Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Editor’s note: In the Human Factor, we profile survivors who have overcome the odds. Confronting a life obstacle — injury, illness or other hardship — they tapped their inner strength and found resilience they didn’t know they possessed. Evan and Eric Edwards have life-threatening allergies and wanted to develop a better way to deliver epinephrine, a drug used to treat serious allergic reactions. Their vision started shortly after graduating from high school and became a reality soon afterward.

Like many kids, we were unaware and felt invincible. We didn’t worry too much about managing our allergies. That changed after the first severe allergic reaction either of us had.

Evan was playing at a friend’s house when he ate what he had been assured was a “fake peanut.” Almost immediately, it was apparent that something was very, very wrong. Luckily, his friend’s dad also happened to be Evan’s doctor; he treated him immediately, and the incident was resolved.

Life-threatening allergies were much less common when we went to school, so we really stood out as the “strange twins with allergies” — those guys who had to sit at a separate table by themselves at lunchtime. It is unfortunate that severe allergies are much more widespread now, but there is a silver lining: People and organizations are more aware and better able to support the children and adults who suffer.

The idea to develop a new epinephrine auto-injector (commonly known as an EpiPen), specifically designed for the needs of patients like us, came about the summer after we graduated high school. We were on our way to a family vacation in Europe, and it looked as if, once again, the two of us had not packed our EpiPens. They were too bulky so we often didn’t carry them.

After the usual finger-pointing and questions about why we didn’t carry something that could save our lives, the idea of developing a smaller, more portable type of epinephrine auto-injector was born.

At the time, we had recently selected our college majors. (Evan went into the engineering program at the University of Virginia, and Eric chose pre-med/medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University.) We decided to customize our education to develop the skills necessary to make this invention a reality. At the start of each school year we reviewed our course options and decided together which classes to take that would help us achieve our goal.

Our first real funding came from winning a collegiate inventors’ grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. It was at that point we knew we were on our way.

Soon after we confirmed what we had already suspected: that developing a new pharmaceutical product is extremely complicated. To do it successfully would require deep industry expertise. We founded Intelliject, which now has a leadership team with more than 100 years of combined experience in the pharmaceutical industry.

We are fortunate to work with a team of industry veterans who are just as committed to patients as we are. As we say, the patients are the real experts — we just need to create the opportunities to capture their insight and design products that truly address their needs. Our entire approach puts the user at the center of development from the beginning of the process.

It is hard to describe the feeling now that Auvi-Q – the epinephrine auto-injector that is a culmination of the ideas we had all those years ago — is available in pharmacies across the United States (and as Allerject in Canada).

If you had asked us on the day of the launch in January, we would have told you that it simply can’t get any better than this. But we were wrong.

About a month after Auvi-Q’s launch, we read a Facebook post in which a mother described how her daughter had a severe allergic reaction. She described how Auvi-Q helped her by “having a voice walking through the steps in an emergency situation.” In her opinion, Auvi-Q saved her daughter’s life.

We can confidently say that there is no better feeling than that.

Story By: by Eliza Barclay

Industrial cities like Detroit have high levels of lead in the aging housing stock and in soils. Researchers found that the amount of soil lead in Detroit that gets suspended in the air correlated with the levels of lead in kids’ blood.

Lead poisoning in kids is hardly the problem it used to be, now that we’ve stopped using lead in house paints and gasoline. But the lead that lingers outside and in old homes is still dangerous if kids are exposed to it.

According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 535,000 kids between 1 and 5 years old in the U.S. have at least 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, the amount that doctors say is enough to cause learning and behavior problems. The new analysis of 2007–2010 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey appears this week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The numbers haven’t improved much since the 1990s, and some researchers now say that may be because the CDC is focusing too much on education about one source of exposure: lead paint.

“There has been a lot of effort put into education and remediating houses with lead paint,” Shawn McElmurry, a civil and environmental engineer at Wayne State University, tells Shots. “But it hasn’t been successful at reducing lead exposure. We need a more holistic approach that also deals with contaminated soils.”

