Gastric cancer patients having undergone gastrectomy are at a high risk of becoming malnourished owing to decreased gastric function. To prevent malnutrition, patients need to thoroughly chew a mouthful of food at least 30 times. For these gastrectomy patients requiring dietary support, we developed a chewing-count measurement device named earable RCC using an earphone-type sensor. Experiments to evaluate the performance of this device were conducted on six healthy volunteers who participated in “gum-chewing tests” and “almond-eating tests.” The precision calculated based on the results was ≥0.958, indicating that the earphone-type chewing-count measurement device could experimentally distinguish chewing from other actions. In addition, the recall calculated from the test results was ≥0.937, showing that the device does not miss chewing actions and can accurately count the number of chews with high probability at the timing of chewing. The experimental results also imply that earphone-type sensors may be used to measure swallowing, occlusal force, and tongue motion. Our future plans include clinical testing of the earphone-type chewing-count measurement device to determine its utility in patients who have undergone gastrectomy. We also intend to expand the application of this device for use in other patients to aid in dementia prevention and dietary support.

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In this study, an earphone-type interface named “earable TEMPO” was developed for hands-free operation, wherein the user can control the device by simply pushing the tongue against the roof of the mouth for about one second. This interface can be used to start and stop the music from a portable audio player. The earable TEMPO uses an earphone-type sensor equipped with a light emitting diode (LED) and a phototransistor to optically measure shape variations that occur in the external auditory meatus when the tongue is pressed against the roof of the mouth. To evaluate the operation of the earable TEMPO, experiments were performed on five subjects (men and women aged 22–58) while resting, chewing gum (representing mastication), and walking. The average accuracy was 100% while resting and chewing and 99% while walking. The precision was 100% under all conditions. The average recall value of the five subjects was 92%, 90%, and 48% while resting, masticating, and walking, respectively. All subjects were reliably able to perform the action of pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth. The measured shape variations in the ear canal were highly reproducible, indicating that this method is suitable for various applications such as controlling a portable audio player.

We present a completion procedure (called MKB) which works with multiple reduction orderings. Given equations and a set of reduction orderings, the procedure simulates a computation performed by the parallel processes each of which executes the standard Knuth-Bendix completion procedure $(\mathrm{K}\mathrm{B})$ with one of the given orderings. To gain efficiency, however, we develop new inference rules working on objects called nodes, which are data

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