For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle

A marvelous romp of a story. Complete with dinosaurs, dwarfs, time travel, vampires (err, excuse me, wumpires), and more. Silly, entertaining, and fun.

This fantastic short story will keep you guessing until the end. You never quite know what is going to happen next. Perfect pacing creates a wild ride through space and time.

The book is made even better with the amazing illustrations by Skottie Young. I love seeing his characteristic style and it melded perfectly with Neil Gaiman's excellently strange story.

A great quick read for anyone seeking a little craziness in life. 

When she was a child, Miu's mother told her that she needed to be cute all the time, because she could meet her prince at any moment. Now that she's in high school, Miu understands that her mother's attitude is a bit old-fashioned, but that hasn't stopped her from taking her advice to heart. She really wants to meet her prince someday and get married.

However, she's currently attending an all-girls school, so it's unlikely she'll meet her prince anytime in the near future. The person she meets instead: Fujiwara, a popular member of the volleyball club. When Miu witnesses Fujiwara accidentally break the principal's expensive vase, Fujiwara begs her not to tell, saying she'll do anything Miu wants. Miu sees this as an opportunity. She asks Fujiwara to go out with her, explaining that it would be good practice for when she finally meets her prince - she'd already know how to be a great girlfriend. Fujiwara agrees because the activities Miu says they'd be doing - walking home together, eating lunch together, texting each other good night, etc. - sound like exactly the kind of friendship activities she has always felt she's been missing out on, due to the way all the other student put her on a pedestal. But what happens when their fake relationship starts to feel real?

I went into this expecting ridiculous and adorable fluff and was a bit surprised when it got a little heavy at times (content warning:

). Considering the premise, I thought some of the implications would be flat-out ignored, but, oddly, Morinaga opted to bring some of it up but just...not fully deal with it all?

I'm torn on this volume. Miu and Fujiwara were cute together, and I loved the way Miu struggled with her gradually shifting perception of her own sexuality after years of her mother's heteronormative pep talks. Her journey from viewing her and Fujiwara's relationship as practice for her eventual "real" relationship with a guy to realizing that she was in love with and attracted to Fujiwara, and that romance between two girls was real and valid too, was nice.

Unfortunately, there were too many details that I didn't think Morinaga properly dealt with. For example, I initially rolled my eyes at the premise, wondering why it didn't occur to Miu that her practice relationship might get her a reputation as a lesbian and hurt her chances at eventually getting a prince. Then there was the possibility of homophobic reactions from others. I figured that Morinaga was just going to ignore those possibilities, and I'd actually have been fine with that. Sometimes it's best if cute, fluffy fiction ignores uglier realities.

Homophobia came up, however, after Miu made her and Fujiwara's relationship public. At first it appeared to just be slight jealousy - Miu's friends viewed Fujiwara as an untouchable idol, and Miu was breaking unspoken rules by actually dating her. Eventually, though, it became clear that jealousy wasn't the only issue. Several of Miu's friends announced that they were no longer going to be Fujiwara's fans because, well, it was a bit weird now that she was publicly a lesbian (those weren't the words they used, but that was the implication - my guess was they were worried they'd be viewed as lesbians too). I'd have expected Miu to be hurt and taken aback, because their rejection of Fujiwara for being a lesbian also indicated, on some level, a rejection of her as well, even though they continued to speak to her and be friends with her. I found it odd that this implication was never addressed or dealt with.

There were a few other little annoying things that weren't really dealt with. For example, one of the maids at Fujiwara's house indicated that she'd been worried when Fujiwara announced that she was bringing a friend home. If the person had been a guy, she wouldn't have allowed him in, but Miu was fine. There was no indication that her view of Miu changed after Fujiwara and Miu went from being in a fake relationship to being in a real one and it made me wonder, a little, if the maid and possibly others were still viewing Miu and Fujiwara's relationship as something less real than a similar relationship between a boy and girl. There was also the implication, in another part of the volume, that romantic relationships didn't really count unless they included physical components, like kissing and sex.

I don't know. It was nice and sweet overall, but there was so much that I felt needed to be properly addressed that wasn't. I wish Morinaga hadn't brought some of that stuff up at all if she wasn't going to do anything with it.

Extras:

"After School Girl," a short manga about an all-girl chemistry club with one particular member who looks a bit like a stereotypical juvenile delinquent and doesn't seem to care about chemistry in the slightest. This isn't explicitly a yuri story, but it could be interpreted as the beginnings of one.