While homeowners have learned over the years how to better manage old, peeling lead paint, the lead that was in gasoline was deposited on the ground and is still scattered throughout soils in many postindustrial U.S. cities. Kids still play in that dirt, and little kids may even eat it on occasion.

In a February paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, McElmurry and a team of economists and urban health specialists argue that the seasonal fluctuation of children’s blood lead levels seen in industrial cities like Detroit indicate that kids are exposed to lead from contaminated soil that turns into airborne dust in the summertime.

Here’s their reasoning: Earlier studies have shown that in many cities, including Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., there’s more lead in the air in the summer — because of wind, humidity and other factors. The researchers also knew that the average amount of lead in kids’ blood in Detroit is higher in the summer.

So when they plotted the lead in the air and blood lead levels together, they found a high correlation between the lead in the air and blood lead levels in children in Detroit.

Sammy Zahran, a demographer who studies environmental risks at Colorado State University and co-authored the study, says the findings demonstrate that contaminated soil in yards, playgrounds and elsewhere may be just as big a threat to children’s health when it comes to lead.

If peeling paint were still the main problem, Zahran tells Shots, we would see higher blood lead levels in the winter, when kids are indoors more and could be exposed to more lead-based paint. Instead, he says, his research found that lead and soil in the air “were moving together, lockstep in time” at similar levels to the lead in kids’ blood.

But McElmurry cautions that kids are still getting sick from lead paint. “Lead paint in the old housing stock is still there, and we know that lead can get into soil from car emissions and degraded paint, but right now the CDC’s focus on paint is just too narrow.”

So what’s the answer to the soil problem? CDC spokesman Jay Dempsey tells Shots that parents need to “eliminate or safely control all sources of lead in a child’s environment.” But Zahran argues that the government may also need to play a more active role.

“If we’re serious about minimizing risk, we may need to devote public dollars to cleaning up these areas that children frequent,” says Zahran.

National Geographic Channel is premiering Monday night a new series called “Brain Games,” a fun, smart show that, in a nontraditional way, teaches you how your mind works.

“My hope is that people come out of it in awe of themselves,” said host Jason Silva, formerly a presenter on Current TV.

Each episode zooms in on a different aspect of how our brains work, in areas such as focus, fear, motion and persuasion. During each half-hour program, viewers engage in several games that show how our brains might not be operating the way we expect. Experts in various fields of cognition join in to explain what’s going on.

Through perceptual experiments, interactive games and illusions, the show is able to, in a sense, “hack your brain,” Silva said.

You might think that everything you see is like high-definition TV, that you perceive the world around you in perfect detail. But the truth is that the attentional spotlight of your brain is only about the size of your thumbnail; about 1/1000th of your field of view. As Silva says on the show: It’s as if your attention is a spotlight, and you can only shine it on one thing at a time.

This is your brain on music

Your brain fills in the rest on its own, in order to save energy, so everything around you doesn’t immediately jump out and demand focus.

Perhaps you have noticed, for instance, that while commuting to work you are thinking about all sorts of things that don’t involve being in the car, train or bus that you ride every day. Your brain has already stored a model of your environment, so you might not notice something unusual right next to you. That’s called inattentional blindness.

“The brain creates these mental models of the world so that you can function, but the consequence is that it makes you less present, so we don’t notice what’s around us on a regular basis,” Silva said. “We’re blind to what surrounds us.”

Apollo Robbins, a performer and expert in deception, takes advantage of that fact when playing card tricks and engaging in other trickery on the show. You might think of this as “misdirection,” but Robbins says in a video on the show’s website that he likes to think of it as “managing attention.”

In one episode, he gets many volunteers to look through a deck of cards for the card they started with. Actually, the card is on Robbins’ head, but they’re so focused on the task that they don’t immediately notice.

“Even backstage, he’s able to weave my attention in any direction that he wants,” Silva said.

Top brain scientist is ‘philosopher at heart’

Another game makes use of the relatively poor peripheral vision that we all have. There’s a giant X in the middle of the screen and two cheerleaders on either side of it. If you keep your eyes focused on the X, can you tell which one of the cheerleaders is actually a man wearing a skirt and a wig? It’s a lot harder than you might think.

