 |
|
|
|||||
Chances are, if youre not an Italian grandma or a skilled home chef from Rome, youve probably messed up while trying to make cacio e pepe. At least, thats the thesis underpinning the scientific study Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce, published on April 29 in the journal Physics of Fluids. The studyconducted by a group of scientists from the University of Barcelona, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, the University of Padova in Italy, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austriais pretty much what its title suggests: a full-on scientific investigation into the most optimized recipe for the creamy, peppery pasta dish. Were Italians living abroad, and we often get together for dinner to enjoy traditional recipes from home, says Ivan Di Terlizzi, the studys lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute. Among the dishes weve cooked, cacio e pepe came up several times, and every time, we were struck by how hard it is to get the sauce right. Thats when we realized it might actually be an interesting physical system to study. And of course, there was also the very practical motivation of avoiding the heartbreak of wasting good pecorino! A very brief history of pasta-based physics experiments This isnt the first time that pasta has been used as inspiration for physicists. Probably the most famous example of “pasta as experiment,” Di Terlizzi says, is the observation that spaghetti almost never breaks cleanly in half, tending to snap into three or more fragments instead. This fact originally puzzled renowned physicist Richard Feynman (who died in 1988) and wasnt fully explained until 2005, when a team of French physicists showed that its caused by cascading cracks traveling along the pasta. Another example, Di Terlizzi adds, is the physics of ring-shaped polymers, which are notoriously hard to understand. A study in 2014 used a type of circular pasta, which the researchers called anelloni, to explain why these looped polymers behave so strangely in experiments. With cacio e pepe, the physics question of interest has to do with the sauces unusual behavior under heat. The main goal of our work wasnt just culinary; it was to explore the physics of this system, Di Terlizzi says. The sauces behavior under heat shares features with many physical and biological phenomena, like phase transitions or the formation of membrane-less organelles inside cells. The recipe is, in a sense, the practical byproduct of everything we learned. The most optimal cacio e pepe recipe, according to scientists Cacio e pepe traditionally only includes three ingredients: pasta, pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper. While it seems like a simple enough concoction, the sauces creamy smoothness (the backbone of the dish) can be quite finicky to achieve. When the temperature gets too high or the mixing of cheese and pasta water isnt done carefully, the cheese proteins will denatureessentially unfolding and losing their normal 3D structure. In the unfolded state, the proteins then stick together and the emulsion breaks. Instead of a creamy consistency, you get a gooey mess, which we call salsa impazzita . . . that is, crazy sauce, Di Terlizzi says. The physics-based solution to crazy sauce? Its all about starch. It turns out that, by perfecting the ratio of starch in the pasta water to cheese mass, the cacio e pepe sauce becomes far more resistant to heat, which stabilizes the emulsion and prevents clumping. [Chart: AIP Publishing] Without starch, the so-called mozzarella phase kicks in at around 65°C, where the proteins start forming large aggregates, Di Terlizzi says. But if the starch concentration is above 1% relative to the cheese mass, the clumps stay small, and temperature becomes much less critical, making it much easier to get a good result. This is similar to using polymers to stabilize emulsions in soft matter physics, he adds. Phase behavior of cacio e pepe sauce contains ultra-detailed steps to a foolproof cacio e pepe, but here are the instructions in condensed terms: Step 1: For a pasta dish for two hungry people, start with 300 grams of the preferred tonnarelli pastaor opt for spaghetti or rigatoni, if you must. From there, youll need 200 grams of cheese. Traditionalists would insist on using only pecorino Romano DOP [protected designation of origin], but some argue that up to 30% parmigiano Reggiano DOP is acceptable; though this remains a point of debate, the recipe notes. Proceed based on your own personally held cheese preferences. Step 2: To prepare the sauce, dissolve 5 grams of starchlike potato or corn starchin 50 grams of water. Heat this mixture gently until it thickens and turns from cloudy to nearly clear. This is your starch gel. Step 3: Add 100 grams of water to the starch gel. Instead of manually grating the cheese into the resulting liquid, blend the two together to achieve a homogeneous sauce. Finish the sauce by adding black pepper to taste (for best results, toast the pepper in a pan before adding). Step 4: To prepare the pasta, cook in slightly salted water until it is al dente. Save some of the pasta cooking water before draining. Once the pasta has been drained, let it cool down for up to a minute to prevent the excessive heat from destabilizing the sauce. Finally, mix the pasta with the sauce, ensuring even coating, and adjust the consistency by gradually adding reserved pasta water as needed. Step 5: Garnish with grated cheese and pepper, and serve.
