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Researchers find easy method to drastically enhance your coffee at home

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There are all sorts of fancy tools and expensive equipment that can dramatically improve the taste of your coffee, but now scientists have discovered a new trick that requires just a few drops of water.

When you grind coffee, the process creates friction, which causes some cracks in the beans. This generates electricity that causes the coffee particles to clump and stick to the grinder.

Publish the survey results in a magazine Casea team of researchers reported that coffee beans with higher internal moisture levels generate less static electricity.. This meant less coffee was wasted and a stronger espresso was obtained.

This moisture level is achieved by simply adding a small amount of water to the beans. in front Polishing them.

“Moisture determines the amount of charge formed during grinding, whether it’s residual moisture inside the roasted coffee or external moisture added during grinding,” says the senior author. Dr Christopher Hendona computational materials chemist at Orjon University.

“Water not only reduces static electricity and reduces mess during grinding, but it can also have a significant impact on the strength of the beverage and potentially its ability to obtain a higher concentration of desirable flavor.”

Coffee experts weren’t the only people involved in this study. In a strange turn of events, a volcanologist was brought in to better understand what happens when static electricity is generated when grinding coffee.

“During an eruption, magma breaks up into many small particles that come out of the volcano in a large plume. Throughout the process, those particles rub against each other and become electrically charged until lightning occurs.” he says.volcanologist joshua mendez harperauthor of the paper at Portland State University.

“Simplistically speaking, it’s like grinding coffee, grinding the beans into a fine powder.”

During the course of the study, the research team measured the amount of static electricity generated by grinding a variety of commercially and home-roasted coffee beans. These vary depending on factors such as country of origin, roast color, and moisture content.

Although there was no association between static electricity and the coffee’s country of origin or processing method (natural, washed, decaffeinated), the researchers found a link between static electricity and coffee content, roast color, and particle size. found that there is a correlation between

Less power was produced when the coffee had a higher internal moisture content and when the coffee was ground at a coarser setting. The research team also discovered differences in the static electricity generated between light and dark roasts.

When we compared espresso made with the same coffee beans ground with and without water, we found that grinding with water produced a stronger and longer extraction. Similarly, milling with water improves shot-to-shot consistency, overcoming a hurdle for baristas who want consistent results all day long.

“The main material benefit of adding water during grinding is that there is less agglomeration and the bed can be packed more densely,” says Hendon.

“Espresso is the worst culprit for this problem, but there are also benefits seen in brewing methods where you pour water over the coffee, like on the stovetop. Where you don’t see a benefit are methods like a French press, where you steep the coffee in water. .”

Although the research findings primarily focus on coffee, they have implications for other areas as well.

“It’s kind of the beginning of a joke: a volcanologist and a coffee expert walk into a bar and come out with a paper,” Harper says.

“But I think there are many more opportunities for this kind of collaboration. These investigations could help solve parallel problems in geophysics, such as landslides, volcanic eruptions, and how water infiltrates soil. .”

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Google Maps upgrades to enhance user experience in India

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Google on Tuesday introduced a range of new features and updates to its mapping services in India as it closes out the year and lays the foundation for next year.

The latest in a series of new features is Lens in Maps, which will be launched on Android in 15 cities across India by January. The feature was introduced in the U.S. and select global markets in October and uses a combination of artificial intelligence and augmented reality to show people information such as opening hours, ratings, reviews, and photos when they point their smartphone camera on the street. I will provide a. Go to a restaurant or cafe.

Google has also launched Live View Walking Navigation in India, providing overlays of arrows, directions, and distance markers on the map screen to help users navigate to their destinations easily. Google says the feature will initially be available on Android and will be rolled out to more than 3,000 cities and towns across the country.

“India is a huge country with very diverse needs,” Miriam Karthika, vice president of Google Maps Experience, said at the event. “The scale on which we have to operate for India is enormous.”

In addition to the visually immersive viewing experience with Lens in Maps and Live View walking navigation, Google uses a combination of machine learning signals to discover the most relevant lands around your pinned address. We announced an address descriptor that provides up to five mark and area names and displays landmark references. Users share their location information. This India-first feature was introduced for Google Maps Platform developers earlier this year and will be available across his 75+ cities in India.