The show is particularly relevant now, given recent movements toward advancing brain science, Silva said.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced a $100 million initiative called Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN. It “aims to help researchers find new ways to treat, cure and even prevent brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury,” the White House said in a release.

Another major brain research initiative is called the Human Brain Project, based in Europe. Scientists at the Human Brain Project are using supercomputers to simulate the way the brain works in order to understand it better. Henry Markram at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland is leading this effort. In January, the European Commission awarded this international effort about €1 billion ($1.3 billion).

The show’s executive producer, Jerry Kolber, said he wanted to make a game show where the viewer would also be contestants. He wanted it to be a “science show without the ‘s-word.’” Of course, the “s-word” is “science.”

Kolber said he was personally amazed by the episode on fear, in which the show explores how the stress we feel in modern life about things like an overflowing e-mail inbox are derivative of fear. The fear response is something that evolved in humans, and dates back to when our primitive ancestors had to be on high alert in case of animal attacks.

“Our brain wants us to feel stress in situations that are uncomfortable,” Kolber said. “That’s its way of putting you on alert.”

What’s different now, of course, is that in modern life, the stress response is being triggered dozens of times a day, which isn’t healthy, he said.

“Brain Games” premieres at 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET/PT Monday on the National Geographic Channel.

You can learn more about “Brain Games,” play games and watch additional videos on the show’s website.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Latin America’s growing prosperity is fueling a cancer epidemic that threatens to overwhelm the region unless governments take urgent preventive action, a study published on Friday warned.

A multinational team of researchers found the current state of cancer care and prevention in Latin America incompatible with the socioeconomic changes taking place in the region, where an increasingly urban populace faces mounting lifestyle-related cancer risks.

Writing in The Lancet Oncology medical journal, researchers said Latin Americans are enjoying the benefits of growing economic prosperity but also are leading longer, more sedentary lives, accompanied by a rise in alcohol consumption, smoking and obesity. That is not only leading to an increase in cancer rates, which are expected to rise more than 33 percent in the region by 2020, but a disproportionately high number of cancer deaths.

“If corrective action is not taken this problem will become magnitudes of order bigger than it is today, it will create massive human suffering and it will threaten the economies of the region,” Paul Goss, a professor at Harvard Medical School who led the study, said at an event in Sao Paulo on Friday.

While Latin Americans contract cancer at lower rates than residents of the United States, they are nearly twice as likely to die from it, the study said.

Much of that has to do with the way cancer is treated in Latin America. More than half of those in the region have little or no health insurance and relatively few public health efforts are focused on preventive medicine. That means most patients seek treatment when they are at advanced stages of the disease and often too sick to be saved.

That type of care is not only ineffective but often very expensive, draining already scarce resources from public coffers, the study found.

IMMEDIATE CHANGES NEEDED

The study recommended Latin American nations make major changes to their healthcare policies, such as dedicating more funds to public health, widening healthcare access so cancer patients can be treated earlier and developing better national cancer plans. It also envisions shifting funds away from costly end-stage cancer treatment toward palliative care.

While researchers speaking at Friday’s event acknowledged the difficulty of enacting such reforms quickly, they called on governments to start with short-term solutions, such as raising taxes on tobacco and providing families with cleaner-burning wood stoves.

The total cost of cancer to Latin American countries currently is about $4 billion per year and stands to grow precipitously, according to the study.

“If we don’t put these things on the agenda now, we won’t be prepared to deal with this in 10 or 15 years,” said Carlos Barrios, a professor at Brazil’s Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul. “(At that point) the costs will be likely be exorbitant.”

(Editing by Todd Benson and Bill Trott)

ROME (Reuters) – Tests on beef products in Italy have found that one in five contain more than 1 percent horse meat, the Italian Health Ministry said on Monday.

Italy launched an inspection of the sector in response to the scandal of horse meat in products labeled as beef that has spread across Europe since January, prompting product withdrawals and worrying consumers.

Italian police inspected 454 samples of products advertised as beef without any mention of horse meat, and found that 93 tested positive for horse meat traces above 1 percent, which should have been declared, the ministry said.

