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Indian-American professor turns chicken feathers into fuel

March 11, 2010
Manoranjan ‘Mano’ Misra, an Indian American professor known for turning coffee grounds and chicken feathers into fuel, been honoured as the 2010 Regents’ Researcher by the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

Misra, director of the University of Nevada, Reno’s Renewable Energy Centre, has published 183 technical papers in the areas of materials, nanotechnology and environmental and mineral process engineering, according to Nevada News.

A faculty member since 1988, he has had 10 patents published and another 12 are pending. He has secured over $25 million dollars in grant funding.

Misra’s work also includes applied nano-technology for solar hydrogen generation, hydrogen storage, biomaterials for prosthetic implantation and sensor technology.

Misra’s work in the removal of arsenic from drinking water has earned him national recognition, as well as three patents. Several industries have taken licenses from the University to use his arsenic technology for water purification.

His patented process for mercury removal from the cyanide streams of gold mining operations is being used in Nevada and internationally. Misra’s recent research in renewal energy, more specifically in using coffee grounds and chicken feathers to produce biodiesel fuel, has garnered media attention.

Misra’s expertise is also recognised for his service as a reviewer for 12 different journals, including Science and Nature. He also is a panel reviewer for the Department of Energy- Alternative Energy, National Science Foundation and the Department of Defence, among others.

He has been a professor in the department of chemical and metallurgical engineering since 1993 and served for six years as the chair of the metallurgical and materials engineering department.

Currently he is the director of the Centre for Mineral Bioprocessing and Remediation and is on the faculty of the environmental science and engineering department and the biomedical engineering department.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

[via sifynews]

Formula reveals 11am is the ideal time for the perfect coffee break

By Daily Mail Reporter
March10, 2010

A team of university experts have come up with a formula that proves that Elevenses really is the best time for a coffee break.

But the research also shows that a tasty Americano is not the only requirement – lights, music, aroma and good company need to be added to the mix.

The research was undertaken by Professor Charles Spence of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University.

He looked at combining great flavour (F) with the perfect environment (E), the container it comes in (P), who you drink coffee with (C) and the time of day you enjoy your coffee break (T) to create the most enjoyable coffee moment (M).

Professor Spence’s formula for the perfect coffee was: M = 0.5 x F + (0.5 x E + 0.3 x P + 0.15 x C + 0.05 x T.

He found 11am was the best time to drink your brew, in a well-lit room with friends and Marianne Faithfull singing in the background.

Professor Spence’s formula was published in a new report called ‘Changing Tastes.’ It highlights that scientists can now understand how external, environmental influences also affect our brain’s interpretation of taste and enjoyment of food and drink.

Coffee demand threatens to outstrip supply

Posted by Melissa Allison

Ezra Fieser, who wrote an insightful article for Time magazine last fall about the limitations of Fair Trade coffee, wrote a story for our paper this weekend on the limitations of organic coffee.

Growers are giving up on organic because it costs more to grow than it’s worth, Fieser found. Some roasters won’t buy the beans at all, and even when they do, the price doesn’t cover farmers’ costs.

“Although organic still pays a premium of as much as 25 percent over conventional coffee,” he wrote, “it’s not enough to cover the added cost of production and make up for the smaller yields.”

The market appears to be validating what a 2005 study predicted about organic coffee — that it would not be sustainable. The rewards are not worth growers’ efforts, including the need to buy large amounts of composted organic matter to keep yields high, that study said.

The organic article is getting lots of attention on the paper’s web site, but I think Fieser’s other story from the World Coffee Conference in Guatemala City is even more shocking. Demand for coffee next year is expected to be just 10 million sacks short of production, the International Coffee Organization estimates.

“We’re nearing the razor’s edge of danger where supply can’t meet demand,” Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, says in that article.

There’s more demand from places like Russia and India, and supply has been threatened by things like higher fuel prices and global warming, according to Fieser’s report. “Weather was a major factor in the 28 percent drop in Latin American coffee production in the initial three months of the current harvest,” coffee representatives told him.

PHOTO CREDIT: ERIKA SCHULTZ/THE SEATTLE TIMES; Seasonal coffee workers unload baskets of coffee cherries into a transport truck at Santa Eduviges in Costa Rica.

Cocoa Drops on Supply Surplus, Weaker U.K. Pound; Coffee Gains

March 09, 2010

By Elizabeth Campbell

March 9 (Bloomberg) — Cocoa slid to a six-month low in New York on a forecast for a production surplus next season and a decline in the U.K. pound, used to trade the commodity in London. Coffee climbed the most in more than two weeks.

Cocoa output will exceed demand by about 80,000 metric tons in the year that begins on Oct. 1, the International Cocoa Organization said today. The pound slid to a one-week low against the dollar, curbing the appeal of cocoa traded in New York. The dollar climbed as equity markets rallied, a year after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed at a bear-market low.

