Food Day 2015 raises public awareness about healthy food

Mark Jones grew up learning about the value of food from his father, who worked in urban and homeless communities as a master gardener in Los Angeles.

“I was fortunate to have a father with a green thumb,” said Jones, who is now the owner of Big Day Catering in Los Angeles.

Jones was one of four chefs that hosted booths at Food Day 2015 held at Los Angeles City Hall by the Food Policy Council. An annual gathering, Food Day is meant to help people appreciate their access to healthy food and raise public awareness of giving back to the community.

During his first time participating in Food Day, Jones presented two dishes: a turkey meatball crostini sub with kale and a creamy corn soup.

Jones’ father worked for nonprofit organizations such as Food From the ‘Hood and Dome Village, Jones said. Growing up in Los Angeles in an environment that promotes providing healthy and sufficient food to low-income communities, Jones learned the importance of food and volunteering. Jones said his father provided organic food to the poor before the term “organic” was even created.

“As a child, I was blessed to see farm-to-table organic from the time I was born, and as I got older, I experienced the time and love it takes to prepare homemade food,” Jones said.

Similar to Jones, chef Lane Gold said she aims to provide food for the homeless. It was also Gold’s first time at Food Day, as she wanted to promote healthy eating for the homeless.

Gold worked at South Central Farm, one of the largest urban farms in the United States, for more than two decades, though the farm has battled settlement issues for years between clothing stores and park space.

“We are on the front line fighting to save South Central Farm,” Gold said. “The rest of the food that we provide goes to Skid Row, homeless people in Los Angeles.“

Artist chef Genevieve Erin O’Brien served two types of popcorns. One of them is called “Post-Colonial Popcorn,” since it has the strong flavor of Indian curry.

“You can think of it as a reverse colonialism,” O’Brien said.

The other popcorn, O’Brien said, was called “Orientalize This!” and was meant to represent Asian American feminists. It was made of organic white chestnut, honey ginger and Yuzu salt. O’Brien said while some people think of Asian Americans as a sweet and docile group, the ginger gives a sharp and fun twist.

She holds spice workshops several times a month, and teaches culinary lessons to children from 8 to 12 years old at Common Threads, an edible schoolyard in Los Angeles. She uses these activities to raise public awareness of and interest in food.

“I enjoy sharing the experience of making food with people,” O’Brien said. “I joined Food Day because my ethics match with the Food Policy Council’s ethics.”

O’Brien said she insists on using quality ingredients for making her food and pays her employees more than minimum wage to protect the rights of people in the food industry.

“I strive for an ethical approach at all levels of production,” O’Brien said.

Chef Bryce Fluellen, on the other hand, is more experienced with Food Day. Fluellen works on the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, specifically on the subcommittee called Healthy Cornerstone Committee. This is his second time presenting dishes at Food Day. He made sweet potato chipotle bisque topped with crispy collard strips.

Fluellen said that as a black man he wants to help improve access to healthy food for communities of color. He added that communities of color have higher chances of acquiring food- and lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes.

“My vision for food equity is that we continue to challenge and push back against the status quo that says our food system is too complex and big to fix,” Fluellen said. “My vision is that the good food soldiers fighting the fight for justice every day have on their long-distance shoes and are prepared to keep running until we reach the finish line.”

Study Suggests Autism Is Being Overdiagnosed

Autism may be overdiagnosed in as many as 9 percent of children, U.S. government researchers reported Friday.

It might be because autism covers such a broad range of symptoms and behaviors and is difficult to diagnose, and it may also be because increasing awareness about autism means there are resources to help kids who get the diagnosis, the team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Washington

The survey also suggests that up to 4 percent of children are helped with early therapy, or outgrow their symptoms, Stephen Blumberg of the National Center for Health Statistics and colleagues found.

"The results of this study suggest that some children with developmental delays, attentional flexibility problems, or other conditions may be receiving provisional yet inaccurate diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder from nonspecialists," they wrote in their report published in the journal Autism.

It fits in with what other researchers have found.

The CDC found a 30 percent spike in autism diagnoses among 8-year-olds between 2008 and 2010 to one in 68 children. It was a startling finding and one that fueled fears that something was causing more children to develop the condition.

But a report published earlier this year suggested that many cases of developmental delays had simply been reclacyfied in recent years.

Autism spectrum disorder can range from mild symptoms to profound mental retardation, debilitating repetitive behaviors and an inability to communicate. Genes have a strong influence and autism runs in families.

There's no cure, but experiments with early treatment suggest it might be possible to help children overcome some difficulties.

Blumberg's team followed up on a national survey of more than 1,500 parents of kids with autism.