The products it tested were of both national and foreign origin, the ministry said.

Italy said it had sent the findings to the European Commission, which is due to publish EU-wide data on Tuesday.

Farmers lobby Coldiretti said the results had unveiled a “global scam” and “a scandal without precedent”.

It said the inspection highlighted “the widespread movement of meat that goes from one end of Europe to the next through opaque exchanges that spawns fraud and deception to the detriment of businesses and consumers”.

The tests found no traces of the horse pain-killing drug phenylbutazone, which has been found during inspections elsewhere in Europe. The drug can be harmful to humans in very high concentrations and is banned from entering the human food chain.

(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Alison Williams)

But sipping much more than that can wreak havoc with your shape, and not just by adding hundreds of calories to your diet. Alcohol temporarily keeps your body from burning fat, explains integrative medicine specialist Dr. Pamela M. Peeke, author of the book “The Hunger Fix.”

The reason is that your body can’t store calories from alcohol for later, the way it does with food calories. So when you drink, your metabolic system must stop what it’s doing (like, say, burning off calories from your last meal) to get rid of the booze.

“Drinking presses ‘pause’ on your metabolism, shoves away the other calories, and says, ‘Break me down first!’” Peeke explains. The result is that whatever you recently ate gets stored as fat.

What’s worse: “Research has uncovered that alcohol especially decreases fat burn in the belly,” Peeke adds. “That’s why you never hear about ‘beer hips’ — you hear about a ‘beer belly.’”

So can you ever enjoy a drink without putting on pounds? Absolutely, if you imbibe the right way.

In fact, large, long-term studies published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and International Journal of Obesity found that middle-aged and older women who drank moderately (about one drink a day) gained less weight over time than those who never imbibed at all; they were also less likely to become obese.

Health.com: 7 easy ways to kickstart your metabolism

It’s a complex topic, but Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the studies, says that the moderate drinkers appeared to be more likely to compensate for the occasional drinks by taking in fewer calories from other sources and also tended to be a little more physically active. (In other words, they didn’t get blitzed on margaritas, then dive in to a bowl of fried ice cream.)

What else beyond basic exercise and calorie-counting can keep happy hour from turning into hefty hour? Health magazine dug into the research and grilled the experts on how you can have your sips and jeans that still zip.

Rule #1: Always eat when you drink

While the Harvard research suggests it’s wise to factor in those cocktail calories, it’s actually more important to eat right than to eat less, the experts stress. Skimping on food in order to “make room” for drinks will only backfire and send you straight to the bottom of the candied nut bowl.

Here’s why: Most cocktails are loaded with simple carbohydrates, “so during a night of drinking, people end up with soaring blood sugar, followed by a ‘crash’ that leaves them ravenous,” says Dr. Jason Burke, an anesthesiologist and hangover researcher who runs a hangover treatment clinic in (where else?) Las Vegas.

Health.com: The top fat-burning foods

You can help counteract that effect by nibbling foods that provide long-lasting energy. “Before you go out, have dinner or a snack with protein, fiber, and healthy fat,” says Karlene Karst, a registered dietician and author of the book “The Full-Fat Solution.” “They stabilize your blood-sugar levels without slowing down your metabolism.”

Karst recommends Greek yogurt with berries, almond or hemp butter with an apple, or a protein shake. An added benefit of grabbing a bite beforehand, she says, is that that Pinot or appletini will be absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream, minimizing its diet-damaging effects.

In addition to revving your appetite, tippling also makes you lose your eating inhibitions (“I only live once — I’ll have the steak frites!”).

“It temporarily impairs the prefrontal cortex, the smarty-pants part of the brain that allows you to think clearly and rein inimpulsivity,” Peeke says. “So after a certain amount of alcohol (and it’s different for everyone), you’re going to feel yourself not caring and letting it rip with food and probably drinks.” A cocktail (or three) can make you forgetful, too — as in, forgetting that the Death by Chocolate dessert is not on your eating plan.

Health.com: Happy hour treats under 80 calories

The trick is to have an easy-to-follow strategy in place before you take that first sip. Scout out the bar or restaurant menu ahead of time and note your picks on your phone. Then set an alert to remind you to order wisely — that way you won’t have to think too much (or rely on that alcohol-impaired prefrontal cortex!) to stay on track.