Prices for cocoa are down today partly on signs of “supply exceeding demand,” said Dennis Cajigas, a senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock in Chicago. “Outside-market pressure isn’t helping, with the pound being lower and the dollar being higher. All those combined continue to push it lower.”

Cocoa futures for May delivery fell $32, or 1.1 percent, to $2,802 a metric ton on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Earlier, the most-active contract touched $2,766, the lowest price since August. The chocolate ingredient has climbed 24 percent in the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 is up 69 percent from a 12- year closing low of 676.53.

Also on ICE, arabica-coffee futures for May delivery rose 1.65 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $1.3275 a pound, the biggest gain for a most-active contract since Feb. 18. Coffee gained 25 percent in the past year on the outlook for a global- production deficit.

Frost may threaten major coffee-growing regions in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer, for the first time in a decade, according to forecaster Somar Meteorologia in Sao Paulo.

–With assistance from Claudia Carpenter in London and Lucia Kassai in San Paulo. Editors: Ted Bunker, Daniel Enoch.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Campbell in New York at ecampbell14@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.

Related Articles

New York Is Finally Taking Its Coffee Seriously

NEW YORK used to be a second-string city when it came to coffee. No longer.

Over the last two years, more than 40 new cafes and coffee bars have joined a small, dedicated group of establishments where coffee making is treated like an art, or at least a high form of craft.

At places like Bluebird Coffee Shop in the East Village, the espresso is so plush and bright that it tastes sweet on its own.

The elaborate designs in the cappuccino’s foam at Third Rail Coffee in the West Village aren’t just to show off, but are a sign that the barista properly steamed the milk so that it holds its form.

At Abraço in the East Village, you can get drip coffee brewed by the cup, not drawn from an urn.

For years New Yorkers had to look to places like Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Ore., or Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco for this kind of quality. Now both companies have opened roasters and coffee bars in New York. Four Barrel Coffee of San Francisco will be roasting here soon.

Meanwhile, some established cafes around the city have made moves toward roasting their own beans. Café Grumpy is already doing it, and Abraço will by the summer.

This means that New Yorkers can now drink coffee that is made from some of the best beans available in the United States, freshly roasted in town.

The difference between a cup of coffee from these new style coffee bars and what was available before is striking.

These shops use only beans that have been roasted in the past 10 days (though some say two weeks is fine), so the flavors are still lively.

The beans are ground to order for each cup. Certain coffee bars have a skyline of grinders: one for espresso, one for decaffeinated espresso, one for brewed coffee. If they offer more than one variety of espresso bean, that gets its own grinder, too.

Milk is steamed to order for each macchiato or latte. A telltale sign is an arsenal of smaller steam pitchers, instead of one big one.

And coffee bars reaching for the highest rung use only manual espresso machines run by baristas who, in the past three years, have been able to attend classes given by the leading roasting companies in the intricacies of these devices. Many chain stores are turning to automatic machines with preset levels for coffee, temperature and timing.

For brewed coffee, there are French press pots, filter cones or machines like the Clover or Bunn’s new Trifecta.

Some of the obsessiveness may get a bit off-putting. Want an espresso to go at Ninth Street Espresso? Forget it. The baristas there believe it should be drunk immediately from a warm ceramic cup. Want a cappuccino made from single-origin beans at Kaffe 1668? Sorry, you’ll be told, but milk would overpower the subtle flavors of the coffee. Wonder why the barista pulled and tossed out two shots of espresso before she served you yours? She was making sure it was perfect, the coffee evenly tamped, the water temperature ideal for the particular beans, the timing just right. (The best baristas will “dial in” throughout the day, tasting the espresso and adjusting the grind and dose.)

Want a double espresso? You’ll have to buy two singles.

Today, most of the chains use about seven grams of ground coffee for a two-ounce shot. Espresso pods are filled with around five grams.

Baristas at the best places in town, like Bluebird Coffee Shop or Joe, tamp down between 19 and 21 grams. Often the espresso is even more concentrated because it’s pulled “short,” with less water, so that the final volume is a thick 1.5 to 2 ounces.

With that much coffee — and care — put into each shot, baristas feel that a larger shot, with more water, would compromise the quality of the espresso.

This awakening has led some unlikely businesses to offer serious, artful drinks. Saturdays Surf, a minimalist surf shop in SoHo, has a vintage la Marzocco machine next to the cash register. At Moomah, a children’s center in TriBeCa, parents can enjoy one of the city’s more artful cappuccinos.

Even restaurants, where coffee has long been an afterthought, are getting in on the act.

Superior coffee, day after day: increasingly it’s the rule in New York, not the exception.

Here are places in New York serving the best coffee. Included are 10 outstanding coffee bars (listed with an asterisk) that not only produce extraordinary coffee at the highest standards, but also do so with consistency, day after day. There are also coffee bars that serve particularly good drip coffee, restaurants with great coffee, coffee bars with nice baked goods and places to buy beans, all of which are noted on a map, here.

