Foodservice conditions in licensed urban and rural child care centers: An application of the \u3cem\u3eNational Health and Safety Performance Standards\u3c/em\u3e

Objectives: To assess the degree to which child care centers in urban and rural counties met foodservice standards as documented in the National Health and Safety Performance Standards; to determine if a difference in foodservice conditions existed between these two groups; to determine if the foodservice conditions at child care centers are related to the directors\u27 perception of existing foodservice conditions or the importance of maintaining safe foodservice conditions, or previous environmental health inspection scores; to identify child care staffing needs. Subjects: 36 urban and 34 rural child care centers in east Tennessee Design: On-site assessment of food production facilities and interviews with food production staff members and center directors. Statistical Analysis: Multivariate and analysis of variance were used to detect differences for assessed foodservice conditions, while Pearson Correlation described relationships. Frequencies were used to identify the training topics most requested by directors. Results: There was no significant difference (F=0.00; p=0.9516) in the assessed foodservice conditions between urban (80.9 ± 4.8) and rural (80.8 ± 6.9) centers. A statistically significant difference (F=4.40; p=0.0397) was detected in the safe food storage sub-topic between rural (70.8 ± 12.5) and urban (65.1 ± 10.2) centers. Since assumptions for parametric tests were not met, a correlation could not be done between the assessed foodservice conditions and the directors\u27 perception of the importance of maintaining safe foodservice conditions. There was a statistically significant (F=10.47; p\u3c0.0001) difference in assessed foodservice conditions between directors who perceived them to be very good (78.5 ± 6.3) or average (77.8 ± 4.9). There was no statistically significant relationship between the assessed foodservice conditions and environmental health inspection scores (r=-0.14; p=0.4163). A majority of the directors (88.6%) believed there was a need for training that addressed safe foodservice practices; in particular safe food storage (90.0%), kitchen safety (87.1%) and chemical storage (85.7%). Conclusions: Urban and rural centers maintain similar foodservice conditions. However, urban centers did score significantly lower than rural centers for one foodservice sub-topic, safe food storage, with a score of \u3c 70%. The directors\u27 perception of the existing foodservice conditions is related to the assessed conditions, although the application of this relationship is unknown. There is no statistically significant relationship between the assessed foodservice conditions and environmental health inspection scores. There is both a perceived and assessed need for foodservice training. Applications: The National Health and Safety Performance Standards could be used as national standards applicable for child care centers in all 50 states. Foodservice topics in need of training include: safe food storage, kitchen safety and chemical storage

Dishware Identification and Inspection for Automatic Dishwashing Operations

Commercial dishwashing systems currently involve human loading, sorting, inspecting, and unloading dishes and silverware pieces before and after washing, in hot and humid environments. Automation is desirable, especially in large scale kitchens, to improve safety and efficiency. We propose automatically identifying dishes in mixed batches by using statistics of shape descriptors of dish pieces. Experiments were conducted on 1225 images of ceramic and plastic dishes taken in different lighting conditions using different positions of 84 separate dishes of 5 different styles and shapes. In order to find the minimum set of descriptors to produce fast, adaptable and efficient automatic dish recognition, we employed several shape-based properties, including area, perimeter, ratio of length to width, extension, and minimum bounding box, together with some properties based on gray level and color of dish images. Selected set of descriptors were area, ratio of length to width, and ratio of area to area of the oriented bounding box of dish images. For dish inspection, we propose a new technique using partitioning and adaptive thresholding, combined with global thresholding. Matlab ® R14 and Image Processing Toolbox V5.0 were used. The machine vision algorithms, developed in this study, are fast, simple, and produce results invariant with lighting conditions and dish rotation about the camera-dish axis.Mechanical & Aerospace Engineerin

