India : a solution against food wastage

In India, a restaurant revolutionize the doggy bag concept by reducing food wastage and helping people in need. Indeed, Pappadavada (really popular restaurant in Kochi, Kerala state) encourages its customers and passers-by to put their scraps in a fridge, which is outside the restaurant, to allow starving people to sustain. Minu Pauline, owner of the restaurant, had this idea after seeing someone rummaging about in a bin. She realized she was generating a lot of scraps everyday with her restaurant. This is how she decided to place a fridge in front of her restaurant to permit people to use it and serve themselves food.

The fridge is open 24/7 ans is filled as by restaurant owners' donations as by Kochi citizens' donations. Minu Pauline drops off by her own from 75 to 80 food portions per day, and it is far from being enough. The fridge is not locked and the Pappadavada owner asks people to write on the wrapping when the product has been dropped off. It enables users to know how long the food has been in the fridge and those who are in need can serve themselves as much as they want.

Interviewed by the Huffington Post, Minu Pauline declared : "Money is yours, but resources belong to the world. This is the message I want to convey. If you want to waste your money, that is your problem, but you can't waste resources of the world. Don't waste resources, don't waste food".

Here is a good initiative locally set up against food wastage !

Australian mail service tests drone delivery

In Australia, Australian mail services hopes to develop and generalize little parcels delivery by drone in years to come. During AFR Business Summit that has taken place in March in Sydney, Ahmed Fahour (Australian Post CEO) has affirmed the staff was currently testing little parcels delivery (a maximum of 1,2 kilograms) thanks to drones. Australian Post has the support of civilian aviation in order to guarantee the security of the customers.

Designed by ARI Labs and remote piloted thanks to a high definition camera direction, this new kind of delivery could be particularly useful for country person whose houses are far from their letter box. The delivery driver could start the drone from the place he/she is parked to do a fifteen kilometers flight.

The Australian Post CEO declared "Although this project is fascinating, we take the security very seriously. The drone delivery will be officially declared when we will be 100% sure our system is reliable".

The current tests will be done over a two-weeks period? The objective is to deliver about fifty addressees twice a week. To reassure Australian people, Australia Post explains that drones will be equipped of a parachute, an alarm and a light. For now, ARI Labs engineers need to supervise the drone trajectory but they hope they will be able to automatize this part of the process in years to come.

Flashy green rivers in France

Monday, 25th of April :

This morning, French people from twelve different French departments woke up noticing the colour of some rivers have changed. Indeed fluorescine, an inoffensive colourant, has been poured into the water by an environmental federation in order to warn people about the lack of resources allocated to the pollution struggle.

Outside the fourth environmental conference (following on from COP21 conference), environmental activists have decided to make a national impact and led the "Green River Mission". Twelve French departments are concerned with the fake pollution designed to raise awareness (Paris, Ardèche, Aude, Haute-Savoie, Orne, Calvados, Gard, Ille-et-Vilaine, Finistère, Landes, Moselle and Cher).

Indeed, the activist leaders declare pollution struggle is far from being a national priority as its budget has been cut by around 10%. They disapprove of the difference between what politicians say and what they concretely set up.

This mission makes itself heard and make an impression on French people who perhaps are not careful enough of the environment. On social medias, numerous pictures of French flashy green rivers have been posted via #rivieresvertes hashtag.

SPYCE KITCHEN, a new way to eat

MIT engineering students (in Boston, USA) have invented a fully-automated robot that could be your new chef! It is called SPYCE KITCHEN and features several elements such as a refrigerator, a dishwasher, a stovetop and a robot chef that cooks and serves meals.

Indeed, the fully-equipped robot can prepare meals composed of fresh food at the disposal of users. The ingredients are stocked by the SPYCE staff daily to offer fresh products to the users. All they have to do is to choose their order by using the dedicated mobile and tablet app. They can customize their entire meal, from the different ingredients to the sauce they want. The quantity can also be chosen. When the order is validated, they are transported to one of four automated pots that mix and cook the ingredients all-in-one. Once the meal is ready to eat, it is dispensed on a plate and the pot cleans itself.
This invention could definitely revolutionize our way to eat and represent a new alternative to fast-foods. Despite its small size (two square meters), the SPYCE KITCHEN would be able to produce the half of the production per day of a standard fast food.

INK HUNTER : The new tatoo app

Have you ever thought about getting a tattoo? Or worried if you will regret the moment it is there? And what about the placement? Would it be better on the waist, arm or neck?

This is why INK HUNTER was created! This new app projects your potential future tattoo on your body via your phone screen. 

Here is how the app works: available on the Apple Store, the app asks you to choose a pattern among a large pictures gallery or to upload your own pattern in order to project the image where you would like to have your tattoo. To do so, you just have to draw a smiley on your skin where you would like the tattoo to be. The app will recognize the smiley and the tattoo will appear. Thanks to this app, you will be able to have a more defined idea of what the tattoo you want could look like, and you will equally have the possibility to ask your friends' opinion by sharing it via social medias. 
Here is a new way to avoid awkward tattoos!

What if dogs could detect illnesses?

Well trained, some dogs are capable of detecting illnesses such as cancers: this is what several studies conducted by different medical teams all around the world have confirmed. Everything started through sheer luck : a woman had noticed her dog couldn't stop sniffing the mole she had on her leg. An analyse revealed it was about a carcinoma. Scientists have looked into the situation and have ventured the hypothesis that dogs were able to detect cancers thanks to their sense of smell, which is much more developed than humans' one.

Prostate cancer is the first screening case made by dogs, but the experience has been expanded to other forms of cancers such as breast cancer or lung cancer. This kind of cancer screening has been really convincing with a success rate neighbouring 100%. Those results have encouraged cancer researchers to explore a lead concerning artificial noses which could permit to set up non-invasive cancer screenings. 

London : pigeons patrol to measure air quality

The company Plume Labs has developed small devices called Plume Air Sensors, which are able to analyse the air and can determine the rates of nitrogen dioxide, ozone and volatile organic compound. Then Plume Labs has equipped around ten pigeons with those engines. Thus, thanks to their application and website, they can read on an interactive map the levels of pollution of the neighborhoods the pigeons have been flying through. The project is still being tested and the "pigeon test phase" last three days. The Plume Air Patrol is composed of about ten pigeons, each of them is equipped with a Plume Air Sensors that is worn like a backpack. Furthermore, if a London citizen tweets the place he/she is with the mention @PigeonAir, he/she should receive an information report concerning the pollution levels of the concerned place. The limited number of pigeons is not enough to receive a sufficient amount of information and a complete analysis of the London air, but that is enough to start an advertising campaign. The next step (which has already started) for the company is to equip around a hundred of citizens with the Plume Air Sensor. The main objective of the company being to combine all the received data and their application to propose to anyone to check air quality around them.  

Vietnam : an extremely rare case of twins born from two different fathers

An extremely rare case of twins born from two different fathers was revealed on Tuesday, 8th of March 2016 by the sanitary authorities of Vietnam. The discovery was followed upon a test DNA made on these twins in a laboratory in Hanoi, at the request of their parents, the identity of whom was not revealed.
The rarity of this phenomenon was underlined. Indeed, the latter occurs when two oocytes of the mother are fertilized by two different men, during sexual intercourse arisen during the same period of ovulation. The number of pairs of twins identified born from different fathers is estimated at about ten worldwide.
According to the daily Tupi Tre, everything started from a request of a paternity test asked by the official father, worried about verifying if he was the biological father of the two twins of his wife because one of them seemed to have no family resemblance. The tests showed that he was the father of only one of the two babies, while his wife is he biological mother of both children, today two-year-old.