Category Archives: News

Trends In Food: Rising Number Of Consumers Eat Salty Snacks For Lunch, Dinner (Even Breakfast)

From an Innova Market Insights online release:

Innova Market InsightsAccording to a report from Innova Market Insights, snacking has already become an all-day habit in the States. While 46% of consumers eat salty snacks between-meals in the afternoon and 37% in the evening, more consumers are also replacing traditional meals with quicker bites. The numbers of consumers who are consuming salty snacks at lunchtime (23%), dinner (17%) and even breakfast (8%) are on the increase.

“Enjoyment is still a very strong driver behind snacks purchase,” says Lu Ann Williams, Head of Innovation at Innova Market Insights. “When asked why they buy salty snacks, 40% of Americans named taste and a further 22% said it was to treat or reward themselves, so innovators need to balance nutrition and taste to ensure that salty snacks remain competitive for all snacking occasions.”

To read more: https://www.innovamarketinsights.com/americans-want-snackable-nutrition/

Podcasts: “LabGenius” CEO James Field On AI/Machine Learning Discovering New Medicines (Babbage)

Babbage PodcastsResearchers are using artificial intelligence techniques to invent medicines and materials—but in the process are they upending the scientific method itself? The AI approach is a form of trial-and-error at scale, or “radical empiricism”. But does AI-driven science uncover new answers that humans cannot understand? Host Kenneth Cukier finds out with James Field of LabGenius…

Website: https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2019/11/27/the-end-of-the-scientific-method

Photography Contests: “2019 Epson International Pano Awards” Winners

The Epson International Pano AwardsThe 10th EPSON International Pano Awards is dedicated to the craft and art of panoramic photography. Advances in digital photography and editing software have resulted in an ever-increasing rise in the popularity of image stitching, especially in the panoramic format. VR ‘immersive’ photography also continues to excite and develop at a rapid pace, and panoramic film photography remains alive and well.

The EPSON International Pano Awards showcases the work of panoramic photographers worldwide and is the largest competition for panoramic photography.

2019 Pano Awards Open Photographer of the Year Mieke Boynton

2019 Pano Awards Major Amateur Winner Carlos F. Turienzo

To read and see more: https://thepanoawards.com/2019-winners-gallery/

 

Health Diagnosis Podcasts: Dysautonomia (Invisible Illness) Affects Up To 3 Million Americans

From a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online article:

This Weekend with Gordon Deal

“Dysautonomia is probably significantly more common than we realize,” says Jeremy Cutsforth-Gregory, a neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “I think it’s significantly underdiagnosed.” In about half of POTS cases, he adds, the patient’s disease grows out of the immune response to an infection. 

Ryan Cooley, a doctor and co-director of the Dysautonomia Center at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, says detecting the disorder is especially challenging because “typically there isn’t a dominant symptom or physical finding.”

Perhaps the most common clue to the disorder is that patients find that when they stand up from a chair their heart races and they feel light-headed.

To read more: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2019/11/14/invisible-illness-leaves-millions-undiagnosed-barely-functioning/2507547001/

 

 

 

Top Political Podcasts: Mark Shields And David Brooks On The Latest In Washington (PBS)

Shields and Brooks Nov 29 2019Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including public opinion and legal debate in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the shifting race among 2020 Democrats and what we’re thankful for during this holiday week.

Top Political Podcasts The Economist Asks: “What’s The Future Of The Republican Party?”

The Economist Asks PodcastAHEAD OF the 2020 American presidential election, John Prideaux, The Economist‘s US editor, talks to Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, Joe Walsh, a talk radio host and former Illinois congressman, and Mark Sanford, a former governor of South Carolina. While Donald Trump enjoys near 90% approval ratings among his party, can anyone challenge him for the Republican presidential nomination? And how has he changed what it means to be a Republican?

Anne McElvoy hosts. Runtime: 32 min

Website: https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2019/11/29/whats-the-future-of-the-republican-party

 

Online Shopping: “Amazon, Target, Walmart – The One-Day Shipping Battle” (WSJ Podcast)

Wall Street Journal corporate bureau chief Marcelo Prince explains the competition between retailers Amazon, Target and Walmart to provide one-day shipping to customers during the holiday season.

Science Podcasts: NIH Scientist Loan Repayment Conflicts, Undersea Cables As Seismic Sensors

The National Instituscimag_pc_logo_120_120 (2)tes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry funding. But a close examination of the program by investigative correspondent Charles Piller has revealed that many participants are taking money from the government to repay their loans, while at the same time taking payments from pharmaceutical companies. Piller joins Host Sarah Crespi to talk about the steps he took to uncover this double dipping and why ethicists say this a conflict of interest.

Sarah also talks with Nate Lindsey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, about turning a 50-meter undersea fiber optic cable designed to move data into a sensor for activity in the ocean and the land underneath. During a 4-day test in Monterey Bay, California, the cable detected earthquakes, faults, waves, and even ocean-going storms.

For this month’s books segment, Kiki Sandford talks with Dan Hooper about his book At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds.

Technology Podcasts: “The Digitisation Of Healthcare” (Economist)

The Economist Intelligence Unit Digital EconomyThere can be few applications of digital technology more worthwhile than saving lives, but integrating digital technology into healthcare systems is uniquely complex. This episode provides an introduction to some of the challenges that healthcare providers face in their pursuit of digital innovation, and explores some of the paths forward.

Host Pete Swabey is joined by Professor Ann Blandford, deputy director for digital health at the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering; by Jackie Hunter, chief executive, clinical programmes & strategic relationships at AI-powered drug development firm Benevolent.AI; and by Elizabeth Sukkar, managing editor and global editorial lead for healthcare at The EIU. Sponsored by DXC Technology.

Politics: “Baby Boomers Versus Millennials” Battle Brewing In Great Britain

From a The Atlantic online article:

Willetts had stumbled onto one of the great divides of modern politics: young versus old. In Britain, age is now a better predictor of voting intention than social class. Overall, the Boomers voted for Brexit in 2016 and the Conservatives in 2017; their Millennial children voted Remain and Labour. The single biggest error that Theresa May, the prime minister in the lead-up to the 2017 election, made during that process was to float the idea that older people might have to contribute more to the spiraling costs of their own retirement care. The “dementia tax” prompted an immediate, ferocious response, and May backed down.

 

That is not an isolated example. A guiding principle of politics in Britain, and elsewhere in the West, is: What Boomers want, Boomers get. Working-age benefits, for example, have been frozen since the 2015 budget, but the state pension has consistently risen. (At this election, Britain’s two main parties have both promised to keep increasing pensions; Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has also pledged £58 billion ($74.7 billion) to Boomer women affected by the rise in the female state pension age from 60 to 66.

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The debate is also about so much more than abstract disagreements over policy and government funding. Caring for the elderly, for example, becomes wrapped up in assertions of “just deserts”—I’ve worked hard all my life and paid my taxes—and fears about money-grubbing children selling off their parents’ houses. It is also, like taxes on inheritance, a subject that prods at many people’s deep desire to pass something on to their offspring.

To read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/britain-election-boomers/602680/