The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Sushi-go-round - Japan tradition served with technology Posted: 11 Aug 2013 09:45 PM PDT The country is dotted with thousands of "kaiten" (revolving) sushi restaurants where raw fish slices atop rice balls travel on conveyer belts along counters waiting to be picked up by diners. Behind the scenes, however, it is far from a simple merry-go-round, with robots in some locations rolling out perfectly-sized rice balls onto plates embedded with microchips. Measured dollops of spicy wasabi paste are squirted onto the rice assembly-line style before they're topped with raw fish. And the most cutting-edge eateries are even connected to monitoring centres that can quickly tell whether the right balance of dishes is being produced -- a far cry from traditional-style places where the sushi chef and his knife still reign supreme. "Sushi isn't going round at random but rather it is coming out based on a number of calculations," said Akihiro Tsuji, public relations manager at Kura Corp., a major operator in a market expected to hit $5.0 billion in revenue this year, according to industry figures. "Though traditional, sushi is stuffed with high technology. You can't operate low-price revolving sushi restaurants without databases and scientific management," he told AFP at a Tokyo outlet. Kura has invented a serving device called "sendo-kun", which roughly translates as "Mr Fresh", a plate with a transparent dome that opens automatically when diners select the dish. While the hood keeps the sushi moist and clean, it also contains a microchip telling managers what kind of fish are swinging around on the conveyer belts and how long they have been there. Since their birth half a century ago, kaiten sushi restaurants have evolved from selling traditional sushi into miniature museums of the food that Japanese people eat today, including battered tempura, noodles, and even ice cream. The dishes are cheap, usually starting at around 100 yen (around $1) for two pieces of sushi. Now, more and more outlets are equipped with dedicated "high-speed" lanes where customers can receive their order via a touch-screen menu. Ryozo Aida, a 68-year-old university lecturer, said he visits the Kura outlet with his wife because of its "affordable prices". "It may sound strange in a sushi restaurant, but I like tempura," he said as he jabbed his fingers at a touch-screen panel. Inside the kitchen, screens show how many adults and children are dining and roughly how long they have been in the restaurant. "Even if all the 199 seats here are occupied, how much sushi we need will differ depending on how long they have been at the table," Tsuji said. The system combines real-time data with information about how many items were consumed in similar circumstances in the past, displaying results for kitchen staff. Complementing on-the-spot efforts, the Kura chain also has a remote assistance system serving its network of more than 300 outlets. At another outlet run by Genki Sushi's "Uobei" brand in the fashionable Tokyo district of Shibuya, the concept of one conveyor belt has been updated. All 90 seats face counters with three decks of "high-speed" lanes delivering sushi directly to the person who ordered via multi-lingual touch screen. Accuracy and speed is the name of the game with the store targeting delivery in under a minute. "As we looked at how fast we can deliver what's ordered, we came up with this system," said Akira Koyanagi, district manager for Genki, adding that it also cuts down on wasted food. All this high technology costs money, but sales at kaiten sushi restaurants have grown 20 percent over the past five years with the industry expected to rake in nearly $5.0 billion this year, according to research firm Fuji-Keizai Group. A key challenge, however, is that Japanese people are eating less fish and more meat these days as world prices rise due to strong demand in the United States and Europe. "Procurement is getting tough," said a Genki Sushi spokesman. - AFP, August 12, 2013. |
| Early promise for malaria vaccine that mimics bites Posted: 11 Aug 2013 04:16 PM PDT The experimental vaccine, called PfSPZ and produced by the Maryland-based company Sanaria, contains live malaria parasites collected through a painstaking process of dissecting the salivary glands of mosquitoes. These immature parasites, known as sporozoites, are then weakened so they cannot cause illness and incorporated into a vaccine, which must be injected into a person's veins several times, with each shot about a month apart. "When we started doing this, everybody knew that sporozoites were the gold standard but everyone thought it was impossible to make a vaccine out of sporozoites and we were crazy. And we have proven them wrong," Sanaria chief scientific officer Stephen Hoffman told AFP. A test two years ago that administered the same vaccine into the skin of patients, the way most vaccines are given, protected only two of 44 volunteers. But the latest trial showed that injecting the vaccine into the bloodstream protected against malaria in all six volunteers who received a five-shot regimen at the highest dosage, according to the results published in the US journal Science. Six of nine volunteers in a separate group that received four shots of the highest dose - 135,000 sporozoites per injection - were also fully protected against malaria, it said. The phase I study included 57 people - including 40 who received the vaccine in varying doses and 17 controls. The study was co-authored by Hoffman and Robert Seder of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "The good news is that the proof of concept is quite impressive," said Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID. "The sobering news is that we that we still have a lot of work to do in order to prove that this is something that has very broad applications." There is no vaccine on the market for malaria, which infected some 220 million people in 2010 and killed 660,000 according to the World Health Organization. Most of the deaths were among children in Africa. Another vaccine effort under way is the RTS,S trial. Its phase III results, reported in Science in 2012, showed 31 percent effectiveness in young infants and 56 percent in older babies and toddlers. Hoffman told Science he realized years ago that a single protein vaccine like RTS,S would "never do the job" of warding off malaria, which is caused by a 5,000-gene parasite. He was inspired instead by studies in the 1970s that showed 90 percent of volunteers were protected against malaria after getting more than 1,000 bites from infected mosquitoes that had undergone radiation to weaken the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. Hoffman said his product is believed to protect against malaria for a period of six to 10 months. It also needs to be shown to work against all different kinds of malaria parasites. Next, several small clinical trials are planned for Tanzania, Germany and the United States. Hoffman estimated it would be four years before a vaccine may reach the marketplace. He said about $110 million has been invested so far. "The major challenge has been overcome - that is to prove the principle that we actually have a product that can protect all the people whom we immunize." Sanaria is also teaming with Harvard University engineers to automate the process of dissecting the mosquitoes. The company currently employs 16 "dissectors" who can each tease apart about 150 mosquitoes an hour, Hoffman told AFP. According to Regina Rabinovich, a malaria expert and scholar in residence at Harvard University, the results are "encouraging." However, she said the researchers "need to figure out how to replicate with a scalable technology." - AFP/Relaxnews, August12, 2013. |
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