How much would a Leaf owner pay to banish range anxiety? If your answer was "$100 a month," then Nissan's got a proposition for you. The car maker is gearing up to launch a domestic battery replacement program for its EV in 2014 that'll set you back that aforementioned sum. Similar to Nissan's setup in Europe, if your battery can only hold nine out of 12 bars worth of charge, it'll replace the unit with a new or reconditioned unit. The company insists that very few will ever actually need to replace the battery, but hey, squeezing $1,200 a year out of its existing customers is a sure-fire way to inspire loyalty.
Tom?s Saraceno's M.O. as an artist is to make you float?either on top of millions of yards of plastic, or inside of hexagonal sky pods, or on top of an inflatable balloons. His latest Jules Verne-tinged installation, which opened today, is no different.
Paula Deen, queen of Southern Cooking has been dropped by the Food Network after a bizarre series of events, in which she admitted using racial epithets, using slurs against gays, and that she condoned pornography and racist jokes in the workplace. According to the NY Times, She was scheduled to appear on the ?Today? show to defend her actions, but canceled at the last minute, leaving host Matt Lauer steaming. Paula then posted two odd online videos, tearfully begging her audience to forgive her for using racist language. ?I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I?ve done. I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable? (since removed from the service). Later this afternoon she posted a second video?in which she says ?The pain has been tremendous that I have caused to myself and to others?.
This is not the first controversy for Paula. Last year she was roundly criticized for continuing to push her sugar laden cooking after keeping secret her diagnosis of diabetes.
The Food Network stated that Paula?s contract would not be renewed when it expires this month.
This will not be a big loss for the food community. I hate to think she?d be causing herself more pain.
"I have a wide-range of food experience - working in the restaurant industry on both sides of the house, later in the wine industry, and finally traveling/tasting my way around the world. Whether you agree or disagree, you can always count on my unbiased opinion. I don't take free meals, and the restaurants don't know when, or if, I am coming."
The song was playing on the radio as I?m driving to Penticton with two happy girls in the backseat. That?s not how we started the day though, and I thought I would dictate a post about today, from the coffee stop along the way. I think it?s a good example of what attachment parenting looks like? long past adoption day.
I?m not saying I?m the attachment parenting guru (ha!) as we?ve made many mistakes along the way. But today, I got it right.
As you know, Jason and I were gone for nine days in Morocco while my parents look after the girls. They did a great job by the way? My dad said that the jellybean jar with one candy for every day helped the girls countdown the time we were away. But I think the love and care from my parents was what held the girls together.
Nine days is a long time though, and when Jason started commuting to work in Penticton Wednesday, we got cries and screams of protest. Yesterday, Spice barely got herself together to go to school. And this morning the girls were so tired from the solstice and so upset that daddy was going to work again, that I decided to take them home for the day. So we took our time in the morning and made blue pancakes covered with sprinkles. Healthy! I know. The point is that it took time and we got to do it together. Then after getting ready for the day, the girls got busy doing massive crafts in the kitchen. 11 o?clock and we are on the road? Off to have lunch with daddy in Penticton. We both felt that even if it was 45 minutes together at the middle of the day, that would be special for the girls. So on the road we are.
I?m being reflective about attachment parenting because often we talked about the process of attachment as the foundations of our relationship post adoption. A really attachment is this ongoing process between any family members who love and trust each other. We have to work to reconnect and builds the bonds of attachment between parents. That?s what Morocco was all about! But we also have to constantly repair hurts and nurture the connection between children and parents as well.
So it doesn?t happen very often? But on days like today, we choose to put the needs of our children first. It was painstakingly obvious that our girls were feeling abandoned when daddy was going off to work, and I was not much of the salve on the wound. Somewhat humbling? Anyway, we decided that I would work this weekend instead, and tend to the children today. And I think it?s an investment that will pay off.
And what if I didn?t take the day is today to focus on the kids and drive to Penticton to have lunch with daddy?
No doubt we would?ve had hurt feelings and bad behavior all weekend. So maybe attachment parenting is self-serving! Because a little repairing now means a lot of enjoyment of my children later.
I would love to hear some of the things that you have done to support and reconnect with your kids, long past your adoption day. Or even if you gave birth to children, I would love to hear what you?ve done to put your children first. Comments?
PARIS (Reuters) - An improved version of Sanofi's blockbuster insulin Lantus is better than the older drug at controlling blood sugar lows at night, a common side effect in diabetics treated with insulin, according two late-stage tests published on Saturday.
The results for the next-generation treatment, known as U300, could strengthen Sanofi's position as it defends its no. 2 spot in the $43 billion diabetes market from rival drugs.
Lantus, a synthetic insulin developed in the 1990s, is currently Sanofi's top-selling product. Last year it grew almost 20 percent to generate 5 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in sales - but is set to lose patent protection in 2015.
The new version has shown it could reduce night-time blood sugar lows by 21 percent compared with Lantus in patients treating their disease with insulin injections, without any additional side effects.
Headline data from a second study of people taking high doses of insulin as well as diabetes pills confirmed the findings of the first study.
Full data from the two studies, which were presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Chicago, are expected by the end of 2013. This means Sanofi could potentially launch U300 in 2014, analysts say.
Pierre Chancel, who heads Sanofi's diabetes unit, said it was too early to give a timeline for a potential launch or provide specific sales forecasts, but said the company would aim to switch patients currently using Lantus over to the new product.
"Will it be a blockbuster? Probably yes," he told Reuters during a telephone interview.
A consensus compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma has forecast annual sales of $974 million for U300 by 2018.
"The price would be comparable to Lantus or slightly higher, depending on the geography, but not like the pricing approach of Novo Nordisk," Chancel added.