There's also a 2-page author afterword comic that includes a sweet little story from the author's time at an all-girls school.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

According to the report “Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market: Type (Chromatography Systems, Mass Spectrometry Systems, Others) Contaminant Type (Microbiological Analysis, Allergens Analysis, Pesticides and Fertilizers, Others) By Food Type & By Geography-Forecast(2016-2021)”, published by IndustryArc.

Browse 75 Market Tables, 40 Figures spread through 190 Pages and an in-depth TOC on “Global Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market (2016 - 2021)”
http://www.industryarc.com/Report/189/Food-Safety-Testing-Equipment-and-Consumables-Market.html

Safety testing has become one of the keystones of food value chain to ensure quality food products and ultimately consumer health. There are various types of food raw materials available that are directly consumed or processed into other consumable items. The products that are dominantly monitored in the food safety testing market include Dairy products and meat & poultry industry. These products are highly susceptible to contaminant presence owing to their production and processing facility conditions. Following it are the fruits & vegetables that after harvesting requires a proper environment for their storage. Global food safety testing equipment market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% to reach $3,301.4 Million by 2021.

The nutritional facts or labeling on the food product has been prioritized recently. The initiation of organic food products, functional foods, GMO foods and other similar products in the market has made the labeling both a regulatory and marketing compulsion for food manufacturers. For example, ‘100% gluten-free and ‘zero cholesterol’ are some of the claims visible on many organic or functional food products. In January 2015, Morrison Meat Packets (U.S.) recalled nearly 70,077 pounds of cooked pork products as it contained peanuts, a well-known allergen that is not declared on the product label. This kind of mislabeling and misbranding of a product with an undeclared allergen may lead to health hazard situations and there are more chances of adverse health consequences or death. Product related information is increasingly being perceived by the consumer to make choices while buying a food product. Thus, the rising consumer demand for accurate labeling mandates efficient testing of food.

Rise in global trade, increase in food mishaps resulting in product recalls, growing consumer awareness on food safety and clamor for labeling and increasing trend of outsourcing testing, inspection and certification (TIC) activities are the key drivers for increasing demand for food safety testing equipment. PCR equipment is the segment accounted for highest revenue in this market and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.5%. North America is the dominant market for food safety testing equipment and is estimated to reach $991.6 Million by 2021 at a CAGR of 4.6%.

The key Players in this Market Include:
Thermo Fisher Inc.
Agilent Technologies Inc.
Bruker Corporation
Shimadzu Corporation

The food safety testing equipment and consumables market is dominated by key players with a wide distribution network and strong brand image. Acquisitions and product launches are few of the growth strategies the key players in the industry are striving to increase their market share.

Various types of consumables included in the report are:
Test Kits
Reagents
General Labware

The overall market is also presented from the perspective of different geographic regions and the key countries for this industry.

Browse Related Reports:

Food Additives Testing Market: By Additive Type (Colorants, Preservatives, Emulsifiers, Flavor Enhancers, Sweeteners & Others), By Technology (Immunoassay-based, PCR-based, Convenience-based & others) & By Geography - Forecast (2015-2020).
http://www.industryarc.com/Report/7369/Food-Additives-Testing-Market-Research-Report.html

Food Testing Market By Technology (Polymerase Chain Reaction, Mass Spectrometry, Chromatography, Immunoassay, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) : By Testing Type & Geography - (2013 - 2018).
http://www.industryarc.com/Report/153/global-food-testing-equipment-market.html

About IndustryARC:

IndustryARC is a research and consulting firm that publishes more than 500 reports annually in various industries, such as Agriculture, Automotive, Automation & Instrumentation, Chemicals and Materials, Energy and Power, Electronics, Food & Beverages, Information Technology, Life sciences & Healthcare.

IndustryARC primarily focuses on Cutting Edge Technologies and Newer Applications of the Market. Our Custom Research Services are designed to provide insights on the constant flux in the global demand-supply gap of markets. Our strong analyst team enables us to meet the client research needs at a very quick speed with a variety of options for your business.

We look forward to support the client to be able to better address customer needs; stay ahead in the market; become the top competitor and get real-time recommendations on business strategies and deals. Contact us to find out how we can help you today.

Contact Us:

Mr. Venkateshwar Reddy
Business Development Manager
Email: sales@industryarc.com
Contact Sales: 1-614-588-8538 (Ext-101)

For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle

This book sat on my To-Be-Read shelf for quite a while, because I felt I needed to be in the right mindset to read it and have enough time to enjoy it and really digest it. I finally brought it with me on a road trip to read and honestly, I was just underwhelmed after hearing so much praise about it. 

