The Salt Americans wasted 31 percent of all food that was available in 2010, the USDA reports. For the first time, the agency calculated what that means in terms of calories, too.
Category: food – Page 239
Profile: Christian Wanamaker Teaches Robots to Learn How to Help Students
“The thing I find rewarding about coding: You’re literally creating something out of nothing. You’re kind of like a wizard.”
When the smiley-faced robot tells two boys to pick out the drawing of an ear from three choices, one of the boys, about 5, touches his nose. “No. Ear,” his teacher says, a note of frustration in her voice. The child picks up the drawing of an ear and hands it to the other boy, who shows it to the robot. “Yes, that is the ear,” the ever-patient robot says. “Good job.” The boys smile as the teacher pats the first boy in congratulations.
The robot is powered by technology created by Movia Robotics, founded by Tim Gifford in 2010 and headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut. Unlike other companies that have made robots intended to work with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), such Beatbots, Movia focuses on building and integrating software that can work with a number of humanoid robots, such as the Nao. Movia has robots in three school districts in Connecticut. Through a U.S. Department of Defense contract, they’re being added to 60 schools for the children of military personnel worldwide.
It’s Gifford’s former computer science graduate student, Christian Wanamaker, who programs the robots. Before graduate school at the University of Connecticut, Wanamaker used his computer science degree to program commercial kitchen fryolators. He enjoys a crispy fry as much as anyone, but his work coding for robot-assisted therapy is much more challenging, interesting and rewarding, he says.
America’s most widely consumed oil causes genetic changes in the brain
New UC Riverside research shows soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression.
Used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to livestock, soybean oil is by far the most widely produced and consumed edible oil in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In all likelihood, it is not healthy for humans.
It certainly is not good for mice. The new study, published this month in the journal Endocrinology, compared mice fed three different diets high in fat: soybean oil, soybean oil modified to be low in linoleic acid, and coconut oil.
Veggie Factory: World’s First Vertical Farm Run Entirely By Robots
Circa 2016
Taking vertical urban indoor farming efficiency to the next level, a new automated plant coming to Japan will be staffed entirely by robots and produce 30,000 heads of lettuce daily.
The so-called Vegetable Factory is a project of Spread, a Japanese company already operating vertical farms. Located in Kyoto, its small army of bots will various seed, water, trim and harvest the lettuce. Spread’s new automation technology will not only produce more lettuce, it will also reduce labor costs by 50%, cut energy use by 30%, and recycle 98% of water needed to grow the crops.
Defector says North Korean regime turned its people into cannibals
Like millions of movie-mad children around the world, Gim Gyu Min dreamed of being a film star when he grew up. But when he huddled in the darkness of the cinema in the 1980s and ’90s, he was forced to watch propaganda praising the North Korean regime.
Now, after a harrowing escape from his country in 1999, he is a filmmaker dedicated to making movies that expose the human-rights abuses there. “I want to let the world know that more and more people are dying under the Kim family dictatorship,” he said.
His movies are based on events that he witnessed during the North Korean famine in the late 1990s, when, among other horrors, he watched a woman being arrested for cannibalism after she resorted to eating her own son. Her child’s head had been found in a cauldron.
‘Radiation-eating’ Fungi Finding Could Trigger Recalculation Of Earth’s Energy Balance And Help Feed Astronauts
Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.
“The fungal kingdom comprises more species than any other plant or animal kingdom, so finding that they’re making food in addition to breaking it down means that Earth’s energetics—in particular, the amount of radiation energy being converted to biological energy—may need to be recalculated,” says Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of microbiology & immunology at Einstein and senior author of the study, published May 23 in PLoS ONE.
The ability of fungi to live off radiation could also prove useful to people: “Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets,” says Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova, associate professor of nuclear medicine and microbiology & immunology at Einstein and lead author of the study.
Be Extraordinary
How do you all feel about this?
Strips you pee on at home and then scan with your phone to see if you are dealing with any deficiencies. The test results provide food recommendations, supplement recommendations, and lifestyle recommendations intended to help improve the way you “look, feel, and perform…”
Probably rudimentary but I like where their head is at.
With Bloom you can track 15 health metrics from the comfort of your home and get personalized food, supplement and lifestyle recommendations to help you feel your best.
Deepfake video: It takes AI to beat AI
Anyone with a modicum of skill can create deepfake videos using artificial intelligence, but experts suggest that AI may also be the solution that allows rapid and accurate identification and detection.
By now, most of us have shared a few chuckles over AI-generated deepfake videos, like those in which the face of comedian and impressionist Bill Hader gradually takes on the likenesses of Tom Cruise, Seth Rogen, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as he imitates the celebrities. We’ve seen actor Ryan Reynolds’ mug superimposed over Gene Wilder’s in the 1971 classic film “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” We’ve even marveled over businessman Elon Musk being turned into a baby.
It all can be quite humorous, but not everyone is laughing. Tech companies, researchers, and politicians alike are growing concerned that the increasing sophistication of the artificial intelligence and machine learning technology powering deepfakes will outpace our ability to discern between genuine and doctored imagery.