Search Results (1,709)

Indigenous crops are well adapted to marginal conditions and rich in nutrients, making them promising contributors to food and nutrition security in rural South African communities. This study evaluated the consumer acceptability and community perceptions of stiff pap composite dishes incorporating pumpkin leaves, Cucurbita pumpkin, and cream-fleshed sweet potato (CFSP) among 60 rural participants. Employing a cross-sectional design, sensory testing using a nine-point hedonic scale and focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted across the uMkhanyakude and King Cetshwayo District Municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. All three composite dishes were well-liked overall. The CFSP-based dish achieved the highest overall acceptability (7.68) and was the most preferred (40%; n = 24), while the pumpkin-based dish was the least preferred (38%; n = 23). Significant differences in taste and color were observed across dishes (p < 0.05). Focus groups highlighted that familiarity, flavor balance, preparation methods, and cultural norms shaped willingness to adopt these dishes, with novel combinations eliciting both curiosity and hesitation. Cultural norms, family preferences, and the traditional significance of stiff pap shape acceptance pathways. The findings suggest that integrating indigenous crops into culturally familiar staples can promote dietary diversification and support smallholder farming systems, with culturally sensitive culinary guidance serving as the key enabler for broader adoption. These findings imply that embedding indigenous crops within culturally central staples offers a practical, consumer-driven entry point for sustainable food system transformation, simultaneously advancing dietary diversity, smallholder livelihoods, and the resilience of rural food systems. Full article

The accelerating urgency of global public health challenges, biodiversity loss, and climate change has driven rapid innovation in novel foods and alternative proteins, including cultured cells, fermentation-derived components, plant-based meats, insects, and algae, which promise nutritious, sustainable, and ethical dietary choices with lower environmental footprints. Although technologies have advanced, consumer perception and preferences remain key hindrances due to perceptual, cultural, and sensory challenges. This semi-systematic narrative literature review aims to incorporate interdisciplinary studies (2020–2025) that span sensory science, AI-driven marketing, behavioral economics, and policy analysis to explore consumer incentives, barriers, and intervention approaches associated with novel food categories. Of 1260 initial records, 310 duplicates were removed, 530 were excluded at title/abstract screening, 233 were excluded at full-text review, leaving 197 studies for the final synthesis. The focus is on understanding cultural contexts, cognitive biases, digital and social influences, and the global framing impacts that shape consumer adoption. Consumer perceptions and preferences are primarily influenced by health benefits, ethical concerns, and environmental sustainability; however, neophobia, sensory unfamiliarity, trust deficits, and price temper these factors. Preliminary evidence suggests that AI-generated personalization, transparent labeling, behavioral nudges, and social norms may be useful tools for overcoming resistance to change, though the effectiveness of AI-driven personalization in actual purchasing behavior is not yet firmly established. Cultural diversity affects acceptance routes, with culturally established insect consumption differing from Western neophobia. Future studies should integrate interdisciplinary methodologies, longitudinal cross-cultural analyses, and innovative technologies to enhance communication and product design. Full article

Butter texture is one of the key quality attributes affecting both technological performance and consumer perception. Although the effects of milk composition and fatty acid profile on butter properties have been widely investigated, studies integrating chemical composition, fatty acid profile, instrumental firmness, and sensory texture characteristics in butter produced from different animal species remain limited. This study evaluated the relationships among chemical composition, fatty acid profile, instrumental firmness, and sensory texture attributes of butter produced from cow, sheep, and goat milk. Sheep butter showed the highest total solids and fat contents (86.84 and 85.27 g/100 g), whereas cow and goat butter contained significantly higher water levels (approximately 17.9 g/100 g; p < 0.05). Cow butter was characterised by higher proportions of long-chain saturated fatty acids, particularly palmitic acid (32.39%), and the highest monounsaturated fatty acid content (24.11%). Although instrumental firmness did not differ significantly among butter types (p > 0.05), cow butter exhibited the highest mean firmness value (6.07 N) and the highest sensory firmness score. Goat butter contained elevated levels of short- and medium-chain fatty acids, and the highest polyunsaturated fatty acid content (4.83%), which was associated with lower firmness (3.04 N). Sheep butter exhibited the highest stearic acid content (11.08%), together with greater spreadability and fatty mouthfeel. Principal component analysis provided an exploratory overview of the relationships among compositional, instrumental, and sensory variables and highlighted potential associations between fatty acid composition and butter texture characteristics. Under the conditions of this pilot-scale study, milk origin was associated with distinct compositional and textural profiles of butter. Full article

