture. Adesnik et al. (2012) describe a somatostatin-expressing interneuron population (SOMs) that confers surround suppression on layer II/III pyramidal cells in mouse V1. Strikingly both the SINs and the SOMs, display size-dependent response properties. Increasing visual stimulus size increases excitatory input to these neurons. Dampening SIN or SOM activity alters tuning of neighboring circuits such that they lose preference for small objects. Both results provide exciting evidence for mechanisms of size filtering in visual circuits. Here we review the roles of the SINs and the SOMs and speculate on the similarity of such spatial filters across species.

Customizing Food with an Additive Manufacturing Technology

The development of open Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, such as the Fab@Home system, has emerged as a freeform approach capable of producing complex three-dimensional objects with a broad variety of materials. The main objective of this work is to analyze and optimize the manufacturing capacity of this system when producing 3D edible objects. A new heated syringe deposition tool was developed and several process parameters were optimized to adapt this technology to consumers needs. The results revealed in this study show the potential of this system to produce customized edible objects without qualified personnel knowledge, therefore saving manufacturing costs compared to traditional technologies.

Prediction during language processing is a piece of cake—But only for skilled producers.

Are there individual differences in children's prediction of upcoming linguistic input and what do these differences reflect? Using a variant of the preferential looking paradigm (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987), we found that, upon hearing a sentence like, "The boy eats a big cake," 2-year-olds fixate edible objects in a visual scene (a cake) soon after they hear the semantically constraining verb eats and prior to hearing the word cake. Importantly, children's prediction skills were significantly correlated with their productive vocabulary size-skilled producers (i.e., children with large production vocabularies) showed evidence of predicting upcoming linguistic input, while low producers did not. Furthermore, we found that children's prediction ability is tied specifically to their production skills and not to their comprehension skills. Prediction is really a piece of cake, but only for skilled producers.