This review summarizes the current trends related to insect as food resources
among consumers, industry, and academia. In Western societies, edible insects
have a greater potential as animal feed than as human food because of cultural
biases associated with harmful insects, although the abundant characteristics of
edible insects should benefit human health. Nevertheless, many countries in
Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Latin America utilize insects as a major protein
source. Using insects can potentially solve problems related to the conventional
food-supply chain, including global water, land, and energy deficits. Academic,
industry, and government-led efforts have attempted to reduce negative
perceptions of insects through developing palatable processing methods, as well
as providing descriptions of health benefits and explaining the necessity of
reducing reliance on other food sources. Our overview reveals that entomophagy
is experiencing a steady increase worldwide, despite its unfamiliarity to the
consumers influenced by Western eating habits.
Plant-based meat analogues, edible insects, and cultured meat are promising major meat alternatives that can be used as protein sources in the future. It is also believed that the importance of meat alternatives will continue to increase because of concerns on limited sustainability of the traditional meat production system. The meat alternatives are expected to have different roles based on their different benefits and limitations. Plant-based meat analogues and edible insects can replace traditional meat as a good protein source from the perspective of nutritional value. Furthermore, plant-based meat can be made available to a wide range of consumers (e.g., as vegetarian or halal food products). However, despite ongoing technical developments, their palatability, including appearance, flavor, and texture, is still different from the consumers’ standard established from livestock-based traditional meat. Meanwhile, cultured meat is the only method to produce actual animal muscle-based meat; therefore, the final product is more meat-like compared to other meat analogues. However, technical difficulties, especially in mass production and cost, remain before it can be commercialized. Nevertheless, these meat alternatives can be a part of our future protein sources while maintaining a complementary relationship with traditional meat.
We report the interface properties of atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 thin films on ultraviolet/ozone (UV/O3)-treated multilayer MoS2 crystals. The formation of S-O bonds on MoS2 after low-power UV/O3 treatment increased the surface energy, allowing the subsequent deposition of uniform Al2O3 thin films. The capacitance-voltage measurement of Au-Al2O3-MoS2 metal oxide semiconductor capacitors indicated n-type MoS2 with an electron density of ∼10(17) cm(-3) and a minimum interface trap density of ∼10(11) cm(-2) eV(-1). These results demonstrate the possibility of forming a high-quality Al2O3-MoS2 interface by proper UV/O3 treatment, providing important implications for their integration into field-effect transistors.
The amino acid composition, protein quality, and protein functionality of protein
solution extracted from three edible insect species were investigated. We used
0.02% ascorbic acid and 0.58 M saline solution to extract water-soluble
and salt-soluble proteins from the three insect species. Extracted protein
solutions of
Tenebrio molitor
(TM),
Allomyrina
dichotoma
(AD), and
Protaetia brevitarsis
seulensis
(PB) were divided into six groups, according to species
and solubility: WTM, WAD, WPB (water-soluble), and STM, SAD, and SPB
(salt-soluble). Defatted TM had the highest protein content, but its protein
solubility was the lowest, for both water and saline solutions. Amino acid
composition differed by edible insect species and buffer type; SPB had the
highest protein quality, followed by WPB. PB had a higher pH than the other
species. Color values also differed among species. SPB had abundant high
molecular weight proteins, compared with other treatments; and also had the
highest foaming capacity, foam stability, and emulsifying capacity. In
conclusion, PB is a good source of functional protein compared with the other
studied species. Additionally, protein extraction using saline solution is
promising as a useful method for improving edible insect protein
functionality.
We report the largest-size thin films of uniform single-layer MoS2 on sapphire substrates grown by chemical vapor deposition based on the reaction of gaseous MoO3 and S evaporated from solid sources. The as-grown thin films of single-layer MoS2 were continuous and uniform in thickness for more than 4 cm without the existence of triangular-shaped MoS2 clusters. Compared to mechanically exfoliated crystals, the as-grown single-layer MoS2 thin films possessed consistent chemical valence states and crystal structure along with strong photoluminescence emission and optical absorbance at high energy. These results demonstrate that it is possible to scale up the growth of uniform single-layer MoS2 thin films, providing potentially important implications on realizing high-performance MoS2 devices.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-015-1094-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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