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2021-05-17 11:03:42 3 interesting companies in plant based food market
Plant-based food products are a booming industry. Food and beverage manufacturers ranging from startups to leading companies are innovating rapidly in this market. The shift towards plant-based diets has been predominantly driven by increasing incidences of intolerance for animal protein, growing urbanization with new consumer aspirations, increasing vegan population, and significant venture investments in plant-based product manufacturers. However, some of the meat substitutes have comparatively higher price range, significant preference for animal-based products, and consumer preference for soy and gluten free products hinders the growth of market to some extent.

Dicos
In China, a fast-food chain called Dicos is embracing plant-based ingredients in a very different fashion to restaurants in America.
At a fast-food restaurant like Burger King, for example, a plant-based burger is sold as an alternative to the animal version, but ultimately, customers can choose between the two options. But if you go to Dicos and order their breakfast sandwich, for instance, it will automatically come with a plant-based egg.
The restaurant chain, which has about 500 locations in China, is the first major fast-food company to outright replace items on the menu that were made with animal products with a plant-based version, rather than selling it side-by-side with the “real thing.”

Impossible Foods
Impossible Foods became famous in the culinary world for its faux meat burger patties that feel and taste like the real thing. Now the food company is focusing on replacing another popular animal-sourced product: cow milk.
Yes, alternatives to cow milk already exist in the form of soy milk or nut-based milk, but what Impossible Foods is aiming to do is produce plant-based milk that is designed to function, behave, and taste just like the animal-derived cow’s milk.
Recently, a researcher showed samples of Impossible Milk side by side with other plant-based milk like almond milk and soy milk, to show that the Impossible Milk looks much more like cow milk than the others.
If you’re vegan but have never been satisfied with plant-based milk alternatives, the development of Impossible Milk must be exciting news.

Amy's Kitchen
Amy’s Kitchen is engaged in producing and marketing natural and organic convenience and frozen foods. The company’s product portfolio mainly segmented into entrées, bowls, burritos & wraps, pizza, pasta, soups, snacks, pot pies, veggie burgers, veggie meats, chili, beans, pasta sauce, salsa, candy, and others. The company distributes its specialty foods globally through supermarkets, natural food and grocery stores, warehouse clubs, colleges, and online. Open / Comment

2021-05-16 13:05:53 Open / Comment

2021-05-16 13:05:50 Amazing Tech Developed by Private Firms Are on the Verge of Creating Nuclear Fusion Reactors to Power Humanity

While industries are harnessing solar, hydro, and geothermal power to solve the world’s energy problems, it’s been thought by many for sometime that the eventual source of unlimited clean energy will be nuclear fusion.

Fusion reactors replicate the power and process of the sun down here on Earth by creating plasma, the fourth material state, inside a controlled device that harnesses the heat given off as energy to be turned into electricity.

Now a pair of private firms, one near MIT, and another in England, are developing something that could be described as a “portable” fusion reactor, by utilizing super rare minerals and some of the most powerful magnets ever made.

If only the firms can solve a laundry list of some of the most complex technological problems imaginable, coal and oil could stay in the ground, there’d be no need to risk another Fukushima, the enormous inefficiencies with renewable energies could all be forgotten, and all those engineers and technologists could lend their talents to other areas of the economy.

Unlike other physics equations, the fusion reactor theory is actually quite simple to explain. Hydrogen atoms go into the reactor, immense pressure causes them to fuse and become helium. Some of this hydrogen mass is converted into heat, which can be used to generate electricity. Simple.

The difficulty comes with the process. In order to make fusion occur on Earth, scientists like Brittle must heat hydrogen isotopes to degrees in the hundreds of millions, at which point they break apart and form a plasma.

The sun has its gravitational field to contain the plasma within it. Lacking an object 330,000 times the mass of the Earth, Tokamak Energy and other firms are planning to keep the plasma controlled with super powerful magnets.


This kind of private innovation, this “race” as Kingham calls it, done with limited resources, produces the most innovative technologies. There’s no reason to make a reactor that weighs and costs as much as a cruise ship if you can make it the size of a phone box. Open / Comment

2021-05-15 13:21:09 Open / Comment

2021-05-15 13:21:06 New Tech Makes Perishable Food Last For Months Without a Fridge, Helping Farmers and the Planet

A food-tech startup in upstate New York has developed technology to preserve food without refrigeration for months beyond when it would normally spoil, without the use of artificial preservatives. Poised to cut down on the millions of tons of food waste worldwide, it also has the potential to transform agriculture in developing countries where refrigerated shipping containers and trains are rare or expensive.

Have you ever wondered why we don’t devote more cropland to growing fruits and vegetables instead of grain since they’re much more nutritious? The reason is food spoilage, a problem that costs $14 billion in waste in India alone. As soon as a harvest is reaped, a clock begins to tick until oxygen damage and bacteria render a product inedible. Farther Farms proprietary CO2 pasteurization technology is a simple fix that can prolong packaged foods’ shelf life in room temperature past 90 days.