"Approximately 13 percent of the children ever diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were estimated to have lost the diagnosis, and parents of 74 percent of them believed it was changed due to new information," Blumberg's team wrote.

This means 9 percent of the children originally diagnosed with autism got that diagnosis changed. Many got a new diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, the researchers found.

"It is possible this is the result of the high overlap between the symptoms of these disorders," they wrote.

It's possible that language and developmental delays look like autism, and it's also possible that kids with other learning disabilities are given an autism diagnosis because services are more available in some places for children with autism, they said.

Did you drink enough water today?

Eight, 8 oz. glasses of water a day: it's a rule that's been burned into our brains for years as the ideal amount of fluid to drink each day. Yet no matter how many times experts say that's not quite accurate, many still believe "8×8" is the magic amount.

The truth: How much water you should drink each day really, truly depends on the person, Robert A. Huggins, PhD, of the University of Connecticut explained to Health. "Fluid needs are dynamic and need to be individualized from person to person. Factors such as sex, environmental conditions, level of heat acclimatization, exercise or work intensity, age, and even diet need to be considered."

What this means is that simply listening to your thirst is the best way to gauge when to drink. Another way to monitor hydration is to look at your pee before you flush. You want it to look like lemonade; if it's darker than that, you should down a glass.

But what about exercise? To gauge how much water you specifically should take in during exercise, Huggins recommends doing a small experiment on yourself.

First, before you work out weigh yourself wearing with little to no clothing. "If you can, [make sure you're hydrated beforehand] and avoid drinking while you exercise to make the math easy," Huggins says. But if you get thirsty, don't ignore it: drink some and make sure to measure the amount.

After you're done exercising, weigh yourself again. Then, take your first weight and subtract the second weight, and you'll end up with how much fluid you lost. Convert this to kilograms (if you search it, Google will return the number for you or try a metric converter), then drink that amount in liters. (If you drank some water during exercise, subtract the amount of water you drank from your final total.)

This is your "sweat rate," Huggins says. It's the amount of water you should drink during or after your next workout to replace what you've lost. (You can also use an online calculator for sweat rate; just plug in your numbers.)

Complicated much? We agree. Huggins estimates that most people lose between one to two liters of sweat for each hour of moderate intensity exercise. But ultimately thirst should still be your guide.

Why it's important to get the right amount You already know that dehydration can be dangerous, but over-hydrating may actually be just as bad.

In fact, a new consensus report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that many athletes are at risk of exercise-associated hyponatremia, which is an electrolyte imbalance that can be caused by drinking too much liquid. This can lead to nausea and vomiting, headaches, fatigue, and in serious cases, coma and even death.

While it was previously thought to only be a concern for long-distance athletes competing in events like marathons and Ironmans, the paper (which was funded by CrossFit, Inc.) concluded that many athletes are actually dangerously over-drinking during events as short as 10K races and even bikram yoga classes, Tamara Hew-Butler, PhD, lead author of the paper, explained to Health.

Because "it is impossible to recommend a generalized range especially during exercise when conditions are dynamic and changing, there is not one size that fits all!" she adds.

So the best method to keep you in that sweet spot between over- and under-hydrated is, as with many things, to listen to your body.

Nextbit Robin Goes Up for Pre-Orders in Several Regions Including India

The "cloud-first" smartphone Nextbit Robin is now available for pre-order in many regions including India. The handset, which starts at $399 (roughly Rs. 26,000), will cost you another $70 (roughly Rs. 4,600) to get it shipped to India.

Next bit, a startup that boasts of veterans from Apple,Google, and HTC on its team, has given the Robin top-of-the-line hardware specifications, and addresses the limited storage issue in smartphones with a cloud-based storage solution. It automatically backs up photos and other data that you haven't used recently to the cloud to free up space on your device.

The company had put the smartphone up on Kickstarter for financial support, where it recived n overwhelming response. For the $500,000 (roughly Rs. 3.26 crores) goal the company had set, it received $1,362,344 (roughly Rs. 8.9 crores) in funding.

The Nexbit Robin comes with a 5.2-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) display which is embedded in a funky plastic body. It is powered by Qualcomm's hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor coupled with 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of inbuilt storage that can't be expanded using a microSD card. The device also comes with a fingerprint sensor.

Other features of the Nextbit Robin include a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a 2680mAh battery, and a USB Type-C charging port. The single-SIM capable device supports LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi and other connectivity options. On the software side, the device will ship with Android 6.0 Marsmallow. The company noted that the Robin is completely carrier unlocked. The bootloader of the device is unlocked too, which essentially means that one could flash their own favoured custom Android ROMs on the handset. The handset comes in two colour variants: Mint, and Midnight.

