Summer Fitness and Nutrition: Get that Beach Body!

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As the weather gets warmer and summer gets nearer, I fall into a state of mixed emotions. I get super excited for weekend trips to the beach, but also utterly anxious about wearing a swimsuit in public. I get the feeling I’m not the only one who has started eating better and working out more in anticipation of the beach season.

Fitness

I turned to Cecilia Tobler, certified personal trainer and author of The Traveler’s Fitness Companion: Your Workout Formula to Go!, for her suggestions on how to kick start a workout towards attaining a beach body. The smartest and most effective way to lose weight is to follow the most basic rule: increase exercise and limit what you eat. Cecilia recommends combining cardio and strength training to achieve the best, and fastest, results. It’ll take a little discipline to get going, but once you begin to lose weight and become more active, you can progressively add calories back into your diet.  Not so bad, right?

Nutrition

Fill up with cooling foods during warm summer months. Juicy foods with lots of water content will help you to stay hydrated. Foods that are naturally blue, green, or purple are typically more cooling than similar foods that are red, orange or yellow.

These examples of cooling foods and spices are high in fiber, meaning they’ll keep you full for longer, and low in calories.

  • Vegetables: summer squash, celery, radishes, cucumber, corn, green beans, peas tomatoes, sea vegetables, and leafy vegetables such as spinach, arugula, Swiss chard and lettuce
  • Fruit: berries, melons, peaches, nectarines, grapes, oranges and apples
  • Spices: fresh ginger, cilantro, and peppermint
  • Grains: couscous, wheatberry, amaranth, and barley

Les Phillip Republican & Tea Partier for Congress – They can’t call him a Racist

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Proud Navy Vet, Patriot & Fierce Obama critic

Republican candidate for Congress, Alabama CD-1.

Note - he is running in the GOP primary against incumbent Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Parker Griffith.

Editor's comment - this is a tough one. Phillip is fantastic. Just imagine Phillip and a newly-elected African-American Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida side-by-side fighting the Obama agenda in Congress. On the other hand a Phillip win might discourage conservative Democrats in the future from switching to the GOP?

Does Sarah Palin have the Midas Touch?

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The Midas touch, or the gift of profiting from whatever one undertakes, is named for a legendary king of Phrygia. Midas was granted the power to transmute whatever he touched into gold. -- MythWeb.com

From Eric Dondero:

Every Republican primary candidate she endorses turns to Gold.

Consider:

Five weeks ago, she broke with the GOP leadership, and backed libertarian Republican Rand Paul in his primary against establishment-backed candidate Trey Grayson.

Result - Paul wins by 24%

Three weeks ago, Palin traveled to South Carolina to campaign with underdog Nikki Haley who had been languishing in a distant 4th place. Days after, a poll was released showing State Rep. Haley jolting to a comfortable 10 point lead of the entire pack including both the State's AG, and the Lt. Governor.

In Minnesota she enthusiastically endorsed "Hockey Dad" Tom Emmer who had consistently been polling in 2nd place. He soon after won the support of GOP delegates in convention, and he is now virtually assured to be the nominee. What's more he's comfortably ahead of all potential Democrats in recent polls for the Fall.

And now this... Palin took some serious heat from hard-line social conservatives for her endorsement of pro-business/fiscal conservative Carly Fiorina in California's red hot Senate primary.

From the Daily Caller:

two weeks ago former Congressman Tom Campbell held a 11 percentage point lead over Carly Fiorina in the GOP governor’s primary. That lead has now incredibly evaporated into a 23 point deficit...

In the Republican primary for US Senator, support for former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is up sharply in the past 2 weeks, from 24% on 05/10/10 to 46% today 05/24/10. Fiorina’s support has more than doubled among women, seniors, Hispanics, the less educated, and in the Inland Empire. During these 2 weeks, Former Congressman Tom Campbell’s support dropped 12 points, from 35% on 05/10/10 to 23% today 05/24/10.

Overlooked, Fiorina, Paul, Emmer, and Halley all share a common bond: fiscal conservatism and staunch support for limited government policies with a de-emphasis of social issues. Indeed Paul and Emmer are explicitly libertarian Republicans. And Paul, Emmer and Halley all have strong Tea Party ties.

