Enologix makes software that predicts how a wine will rate in reviews even before it is made. It claims that wine quality can be measured chemically, and a score assessed, much like a wine critic. In order to achieve the high rating, winemakers invest in processes rooted not in agriculture but in biochemical information. Wine making becomes an information science. Care for a nice norisoprenoid anthocyanin blend?
COOKING AT THE END OF THE WORLD :: MICHÈLE GENTILLE
In a freely available article, The Wall Street Journal reveals how chefs cook at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Cooking at the South Pole needs lots of innovation and creativity. Let's look at some of the challenges. First, the South Pole Station stands at an elevation of 2,835 meters and temperatures varied between -13.6° C and -82.8° C. Then, all the food for the 250 scientists based there comes by plane and is obviously frozen. And it can take up to two weeks to defrost meat or poultry. Finally, because of the moisture-free air, cooking must be exclusively done with electric equipment, which can take a very long time. But read more...
The passion for cooking and food are the central theme of Pixar's recent film - Ratatouille. This complex and multi-faceted problem posed many challenges that were solved using diverse computer graphics and production techniques. In this course we will comprehensively cover all aspects including modeling, dressing, shading, lighting and effects.
The story called for working cooking stations and sloppy mess of a busy, functional kitchen. We will review some of the set concepts, visual framework and even dynamics simulation techniques that were used to create this illusion. We will illustrate with several examples including final plated dishes, mis-en-place setups and the Food Locker.
The challenge of shading food on Ratatouille was to work within the stylized look of the film and yet keep it recognizable and appealing to eat. We developed subtle illumination techniques that added up to a general approach we could use on a variety of objects. We will breakdown examples ranging from vegetables to plated dishes.
Lighting played a key role in making the food look appetizing, a task further complicated by different types of food such as bread, cheese, soup and wine that pushed the boundaries of standard surface based lighting. We will discuss our general approach to lighting food as well as specific challenges and solutions posed by the various dishes.
The Bionic Learning Network is part of the company’s commitment to vocational and further training. Cooperating with colleges and research companies, Festo promotes ideas and initiatives that go beyond the core business of automation and didactics, and may well give rise to promising areas of application in the future.
Air_ray, modelled on the manta ray, is a remote-controlled hybrid construction consisting of a helium-filled ballonet and a beating wing drive. Its light design makes it possible for it to “swim” in the sea of air, boosted by helium, in a similar way to the manta ray in water.
Propulsion is achieved by a beating wing drive. The servo drive-controlled wing, which can move up and down, utilises the Fin Ray Effect® and is based on alternate pulling and pushing flanks connected via frames. When pressure is exerted on one flank, the geometrical structure curves automatically against the direction of the influencing force. A servo drive pulls the two flanks alternately in the longitudinal direction, thus moving the wing up and down.
A sensor that detects odors better than the human nose may be able to smell dangerous air pollutants, soil contaminants, insecticides, food pathogens, biological warfare neurotoxins, and body odors associated with illness and disease. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, chemistry professor Kenneth S. Suslick and graduate student Neal A. Rakow have spent four years developing a sensor that sniffs out odors by "seeing" them. Called "smell-seeing" by its inventors, the method relies on color changes that occur in an array of vapor-sensitive dyes in response to exposure. This newest version of an artificial nose is simple, fast, and inexpensive. The ink on this paper changes color when exposed to odor. In the future it could be used on a milk container to detect spoilage.
Oil–water mixtures are ubiquitous in nature and are particularly important in biology and industry. Usually additives are used to prevent the liquid droplets from coalescing. Here, we show that stabilization can also be obtained from electrostatics, because of the well known remarkable properties of water. Preferential ion uptake leads to a tunable droplet charge and surprisingly stable, additive-free, water-in-oil emulsions that can crystallize. For particle-stabilized ("Pickering") emulsions we find that even extremely hydrophobic, nonwetting particles can be strongly bound to (like-charged) oil–water interfaces because of image charge effects. These basic insights are important for emulsion production, encapsulation, and (self-)assembly, as we demonstrate by fabricating a diversity of structures in bulk, on surfaces, and in confined geometries.