Image credits: Google

Google is also bringing fuel-efficient directions to India, which will be available to users starting in January. This feature works on domestic four-wheelers and two-wheelers and helps users reduce fuel consumption and limit carbon emissions. The feature will be available to users in Indonesia in addition to India next year.

Since its initial launch in October 2021, through September this year, Google said its fuel-efficient directions had prevented more than 2.4 million tons of CO2e emissions worldwide. The company says the feature uses AI to understand real-time traffic data, road elevation, and vehicle engine type to identify routes that limit fuel and emissions.

Apart from launching global features in India, Google has partnered with India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and mobility app Namma Yatri to bring metro schedules and reservations directly to users through Google Maps. . The experience will be available from the Kochi metro by the middle of next year, and will be rolled out in stages as other metros come on board with the open e-commerce network.

Google is also expanding its Where Is My Train app, which helps more than 80 million users every month to navigate their intercity train journeys, to local trains in Mumbai and Kolkata, with plans to add more cities in the future. .

To date, Google has mapped millions of kilometers of roads and 300 million buildings across the country. More than 50 million searches are made every day on the domestic map, 2.5 billion kilometers of directions are recorded every day, and more than 60 million unique users contribute to the map. Additionally, Google said it has mapped 30 million businesses and locations across the country, enabling direct connections between 900 million merchants and consumers.

Last July, Google introduced the Street View feature in India, six years after it was banned due to security concerns. The company has partnered with local companies Genesis and Tech Mahindra. According to Google, more than 50 million users in Japan are currently viewing Street View.

Source: techcrunch.com

Researchers find natural method to enhance the meat-like qualities of plant-based meat

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Recent research has revealed that fermenting alliums such as onions with fungi can naturally mimic the flavor of meat, offering a promising solution for enhancing plant-based meat substitutes without the use of synthetic additives. measures are provided.

Plant-based alternatives like tempeh and bean burgers offer protein-rich options for those looking to cut back on meat. However, it is difficult to imitate the taste and aroma of meat, and many companies use artificial additives for this purpose. Recent research in ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry revealed a promising solution. Onions, chives, and leeks can produce natural compounds that resemble meat flavors when fermented with typical fungi.

An innovative approach to natural meat flavoring

When food manufacturers want their plant-based meat alternatives to taste more like meat, they often add precursor ingredients found in the meat that transform into flavorants during cooking. Alternatively, flavors are first prepared by heating flavor precursors or other chemical manipulations and then added to the product.

Because these flavors are created through a synthetic process, many countries do not allow food manufacturers to label them as “natural.” To utilize plant-based “natural” meat flavors, flavor chemicals must be physically extracted from plants or produced biochemically using enzymes, bacteria, and fungi. So YanYan Zhang and colleagues wanted to see if they could produce the same chemicals from vegetables and spices using fungi, which are known for producing meat-like tastes and smells from synthetic ingredients.

Allium releases the aroma of meat

The team fermented different fungi seed After experimenting with different foods, I found that meaty aromas only come from foods in the allium family, such as onions and leeks. The sample with the strongest aroma was one in which the fungus Polyporus umbellatus was used to ferment onions for 18 hours, producing a fatty and meaty aroma similar to liverwurst.

The researchers used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze onion ferments to identify flavor and odor chemicals, many of which are known to be responsible for various flavors in meat. discovered a chemical substance. One of the chemicals they identified was bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide, a strong odorant found in meat and savory foods.

The researchers say the high sulfur content of alliums contributes to their ability to produce meat-flavoring compounds, and these compounds often also contain sulfur. These onion ferments could one day be used as a natural flavoring agent in a variety of plant-based meat substitutes, the researchers say.

Reference: “Sensoproteomic discovery of taste-modulating peptides and taste re-engineering of soy sauce” Manon Jünger, Verena Karolin Mittermeier-Kleßinger, Anastasia Farrenkopf, Andreas Dunkel, Timo Stark, Sonja Fröhlich, Veronika Somoza, Corinna Dawid, and Thomas Hofmann, 2022 May 20th Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.2c01688

The authors acknowledge funding from Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung.