As with your pre-partying meal, go for something with fiber, protein, and a little bit of healthy fat to help control blood-sugar levels and make you feel satisfied, Karst says.

Rule #2: Know that some drinks make you hungrier

When it comes to waist-friendly cocktails, the simpler the drink, the better. Not only do the sweet-and-fancy ones tend to have more calories, but the additional sugar can make you even hungrier: Your blood sugar skyrockets higher than it does on beer, wine, or a shot of something, making the plummet (and the resulting cravings) worse.

And then there are the calories! Booze has 7 calories per gram, making it the second-most calorie-dense macronutrient. (That’s just below pure fat, which has 9 calories per gram.) This means a measly 1.5-ounce jigger of vodka has almost 100 calories.

Health.com: 25 ways to cut 500 calories a day

Mix that up with some club soda and lime, and it’s a reasonable tipple, but when you start tossing together a whole bunch of different liquors — whether it’s a hipster fizz made with bourbon, elderflower liqueur, and house-made bitters, or a dive-bar Long Island iced tea loaded with vodka, rum, tequila, and gin — it really adds up (to the tune of 300 calories, in the case of a Long Island).

Even simple mixed drinks like rum-and-Cokes and screwdrivers pack extra calories because of the sugary soda and juice. “So if you’re going to drink, have something straight up and simple like wine or beer,” Peeke advises.

Any wine or beer works, but to trim about 10 calories per glass, choose a rosé or white wine instead of a heavier red. A whole pint of a dark beer is around only 170 calories (compared with 195 for the same amount of regular beer) and may leave you feeling fuller than, say, Champagne, because it’s so starchy and rich, Karst notes.

Vodka, gin, or bourbon with club soda and a twist are pretty good bets, too. Club soda is calorie- and sugar-free and dilutes the alcohol and its effect on your cravings. Avoid juices, liqueurs (which are sweet and syrupy), colas, tonics, and super-sugary bottled mixes like the ones for a lot of bar-made margaritas and daiquiris.

Health.com: 9 margaritas under 300 calories

Rule #3: Stick to a drink or two, tops

One drink a day is the widely accepted definition of moderate drinking for women, but there’s a misconception among some bar-hoppers that you can go without alcohol all week and save your seven drinks for the weekend.

“That’s the worst thing you can possibly do for your weight,” Peeke says. (And, of course, for your health.) “It has a much bigger effect than one drink a day.”

When you down three or four drinks in one night, your body has many hundreds of alcohol calories to process before it can continue to break down food calories or stored fat.

Plus, all those drinks throw your blood sugar even more out of whack so you’re hungry as heck — and because you’re tipsy, your prefrontal cortex is misfiring and you now have zero compunction about ordering the fried mozzarella sticks with a side of ranch (and keeping them all for yourself). The extra calories alone are enough to pile on the pounds; have four drinks every Saturday night and you’ll be up about 10 pounds in a year.

Rule #4: Beware that gnawing, starving feeling the next day

The morning after poses a new diet challenge. As if a hangover weren’t punishment enough, you’re fighting cravings for large amounts of cheesy, greasy fast food. Part of the problem is that you’re dehydrated (don’t forget, alcohol is a diuretic), and that can make you feel even hungrier, Karst notes.

Health.com: 10 hangover remedies: what works?

But that’s not the only thing at play. “The body needs energy to resolve the effects of a big night of drinking, so it wants the richest source of energy it can find, which is fat,” Burke says. “Also, greasy foods tend to settle the stomach a bit.”

To avoid that: When you’re out, drink a big glass of water for every drink you have. Then, before going to bed, have some more, along with a snack that is high in fiber and protein such as high-fiber cereal or oatmeal, Burke suggests.

“You’ll get important nutrients into the body that were lost during alcohol consumption,” he adds. “Plus, foods rich in fiber stay in the stomach longer, so you’ll be less prone to hunger in the morning.”

With any luck, you’ll also be less likely to overdo it in the a.m., ensuring your figure won’t have to pay the price for a night out.

