[link] Thai Tasting Robot

In a country known for their tasty cuisine, a group of scientists in Thailand has developed a device which they hope can tell the authenticity of a Thai dish.

It is called "e-Delicious" and it has nine sensors that serve as the nose and tongue of the device.

Read the full article on BBC here: Thai tasting robot tastes for authenticity

[link] How To Make Homemade Glycerin Soap

Hello Natural has shared an easy tutorial to make a homemade glycerin soap with herbs and spices here. I definitely have to try this one! :-)

(via Make)

[link] cancelling pungent smells

A couple of researchers have claimed that they can produce a mixture that can cancel the pungent smells, or olfactory white - equivalent to white noise and white light.

Brothers Kush and Lav Varshney said that they have created a mathematical model that predicts how humans perceive the smell of a particular substance based on its physical and chemical properties, by matching a database of compounds to another of perceived smells.

Theoretically, canceling smells with smells should work because human perception of smell is synthetic, not analytic. That means that when human brains encounter multiple odors, they don't perceive them as a weighted mix. So it's not like, "Oh hey, this is 50 percent dairy compounds, plus 48 percent mild squash, plus two percent tree bark." Instead, human brains mush everything together: Smells like pumpkin pie!

To cancel out a smell, they calculate which compounds provide the opposite ratings, giving a zero score across the board. Previous research has shown that an equal blend of around 30 compounds creates "white smell".

Read the full articles here:
White noise for your nose cancels pungent aromas at New Scientist, and
How To Make 'Noise-Cancelling Headphones" For Your Nose" at Popular Science

Nusantara International Tea Festival

The Tea Festival was actually not a part of the KTCF 2014, but I was so excited that the two events took place at the same time so I could just drop by and drink some tea. Well actually, drink a lot of tea - I drank too much tea that day that I could not sleep until the next morning.

Anyway, I was just so excited to know that there was finally a tea festival in the middle of this coffee-dominated era. I particularly liked the booth of Oza Tea House, a new tea parlour in Bandung. The booth displayed all sorts of tea, from White Silver Needle Tea to Earl Grey to Vanilla. I could even smell most of the different kinds of tea, and I really loved their premium tea - the white silver needle tea (which has a very soft, soothing smell) and the Grey Dragon (with a rich, fresh fruity smell). I was sort on cash unfortunately, so I could only buy the white tea ;-)

And all of their products were nicely packed like foreign tea packages. The premium teas were even nicer - they were put in small vacuumed bottles so you were sure that the smells and freshness did not leave the tea leaves.

Titing and I also made a visit to the "Incredible India" booth, where the Tea Board of India served three kinds of tea: Darjeeling, Nilgiri, and Assam, all based on the regions they came from. The Assam tea was probably the most special, because it was planted on the low lands, near sea level, instead of the hills like the two other teas. It also had a rather stronger flavour.

We also went to had a look at the other booths, where we had a look at the Chrysanthemum buds and matcha powder, and later bought a bottle of cold Chrysanthemum tea to refresh ourselves.

Last but not least, surely I had to take a photo with this awesome quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky!

"I say let the world go to hell,
But I should always have my tea"

22.06.2014