Gadget: Albicchiere is a Connected Device to Pour and Store Your Wine

Chris Albrecht wrote . . . . . . . . .

Made in Italy, the Albicchiere is a countertop device that pours and stores your wine. The “Albi” as the appliance is also known, brings your wine to the proper serving temperature (between 4°C to 20°C / 39.2°F to 68°F). before dispensing, so, the company claims, you get the most enjoyment out of each glass.

The Albi is launching on Kickstarter and will cost early backers $279. The device is supposed to ship in September of 2020 (though, as with any crowdfunded hardware, caveat emptor).

At first glance, $279 seems pretty pricey for a wine dispenser, but here’s what else the Albi can do:

You can load the Albi with either your own bottled wine or special “Smart Bags” of wine the company sells itself for the device. These bags use a special patent-pending technology that keeps wine fresh in the device for up to six months, even if you’re just pouring one glass at a time, because the wine never comes into contact with oxygen. (Other wine preservation systems like Coravin, use argon gas.)

These bags of wine are reusable (though it seems like pouring your own wine into them would introduce oxygen), and the company says you can swap out bags of wine, like going from white to red during a meal, in as little as five seconds without needing to clean the machine in between.

We’ve actually seen a similar “smart bag” approach to wine containers before with the Edgar commercial wine dispenser at last year’s CES show.

The Albi has Alexa and Google Home compatibility built in, so you can ask it to pour you wine, though this functionality seems limited as you’d need to be at the machine at some point to make the glass available (the company says you could use it to have a glass of wine ready and waiting at the right temperature when you get home from work).

The built-in screen provides you with details about your wine, so you can learn more about where it’s from and other characteristics. The Albi keeps track of your wine so you know when the wine is going going bad and when you are running low. Albi can also reorder it for you.

The smart bags also make it easier to ship wine by reducing transport costs and carbon footprints through lighter packaging. Albicchiere says that it has already signed up 200 wineries that will sell their wine in Smart Bags. The cost for wine, as with buying any traditional bottle of wine, will depend on the type and brand.

Source: The Spoon

Ox Heart with Wild Mushroom

Ingredients

1/2 ox heart (Bos primigenius taurus)
1-1/4 cups wild mushrooms (Boletus edulis)
rosemary, (Rosmarinus officinalis), ground + 1 sprig
olive oil
pepper
salt

Method

1. Slice the ox heart (or buy it ready sliced). Season with salt and pepper.
2. Before slicing them, wash the mushrooms to remove any soil.
3. Heat some oil in a frying pan, add the mushrooms, and saute them.
4. Brush the ox-heart slices with a little oil. Heat a griddle over high heat and cook them for 3-5 minutes (according to taste), along with the sprig of rosemary (to allow its flavor to impregnate the meat).
5. Serve the ox heart with the mushrooms and dust with a little ground rosemary to taste.

Makes 1 serving.

Source: Paleo

What’s the Difference Between an Air Fryer and a Convection Oven?

Danilo Alfaro wrote . . . . . . . . .

If you’re thinking about buying an air fryer, you might be wondering what the difference is between air fryers and convection ovens. The quick answer is, an air fryer is a simply a smaller convection oven with a catchy name.

There is no actual frying going on inside an air fryer—that’s because an air fryer cooks food via convection baking.

With actual deep-frying, your food is directly immersed in hot oil. The oil completely surrounds every inch of the food, so it gets uniformly crispy. With ordinary baking, your food gets less crispy, because baking cooks by surrounding your food with hot air and air is not as good a conductor of heat as oil.

What Is Convection Baking?

Convection baking introduces a fan to the interior of an oven, allowing hot air to be blown around and onto the food. The force of the air thus transfers more heat to the surface of the food, so that it produces more crispiness than an ordinary oven (but still far less than an actual deep-fryer).

So air fryers are, in essence, convection ovens. But that doesn’t mean the two are exactly the same. Let’s talk about what those differences are.

Note that although many oven ranges offer a convection setting, for this discussion, we’re solely comparing countertop convection ovens with air fryers.

What Is a Convection Oven?

A countertop convection oven is built like a standard toaster oven: rectangular in shape with a front door that opens on a hinge at the bottom. How it differs from an ordinary toaster oven is that a convection oven is equipped with a fan, which blows hot air around.

The motion of the air inside the oven is called a convection effect and it results in faster cooking by transferring higher temperatures to the surface of the food as compared with an ordinary oven. So it both accelerates cooking as well as enhances the browning and crisping of the surface of your food.