WD-2 can make facial expressions that, if possible, are more human-like than some humans can make. WD-2 is short for "Waseda-Docomo face robot 2," and is the most recent version of the face robot developed by researchers from Waseda University in Tokyo led by mechanical engineer Atsuo Takanishi.
According to a recent article at Robot World News, WD-2 may provide insight into the creation of personal robots. In the future, personal robots may serve a multitude of purposes in work and entertainment with humans, and therefore must be able to communicate in a human-like manner.
WD-2 not only makes facial expressions, but changes its facial expressions with nearly the minute detail of a human face. According to the article, "While other robots make expressions that mean ‘happy,' ‘sad,' ‘excited,' or ‘angry,' WD-2 can make tiny movements to reveal a wide spectrum of meanings."
WD-2 changes its facial features by changing 17 specific facial points on a mask, with each point possessing three degrees of freedom, for a total of 56 degrees of freedom. To make certain points of the face move, a shaft is driven behind the mask at the desired facial point, driven by a DC motor with a simple pulley and a slide screw.
According to the article, the researchers say that the mask can be modified to "copy" a human face, even displaying a person's hair style and skin color when a photo of their face is projected onto the 3D mask.
This is fascinating: making an airship's surface contract and expand so as to enable it to "swim" through the atmosphere. These artificial muscles are made of polymers which deform when subjected to an electrical field.
Conventional propeller driven airships have their disadvantages. They are inefficient, and thereby wasteful of energy, and they are noisy too. Empa scientists are looking to solve both these problems by using a technology which is simultaneously very advanced and yet simple in concept – their design lets an airship “swim” through the air like a fish moving through water. That this idea could become reality thanks to the development of electroactive polymers (EAPs) is demonstrated by the first flight trials as well as computer simulations. The EAPs need further development, however, and their reliability and useful lifetime must be improved.
If the patented idea of Empa researcher Silvain Michel and his team becomes established, then the airship of the future will be a non-rigid airship (blimp) that glides through the air as silently and using the same means of propulsion as a trout swimming in a brook – by bending its body in one direction and simultaneously moving its tail in the opposite way. The technically simplified version of this trout-like motion, using three rigid, interconnected body segments, is known in scientific jargon as the “bending-rotation-stroke”, says Michel.
“This technique can be transferred directly from water to air”, he explains further. “A blimp moving through the air is, in terms of the physics involved, exactly the same as a fish moving through water. In both cases a body is moving through a fluid and is subject to the same laws of fluid dynamics.” The new propulsion technique, combine with a sleeker, trout-like shape, doubles the efficiency of the blimp design from an aerodynamic point of view.
FROM SUPERBOT TO MOLECUBE - PROGRAMMABLE FOOD CONCEPT
SuperBot is a new type of robots that are modular, multifunctional, and easily reconfigurable. Its modules can be dynamically configured into different robots to fit the user's needs. For example, it can crawl, walk, roll, climb, carry, fetch, or survey. The reconfiguration and module exchanges are easy and do not require any special knowledge or training. Such robots are economic because a single robot can provide diverse behaviors and can be changed frequently. This is ideal for home campanions, search and rescue, security, surveillance, and so on.
A step further is that we produce these modules on nano scale and create nanorobots. Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it would probably be necessary for very large numbers of them to work together to perform macroscopic tasks.In such plans, future medical nanotechnology has been posited to employ nanorobots injected into the patient to perform treatment on a cellular level.
Far-fetched? The processed-food giant Kraft and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards 'programmable food'. One product they are working on is a colourless, tasteless drink that you, the consumer, will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what colour and flavour you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too.
According to researchers, Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale. Winston Churchil, a carnivore to the core, already in 1936 predicted that “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” Today, growing meat in the lab still seems the stuff of science fiction, but reality is not far behind.
