JOURNAL
In Cities, Mobile Farms Give New Meaning to the Term “Food Truck”
The challenges of growing food in the city -- pretty much any city, really -- are well documented, and topping the list of obstacles is the issue of space. In packed metropolises like New York, where back yards, patios, and roof decks are something of a luxury, finding the necessary square footage beneath adequate sunlight can be a tall order. Still, determined growers make due, farming in container gardens on their front stoop, snagging a coveted plot in a community garden, sneaking their crops onto roofs and fire escapes, maintaining small windowsill gardens, and even engaging in some guerrilla gardening in unused public space. Commercially, rooftop farms and indoor farming techniques are becoming increasingly popular means of supplying urban dwellers with fresh, locally grown produce.
The Addictive Nature of Carbs
Carbohydrates are a complicated business when it comes to eating healthy and losing weight. It's not easy when the advice seems to contradict itself, with some diets telling people to cut out carbs completely and others touting the benefits of a carb-laden eating plan. However, recent research conducted at the Boston Children's Hospital seems to have finally laid the carb question to rest, as findings suggest that processed carbohydrates are not only bad in themselves but that they can trigger cravings for further calorie-laden, sugary goods.
BandAid Solution to Low Sexual Desire
There is a new pill undergoing drug trials that promises to help women with their sexual desire issues. Intrigued? Research suggests that over 30% of women suffer from low desire to some degree. There are a number of different theories as to why women suffer from low desire, but researchers have yet to pinpoint an exact cause. Nevertheless, women who have this problem often suffer emotional and relationship stress because of it. Are new drugs like Lybrido and Lybridos the answer to women’s prayers? Or will the drug just cause a chemical change in the body leaving the psychological issues unaddressed?
In Search of Sustainable Seafood: Emerging Solutions to Fish Farming Woes
Whether fish is farmed or caught free, the process of getting delicious seafood onto the plates of consumers is rife with problems. Open sea fishing has severely depleted wild fish stocks, and as a result, roughly half of the seafood sold in the United States is farm raised, rather than caught in the open waters, according to NPR. But like most commercial agriculture, the aquaculture (fish farming) industry struggles with problems of inefficiency and environmental impact. The practice of confining thousands of fish to relatively small pens makes it necessary to use pesticides and antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease. Since aquaculture facilities are usually located in the ocean, discharges of fish waste, cage materials, and pesticide chemicals can damage surrounding ecosystems and threaten wild fish populations. Escapement is also a problem, as escaped fish from these facilities compete with native populations for food.
Furthermore, fish need to be fed, and the question of how to feed farm-raised fish presents yet another challenge, particularly when it comes to carnivorous species such as salmon and tuna. As Food & Water watch points out, farmed fish are often fed with wild species such as krill, with the effect of further threatening wild fish populations by depleting vital elements of our oceans' ecosystems. It's a system that's woefully inefficient: to raise one pound of farmed tuna, for example, 15 pounds of wild fish are converted to feed, according to chef Dan Barber -- wild fish, some argue, that could be used to feed humans instead.
A Fight for Health: The Commonalities of the Paleo, Vegan, Vegetarian, Slow Carb, and Flexitarian Diets
Weight loss and health are big business these days, and with so many fad diets claiming to be ‘the one’ to help you meet, or even beat your goals, it is difficult to decide which ones to believe. There is a group of diets, however, that are increasingly gaining in popularity. Not only do they argue for a lifestyle change rather than a faddy quick fix but they all advocate similar eating patterns and for very similar reasons.
The Affordable Care Act - Provisions that benefit the seniors in your family
Overview – the expansion of the safety net
Since their inception, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security provided the vital safety net that protected the poor and the middle classes in America. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was thus intended to bridge the gaps in the protections that these programs provided. Come January 1, 2014, the ACA will impact over 100 million Americans with savings and peace of mind.
More specifically, The ACA was meant to drastically reduce the number of uninsured Americans, to improve and render more comprehensive the coverage of insured Americans, and to address the crisis of rapidly increasing national healthcare costs.
The full name of this landmark legislation is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, mostly referred to simply as the Affordable Care Act. It was passed by Congress and then signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Pursuant to subsequent legal challenges, the Supreme Court rendered a final decision on June 28, 2012, to uphold the health care law. The law was promptly proclaimed as the most significant healthcare legislation enacted since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid forty-five years earlier. It puts in place major health insurance reforms that will keep rolling out over the entire decade, starting in 2010.
UrbanSculpt's Guide to Alternative Energy
Over the last decade, unprecedented spikes in oil prices have made it clear that our current dependence on polluting, non-renewable fossil fuels is no longer a viable solution to meeting our energy needs. But in the search for energy alternatives, it is sometimes difficult to get a balanced perspective on how practical, clean, or sustainable our energy alternatives really are. Many sources of information are propagated by the industries they support; other sources are promoted by those determined to nay-say every alternative energy option by blowing the drawbacks out or proportion and ignoring the advantages of these options relative to our current fossil fuel dependence. Amid all the noise and competing agendas, it can be difficult to discern the true, scientific facts in their proper context.
