Baidu's Chief Executive, Robin Li holds very early patents for site-scoring algorithm for search engine page ranking while he was working in the U.S., which he later used to found his company. Today, Baidu is the largest search engine in China, and just like Google (News - Alert), it is developing other technologies to serve its customers. This includes the development of a computing cluster that will be 100 times more powerful than what Google developed in 2012 with the Google Brain project as well as many other projects. At the company’s recent technology innovation conference, Li announced they have created a chopstick that warns the user if the food they are eating is unsafe.

Food safety is a great concern for Chinese consumers, and the growing number of incidents highlighting the gross violations that have taken place in the food industry have forced the government to implement severe punishments ranging from lengthy prison terms to the death penalty. This however doesn’t seem to deter the people that perpetrate these crimes as scandals involving pork, lamb, cat meat and the recent expired meat sold to global brands continue to take place.

According to the guardian, the idea was born out of an April Fool’s joke, and it has found its way to a real world product. The company hasn’t announced if it will go into commercial production, but the few prototypes that were available detected the quality of the oil used in making the food and reported the result on a smartphone app. Just in case you are asking yourself why they have to test the oil, gutter oil is used to cook food. This is oil that is scooped up from sewers and sold as cooking oil.

Apparently the practice is very common and authorities have launched a campaign to apprehend the perpetrators, which has resulted in the arrest of more than 100 people with two of the individuals receiving life sentences.

The chopsticks are able to assess the acidity and temperature of the oil in the food and determine if it is recycled oil. If the TPM (Total Polar Materials) level in the oil is above 25 percent a red light will flash indicating it is not safe for consumption. A blue light indicate pH levels in water and a company spokesman stated more sensors could be added in  next generation chopsticks so they can detect more compounds.