Like a toaster oven, a convection oven has an interior rack that will fit a sheet pan (preferably a perforated one to allow maximum air flow). Because it’s wide, it allows for the food to be spread out on the rack rather than stacked in layers.

This is crucial, since stacking or layering food impedes the flow of hot air. Arranging the food in a single layer allows for even cooking all around.

What Is an Air Fryer?

Essentially, an air fryer is a smaller, more portable convection oven. Instead of being shaped like a toaster oven, many air fryers are tall, closly resembling a coffeemaker. It has a removable bucket with a handle and inside that bucket, fits a removable basket. This basket is where the food goes. The bucket slides into the device, you turn it on, and it starts to cook. The fan is situated overhead, above a heating element.

Now, because it’s smaller and the fan is closer to the food, an air fryer is able to focus a high amount of heat onto a relatively small cooking area. Which means that an item of food in that cooking area will cook more quickly than it would in a convection oven.

However, because it is smaller, it will only accommodate a fraction of the amount of food that a convection oven will fit. An air fryer will really only cook about two servings at a time—if that.

This means that if you are trying to feed more than one or two people, you’ll have to cook in batches, so that ultimately it may take longer to serve a meal than it would using a convection oven.

This creates a sort of catch-22, since the small size of the basket prevents you from spreading out an even layer of food, so you have to stack your food instead. But by stacking your food, you prevent the hot air from flowing evenly around it, thus defeating the purpose of the convection effect.

Even when used according to the instructions, cooking French fries or onion rings in an air fryer requires you to periodically shake the basket to ensure that all the fries or rings cook evenly. So not only does it take longer to cook (because of having to cook in batches), you also have to physically do more work.

Source: Spruce Eats

Study: Exercise Good for Your Brain’s Gray Matter

Jay Furst wrote . . . . . . . . .

Cardiorespiratory exercise — walking briskly, running, biking and just about any other exercise that gets your heart pumping — is good for your body, but can it also slow cognitive changes in your brain?

A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases provides new evidence of an association between cardiorespiratory fitness and brain health, particularly in gray matter and total brain volume — regions of the brain involved with cognitive decline and aging.

Brain tissue is made up of gray matter, or cell bodies, and filaments, called white matter, that extend from the cells. The volume of gray matter appears to correlate with various skills and cognitive abilities. The researchers found that increases in peak oxygen uptake were strongly associated with increased gray matter volume.

The study involved 2,013 adults from two independent cohorts in northeastern Germany. Participants were examined in phases from 1997 through 2012. Cardiorespiratory fitness was measured using peak oxygen uptake and other standards while participants used an exercise bike. MRI brain data also were analyzed.

The results suggest cardiorespiratory exercise may contribute to improved brain health and decelerate a decline in gray matter. An editorial by three Mayo Clinic experts that accompanies the Mayo Clinic Proceedings study says the results are “encouraging, intriguing and contribute to the growing literature relating to exercise and brain health.”

Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and first author of the editorial, says the most striking feature of the study is the measured effect of exercise on brain structures involved in cognition, rather than motor function. “This provides indirect evidence that aerobic exercise can have a positive impact on cognitive function in addition to physical conditioning,” he says. “Another important feature of the study is that these results may apply to older adults, as well. There is good evidence for the value of exercise in midlife, but it is encouraging that there can be positive effects on the brain in later life as well.”

Dr. Petersen is the Cora Kanow Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research and the Chester and Debbie Cadieux Director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

The study’s finding of higher gray matter volume associated with cardiorespiratory exercise are in brain regions clinically relevant for cognitive changes in aging, including some involved in Alzheimer’s disease. The editorial calls those associations interesting but cautions against concluding that cardiorespiratory fitness correlations would affect Alzheimer’s disease.

“This is another piece of the puzzle showing physical activity and physical fitness is protective against aging-related cognitive decline,” says Michael Joyner, M.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and physiologist, and editorial co-author. “There’s already good epidemiological evidence for this, as well as emerging data showing that physical activity and fitness are associated with improved brain blood vessel function. This paper is important because of the volumetric data showing an effect on brain structure.”

Dr. Joyner is the Frank R. and Shari Caywood Professor at Mayo Clinic.

