May 24, 2019

Free Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms

Many municipalities offer free alarms or free battery replacements from local fire departments. There are a few restrictions, such as elderly, ability to pay, and others, such as height that vary from location to location. Look up your city fire department for details. You are welcome.

Frozen Produce Myth Debunked

Frozen produce can actually be even healthier than fresh fruits and vegetables. Those fruits are often picked at the peak of their ripeness, then flash-frozen within six to ten hours, says registered dietitian nutritionist Jenna Braddock, founder of MakeHealthyEasy.com. “That freezing locks in that nutritional value, so it no longer degrades until you use it,” she says. In fact, frozen produce might have even more nutrients than out-of-season fresh veggies.
Carrots, mangos, peas, spinach, squash, corn on the cob (keep it in the husk), peaches, also good to buy frozen or freeze at home.
Any vegetable or fruit that has a high water concentration, like celery, cucumber, salad greens, and watermelon will not survive the freezer because the water inside quickly forms ice crystals.

Fresh produce, such as apples may be stored for a year before reaching the grocery store shelf. Did you know you can freeze potato chips, nuts, and pretzels to prolong shelf life - if it that is a problem in your house. Incidentally, fresh produce can be kept on the counter if it is to be used within a few days, but is better in the fridge if it is not needed soon. Peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots are all best kept at room temperature so they can ripen to perfection.

keep apples in crisper drawer instead of on the counter. They ripen too fast on the counter. And a cool crisp apple tastes great, especially with some cheddar cheese on the side and maybe a pinch of salt to bring out peak flavor.

Maybellene

This week during 1955 Chuck Berry released his first hit song Maybellene (sic). Back in the time of innocent rock and roll music and hot rods. Enjoy! LINK

Centrifugal Force vs. Centripetal Force

We see it in the spin cycle of a washing machine or when children ride on a merry-go-round.
Centrifugal force is often confused with its counterpart, centripetal force, because they are so closely related. Centrifugal force is defined as the apparent force that is felt by an object moving in a curved path that acts outwardly away from the center of rotation. It is more inertia than a force. An example of centrifugal force is the earth's revolution around the sun. Another is passengers feeling pushed outward on a merry-go-round.
Centripetal force is defined as the force that is necessary to keep an object moving in a curved path and that is directed inward toward the center of rotation. If you are in a spacecraft orbiting the earth, the centripetal force is the force of gravity. Another example is spinning an object on a string. The tension on the rope pulls the object in toward the center.
Centripetal force and centrifugal force are the same force, just in opposite directions, because they are experienced from different frames of reference.

Centripetal force is an actual force; centrifugal force is an apparent force. In other words, when twirling a mass on a string, the string exerts an inward centripetal force on the mass, while mass appears to exert an outward centrifugal force on the string.

May 17, 2019

Happy Friday

“I love to laugh. It’s the only way to live. Enjoy each day — it’s not coming back again!” ~ Doris Day

I love to laugh and enjoy also, especially on a Happy Friday!

Beyond Meat

Have recently read that some fast food places and TGI Friday's are selling a meatless hamburger ($16.75 in New York). You have likely read about the Beyond Meat company and its recent filing for a successful IPO. Reviews are decidedly mixed and bottom line is that the burgers are close, but not too close to regular meat hamburgers in taste, texture, and looks. With the first two ingredients of water and pea protein, I will be waiting for more reviews before trying one. Of course, bacon might help.


Ingredients include:
 Water
 Pea protein isolate
 Expeller-pressed canola oil
 Refined coconut oil
  - also 2% or less of:
 Cellulose from bamboo
 Methylcellulose
 Potato starch
 Natural flavor
 Maltodextrin
 Yeast extract
 Salt
 Sunflower oil
 Vegetable glycerin
 Dried yeast
 Gum arabic
 Citrus extract (to protect quality)
 Ascorbic acid (to maintain color)
 Beet juice extract (for color)
 Acetic acid
 Succinic acid
 Modified food starch
 Annatto (for color)

Golden Gate Bridge

It did not get name due to its paint color, which many people believe, as it was named after the Golden Gate Strait, which is the waterway it straddles.