The Danish drugmaker, the world's biggest insulin producer, has opted to sell its main drug hope, long-acting insulin Tresiba, at a considerable premium over Lantus in Europe as it is believed to hold some advantages over Sanofi's product.
Tresiba has already been approved in Europe and Japan, but is unlikely to be launched in the U.S. before 2018 while Novo Nordisk conducts more tests to satisfy regulators.
The setback for Tresiba has been good news for rival makers of insulin medicines such as Sanofi.
In addition to U300, the French group has also stepped up the development of a fixed combination of diabetes treatments Lantus and Lyxumia to sidestep an earlier setback with a similar pen device and take advantage of the delayed U.S. launch of Tresiba.
Sanofi shares - which have gained 8.4 percent since January, in line with the sector index, up 8.9 percent, but outperforming the bluechip CAC40 index, up 0.5 percent - closed at 77.41 euros on Friday.
(Reporting by Elena Berton and Noelle Mennella; Editing by Toby Chopra)
If the endless stream of YouTube videos are anything to go by (see related links below), laughing babies are a popular and effective method of stress relief.
Shari Alyse from HooplaHa's Sharing With Shari has compiled some of the most infectious baby laughs out there into a single video that's the ultimate cure for weekday blues.
You'll feel yourself smiling before you know it. The cutie at 0:48 did us in.
And if you need more, we've got you covered. A whole collection of laughing baby videos awaits you here. Enjoy.
June 17, 2013 ? Insufficient sleep may contribute to weight gain and obesity by raising levels of a substance in the body that is a natural appetite stimulant, a new study finds. The results were presented today at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
The researchers found that when healthy, lean, young adults received only 4.5 hours of sleep a night, they had higher daytime circulating, or blood, levels of a molecule that controls the pleasurable aspects of eating, compared with when they slept 8.5 hours.
"Past experimental studies show that sleep restriction increases hunger and appetite," said Erin Hanlon, PhD, research associate (assistant professor) at the University of Chicago's Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. "The mechanism for overeating after inadequate sleep may be an elevation in this endocannabinoid molecule, called 2-arachidonoylglycerol, or 2-AG."
With colleagues from the University of Chicago Medicine and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Hanlon studied nine subjects with an average age of 23 years. The subjects spent six nights in a sleep lab and then another six nights there at least a month later. In a random order, the subjects were allowed to sleep from 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. ("normal sleep -- 8.5 hours in bed") during one testing period and from 1 to 5:30 a.m. ("partial sleep restriction -- 4.5 hours in bed") during the other testing period. During waking hours, the subjects ate a controlled number of calories based on their height and weight.
After the second night of each sleep condition, the researchers took blood samples from the subjects at one-hour intervals for 24 hours. Using a highly accurate laboratory assay, they analyzed the samples for 2-AG, a component of the endocannabinoid system. Found throughout the body, this system plays an important role in the signaling of rewarding events and one's enjoyment of eating, similar to the cannabinoids in marijuana, Hanlon said.
Levels of 2-AG levels were the lowest halfway through sleep and the highest in the early afternoon, "when the pleasurable properties of food would be most beneficial," Hanlon said. She reported that the afternoon peak of 2-AG was even higher when the study participants had partial sleep restriction than when they had normal sleep.
The study results suggest that the increased hunger and appetite that subjects in previous studies have reported after sleep restriction might be due to increases in circulating 2-AG, she said.
"These findings," Hanlon said, "are highly relevant to millions of individuals who are at an increased risk of obesity and its health consequences because of chronic short sleep or sleep disruption."
This study received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Medical Program and the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin endowment fund of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
MUNICH (Reuters) - German industrial conglomerate Siemens is shutting down the last of its solar energy businesses after it failed to find a buyer, the company said on Monday.
Confirming a report in German newspaper Handelsblatt, a spokesman for Siemens said the group would close Solel by early next year. The Israeli business has accumulated losses of around 1 billion euros ($1.33 billion) since Siemens bought it in 2009, including a write-off of the entire purchase price.
Siemens has spent seven months trying to sell Solel, which makes components used in solar-thermal power stations. Some 280 employees will be affected by the closure, most of them in Israel.
The cost will run into the mid-double digit millions of euros, according to Siemens.
Once a promising new field with strong growth rates, the solar energy industry is in sharp decline in Germany as Chinese manufacturers flood the global market with cheaper panels and components.
Several smaller German companies are struggling to survive the onslaught.
Industrial giant Siemens has already closed down its photovoltaic inverter business and pulled out of the Desertec solar energy project.
Its fellow conglomerate Bosch is looking to sell or close its photovoltaic solar operations after losing 2.4 billion euros since 2008. It partly blames a drop in U.S. energy prices caused by a growing abundance of shale gas.
($1 = 0.7496 euros)
(Reporting by Jens Hack; additional reporting by Christiaan Hetzner; editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? 'Terminator 2' star Edward Furlong has been charged with assault after a May 21 incident in which his girlfriend called police and reported he attacked her.
Deputy District Attorney Linda Loftfield says Furlong pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Tuesday.
Furlong already has two pending misdemeanor battery cases. He allegedly violated a restraining order when he returned to the victim's West Hollywood home. He's also accused of damaging a laptop and photo equipment.
In March, the 35-year-old actor was sentenced to six months in jail for violating his probation in a 2010 case for violating a similar restraining order.
Furlong has been the subject of such orders taken out by both his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend.
June 10, 2013 ? Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa NASA Astrobiology Institute (UHNAI) have discovered high concentrations of boron in a Martian meteorite. When present in its oxidized form (borate), boron may have played a key role in the formation of RNA, one of the building blocks for life.
The work was published on June 6 in PLOS ONE.
