BANGKOK, Aug. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Chulalongkorn University‘s “High-Protein Jelly Pudding with Modified Texture for the Elderly with Swallowing Difficulties,” developed by Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya Techasukthavorn and a team from the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, won a bronze medal in Geneva, along with a special award from Malaysia. Striking with banana and strawberry flavors, the jelly pudding is easy to consume and provides a high protein content of 7-8 grams per cup to strengthen muscles. It’s suitable for the elderly, patients, and those who need additional protein. The team is preparing to scale up to commercial production soon.

The “High Protein Jelly Pudding with Modified Texture for the Elderly with Swallowing Difficulties” by Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya Techasukthavorn, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chulalongkorn University, and her team won the Bronze Medal at “The 50th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva,” held on April 9-13, 2025, in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Prize of Malaysia delegation from Malaysia Delegation from Malaysia. This marks another remarkable innovation that addresses the needs of an aging society and the elderly people who often face problems with reduced food consumption and difficulty chewing and swallowing.

Elderly-Friendly Protein Snack under IDDSI Standards 

Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya Techasukthavorn, head of the research team, revealed the origin of this innovation: elderly people often have trouble chewing and swallowing food, which causes them to receive insufficient nutrients, resulting in muscle loss. Continuous research on food for people with swallowing difficulties has led to the development of “46 swallowing training foods based on international IDDSI standards.” This sparked requests for ready-to-eat snacks that are high in nutrients and safe to swallow for the elderly. Hence, the “High Protein Jelly Pudding with Modified Texture for the Elderly with Swallowing Difficulties” was created as a between-meal supplement with delicious flavors that appeal to Thai tastes for elderly people. The product is marketed under the name “Elderine,” developed in collaboration with Banpong Novitat Co., Ltd. 

“The research and development of the high-protein jelly pudding formula took more than 1 year, going through various processes in the laboratory. Experiments were done to modify the texture and enhance nutritional value, adjusting the proportions of raw ingredients and flavors as well as examining the texture. The product was then evaluated by 30 elderly volunteers before undergoing the production technology that best meets the requirements,” Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya stated.

2-in-1 jelly pudding: high-protein and chewable, an innovation for every age

Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya explained the unique characteristic of the newly developed high-protein jelly pudding: “it differs from the jelly pudding sold in the market in that it has a 2-in-1 texture. The ready-to-eat jelly texture maintains its stability on a spoon and can become a soft pudding texture when lightly mashed with a spoon, helping elderly people chew and consume food even without teeth. 

Moreover, this high-protein jelly pudding contains up to 7 grams of a special whey protein isolate per cup without hardening the texture or making it bitter. It incorporates modified cassava starch with glucose polymer molecules to achieve a low glycemic index, and the texture is optimized with a balanced blend of carrageenan and other gelling agents. Using advanced production technology, the product can be stored at room temperature for up to 6 months while maintaining the same quality and texture. Currently, two flavors have been developed to suit the Thai palate: banana and strawberry. Each cup of jelly pudding provides 70-80 calories of energy and 7-8 grams of easily digestible protein, equivalent to one chicken egg. It serves as a healthy snack that can be consumed up to 2 cups per day. 

Besides the elderly, the product is suitable for various groups of consumers, e.g., those who have recently had their teeth or wisdom teeth removed, causing difficulty chewing; teenagers who want to increase their protein intake; cancer patients who need a lot of protein supplements; and those who would like to build muscle, etc.

This high-protein jelly pudding innovation received support from Dr. Chaiwut Gamonpilas from the National Metal and Materials Technology Center (MTEC), National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), who conducted an oral tribology test on the texture and slipperiness of the jelly pudding.

Toward Medical Food Innovation for the Elderly 

Currently, this product is in the process of patent application. For the future, Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya shared plans to register the product as a special-purpose food in the form of medical food. In collaboration with a research team (Asst. Prof. Dr. Pattra Wattanapan from the Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University), a human research study will be conducted to test the effectiveness of the high-protein jelly pudding product on increasing muscle mass in elderly people. The team is also expanding collaboration with a research team from Japan for commercial production of the jelly pudding. It is expected to be available in the market around this coming October. 

Asst. Prof. Dr. Varanya is committed to studying food products for those with swallowing difficulties, with plans to develop products in other forms, such as Thai desserts for the elderly, as well as functional food products with other added nutrients essential for the elderly, like fiber to help with digestion.

For the full release and more images, please visit: https://www.chula.ac.th/en/highlight/246841/

About Chulalongkorn University

Chulalongkorn University has made the world’s top 50 university list for employment outcomes, which reflects both the high employment rate and work ability of Chula graduates. The university is also listed as the best in Thailand for the 15th Consecutive Year (since 2009), according to the newly released QS World University Rankings 2024, putting Chula at 211th in the world, up from 244th last year.

Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChulalongkornUniversity
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/chulauniversity
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/school/15101896/

―A journey to enjoy the history and nature of Japan

OSAKA, Japan, Aug. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, currently underway, announced that the cumulative number of general visitors as of June 21 has reached 7,622,161, according to the Expo Association. The number of visitors continues to increase steadily, and many overseas tourists who visit the venue also tend to visit nearby tourist spots. Kintetsu Railway Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Kintetsu) boasts the longest railway line among private railways in Japan, connecting Osaka, Nara, Nagoya, Mie, Kyoto, and other cities. The Kintetsu Rail Pass, which is popular among foreign tourists for its affordability, has been digitized, allowing passengers to board and alight at stations simply by scanning a QR code. Similar to Singapore’s subway system, passengers can tap their credit cards at the ticket gates to board and exit, and services are being enhanced so that visitors can enjoy more areas during the Expo.

The most recommended tourist spot along the Kintetsu Railway line is the “Ise-Shima” area in Mie Prefecture. It is easily accessible from bustling cities, yet offers visitors a chance to experience Japan’s long history and traditions firsthand, making it a “hidden gem” of Japanese tourism. The “Sightseeing Limited Express SHIMAKAZE” is a convenient way to access Ise-Shima. The “Shimakaze” runs from Osaka Namba, Kyoto, and Nagoya to Ise-Shima, and is designed with the concept of “enjoying the ride itself as a tourist attraction.” During the approximately 2.5-hour journey, passengers can enjoy views of the sea and mountains from the windows and relax in leather seats equipped with massage functions while enjoying various areas.

– Ise Area:
Ise Grand Shrine, which even Japanese people say they want to visit at least once in their lifetime, has a history of over 2,000 years. Nearby are “Okage Yokocho” and “Oharaimachi,” lined with restaurants and souvenir shops, where you can not only feel the history of Japan but also enjoy local cuisine unique to this area.

– Toba/Shima Area:
The number of “ama” (female divers) has been decreasing year by year, but they still dive into the sea to catch shellfish and seaweed using only their breath. After fishing, they warm their cold bodies in “ama huts,” where meals are also provided. Guests can join in around the hearth to savor the fresh seafood of Mie Prefecture, including Ise ebi (spiny lobster), abalone, and sazae (turban shell). In this area, which was the first in the world to successfully cultivate pearls, visitors can not only purchase pearl products but also experience harvesting pearls themselves and creating their own accessories.

The venue for the 2016 summit, the “Shima Kanko Hotel,” offers sophisticated services worthy of hosting members of the imperial family and French cuisine that attracts many fans. The “Kashikojima Hojoen“, a popular Japanese-style ryokan with hot springs, offers beautiful views and spacious rooms where families can relax and enjoy themselves.

The railway lines extending from Osaka, home to the Expo site, to the wider Kansai region offer travelers the opportunity to enjoy the scenic natural beauty and rich history of the area.

SINGAPORE and KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Activeo, a leading customer experience (CX) consultancy and system integrator, today announced a strategic partnership with XEBO.ai, a global pioneer in AI-powered Experience Management. The agreement positions Activeo as the exclusive reseller of XEBO.ai in Singapore and Malaysia, laying the foundation for smarter, faster, and more localised feedback-to-action cycles across enterprises in the region.

From Feedback Fatigue to Experience Intelligence

As customer expectations surge and experience ecosystems grow more complex, enterprises are drowning in data but starving for insights. Across APAC, many struggle to unify fragmented Voice of Customer (VoC) programs, close feedback loops at scale, and act on employee sentiment in real time.

This partnership between Activeo and XEBO.ai directly addresses those challenges, offering organisations a smarter, more agile approach to experience management. By combining XEBO.ai’s AI-first platform with Activeo’s local delivery and consulting strength, enterprises can finally bridge the gap between what customers say and what businesses do.

Together, the two companies will enable organisations to:

• Unlock next-generation insights with AI-powered VoC analytics, surfacing real-time trends and sentiment across channels.
• Accelerate time to value through local implementation and integration support delivered by Activeo’s regional consultants.
• Drive action at scale with unified dashboards that consolidate customer and employee feedback into measurable business outcomes.
• Build trust through localisation by combining XEBO.ai’s scalable tech with Activeo’s in-depth knowledge of cultural, regulatory, and operational nuances in APAC.

A Shared Commitment to Turning Insights into Impact Across APAC

“This isn’t just a reseller agreement, it’s a strategic alignment that amplifies our CX vision across the region,” said Jonathan Mondon, Head of Enterprise at Activeo. “In a landscape where enterprises are overwhelmed by feedback but under-equipped to act on it, we are enabling a shift from passive data collection to proactive experience intelligence. By combining our delivery strength with XEBO.ai’s AI-first platform, we are empowering clients to operationalise feedback in ways that truly move the needle, across both customer and employee journeys.”

“Partnering with Activeo marks a pivotal step in our mission to elevate customer experience in Southeast Asia,” said Yash Sultania, Co-Founder & CEO at XEBO.ai. “By combining our AI-powered platform with Activeo’s deep regional expertise, we’re enabling brands in Malaysia and Singapore to truly listen, understand, and act with empathy at every touchpoint.”

Looking ahead, both companies plan to explore further collaboration opportunities, including expanded geographic coverage and deeper technology integrations. As AI adoption accelerates and customer expectations rise, this partnership sets a strong foundation for enterprise transformation anchored in trust, local insight, and measurable business outcomes.

