acid Archives - usatoday24

cover your straws with acid ants

July 28, 2026 by usatoday24

When some time ago South Korean Food Safety inspectors started looking at online reviews of restaurants, they found something unpleasant: ants. Hundreds, thousands of ants. To the astonishment of the officials, in the comments of one of the most prestigious establishments in Seoul, nothing more nor less than a sorbet sprinkled with insects was shown, a dressing with which the chef intended to give an acidic touch to the dessert. The recipe worked well enough that it has been served since 2021. There was only one problem: it was illegal. What has happened? That a South Korean chef’s creativity in the kitchen is about to cost him dearly. Very expensive. The local press has revealed that the Seoul Western District Prosecutor’s Office has requested a severe sentence for the owner of a restaurant in the capital for violating the Food Safety Law. The most curious thing is what he is accused of. The establishment in question has not neglected its hygiene or served food or drink in poor condition. No. Their mistake (supposedly) was including ants as part of their ingredients. Ants in the kitchen? Exact. While browsing online reviews, officials from the country’s Food and Pharmaceutical Health Department came across strange mentions about a restaurant in Seoul: in addition to mentioning its meats, fish, wines and desserts, customers alluded to a sorbet covered with insects. To be more precise, what the chef used were dried black ants imported directly from the United States and Thailand. The most curious thing is that it was not new. According to the local pressthe restaurant began buying them in 2021, so the dessert had been on the menu for years. And what is the problem? Taste and scruples aside, the main problem is that South Korean law is very strict about what can and cannot be used in hospitality. And black ants fall into that last category, the banned one. It is not that the country’s legislation prohibits the sale of insects for human consumption, but its list is very restricted and perfectly limited: it is limited to a dozen species, including grasshoppers, mealworms, crickets, bumblebee pulp or silkworm pupae. No ants. What if you want to try new things? If a chef wants to be original and try new ingredients they can try it, but they must first request specific authorization from the authorities. The Food Safety Agency He also insists in that she is very clear about it, so she does not tolerate excuses. “Anyone can easily check on the department’s website, among other places, which raw materials can be used in food. Therefore, operators in particular must first check whether a raw material is suitable for use in food before purchasing or using it.” Were many sold? It seems so. According to authorities’ calculations, the restaurant served a total of 49,000 ants in 12,200 sherbet glasses. From the local they clarify this information and remember several issues. First, there was no bad faith. The chef used the recipe in the US and Europe to give acidity to his sorbets, but when he transferred it to South Korea he did not notice the change in legislation. Secondly, the business remembers that the ingredient was well identified on the menu, which offered several alternatives. It was the diners themselves who chose whether to order it or not. They estimate that in these years it has done 60%. And now what? Seoul authorities have released the news, but without detailing the name of the restaurant or the identity of its owner and chef. In fact, it is not even known if they are two different people or if the cook is also the owner of the business. What has emerged is that the establishment is located in the area of gangnamin the Korean capital, and is distinguished with two Michelin stars, which a priori identifies it as a restaurant of “excellent cuisine”. The creativity of your chef, however, can be costly. Yonhap agency points out that the Seoul Western District Prosecutor’s Office has asked the court for a one-year prison sentence for the restaurant owner, in addition to a fine of 20 million won, about 12,000 euros. The figure has been calculated based on the estimated benefits, which the authorities place at 120 million won. Isn’t that a bit excessive? It may seem like too harsh a punishment, but The Chosun Daily assures that the health authorities have not only “hunted” the establishment by ignoring food legislation. Their analyzes would have concluded that the ants used to sprinkle the sorbet “contained up to 55 times more heavy metals than usual edible insects.” Images | Marco Neri (Unsplash), Louis Hansel (Unsplash) and Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of South Korea In Xataka | Italy has taken the “gourmetization” of ice cream to the extreme with a €95 cone. Now the country debates whether that is “idiots”

Plastic is the great recycling nightmare. Car battery acid aspires to be the great nightmare of plastic