The Antarctic Search for Meteorites team found the Martian meteorite used in this study in Antarctica during its 2009-2010 field season. The minerals it contains, as well as its chemical composition, clearly show that it is of Martian origin.
Using the ion microprobe in the W. M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory at UH, the team was able to analyze veins of Martian clay in the meteorite. After ruling out contamination from Earth, they determined boron abundances in these clays are over ten times higher than in any previously measured meteorite.
"Borates may have been important for the origin of life on Earth because they can stabilize ribose, a crucial component of RNA. In early life RNA is thought to have been the informational precursor to DNA," said James Stephenson, a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow.
RNA may have been the first molecule to store information and pass it on to the next generation, a mechanism crucial for evolution. Although life has now evolved a sophisticated mechanism to synthesize RNA, the first RNA molecules must have been made without such help. One of the most difficult steps in making RNA nonbiologically is the formation of the RNA sugar component, ribose. Previous laboratory tests have shown that without borate the chemicals available on the early Earth fail to build ribose. However, in the presence of borate, ribose is spontaneously produced and stabilized.
This work was born from the uniquely interdisciplinary environment of UHNAI. The lead authors on the paper, Stephenson, an evolutionary biologist, and Lydia Hallis, a cosmochemist who is also a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow, first came up with the idea over an after-work beer. "Given that boron has been implicated in the emergence of life, I had assumed that it was well characterized in meteorites," said Stephenson. "Discussing this with Dr. Hallis, I found out that it was barely studied. I was shocked and excited. She then informed me that both the samples and the specialized machinery needed to analyze them were available at UH."
On our planet, borate-enriched salt, sediment and clay deposits are relatively common, but such deposits had never previously been found on an extraterrestrial body. This new research suggests that when life was getting started on Earth, borate could also have been concentrated in deposits on Mars.
The significance goes beyond an interest in the red planet, as Hallis explains: "Earth and Mars used to have much more in common than they do today. Over time, Mars has lost a lot of its atmosphere and surface water, but ancient meteorites preserve delicate clays from wetter periods in Mars' history. The Martian clay we studied is thought to be up to 700 million years old. The recycling of the Earth's crust via plate tectonics has left no evidence of clays this old on our planet; hence Martian clays could provide essential information regarding environmental conditions on the early Earth."
The presence of ancient borate-enriched clays on Mars implies that these clays may also have been present on the early Earth. Borate-enriched clays such as the ones studied here may have represented chemical havens in which one of life's key molecular building blocks could form.
UHNAI is a research center that links the biological, chemical, geological, and astronomical sciences to better understand the origin, history, distribution, and role of water as it relates to life in the universe.
Drunk driving is a serious problem in the United States, impacting many thousands of Americans every year, and so is racism. The two issues converged recently during a routine traffic stop of 64-year-old retired firefighter Jessie Thornton by police officers in Surprise, Arizona.
Job Title: Former CIA employee currently employed by defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
Age: 29
Security clearance: Snowden had access to NSA documents during the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors.
Number of documents leaked: Undetermined. Snowden leaked a PowerPoint presentation and possibly among other documents about PRISM, a government computer program used for managing foreign intelligence collected from Internet and electronic service providers.
Agency betrayed: National Security Agency
Potential years: Undetermined. Snowden is still holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong, though he said in a video that he?s prepared for the fact that he could be "rendered by the CIA" or "have people come after me" at any time.
Motive: The Guardian interviewed Snowden, who lived in Hawaii with his girlfriend and had a stable, well-paying job: "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to," Snowden added. "There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to." Snowden says he hopes that his efforts will spur public debate about the intelligence programs the government is running.
Name: Bradley Manning
Job title: Army Sergeant First Class, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division
Age: 25
Security clearance: Manning "was allowed to surf massive closed databases of secret information without any restrictions as well as download classified files to CDs," according to The Guardian.
Number of documents leaked: Manning provided 700,000 documents to Wikileaks in the most extensive leak of confidential and classified material in U.S. history.
Agency betrayed: U.S. Military
Potential years: Government prosecutors are charging Manning with aiding the enemy, a charge that carries a maximum of a life sentence. Manning, who faces 22 charges altogether, is allowed to plead guilty to seven of them (not including the aiding the enemy charge), which together carry a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison.
Motive: Manning became increasingly disillusioned with the Army and the U.S.?s tactics in Iraq and, during online chat sessions with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker, said that he wanted "people to see the truth? regardless of who they are? because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
June 10, 2013 ? Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug.
What's more, the gut viruses, called bacteriophage or simply phage, deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well, the scientists reported online June 9 in Nature. That suggests that phages in the gut may be partly responsible for the emergence of dangerous superbugs that withstand multiple antibiotics, and that drug targeting of phages could offer a potential new path to mitigate development of antibiotic resistance.
"The results mean that the antibiotic-resistance situation is even more troubling than we thought," said senior author Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology and Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center of Synthetic Biology.
Today disease-causing bacteria have adapted to antibiotics faster than scientists can generate new drugs to kill them, creating a serious global public-health threat. Patients who are hospitalized with serious bacterial infections tend to have longer, more expensive hospital stays, and they are twice as likely to die as those infected with antibiotic-susceptible bacteria, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, because first-line drugs fail more often than before, more expensive therapies must be used, raising health-care costs.
In the past, Collins and other scientists have probed the ways gut bacteria adapt to antibiotics, but they've focused on the bacteria themselves. But Collins and Sheetal Modi, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Collins' laboratory and at the Wyss Institute, knew that phage were also abundant in the gut, and that they were adept at ferrying genes from one bacterium to another.
The researchers wondered whether treating mice with antibiotics led phage in the gut to pick up more drug-resistance genes, and if so, whether that made gut bacteria stronger.
