Despite the fact that humans experience mixtures of odors and tastes each time they eat, little is known of their capacity to detect the individual components of foods. To investigate this capacity, 43 subjects were trained to identify three odors and three tastes and were required to indicate which of these could be identified in stimuli consisting of one to six components. Although the odor a...

Using a developmental systems perspective, this review focuses on how genetic predispositions interact with aspects of the eating environment to produce phenotypic food preferences. Predispositions include the unlearned, reflexive reactions to basic tastes: the preference for sweet and salty tastes, and the rejection of sour and bitter tastes. Other predispositions are (a) the neophobic reactio...

The taste receptor type 1 (T1r) family perceives 'palatable' tastes. These receptors function as T1r2-T1r3 and T1r1-T1r3 heterodimers to recognize a wide array of sweet and umami (savory) tastes in sugars and amino acids. Nonetheless, it is unclear how diverse tastes are recognized by so few receptors. Here we present crystal structures of the extracellular ligand-binding domains (LBDs), the ta...

The increasing popularity of computer gaming as a contemporary leisure activity, together with the use of PCs and games consoles as leisure technologies are evidence of the increasing convergence of new technology and leisure practice. The size and popularity of the games industry stands out in contrast to the lack of understanding of computer gaming as a serious leisure activity. Previous rese...

UNLABELLED Even if behavioral studies relate leisure practices to the preservation of memory in old persons, there is unsubstantial evidence of the import of leisure on brain activity. AIM This study was to compare the brain activity of elderly retired people who engage in different types of leisure activities. METHODS Quasi-experimental study over a sample of 60 elderly, retired subjects d...

Urban leisure venues proffer spatial carriers for citizens’ leisure activities and their functions rely heavily on the spatial configuration, which have largely been ignored. The increasing needs for healthy leisure life and the availability of geospatial open data provide a rising opportunity to fill this gap. To examine the spatial distribution of leisure venues and explore its underlying dom...

There are many types of electrical signal that can be sensed from liquid solution. Among them conductivity signal is more suitable than voltage signal for the study of liquid. Thus, we choose conductivity as the target sense signal for the study of taste sensors. We developed a chemical sensors array with seven chemical sensors. There are two groups in the designed sensors. The first group is m...

This appendix contains additional technical derivations and supplementary material for the main paper. Section 1 presents model solutions for the special case where firm productivity and consumer tastes are Pareto distributed. Section 2 contains the complete proof of Proposition 3 in the paper. Section 3 shows that it is straightforward to extend the model to introduce dependence in consumer ta...

In this paper we propose a method for learning the reasons why groups of consumers prefer some food products instead of others of the same type. We emphasize the role of groups given that, from a practical point of view, they may represent market segments that demand different products. Our method starts representing in a metric space people preferences; there we are able to define similarity f...

Facial expression changes characteristically with the emotions induced by basic tastes in humans. We tested the hypothesis that the five basic tastes also elicit unique responses in facial skin blood flow. Facial skin blood flow was measured using laser speckle flowgraphy in 16 healthy subjects before and during the application of basic taste stimuli in the oral cavity for 20 s. The skin blood ...