Archive-Name: sci/food-science-faq/diff

Posting-Frequency: biweekly
Last-modified: 2006/06/12

RECENT CHANGES (12 June 2006):

This is another minor fix. A couple of URLs have changed at the request of
the respective web site maintainers or the institutions they represent.

Part 1/3: FAQ - SCI.BIO.FOOD.SCIENCE Frequently-Asked Questions (1 of 3)

Some URL changes:
UNITED KINGDOM
University of Huddersfield: http://www.hud.ac.uk/sas/nuthealth

THE NETHERLANDS
Wageningen University: http://www.food-info.net/wageningen.htm
__

That's it for the changes! Now on to New User Information. No need to read
the rest of this "NEWS" section unless you're new to the group.
__

INFORMATION FOR NEW USERS
__

NOTES ON 'NETTIQUETTE:

Please read also FAQ 1/3, Part I: GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR POSTING IN
SCI.BIO.FOOD-SCIENCE

There has been a slow but sure trend in recent years for some
posters to get emotional or to bait emotional debates with their
postings. This is never a good thing, since discussions most commonly
deteriorate into name-calling and so on. Others wonder why their
posts hardly get any responses from this group. All this is discussed
here.

Emotional debates are common in any topic for which adherents hold
passionate, but opposing, beliefs. One of life's many paradoxes holds
that if you shout, you will not be heard. Keep your conversations
polite and cordial. The basis of politeness means that you must
realise that this is a text medium, and people cannot see your body
language to find out what you intend with these words, and as a
result most people tend to assume the worst. You have to be extra
careful in how you word things with others.

However, there are many other reasons your postings do not get
desirable responses. First of all, realise that this is a food
science newsgroup, and that most of the posters tend to tow the
party line of science. If you find this hard to take, there are
many other newsgroups that you might find more friendly. In FAQ
1/3, for example, the newsgroup has many explicitly-stated goals,
along with a newsgroup charter. These were agreed to and voted on
over 10 years ago. Charters and statements of goals are a fact of
life of all newsgroups under the sci.* hierarchy, and other
hierarchies as well.

While we welcome posts from anybody and everybody, you must ensure
that your postings are on-topic. Some newsgroups dealing with other
aspects of foods which we don't deal with:

sci.med.nutrition rec.food.preserving rec.food.cooking
rec.food.recipes alt.food.wine alt.food.fat-free
rec.food-veg rec.food.veg.cooking alt.support.diet
alt.food.vegan alt.food.vegan.science
alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian alt.sport.weightlifting.vegetarian
alt.support.diet.* (there are several newsgroups in this hierarchy)

If you wonder why your posting garners few or no responses, it
could be due to several reasons, including: 1) Nobody understood your
post; 2) your post was not on-topic for the newsgroup, 3) your post
showed an obvious intent at baiting an argument, and people properly
ignored it, or 4) your post perhaps gave nothing for others to
respond to.
__

This FAQ has been accepted to the *.answers newsgroups, and can be found
in both sci.answers and news.answers.

DOWNLOADING This FAQ: This is not an exhaustive list. Pick a
site nearest you. All paths end in "sci/food-science-faq/"
except for Gopher sites, which use menus, and FSP sites, which have
protocols that I am unfamiliar with. FSP stands for "File Service
Protocol". There are several other sites not mentioned here. To get
the very latest list, look under:

<http://tinyurl.com/7f3v7>

They include Gopher sites, FTP sites, FSP sites, and web sites in
Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
This list is intended only as a representative sample.

From Canada:

This is the only Canadian FAQ repository, located in the
maritime province of New Brunswick.
From Germany:
via FSP from: ftp.Germany.EU.net, port 2001
<ftp://ftp.Germany.EU.net:80/pub/newsarchive/news.answers/>
This FTP site uses compression. You must download a GZIP
decompression package to see the text, which should be
available at this site.
From Hong Kong:
<ftp://ftp.hk.super.net/mirror/faqs/>
One of many Asian sites.
From Mexico and Central America:
<ftp://ftp.mty.itesm.mx/pub/mirrors/usenet/news.answers/>
This FTP site uses compression. You must download an
UNCOMPRESS package to see the text, which should be
available at this site.
From South Africa:
<ftp://ftp.is.co.za/usenet/news.answers/>
From the United Kingdom:
<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-faqs/news.answers/>
via FSP from: src.doc.ic.ac.uk, port 21
From the United States:
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/>
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/alt.answers/>
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/answers/>
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/alt/answers/>
rtfm.mit.edu is the central repository for most of the
official FAQs that appear on the Usenet. In fact, this is the
place where you are *guaranteed* the most up-to-date FAQ, since
they have to do the auto-posting.
<ftp://ftp.mirrors.aol.com/pub/rtfm/usenet/news-answers/>

From the Web:
Old postings to sbfs can be found at http://dejanews.com, using
"sci.bio.food-science" as a search string.

Other WWW Pages: Check out a site nearest you:

Germany: <http://www.Germany.EU.net:80/>
This actually leads to a search engine where the FAQ must be
downloaded via FTP as above. The files are compressed with GZIP.