Current digital twin frameworks focused on human–robot collaboration rarely take into account the sensory degradation of real industrial environments, nor do they integrate the operator as an active agent within the system. This research presents a multimodal digital twin framework for a dual-arm collaborative robot at an assembly station; the system was developed using ROS 2 Jazzy and CoppeliaSim as the simulator. The architecture integrates three main components: the first is a perception layer that captures voice commands using Whisper ASR and the state of the workspace using a hybrid YOLO + ViT visual pipeline, both with per-channel metadata; the second consists of a Confidence-Weighted Late Fusion engine that dynamically adjusts the weight of each modality based on real-time signal quality, so that each fusion decision can be reconstructed from the signals that generated it; and the third component is a Reference Resolver that grounds linguistic intent within the visual context of the scene and in the fusion weights, using a local instance of Llama 3.1 8B that does not transmit audio, transcripts, or images outside the system. The framework was evaluated using 210 iterations distributed across seven degradation conditions of increasing severity, comparing adaptive fusion against a baseline of fixed weights (0.5/0.5). Under clean conditions and under visual degradation of any severity, both configurations achieved 100% accuracy. Under severe auditory degradation (SNR 0 dB), adaptive fusion activated the safety gate and refrained from executing most commands (13.3% accuracy), while the fixed-weight baseline executed more commands (60% accuracy) but made three incorrect object selections; under severe dual degradation, the pattern repeated (13.3% vs. 40%, with five incorrect selections in the baseline). The adaptive system made no grounding errors in the 210 executions, compared to eight in the baseline, substituting incorrect execution with conservative abstention when no modality provided a reliable signal. The implementation, featuring a versioned degradation protocol and a fixed seed, provides a reproducible benchmark for evaluating multimodal fusion strategies in human–cobot interaction. Full article

Mo Yan’s stage play Crocodile (Eyu) marks a shift away from novel-centered scholarship in Mo Yan studies. Centered on a continually fed, ever-growing crocodile, the play moves the animal from a textual symbol to a stage image. Existing studies emphasize theme, symbolism, or genre but say less about how stage procedures establish the crocodile’s presence as a publicly perceptible fact and generate meanings around power, desire, and judgment. This article addresses that gap through a script-based, stage-oriented semiotic analysis. Drawing on Barthes’s denotation and connotation together with Hjelmslev’s expression and content planes, it analyzes how stage images organize perception and meaning. It argues that presence in Crocodile is produced through linked sensory, spatial, and verbal cues: at moments of concealment and disclosure, expansion, threshold, and loss of control, the play turns the crocodile into a collectively witnessable event rather than a mere symbol, while repeated cues consolidate associations around power, desire, and judgment, reorienting spectatorship toward the conditions of witnessing. By treating the stage image as an operative mechanism rather than a symbol to be decoded, the article shows how the play, through stage procedures, establishes the crocodile as a perceptible and witnessable stage presence that generates meaning. Full article