Long-term studies on the relationship between exercise and brain health are needed, which will be costly and logistically challenging to produce. “Nevertheless, these data are encouraging,” says Clifford Jack Jr., M.D., a Mayo Clinic neuroradiologist and co-author of the editorial. “The findings regarding cardiorespiratory fitness and certain brain structures are unique.”

Dr. Jack is the Alexander Family Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research.

According to Mayo Clinic experts, moderate and regular exercise — about 150 minutes per week — is recommended. Good cardiorespiratory fitness also involves:

• Not smoking
• Following healthy eating habits
• Losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight level
• Managing blood pressure and avoiding hypertension
• Controlling cholesterol levels
• Reducing blood sugar, which over time can damage your heart and other organs

Source: Mayo Clinic

AI Beat Humans in Spotting Breast Tumors

Amy Norton wrote . . . . . . . . .

Machines can be trained to outperform humans when it comes to catching breast tumors on mammograms, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Google and several universities are working on an artificial intelligence (AI) model aimed at improving the accuracy of mammography screening. In the Jan. 1 issue of Nature, they describe the initial results: Computers, it seems, can beat radiologists both in detecting breast tumors and avoiding false alarms.

Compared with mammography results collected from routine practice, the computer model reduced false positives by 1.2% (at three U.K. hospitals) and 5.7% (at one U.S. center). “False positive” refers to a mammogram that is deemed abnormal, even though no cancer is present.

“That means we could, potentially, create less angst for patients,” said researcher Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, an assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

Artificial intelligence also bested humans when it came to false negatives — where a mammogram is interpreted as normal despite the presence of a tumor. The algorithm reduced those cases by 2.7% in the United Kingdom, and by 9.4% in the United States.

Etemadi called the findings “exciting,” but also stressed that research into using AI in medicine is “still in its infancy.”

Nor will it be replacing humans any time soon. Instead, Etemadi explained, AI is seen as a “tool” to boost doctors’ efficiency and accuracy.

As an example, he said AI could be used to “re-order the queue” — so that instead of analyzing mammograms in the order they come in, radiologists could have certain images with suspicious findings flagged for priority review.

Mammography screening can detect breast cancer in its earliest stages, but it’s imperfect: According to the American Cancer Society, it misses about 20% of cancers. And if a woman gets a mammogram every year for 10 years, she has about a 50% chance of receiving a false positive at some point.

The new study, funded by Google, is the latest to explore whether AI can help detect cancer.

Typically, it works like this: Researchers develop an algorithm using “deep learning” — where a computer system mimics the brain’s neural networks. It’s exposed to a large number of images — digital mammograms, for example — and it teaches itself to recognize key features, such as signs of a tumor.

Other studies have suggested that AI can outperform humans in diagnosing certain cancers. One found that computers bested dermatologists in distinguishing harmless moles from melanoma skin cancer. Another found that AI was typically better than pathologists at finding breast tumor cells in lymph node samples.

This latest AI model was “trained” by exposing it to mammograms from over 90,000 women whose outcomes were known. The researchers then tested the model on a separate dataset, involving mammograms from over 25,000 U.K. women and 3,000-plus U.S. women.

Overall, the model reduced false positive and false negative results. The improvement was greater in the United States. While it’s not certain why, Etemadi pointed to one potential reason: In the United Kingdom, it’s standard for two radiologists to analyze a mammogram, which generally improves the accuracy.

But while the AI model performed well in this “controlled environment,” it remains to be seen how it will work in the real world, said Dr. Stamatia Destounis.

She is a spokesperson for the Radiological Society of North America and a clinical professor of imaging sciences at the University of Rochester, in New York.

“What’s needed are clinical studies in real day-to-day practice to see if these findings can be reproduced,” Destounis said.

Even in this controlled setting, the AI model was not foolproof. It did not detect all cancers or eliminate false positives. And sometimes it lost out to humans.

In a separate experiment, the researchers pitted the AI model against six U.S. radiologists. Overall, the computer was better, but there were cases where the doctors correctly saw a tumor the machine missed.

So what did the AI model overlook? And what did it see that doctors didn’t? No one knows, Etemadi said.

“At this point, we can only observe the patterns,” he said. “We don’t know the ‘why.'”

But, he added, it all suggests the combined forces of human and machine would be better than either alone.

To Destounis, the prospect of a new tool to help spot breast cancer is “exciting.”

“I’m hopeful that AI will be another tool in our clinical practice to help radiologists identify breast cancer as early as possible — when the tumor is smallest and the treatment least invasive,” she said.

Source: HealthDay

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