The picture above shows the Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow project by James King, who proposes scan the countryside looking for the most beautiful examples of cows, pigs, chickens and other livestock. Once located the animals are scanned from head to toe, creating precise cross-sectional images of its inner organs.The most interesting and aesthetically pleasing examples of anatomy are used as templates to create moulds for the in-vitro meat (we wouldn’t choose to eat the same old boring parts that we eat today). The result is a satisfyingly complicated and authentic form of food. The project was inspired by the Disembodied Cuisine project.
Nanobucky is a fun example of the ability to control the synthesis of nanoscale materials such as carbon nanofibers. Nanobucky is made entirely from tiny "hairs" of carbon nanofibers. These carbon nanofibers are about 50-75 nanometers in diameter, each about 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. The entire image of Bucky is about 15 microns (15,000 nm) in size. That means that we could fit approximately 9,000 complete NanoBuckys onto the head of a pin. NanoBucky was created by graduate students Sarah Baker, Kiu-Yuen Tse and Jeremy Streifer, postdoc Matthew Marcus, and Prof. Robert Hamers, at UW-Madison.
The carbon nanofibers that make up Bucky are of great interest for practical applications such as chemical and biological sensing and as high surface-area materials for use in a applications such as energy storage. So, while NanoBucky is fun, there is some serious science behind making structures such as this. Below you'll find a link to the description of how Bucky was made.
A refrigerator is one of the biggest electricity consumers at home. It works with refrigerant-generally Freon gas. When the refrigerant is liquid condition, it sucks heat so that the fridge does cooling. But it emits heat when gas condition. While refrigerant repeats gas-liquid condition, the compressor and condenser(long and thin copper/aluminum pipes at back of fridges) are heated up because gas has to evaporate this heat. To blow this heat, a refrigerator has to be placed 5-10 cm apart from the wall in the kitchen.
The idea of Hot Fridge is based on an experimental use of waste heat from a refrigerator and is inspired by Gudul (Ondol), the traditional under-floor Korean heating system.
By having its structure and condenser redesigned, the fridge is able to store not only cold food but also warm food. The condenser is on top of the fridge so that you can put and keep left-over food warm until next meal. Plastic shelves in door are changed to fabric net pocket bags that help cool air circulation and allow easy storing. Hot Fridge is easy to move so you can pull it to bring warm dishes on the dinner table. If you cannot finish all your pizza at lunch, put the pizza plate up on the fridge. The afternnon bite will be warm!
Implant technology is already commonplace in the form of replacement surgery (artificial joints, pacemakers, etc). The Audio Tooth Implant (ATI) is the first commodity based in-body product. Augmenting our body’s communication skills it enables a form of telepathy.
A micro-vibration device and a wireless low frequency receiver are implanted in the tooth during routine dental surgery. The tooth communicates with an array of digital devices, such as mobile telephones, radio and computers. A dedicated device (also acts as the long-range receiver) is used to fully customise the set up for each individuals personal requirements.
Sound information is transferred from the tooth into the inner ear by bone transduction.Sound reception is totally discreet enabling information to be received anywhere at anytime.
Inventors keep coming up with new ways to exploit RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. Now Kodak wants to use them to probe a person’s digestive system.
RFID tags are tiny radio chips that resonate with a single echo when hit with a radio trigger. Kodak’s digestible tags are harmless and intentionally fragile. The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.
They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient’s digestive tract.
Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.
Martin Frey, a Munich, Germany-based experimental interface and interaction designer, has developed SnOil, a physical interactive display that utilizes ferrofluid, a liquid that reacts to magnetism. Frey has integrated SnOil with classic arcade game Snake (get it? snake + oil = SnOil) to illustrate game actions via the ferrofluid display. SnOil makes use of the ferrofluids magnetic sensitivity to selectively position and shape the fluid. This is done by electromagnets, which enable the appearing and disappearing of a magnetic field by switching the flow of an electric current.
A liquid below its freezing point will crystallize in the presence of a seed crystal or nucleus around which a crystal structure can form. However, lacking any such nucleus, the liquid phase can be maintained all the way down to the temperature at which crystal homogeneous nucleation occurs. The homogeneous nucleation can occur above the glass transition where the system is an amorphous—that is, non-crystalline—solid.
