tingilinde

if you need a hobby

plant-based "meat" vs the real thing

There's quite a gulf, but there are a number of sometimes expensive new approaches. Here's an effort to quantify some of the differences and use some simple machine learning to optimise. 

snip

...

The objective of this study is to understand the mechanical signatures of plant-based and animal meat. Animal meat consists of muscle, connective tissue, fat, and water, and is dominated by its anisotropic microstructure27. In contrast, most plant-based meats are made of soy-, wheat-, or pea-based proteins, they have no pronounced fibers, and are generally isotropic14. Here, to unify the comparison, we focus on processed meat products–plant-based and animal sausage and hotdog–and assume that these products no longer have fibers, but are all homogeneous and isotropic. For comparison, we also characterize processed plant-based and animal turkey, and two plain soy-protein products, extrafirm and firm tofu. We systematically compare all eight products through standardized mechanical tension, compression, and shear tests28, combined with automated model discovery, to discover the best models and parameters for each product29, and conduct a food texture survey21 with n = 16 participants to explore whether the results align with our sensory perception. To accelerate discovery and innovation in plant-based food technologies1, we share all raw data, methods, algorithms, and results on a public open source discovery platform.

...

 

a ux conversion

Using LEGO interface pieces.

snip

...

What could cause 400 WWII pilots to raise the landing gear on their B-17 bomber just before touchdown? Catastrophic pilot error, or something more fundamental?

It was the psychologist Alphonse Chapanis who first suggested that the high rate of crash landings might be the fault of poor interface design. The adjacent landing gear and flap control knobs were identically shaped. The pilots never stood a chance.

His temporary solution was to glue differently shaped strips of rubber to each switch, enabling blind operation by touch alone. This gave rise to the idea of shape coding and a system of differentiation still being followed in aircraft cockpits today.

...

 

 

 

taking antimatter on a roadtrip

A most remarkable delivery service!

snip

...

Each team is taking antimatter on the road for different reasons. BASE-STEP wants to move antiprotons — counterparts to protons — to a location free from experimental noise, where they can be examined in finer detail. PUMA plans to transport antiprotons to a facility in which other short-lived materials are made, and use the antimatter to probe their nuclear structures.

Each project’s maiden trip will take just a few hours, and will venture only across the CERN site. But eventually the teams hope to make longer journeys to universities around Europe, giving more labs the opportunity to experiment with antimatter. BASE-STEP aims to transport antiprotons some 700 kilometres to the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where some of its team is based.

This kind of delivery service “would democratize the use, or the study, of antimatter”, says Alexandre Obertelli, a physicist at the Technical University of Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) in Germany, and architect of the PUMA experiment.

...

 

precision aerobatics at a walking pace

air is, indeed, a fluid

masking in hospitals works

What happened when universal masking was relaxed and then later reimposed during a surge.

 masking works

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

reverse-engineering a pigeon

Learning what bird-like maneuverability takes.

snip

...

Birds’ feathers appear simple, but they really are extremely advanced pieces of aerospace hardware. Their complexity starts with nanoscale features. “Feathers have 10-micron 3D hooks on their surface that prevent them from going too far apart. It is the only one-sided Velcro system in the world. This is something that has never been engineered, and there is nothing like this elsewhere in nature,” Lentink says. Those nanoscale hooks, when locked in, can bear loads reaching up to 20 grams.

Then there are macroscale properties. Feathers are not like aluminum structures that have one bending stiffness, one torque stiffness, and that’s it. “They are very stiff in one direction and very soft in another direction, but not soft in a weak way—they can bear significant loads,” Lentink says.

His team attempted to make artificial feathers with carbon fiber, but they couldn’t create anything as lightweight as a real feather. “I don’t know of any 3D printer that could start with 10-micron nanoscale features and work all the way up to macro-scale structures that can be 20 centimeters long,” Lentink says. His team also discovered that pigeon’s feathers could filter out a lot of turbulence perturbations on their own. “It wasn’t just the form of the wing,” Lentink claims.

...

 

 

on ken burns

A look into the life of an unconventional film-maker.

snip

...

He moved here out of necessity: In 1979, Mr. Burns’s landlord raised the rent on his fifth-floor, walk-up apartment in Manhattan from $275 to $325 — a sum now so quaint that it’s hard to imagine how consequential it was for the beginning filmmaker. The increase meant that he would need to get a day job, and he had a vision of himself decades later, returning haggard from the office, the reels of his unfinished documentary atop the refrigerator.

...

 

 

donald's "beautiful word"

Let's see if he's really stupid enough to pull the trigger.

Maybe we'll see something dramatic like the 30s..

 

 

thirty years!

This is the original holiday card I sketched back in 1994 along with a bit of midi.  I posted it to the then-new web and the few people I knew with browsers on their machines gave a thumbs up.  The next year a bit of laziness saw  it going out unchanged.   The third year came and I almost forgot, only to be reminded by a few dozen requests that came just before Christmas. From then on I posted it every year soon after Thanksgiving.  When the 25th anniversary rolled around a few years ago,   I asked if people wanted something new, but the unanimous vote was for the  classic.  

 

Autoplay didn’t exist then so you’ll have to start the music yourself on the like below the main image.

Happy Holidays! - peace, friendship, and health!

http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/good-yule.html