Scanner identifies what's in your food

TellSpec hand-held scanner identifies what's in your food

TellSpec

Figuring out whether the fries on your plate contain traces of trans-fat, or if those celery sticks are truly pesticide-free can be tricky, if not impossible. That's why Isabel Hoffmann along with mathematician Stephen Watson set out to create TellSpec, a hand-held device that you can simply point at a food item, to identify what's in it. Not only does the device warn you about chemicals, allergens and ingredients you'd rather avoid, it'll also help you figure out food sensitivities and track your vitamin intake. The goal, the company says, is to help people make clean food choices by letting them "check their food as easily as they check their mail." "We want to promote healthier eating, alert those who have allergies and educate consumers by telling them exactly what’s in their food – beyond what the label says," Hoffman tells Gizmag. The device utilizes a small Raman spectrometer, a unique cloud-based algorithm and a simple smartphone app. Scanning a food item on the plate or in a shopping aisle is as simple as aiming TellSpec at it and pushing a button. It beams a low-powered laser at the item and analyzes the reflected light waves to identify the chemical makeup of the food. This data is uploaded to the analysis engine which processes the information, compares it to reference spectra, interprets the results with the help of a database, and downloads the results to the user's smartphone. Hoffman states that the device can successfully identify foods and their ingredients approximately 97.7 percent of the time after scanning the food's surface. "Depending on how transparent the surface of the food is, the more accurate the scan will be," explains Hoffman. "Users must understand that these scans can only go so deep. To scan a Twinkie, the user could do two separate scans for a more accurate reading.

One at the surface and then a second in the center of the Twinkie." The team scanned 3,000 food items to create the initial database, but the device can potentially identify an unlimited number of ingredients, according to Hoffman. Its ability to make identifications is expected to increase exponentially as the number of TellSpec users grow, and add their own scans of different food items. Initially the company plans to direct 82 beta food testers early next spring (Northern Hemisphere) to start TellSpecing as soon as the devices become available, increasing the breadth and depth of the food data. "This is the crowd-sourced element of our clean food revolution," Hoffman tells us. "It is literally in the hands of the people. It is they who will truly participate actively in creating a global footprint of food data.The food database is an evolving number – the more people scan, the more the database grows and the more precise the scans become." We've seen devices like the iTube which turns a smartphone into an allergen sensor, but TellSpec is designed to be a smart device. It will do more than tell you if there's Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) in that soup mix or if those chips are truly gluten-free. It can also give you the background story on little-known ingredients like Tartrazine, a synthetic lemon yellow that's commonly used as food coloring. For the calorie conscious, TellSpec can breakdown the amount of sugars, fats and more per gram of a scanned food item. It can help users ascertain that they stay within recommended limits, when it comes to their intake of toxic substances like mercury. Plans are in the works to have the device calculate the volume of food a person consumes, too. While it doesn't diagnose food sensitivities or allergies, users who are uncertain about food triggers can log in symptoms after they've eaten something (like feeling uncomfortable after drinking a glass of milk) to get TellSpec's suggestions. "It will ask you how you feel," Hoffman explains. "If you tell Tellspec you feel bloated, it will suggest that it may be caused by lactose and that you should check with your doctor about the possibility of an allergy." Hoffman hopes that the device will find use as a holistic health tool, as its food database grows larger and people use it in real time to register any disturbing symptoms. "Eventually, the food data 'bank' will compile across time, peoples' historical food data and individual symptoms at a global level," says Hoffman. "These correlations between how people feel and what they really eat will eventually lead to a 'TellSpecodedia' of food data and personalized health information." All the TellSpec data will be open source, allowing anyone to use the data to create their own health-based apps. For instance, a diabetic app that tracks blood sugar levels could utilize TellSpec data to track what sugars or carbohydrates the user consumes, and identify ingredients in their food that would also convert into sugar. "By sharing our API with the world, we want TellSpec to engage the crowd-sourcing power that a group and population bring to any problem," says Hoffman. "One or two brains on any food issue would not yield the answers that the world could definitely benefit from. We want this to be an open source for new applications and new fields of study that grow from a source of food data that has never been available before." TellSpec is currently under development, after raising three times its funding goal on Indiegogo. Shipping is slated to begin in August 2014. Its US$320 price tag includes one year of free analysis of food scans, with further analyses being made available through subscription plans.

 source:Tellspec

Water Could Help Make Better Batteries

How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries

Water could be the key to producing a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and less dangerous way of making the lithium-ion batteries that power so many everyday gadgets, researchers say. Currently, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are typically found in mobile devices such as cellphones, laptops and tablet computers, and they are increasingly being used to power hybrid and electric vehicles. As their uses grow, scientists would like to manufacture the batteries in a manner that's both less expensive and more environmentally friendly. "The application of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles is hindered by their high cost," researcher Jianlin Li, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told TechNewsDaily. "For example, the cost of the lithium-ion batteries in the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Colt is about $500 per kilowatt-hour, which is almost five times of the target cost — $110 per kilowatt-hour — of an electric vehicle lithium-ion battery set by the president's EV Everywhere Grand Challenge."

Li-ion

Currently, more than 80 percent of the costs of making lithium-ion batteries are due to materials and the processing of those materials. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee are now aiming to reduce the price of both of these factors. All batteries generate electricity by flowing electric current between two electrodes — a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode. Cathodes make up about 70 percent of the total cost of high-power batteries, and the organic solvent used to make the lithium ion battery cathodes, N-methylpyrrolidone or NMP, is expensive, toxic and generates flammable vapors. Making batteries with this solvent also requires expensive, explosion-proof processing equipment and costly solvent recovery and recycling systems. Instead of using NMP, the researchers say they can replace it with a system that uses water, which is much safer, greener and at least 150 times cheaper than the organic solvent. Replacing NMP with water is tricky because the slurries, or fluids containing the materials used to make the battery's electrodes, behaves in very different ways if water is employed. For instance, water-based slurries are typically not as good at coating the current collector, the material that gathers electric charge from the electrode. "While it seems quite straightforward to substitute expensive and toxic NMP with water in battery manufacturing, it is very complicated and requires extensive knowledge in science and engineering to realize it," Li said. The scientists employed a number of different tricks to get water to work. For instance, treating the current collector with electrified plasma alters its surface in ways that makes water-based slurries coat it better. Additives in the slurries also help prevent the particles from clumping together. Previous work could help scientists manufacture lithium-ion battery anodes using water. However, until now, "no one has been successful with both anodes and cathodes," Li said. Using this method, the researchers have created a battery that features excellent performance comparable to conventional batteries. Replacing NMP with water promises to reduce the overall costs of lithium ion batteries by about one-eighth, and "the whole process is much more environmentally benign," Li said. "This allows the battery manufacturing more sustainable and affordable." The scientists currently have a patent pending on their technology. They detailed their latest findings online May 25 in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.

Source:livescience