They gave mice either ciprofloxacin or ampicillin -- two commonly prescribed antibiotics. After eight weeks, they harvested all the viruses in the mice's feces, and identified the viral genes present by comparing them with a large database of known genes.
They found that the phages from antibiotic-treated mice carried significantly higher numbers of bacterial drug-resistance genes than they would have carried by chance. What's more, phage from ampicillin-treated mice carried more genes that help bacteria fight off ampicillin and related penicillin-like drugs, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice carried more genes that help them fight off ciprofloxacin and related drugs.
"When we treat mice with certain classes of drugs, we see enrichment of resistance genes to those drug classes," Modi said.
The phage did more than harbor drug-resistance genes. They could also transfer them back to gut bacteria -- a necessary step in conferring drug resistance. The researchers demonstrated this by isolating phage from either antibiotic-treated mice or untreated mice, then adding those phage to gut bacteria from untreated mice. Phage from ampicillin-treated mice tripled the amount of ampicillin resistance, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice doubled the amount of ciprofloxacin resistance.
That was bad enough, but the scientists also found signs that the phage could do yet more to foster antibiotic resistance. That's because gut phage from mice treated with one drug carried high levels of genes that confer resistance to different drugs, which means that the phage could serve as backup when bacteria must find ways to withstand a variety of antibiotics.
"With antibiotic treatment, the microbiome has a means to protect itself by expanding the antibiotic resistance reservoir, enabling bugs to come back to be potentially stronger and more resistant than before," Collins said.
"Antibiotic resistance is as pressing a global health problem as they come, and to fight it, it's critical to understand it," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Institute Founding Director. "Jim's novel findings offer a previously unknown way to approach this problem -- by targeting the phage that live in our intestine, rather than the pathogens themselves."
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In addition to Collins and Modi, the research team included: Henry H. Lee, Ph.D., a former graduate student at Boston University who's currently at Harvard Medical School, and Catherine S. Spina, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Boston University and researcher at the Wyss Institute.
Sony announced that it will provide streamed PS3 games, powered by Gaikai, to Vita, PS3 and PS4 owners next year. While it won't make the launch of the PlayStation 4, Sony says it will be "fast and responsive," and hopefully worth the wait.
Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from E3 2013.
White Banks, Executive Chef for FIVE at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza
The revenue growth of the restaurant industry has hit a ?sustainability wall? as it confronts a sea-changing shift in consumer expectations. Consumers are increasingly viewing food as a hazard loaded with sugar, salt, chemicals and fat.
Led by moms, consumer outrage is growing over their weight gains and increased health risks that science is tying to the American fast food diet. The food industry is now naked before the blogs, tweets and videos posted by consumers exposing unhealthy business behavior toward people, animals and the environment. The result is a sea-changing search by consumers for affordable and authentic foods.
The strategic conundrum facing the food industry is one of mixed messaging. Consumers now view industrial food as a commodity. They buy at the chain restaurant offering the lowest price. The chains are attempting to offer healthier food but their brand positioning is limited by their failure to execute an enterprise-scale shift to affordable and sustainable foods. This fifth article in my ?Re-thinking Restaurants? series profiles how enterprise-scale strategies in the food service industry grow sustainable revenues.
Sustainable enterprise-scale strategies are creating competitive advantage
Companies that include Chipotle, Panera Bread and a rapidly growing number of local restaurants are taking advantage of their competitors? marketing conundrum through an enterprise-scale approach to selling healthier food. Their marketing advantage is as clear and succinct as Panera Bread?s marketing slogan: ?Live Consciously, Eat Deliciously.? These companies are winning new customers, growing their customer loyalty programs and achieving industry-leading growth of same-store sales through their enterprise-scale strategy built upon sustainable best practices.
How to build an enterprise-scale sustainable business: Hotel Shattuck Plaza
Hotel Shattuck Plaza is located in Berkeley, California, and it offers its guests and visitors a restaurant experience serving fresh, local and tasty food. Its restaurant, FIVE,?has a goal, says Executive Chef Banks White, to ?nourish the community.? The Hotel Shattuck Plaza and FIVE provide a template for how to construct an enterprise-scale strategy built upon sustainable best practices.
It begins at the top
Perry Patel is a partner for the family-owned business that owns the Hotel Shattuck Plaza. Their business strategy, founded by his father, is to repurpose declining hotel properties. Sustainability is at the core of their values and business strategy. Their business plan is to invest in a diminished property in a manner that makes its operations cost competitive while also providing guests with a superior experience.
Their investment horizon extends multi-generations vs. today?s quarterly performance focus for many publicly-listed companies. Through Perry?s leadership the Hotel Shattuck Plaza was rebuilt using sustainable construction best practices. Just as importantly, his leadership has empowered his management team to operate in a sustainable manner. In the following exclusive video interview, Perry talks about his business strategy that generates attractive cash flows, increases the value of his firm?s property investments, offers a superior guest experience and advances the sustainable economic development of a re-emerging downtown community:
Operations management: Creative, engaging and sustainable best practices
Greg Mauldin is the Hotel Shattuck Plaza?s General Manager. Greg attributes the leadership of Perry Patel to making sustainability a part of the hotel?s DNA. But it is Greg?s creativity and engaging operational leadership that has turned vision into results.
Even in bright-green Berkeley, the Hotel Shattuck Plaza?s operational focus is on the customer. It is Greg?s operational leadership that links the two. For example, recycling under his leadership has assumed a consumer-facing focus. Using ideas supplied through the hotel?s green teams Greg has enabled the hotel?s repurposing of dated menus as drink coasters. Another green team idea came from the hotel?s goal of not using bottled water. Th idea was to serve filtered water in repurposed vodka bottles.
