While there's plenty of discoveries that no doubt wouldn't have been possible without coffee, few have been as directly influenced as this latest fit of inspiration from Ivan Vakarelski of the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Singapore, who apparently saw the future of TV screens in a coffee stain. More specifically, he was intrigued by the way a coffee spill dried into a circular stain, which, as New Scientist notes, is effectively caused by coffee granules being "assembled" by the varying evaporation and convection rates in the fluid. That process, Vakarelski thought, could be replicated artificially to create a better coating for LCD and plasma screens, and he and his colleagues were ultimately able to do just that with a suspension of gold particles that were left to dry on a glass plate covered with closely packed latex microspheres. According to Vakarelski, the resulting network of gold nanoparticles is "finer than spider's silk," and potentially even more conductive than the ITO coatings commonly used today. Of course, it's still a long ways from actually be used on LCDs, although the researchers have already created coatings a few square centimeters in size, and say they plan to increase that "tenfold" as soon as possible.

[Via New Scientist]

If Yujin Robot has its way, cafes the world over will someday replace their waitstaff with robots like CAFERO (shown above at Robot World 2008 in Seoul). Details are scarce, but apparently the automaton takes orders on a touch screen and fills them with the help of a human operator (though it's only a matter of time before the carbon-based barista is obsolete). Robot waitresses don't flirt and they don't ask for tips: does CAFERO represent food service utopia or a chilling vision of the future? Only time will tell.

[Via Hallyu Tech]

It looks like coffee technology could be about to take another leap forward, with Nestle researchers now touting that they've devised a machine that can tell the difference between good coffee and bad coffee -- espresso, in particular. Apparently, the machine has "nearly" the taste accuracy of a panel of trained espresso tasters, who, if this machine is any indication, may soon have to kiss their envious job goodbye (like so many others that have been forced to confront the cold hard reality of the machines taking over). While there's apparently still quite a bit of work to be done on the coffee tasting machine, Nestle eventually sees it being used as a quality control device for the entire coffee industry.

[Via Single Serve Coffee]