Category:
E-Commerce
Just two years ago, prompt engineering was hailed as a hot new job in tech. Now, it has all but disappeared. At the beginning of the corporate AI boom, some companies sought out large language model (LLM) translatorsprompt engineers who specialized in crafting the most effective questions to ask internal AIs, ensuring optimal and efficient outputs. Today, strong AI prompting is simply an expected skill, not a stand-alone role. Some companies are even using AI to generate the best prompts for their own AI systems. The decline of prompt engineering serves as a cautionary tale for the AI job market. The flashy, niche roles that emerged with ChatGPTs rise may prove to be short-lived. While AI is reshaping roles across industries, it may not be creating entirely new ones. AI is already eating its own, says Malcolm Frank, CEO of TalentGenius. Prompt engineering has become something thats embedded in almost every role, and people know how to do it. Also, now AI can help you write the perfect prompts that you need. Its turned from a job into a task very, very quickly. AI jobs are just jobs now Part of the prompt engineers appeal was its low barrier to entry. The role required little technical expertise, making it an accessible path for those eager to join a booming market. But because the position was so generalized, it was also easily replaced. Frank compares prompt engineering to roles like Excel wizard and PowerPoint expertall valuable skills, but not ones companies typically hire for individually. And prompt engineers may not be the only roles fading away. Frank envisions a world where AI agentsalready taking shapereplace many lower-level tasks. Its almost like Pac-Man just moving along and eating different tasks and different skills, he says. AI has the potential to displace thousands of workers. Its advocates have long argued that it will create as many jobs as it destroys. Prompt engineering once seemed to support that claima brand-new job title born from AI. But that optimism may be misplaced. Rather than inventing entirely new roles, AI is largely reshaping existing ones. Tim Tully wasnt surprised to see prompt engineering decline. As a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, hes witnessed the AI boom firsthand, especially through the firms investment in Anthropic. He also works closely with software developersa profession already transformed by tools like Cursor. His view is clear: The real impact of AI lies not in boutique job creation, but in widespread productivity gains. I wouldn’t say that [there are] new jobs, necessarily; it’s more so that it’s changing how people work, Tully says. Youre using AI all the time now, whether you like it or not, and its accelerating what you do. Did prompt engineers ever exist? It remains unclear whether companies were ever truly hiring for individually titled prompt engineers. They certainly arent now, says Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab. It looks to me like prompt engineering is more being combined with, say, a machine learning engineering title or an automation architect title, Shrivastava tells Fast Company. Its probably a part of more job titles, but Im not necessarily seeing it as a job title in and of itself. But thats always been the caseeven in 2023, when LinkedIn was filled with self-described prompt engineers. Asked whether there was any change over time in the number of prompt engineer job postings, Shrivastava notes that it was never a large enough title to track mathematically. Which raises a larger question: Did prompt engineering roles ever truly exist? All experts interviewed for this piece were skeptical. The market itself was real enough: The North American prompt engineering market was valued at $75.5 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.8%. But whether that translated into formally titled roles is another matter. I think the discussion online of [prompt engineering] was probably much bigger than the head count, says Aline Lerner, CEO of Interviewing.io. It was such an appealing thing, precisely because it was this on-ramp for nontechnical people into this sexy, lucrative field. Where are the AI jobs, then? Lerner has observed a clear trend. While Interviewing.io has never offered mock interviews specifically for prompt engineering, it has offered them for machine learning engineering. The distinction is important: Prompt engineers focus on crafting questions for LLMs, while machine learning engineers build the models themselves. And while demand for the former has declined, demand for the latter is surging. Demand for mock interviews for machine learning engineers was flat for a while, and then in the last two months, it has hockey-sticked up and grown more than three times, Lerner says. The future is working on the LLM itself and continuing to make it better and better, rather than needing somebody to interpret it. Those easy-access AI jobs may no longer exist. Machine learning engineering roles demand deep technical expertiseskills that take years to develop, unlike the relatively shallow learning curve for prompt engineering. Even basic coding skills are no longer sufficient. Indeeds Shrivastava notes that while demand for developers is declining, engineering roles more broadly are on the rise. For those without a coding background, becoming a founder is often the most lucrativethough riskyroute. Management consulting has also seen a boom. As of February, consulting roles made up 12.4% of AI job titles on Indeed. As time goes on, we might see [AI] in more variety of sectors overall, Shrivastava says. They need someone tasked with really implementing that technology into that company.