The present research investigated the effects of two pork back-fat concentrations (30% fat, FAT30, and 40% fat, FAT40), two sodium chloride levels (2.4% and 2.6%), and two starter culture combinations (Lactobacillus curvatus/Staphylococcus xylosus; LAB6, and Lactobacillus sakei/Staphylococcus xylosus; LAB8) on ripened ostrich salami. Salami samples were formulated without nitrite and nitrate, which aligns with consumer demands for healthier, cleaner-label meat products. It is specified that the present experiment is structured with a single-batch-per-treatment combination: this was due to structural processing limitations in the production facility, which was an artisanal laboratory and not an industry plant. After 10 weeks of ripening, FAT30 salami showed higher values of pH, salt content, water-phase salt (WPS), α-tocopherol, free fatty acids (FFA), and secondary lipid oxidation products (TBARS) compared with FAT40 salami. Conversely, FAT40 salami exhibited higher water activity (a_w), moisture-to-protein ratio (M:P), conjugated dienes (CD; primary lipid oxidation products), and non-protein nitrogen (NPN) than FAT30 salami. Both NaCl concentration and starter culture type influenced several of the measured variables. Specifically, salami containing 2.4% salt exhibited higher FFA and CD values than the formulation containing 2.6% salt. Likewise, the LAB8 starter culture resulted in higher CD and NPN levels compared with LAB6. Fat inclusion level significantly affected sensory characteristics. FAT40 salami exhibited greater intensities of gamy, metallic, fatty, and moldy flavors, as well as higher overall off-flavor intensity, tenderness, and juiciness. In contrast, FAT30 salami was characterized by greater cohesiveness and a more pronounced ripening flavor. The 2.6% sodium chloride treatment resulted in greater color homogeneity, higher odor intensity, and stronger rancid notes, while reducing the perception of metallic, fatty, and moldy flavors compared with the 2.4% treatment. Salami inoculated with LAB6 exhibited a higher intensity of off-flavors than the formulation produced with LAB8. Moreover, several significant interactions among the three experimental factors were observed. After 20 weeks of ripening, the effects observed after 10 weeks for most physicochemical parameters were largely maintained. However, FFA and CD concentrations (both below the limit of quantification) no longer differed between the two fat inclusion levels. Sensory evaluation revealed that the differences between FAT30 and FAT40 in undesirable flavor attributes disappeared over time, whereas the perception of ripening and maturity became even more pronounced in FAT30 salami. Regarding FA composition, FAT30 salami contained higher proportions of saturated FA and polyunsaturated FA, whereas FAT40 salami was characterized by a higher monounsaturated FA content and more favorable lipid quality indices. Full article

Consumer perception and sensory satisfaction play a critical role in shaping sustainable food consumption patterns, purchase intention, and repeat purchasing behavior within modern food systems. This study evaluated the physicochemical and sensory attributes of five imported mango cultivars (Tommy Atkins, Kent, Palmer, Osteen, and Sindhri) sold in Florence, Italy, to examine how quality characteristics influence consumer acceptance and sustainable food choice behavior. Physical and chemical analyses included fruit weight, peel color, firmness, total soluble solids, titratable acidity, and pulp characteristics. Sensory evaluation was conducted using a trained panel to assess visual appearance, sweetness, sourness, aroma, juiciness, texture, pleasantness, naturalness perception, overall judgment, and purchase intention before and after consumption. Significant differences were observed among cultivars for several quality and sensory parameters. Sindhri exhibited the highest sweetness and strong consumer acceptance, while Palmer achieved the highest overall judgment and purchase intention after tasting. Kent demonstrated superior visual color and firmness attributes, whereas Tommy Atkins showed higher fibrousness and lower overall consumer acceptance. The findings demonstrate that sensory characteristics are strongly associated with consumer perceptions and purchase intentions, underscoring the importance of cultivar-specific quality profiling in sustainable food marketing strategies. Understanding consumer-oriented quality preferences may support more sustainable imported fruit supply chains by improving consumer satisfaction, reducing dissatisfaction-related food waste, and enhancing sustainable consumption patterns in the growing Italian tropical fruit market. Full article

Urban night markets are increasingly promoted as engines of nighttime economies and everyday public life, yet the mechanisms through which their spatial settings generate vitality remain poorly understood. Here we examine how the built environment and multisensory perception jointly shape night-market vitality in Changsha, China. We develop a structural equation model linking four built-environment dimensions—spatial convenience, service richness, strolling comfort and scene atmosphere—with individual perception and spatial vitality. The results show that night-market vitality is not produced by physical accessibility alone, but emerges from the interaction between environmental conditions and visitors’ sensory experience. Strolling comfort is the strongest predictor of vitality, acting both directly and through perception. Service richness and scene atmosphere also significantly enhance vitality, whereas spatial convenience has no significant direct effect but improves individual perception. Individual perception further translates sensory evaluations into behavioural vitality, including lingering, consumption, social interaction and revisitation. These findings suggest that night-market regeneration should move beyond traffic access and facility provision towards the design of comfortable, distinctive and multisensory urban experiences. This study provides empirical evidence for understanding informal nighttime commercial spaces as dynamic public environments shaped by both material form and embodied perception. Full article