Greg also engages his guests in fun and sustainable behavior by supplying them with a shower soap built with a donut-like middle hole that reduces the volume of unused soap. In the following video interview Greg explains his creative, engaging and sustainable operational best practices.
FIVE: A restaurant nourishing a community
?Sustainability means community? is how the Executive Chef Banks White defines sustainability for the hotel?s restaurant, FIVE. Farmers are one of Banks? key communities. He has nurtured a community of farmers that now supply him with high-quality products that are a competitive advantage for his restaurant. His ability to offer fresh and locally-sourced food is his marketing and branding path for attracting customers.
Minimizing food waste is what sustainability means to Banks? kitchen operations. He holds himself and his kitchen staff to the highest goal of having zero food waste. This is also smart economics since the food he buys carries a higher cost than industrially produced food. Food waste is a reflection of Banks? respect for farmers, his appreciation of the quality product they deliver and astute cost control business practices.
Banks has, over the last four years, established a link between value and values with his clients. His menu continues to offer value-priced items. But his dedication to serving quality food in a nourishing environment has won loyal customers that recognize his ability to serve food that reflects his values and is also a good value. His ability to sell at a slightly higher price-point than chain restaurant prices reflects the trust he has earned from his customers.
Most tellingly, Banks? focus is on how food and dining can nourishes a soul. In this definition of sustainability Banks see his restaurant as a platform for engagement among friends, family members and the community. Enjoy the following video interview with Banks White as he explains his path for building a successful business based upon enabling the development of community relationships:
Bill Roth is an economist and the Founder of Earth 2017. He coaches business owners and leaders on proven best practices in pricing, marketing and operations that make money and create a positive difference. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles business case studies of pioneering best practices that are proven to win customers and grow product revenues. Follow him on Twitter: @earth2017
Related posts:
Five Factors Driving the Restaurant Industry?s Sustainability Crisis
Cancun Sabor Mexicano: Affordable Authenticity
SemiFreddi?s and Crogan?s Green-Certified Food Service Business
Consumer ?Search for Authenticity? Driving Food Sales Crisis
May 13, 2013 ? When trouble approaches, what do you do? Run for the hills? Hide? Pretend it isn't there? Or do you focus on the promise of rain in those looming dark clouds?
New research suggests that the way you regulate your emotions, in bad times and in good, can influence whether -- or how much -- you suffer from anxiety.
The study appears in the journal Emotion.
In a series of questionnaires, researchers asked 179 healthy men and women how they managed their emotions and how anxious they felt in various situations. The team analyzed the results to see if different emotional strategies were associated with more or less anxiety.
The study revealed that those who engage in an emotional regulation strategy called reappraisal tended to also have less social anxiety and less anxiety in general than those who avoid expressing their feelings. Reappraisal involves looking at a problem in a new way, said University of Illinois graduate student Nicole Llewellyn, who led the research with psychology professor Florin Dolcos, an affiliate of the Beckman Institute at Illinois.
"When something happens, you think about it in a more positive light, a glass half full instead of half empty," Llewellyn said. "You sort of reframe and reappraise what's happened and think what are the positives about this? What are the ways I can look at this and think of it as a stimulating challenge rather than a problem?"
Study participants who regularly used this approach reported less severe anxiety than those who tended to suppress their emotions.
Anxiety disorders are a major public health problem in the U.S. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 18 percent of the U.S. adult population is afflicted with general or social anxiety that is so intense that it warrants a diagnosis.
"The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, anxiety and depression -which tend to co-occur -- will be among the most prevalent causes of disability worldwide, secondary only to cardiovascular disease," Dolcos said. "So it's associated with big costs."
Not all anxiety is bad, however, he said. Low-level anxiety may help you maintain the kind of focus that gets things done. Suppressing or putting a lid on your emotions also can be a good strategy in a short-term situation, such as when your boss yells at you, Dolcos said. Similarly, an always-positive attitude can be dangerous, causing a person to ignore health problems, for example, or to engage in risky behavior.
Previous studies had found that people who were temperamentally inclined to focus on making good things happen were less likely to suffer from anxiety than those who focused on preventing bad things from happening, Llewellyn said. But she could find no earlier research that explained how this difference in focus translated to behaviors that people could change. The new study appears to explain the strategies that contribute to a person having more or less anxiety, she said.
"This is something you can change," she said. "You can't do much to affect the genetic or environmental factors that contribute to anxiety. But you can change your emotion regulation strategies."
Monday's car bombs came after a week of attacks on both Sunni and Shiite targets that killed more than 200 ? and only days after Iraq's 'most democratic' elections.
By Ryan Lenora Brown,?Correspondent / April 30, 2013
Street cleaners remove debris on the road after a car bomb exploded in Diwaniyah province, 95 miles south of Baghdad, Monday.
Imad al-Khozai/Reuters
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? A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
Skip to next paragraph Ryan Lenora Brown
Correspondent
Ryan Brown edits the Africa Monitor blog and contributes to the national and international news desks of the Monitor. She is a former Fulbright fellow to South Africa and holds a degree in history from Duke University.?
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A fresh wave of violence in Iraq yesterday underscores the fragility of the country's nascent democratic practice, and how easily it could once again devolve into sectarian conflict.?
More than 30 people were killed when four car bombs went off in heavily populated areas in the cities of Amarah, Karbala, Diwaniyah, and Mahmoudiya, all located in Shiite areas of south and central Iraq, the Associated Press reports. The bombings come after a week of attacks on both Shiite and Sunni targets across the country that have collectively killed more than 240, prompting the government to announce a crackdown on media outlets it accuses of stoking the violence with ?unprofessional reporting.?
