Posting-Frequency: biweekly
Last-modified: 2011/08/11

RECENT CHANGES (11 August 2012):

DELETED:

This is a list of URLs that have been deleted, either because they were
unreachable at the time of testing, or there were duplicate entries
(more than one link to the same university or organisation).

Section 5, the list of recommended textbooks, has been deleted.

ADDED/CHANGED:

There were many additions, but many more changes. In the interest of
shortening the text to under 80 columns per line of text, many of the
longer URLs were shortened using a free service provided by bit.ly.
Bit.ly shortens long URLs to 25 characters. Pasting this link on
your address bar causes bit.ly to redirect you to the proper web
page.

Universities:
University of Melbourne: http://www.foodscience.unimelb.au/

Organisations:
Food Science Australia: http://www.foodscience.csiro.au/

New User Info: Several deletions and updates. All changes appear below.
  __

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>

      Other WWW Pages with a copy of the FAQ:

      http://sunsite.org.uk/public/usenet/news-faqs/
      http://www.faqs.org/
      My website: http://foodsci.info/

__

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.

__

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.
__

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
are:

Rachel Zemser, creator of the newsgroup sci.bio.food-science:

J Ralph Blanchfield, Food Science, Food Technology & Food Law
     Consultant, Chair, IFST Member Relations & Services Committee and
     Web Editor, IFST Web on the WWW

Paul King, Creator and Maintainer of the List of Common Abbreviations,
      and New User Info: sci...@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.