April 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Have a problem with recycling. Thus, in general and even in countries that the more they try and complicate things. But, specifically, we have a problem with plastic recycling. It is a difficult and therefore expensive process, rather than producing new plastic, which leads to a scenario in which potential waste accumulates. To complicate things further, there are many types of plasticsand some are terribly difficult to recycle. But the University of Cambridge has had an idea: a solar reactor to destroy those difficult plastics. And the secret ingredient is car battery acid. The data. Before entering the ‘invention‘ from Cambridge, let’s go with some context. Recycling is not collecting, and vice versa. An example of this is Japan, a country in which there are areas in which there are 45 different categories of garbage that citizens must separate and where only 20% is recycled. In Spain, with an infinitely less obsessive systemwe are around 39%. And what is not recycled is burned in Japan and sent to landfills in Spain. Focusing on plastic and according to Cambridge researchers, the world produces 400 million tons per year and only 18% is recycled. And, as I say, there are plastics such as nylon or polyurethane that are particularly complex to recycle because their chemical structure is very resistant, which makes breaking them down complex and very expensive. plastic fulminator. This is where the discovery of the University of Cambridge comes into play. What they have developed is a solar-powered reactor that uses a very special ingredient: car battery acid. This component breaks the structural chains of the polymers into more basic chemical blocks and, therefore, easier to assimilate, such as ethylene glycol. Once the new material is obtained, a very special photocatalyst is what allows it to be converted into hydrogen and acetic acid, putting an end to that ‘rebellious’ plastic. By fluke. The team of researchers comments that the discovery was practically an accident since they knew that battery acid could be used for the process, but it was not convenient because, just as it melts plastics, it ‘eats’ the catalysts. Theirs, however, held out, and it turns out to be cheap and scalable. It is a photocatalyst composed of carbon nitride functionalized with cyanamide and integrated with molybdenum disulfide promoted with cobalt. Lots of text to say that it is a hybrid material specifically designed to remain stable in a strongly acidic environment. According to the team, it is economical and solves two problems at once: it dissolves difficult plastics and reuses battery acid that usually ends up as waste after extracting its lead content for resale. Future. In the tests, the team points out that the system has worked for more than 260 hours without losing performance and works with the aforementioned plastics, but also with that of the plastic bottles They are also not particularly easy to deal with. They claim that their discovery offers a potential cost reduction in recycling tasks because, in addition, reusable hydrogen is produced in the process. The key here is finding a way to collect the battery acid before it is neutralized for uninterrupted use to break down plastics. The team comments that they do not promise to solve the problem, but they demonstrate how waste can become a resource. new life. This approach approaches the problem from the angle of decomposition, but there are other proposals to give these plastics a second life. Because ‘melting’ them may be expensive, but if they are put into presses they can be turned directly into bricks or paving stones for the streets. This is what Nzambi Matee proposes, a Kenyan materials engineer who has proposed convert that waste into construction material. Like the University of Cambridge experiment, it addresses two problems at the same time: recycling and creating necessary non-polluting construction elements, and this idea is catching on because the authorities have given the green light to use this 2.0 brick to pave the streets of Nairobi. Returning to battery acid, the business arm of the University of Cambridge is looking to commercialize the company, but now the most complicated thing remains: making it a standard. Images | Cambridge University (Beverly Low) In Xataka | The big problem with nuclear energy has always been its waste. Russia can now recycle them up to five times

We have discovered that cutting the consumption of an amino acid is related to more life expectancy. In mice, yes

April 21, 2025 by usatoday24

Virtually anything, in excess, can end up being harmful. Water is no exception and amino acids, the “bricks of life” are not. This was demonstrated by a study conducted from one of those compounds. In moderation. In study, conducted in mice, noticed that cutting the intake of isoleucine in the diet of animals helped increase the life expectancy of rodents by 33%. Isoleucine. Isoleucine is one of the essential amino acids. Amino acids are essential molecules for life as they represent The links from which proteins are created. We know thousands of proteins, all of them composed from about twenty amino acids. Our body can synthesize more than half of the amino acids that it requires to create proteins, but nine of these amino acids, the so -called essential, we must obtain them from our food. This is the case of isoleucine, an amino acid that we can find in a diversity of foods such as eggs, soybeans, meat and fish. A previous track. The study started from a Previous indication. A study conducted ten years ago in the state of Wisconsin observed that the diets of people with obesity were richer in this amino acid than the average population. In mice. For Study this correlationthe team went to the laboratory and studied its effect on mice. Laboratory animals divided into three groups: one control, to which no food restrictions were applied, another whose diet was altered to reduce the presence of amino acids, and another whose diet was normal in the presence of amino acids except in Isoleucine. The amount of isoleucine that this group received was ⅔ less than the standard. The mice were six months when they started these diets, which would be equivalent to an age of 30 years in humans. Analziating results. The team observed that the two groups of mice with amino acid restiring lost body fat at the beginning but those who had all the restricted amino acids lost it again soon. More important, the team observed that mice in this diet with less isoleucine increased their life expectancy: 7% in females and 33% in males. Another relevant detail that they observed is that the mice in this diet would ingest more calories. Possibly, they point out, to compensate for the lack of nutritional contribution of this component. Despite this, they also burned more of these calories, which led them to maintain a lower body mass than the rest of the study mice. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Cell metabolism. And what about humans? The team responsible for the study was likely that the restriction of this amino acid can have a similar effect on humans. For now that possibility is little more than speculative but the fact that the greatest presence of this amino acid in the diets of people with obesity is already observed implies another indication of the existence of some relationship. Beyond the biological differences between one species, the human diet is much less controllable than that of laboratory mice. The field of nutrition is extremely complex, with an infinity of nutrients, some of which interact with each other. He effect of other factors As our physical activity or tobacco consumption also affect our health and our life expectancy, making it difficult to elucidate the net impact of a nutrient on the human body. In Xataka | We believed that creatine was one of the most useful supplements to gain muscle mass. We are no longer so sure Image | Moerschy