Palin's long held free market economics over divisive social issues libertarianism is finally triumphing much to the chagrin of her vitriolic critics on the Left, but even among her doubters - mostly establishment conservatives - on the Right.

SRB View of Atlantis Launch

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is a look at the STS-132 (Atlantis) making it’s last launch.  Note the movement just before the shuttle leaves the ground.  Thrust makes the shuttle assembly bend a little bit and there is a slight delay for it to come back before the clamps open and set it free.  Happens on every launch so it’s not unique or anything, still the power is amazing.  This particular video is from the Left SRB (Solid Rocket Booster).  Here is a video showing the launch from the four SRB cams on the same screen.

Source for featured video.

Speaking of amazing, below is an image of the ISS and Shuttle transiting the Sun shortly before docking.  The image was taken in Spain by Thierry Legault, be sure to click on the image to see more of his outstanding work.  I’ve seen Thierry’s work before and  I’ve tried to do this and it’s not as easy as you might think.  All the preparation is for just a second or two of transit, you’d crack up watching trying to pull it off.  No matter, I’m up for another go at it and I’ll try again if the opportunity presents itself, and as you might expect that doesn’t happen very often.

Atlantis and the ISS transit the Sun before docking. Click for larger. Credit: Thierry Legault (via SpaceRef)

Oh and BE SURE (!!!!!) to try and get a look at the Shuttle/ISS passing overhead.   Atlantis is undocked from the ISS and this is going to be one of your last chances to see a shuttle and the ISS — EVER!  Check Heavens Above for viewing times for you (you have to register, but fear not, it’s free and safe.  Don’t forget to enter your location!

Actually it’s going to be one of your last chances to see ANY of NASA’s manned missions.  After the two remaining scheduled shuttle missions, it may be quite some time before an astronaut is launched from US soil.  Yes, I’ve seen the press releases with all the private interests lauding the new direction, however that is tempered by the fact they are a long ways from routine human space flight.  Oh they’ll get there, I just hope there is LOTS of information sharing so they can benefit from what we’ve achieved in the field.  They will right?

ABC News Covers the New War on Climate Research (and on Michael Mann) | The Intersection

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Here's the report that (I understand) airs tonight:
Climate scientist Michael Mann has received hundreds of them -- threatening e-mails and phone calls calling him a criminal, a communist or worse. "6 feet under, with the roots, is were you should be," one e-mail reads. "How know 1 one has been the livin p*ss out of you yet, i was hopin i would see the news that you commited suicide, Do it." "I've been called just about everything in the book," Mann, who runs of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, told ABC News. "It's an attempt to chill the discourse, and I think that's what's most disconcerting." Mann is not the only one. The FBI says it's seeing an uptick in threatening communications to climate scientists. Recently, a white supremacist website posted Mann's picture alongside several of his colleagues with the word "Jew" next to each image. One climate scientist, who did not wish to be identified, told ABC News he's had a dead animal left on his doorstep, and now sometimes travels with bodyguards. "Human-caused climate change is a reality," Mann said. "There are clearly some who find that message inconvenient, and unfortunately they appear willing to turn to just about ...


“Weedy” mice dominate a warming world while other small mammals suffer | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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Deer_mouseToday’s mammals are facing the twin threats of a rapidly warming planet and increasingly intrusive human activity. As usual, the big species hog the limelight. The world waits on bated breath to hear about the fates of polar bears, whales and elephants, while smaller and more unobtrusive species are ignored. But smaller mammals are still vital parts of their ecosystems and it’s important to know how they will fare in a warmer world. Now, thanks to Jessica Blois from Stanford University and a hoard of new fossils, we have an idea. As they say, all this has happened before…

Around 12,000 years ago, as the Pleistocene epoch drew to a close, the mammals of North America were also dealing with multiple threats. The last Ice Age was giving way to the far warmer Holocene and at the same time, humans arrived on the scene, wiping out species after species. Some of the larger losses are familiar, such as the mammoths and ground sloths, but a new treasure trove of fossils in California’s Samwell Cave has revealed the fate of their smaller kin.

