Last weekend, the Greatist Team took a little retreat to a country house about an hour north of the good ol? Big Apple. While we love the home-away-from-home we?ve created at Greatist HQ, we were all in need of a little time away from the urban jungle to talk team bonding.
The first thing we tackled when planning the trip? FOOD (duh). One thing we knew we had to take advantage of was having double ovens. (Yes, I was pretty much in heaven.)?When we stumbled across these?Dark Chocolate Avocado Cookies?on Pinterest, we knew we had struck gold simply because they covered all of the staff?s dietary needs?and?loves in one simple recipe: gluten- and dairy-free, with avocado and dark chocolate as the main ingredients.?We promise you?ll love them, too.
Recipe:?Dark Chocolate Avocado Cookies
Photo by Jordan Shakeshaft
Makes about 12 1-inch cookies. Adapted from?Cooking with Dia.
What You?ll Need:
1/2 cup mashed avocado 1 bag dark chocolate chips (100 grams) 3/4 cup gluten-free flour mix (or whole-wheat flour) 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 cup turbinado sugar 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp cider vinegar 1 tsp cinnamon 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
What to Do:?
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the avocado and sugar. Blend until well incorporated. (If you?re short a food processor, go for a good ol? bowl and mixing spoon. Just mix very very well!)
Add the vanilla, cider vinegar, baking soda, cocoa powder, and cinnamon and mix to combine.
Add in the flour, and mix until the batter is smooth and the ingredients are evenly incorporated.
Take?the cookie batter out of the food processor and put into a mixing bowl.?Stir?in the chocolate chips. (Feeling fancy? Add some chopped roasted nuts, too!)
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (so the cookies don?t stick).
Spoon?out approximately 1 tablespoon-sized scoops of the dough, and flatten into an even, cookie-like shape (the dough will not spread when it bakes).
Bake?for 10 minutes, turning the tray around half way through.
Allow?cookies to sit for 3 to 4 minutes before?transferring?to a cooling rack.
Have you tried your hand at vegan or gluten-free baking? How?d it go? Share your stories in the comments below!?
Since being launched in the U.K. last year, second-screen TV app Zeebox* has gradually been making its way to other geographies. About a month ago, I reported that Zeebox would be coming to the U.S. market with investment from Comcast, and today that's finally happening. The Zeebox companion TV app is now available to iOS and Android users in the U.S., and it's launching with strategic investment not just from Comcast, but also from NBC Universal.
ZURICH (Reuters) - Three Swiss engineers guilty of involvement in a Pakistani nuclear smuggling ring avoided a prison sentence on Tuesday after agreeing a plea bargain with the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office.
Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Marco and Urs, pleaded guilty at the federal criminal court in Bellinzona of supplying centrifuge parts and participating in the smuggling ring of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear programme, who in 2004 was found by Pakistan to have sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
However, after agreeing the plea bargain, the Tinner trio were handed relatively mild suspended jail sentences of between 24 and 50 months.
In a long testimony, Friedrich Tinner told the court on Monday about how he met A. Q. Khan in 1975 and used his business in the eastern city of St. Gallen to sell centrifuge parts for enriching uranium, the online edition of Swiss tabloid Blick reported.
The court also heard that Urs Tinner set up production sites in Dubai and Malaysia for producing centrifuge parts for enriching uranium, while Marco took care of supplies and book-keeping.
Swiss authorities started investigating Marco Tinner and his brother in 2004, confiscating thousands of documents. A year later they expanded investigations to include Friedrich Tinner.
In 2009 Urs Tinner said that he had helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to uncover Libya's nuclear weapons programme by tipping it off that Libya was about to receive the equipment needed to make an atom bomb.
It was widely reported in the Swiss media that further investigations into the Tinners were halted after the CIA urged the Swiss government to drop them to avoid exposing the extent of the agency's activities.
Switzerland, which is not a nuclear power, is not authorized under the global Non-Proliferation Treaty to possess documents related to nuclear weaponry. (Reporting by Catherine Bosley; Editing by David Goodman)
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If folks are keen on partaking in tough sport, they could try the wakeboard activity. Wakeboarding is deemed as an intense challenge sport, practically precisely the same like the snowboard or the skateboard. Despite the fact that the majority of them share precisely the same similarities, they nonetheless have simple differences and traits.
The wakeboard itself is basically a water sport activity where folks would ride the board though being dragged by a motor boat. The creation of this specific activity is according to the surfing, snowboarding, as well as water skiing. Even though all of the supporting elements may seem unimportant, every single of them play important role in the success of the sport. For example, people today ought to select the appropriate board size, their own weight, the speed, as well as the forms of tricks they desire to execute. The varieties of motor boat are also significant. The model, the speed, and even the year of making play important role inside the sport activity. Apart from the motor boat, the board can also be dragged by winches, water craft for personal use, and closed course method cable. This sport may also be played on land. When men and women come to the wakeboarding park, they will see that such board can be towed by cars or trucks, and other all terrain mode automobiles.