About Activeo

Activeo empowers organisations across APAC and globally to transform customer experiences and accelerate digital innovation. As impartial system integrators with more than 12 years of deep consulting expertise and 300+ successful projects, Activeo supports enterprise and government clients with a holistic blend of solutions across CX, Customer Engagement, Digital Workplace, IT Consulting, and Customer Data. We handpick the best technologies aligned with your business objectives, guaranteeing future-resilient solutions with minimal vendor constraints.

About XEBO.ai

XEBO.ai offers an AI-powered Experience Management platform that enhances customer and employee experiences across every touchpoint. Trusted by brands like BMW, Bupa Arabia, and VISA, it unifies feedback, reduces churn, and delivers insights through digital research and global audience panels. Serving industries such as banking, healthcare, and e-commerce, XEBO.ai turns data into action — and detractors into promoters.

Allows Performance Tuning Designs of AI Clusters to Specialized Workloads

TAIPEI, Aug. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, announces it has taken important steps in enabling silicon diversity for high-performance AI and HPC Clusters with the release of a new Universal D2D Transaction and Link-Layer specification that now also covers UCIe. This universal link layer will be an important part of the execution stack in delivering an economically viable and dynamic, reconfigurable AI Cluster capable of achieving world-leading performance in HPC and AI workloads. The link layer uniquely defines profiles that allow customization of the mapping from upper-level transaction layer services to the underlying PHY via link layer services, allowing choice of PHY without affecting other layers.

“The OCP recognized several years ago that innovation in silicon needed to be amplified, just as the constraints of larger silicon dies were beginning to impede progress. Through its Open Chiplet Economy Project, the OCP has established a strong community to deliver on the new standardizations, tools and best practices around technical and business workflows that are required for a truly open economy, where vendors sell chiplets embodying their IP to integrators that then build specialized System in Packages (SiPs),” said Cliff Grossner Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer at OCP.

The Universal link layer specification uniquely combines bindings to several physical layer standards, with a low-latency low-overhead packetization of a wide range of protocols between chiplets. The overall layered architecture maps a set of design IP protocols on a chiplet interface using transaction and linklayer packet formats to a particular physical layer interface.

“Ventana has been at the forefront of the chiplet revolution, driving adoption of open, scalable solutions across the industry. Ventana is proud to continue its contributions within the OCP Community, enabling high-performance systems across Data Center, AI, and Automotive markets. What makes this specification unique is its efficiency and its ability to work with existing protocols and fabrics. This means chiplet-based designs can achieve near-monolithic performance without costly protocol bridges or complex conversions, accelerating innovation while keeping integration simple and open,” said Balaji Baktha, Founder and CEO, at Ventana Micro Systems.

The development of the OCP Universal Link Layer specification is centered on silicon die disaggregation, maintaining simplicity to serve as many markets as possible with key features as follows: (1) extensibility to define interface profiles within the OCP community that allow native bus protocols to be packetized and transported, enabling chiplet interoperability; (2) portability across different die implementation methodologies and process nodes; (3) able to scale with support for multiple PHY slices and different data rates.

“We are at an inflection point where chiplet vendors have a fairly complete set of standards and tools available to build chiplet product sets. The market leaders developing chiplets are still playing a very important role filling gaps that they identify in current standards, and we expect to see these additional learnings materialize as updates to existing standards as the Open Chiplet Economy matures,” said Anu Ramamurthy and Jawad Nasrullah, OCP Open Chiplet Economy Project leads.

To further the OCP vision for an Open Chiplet Economy, in October 2024, the OCP Chiplet Marketplace went live making available a catalog of standalone chiplets. This one stop site for SiP designers and builders to find the latest available standalone chiplets, design and manufacturing services, chiplet-aware EDA tools, and reference material needed to successfully build chiplet-based products.

“The semiconductor supply chain requires a robust multi-vendor ecosystem to serve not only the AI/HPC market, but other market verticals such as Automotive, Enterprise Data Processing, Communications Infrastructure, Medical, Defense, Aerospace and Industrial. Coming together as part of an open community to share learning and knowledge is critical for building common tools, standards and workflows so as to accelerate the pace of innovation.” –Dan Nishball, Director of Research, SemiAnalysis

About the Open Compute Project Foundation
The Open Compute Project (OCP) brings at-scale innovations and hyperscaler best practices to all, spanning technology domains from the data center to the edge, and the technology stack from silicon, to systems, to site facilities and services. The international OCP Community is made up of organizations and people from hyperscale and tier-2 cloud data center operators, communications providers, colocation providers, diverse enterprises, and technology vendors. With the tenets of openness, impact, efficiency, scale and sustainability, the OCP engages and educates thousands of engineers every year. Across many projects and initiatives, the OCP Foundation and Community are meeting the market today and shaping the future.
Learn more at: www.opencompute.org.

Media Contact
Dirk Van Slyke
Open Compute Project Foundation
Chief Marketing Officer
dirkv@opencompute.org
Mobile: +1 303-999-7398

Logo – https://laotiantimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ocp_logo.jpg