The majority of the poetry is short, vague, uninspiring, and lacks any rhythm or form. It was quite a disappointment. Most of the poems feel like snippets of poems rather than full poems themselves. Of the entire collection, I liked maybe one or two. Most of the poems read like someone had a great idea and wrote it down to develop later, yet these ones never got developed further than that initial idea. 

The book is broken down into four sections: the hurting, the loving, the breaking, and the healing. The first section is the most difficult to read as it deals with hard issues like rape, abuse, and possibly incest. These are obviously hard things to deal with and write about and I commend Kaur for sharing such painful stories and memories, but as far as poetry goes, the majority lacked a message or thought-provoking idea. Many of them just appeared to share the event without much reflection or analysis. While this can be cathartic, it doesn't make for great poetry and they read like undeveloped poems that are meaningful to the person writing them, but not necessarily to strangers reading a collection of them. 

Overall, this just wasn't the type of poetry I like. I had heard good things about this book, but the style just didn't resonate with me. Some of the doodles were interesting and I liked one or two of the actual poems, but on the whole, the collection was kind of a letdown.

The powdered milk market is estimated to reach $10 billion by 2025 owning its characteristics of having a longer shelf-life than liquid milk. Powdered milk is easy to store in cold temperatures and convenient to transport to remote areas, where milk supply and production volumes are low. Along with long shelf life, powdered milk is also very cost-effective. Furthermore, powdered milk is a rich source of vitamins and minerals (magnesium, calcium, and others) as it is produced by extracting water and fat from fresh pasteurized milk.

Introduction of skim milk powder has been a prominent factor driving growth of the powdered milk market. As skim milk powder consist of very trace amounts of fat and are low in calorie content, it has garnered huge attention among those who are trying to lose or maintain their weight. Furthermore, skim powder milk is low in cholesterol, therefore it promotes a healthy heart and weight loss. Being a rich source of complete proteins, which helps in building and maintaining lean muscles, its consumption has increased among athletes also. As skim milk powder is the richest source of calcium among other milk powders, it is expected to witness significant growth during the upcoming period.

Growth of the powdered milk market can be mainly attributed to development of advanced technologies, which retain the nutrient content of milk even after the drying process. With rise in consumption of infant as well as adult formula, the powdered milk market is estimated to witness heavy growth. Due to strict regulations, manufacturers need to find replacements for preservatives used in infant milk formula.

Powdered milk is one of the top European Union-exports among different dairy products. Every year, European dairies transform 160 million tons of raw milk into high-quality dairy products. In terms of sales channels, the offline segment held the greatest share with more than 85% in 2018. However, with rising internet penetration, the online segment would exhibit the fastest growth rate during the forecast period.

The powdered milk market has witnessed tremendous growth due to the extended shelf life capabilities displayed by milk powder as compared to milk, due to the former’s low water content. In high temperature regions, production of milk is low and milk powder has gained an important position among commercial as well as household applications, due to its long shelf life and high nutrient content. Furthermore, transportation of milk powder is also more economical as compared to the transport of milk due to its convenient packaging and low maintenance. Advancements in the drying process has also played an important role in growth of the powdered milk market. The spray drying process uses lesser heat in comparison to the roller drying process. Due to the low heat treatment, the biological properties of proteins remain intact as does its nutrient content.

Get a quote of Powdered Milk Market Report from one of our sales representatives
https://www.industryarc.com/Report/17861/powdered-milk-market.html

In emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India, the growing population and growth in the food and beverage industry is stimulating demand of powdered milk. The same nutritional value is offered by powdered milk as by regular milk, and therefore, powdered milk is being used in various diet plan in the form of nutrition bars and beverages. Increasing health consciousness and fitness awareness are two major factors fueling consumption of powdered milk in sports diets.

Conclusion:

Increasing world population is posing a burden on development of various milk substitutes. Apart from traditional cow milk powder, innovations in the market have seen various new products namely goat milk powder, soy milk powder, and coconut milk powder. Lactose intolerant people are preferring goat milk powder over cow milk powder as it is low in sugar and has 13% more calcium, vitamin A, and Vitamin B6. Goat milk powder is now widely being used in developing countries as well as in the Middle East and Eastern European countries.

Media Contact:

Mr. Venkat Reddy
Sales Manager
Email: sales@industryarc.com
Contact Sales: +1-614-588-8538