the benefits of polyglutamic acid, the trendy ingredient of the year

January 24, 2025 by usatoday24

Well, it turns out that that asset is polyglutamic acid and we’ve contacted the experts to tell you about it all kinds of details. © josefinehj Polyglutamic acid: everything you need to know Nuria Aluart, founder of the store on-line of signature cosmetics Mumona.com, ensures that the skin care is constantly evolving thanks to advances in science and technology. “Every year, they are different the assets that gain prominence to revitalize, protect and transform the skin,” she tells us. This 2025, according to the expert, We are going to hear a lot about polyglutamic acid as a more effective moisturizing active ingredient than hyaluronic acid. © vanessahudgens Nuria explains that this ingredient “It has a moisture retention capacity greater than that of hyaluronic acid“. “It is capable of retaining up to 5,000 times its weight in water,” he specifies. “This translates into intense hydration and the skin does not suffer from transepidermal water loss, getting much juicier skin”he adds. Thanks to the above, polyglutamic acid strengthens the barrier functionprotecting the skin from damage caused by external factorswhich at the same time improves the skin firmness and elasticity. Furthermore, “thanks to this ingredient, cell regeneration is promoted, thus eliminating dead cells and revealing fresher, more radiant and renewed skin,” says Nuria. © rhode The acid of the moment in 8 keys The experts at Glow Recipe, a brand inspired by korean skin care philosophies which has many innovative formulas that combine fruits rich in antioxidants with mild active ingredients, they have summarized the secrets of this new fashionable ingredient in eight key points. It is obtained from soybeans and it is a polymer of amino acids that is created when different glutamic acid molecules join together. It may appear in the INCI of your cosmetics under its English acronym PGA and for more than 80 years it has been used as an ingredient in products designed to accelerate wound healing. is able to retain up to 5,000 times its weight in water. Unlike hyaluronic acid, which has different molecular weights, glutamic acid is made up of larger moleculeswhich do not penetrate the inside of the skin but form a film that retains water inside. Forms a perfect team with hyaluronic acid and together they are unbeatable when it comes to hydrating the skin since one acts inside and the other on the surface. Has preventive action. This is due to its ability to inhibit the enzyme hyaluronidase, which breaks down the skin’s natural hyaluronic acid over the years. Beyond its great moisturizing effectpolyglutamic acid plumps the skin, increases elasticity, reduces pore size, smoothes wrinkles and increases luminosity. For all skin types. This acid It has no restrictions on use and is suitable for even the most sensitive skin.. In addition, it calms the epidermis stressed by environmental factors. Furthermore, remember that combining hyaluronic and polyglutamic acid is the perfect recipe to restore hydration and juiciness to the skin. We show you three products that contain this ingredient and that are worth incorporating into your facial care routine. © Glow Recipe Plum plum hyaluronic cream, from Glow Recipe With an addictive whipped gel-cream texture, it is a ‘gift’ for dehydrated and stressed skin with the arrival of the first cold weather. Not only does it intensely hydrate at all levels. This complete treatment balances the skin, providing luminosity and juiciness that is maintained throughout the day. In the medium term, firms the skin and fills wrinkles. It turns out perfect for oily and combination skinas it balances excess sebum and promotes the microbiome. Price: 38.99 euros. © Mumona Hydra Défense Le Sérum, by Scens The Hydra Défense Le Sérum de Scens, in addition to containing polyglutamic acid, is enriched with hyaluronic acid, organic aloe vera, niacinamide, panthenol and red algae extract. The sum of all the benefits of polyglutamic acid gives this treatment some anti-aging properties excellent, thus making its formula achieve a smoother skin, reducing wrinkles and fine lines. Price: 63 euros. © Charlotte Tilbury Charlotte’s Magic Serum Crystal Elixir, by Charlotte Tilbury Awaken your skin’s potential with the power of super-effective ingredients, like replexium for younger-looking skin; golden Vitamin C for a brighter complexion; and polyglutamic acid for skin care that is four times more hydrating than hyaluronic acid. Price: 79 euros.

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