Wordology, By The Same Token

Token is a very old word, referring to something that is a symbol or sign of something else. It could be a pat on the back as a token or sign of friendship, or a marked piece of lead that could be exchanged for money. It came to mean a fact or piece of evidence that could be used as proof.


“By the same token” first meant, basically “those things you used to prove that can also be used to prove this.” It was later weakened into the expression that just says “these two things are somehow associated.”

Jeans Day

According to the Levi Strauss, May 20 was the day that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, the innovators behind the sturdy blue jeans got a patent on the process of adding metal rivets to men’s denim work pants for the first time in history.

Jeans are named after the city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured. Prior to the Levi Strauss patented trousers, the term "blue jeans" had been long in use for various garments (including trousers, overalls, and coats), constructed from blue-colored denim.

Calm Your Heart

New research shows that negative thoughts can be physiologically harmful, while positive thinking calms the heart rate and even boosts the immune system and can make a significant positive health difference.
In a study carried out by academics at the universities of Exeter and Oxford, 135 healthy were divided into five groups and played a different set of audio instructions. The team took physical measurements of heart rate and sweat response and asked participants to report how they were feeling.
Questions included how safe they felt, how likely they were to be kind to themselves and how connected they felt to others. The two groups whose instructions encouraged them to be kind to themselves not only reported feeling more self-compassion and connection with others, but also showed a bodily response consistent with feelings of relaxation and safety. Their heart rates dropped along with the variation in length of time between their heartbeats - a healthy sign of a heart that can respond flexibly to changing situations. They also showed lower sweat response.
Meanwhile, instructions that induced a critical inner voice led to an increased heart rate and a higher sweat response - consistent with feelings of threat and distress.

The three other groups listened to recordings designed to induce a critical inner voice, put them into a positive, but competitive and self-enhancing mode, or an emotionally neutral shopping scenario.

While people in both the self-compassion and positive-but-competitive groups reported greater self-compassion and decreased self-criticism, only the self-compassion groups showed the positive bodily response.

The study, Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self-Compassion, is published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

Genes vs. Heredity

Genes or genetic mean something related to your DNA. Hereditary means something you inherit from your parents.
When kings die their child inherits the throne. That is hereditary, but it is not genetic, because there is no gene that makes a person royalty.
Not all genetic conditions are hereditary, such as if they are caused by a mutation they will not have been inherited.

Bottom Line, DNA is inherited, so genetic medical conditions are hereditary, but not all hereditary things are genetic.

Lemon Freezing

If you want lemons or limes when you need them, you can freeze a few whole and defrost them, including in the microwave for quick use when needed. The consistency might be a bit mushy, but for drinks or juicing it is a good solution.

US Recycling Statistics

US recycling rate is low. Figures from the Environmental Protection Agency show that America recycles about 34.7 percent of the garbage it produces. The world's top recyclers, Germany, Austria, Wales, and South Korea report a rate between 52 and 56 percent.)
Until 2018, China took 40 percent of the US recycled paper, plastic, and metal, but in January of that year, China imposed strict new rules on the levels of contamination. Because of that, and a lack of suitable destinations closer to home, many cities have been forced to incinerate or stockpile recyclables until they can find a better solution.

The nation recycles less than 10 percent of its plastic, compared to 67 percent for paper materials, 34 percent for metals, and 26 percent for glass. China's restrictions have especially affected plastic. Exports of scrap plastic to China were valued at more than $300 million in 2015; they amounted to $7.6 million in the first quarter of 2018, down 90 percent from the year before.

May 10, 2019

Happy Friday

Life advice is like airplane advice, "Make sure you have your own mask on before helping others with theirs."

I am always ready to help others celebrate a Happy Friday!