The common wisdom suggests that small mammals are relatively resistant to extinction, because they have large litters, they breed quickly and their populations grow at incredible rates (think mice and rabbits). The Samwell fossils support this idea but they also tell us that communities of small mammals were greatly affected by natural warming nonetheless. Their diversity plummeted, they became less evenly spread, and rare species became ever rarer.

Not everything suffered though – ‘weedy’ species took over this new landscape. The deer mice did particularly well, doubling in abundance between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago. These rodents aren’t fussy about their homes and they’re often the first into a new area. Opportunistic and adaptable, these generalists flourished under changing circumstances that flummoxed others. And their rise to power accounted for much of the fall in overall species evenness during this time. There are signs that deer mice are doing the same today.

To Blois, it’s clear that these changes were mainly driven by climate change. As the temperature rose, so the evenness and richness of the mammal communities fell, and the first signs of falling populations coincided neatly with the very rapid warming of the Bolling-Allerod period. Individual species supported these general trends. The Western pocket gopher and the mountain beaver both went locally extinct and today, they’re found in much cooler parts of California. Blois thinks that these rodents tracked the cooler weather to other more hospitable areas.

Meanwhile, Blois also ruled out other possible explanations. Humans invaded North America during the end of the Pleistocene, but the shifts in small mammal populations predated them by around 1,500 years. The fall of the large beasts could have altered the local vegetation, creating new landscapes for species that scurry, but these new plant communities also appeared after the small mammal communities had already started to shift. Changing climate, it seems, is the best explanation.

Blois says that since today’s climate is changing even more quickly, our current small mammals might face a similar fate to their Pleistocene counterparts. Their communities are likely to shift towards an impoverished and uneven selection of species. In this way, they could act as a colony of furry canaries, as “harbingers of imperilled ecosystems”.

Reference: Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09077

More on climate change:

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Do Scientists Want (or Need) Media Training? | The Intersection

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Tomorrow at MIT, I'll be giving a four hour "boot camp" on science communication to a group of graduate students and other interested parties. The session begins with an overview of the "theory" of science communication--why we must do it better, what the obstacles are, and how a changing media environment makes it much tougher than it was during the era when the dude at right was so popular (the same era when the dude at *top* right was about to deregulate the media...). Then, the session goes into a media "how to"--rules for interacting with journalists, media do's and don'ts, and an overview of various key communication "technologies," such as framing. Finally, it ends with a role playing in which the scientists get to try out their chops in a Colbert-style interview, and see if they can stay on message while traversing the very rockiest of media seas. I get the sense there is an increasing demand for this kind of training, which is often not provided in the standard science graduate curriculum. The hunger seems especially strong among the younger set of scientists. Why? Well, consider the write up for another all day sci comm boot camp I did at Princeton ...


A skeptic needs our help | Bad Astronomy

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michaelstriebLast year, at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, I met a young skeptic who went by the handle Nobby Nobbs on the fora. His real name is Michael Strieb, and he has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is the same condition Stephen Hawking has.

In Michael’s case it confined him to a wheelchair and at TAM it was very difficult for him to speak. I just read from Rebecca at Skepchick that his condition has progressed, and now it’s impossible for him to talk. His mind is healthy and sharp, but his body is making it extremely difficult to communicate.

Because of this, a group has set up a page where people can donate so that they can buy Michael an Eye Gaze System, an incredibly cool setup where a machine can measure where his eye is pointing, and use that to guide a cursor on a computer screen, allowing Michael to once again communicate. The device costs about $3200.

Update: Someone who knows Michael has let me know that this is not the only source of their financial need. As you can imagine, his situation can put a strain on anyone’s budget. So please give what you can, and help out a guy — and his family — who could use a little relief.

Michael’s one of the good guys. I just sent in my donation, so please, if you can, help him out.


Our innate duty?

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Last week, I had the fortunate privilege of meeting a good number of 150 of human spaceflight & NASA’s biggest supporters and advocates. Nope, they weren’t NASA employees; most weren’t even affiliated with the space industry in any way. They came from all walks of life, from across the United States, and even some from across the pond, to marvel at one of mankind’s greatest technological creations, as it soared into the skies, out of our atmosphere, and into the void we call space.

