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Category: food – Page 101

Year 2021 face_with_colon_three

Remember back in the mid-80s, when mass-produced holograms were such a big deal? Since then, they’ve become common on credit cards, currency and other items. Now, thanks to new research, you can actually eat the things.

First of all, why would anyone want an edible hologram? Well, along with simply being used for decorative purposes, they could conceivably also serve to show that a food item hasn’t been tampered with, or to display its name and/or ingredients in a way that proves it isn’t a counterfeit product.

Scientists have already successfully molded edible holograms into chocolate, although only certain types of chocolate worked, and a new mold had to be created for each hologram design. Seeking a more versatile alternative, researchers at the United Arab Emirates’ Khalifa University of Science started out by mixing corn syrup and vanilla with water, then letting the solution dry into a film.

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Terahertz (THz) radiation is electromagnetic radiation ranging from frequencies of 0.1 THz to 10 THz, with wavelengths between 30μm and 3mm. Reliably detecting this radiation could have numerous valuable applications in security, product inspection, and quality control.

For instance, THz detectors could allow law enforcement agents to uncover potential weapons on humans or in luggage more reliably. It could also be used to monitor without damaging them or to assess the quality of food, cosmetics and other products.

Recent studies introduced several devices and solutions for detecting terahertz radiation. While a few of them achieved promising results, their performance in terms of sensitivity, speed, bandwidth and operating temperature is often limited. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Minnesota, and other institutes in the United States and South Korea recently developed a that can reliably detect THz radiation at room temperature, while also characterizing its so-called polarization states. This camera, introduced in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, is based on widely available complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS), enhanced using (i.e., nm-sized semiconductor particles with advantageous optoelectronic properties).

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Google today announced two new performance settings in its Chrome browser: Memory Saver and Energy Saver.

Modern browsers eat up a lot of memory and while that’s not a problem if you have 32GB of RAM, Chrome using multiple gigabytes of your memory can quickly slow your machine down if you’re on a machine with lower specs. The Memory Saver mode promises to reduce Chrome’s memory usage by up to 30% by putting inactive tabs to sleep. The tabs will simply reload when you need them again. The Energy Saver mode, meanwhile, limits background activity and visual effects for sites with animations and videos when your laptop’s battery level drops below 20%.

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‘I almost died on the way out,’ said the six-foot-two tall archeologist who lost 25 kgs to enter a 17.5-centimeter cave.

Researchers claim to have discovered new evidence of extinct human species who lived in the underground caves of modern-day South Africa.

“We have massive evidence. It’s everywhere,” said Berger, who reported the findings in a press release and a Carnegie Science lecture at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Gulshan Khan/Getty Images.

The archeological findings reveal that Homo naledi, a prehistoric human species used fires to prepare food and navigate in the darkness of underground caves, according to South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic explorer Lee Berger.

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http://www.iBiology.org.

For millennia, humans have been harnessing #microbes to produce everything from breads, to cheeses, to alcohol. Now these tiny organisms have produced another powerful revolution — the gene editing tool CRISPR. Rodolphe Barrangou, Ph.D., was working at the food company Danisco, where he was trying to produce yogurt lines resistant to contamination. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, he helped uncover what CRISPR was, how it worked, and why it could be so transformative.

Speaker Biography:
Rodolphe Barrangou, Ph.D., studies beneficial microbes, focusing on the occurrence and diversity of lactic acid bacteria in fermented foods and as probiotics. Using functional genomics, he has focused on uncovering the genetic basis for health-promoting traits, including the ability to uptake and catabolize non-digestible carbohydrates. He spent 9 years at Danisco-DuPont, characterizing probiotics and starter cultures, and established the functional role of CRISPR-Cas as adaptive immune systems in bacteria. At NC State, he continues to study the molecular basis for their mechanism of action, as well as developing and applying CRISPR-based technologies for genotyping, building immunity and genome editing.

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#biology #research

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The microphone sensor can classify bowel diseases using machine learning.

There are many diseases that could potentially be detected through human waste. One such infection includes cholera. Cholera is a bacterial disease.

Cholera is spread through contaminated food and water. Large epidemics that spread the bacterium are related to fecal contamination of water or food. It can sometimes be spread through undercooked shellfish and other seafood-related infections, as well. is spread through contaminated food and water. Large epidemics that spread the bacterium are related to fecal contamination of water or food. It can sometimes be spread through undercooked shellfish and other seafood-related infections, as well.

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Researchers at McMaster University have created a powerful new weapon against bacterial contamination and infection.

They have developed a way to coax bacteriophages—harmless viruses that eat bacteria—into linking together and forming microscopic beads. Those beads can safely be applied to and other materials to rid them of harmful pathogens such as E. coli 0157. Each bead is about 20 microns, (one 50th of a millimeter) in diameter and is loaded with millions of phages.

The McMaster engineering team behind the invention, led by professors Zeinab Hosseinidoust, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage Bioengineering, and Tohid Didar, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Nano-Biomaterials, and graduate student Lei Tian, have created a spray using nothing but the microbeads.

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Antibiotics are not enough in the war against pathogens.

Every year more than 40 million people in the U.S. suffer from foodborne illnesses caused by bacteria, viruses, and various other types of pathogens. Food contamination is often underestimated, but it is responsible for 420,000 deaths annually. This number represents more people than the entire population of Iceland.

Urfinguss/iStock.

After being produced on a farm, food passes through a lot of channels before it makes it to our platter. Preventing it from contamination is almost impossible. However, a team of researchers from McMaster University in Ontario has figured out a way to free food from disease-causing bacteria before it goes into your stomach, according to a press release.

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Examinations using microscopes confirmed that these neurons were active in the mice with chronic pain. When the researchers used chemicals to stop the neuronal activity in this cortex, the mice’s appetites improved.

Similarly, when the researchers used chemicals to activate these neurons in mice that weren’t in pain, the animals ate less, even if they had been deprived of food before the experiment.

This is the first time that researchers have traced the brain mechanisms behind pain-related appetite loss, the researchers wrote.

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