The Best Coffee Places in Manhattan and Brooklyn

* ABRAÇO There’s barely room enough for six standing adults, never mind the dozen or more who can crowd in during prime time. And yet in this cramped space the baristas turn out some of the city’s best cappuccinos and drip coffee. There’s a small, exquisite selection of baked goods, including a memorable cookie with cured olives. The owner, Jamie McCormick, will start roasting beans soon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

86 East Seventh Street (First Avenue), no telephone, abraconyc.com.

BABA A tasteful little Italian-accented specialty store that doubles as restaurant with a serious coffee setup.

[via http://www.nytimes.com]

Coffee Grounds + Spores = a New East Bay Business

By RACHEL GROSS

March 9, 2010

Grown in used coffee grounds, oyster mushrooms from BTTR Ventures are on sale in the produce section of Whole Foods Market

Last year, in an ethics class at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Alex Velez and Nikhil Arora heard a visiting lecturer mention that women in Colombia and parts of East Africa were growing mushrooms from coffee grounds to fight malnutrition.

That classroom discussion has since led to the start of a company, BTTR Ventures, which uses coffee grounds to grow edible mushrooms, as described in a Daily Californian story in April.

Perhaps it is no surprise that in the few months it has been an entity, the business well, mushroomed, in the East Bay, where good produce, coffee and sustainable agriculture are each semi-religions. Adding to its green virtuousness, the company creates compost from the coffee grounds once the mushrooms are harvested and then sells the compost or gives it away to schools, ABC 7 reported.

BTTR, whose name stand for “Back To The Roots,” sells not only gourmet oyster mushrooms it grows in its Emeryville warehouse but also a mushroom-growing kit. (Just add water, and presto! roughly 20 mushrooms appear and are ready to eat in a week. See photo here). On April 22, which is Earth Day, BTTR’s kits will begin appearing in 120 Peets Coffee & Tea stores statewide.  The coffee outfit is BTTR’s main supplier of grounds, providing more than 6,000 pounds a week.

As the two men pursued the idea last year and over the summer, they worked with their professor, Alan Ross, and local consultants and mushroom experts (mycologists) until they had a business plan. In April, they received a $5,000 grant for social innovation from the Berkeley campus.”

The pair spent the summer perfecting their method, farming for size, taste and texture. Though coffee grounds are nutrient-rich and have the right carbon-to-nitrogen ratio for growing mushrooms, an urban mushroom farm on the scale the pair envisioned had never been attempted, according to Mr. Arora.

“You graduate business school, the next thing you know you’re going into full-time farming,” Mr. Arora said. “We were knee-deep in coffee ground research.

At the end of the summer, they toted their first bucket of successful mushrooms around Berkeley. The Berkeley Student Co-op now buys about 60 pounds of mushrooms a week. At a local Whole Foods Market store, they were enthusiastically received by Randy Ducummon, regional floral and produce coordinator. He said he appreciated the duo for being “super aggressive, extremely passionate.”

Now, with six full-time employees, BTTR produces 600 pounds of oyster mushrooms a week. Mr. Velez hopes to double that number if the company receives a $30,000 loan it has been seeking through Whole Foods’ Local Producer Loan program. He declined to say what the company’s sales revenue were. Some stores sell the mushrooms at about $11.99 a pound.

The kits, which are currently being sold at eight Whole Foods stores, were expanded to all 29 regional stores this month. The kits, which normally sell for $20, will be sold at the store for $15.99.

The mushrooms themselves withstand at least one quality test. I purchased a pearly bunch and grilled them up with some onions.

They were savory, tender, with a smooth texture. No coffee taste was detected.

[via:http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com]

Lunchtime Coffee Linked With Reduction in Diabetes Risk

by Jason Ramsey on March 09,2010

A recent research has linked consumption of coffee to reduction in obesity risk. Consumption of coffee reduces the risk of diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes which bears a intimate association with obesity.

However, the mechanism to make the relationship evident hasn’t been established and no studies have pondered into whether the timing of coffee drinking poses an influence on this effect.

The study involved researchers to analyze 69,532 French women participating in a large European nutrition study. The women involved were in the age bracket of 41 to 72 years when they were enrolled in the study, and were followed for 11 years, on average.

Over the observation period, 1,415 of them developed type 2 diabetes. Overall, those who drank at least three cups of coffee daily were 27 percent less susceptible to fall in prey for diabetes.

However, it is reported that on observing the timing of coffee intake, the researchers discovered that only lunchtime coffee drinking decreasedtype 2 diabetes risk; women who drank more than a cup with lunch every day were 33 percent less likely to develop diabetes.

Lunchtime coffee benefits could have some link with timing, or they might be associated to the types of food that people eat at lunch, the researchers suggested.

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