We’ve asked augmented reality to help us drive, overcome our phobias, and put names to faces. Now we want cookies. Researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan have devised a headset that can replace the appearance and smell of a plain cookie with tastier varieties including chocolate, almond, orange, maple, lemon, and cheese.
The group, led by Takuji Narumi, presented its research at the SIGGRAPH conference on computer graphics at the end of last month. “Augmented gustation” is a challenge, the team says, because taste relies on so many of our other senses. We see the embedded chocolate chips. We smell the straight-out-of-the-oven scent.
The “meta cookie” project attempts to use our multiple cookie senses to create a virtual cookie variety pack. Users choose their preferred cookie, and a camera on the headset overlays an image on a plain sugar cookie and sprays the correct associated scent, be it maple or cheese. The closer the cookie gets to the user’s mouth, the more of the scent the headset cranks out. Though the test subject in the video above appears satisfied, TechNewsDailyreports that the trick did not fool everyone. One cookie remained “mostly neutral” tasting though the headset tried to conjure maple and chocolate flavors.
Perhaps researchers will next attempt to copy the cookie’s feel? Texture seems to matter: ask anyone who’s entered the crunchy versus chewy fray.
After years of serving as your faithful companion to ball games and keeping the brewskies frosty at backyard barbecues, your trusty beer cooler now has a new assignment–cooking up a gourmet meal, sous-vide style.
For those of you who don’t keep up with high-tech cookery, sous-vide is a method of cooking where food is heated for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Unlike a slow cooker or Crock pot, the sous-vide process uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 140 Fahrenheit). The idea is to maintain the integrity and flavor of the food without overcooking it (but while still killing any bacteria that may be present).
Normally, a sous-vide cooker like the Sous-Vide Supreme would set you back hundreds of dollars, but chef J. Kenzi Lopez-Alt shows us how to use a beer cooler to cook a perfect piece of meat.
The Web site for POM pomegranate juice makes some pretty extreme claims, strongly implying that the juice can prevent or help treat diseases like cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and even erectile dysfunction. Now, the Food and Drug Administration has said such claims are misleading and are not allowed on food products, according to a report in The New York Times. If POM wants to make such claims, the FDA stated, it will have to be regulated as a drug.
In a crackdown on companies with misleading labels, the FDA shot off warning letters asking 17 companies to clean up their act.
I scream, you scream, we all scream… for the medicine given to recovering cancer patients.
The Scientist reports that LactoPharma, (a “collaborative research venture between the University of Aukland, the New Zealand government, and the country’s largest dairy company, Fonterra Ltd.”) has created a therapeutic, strawberry-flavored ice cream called ReCharge.
ReCharge ice cream has gone through a string of taste-tests to ensure that the product satisfies the palette. However, one ingredient is a mandatory keeper: Lactoferrin, a protein found in milk that possesses the power to impede tumor growth and improve intestinal immune response. Because side effects of chemotherapy include the destruction of neutrophils (while blood cells) and intestinal cells, which often leads to infection and digestive problems, University of Auckland biologist Geoff Krissansen decided to test bovine lactoferrin on chemotherapy patients to see whether it could counter these side effects.
Pediatricians have declared that the trusty ol’ hot dog is in need of a makeover, setting the stage for one of the biggest engineering challenges known to man and causing some to worry, “Is it the end of the hot dog as we know it?”
The cylindrical sausage has been deemed a choking hazard by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which published an official statement on choking risks in the journal Pediatrics that included concerns about the snack clogging a child’s wind pipe. The pediatricians pointed out that 17 percent of all food-related asphyxiations among children are caused by hot dogs.
Talking about the proposal for a choke-proof hot dog, a doctor explains to USA Today:
“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”
But Smith admitted that he doesn’t know how the sausage could be redesigned to be safer, adding somewhat lamely that he’s “certain that some savvy inventor will find a way.”
Slime molds have been popping up in the news quite a bit lately. A few weeks ago, they made headlines by mimicking the Japanese rail system. Now, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that slime molds can make complicated choices about the amount and variety of nutrients they eat.
It might not seem like a big deal that an organism—whether mold, mouse, or man—can make complex decisions about how to feed itself.
Except that they have no brains. These amoeboid creatures have no specialized center dictating all their actions. So, as they spread across a landscape, they have no “mission control” to which to report their nutritional requirements.
Surprise, surprise…. Fast food restaurants might be lying to your face.
According to the Los Angeles Times health blog, Booster Shots:
Researchers from Tufts University took commercially prepared foods — both prepackaged and from restaurants — and analyzed them in a bomb calorimeter. The measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated, and foods from 29 restaurants (both fast-food and sit-down venues) were on average 18% more than reported.
The most egregious offender? Denny’s, whose dry toast is advertised to contain 92 calories but actually packs a diet-busting 283 calories! If they can’t even get the numbers on toast right, just imagine the true caloric content of one of their Grand Slamwiches.
So if your New Year’s resolution includes getting back in shape, help yourself out by resolving to stop eating fast food and frozen meals all together.
A pair of genetic sleuths from New York City’s Trinity high school discovered a bit of food foul play. Seniors Matt Cost and Brenda Tan collected DNA samples from items around their homes and school, sequenced the fragments and analyzed them with a publicly available database, and found there is little truth in advertising, according to Cosmic Log:
The real detective work came into play when [they] matched the DNA code against a couple of publicly available databases for animal species. They found out that an expensive brand of sheep’s-milk cheese was actually made from cow’s milk, that “sturgeon caviar” was actually Mississippi paddlefish, and that dog treats supposedly made from venison were actually made from beef.
It’s amazing what artifacts you can find buried in the ice. (No I’m not talking about that leftover turkey that’s been in your freezer since last Thanksgiving. Though if you consider that an historical find, more power to you.)
Last month Discoblog brought you the story of the century-old whiskey that British explorer Ernest Shackleton left on Antarctica, which New Zealanders recovered and plan to replicate. Now scientists have analyzed a soup can found in the Canadian Arctic that dates to around the time of the famous Franklin Expedition, and could point to how its members met their doom.
Gotta love mathematicians: Even when they attack a practical problem familiar to just about everybody, the results can be wonderfully impractical.
New Scientist today documents the exhaustive, decades-spanning search of two mathematicians trying to solve the pizza problem: How to cut a pizza so that everyone gets a fair slice. Seems pretty simple with the standard method, cutting through the center four times to create eight equitable slices. But if you miss the center, or want to create a different number of slices, it opens up a world of possibilities for mathematicians to try to work out.
Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.
After years of serving as your faithful companion to ball games and keeping the brewskies frosty at backyard barbecues, your trusty beer cooler now has a new assignment–cooking up a gourmet meal, sous-vide style.
The Web site for 
I scream, you scream, we all scream… for the medicine given to recovering cancer patients.
Pediatricians have declared that the trusty ol’ hot dog is in need of a makeover, setting the stage for one of the biggest engineering challenges known to man and causing some to worry, “Is it the end of the hot dog as we know it?”
By 
Surprise, surprise…. Fast food restaurants might be lying to your face.
A pair of genetic sleuths from New York City’s Trinity high school discovered a bit of food foul play. Seniors Matt Cost and Brenda Tan collected DNA samples from items around their homes and school, sequenced the fragments and analyzed them with a 
It’s amazing what artifacts you can find buried in the ice. (No I’m not talking about that leftover turkey that’s been in your freezer since last Thanksgiving. Though if you consider that an historical find, more power to you.)
Gotta love mathematicians: Even when they attack a practical problem familiar to just about everybody, the results can be wonderfully impractical.