These folks dropped everything they were doing for 2+ days, to fly, drive, walk, run (OK, maybe I exaggerated on the latter two), to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where they were given the chance of a lifetime to interact with NASA professionals and see the sites where the US human spaceflight program roared to life. Their stay culminated in the witnessing of a now almost historical event: a space shuttle launch.

Now, in hindsight, I admit that walking into the STS-132 Tweetup tent for the first time overwhelmed me a bit…after all, I’d just walked into an area with 150+ almost new faces, something I probably hadn’t done since college. Over the next day and a half, I had a chance to interact with many of the participants, as we shared an experience I’m sure many of us will never forget. I think what struck me most throughout that time, and even today, is how passionate and excited they all were to not only get to see all of these awe-inspiring sites (undoubtedly ones many of us grew up reading about), but how generally interested they were in spaceflight.

Living and working in the bowels of our nation’s human spaceflight program affords us many opportunities and benefits. It is, however, incredibly easy (moreso than I ever could’ve imagined) to become jaded and unknowingly unappreciative of the incredible nature of it all. We, as NASA employees, have the perfect vantage point and opportunity to share both our own and our agency’s passion, drive, and accomplishments towards human spaceflight; and I’d be willing to argue that in some respect, it is our duty to act as ambassadors, facilitating conversations and interacting with those around us, to communicate (within reason, of course) our own personal raison d’etre for contributing to the human spaceflight program.

In the days since the tweetup, I’ve chatted with several of the participants I met in Florida. The most amazing thing to note about all of these interactions? They are still SO excited about what they got to be a part of last week. Their fervent passion has “recharged” me in a way, reminding me that what I am fortunate enough to do on a day-to-day basis is actually pretty amazing – and for that, I’m incredibly, incredibly grateful to all of them.

Now the question: just as NASA’s employees have an opportunity to be ambassadors for NASA, do the participants of all of NASA’s incredibly successful “Tweetups” have a similar chance and responsibility now? If so, what is the best way to leverage their (your) current excitement, and reach out to their (your) friends, families, and communities to engage them while sharing their (your) passion for space exploration?

This is our challenge, regardless of the level of affiliation we have with the US human spaceflight program. As space enthusiasts, we have a collective responsibility to share the amazing accomplishments and communicate the excitement we all felt when we first saw a shuttle launch, or walked into Mission Control, or talked to an astronaut.

And so, my challenge to not only the NASA employees reading this, but also the #NASATweetup participants, is how do we share our excitement and wonder with those around us? What’s the best way to share our experiences and have others share in our passion? How can we all partner together to connect with those around us?

Unruly Democracy: Pictures, Videos | The Intersection

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The conference on science blogging at the Harvard Kennedy School from last month now has a lot of multimedia available. There are Flickr pictures, like this one, showing a panel comprised of myself, Jessica Palmer, Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and moderator Sam Evans: And there are also 35 YouTube vids of the entire event. I am going to post some of these over the course of the week with commentary, but for now, you can start from the intro, by Harvard's Sheila Jasanoff, and go from there...


Red Meat: Is It Hazardous to Health?

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Red meat consumption has been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and several types of cancer (breast, colorectal, stomach, bladder, prostate, and lymphoma). There are plausible mechanisms: meat is a source of carcinogens, iron that may increase oxidative damage, and saturated fat. But correlation and plausibility are not enough to establish causation. Is red meat really dangerous? If so, how great is the risk? A couple of recent studies have tried to shed light on these questions, but they have raised more questions than they have answered.

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

A new study in Circulation, “Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes Mellitus. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” by Micha, Wallace and Mozaffarian, is a systematic review of the literature. It analyzed 17 prospective cohort studies and 3 case-control studies, with a total of 1.2 million subjects. As far as I can judge, it appears to be a well-done systematic review with excellent methodology and multiple precautions. They even looked for things like publication bias (which they did not find).