Self Propelled Liquid Droplets : When a liquid drop is placed on a surface held at a temperature much higher than the liquid’s boiling point (such as a drop of water in a very hot pan) it hovers on its own vapor cushion, without wetting the surface. This phenomenon is called film-boiling and occurs beyond a surface temperature called the Leidenfrost point (about 200 - 300 ºC for water on flat surfaces, depending on surface quality).Please take your time to check the other movies.Contact: Heiner Linke,Associate Professor Department of Physics, University of Oregon.
This is an acoustic levitation chamber dr. David Deak designed and built in 1987 as a micro-gravity experiment for NASA related subject matter. The 12 inch cubed plexiglas Helmholtz Resonant Cavity has 3 speakers attached to the cube by aluminium acoustic waveguides. By applying a continuous resonant(600Hertz) sound wave, and by adjusting the amplitude and phase relationship amongst the 3 speakers; I was able to control levitation and movement in all 3 (x,y,z) axis of the ambient space. This research was used to show the effects of micro-gravity conditions that exist in the space shuttle environment in orbit, but done here on Earth in a lab.
Hard as it may be to believe, there are still those of us that haven’t purchased a Nintendo Wii. Those poor souls may still be wondering what sort of new gameplay the console is supposed to bring them. Well, you should check out this video for an upcoming family oriented title called “Cooking Mama: Cook Off”, a game originally developped for the DS, but which is now being entirely re-written for the Wii.
“There are new foods, new modes, and multiplayer, all wrapped around the crunchy center of the Wiimote.”
As the title indicates, the whole point of the game is to cook. You get to slice, dice, chop and sautee all your ingredients, in the quest of the perfect dish. Or something like that.
Point is, there’s a video after the jump, if you’re so inclined. The game should be out in April, for $50.
People wrote about Behrokh Khoshnevis’ awe-inspiring, rapid-prototyping “robo builder” in 2005 when it was still a work in progress. But now, the University of Southern California professor’s contour crafting machine will be put to the test; it’s scheduled to erect its first house in California within the next few months. The two-story house will built in less than 24 hours out of only concrete and gypsum — and without the help of a single human hand. Khoshenevis’ groundbreaking robo-builder has caused some raised eyebrows and dropped jaws within the architectural community, as the machine provides a new model for construction that drastically cuts building timelines, material, manpower, and most importantly, waste and carbon emissions.
Food for design wants to be an open source for design, food and science cross-over. We are not interested in creating hypes, but in long term co-operations, where everyone benefits. Promoting quality and collective creativity are the things that count... So please take a seat and have a bite! Best view [res: 1024 x 768] x [browser: firefox]
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17.03.2007::MATERIALS ::
Food for design was invited by the Meat & Fresh expo and will install a creative food laboratory at the rambla during the fair,
where people can find inspiration towards form and taste.
[+ more]
_m[eat]ing 002
18.11.2006::MATERIALS ::
A feast of surfaces, textures, colors and other sensorial elements, using a large palette of food materials.
The objective is to inspire new uses for food materials and provoke new applications within a design context.
[+ more]
_seminar
20.09.2006::MG SEMINAR IN BELGIUM ::
This seminar [ 20 november 2006 ] is organised by the innovation and knowledge centre of food for every one who is interested in food science, technology and cooking processes. This can be chefs, scientists, recipe developers, foodies,...
The guest speakers tell and demonstrate how food science and technology can inspire gastronomy...
[+ english][+ dutch]
_manifesto 001
03.02.2006::FOOD for design::
The first aim of this project is to explore and understand the physicochemical properties of materials / ingredients and apply this under-standing when designing.
_manifesto 002
28.01.2006::food for DESIGN::
A different way of thinking : abandoning the role of "creator" and "descending" to the role of a participant playing within the rules of an experimental process.
All experiments come into being as a result of self-formation processes.
_manifesto 001
22.01.2006::food FOR design::
In exploring the materials the main focus lays on the food as in exploring the structure the primary focus lays on the process.
The goal of this cross-fertilisation project is to add more senses / experience to design, it is a way of sustainable, random, natural thinking to in-spire others, giving food for the future.