UK scientists have embarked on a six-year project to map how nerve connections develop in babies' brains while still in the womb and after birth.

Researchers from Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, King's College London, Imperial College and Oxford University aim to produce a dynamic wiring diagram of how the brain grows, at a level of detail that they say has been impossible until now.

They hope that by charting the journeys of bundles of nerves in the final three months of pregnancy, doctors will be able to understand more about how they can help in situations when this process goes wrong.

Prof David Edwards, director of the Centre for the Developing Brain, who is leading the research, says: "There is a distressing number of children in our society who grow up with problems because of things that happen to them around the time of birth or just before birth.

"It is very important to be able to scan babies before they are born, because we can capture a period when an awful lot is changing inside the brain, and it is a time when a great many of the things that might be going wrong do seem to be going wrong."

The study – known as the Developing Human Connectome Project – hopes to look at more than 1,500 babies, studying many aspects of their neurological development.

By examining the brains of babies while they are still growing in the womb, as well as those born prematurely and at full term, the scientists will try to define baselines of normal development and investigate how these may be affected by problems around birth.

And they plan to share their map with the wider research community.

Central to this project are advanced MRI scanning techniques, which the scientists say are able to pick up on details of the growing brain that have been difficult to capture until now.

While in the womb, foetuses are free to somersault in their amniotic sacs, and this constant movement has so far hindered clear images of growing brains.

But researchers at the Centre for the Developing Brain have found ways to counter the effects of these movements, building up full three-dimensional pictures while the foetus is in motion.

And by placing the MRI machine in the neonatal intensive care unit at Evelina Children's Hospital in London they are one of the few centres in the world to have a scanner in such close proximity to the babies who often need it most, Prof Edwards says.

This means the same scanning system can be used to find out more about the brains of the sickest and smallest newborn babies, he says.

Daniel Rueckert, professor of visual information processing at Imperial College London, who is also involved in the research, says: "We are trying to look at brain connectivity in two ways: firstly, from a structural perspective, to find out which parts of the brain are wired to other parts. And secondly we are looking at functional connectivity – how strongly two brain regions are linked across time and activity."

But Prof Partha Mitra, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York state, says we need to be aware of the limitations of the technology in use.

"It would obviously be a very good thing to know more about the circuits in the developing human brain. Much of what we know hasn't changed in a hundred years and has come from dissection studies.

"But we need to keep in mind the imaging techniques we have are indirect – we can't open up a human brain and look at the connections while someone is alive so we rely on these non-invasive methods. But there is a big gap between the real circuits in the brain and what images can show us."

Prof Rueckert acknowledges that this map will provide a "macro-level" view of the developing brain and not be the "final answer".

But he points to early results from the adult version of this project – the Human Connectome Project, based in the US: "There is so much evidence already from the adult project that there are significant changes in the brain that can be mapped with the technology we have now.

"It will be incredibly useful to be able to do this with the still growing and developing brain – perhaps giving us more time to intervene when things go wrong."

Editor’s note: In the Human Factor, we profile survivors who have overcome the odds. Confronting a life obstacle — injury, illness or other hardship — they tapped their inner strength and found resilience they didn’t know they possessed. This week, author Alexandra Horowitz introduces us to the world we’re not seeing. Read more in Horowitz’s book “On Looking.”

Chances are, not much at all.

Evolution in humans has refined our ability to selectively attend to one stimulus and ignore all others; in this case, most of the myriad of stimuli that bombards you on the street, from people and pigeons to sounds and smells.

This capacity is useful, and lets us “concentrate” when we need to. But it also means that we spend a lot of time ignoring the richness of the world around us.

I study dog cognition, and to do so I spend a good amount of time observing dog behavior; on top of that, I live with two dogs who compel me to bring them out for walks a few times a day.

After some thousands of these walks and observations, I began realizing just how different “a walk” is for a dog and her person. For a dog, an animal whose primary sense is olfaction, the street is made up not of sights to see but of smells to smell. Indeed, being focused on odors — which themselves require air to move, or a surface to light on — means that for my dogs, the street outside our apartment building is different each time we step out the door.

