A Study on How Food Colour May Determine the Categorization of a Dish: Predicting Meal Appeal from Colour Combinations

A person’s preference to select or reject certain meals is influenced by several aspects, including colour. In this paper, we study the relevance of food colour for such preferences. To this end, a set of images of meals is processed by an automatic method that associates mood adjectives that capture such meal preferences. These adjectives are obtained by analyzing the colour palettes in the image, using a method based in Kobayashi’s model of harmonic colour combinations. The paper also validates that the colour palettes calculated for each image are harmonic by developing a rating model to predict how much a user would like the colour palettes obtained. This rating is computed using a regression model based on the COLOURlovers dataset implemented to learn users’ preferences. Finally, the adjectives associated automatically with images of dishes are validated by a survey which was responded by 178 people and demonstrates that the labels are adequate. The results obtained in this paper have applications in tourism marketing, to help in the design of marketing multimedia material, especially for promoting restaurants and gastronomic destinations

Symptoms Based Image Predictive Analysis for Citrus Orchards Using Machine Learning Techniques: A Review

In Agriculture, orchards are the deciding factor in the country’s economy. There are many orchards, and citrus and sugarcane will cover 60 percent of them. These citrus orchards satisfy the necessity of citrus fruits and citrus products, and these citrus fruits contain more vitamin C. The citrus orchards have had some problems generating good yields and quality products. Pathogenic diseases, pests, and water shortages are the three main problems that plants face. Farmers can find these problems early on with the support of machine learning and deep learning, which may also change how they feel about technology.  By doing this in agriculture, the farmers can cut off the major issues of yield and quality losses. This review gives enormous methods for identifying and classifying plant pathogens, pests, and water stresses using image-based work. In this review, the researchers present detailed information about citrus pathogens, pests, and water deficits. Methods and techniques that are currently available will be used to validate the problem. These will include pre-processing for intensification, segmentation, feature extraction, and selection processes, machine learning-based classifiers, and deep learning models. In this work, researchers thoroughly examine and outline the various research opportunities in the field. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of citrus plants and orchards; Researchers used a systematic review to ensure comprehensive coverage of this topic

Haloacetic acids in public drinking water and risk of adverse birth outcomes in the Born in Bradford cohort

Disinfection of drinking water is vital to protect the public against disease. However disinfectants such as chlorine react with organic matter in drinking water to produce a wide range of chemical disinfection by-products (DBPs) of potential health concern including haloacetic acids (HAAs). This thesis is an epidemiologic analysis investigating the relationship between prenatal exposure to HAAs in drinking water and adverse birth outcomes in “Born in Bradford”, a large multi-ethnic prospective birth cohort study based in Bradford, England. It focuses on the understudied and as yet unregulated HAAs which are the second most prevalent class of chlorination DBPs in UK drinking waters. To assess exposure, area-level concentrations to three select HAAs (measured in drinking water samples newly collected for this study, modelled in time and space, and weighted to each cohort woman’s specific trimester of pregnancy by postcode of residence) were combined with individual water consumption information collected via questionnaire at recruitment to the cohort. Despite the benefits of state-of-the-art exposure metrics and a large sample size, this study does not find any significant patterns of association between prenatal exposure to HAAs and either birth weight, being born term low birth weight or small-for-gestational age. Water consumption over the course of late pregnancy was further studied in a subset of cohort women. A small but significant increase in water consumption was reported, bearing in mind that both behaviour change over the third trimester of pregnancy and measurement error likely contributed to this effect. This research addresses some of the limitations of previous DBP studies in terms of exposure assessment and birth outcome definitions, and uniquely evaluates the variability of individual water consumption over time. It also identifies areas for future research and examines the importance of HAAs and birth weight-based outcomes in the larger research context.Open Acces