As The Christian Science Monitor reported in March, a drumbeat of antigovernment protests has been building?since December, driven by widespread Sunni dissatisfaction about their place in postwar Iraq, which is led by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite State of Law coalition. ?
While many discount the possibility of a coup, rising sectarian tension and an ongoing political crisis have raised fears that there is a new battle looming between Baghdad and the provinces?.
"We're being marginalized," said one young [Sunni] man who did not want to give his name. "We're not against the government, but the government could take action on this issue."
Protesters in Sunni areas have demanded the release of several thousand prisoners held under antiterrorism laws, reinstatement of former Army officers, and the hiring of more Sunnis in the Shiite-dominated security forces.
The latest wave of violence began a week ago, when security forces stormed an antigovernment Sunni protest camp in the northern city of Hawija. The subsequent fight killed 23 people, including three soldiers, according to the AP.?From there, conflict rippled outward, as Sunni militants clashed with Iraqi soldiers and scattered car bombs ? a favorite tactic of Al Qaeda ? exploded in towns and cities around the country.
In the midst of the retaliatory back and forth, the government announced two days ago that it was revoking the licenses of 10 satellite TV channels, including Al Jazeera Arabic, which it accused of coverage that was "provocative, misleading, and exaggerated, with the objective of disturbing the civil and democratic process,? the news channel reported on its website.
The attacks and media crackdown come as Iraqis vote in a series of provincial elections, a crucial test of the fragile democratic process in the runup to its parliamentary election next year.
Voters in 12 of Iraqi?s 18 provinces cast their ballots April 20. At least 13 candidates and two political party officers were killed in the weeks leading to election day, the Monitor reports.?Although turnout hovered around 50 percent and two Sunni-majority provinces rescheduled their elections due to security concerns, they were ?considered to be perhaps the most democratic in Iraq?s post-war history,? according to the Monitor.
As one Iranian analyst noted in an op-ed for the Tehran Times, the elections suggested the shifting terrain of Iraqi politics.
The provincial election provided an opportunity for the government to prove its ability to maintain order and security without the help of foreigners. Since the withdrawal of the occupation forces in 2011, many were expecting that Iraq would be unable to exercise democracy on its own. However, the government organized a successful election, and Saturday's voting was mostly peaceful.
However, the elections were delayed in two provinces because of unstable security conditions, but officials later announced that those provinces would vote on July 4. Any misstep by the government in the electoral process in those areas may complicate the situation since the opposition is looking for an opportunity to highlight the weaknesses of the government and create a new controversy. ? ?
Still, he noted, the rising violence did not bode well. ?The rise of sectarian disputes in Iraq over the past few months has greatly jeopardized the prospects for a stable Iraq,? he wrote.?
DUBLIN (AP) ? A paralyzed Irish woman who wants to die cannot legally commit suicide with her partner's help, Ireland's Supreme Court ruled Monday in a case that has moved the nation.
The seven-judge court said nothing in the country's 1937 constitution could authorize the deliberate taking of a life on humanitarian grounds. It said lawmakers could pass such a law to permit 59-year-old Marie Fleming to die at a time of her choosing, but no such statute existed yet.
Fleming, a former University College Dublin lecturer who is unable to move from the neck down because of advanced multiple sclerosis, testified that her life had been reduced to untreatable agony and she feared choking to death because she couldn't swallow.
Her lawyers argued that suicide was not a crime in Ireland, therefore a disabled person unable to end his or her own life should receive that help to be equal under the law. They also contended that Fleming's right to personal autonomy under the European Convention of Human Rights was being violated.
But Chief Justice Susan Denham said EU law permits nations to set their own policies on euthanasia, and the Irish constitution contains "no explicit right to commit suicide or to determine the time of one's own death."
As Denham read the judgment, Fleming's partner, Tom Curran, and the couple's three adult children cried and held hands. Fleming herself could not come to the courthouse because, Curran said, she was battling a chest infection that itself might prove lethal.
Outside the courthouse, Curran said he would help his partner die regardless of criminal penalties if she decided to proceed. After telephoning her to say the verdict was as they both had expected, Curran said the couple was determined to end her life at their home in County Wicklow south of Dublin. If charged and convicted of assisting suicide, Curran would face a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
"It's very difficult to understand how a person with a disability can be deprived of something that's legally available to everybody else. For that not to be discriminatory under the constitution, that's something we fail to understand. The constitution is there to protect people like Marie and to give them solace that they will be looked after," Curran said.
"We will now go back to Wicklow and live our lives until such time as Marie makes up her mind that she's had enough. And in that case, the court will have an opportunity to decide on my future," he said.
The family's lawyers have kept open the possibility of appealing their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. But Curran said that might prove to be too much of an ordeal for his partner.
Most of the world has not legalized assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland have legalized the practice as have the U.S. states of Montana, Oregon and Washington, all under restricted circumstances.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank has "zero tolerance" for customers seeking to evade taxes by holding assets in foreign accounts managed by the lender, Co-Chief Executive Juergen Fitschen told German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
"Tax evasion is a crime," Fitschen said in an interview. "It's unacceptable."
Germany's biggest lender has restrictive policies for dealing with its customers' overseas assets and all employees working in the area are aware of it, Fitschen said.
"We have zero tolerance," he said, adding that if the bank had the slightest indication that foreign assets handled by the bank were not taxed, it would demand that customers prove the assets were legitimate.
Tax evasion has become an election issue in Germany after the shock revelation that Uli Hoeness, the Bayern Munich soccer club president and an associate of Chancellor Angela Merkel, had turned himself into tax authorities over a secret Swiss bank account.
Germany's financial watchdog Bafin plans to take a closer look at banks' business in offshore tax havens.
