Science Daily reports that European scientists have invented an electronic tongue that will tell you the grape variety and vintage of wine at the press of a button. The device is said to be cheap, fast and portable.
Designed for quality control in the field, the device is made up of six sensors which detect substances characteristic of a certain wine variety. Components such as acid, sugar and alcohol can be measured by this detection, and from these parameters it can determine the age and variety of the wine.
The tongue was invented by Cecilia Jimenez-Jorquera and colleagues from the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, Spain, and is reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal The Analyst.
Wine industry specialists told the researchers they lacked a fast way to assess quality of wines - it takes a long time to send samples to a central laboratory for processing.
This new tongue is not only swift, but also portable, cheap to manufacture, and can be trained to "taste" new varieties as required.
It might seem a small matter to some but this piece in the Guardian's wordofmouth section explains that the electronic wine taster could help the wine industry battle fraud.
There is one big reason why we need a machine with a more precise ability to identify wine than any human palate, and that is to detect wine fraud. If a grape other than the stated variety or vintage has been inserted in your glass or mine, it makes precisely bugger all difference - if we're enjoying the glass it's as relevant as the provenance of the oranges in our morning juice - but to those who've invested many hundreds of thousands of pounds in supposedly important bottles it's crucial.
There is likely a market for this device among those who collect expensive wines. The device could help them discover they have the real deal or that they have been tricked.
Gizmag reports that the canned food geniuses at Trekking-Mahlzeiten have created a canned cheesburger. The cheeseburger in a can is sold here. It is designed for outdoor enthusiasts who need only to toss the can in boiling water for a few minutes and then open the can and eat the cheesburger goodness found within.
The canned cheeseburger is sold under one of Katadyn's best known brands, Trekking-Mahlzeiten, a subsidiary company that develops specialist ready-meals for the outdoor, expedition and extreme athlete markets.
The high tech hamburger has been developed for trekkers and the non-traditional metal wrapping reflects the Trekking-Mahlzeiten company ethos that its speciality meals should be easy to prepare and require only water to do so - simply throw the can into a water container over a fire, give it a minute or two, fish it out, open the lid, and eat. With a shelf life of twelve months without requiring refrigeration, the lightweight snack is the ideal fast food treat for the wilderness.
Chow doesn't believe the cheeseburger in the photograph is really the one that came out of the can. It probably isn't - it looks impossibly larger than the can. But the delicious food you see in commercials often isn't the actual food either. Kudos to Co-ed Magazine for the clever headline, "I Can Has Canned Cheezburger?" Gridskipper has a video of someone in Germany taste-testing the canned cheesburger.
Martha Stewart chats with Barry Kudrowitz and Bill Fienup about their remote controlled award-winning ketchup robot. It zooms over to your plate and automatically dispenses ketchup. The robot is called the ketchup crapper. Martha Stewart liked the automato better. So do we.
Gizmag 