They found that the consumption of processed meats, but not red meats, is associated with a higher incidence of coronary heart disease and diabetes. (Processed meats include bacon, sausage, ham, hot dogs, salami, luncheon meat and other cured meats.) The increased risk per 50 gram serving of processed meats per day was 42% for heart disease and 19% for diabetes. Unprocessed red meats were not associated with CHD and were associated with a nonsignificant trend towards higher risk of diabetes. They found no association with stroke, but this was based only on 3 studies.

They commented that

“…each of these individual studies has potential limitations, and our findings should be interpreted in that context. On the other hand, this represents the most complete worldwide evidence to date of the potential effects of red and processed meat consumption on incidence of CHD, stroke, and diabetes mellitus.”

A Large Study of Meat and Mortality

A 2009 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, “Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people,” by Sinha et al., was more comprehensive in that it looked at many different conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease, and it measured various causes of mortality as well as all-cause mortality.

The half a million subjects were 51-70 years old and were from various geographic locations in the US. They filled out a questionnaire that asked about their usual consumption of foods and drinks and portion sizes over the previous twelve months. Their diets were classified as high, medium or low risk meat diets based on the amount of red meat and white meat adjusted for energy, and they were split into two groups using median consumption as cutpoints. The study was prospective: it assessed diet first and then followed subjects for 10 years and recorded deaths and causes of death.

It concluded that red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality and CVD mortality.

In general, those in the highest quintile of red meat intake tended to consume a slightly lower amount of white meat, but a higher amount of processed meat than those in the lowest quintile. Subjects who consumed more red meat tended to be married, more likely to be of non-Hispanic white ethnicity, more likely to be a current smoker, have a higher body mass index, and a higher daily intake of energy, total fat and saturated fat; whereas they tended to have a lower education level, were less physically active and consumed less fruits, vegetables, fiber and vitamin supplements.

They found an increased risk associated with accidental deaths with higher consumption of red meat in men but not in women. It’s hard to know how to interpret that. They found an inverse association for white meat intake: it appeared protective against total mortality, but there was a small increase in risk for CVD mortality in men.

The overall hazard ratios for men ranged from 1.06 to 1.31 for red meat (increasing steadily by quintile of meat intake), .90 to.92 for white meat, and 1.01 to 1.16 for processed meats. The effect of red meat was greater than the effect of processed meats, which was opposite to the findings of the review in Circulation.

They tried to correct for confounders. In the process, they found an increased risk with white meat consumption among never-smokers and commented that the reason was not readily apparent. I suspect that the reason was that if you look at a large enough number of subgroups you can always find an occasional chance correlation that is meaningless.

Their data also showed that increased red meat consumption was correlated to smoking, lack of exercise, higher total calorie intake, higher body weight, higher total fat and saturated fat intake, lower intake of fruits, vegetables and fiber, and lower use of vitamin supplements. Could it be this constellation of factors, rather than red meat itself, that leads to higher mortality?

They estimated that

For overall mortality … 11% of deaths in men and 16% of deaths in women could be prevented if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of intake in the first quintile.

I don’t think this can be determined from the data. They haven’t reliably ruled out all possible confounding factors and they don’t have any direct evidence that taking people with a high red meat intake and reducing their intake improves their longevity.

What about Vegetarians?

A recent study comparing vegetarians to non-vegetarians found that

…in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34% lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans. There were no significant differences between vegetarians and nonvegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or all other causes combined.

Meta-analysis of several prospective studies showed no significant differences in the mortality caused by colorectal, stomach, lung, prostate or breast cancers and stroke between vegetarians and “health-conscious” nonvegetarians.

In vegetarians, a decrease of ischemic heart disease mortality was observed probably due to lower total serum cholesterol levels, lower prevalence of obesity and higher consumption of antioxidants. Very probably, an ample consumption of fruits and vegetables and not the exclusion of meat make vegetarians healthful.

Conclusion

Epidemiologic studies based on self-reporting and recall are not the most reliable form of evidence. What are we to make of all the confusing data? The evidence is far from conclusive, but it suggests that it would be wise to limit our consumption of red meat. The evidence is not strong enough to support recommendations that we give up red meat entirely or become vegetarians.

Aristotle said “Moderation in all things.” Mom said “Eat your vegetables.” They were both right.


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