The UK: <http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-faqs/news.answers/>
This is a "bare text" web page. In other words, there are no
live web links. It is a plain text FAQ.

<http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/sci.bio.food-science.html>
This is the other British Homepage worth mentioning, which
will hopefully be updated soon. All links mentioned in this FAQ
are live, and is a good starting point in surfing to various
food science web sites. See "SCI.BIO.FOOD-SCIENCE ON THE
WORLD-WIDE WEB" below:

The USA: <http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/>
__

A SHORT NOTE ON FTP RETRIEVAL OF THIS FAQ (for Windows users with
SLIP/PPP):

If you find your web browser too slow on your system, a better way to FTP
is by use of freeware like WS-FTP. It can be downloaded via anonymous FTP
from <ftp://129.29.64.246/pub/msdos>. WS-FTP is free for private,
household use. A fee is required for commercial use. You may find the
transfer on WS-FTP is much faster, and that it uses far less memory. Also,
WS-FTP allows you to maintain a menu of your favourite FTP sites. This is
not intended to be an endorsement of WS-FTP, and others are available. __

SCI.BIO.FOOD-SCIENCE FAQ ON THE WORLD-WIDE WEB:

Our FAQ has been converted to HTML for users of the World-Wide Web. It may
be found at two locations:

<http://tinyurl.com/d6ake>
or
<http://dejanews.com/>

The first site is a direct link to our FAQ; the second requires you to
fill out a search form for the correct newsgroup, since DejaNews lists ALL
news articles posted on the Internet over several months. In both cases,
the great thing about seeing out FAQ on HTML is that all of the links we
mention are LIVE links. That is, if you have Netscape, you may point and
click on our FAQ from any web site we mention to wherever those links take
you.

I also have my own personal web page, with most of the links mentioned in
this FAQ. The intent was to write a simple web page that was easy to move
around in. You may find it a bit more user-friendly than the web pages
offered at landfield.com or by Deja News. I won't be updating it as much
as the FAQ, so it may not have the most current URLs. I stress here that
the entire FAQ is not on my home page - just the links mentioned in it.
Visit the site and tell me what you think! The web site is at:

<http://alimentarus.net>

You are given a choice as to the kind of web page you want, based on
your browser capability and download speed.

__

HISTORICAL POSTINGS OF SBFS:

Another item worthy of mentioning is the finding of

<http://tinyurl.com/bm5m3>

The website "tinyurl.com" provided an abbreviation of an otherwise long
website URL, located at a completely different website.

It is at the University of North Carolina (sunsite.unc.edu, now ibiblio)
and contains historical postings from the first day the newsgroup began
(May, 1995), up until December 1996. I consider it to be a valuable
resource, and would appreciate it if anyone else finds archived postings
from our newsgroup that proceed from December 1996 onward.

__

VIEWING THE SBFS FAQ ON NETSCAPE 2.2 and above:

Of the Web Browsers, I have found Netscape to have the best news reader.
This is because the Netscape's news browser turns any mention of a web URL
into a live link, as well. What is ideal about this kind of arrangement is
that if you point and click on the "blue" URL reference on the news
browser, the web page will pop up in a new window. That means can surf the
'net without ever losing track of our news articles. __

Professional food scientists, academics, and others involoved in the
food industry are invited to list their "favourite", or "most highly
recommended" textbooks in the food science field to be added to the FAQ
for the benefit of non-food scientists. The following format is preferred
for ease of editing (loosely based on the Journal of Food Science):

SUBJECT: Author(Year). Title. Edition. City: Publisher. ISBN. Comments.

The basic idea is to provide enough information for someone to walk into a
library or bookstore and order it. The ISBN number is essential. Comments
are optional. __

"ETHNIC" FOOD PREPARATION METHODS ON THE WEB

Ralph, Rachel, and I have proposed a new sub-section dealing with an
important and as of yet overlooked aspect of foods: Ethnic (non-American
and non-British) food preparations. Specifically, we are looking for web
pages dealing with details on the preparation of foods that are described
as "halal", "kosher", "pareve", and so on - you fill in the terminologies
for your ethnic group.

If you know of any web pages that describe or even mention these things,
please send your suggestions to Paul King at "sciguy at vex.net"
___

You are all encouraged to contact one of us if you have suggestions
additions, or other 'major' questions we haven't thought of. Our names and
email addresses are:

Rachel Zemser, creator of the newsgroup sci.bio.food-science:
rachel.zemser at unilever.com

J Ralph Blanchfield, Food Science, Food Technology & Food Law
Consultant, Chair, IFST Member Relations & Services Committee and Web
Editor, IFST Web on the WWW: jralphb at easynet.co.uk

Paul King, Creator and Maintainer of the List of Common Abbreviations,
and New User Info: sciguy at vex.net

For a glossary of scientific, marketing, industry, technical and
legal terms of relevance to food science, see FAQ 2 of 3. For a list
of common questions and answers about food and food science, see
FAQ 3 of 3.

- Paul King