Intranasal corticosteroids (INCS) remain the cornerstone of pharmacologic treatment for allergic rhinitis (AR) because of their well-established anti-inflammatory efficacy and generally favorable benefit–risk profile. Nevertheless, concerns regarding local and systemic corticosteroid-related adverse events (AEs) continue to influence patient adherence, prescribing practices, and long-term treatment acceptance. In routine clinical practice, safety perception and corticosteroid-related concerns frequently influence adherence and formulation selection to a greater extent than differences in clinical efficacy, particularly in pediatric populations and in patients requiring prolonged continuous therapy. Differences in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, including systemic bioavailability, glucocorticoid receptor affinity, lipophilicity, protein binding, and extent of first-pass metabolism, are considered important safety profile determinants of currently available INCS formulations. Available evidence indicates that local AEs, particularly epistaxis, nasal irritation, dryness, and sensory discomfort, represent the most frequently reported treatment-related AEs across INCS formulations, although these events are generally mild, self-limiting, and infrequently treatment-limiting. Clinically significant structural nasal complications, including septal perforation or progressive mucosal injury, appear uncommon in currently available studies. Systemic AEs, including hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis suppression, ocular toxicity, growth impairment, or clinically meaningful effects on bone metabolism, have not been consistently demonstrated with currently used low-systemic-exposure formulations administered at recommended therapeutic doses. Although systemic glucocorticoid exposure has been associated with alterations in lipid metabolism, adipose tissue function, and metabolic homeostasis, currently available intranasal corticosteroids demonstrate minimal systemic exposure, making clinically relevant metabolic effects unlikely under recommended therapeutic conditions. Formulations such as mometasone furoate, fluticasone propionate, fluticasone furoate, and ciclesonide exhibit pharmacokinetic characteristics associated with minimal systemic exposure because of extensive first-pass metabolism and low oral bioavailability. Although substantial pharmacokinetic differences exist between currently available INCS formulations, direct comparative evidence demonstrating clinically meaningful superiority in systemic safety outcomes remains limited. Current evidence suggests that formulation-dependent differences are clinically more relevant with respect to local tolerability, sensory characteristics, patient preference, and long-term adherence than major systemic safety outcomes. Pediatric evidence is generally reassuring, although historical concerns regarding growth suppression associated with earlier corticosteroid formulations continue to influence clinical practice. Currently available evidence supports the use of modern INCS as effective and generally well-tolerated therapeutic options across adult and pediatric populations. Full article

Background: Sensorimotor impairments are common following sports injuries. Electrical Threshold Testing (ETT) is a promising quantitative sensory testing (QST) tool that allows the assessment of sensory deficits, motor recruitment, and pain perception. Although various protocols have been proposed, direct comparisons between studies and protocols remain difficult due to methodological inconsistencies, particularly regarding the number of measurements used, which significantly affect reliability. The main objective was to determine the number of trials required to obtain reliable measurements of electrical sensory threshold (EST), electrical motor threshold (EMT), and electrical pain threshold (EPT) in terms of both intra- and interday reliability. Methods: In this repeated-measures study, 14 active participants underwent three electrical stimulation protocols (sensory, motor, and pain) and performed five measurements per threshold. Averages of 1 to 5 measurements were analyzed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Results: For EST, averaging multiple trials yielded good-to-excellent intra- and interday reliability (ICCs = 0.778–0.964). For EMT, intraday reliability was excellent (ICCs > 0.928), but interday stability remained moderate depending on the performed test. For EPT, intraday reliability was good to excellent (ICCs = 0.812–0.957), whereas interday stability (ICCs > 0.782) required averaging at least three trials. Single-trial assessments provided insufficient precision across all thresholds. Conclusions: Implementing a standardized protocol of three-averaged trials, including EST, EMT and EPT, appears to be an optimal, reliable, and time-efficient balance for clinical settings. These findings may contribute to ETT standardization in active populations, enhancing clinical efficiency, and supporting its use as a reliable tool for assessing sensorimotor impairments and monitoring treatment outcomes. Full article

