The Child Food Rejection Scale: Development and validation of a new scale to assess food neophobia and pickiness among 2- to 7-year-old French children

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Organisation multi-agent pour la gouvernance de systèmes Machine-to-Machine

http://www.emse.fr/~picard/publications/persson11jfsma.pdfInternational audienceLe paradigme Machine-to-Machine (M2M) implique des appareils (capteurs, effecteurs) interagissant pour fournir des services localisés dans le monde physique. Avec la maturité du M2M, émerge une demande grandissante pour des solutions mutualisées dans lesquelles les applications peuvent partager un ensemble commun d'appareils. Dans ce contexte, le projet SensCity propose une infrastructure pour mettre en oeuvre des applications à l'échelle de la ville, ce qui nécessite de fournir des moyens de gouvernance agile pour prendre en compte l'extensibilité du système (ie. scalability). Nous proposons d'utiliser les technologies multi-agents pour répondre à cette problématique. Selon cette approche, la stratégie de gouvernance est exprimée par une organisation multi-agent à l'aide du framework organisationnel MOISE. Nous illustrons notre proposition par un système de gestion intelligente du strationnement

Food rejection in young children:Validation of the Child Food Rejection Scale in English and cross-cultural examination in the UK and France.

Although there are numerous studies examining food rejection (neophobia and pickiness), very few studies have directly compared these particular behaviors in children from different countries. Testing children from different countries is important for future research, as there are clear differences between European countries in early feeding practices and child fruit and vegetable consumption. In the present study we aimed to (i) validate the Child Food Rejection Scale in English and (ii) compare children’s food neophobia and pickiness in the UK and France. To that aim, the Child Food Rejection Scale was first translated into English and its reliability and validity were assessed. Second, food rejection scores in a UK sample (n=117) and in a French sample (n=256) were directly compared to examine cross-cultural differences. Results showed that the Child Food Rejection Scale can be successfully used outside France. Moreover results revealed that UK children are less neophobic and picky than French children. These cultural differences can be useful to inform targeted interventions to change food related behaviors in these different populations

Multi-agent based governance model for machine-to-machine networks in a smart parking management system

http://www.emse.fr/~picard/publications/bilal12saconet.pdfInternational audienceProposed in this paper is a multi-agent model that defines a set of global functioning rules for a flexible governance, adapted to parking management within a city. This is designed to aid drivers in finding a parking place, which satisfies a group of criteria, predefined in profiles, providing a better parking service to the public. The Multi-Agent model developed is integrated in the platform SensCity, which is dedicated to the development and deployment of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems. The city is divided into a number of parking areas that are equipped with sensors and actuators, which are responsible for transferring data from and to the parking places. Therefore, the agents can work to interpret and manipulate the governance principles modeled and implemented by the multi-agent model, independently from drivers and parking spaces. Moreover, this paper proposes an intelligent endto- end management of parking system using the MOISE organization framework

Extraction of Uranium from Seawater: Design and Testing of a Symbiotic System

Uranium present in low concentration in ocean water has the potential to greatly augment the current fuel reserve for nuclear power generation, but the challenge of extracting it economically remains. Two new designs of seawater uranium extraction systems are proposed in this paper—a stationary system and a continuous system—both of which utilize a braided polymer adsorbent. The stationary system simplifies the recovery procedure, and it is predicted to produce uranium at $326/kg. The continuous system is attached to an offshore wind turbine system to eliminate the need for additional mooring and increase the overall energy-gathering ability of the wind farm system. This system could maximize the adsorbent yield and achieve a production cost of$403/kg of uranium.MIT Energy InitiativeS. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundatio

Visual exposure and categorization performance positively influence 3- to 6-year-old children's willingness to taste unfamiliar vegetables

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Food neophobia and pickiness in young children. How to measure it?

International audienceBackground. The two strongest barriers to increasing children's dietary variety and consumption of fruit and vegetables are food neophobia and pickiness, assumed to be the main kinds of food rejection in children. Accordingly, psychometric tools that provide a clear assessment of food neophobia and pickiness are greatly needed. Objective.We developed and validated a new scale for the assessment of food neophobia and pickiness, thus filling a major gap in the psychometric assessment of food rejection by French children. We concentrated on French children aged 2-7 years, as no such scale exists for this young population, and on the two known dimensions of food rejection, namely food neophobia and pickiness, as the nature of the relationship between them is still unclear. Design. The questionnaire was administered online to two samples (N =168; N ==256) of caregivers who responded for their children aged between 2 and 7 years. Additionally, a food choice task was administered to 17 children to check the scale's predictive validity. Main outcome measures/Statistical analysis performed. A factor analysis was performed to investigate the underlying structure of the scale. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent discriminant and predictive validity were also assessed. Results.The resulting scale, called the Child Food Rejection Scale (CFRS), included six items relating to food neophobia and five items relating to pickiness. The factor analysis confirmed the two-dimensional structure of the scale. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity were all satisfactory. Moreover, results from the food choice task showed that scores on the CFRS accurately predicted children's attitudes toward new and familiar foods. Conclusions.Taken together, these findings suggest that the CFRS, a short and easy-to-administer scale, represents a valuable tool for studying food rejection tendencies in French children

Multi-agent Self-organization and Reorganization to Adapt M2M Infrastructures

International audienceMachine-to-Machine (M2M) systems are based on networks of sensors and actuators immersed in the physical world, like in Smart Cities. To manage such networks, classical so-called vertical approaches (where one stakeholder is involved from services to sensors) are very expensive. Thus, a growing trend emerges for horizontal architectures, where several stakeholders collaborate within the same infrastructure. Moreover, the growing number of connected devices raises the key issue of properly controlling and adapting capabilities so that human intervention is minimized. Based on a Multi-Agent Oriented Programming approach, the Adaptive Governance MAS for M2M systems (AGaMeMnon) system installs such capabilities by combining self-organization and reorganization mechanisms. This will be the focus of this paper. AGaMeMnon has been implemented and linked to the SensCity project middleware and evaluated experimentally by the means of simulations