WikiLeaks Publishes CIA Director John Brennan's Emails

The WikiLeaks organization posted from what appears to be CIA Director John Brennan's personal email account, including a draft security clearance application containing personal information.

The material presumably was taken in a compromise of Brennan's email account by the hacker who told The New York Post he is a high school student protesting American foreign policy. The hacker claimed he posed as a Verizon employee and tricked another employee into revealing Brennan's personal information.

Brennan was seeking a security clearance while applying for a job as White House counterterrorism adviser. It was not immediately clear whether any national security information was compromised in the release of the clearance application, which includes his wife's Social Security number and the names of people Brennan worked with over a long prior career at the CIA.

A CIA statement called the postings a "crime."

"The Brennan family is the victim," the agency said in an unattributed statement, in keeping with agency policy. "This attack is something that could happen to anyone and should be condemned, not promoted. There is no indication that any the documents released thus far are classified. In fact, they appear to be documents that a private citizen with national security interests and expertise would be expected to possess."

The documents all date from before 2009, when Brennan joined the White House staff; before that, he was working in the private sector. Aside from the partially completed clearance application, none of the documents appears to be sensitive.

In a section of his security clearance application covering foreign contacts, Brennan writes that in August 2007: "I have had lunch twice and dinner once with Alan Lovell, a UK colleague with whom I worked closely during the last three years of my government career. Alan is currently posted at the UK Embassy in Washington."

Brennan's "government career" to that point consisted of decades at the CIA. It's not clear what Lovell's role was at the British Embassy. The State Department in 2009 listed Lovell as a "counselor" in the British Embassy. His LinkedIn profile currently lists him as working at the British Ministry of Defense.

The documents include a partially written position paper on the future of intelligence, a memo on Iran, a paper from a Republican lawmaker on CIA interrogations and a summary of a contract dispute between the CIA and Brennan's private company, the Analysis Corporation, which had filed a formal protest after losing a contract dealing with terrorist watch lists.

In a post-election memo, purportedly written to Obama, Brennan laid out a pragmatic roadmap on dealings with Iran. His suggestions are similar to the carrot-and-stick approach the administration would eventually use in nudging Tehran toward joining negotiations over slowing the momentum of its growing nuclear reactor program.

"The United States has no choice but to find ways to coexist - and to come to terms - with whatever government holds power in Tehran," Brennan said in the three-page memo. He added that Iran would have to "come to terms" with the US and that "Tehran's ability to advance its political and economic interests rests on a non-hostile relationship with the United States and the West."

In the memo, Brennan advised Obama to "tone down" rhetoric with Iran, and swiped at former President George W. Bush for his "gratuitous" labeling of Iran as part of a worldwide "axis of evil." Brennan also said the US should establish a direct dialogue with Tehran and "seek realistic, measurable steps." Although he didn't specifically call for the regime of financial sanctions that the Obama administration, along with Europe, Russia and China, pushed against Iran, Brennan told the president-elect to "hold out meaningful carrots as well as sticks."

Back to the Future Day – The 2015 Gadget Predictions That Happened!

To some today is only October 21st 2015. But to many of us this is more than just another date on the calendar, because according to popular 80s sequel Back to the Future II this is the day when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) arrives in the time-travelling DeLorean from 1985. Yes, it really is the correct day and this is not based on another annoying internet meme trying to blur our childhood memories!
Today will be filled with mostly celebration but also a tinge of disappointment as some of the big predictions according to the 2015 as seen in BTTF2 have not yet come true as many would have hoped. We still need roads, despite Doc Brown’s suggestion that we won’t need them. Excitable child fans of 30 years ago were this morning grumpy grown-ups sat in traffic because we’re not really any closer to getting those waste-fuelled flying cars.

But it’s not a total nightmare future because some of the cool stuff from the movie has actually happened. You might not have noticed some of these smaller details while you were waiting for your hover board to show up, but there’s a fair amount of modern tech you can spot inBack to the Future II if you look closely.

For example – You’ve probably forgotten all about the dog-walking drone, right? Yes there are drones in future Hill Valley – and in the real 2015 these unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming common place for combat and reconnaissance as well as being widely retailed for personal use.
Also think back (or forward) to the McFly family home. It’s filled with wearable tech and items that could be considered modern smart-devices. From Marty Jr’s video spectacles (which in the film are JVC branded) that appear to work much like the Sony Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift – and the front door of 3793 Oakhurst Street on which there was a finger print scanner used to unlock it. This is a feature similar to the one recently introduced on smartphones including the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Sony Xperia Z5.