Hockey player: What doesn’t kill you…

Walking with dogs lets me see how little of the street I was experiencing most of the time. As familiar as my own block felt to me, I was mostly ignorant of what was on it.

I wondered what might other peoples’ experience or interest let them see on my street that I routinely miss? In the past two years, I’ve taken dozens of walks with people whose constitution or expertise enables them to see differently (11 of these walks are described in “On Looking”).

The urban sociologist Fred Kent and I noticed how well pedestrians unconsciously adjust their paths to navigate around each other — except for the texters, noses pointed to the ground, who routinely bumped into people.

A naturalist, Charley Eiseman, showed me how every surface, from leaf to sidewalk crack, has an insect whose universe is centered there.

Walking with the illustrator Maira Kalman let me see the elegance in a couch placed incongruously among garbage bags and highlighted the kinds of personal, private and public spaces we navigate in the city.

Man runs 50 marathons in 50 states

These walks stay with me now on every walk I take in New York. Just today, because I walked with the urban wildlife expert John Hadidian, I noticed that a pipe affixing a traffic light to its pole was hosting a slew of nesting sparrows.

Given a lens to notice lettering styles by the typographer Paul Shaw, I counted six distinct serifed fonts in the lobby of the building where I work, punctuated by only one word — EXIT — entirely without serifs.

I noticed the standpipes (colored red, green, gold and one red with yellow caps) which my son, at the time 19 months old, pointed out to me, and which are evidence of a building six stories or higher.

From walking with Dr. Bennett Lorber and physical therapist Evan Johnson, I saw how a woman’s pants, bunched up at the outside of her leg more than on the inside, revealed her bowleggedness and slight swagger.

Running in your undies for a cause

And I felt the change of breeze from a slight headwind to a hair-ruffling side-wind as I crossed an intersection, because I walked with Arlene Gordon. Arlene went blind as an adult, and what she showed me was how much of the block she still sees, four decades after becoming blind.

She saw the intersections we approached by experiencing the changes of airflow that hit her. And as we walked, she used sound to draw a picture of the space around her. Through the tap of her cane, which, like an echolocating bat, sends a small sound out into the world, she could detect the size and constituents of the space through which she was walking.

As we neared an awning overhanging the sidewalk, she heard the awning — because the cane-tap sound bounced back at her changed, closer. After we passed under it, I also could hear the sound changing, dribbling into the wide sky above us.

All of these walkers showed me that there are plenty of details to see on an ordinary walk around the block — if only we bother to turn our attention away from our phones and headphones. There is no mandate to see all the time, but the reality in front of our noses, made visible to me by these people, is well worth the look.

Story By: by Allison Aubrey

Meals On The Run

We touched a nerve recently when we asked about dinnertime as part of On the Run, our series exploring how crucial everyday decisions are made about food and exercise.

“No matter how close a relationship I develop with the Crock-Pot,” wrote mom Celeste Higgins, it’s still hard to get dinner on the table before 8 p.m.

We here at The Salt get it. (Many of us are working moms with kids at home.) And so we want to share some of the savvy, time-saving tips you sent us through email, Facebook and Tumblr, along with snapshots of your weeknight creations.

Swearing By The Slow-Cooker

Lots of you told us that the slow-cooker is a big help. “We eat a lot of Crock[-]Pot dinners,” Jennifer Rippy of Cincinnati told us.

And Shannon Cobourn, who lives in the suburbs of Atlanta (a region known for its long commutes), is in the same boat.

On a recent Thursday, she made a BBQ Pot Roast (scroll down for the recipe). While the dish was cooking on low for six hours in the Crock-Pot, she was able to finish up a work project, pick up her two kids from after-school activities and help them with homework.

‘Cook-Overs,’ Not Leftovers

From KF in Champaign, Ill.: Baba ghanoush, a spicy cilantro chutney with bread, and veggies for dipping

Leftovers are easily forgotten, but if you cook with the intention of multipurposing your creations, you may end up with something more exciting.

It works for “KF” from Champaign, Ill., who wrote in to our Tumblr Dinnertime Confessional that what she and her boyfriend prepare over the weekend can last most of the week.