Requirements-oriented methodology for evaluating ontologies

Ontologies play key roles in many applications today. Therefore, whether using a newly-specified ontology or an existing ontology for use in its target application, it is important to determine the suitability of an ontology to the application at hand. This need is addressed by carrying out ontology evaluation, which determines qualities of an ontology using methodologies, criteria or measures. However, for addressing the ontology requirements from a given application, it is necessary to determine what the appropriate set of criteria and measures are. In this thesis, we propose a Requirements-Oriented Methodology for Evaluating Ontologies (ROMEO). ROMEO outlines a methodology for determining appropriate methods for ontology evaluation that incorporates a suite of existing ontology evaluation criteria and measures. ROMEO helps ontology engineers to determine relevant ontology evaluation measures for a given set of ontology requirements by linking these requirements to existing ontology evaluation measures through a set of questions. There are three main parts to ROMEO. First, ontology requirements are elicited from a given application and form the basis for an appropriate evaluation of ontologies. Second, appropriate questions are mapped to each ontology requirement. Third, relevant ontology evaluation measures are mapped to each of those questions. From the ontology requirements of an application, ROMEO is used to determine appropriate methods for ontology evaluation by mapping applicable questions to the requirements and mapping those questions to appropriate measures. In this thesis, we perform the ROMEO methodology to obtain appropriate ontology evaluation methods for ontology-driven applications through case studies of Lonely Planet and Wikipedia. Since the mappings determined by ROMEO are dependent on the analysis of the ontology engineer, the validation of these mappings is needed. As such, in addition to proposing the ROMEO methodology, a method for the empirical validation of ROMEO mappings is proposed in this thesis. We report on two empirical validation experiments that are carried out in controlled environments to examine the performance of the ontologies over a set of tasks. These tasks vary and are used to compare the performance of a set of ontologies in the respective experimental environment. The ontologies used vary on a specific ontology quality or measure being examined. Empirical validation experiments are conducted for two mappings between questions and their associated measures, which are drawn from case studies of Lonely Planet and Wikipedia. These validation experiments focus on mappings between questions and their measures. Furthermore, as these mappings are application-independent, they may be reusable in subsequent applications of the ROMEO methodology. Using a ROMEO mapping from the Lonely Planet case study, we validate a mapping of a coverage question to the F-measure. The validation experiment carried out for this mapping was inconclusive, thus requiring further analysis. Using a ROMEO mapping from the Wikipedia case study, we carry out a separate validation experiment examining a mapping between an intersectedness question and the tangledness measure. The results from this experiment showed the mapping to be valid. For future work, we propose additional validation experiments for mappings that have been identified between questions and measures

Mobile Value Added Services: A Business Growth Opportunity for Women Entrepreneurs

Examines the potential for mobile value-added services adoption by women entrepreneurs in Egypt, Nigeria, and Indonesia in expanding their micro businesses; challenges, such as access to digital channels; and the need for services tailored to women

Novel plant-based meat alternatives: future opportunities and health considerations.

Current food systems threaten population and environmental health. Evidence suggests reduced meat and increased plant-based food consumption would align with climate change and health promotion priorities. Accelerating this transition requires greater understanding of determinants of plant-based food choice. A thriving plant-based food industry has emerged to meet consumer demand and support dietary shift towards plant-based eating. ‗Traditional' plant-based diets are low energy density, nutrient dense, low in saturated fat and purportedly associated with health benefits. However, fast-paced contemporary lifestyles continue to fuel growing demand for meat-mimicking plant-based convenience foods which are typically ultra-processed. Processing can improve product safety and palatability and enable fortification and enrichment. However, deleterious health consequences have been associated with ultra-processing, though there is a paucity of equivocal evidence regarding the health value of novel plant-based meat alternatives and their capacity to replicate the nutritional profile of meat-equivalents. Thus, despite the health halo often associated with plant-based eating, there is a strong rationale to improve consumer literacy of plant-based meat alternatives. Understanding the impact of extensive processing on health effects may help to justify the use of innovative methods designed to maintain health benefits associated with particular foods and ingredients. Furthering knowledge regarding the nutritional value of novel plant-based meat alternatives will increase consumer awareness thus support informed choice. Finally, knowledge of factors influencing engagement of target consumer subgroups with such products may facilitate production of desirable healthier plant-based meat alternatives. Such evidence-based food manufacturing practice has the potential to positively influence future individual and planetary health

Understanding and enabling nutrition and agriculture linkages: development and implementation of home-grown school feeding in Nepal

Providing nutritionally balanced diets through ecologically sustainable and equitable food systems is the most profound challenge facing us today. The current state of food and nutrition security is in many ways is a legacy of the green revolution and neoliberal market based political economy. Technocratic and market- based approaches have contributed to creating a highly homogenised food system at the expense of diversity, ecological sustainability and nutrition quality. The origin of agriculture around 10000 years ago and the processes of domestication provide useful insights on the key drivers of food production that influence policy and programmes even today. More importantly there is compelling evidence which shows how the transition to agriculture adversely impacted human health in a wide range of contexts. The study is an action research project primarily based on design, implementation and evaluation of ‘Home Grown School Feeding’ in eight districts across the three main agroecological zones of Nepal. It provides important policy and programmatic evidence on enabling decentralized food systems which are nutritionally and ecologically sensitive, as part of a government led universal food-based safety net project. Based on action research inquiry process, the thesis develops concepts and theories through the different chapters to contribute to our understanding of food systems and programme design. The intervention creates an effective platform for food system mediation through different pathways. Evidence on intervention governance through ‘food sovereignty’ lens demonstrates how HSGF interventions can also promote equity in food systems in terms of policies, funding and knowledge. COVID-19 pandemic control measures have contributed to undermining food and nutrition security, with the poorest being hit the hardest and young children potentially facing life-long consequences. Overall evidence from the thesis including the recent Covid crisis highlights the importance of resilient and context sensitive food production and it is an emphatic reminder of the need to have integrated public health-nutrition-ecology approach to food systems.Open Acces