Agritourism farm-stay guesthouses represent a burgeoning sector of rural tourism, wherein locally produced food serves as the primary experiential attraction. This study examines tourist perceptions regarding food quality, sensory characteristics, sustainability awareness, loyalty indicators, and comparative evaluations at three farm-stay guesthouses in Caraș-Severin County, Romania, located at distinct altitudes: lowland (Sacu, 154 m a.s.l.), hill (Văliug, 550 m a.s.l.), and mountain (Cozia, 1130 m a.s.l.). Altitude in this study marks three distinct settings—lowland, hill, mountain—rather than functioning as a tested independent variable. The results show that tourists evaluated all three guesthouses similarly, with no statistically significant differences across zones. The comparative design was a way of asking whether own-farm food quality perceptions hold across different agritourism contexts, not a test of what altitude does to those perceptions. A structured questionnaire (n = 650) was distributed to guests following an informed consent protocol. Four latent constructs were operationalised: food quality (FQ; Cronbach’s α = 0.593), sensory characteristics (SCs; α = 0.596), sustainability perception (SP; α = 0.393), and comparison with non-farm establishments (CF; α = 0.621). Overall gastronomic satisfaction was particularly high (mean = 4.71 ± 0.62 on a 1–5 Likert scale), and the average overall score was 9.44 ± 1.01 out of 10. Multiple regression accounted for 7.5% of the satisfaction variance (R² = 0.075; F(4,643) = 13.09, p < 0.001), with sensory characteristics (β = 0.232, p < 0.001) and sustainability perception (β = 0.088, p = 0.020) serving as significant predictors. Food origin transparency substantially impacted satisfaction (ANOVA: F(3,646) = 4.964, p = 0.002): visitors who received thorough provenance explanations were more satisfied (mean = 4.77) than those who received no information (mean = 4.57). Among the 569 respondents with prior non-farm experience, 85.2% rated farm-stay cuisine as superior to non-farm alternatives overall. Food quality perceptions in these three Caraș-Severin guesthouses are uniformly high regardless of altitude. What separates more satisfied guests from less satisfied ones is not the measurable quality of the product but whether the host explained where it came from. Full article

Background/Objectives: Discrepancies between measured indoor temperature and perceived comfort in hospital settings raise concerns about the role of visual environment in shaping sensory perception and psychological well-being. This study examined the effects of wall finish, wall color, and color temperature on thermal perception, visual perception, affect, perceived restoration, and EEG responses in patient rooms using virtual reality. Methods: In total, 192 participants were assigned to either a 20 °C or 25 °C ambient-temperature condition and exposed to one of 12 virtual patient-room scenes in a between-subjects experiment. Pre- and post-experimental survey data and EEG data were analyzed. Results: Compared with those tested at 20 °C, participants tested at 25 °C underestimated room temperature more and rated wall finish, wall color, and color temperature as more visually comfortable. At 20 °C, participants exposed to the latex paint finish condition rated the wall finish as visually more comfortable and reported greater willingness to rest than those in the vinyl wallcovering condition; however, EEG regression showed higher occipital alpha/beta ratio index values for vinyl wallcovering, indicating a relaxation-related EEG response. Under both temperature conditions, yellow walls led to warmer temperature estimation than blue or white walls. At 20 °C, warm color temperature produced warmer thermal sensation, more visually comfortable color-temperature ratings, higher room pleasantness, and greater willingness to rest than cool color temperature. Conclusions: Differences in perceptual, psychological, and EEG responses to patient-room visual environment should be interpreted together with ambient-temperature conditions in healthcare settings. Full article