Improved Saliency Mechanism for Computer Vision

The objective of this project is to find an efficient biologically plausible model for the bottom-up saliency mechanism of the human vision system (HVS) and employ it in computer vision applications. In practice, analyzing or storing all information entering the human eye at every moment is beyond the capabilities of the human neural system. The saliency mechanism controls the process of selecting and allocating attention to the most "prominent" locations in the scene, which are mostly referred to as "salient points" or "interesting points" in the literature. The same problem of information overload exists in most of the computer vision applications and an efficient visual saliency model can help reducing time consumption of the algorithm. These applications comprise, but are not limited to, automatic target detection, robotics and image and video compression.In the report herein, the general architecture of models of the HVS saliency mechanism is presented and some of the well-known models are illustrated. There are several metrics to compare saliency models; however, results from different metrics vary widely in evaluating models. Since it is important to know which models perform the best in mimicking the saliency mechanism of the human visual system, first a procedure is proposed for evaluating metrics for comparing saliency maps using a database of human fixations on approximately 1000 images. This procedure is then employed to identify the best metric. This best metric is then used to evaluate nine published bottom-up saliency models on two databases, one containing natural images and the other synthetic ones.Furthermore, a new method for normalizing feature saliency maps in the saliency detection mechanisms is introduced. Also, the best visual saliency model in the literature is modified to overcome some deficiencies by automatically selecting different parameters for different regions of the image. As an application of the models of the saliency mechanisms, a saliency mechanism with the new normalization method is then applied to dishware inspection that shows interesting results.Mechanical Engineerin

Serving the Right Plate: Spatial Biases in Food Plating Aesthetics

With the growing popularity of social media, the aesthetics of food plating is getting more and more exposure. Optimizing the aesthetics of plating and understanding where certain elements of the dish should be placed on a plate or within a bento box or bowl will aid researchers in learning what side of dishware plating creates the most appetizing appearance to the average diner. The goal is to understand the ideal layout of a dish in order to improve a chef’s plating techniques along with optimal advertising photography for a world focused on visual stimuli. Previous literature led us to predict that there would be a leftward bias of plating the largest, most caloric heavy component of the meal on the dish. Similar to Western text (both reading and writing) moving from left-to-right, we suspect diners prefer food being placed in a similar directionality. Art is commonly studied in conjunction with laterality experiments, where participants frequently demonstrate a leftward bias. Japanese bentos are normally rectangular in shape, akin to a portrait or painting. When scanning a photograph, people generally scan from left-to-right similar to when reading text. Research in laterality suggests that native reading direction can highly influence a person’s opinion on aesthetics. This thesis outlines studies of food plating aesthetics whereby Canadian participants were presented photographs of professionally plated dishes and their mirror image together to elicit and record preferences. Image pairs were presented on top of each other in random orders, and decisions between leftward and rightward biased choices were collected and analysed. The majority of participants had a native reading direction of left-to-right. Interpretations of the results suggested what the ideal way to plate food is. For food presented on plates, no significant placement bias was present overall. However, for bento boxes and poke bowls, participants preferred dishes where the majority of the food was plated on the left side of the dishware, resulting in a statistically significant leftward bias. Additionally, a particular favourable trend was consistently seen, where participants almost always preferred a placement of long foods to start at the bottom left corner and ascend towards the top right in a diagonal pattern. Research in laterality and aesthetics suggests that people have a particular penchant towards either specifically the left or right side for many different habits (such as preparing the right hand for a handshake) or appearances (such as preferring artwork that is illuminated from the left). By applying these studied concepts to the art of plating, techniques can be taught to create ideal presentations. Learning how we can optimize plating aesthetics can benefit people in a variety of vocations. Mainly chefs, cooks, photographers, social media users, advertisers, and marketers could use this conclusion of a leftward bias preference to their advantage

CHINESE FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN AND FOOD SAFETY ISSUES

The purpose of the thesis was to analyze the food safety problem that happened in different supply chains in China. In addition, the aim was to give a general view of why people do not trust food producers in China these days. In this thesis there were two different cases, Huangtaiji and Sanlu milk powder The purpose of these two cases was to show two types of food producers in China

Recommended shipbuilding construction guidelines for cruise vessels destined to call on U.S. ports