Source: scitechdaily.com

New Discovery May Enhance Fuel Production

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Researchers at Washington State University have discovered self-sustaining oscillations in the Fischer-Tropsch process, an important industrial method for converting coal, natural gas, or biomass into liquid fuels. This breakthrough reveals oscillatory rather than steady-state behavior in reactions, which could lead to more efficient and controlled fuel production. This discovery provides a new knowledge-based approach to catalyst design and process optimization in the chemical industry.

Researchers at Washington State University have made significant progress in understanding the Fischer-Tropsch process, an important industrial method for converting coal, natural gas, or biomass into liquid fuels. They discovered that, unlike many catalytic reactions that maintain a steady state, the Fischer-Tropsch process exhibits self-sustaining oscillations that alternate between high and low activity states.

This insight published in the journal scienceopens the possibility of optimizing the reaction rate and increasing the yield of the desired product, which could lead to more efficient fuel production in the future.

“Velocity fluctuations, usually accompanied by large fluctuations in temperature, are undesirable in the chemical industry due to safety concerns,” said corresponding author Professor Norbert Kruse of the WSU Jean and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. (corresponding author) said. “In this case, the oscillations are controlled and mechanistically well understood. With this foundation of understanding, both experimental and theoretical approaches to research and development can be quite different. It really becomes a knowledge-based approach, which is very useful for us.”

Rethinking catalyst design

The Fischer-Tropsch process is commonly used to make fuels and chemicals, but researchers have had little understanding of how the complex catalytic conversion process works. This process uses a catalyst to convert two simple molecules, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, into long chains of molecules, hydrocarbons that are widely used in everyday life.

Research and development in the fuel and chemical industries has used a trial-and-error approach for more than a century, but researchers will now design catalysts more intentionally and use vibrational techniques to tune reactions and improve catalytic reactions. will be able to cause the condition. performance.

The researchers first encountered this oscillation after graduate student Rui Zhang approached Kruse about the problem of not being able to stabilize the reaction temperature. Studying it together, they discovered surprising vibrations.

“It was very interesting,” Kruse said. “He showed it to me and I said, ‘Louis, congratulations, you have a vibration! “And we continued to develop this story.”

The researchers not only discovered that the reaction causes an oscillatory reaction state, but also discovered why this happens. That is, as the reaction temperature increases due to heat generation, the reaction gas loses contact with the catalyst surface, slowing the reaction and decreasing the temperature. When the temperature is low enough, the concentration of reactant gases on the catalyst surface increases and the reaction rate accelerates again. As a result, the temperature increases and the cycle ends.

Fusion of theory and experiment

For this study, the researchers demonstrated the reaction in the lab using a frequently used cobalt catalyst modified by the addition of cerium oxide and modeled how it works.Co-author Pierre Gaspard of the Free University of Brussels developed the reaction scheme and theoretically imposed Change the temperature periodically to reproduce the experimental rate and selectivity of the reaction.

“This is so beautiful that we were able to model it theoretically,” said corresponding author Yong Wang, Regents Professor in the WSU Boyland School and Zhang’s co-supervisor. . “Theoretical and experimental data were in close agreement.”

Kruse has been researching vibrational responses for more than 30 years. The discovery of oscillatory behavior due to the Fischer-Tropsch reaction was quite surprising because the Fischer-Tropsch reaction is mechanistically very complex.

“In our research, we sometimes experience a lot of frustration because things don’t go our way, but sometimes we have moments that we can’t explain,” Kruse said. “It’s very rewarding, but ‘rewarding’ is a weak word to describe the excitement of making this great progress.”

Reference: “Obcillating Fischer-Tropsch Reaction” by Rui Zhang, Yong Wang, Pierre Gaspard, Norbert Kruse, October 5, 2023, science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adh8463

This research was supported by Chambroad Chemical Industry Research Institute Co., Ltd., the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Catalysis Science Program.

Source: scitechdaily.com