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The purpose of this paper is to describe innovative machine vision methods that have been employed for the capture and analysis of 3D skin textures; and the resulting potential for assisting with identification of suspicious lesions in the detection of skin cancer.

A machine vision approach has been employed for analysis of 3D skin textures. This involves an innovative application of photometric stereo for the capture of the textures, and a range of methods for analysing and quantifying them, including statistical methods and neural networks.

3D skin texture has been identified as a useful indicator of skin cancer. It can be used to improve realism of virtual skin reconstructions in tele‐dermatology. 3D texture features can also be combined with 2D features to obtain a more robust classifier for improving diagnostic accuracy, thereby assisting with the long‐term goal of implementing computer‐aided diagnostics for skin cancer.

The device developed for capturing 3D skin textures is known as the “Skin Analyser”, and as far as the authors know it is unique in the world in being able to recover 3D textures from pigmented lesions in vivo. There currently exist numerous methods for analysing lesions, including manual inspection (using established heuristics commonly known as ABCD rules), dermoscopy and SIAoscopy. The ability to capture and analyse 3D lesion textures complements these existing techniques and forms a valuable additional indicator for assisting with the early detection of dangerous skin cancers such as melanoma.

Measuring texture parameters are time consuming and expensive; it is necessary to develop an efficient and rapid method to evaluate them. Image analysis can be a useful tool. The purpose of this paper is to predict texture parameters in different beef cuts applying image analysis techniques.

Samples were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. Texture parameters were analyzed by instrumental, image analysis techniques and by Warner–Bratzler shear force.

Significant differences (p<0.05) were obtained for image and instrumental texture features. Higher amount of porous were observed in freeze dried samples of beef cuts from Gluteus Medius and semintendinosus muscles. A linear trend with a linear correlation was applied for instrumental and image texture. High correlations were found between image and instrumental texture features. Instrumental parameters showed a positive correlation with image texture feature.

This research suggests that the addition of image texture features improves the accuracy to predict texture parameter. The prediction of quality parameters can be performed easily with a computer by recognizing attributes within an image.

A new instrument from Rank Taylor Hobson has met the challenge of measuring accurately both surface texture and conformance to a flat or circular arc profile. Immediate potential is seen in applications by the precision bearings industry for measurement of ball races, bearings, and rollers, and by engineering companies to measure precision spherical and cylindrical components, fillet radii and diamond tipped tools.

Readability formulas have been criticised as a method for scoring accounting narratives because of their focus on word‐ and sentence‐level features and not on whole‐text aspects, their lack of regard for the interests and motivation of the reader, and their inappropriateness for evaluating adult‐based and technical accounting narratives. The literature of linguistics offers theoretical and practical validation for application of a texture index which addresses these criticisms. The paper shows how the general model drawn from applied linguistics can be tailored to the specific situation of an accounting narrative – the Operating and Financial Review. Rules which provide for objectivity in replication are specified and illustrated for a sample narrative. Illustrative empirical analysis shows that there is no evidence of association with the Flesch readability score. This suggests that the texture index is potentially a powerful tool for analysis of accounting narratives and association testing.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

The purpose of this article is to estimate the relationship between acute care consumers' satisfaction with hospital foodservices, foodservice characteristics, demographic and contextual variables.

The acute care hospital foodservice patient satisfaction questionnaire was administered to 2,347 patients from 1996‐2001. Regression analysis was conducted to measure the influence of 21 foodservice attributes and seven contextual/demographic items on overall foodservice satisfaction.

Foodservice satisfaction was strongly associated with variety, flavour, meat texture, temperature, meal taste, and menu staff (p<0.01). Consumers aged 70 years or more rated their overall satisfaction significantly lower than younger consumers (p<0.01), but no statistically significant differences in overall ratings existed for other contextual or demographic groups.

This new foodservice instrument and the methods of analysis may be generalisable, but application is likely to be context‐specific. Further applications of the instrument are required to produce greater confidence in its validity and reliability across different foodservice settings.

Global statements often used in health service satisfaction surveys (e.g. a single rating of “food quality”) provide insufficient information to allow managers to adapt foodservices to suit consumers' preferences.

Detailed information of the kind produced here is required for the formulation of managerial and sectoral policies to improve the quality of health and consumer nutrition care. The findings are noteworthy and, as far as the literature review showed, no previously published study has produced this level of detail on consumer preferences across foodservice attributes or their relationship to overall foodservice satisfaction.

At the passing of the Fair Trading Act, 1973, and the setting up of a Consumer Protection Service with an Office of Fair Trading under a Director‐General, few could have visualized this comprehensive machinery devised to protect the mainly economic interests of consumers could be used to further the efforts of local enforcement officers and authorities in the field of purity and quality control of food and of food hygiene in particular. This, however, is precisely the effect of a recent initiative under Sect. 34 of the Act, reported elsewhere in the BFJ, taken by the Director‐General in securing from a company operating a large group of restaurants a written undertaking, as prescribed by the Section, that it would improve its standards of hygiene; the company had ten convictions for hygiene contraventions over a period of six years.

Traditionally, the grade of fabric’s crease recovery with twisting is decided by comparing the processed sample fabric with standard sample photograph under some conditions. This method is completely reliant on subjective appraisal, so it is easy to lead to some subjective error and affect the conclusion. In this paper, we use image processing and texture analysis technique to calculate a few of the parameters which describe the fabric’s crease recovery properties. At the same time, we use the Fuzzy priority similarity comparison method to assess the fabric’s crease recovery properties synthetically.

This paper aims to focus on analysing the wear characteristics of tungsten carbide tools on which various micro patterns are fabricated to study its effect on the machinability of Ti-6Al-4V at dry turning conditions.

Micro-patterns such as dimples, linear grooves and a novel combination of dimples and linear grooves were fabricated on rake faces of uncoated tools by micro-EDM process. Impact of these patterns on tool wear and chip morphology characteristics under dry machining conditions were analysed, and their performances were compared with the non-textured tool (NTT).

Encouraging results in terms of minimal tool wear and favourable chip morphology characteristics were observed in case of all the textured tools, which demonstrated better tribological characteristics in contrast to NTT. The average flank wear was reduced by 43.5, 32 and 24.7% in dimple textured tool (DTT), linear textured tool (LTT) and hybrid textured tool (HTT), respectively, as compared to NTT. The average chip curl diameters measured for NTT, DTT, LTT, and HTT were observed to be 6.60, 3.51, 4.0 and 4.31 mm, respectively.

The contribution of this work lies in fabricating innovative patterns using cost-effective micro-EDM process and analysing how the patterns, depending upon their dimensional area and wear debris accumulation characteristics, influence the machinability of Ti-6Al-4V in the absence of any lubrication mediums.