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) in 1975 as a cooperative endeavor with the cruise vessel industry. VSP\u2019s goal is to assist the industry in fulfilling its responsibility for developing and implementing comprehensive sanitation programs to protect the health of passengers and crew members aboard cruise vessels.Every cruise vessel that has a foreign itinerary, carries 13 or more passengers, and calls on a United States port is subject to biannual operational inspections and when necessary, to reinspection by the VSP. The vessel owner pays a fee, based on gross registered tonnage (GRT) of the vessel, for all operational inspections. The VSP Operations Manual, which is available on the VSP web site at www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp, covers details of these inspections.Additionally, on a voluntary basis, cruise vessel owners or shipyards that build or renovate cruise vessels may request plan reviews, on-site shipyard construction inspections and/or final construction inspections of new or remodeled vessels before their first or next operational inspection, as the case may be. The vessel owner or shipyard pays a fee, based on GRT of the vessel, for on-site and final construction inspections. VSP does not charge a fee for plan reviews or consultations. Section 3.0, Procedures for Making Requests for Plan Reviews and Construction-Related Inspections covers details pertaining to plan reviews, consultations, or construction inspections.The primary purpose of Recommended Shipbuilding Construction Guidelines for Cruise Vessels Destined To Call on U.S. Ports (hereinafter referred to as the guidelines) is to provide a framework of consistency for the sanitary design and construction of cruise vessels in order to protect the health of passengers and crew aboard ship. CDC is committed to promoting high construction standards to protect the public\u2019s health and believes compliance with these recommended construction guidelines will help ensure a healthful environment on cruise vessels.ConstructionGuidelines2001.pdf2001Surveillance and InvestigationEnvironmental HealthSupersede

Ecodesign and Energy Label for Household Dishwashers

European Commission launched in 2014 the revision of the ecodesign and energy-/resource label implementing measures for the product group 'household dishwashers (DW)'. The revision study follows the Commission’s Methodology for the Evaluation of Energy related Products (MEErP) and includes sections related to the scope and definition market analysis, analysis of user behaviour and system aspects, analysis of technologies, environmental and economics, design options and policy analysis and scenarios.This research was based on available scientific information and data, uses a life-cycle thinking approach, and has engaged stakeholder experts in order to discuss key issues, and to the extent possible reach consensus on the proposals The outcomes of this study provides policy makers with the evidence basis for assessing whether and how to revise the existing Regulations.JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi

An Investigation of Emergent Perceptual Phenomena in Primates: Illusions and Biases in Decision-Making

The perceptual system operates ideally to reveal rapidly processed, accurate and functional information to an organism. However, illusory phenomena emerge when there is discontinuity between sensory input and perception on the basis of misleading contexts. Because illusions emerge as a byproduct of an otherwise functional and efficient perceptual system, they provide a means to understand better mechanisms of perception within and across species. Beyond anatomical and functional similarities in the visual system across primates, nonhuman primate species reveal intriguing similarities in the perception of visual illusions with one another and humans. This dissertation explored visual illusions across the Order Primates, including human adults and children, chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, and capuchin monkeys, with a focus on when, why and for whom geometric illusions emerge. Geometric illusions occur when a target’s perceived properties (e.g., size, shape, color) are impacted by an illusory context. Specifically, I focused on similarities and differences in perceptual mechanisms across primate species and on the role of attention in illusion emergence. I also assessed the translational impact of visual illusions on everyday decision-making (i.e., food-choice behavior). Overall, this research demonstrated that illusions are complex, and they emerged differently across species as a function of processing mode (i.e., global versus local processing) and attentional control. Further, not all illusions were perceived equally. External factors including illusory array design (i.e., the relationship between target and inducer stimuli) and testing paradigm directly impacted illusion perception. Response competition emerged if the illusory array was too heavily weighted towards inducing stimuli, such that the inducers were the more salient element within the array relative to the target stimulus. These methodological challenges proved to be especially true for local processors (e.g., monkeys) that first perceived the individual elements within an array prior to perceiving the global figure. The manner in which illusions are presented to pre- and non-verbal species can constrain or perhaps create a scaffold for illusory perception. Comparative research as in this dissertation provides a deeper understanding of how context influences perception and choice and will shed light on how we see and subsequently interact with our world

North Carolina's Preventive Maintenance Program: A Case For Preventing Childhood Lead Poisoning Through the Use of Mandatory Interim Lead Control Methods

North Carolina's Lead-Based Paint Preventive Maintenance Program was created in 1997 when the North Carolina General Assembly adopted the Childhood Lead Exposure Control Act. The Preventive Maintenance Program was designed to prevent childhood lead exposure from deteriorating lead-based paint in older rental housing. As a primary prevention method, the Preventive Maintenance Program was designed to protect children from exposure to lead-based paint hazards. Today most lead poisoning prevention programs use screening to identify a lead-poisoned child after the child has already been exposed to the environmental toxin lead. By requiring mandatory participation of pre-1978 rental property in the Preventive Maintenance Program, there will be a reduction of risk of children becoming poisoned by lead-based paint.Master of Public Healt