This paper examines how technological innovation in next-generation probiotics shapes consumer trust through the lens of perceived safety. Rapid advances—spanning conventional cultures (Tier 1), postbiotics (Tier 2), and engineered microbial strains (Tier 3)—are transforming functional food architectures, yet consumer trust remains a critical determinant of their successful development, application, and adoption. Drawing on interdisciplinary evidence from food microbiology, consumer perception research, and regulatory analysis, this study examines and evaluates how these distinct technological innovation tiers alter public risk dynamics. Findings indicate that processing methodologies, media framing, and the spread of misinformation significantly influence public perceptions of microbial legitimacy, while the “Animation Gap” and “Contamination Anxiety” introduce qualitatively new cognitive friction points. Furthermore, regulatory inconsistencies across jurisdictions and variability in health claim substantiation further complicate market uptake. Streamlined case-based evidence highlights physical stability, sensory performance, and explicit value metrics that determine whether technological innovations are trusted or rejected by consumers. The paper argues that bridging the gap between scientific innovation and public acceptance requires proactive communication strategies, ethical marketing practices, and participatory engagement strategies grounded in empirical integrity. In addition, digital ecosystems, including social media and algorithm-driven content exposure, play an increasingly influential role in amplifying technology neophobia, underscoring the need for robust, targeted, evidence-based public communication in the evolving landscape of probiotic and functional food innovation. Full article

The effects of asparaginase treatment and conditions of its use (enzyme dose and dough resting time) on the formation of heat-induced contaminants, namely, acrylamide (ACR) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), were investigated in wholemeal wheat biscuits. In addition, potential impacts on sensory-related quality attributes were assessed through instrumental analysis of colour, texture, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Three levels of asparaginase addition (100, 300, and 500 ASNU kg⁻¹ flour) were tested and compared with an untreated control, with and without the application of a 15 min dough resting step. Results confirmed the effectiveness of asparaginase in reducing ACR levels in the final biscuits, showing a dose-dependent response with reductions of up to 68% at 500 ASNU kg⁻¹ flour. A dough resting step tend to further lower ACR content. In contrast, asparaginase treatment did not exert a consistent effect on HMF formation, whereas dough resting tended to decrease it. Moreover, asparaginase addition at the highest dose reduced the level of several Maillard reaction-derived VOCs by approximately 30%. Overall, asparaginase treatment markedly reduced ACR formation while causing changes in some odour-active compounds in biscuits. Further sensory evaluation will be necessary to determine whether these changes are perceptible and may influence consumer acceptance. Full article

Gustatory perception in honeybees is a key determinant of foraging decisions and pollen source selection. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this sensory discrimination remain poorly understood. To investigate these mechanisms during the collection of pollen from different floral sources, this study utilized antennae from worker bees foraging on pear and rapeseed pollen, and non-pollen-foraging workers as controls. Illumina high-throughput transcriptome sequencing was employed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs), perform functional annotation, and characterize gustatory receptor (GR) genes. Compared with the control group, 583 DEGs and 516 DEGs were identified in pear-pollen and rapeseed-pollen foragers, respectively, whereas only 73 DEGs were detected between the two pollen-foraging groups. Several DEGs were associated with chemosensory perception, signal transduction, energy metabolism, and immune responses. Notably, genes involved in membrane-associated signaling and stimulus response exhibited differential expression patterns among foraging groups, suggesting adaptive molecular responses to distinct floral resources. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis indicated that DEGs were primarily associated with cellular processes, membrane components, and binding functions. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment highlighted significant involvement in phagosome, phosphatidylinositol signaling system, oxidative phosphorylation, and extracellular matrix–receptor interaction. Notably, seven GR-related genes were identified in the antennal transcriptome, including five known GR genes and two novel candidates, all with complete open reading frames. Four of these genes featured the canonical seven-transmembrane domain structure of insect GRs. Phylogenetic analysis, in addition to the known sugar receptors AmelGR43a, AmelGR64f, and AmelGR64f-X1, based on GRs from Apis mellifera and Drosophila melanogaster suggested that AmelGR28b, AmelGR10, AmelGR12, and AmelGR13 may belong to the bitter taste receptor family. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) validation demonstrated that the expression patterns of the selected seven DEGs were consistent with the RNA-seq results. This study reveals differential expression patterns and potential functional divergence of gustatory receptor genes in Apis mellifera during pollen collection from different floral sources. It provides important molecular evidence for understanding how honeybees accurately recognize and preferentially forage specific pollen sources via gustatory perception, and offers valuable theoretical and practical insights for honeybee behavioral ecology and crop pollination management. Full article