Fuzzy Sensory Quality Certification in Intensive Organic Beekeeping

The current paper presents a fuzzy sensory quality certification of organic mint honey as a component of the strategy to promote intensive beekeeping. This sensory analysis is based on fuzzy logic that allows the processing of data represented by linguistic terms. For the development of the fuzzy sensory analysis model of bee honey, we develop a MATLAB application, with the help of which we modeled the sensory perceptions in relation to the main quality characteristics of mint honey in relation to the other varieties of honey. The sensory quality index of each honey assortment is obtained by converting qualitative assessments through linguistic terms into a set of three numerical values on a sensory scale of assessment of results with five linguistic values: unsatisfactory, satisfactory, average, good, excellent. Indices of fuzzy sensory quality associated with honey varieties are certified using a blockchain model that is an information technology that offers the opportunity to develop local markets for organic bee products.

A Complementary Sensory Tool for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background: Sensory integration (SI) issues are widely described in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), impacting in their daily life and occupations. To improve their quality of life and occupational performance, we need to improve clinical and educational evaluation and intervention processes. We aim to develop a tool for measuring SI issues for Spanish children and adolescents with ASD diagnosis, to be used as a complementary tool to complete the Rivière’s Autism Spectrum Inventory, a widely used instrument in Spanish speaking places to describe the severity of ASD symptoms, recently updated with a new sensory scale with three dimensions. Methods: 458 Spanish participants complemented the new questionnaire, initially formed by 73 items with a 1–5 Likert scale. Results: The instrument finally was composed of 41 items grouped in three factors: modulation disorders (13 items), discrimination disorders (13 items), and sensory-based motor disorders (15 items). The goodness-of-fit indices from factor analyses, reliability, and the analysis of the questionnaire’s classification capability offered good values. Conclusions: The new questionnaire shows good psychometric properties and seems to be a good complementary tool to complete new the sensory scale in the Rivière’s Autism Spectrum Inventory.

The effect of structured exercise during chemotherapy on chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN): A role for interoceptive brain circuitry.

11590 Background: Over half of patients receiving “neurotoxic” taxane, platinum, or bortezomib chemotherapy experience CIPN—a dose-limiting toxicity involving numbness and pain in the extremities. There are no FDA-approved drugs for CIPN, but exercise may help. This randomized pilot study explored whether structured exercise during chemotherapy ameliorates CIPN symptoms and whether improvements involve changes in the brain’s sensory processing (interoceptive) circuitry. Methods: Nineteen patients scheduled to receive taxane, platinum, or bortezomib were randomized to exercise (home-based, low-moderate intensity, walking and resistance training; EXCAP) or nutrition education (control) for 12 weeks starting at their first infusion. At 0, 6, and 12 weeks, we assessed CIPN symptoms using the CIPN-20 questionnaire (sensory scale, ranges 9-36, higher is worse) and a finger tactile sensitivity task. We assessed resting functional connectivity between the insula and thalamus via fMRI at 0 and 12 weeks. We used linear regression to model each outcome, tested for an effect of exercise, and controlled for baseline value and age because controls were older. Given the pilot nature of this study we present effect sizes, not p-values. Results: The 19 patients were 65±11 years old, 52% women, with cancer: 42% breast, 32% gastrointestinal, 16% myeloma, and 10% genitourinary. Exercise mitigated CIPN symptoms per the CIPN-20 sensory scale. At 6 weeks, exercisers increased from 11.0 to 12.5 whereas controls increased from 11.0 to 15.5 (+1.5 vs. +4.5; ES = 0.81). At 12 weeks, exercisers increased from 11.0 to 14.8 whereas controls increased from 11.0 to 16.2 (+3.8 vs. +5.2, ES = 0.46). The finger-touching test corroborated results at 6 and 12 weeks (ES = 1.03 and 0.07). Exercisers showed better (reduced) insula-thalamus connectivity vs. controls (ES = 0.41). Reductions in connectivity were correlated with smaller increases in CIPN symptoms (r = 0.74). Conclusions: Exercise during neurotoxic chemotherapy mitigated CIPN symptoms, perhaps via improvements in interoceptive brain circuitry. Future work should test for replication with a larger sample. Clinical trial information: NCT03021174.