Fitschen said he was confident the Bafin enquiry would bring a good result. "As in other areas, we have nothing to hide."
Separately, UBS Chairman Axel Weber told Wirtschaftswoche magazine that Switzerland's biggest bank would no longer do business with customers seeking to evade taxes.
"I am confident that we can persuade the affected customers to put their situation with the German tax authorities in order," said Weber, who is a former Bundesbank president.
(Reporting by Jonathan Gould; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
We've been hearing about Jony Ive taking a sand blaster to iOS 7 -- removing a lot of the heavier textures, gradients, shadows, and skeuomorphs that built up at Apple under Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall. According to what I've been hearing), iOS 7 will make fans of the richer design style cry. 9to5Mac's ace reporter, Mark Gurman, calls it Windows Phone-like, and what's more:
In addition to losing the complex interface design characteristics from earlier versions of iOS, Apple has been discussing and testing ways to add more ?glance-able? information and system options panels, like Notification Center, to the software. While it is still uncertain if Apple will end up including such new functionality in iOS 7, or how the Company will implement the potential addition, one of the early ideas was to implement the new panels via swipes from the left and right side of an iOS device?s display. This would be similar to the gesture on Apple?s Mac trackpads for accessing Notification Center in Mountain Lion, but what, specifically, the iOS gesture could access is uncertain.
Gurman also says that iOS 7 is code-named Innsbruck, and includes a full set of newly redesigned icons for the built-in Apple apps. As that suggests, and as I've heard as well, the base Springboard launcher and its grid aren't going anywhere any time soon, so those hoping for an entirely new Home screen experience will be disappointed. That's not to say there won't be, as Gurman alludes to in his post, that Apple won't introduce new or modified sliding panels like Notification Center to add to or enhance functionality, but when you hit Home, currently, you still see Home. That's important for the hundreds of millions of existing iOS users.
What it means for developers and designers, however, will depend on how they've built their apps to date. Those who have stuck to UIKit will get a lot of the new look, including all the new stock interface elements, "for free". Those who have replicated UIKit elements in order to change them more substantially will have to re-replicate them. Those who have completely customized their interfaces, and who want to fit the new aesthetic, will have a lot of graphics to redraw come WWDC.
Ironically, Windows Phone and Android went flat to overcome performance issues. Compositing, masking, and shadow effects takes cycles. Flat interface can be thrown around much faster. Yet, because they've done it more recently, and because it stands in stark contrast to the more elaborate 2007-esque iOS interface, it looks "new". Their constraints brought out a cleanness and modernness that became fashionable, and as a result made Apple look decidedly unfashionable.
It'd be tempting to call the move reactionary -- a new look by new management to deal with new tastes in the market -- but for that new management being headed by Jony Ive. Apple's senior vice president of design has tastes that are well known, minimalist and timeless. He values getting everything, every distraction, out of the way until only the essential nature of the object remains. Now we're seeing that vision, Ive's vision, in charge of software for the first time. That it's such a stark contrast, and likely a welcome change for many from the status quo, could simply be a bonus.
Check out Gurman's article for more on iOS 7's new look, and then come back here and let me know what you think. If Apple goes flat, should they go very flat?
By Mike Collett LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) - Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes that if his team win their last three Premier League games they will qualify for the Champions League, but both Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur could yet scupper his hopes. If Chelsea take at least nine points from their last four games, they will finish on 74 points. If Tottenham win their four remaining games, they would also finish on 74 points. ...
All Critics (90) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (83) | Rotten (7)
The film and its talking head participants paint the picture in both broad strokes and fine detail.
Whatever one's political stripe regarding Israel, it's hard to dispute the impressions and perspective of the film's six eyewitnesses.
The level of candor here may not satisfy hard-liners of either stripe, but it can help viewers begin to formulate new questions about the philosophical, strategic and moral challenges of conflict, in particular "wars on terror."
Ultimately the movie feels evasive, and its flashy, digitally animated re-creations of military surveillance footage unpleasantly evoke the Call of Duty video games.
It offers startlingly honest insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from some of those who called the shots.
As a political testament, the result is revealing and important.
In the end, the accumulated stories in The Gatekeepers offer tremendous insight about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It feels more like it was prepared as a history document for Shin Bet rookies than a documentary.
...a riveting and sobering documentary about Shin Bet that raises important if unanswerable questions about the morality of state-sanctioned violence in the name of internal security.
[Moreh] asks just the right questions, never prodding these understandably private men too far but getting what he needs.
A riveting but depressing history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It's a depressing movie, yet there is encouragement to be found in the manifest decency and reasonableness of these six honest, articulate men ...
The former heads of Israel's military anti-terrorism agency Shin Bet break their silence in this unnerving, eye-opening documentary.
The film, though based on the exploits of Shin Bet, gives us reason to think about the drones that take out more than just terrorists.
Makes for truly bracing viewing.
A fascinating film offering a startling look inside one of the most tightlipped intelligence agencies on the planet, and providing powerful resonances with the US and UK's "war on terror".
A compelling overview of a modern security agency - bred in a moral grey area, organising state-sanctioned violence, but uncertain of the strength of its political safety net.
While memorable in sometimes unexpected ways (1980 head Avraham Shalom's long unwashed nails), there is always the nagging feeling that any revelations are being pushed or sold a little too hard.
Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary is riveting, haunting and depressing in equal measure, offering a sobering assessment of the Israel-Palestine conflict from a unique perspective.
[T]he Oscar-nominated documentary in which the six living former heads of Shin Bet, the ultrasecretive Israeli domestic security agency, talk about their antiterrorism work...
Although The Gatekeepers may not be quite theatrical nor dramatic enough for it to be highly recommended as a cinematic experience, this does feel like a film that really should be seen.
