Functionality of Ingredients and Additives in Plant-Based Meat Analogues

Meat analogue research and development focuses on the production of sustainable products that recreate conventional meat in its physical sensations (texture, appearance, taste, etc.) and nutritional aspects. Minced products, like burger patties and nuggets, muscle-type products, like chicken or steak-like cuts, and emulsion products, like Frankfurter and Mortadella type sausages, are the major categories of meat analogues. In this review, we discuss key ingredients for the production of these novel products, with special focus on protein sources, and underline the importance of ingredient functionality. Our observation is that structuring processes are optimized based on ingredients that were not originally designed for meat analogues applications. Therefore, mixing and blending different plant materials to obtain superior functionality is for now the common practice. We observed though that an alternative approach towards the use of ingredients such as flours, is gaining more interest. The emphasis, in this case, is on functionality towards use in meat analogues, rather than classical functionality such as purity and solubility. Another trend is the exploration of novel protein sources such as seaweed, algae and proteins produced via fermentation (cellular agriculture).

Traveling imagery

How is the sexualized digital imagery that young people engage in enacted and spread? How are negotiations of normativity reshaped by analogue-digital involve- ment? This study travels through shady as well as easily accessible parts of the web, combining insights with analogue research approaches in trying to contemplate these questions in new ways. We use digital ethnography, analogue fieldwork, inter- views, and helpline cases to study how young people’s sexualized imagery moves through and transforms across boundless networks, and also across digital and analogue space. Thinking with new materialist analytics, we show how these move- ments blur the distinction between mundane and abusive practices, and how the opaque and indeterminate character of the material functions as a game changer and affects what it means to be young in gendered communities. Although the effects vary among different young people and among different social groups, in all cases they infiltrate conditions for becoming, positioning, and relating.

Performance Evaluation of Real-Time Kinematic GPS at Arctic Latitudes

A real-time kinematic (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) has been identified for potentially being used as a ground-truth sensor for testing robotic rovers for planetary exploration. A series of environmental tests needs to be performed in order to validate the performance of the sensor at hand before being used as a ground-truth system. This paper focuses on the performance evaluation of the RTK GPS at Axel Heiberg Island Canadian Space Agency’s Analogue Research Network (CARN) site. This is one of the officially recognized terrestrial analogues, that is places on Earth that approximate the geological, environmental and putative biological conditions on Mars and other planetary bodies (Hipkin et al.). The challenge lies in the use of the equipment at Arctic latitudes. The results show that the system performed according to specifications even in this challenging environment.