8 Healthy and Safe Sex Tips
Sex education isn’t just for high school health class anymore. There are a surprising number of adults who know very little about their sexual health. Just because we are old enough to know better, doesn’t always mean that we do. Check out the following tips to keep your sexual life healthy and safe.
1. The Truth about HPV
Genital human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that is getting the most attention these days, probably due to the fact that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tells us that it is the most common STI and almost all sexually active men and women will get it at some point in their lives. Here are some facts to help you learn all you need to know about this STI:
● HPV is spread through skin to skin contact, often during vaginal and anal sex, but it can also be spread during genital to genital contact or oral sex. This means you can be a virgin and still contract HPV.
● There are 40 different types of HPV. Ninety percent (90%) of HPV infections go away on their own within 2 years, but others can go on to cause more serious conditions such as genital warts or cervical cancer.
● There is an HPV screening for women, but unfortunately not for men. Men and women aged 26 and under can get a vaccine that will help to protect against contracting this STI.
The Truth about Lying: How Self-Deception Can Improve Your Social Standing
From time to time, we all lie to ourselves. Be it persuading yourself that you deserve that extra doughnut (do you really?) or convincing yourself that you can procrastinate until the last minute because you work better under pressure anyway (are you sure?), we have all been guilty of self-deception. But why do we do it? That’s the question that has been on the mind of leading evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers for the last 30 years. He shares his ponderings and his conclusions in his book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. Apparently, it’s all down to evolution.
Is There Really Such a Thing as Self-Deception?
Trivers, a professor of anthropology and biological sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is far from the first to be intrigued by this topic. In 1984, Quattrone and Tversky conducted a study into self-deception with 38 students and some cold water (cited in Psyblog, 2009). The participants were told that they were taking part in a study of psychological and medical aspects of athletics but in reality, the experimenters were attempting to trick them into believing that how long they could submerge their arms in cold water was directly related to heart-health. Initially, participants could manage around 30-40 seconds.
They then performed other tasks including using an exercise bike and attending a lecture on life-expectancy. Half the students were told that they had a ‘type 1’ heart that generally has a low-health level and is high-risk. The remaining students were told the opposite, that they had a low-risk, high-health ‘type 2’ heart. Both groups were told that those with the good type 2 hearts would have increased tolerance to the cold water. This information was entirely false. In a second immersion test, their immersion times altered in relation to what the participants falsely believed about their hearts (type 1 participants could withstand less time whereas type 2 participants actually were more tolerant), suggesting that they were led into self-deception (Psyblog, 2009).
Moreover, according to Trivers there are different ways in which we, as human beings, deceive ourselves. On the one hand, we can create false memories and trick ourselves into ‘remembering’ something that simply did not happen. Such ‘memories’ can range from the innocent amusing anecdote to more serious issues, such as falsely remembered abuse cases (Raeburn, 2013).
Alternatively (and much more prevalently), we can be selective about which information we choose to use and believe, and which information to discard. To demonstrate this form of self-deception, Trivers details an experiment in which participants were told that they were either ‘likely’ or ‘unlikely’ to get asked out on a date by a certain person. Both sets of participants were then shown a photograph of the potential date and asked to describe him. Those who were told that they were ‘likely’ to get a date reported primarily positive attributes, whereas those who were told that they were ‘unlikely’ to get a date reported primarily negative attributes. These results suggest that participants lied to themselves about the desirability of the potential date in order to prepare themselves for the outcome, be it disappointment or pleasure (cited in Raeburn, 2013).
“It’s Not My Fault! It’s in my DNA!” Are Your Genes Really Making You Fat?
‘Nature vs. Nurture’, the debate that has been with us for years, has reared its head again. So, the question on everybody’s lips is “can our environment be blamed for obesity or are some people really born to be fat?” David Geffen, of UCLA, recently published findings that suggest the latter (Red Orbit, 2013). After a two-year study, Geffen concluded that obesity is less about what you put in your mouth and more about your DNA, meaning that maybe your genes really are making you fat. But is he right?
Genetics
In 2007, New Scientist reported a University of Oxford study which showed that around half of the 39,000 people tested had a defective FTO gene (Roxanne Khamsi, 2007). This defect made them 30% more likely to be obese. Moreover, 16% of those tested were found to have a double defect, or the defective gene twice, leading to a massive 70% chance of developing obesity. These are startling statistics, especially given the high regularity of the defective gene. What’s more, this study isn’t alone in supporting nature’s side of the debate.
Timothy Frayling of the University of Exeter examined further research, when he declared that the link between obesity and genetics is stronger than we might think (Timothy Frayling, 2012). Frayling looked into adiposity rates in twins (the rate in which they store fat) and found an extraordinarily high correlation. Similarly, he compared BMI levels of adoptive children to both their adoptive and their biological parents. The biological association was significantly stronger than the adoptive one, suggesting that nurture has less to do with obesity than nature. In fact, Frayling concluded that around 60-70% of weight gain is related genetics rather than environment. With findings like these, it is easy to blame nature for your spare tyre.