Their first demonstration, French fries, would normally need to be frozen to survive trips between production facilities and supermarkets. They can’t be pasteurized like other goods, since the rapid heating with steam would turn them into mush. Instead, Farther Farms puts them into special packaging, and fills it with supercritical CO2, preventing damage from oxidation, and suffocating bacteria.

Growing up in India in a farming family, co-founder Vipul Saran developed Farther Farms as a grad student at Cornell University. His familiarity with the costs and difficulties of managing to move agricultural products, in his case potatoes, from farms into towns and cities before they spoiled informed his development of the technology.

Rather than packaging apples or potatoes in a plastic bag, the Farther Farms tech is ideal for value-added food products, not only because they necessitate packaging of some kind, but also because they earn farmers more money, for example turning tomatoes into salsa.

Rather than needing to transport them via refrigerated box car or shipping container, methods that are not only expensive, but limited in their reach to countries in Asia, Africa, and South America, Farther Farms would allow them to bypass the frozen supply chain and ship them at any temperature, thereby allowing farmers and food producers of all kinds to reach the maximal number of markets. Open / Comment

2021-05-14 10:47:41 Open / Comment

2021-05-14 10:47:30 Solar Mountain installation could power Burning Man with clean energy

Burning Man is an annual music and arts event that attracts a lot of creative, expressive, and entrepreneurial individuals. However, because of its expansive desert setting, visitors tend to use a lot of motorized fossil-fuel vehicles to navigate their way around, while several displays require the use of generators.

Mumbai architecture firm NUDES wants to address this by proposing a permanent installation called Solar Mountain. Solar Mountain has been designed to power the entire 3,800-acre ranch of Burning Man with 300 MWh of solar power.

Not only will the design provide a completely renewable energy source, but it will be aesthetically striking. A multitude of solar panels will extend from the structure, creating a curving peak resembling natural mountains. The panels that spread outward will create a partially covered walkway for visitors who want to get a closer look at the stunning energy source.

Solar Mountain will be constructed with recycled wood and other eco-friendly materials. The architects intend for it to not just be a source of clean energy for the event, but for visitors to interact with it and use it as a community center.

NUDES hopes that their contribution to the annual event will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of Burning Man and that other festivals will also be inspired to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices. Open / Comment

2021-05-13 10:31:42

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2021-05-13 10:31:36 Algorithm helps find world’s poorest people to send them cash directly

For the past decade, a charity called GiveDirectly has been sending direct cash transfers to people suffering from poverty around the world, particularly in Africa. The idea behind GiveDirectly is that direct cash transfers can make a far greater impact than government aid programs for poor individuals by providing the agency to decide for themselves how to best improve their lives. As GiveDirectly puts it, cash enables choice.

Recently, GiveDirectly teamed up with UC Berkeley to design an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the poorest individuals in the poorest areas in order to provide them with cash relief. The algorithm works in two stages. First, it uses high-resolution satellite imagery to identify the poorest neighborhoods or villages in a region. As Fast Company reports, the tool identifies those areas from hundreds of poverty markers that distinguish poorer from wealthier places, such as roof material, building density, and paved or unpaved roads. The second stage works by analyzing the mobile phone data of people in that area. The tool can distinguish between richer and poorer folks through clues for more expensive or cheaper usage, like amount of mobile data used or frequency of phone calls. When the poorest individuals are identified, GiveDirectly prompts them to enroll via mobile phone in order to pay them instantly.

Thus far, the project has been launched in the country of Togo where 55 percent of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day. Data shows that the number is closer to 81 percent amongst the rural population, which is why GiveDirectly is focusing its efforts there.

In Togo, approximately $5 million will be delivered in total; $15 for women and $13 for men per month. That number was calculated as the figure to cover their “minimum basket of goods” to survive, with 30,000 Togolose having been paid so far.

Five months from now, GiveDirectly will analyze how effective the pilot program in Togo was and will tweak it as necessary. Josh Blumenstock, associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, admits the system is far from perfect as the algorithm might exclude some people through biases. It also excludes people who don’t have a phone at all.

That said, 90 percent of Togo’s rural population has one phone per household, and the GiveDirectly team is tying registration to its program via SIM cards, rather than phones, so that multiple members can purchase a cheap SIM and link to the family phone in order to receive the monthly payment.

Moving forward, the hope is to secure more funds and scale up the project in Togo as well as other countries. GiveDirectly also hopes governments and NGO use the AI-tool in the future as a means of providing economic relief to people during disasters and humanitarian crises. Open / Comment

2021-05-13 09:17:01 ​​Availability of online education

Nowadays, online education is a good option for students who, for various reasons, can’t access offline education, and it's also a good option to choose when online education is far better than offline. Both technology and pedagogy make online learning have gotten considerably better over the last decade. Evidence of student success and even preference for the online classroom are mounting – and this can serve widespread benefits for all of us.

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