Many secrets are revealed and examined in director Dror Moreh's mind-blowingly fine film. If I have a quibble, it's that he never reveals the most tantalizing secret of all: how the hell he pulled it off.
[An] absorbing documentary, which charts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Six Day War to the presentday.
Insightful, revelatory and profound, Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary combines riveting interviews, archive footage and - yes - state-of-the-art photographic effects to offer a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine issue.
Both journalistic coup and unsettling confirmation of the idea that 'you can't make peace using military means.'
Much like Errol Morris' "The Fog of War," Dror Moreh's film is a sobering inside look inside history, at mistakes made and opportunities missed.
Moreh employs a direct interviewing style, reminiscent of Errol Morris' work, to get the men to talk about their days leading Shin Bet.
Contact: Matthew Swayne mls29@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers.
Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State.
"The fact that they formed teams and interacted as well as they did may mean that game designers should resist over-designing the leadership structures," said Peyton. "If you don't design the leadership structures well, you shouldn't design them at all and, instead, let the players figure it out."
Peyton, who worked with Alyson Young, graduate student in information systems, and Wayne Lutters, associate professor of information systems, both at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said that the players quickly adopted a leadership structure that resembled the U.S. military's leadership hierarchy.
"One of the surprising things is that although the people in the game were not related in any way to the military, many of the teams organized along military lines, from designations to filing situation reports," said Peyton.
The researchers, who presented their findings at the 2013 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris today (April 29), examined 54,000 posts of 2,500 players who took part in the I Love Bees game. Microsoft released the game in 2004 as part of a viral marketing campaign to promote the release of the company's Halo 2 video game. The object of the I Love Bees game was to decode messages from a beekeeper's website that was supposedly hacked by aliens. The coded messages revealed geographic coordinates of real pay telephones situated throughout the United States. Players then waited at those payphones for calls that contained more clues.
Because the game did not have a leadership infrastructure, players established their own websites and online forums on other websites to discuss structure, strategy and tactics.
A group of gamers from Washington, D.C., one of the most successful groups in the game, established an organization with a general and groups of lieutenants and privates. The numbers of members in each rank were roughly proportional to the amount of soldiers who fill out ranks in the U.S. military, Peyton said.
The players assigned their own ranks, rather than have ranks dictated to them. The general oversaw the strategy, while lieutenants mostly handled specific tactics for accomplishing the strategy. The privates carried out orders from the lieutenants.
As the game progressed, members researched military terminology and frequently used terms, such as armies, platoons and companies, in their message board posts. Peyton said that the increased militarization after 9/11 may have influenced this choice in terminology.
"The concept of militarization is more of a part of the collective imagination now, post 9/11," Peyton said.
Peyton said the study also shows the power of games to inspire people to work.
"These people did all of this work with no tangible reward, no promise of a free game, or anything," said Peyton. "The strict line between work and leisure is disappearing."
###
The National Science Foundation supported this work.
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Contact: Matthew Swayne mls29@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers.
Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State.
"The fact that they formed teams and interacted as well as they did may mean that game designers should resist over-designing the leadership structures," said Peyton. "If you don't design the leadership structures well, you shouldn't design them at all and, instead, let the players figure it out."
Peyton, who worked with Alyson Young, graduate student in information systems, and Wayne Lutters, associate professor of information systems, both at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said that the players quickly adopted a leadership structure that resembled the U.S. military's leadership hierarchy.
"One of the surprising things is that although the people in the game were not related in any way to the military, many of the teams organized along military lines, from designations to filing situation reports," said Peyton.
The researchers, who presented their findings at the 2013 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris today (April 29), examined 54,000 posts of 2,500 players who took part in the I Love Bees game. Microsoft released the game in 2004 as part of a viral marketing campaign to promote the release of the company's Halo 2 video game. The object of the I Love Bees game was to decode messages from a beekeeper's website that was supposedly hacked by aliens. The coded messages revealed geographic coordinates of real pay telephones situated throughout the United States. Players then waited at those payphones for calls that contained more clues.
Because the game did not have a leadership infrastructure, players established their own websites and online forums on other websites to discuss structure, strategy and tactics.
A group of gamers from Washington, D.C., one of the most successful groups in the game, established an organization with a general and groups of lieutenants and privates. The numbers of members in each rank were roughly proportional to the amount of soldiers who fill out ranks in the U.S. military, Peyton said.
The players assigned their own ranks, rather than have ranks dictated to them. The general oversaw the strategy, while lieutenants mostly handled specific tactics for accomplishing the strategy. The privates carried out orders from the lieutenants.
As the game progressed, members researched military terminology and frequently used terms, such as armies, platoons and companies, in their message board posts. Peyton said that the increased militarization after 9/11 may have influenced this choice in terminology.
"The concept of militarization is more of a part of the collective imagination now, post 9/11," Peyton said.
Peyton said the study also shows the power of games to inspire people to work.
"These people did all of this work with no tangible reward, no promise of a free game, or anything," said Peyton. "The strict line between work and leisure is disappearing."
###
The National Science Foundation supported this work.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Paula Deen, queen of Southern Cooking has been dropped by the Food Network after a bizarre series of events, in which she admitted using racial epithets, using slurs against gays, and that she condoned pornography and racist jokes in the workplace. According to the NY Times, She was scheduled to appear on the ?Today? show to defend her actions, but canceled at the last minute, leaving host Matt Lauer steaming. Paula then posted two odd online videos, tearfully begging her audience to forgive her for using racist language. ?I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I?ve done. I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable? (since removed from the service). Later this afternoon she posted a second video?in which she says ?The pain has been tremendous that I have caused to myself and to others?.
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Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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