There are also references to holograms in the town square (Jaws 19!), touch screens, video calling and wireless payments/internet banking when Marty Snr. is asked to wire funds electronically to a colleague and virtual reality gaming is touched on, so to speak, in the Café 80s scene when Marty demonstrates his skills on a shooting game and is teased by kids about having to ‘use your hands’ to play it (coincidentally, in our 2015, one of those youngsters is Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood).
So, you don’t have it so bad in this version of 2015, do you? And despite many of Back to the Future II’s 2015 predictions begin fairly tongue-in-cheek and fantastical you can look forward to owning that hoverboard very soon as they’re actually being developed as we speak. Heavy!

Asenal Beat Bayern munich 2-0 at the emirates stadium,theres the five talking points

1 Arsenal go toe-to-toe and conjure up a famous result
Rarely has an Arsenal triumph tasted so sweet for their supporters. The north London club are back from the brink and if there were individual heroes, not least Petr Cech and the defensive players in front of him – the efforts of Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny to suppress the previously irrepressible Robert Lewandowski were a sight to behold – the overall impression was of a club showing their mettle. Bayern Munich had arrived in seemingly invincible touch and with Arsène Wenger describing them as the best team in Europe. The visitors looked good for long spells but they could not breach an Arsenal side who, as Pep Guardiola had predicted, fought like animals. But this was no mere rearguard triumph. Arsenal went toe-to-toe with Bayern; they created (and missed) chances before they bent the result to the sheer force of their will. A 16th consecutive qualification for the Champions League last 16 is back on.

2 Costa and Thiago enjoy a skill-off
In what was a gripping and often thrilling encounter, two Bayern players appeared to be engaged in their own private duel. Would Douglas Costa or Thiago Alcântara out-skill the other to win the super-fly player of the night award? Costa, the winger, took the brinkmanship to another level in the first half with two quite dazzling moves to flummox Héctor Bellerín. The Arsenal full-back was not the only one inside the stadium who wondered what had happened and how. Costa was a slippery menace and on a couple of other occasions he fizzed shots narrowly off target. Thiago’s moves were smoother but the midfielder’s balance and awareness were as much a feature of the evening. He was central to Bayern’s possession game, which at times felt strangely mesmeric while his quick feet got him out of tight spots with ridiculous ease.

3 Cech makes belated Arsenal debut in Europe
When Petr Cech signed for Arsenal from Chelsea over the summer, in what was the club’s only major signing, the goalkeeper might reasonably have expected to have tasted Champions League action by the middle of October. Not so. Wenger had preferred David Ospina against both Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiakos – and to disastrous effect in th second game. Ospina will be haunted by his own goal handling blunder for some time. Ospina was ruled out here with a shoulder injury, which allowed Wenger to restore Cech without any loss of face, and there were several flickers that both manager and player could enjoy. Cech made a big block from Thiago in the 11th minute and another diving save from Arturo Vidal later in the first half. His handling was true throughout and in the second half, he twice stood tall to deny Robert Lewandowski.

4 Neuer veers from the sublime to the ridiculous
Theo Walcott had to do better. From such a distance, completely unmarked, in a central position and in such a big game, the very best finishers do not give goalkeepers a save to make. What Manuel Neuer did next, however, sent jaws dropping to the floor and fingers across the continent reaching for expression in 140 characters or less. Not only did Neuer read Walcott’s intentions to get across his line but he had the strength in one of those mighty paws to bat the header clear. At that point, the eulogies about the world’s best goalkeeper were being penned. And yet Neuer would finish as a villain, courtesy of the rush of blood that saw him leap and flap at Santi Cazorla’s late free‑kick, from which the substitute, Oliver Giroud, scrambled home his goal. Neuer appeared to be distracted by Laurent Koscielny and Thomas Müller in front of him. He had no excuses.

5 Fans show solidarity over ticket prices
A sizeable chunk of the visiting enclosure had been empty at kick-off time, as Bayern’s fans voted with their feet and boycotted the opening minutes. They had wanted to express their anger at having been charged £64 per ticket and, when they began to filter into the stadium after six minutes, their counterparts in the Arsenal seats stood to applaud them. The home fans have long been unhappy at the monies they must find to watch their team live at the Emirates and it was lost on nobody that for the price of two tickets to this game you could afford the cheapest season tickets at Bayern. Once all of the Bayern fans were inside, they ratcheted up the volume while the Arsenal crowd were also full square behind their team. They had got the evening under way by raising red and white cards to create a mural around the ground.