“Sometimes he’ll make several of these dips/sauces/spreads on Saturday or Sunday,” she told us, “and we use them to make vegetarian [sandwiches] and other meals throughout the week.”

And they’ve got another tip that’s working for them: He cooks, she cleans up. (Hey, it’s always good to know your strengths.)

Build A Meal Around A Protein And Multiple Colors

Many a home cook knows the feeling. You open the door to the fridge and nothing pops. So how to go from rut to inspiration?

You can start by going big on color. Pull something green and something orange from the crisper (for example, green beans and sweet potatoes) and let the creativity start flowing (hopefully).

TPC from Dayton, Ohio, shared how this strategy played out in her family dinner: Cinnamon-spiced agave drizzle served as the topping to sweet potatoes, while haricot vert filled in the green space.

From Dayton, Ohio, TPC shares her dinner: “Sweet Potatoes with a cinnamon-spiced agave drizzle, served with haricot vert (french green beans), and curried chicken (thighs) and cornbread.”

And for the protein part of the meal? TPC started by taking the chicken out of the freezer in the morning. “Thaw your protein out that morning and build a meal around it!”

Shop And Plan For The Entire Week

“I find it helpful to make a menu for a week at a time,” writes J.S. from Sandy, Utah. This works even better if you can get organized enough to compile a gigantic shopping list and buy everything in one trip.

J.S. says she has help. “My 3 girls (15, 13 and 10) help plan the menu and cook the meals.”

And she says everyone in her house is happy with the system, even if it takes some thinking to get a vegan version of the meal on the table for her eldest daughter, who is vegetarian.

Here’s their meal from last Sunday: turkey meatloaf muffins, roasted garlic Yukon gold potatoes and green salad (vegan alternative: maple glazed tempeh).

Spice It Up: From Cardamom To Lavender

Lea Pittman, the mom of a 9-year-old son, doesn’t want to entertain him with TV. Instead, cooking is a way to be creative.

“One day he wanted to make lavender butter,” she wrote us, “so we ran some blossoms from our garden through the coffee grinder” and added some cream. “Blam-O, lavender butter.”

She says she’s arranged her work schedule so she can be home in the afternoons — its a “luxurious sort of poverty” she says — trading income for more free time. Whether it’s adding cardamom to a pastry recipe or making something very simple, “we have so much fun making dinner together and hanging out.”

Postscript: Here, as promised, is Shannon Cobourn’s recipe:

BBQ Pot Roast

Brown all sides roast in hot oil in large skillet. Place roast in Crock-Pot. Saute onion and garlic in same pan with drippings from roast. Add to Crock-Pot. In a small bowl, mix together tomato sauce, sugar, vinegar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Pour over roast. Cook on low 6 hours.

VIENNA (Reuters) – The United States must not turn a blind eye to the recreational use of cannabis in states that liberalize drug laws, an international monitoring group said, urging the country to live up to its treaty commitments.

Voters in the states of Colorado and Washington approved measures in November that allow personal possession of cannabis for people 21 and older, who will be able to buy the drug at special stores under rules to be finalized this year.

No other states have legalized pot, the country’s most widely used illicit drug, for recreational use. But proponents are pushing for ballots in states such as California and Oregon, which were among the first to allow cannabis for medical use.

Raymond Yans, president of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), said assurances from the U.S. government in December that growing, selling or possessing the drug remained illegal under federal law were “good, but insufficient”.

Letting people smoke cannabis for recreational purposes violates the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, to which the United States is a party, he told the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs on Wednesday, according to a statement on Thursday.

The INCB monitors implementation of international drug control conventions, and Yans cited the United States’ legal obligation to ensure the treaties were upheld across the country. The Commission is the central U.N. policymaking body for drug-related matters.

Supporters of the U.S. legalization campaign have argued the “war on drugs” launched in 1971 has failed to stem cannabis use, and instead saddled otherwise law-abiding pot smokers with criminal records that could help keep them out of work.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in a television interview in December that it did not make sense for the federal government to “focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that’s legal”.

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Pravin Char)