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Design-minded home goods brand Simplehuman recently released a product that’s a little out of its wheelhousea limited-edition tequila with distillery Nosotros. It may be the company’s first foray into spirits, but the brand already knows how to work with the Weber blue agave that made the tequila. The agave fibers on Simplehumans Soapwell sponge begin their life cycle by being pressed into Nosotros tequila at the companys distillery in Tequila, Mexico. Nosotros then supplies its leftover agave fibers to Simplehuman. The $100 Nosotros x Simplehuman Blanco tequila is made out of that same agave, and was released to mark a year that Simplehuman has been spinning the fibers into sponges. [Photo: Simplehuman] Simplehuman CEO Frank Yang says the company approached the tequila the same way it does any productand notes that the agave-sourcing partnership shows off the “less is more” approach that guides both brands. We’re trying to create cool things that exist in the world that people would miss if we weren’t doing this, Yang says. [Photo: Simplehuman] High proof, high performance The story of how tequila ingredients became a kitchen product isnt too complicated. It starts with Yangs fondness for tequila. While on vacation in Mexico in 2022, he joined a tequila-making class and learned how agave is used to make the spirit. They were telling me how the fiber is really tough, he says, noting that after the juice was extracted, it seemed like they were throwing the [pulp] away. The Simplehuman R&D team was both skeptical and excited. It was a tricky process, working with jimadores (farmers who harvest agave plants in Mexico) to handpick specific fibers amid the gunky pulp. But after about eight months, they realized it was a solution that could help create a soft sponge that could also scrub without scratching pots and pans. High performance is the most important, he says. Besides the agave fibers, the sponge’s differentiator is a round reservoirthe sponges eponymous soap well. [The soap] seeps down to the sponge so it doesn’t just wash away, Yang says. The circular well is positioned to match where soap comes out of a Simplehuman soap dispenser, and also has a hard outer ring that can offer a deeper scrub for stubborn residue. [Photo: Simplehuman] A tequila influenced by terrain Nosotros approaches tequila like wineeach spirit taking on unique characteristics based on the land where its agave grows. The Nosotros x Simplehuman bottle of additive-free Blanco tequila is not made differently than Nosotross other bottles of Blanco, but is a particular vintage. Nosotros cofounder Carlos Soto describes this specific Simplehuman vintage as mineral-forward. A lot of times with our Blanco, we’ve had the highlands carry a lot of itmore fruity notes and that cooked agave sweetness, he says. Hes referring to the Mexican highlands of Arasco, Jalisco, where 50% of the agave for Nosotros tequila comes from. The other 50% comes from the city of Tequila, located in the lowlands of Jalisco, and comes across as more dominant in this vintage. Lowlands usually have a lot more shade. . . . They tend to have soil that is very rich, Soto says. They become a little bit more peppery, more earthy. The approach that Nosotros takes of utilizing these two agaves not only provides a more balanced taste across its line of additive-free products, but also reduces stress on the environment. The farms that we work with are able to rotate crops a little bit more just because we’re only using 50% from each, Soto says. It really protects the soil, which keeps the quality of the agave. The amount of agave required to yield one bottle of tequila produces enough fibers to make more than 2,000 sponges. Giving agave fibers a second life Soto says he thinks of Nosotros as an agave company, and he is always searching for ways to utilize agave fibers. Even before the Simplehuman partnership, Nosotros used fibers to create the labels on all of its bottles, and often recycles the fibers as fertilizer. But the company still regularly has a surplus. We struggle to allocate [the remaining fibers] sometimes, Soto says. We don’t want to just throw it in a landfill. Simplehuman is Nosotross first agave brand partner, and it sees more opportunity to work with other brands to give agave a second life. There’s so much tequila being produced right now, Soto says. There are more fibers than people who are taking it. The company is in the early stages of creating a bigger market for products that can be made out of agave fibers like bricks, single-use cups, plates, and even glassware. Other tequila brands are also finding creative ways to eliminate the waste of agave fibers. Cazadores uses them, among other ingredients, as fuel to power its distillation process. Jose Cuervo has upcycled agave fibers to manufacture some out-of-the-box products including guitars and surfbards. Though the Simplehuman x Nosotros blanco tequila will only be available until the vintage is sold out, it’s a way to underscore how Simplehuman approaches its product development. Yang notes: If it’s not functional, why is it there?
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||