The sawtoothed grain beetle, Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.), is an important pest of packagedconsumer foods, yet little is knownof its behavioral response to foododors.Adults and larvae are not believed to chew holes through packaging materials, but they may invade packaged food by entering through openings caused by improper sealing or handling, throughholes intentionally placed in packages by...

The cache decisions of scatter-hoarding animals are influenced by a number of factors, including satiety, food quality, number of competitors, and the risk of predation and pilferage. However, it is unknown how animals assess these variables. We investigated this process experimentally in free-ranging fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) by measuring the effects of nut characteristics and social conte...

Conventional pneumatic grippers are widely used in industrial pick and place robot processes for rigid objects. They are simple, robust and fast, but their design, motion and features are limited, and they do not fulfil the final purpose. Food products have a wide variety of shapes and textures and are susceptible to damaged. Robot grippers for food handling should adapt to this wide range of d...

The oscillatory tendency of consumer-resource interactions is a key determinant of food-web persistence. Here, we develop a metric for quantifying oscillatory tendency that scales the positive feedback effects of saturating functional responses with the negative feedback effects of self-limitation. We use this metric to predict the oscillatory tendency of a pairwise interaction, tritrophic chai...

Behavioural tests to assess affective states are widely used in human research and have recently been extended to animals. These tests assume that affective state influences cognitive processing, and that animals in a negative affective state interpret ambiguous information as expecting a negative outcome (displaying a negative cognitive bias). Most of these tests however, require long discrimi...

Research Triangle Institute (RTI) conducted a multiyear evaluation of the 1996 Pathogen Reduction; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (PR/HACCP) Systems; Final Rule for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA, FSIS). As part of this evaluation, RTI conducted a study to measure any changes in consumer knowledge, safe food handling practices (i.e., beh...

conclusion according to the results of our series, percutaneous liver biopsy using the tru-cut biopsy gun guided by ultrasonography can be performed safely. we resolve that routine ultrasound of the puncture site is a quick, effective and safe procedure. the complication rate is very low. the us-assisted percutaneous liver biopsy should be used for all cases. results a total of 1018 patients we...

A number of different serovars of Salmonella enterica are often implicated in human nontyphoidal outbreaks. Globally, serovars Typhimurium and Enteritidis are often the causative agent of such outbreaks, but other serovars can also be significant (Table 1). Some serovars such as Infantis and Virchow are routinely linked to outbreaks of gastroenteritis. The consumption of raw food products or po...

Loss of function in the hands occurs with many brain disorders, but there are few measures of skillful forepaw use in rats available to model these impairments that are both sensitive and simple to administer. Whishaw and Coles previously described the dexterous manner in which rats manipulate food items with their paws, including thin pieces of pasta [Whishaw IQ, Coles BL. Varieties of paw and...