Regardless of the seemingly uncomplicated performance, wakeboarding has its personal organization known as because the IWWF or the International Water-ski and Wakeboard Federation. It was set up around 1946 and in 2009 was modified to IWF or International Water-ski Federation. This sport has been included within the World Games 2005 and has been involved as critical sport activities. You'll find in fact athletes who are professionals in performing such game.
It can be believed that the wakeboarding was originally referred to as skurfing, produced around 1980s, right after the existence of snowboarding activity. It can be believed that the sport originated in New Zealand and Australia. Lots of parties happen to be thinking about the concept of the sport and they have started promotion all over the world. Later on, the name was changed into wakeboarding since it is believed that the board comes to 'wake' when utilized through the sport.
Now the wakeboarding activity can also be being used on land, exactly where wheels are attached on the board, permitting the user to slide by means of the street whilst getting dragged by a certain car. The wakeboarding park is generally total with people today practicing their wakeboarding ability even though their good friends are looking to pull them with bikes or motorcycle. Naturally, such practice is not considered. The wakeboarding park itself is just the new terms that these people are applying. The original which means of Wakeboarding Park could be the cable wakeboarding technique when people today are carrying out this sport getting dragged by overhead cable-ski model. Within this world, you will discover about 140 cable parks readily available. These parks are the true which means on the park wakeboarding model.
If individuals are interested in carrying out such tough activity, they need to uncover out extra information regarding it: how the safety method, how the tricks and the whole sport activity, and also the risks. They really should seek advice from the professionals and under no circumstances attempt everything on their own.
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Philadelphia, PA, September 13, 2012 Ghrelin is a hormone released by the lining of the stomach that promotes feeding behavior. Decreasing ghrelin levels could potentially help combat obesity -- in fact, a vaccine that lowers ghrelin levels in order to reduce appetite is being studied as a treatment for obesity.
However, many people eat as a way to relieve stress. If low ghrelin levels increase stress, its effectiveness as a treatment for obesity may be reduced. In the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers led by Dr. Zane Andrews of Monash University in Australia show that mice with no ghrelin are more anxious after stress, but that administration of endogenous ghrelin prevents the over-anxious response.
Previous studies have indicated that ghrelin can be either anxiety-causing or anxiety-relieving. This new set of studies now reveals that this dual role in anxiety behavior is context-dependent. Under non-stressed conditions, normal mice show mild anxiety relative to mice without ghrelin. Under acute stress, normal mice mount an appropriate ghrelin response to stress and are less anxious than no-ghrelin mice. In other words, stress-induced ghrelin release targets the body's stress system to stimulate a hormonal response that will combat the stress.
Ghrelin promotes the drive for food intake and maintains blood glucose during negative energy balance as well as subserving the rewarding nature of food. "We postulate that, under conditions of acute stress, ghrelin limits excessive anxious behavior by promoting the feeling of reward to ensure appropriate food-seeking behavior and maintain energy homeostasis. Consistent with this idea, studies from Jeff Zigman and colleagues showed that elevated ghrelin during calorie restriction produced anxiolytic responses in a test of anxious behavior," said Andrews.
"We hypothesize that ghrelin suppresses anxiety under acutely stressful conditions to encourage food seeking and maintain appropriate energy homeostasis. Indeed, the importance of ghrelin in controlling stress-induced anxiety might manifest only during conditions of elevated plasma ghrelin, such as negative energy balance and calorie restriction," he continued. "This phenomenon represents an important evolutionary adaptation that maintains food-seeking behavior in the face of acutely stressful environments."
"This study highlights the complexity of approaches for reducing the epidemic in obesity," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "In this case, low ghrelin levels stimulate anxiety and anxiety is a factor that increases food consumption in humans, particularly sweet and fatty comfort foods. These studies highlight complex relationships between systems in the body and brain that regulate mood and food consumption."
###
The article is "Ghrelin Regulates the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis and Restricts Anxiety After Acute Stress" by Sarah J. Spencer, Lu Xu, Melanie A. Clarke, Moyra Lemus, Alex Reichenbach, Bram Geenen, Tams Kozicz, and Zane B. Andrews (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.03.010). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 72, Issue 6 (September 15, 2012), published by Elsevier.
Notes for editors
Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Dr. Zane Andrews at +61 3 99058165 or zane.andrews@monash.edu.
The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.
John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.
About Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.
The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.
Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 5th out of 129 Psychiatry titles and 16th out of 243 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports published by Thomson Reuters. The 2011 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 8.283.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Low ghrelin -- reducing appetite at the cost of increased stress?Public release date: 13-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Philadelphia, PA, September 13, 2012 Ghrelin is a hormone released by the lining of the stomach that promotes feeding behavior. Decreasing ghrelin levels could potentially help combat obesity -- in fact, a vaccine that lowers ghrelin levels in order to reduce appetite is being studied as a treatment for obesity.
However, many people eat as a way to relieve stress. If low ghrelin levels increase stress, its effectiveness as a treatment for obesity may be reduced. In the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers led by Dr. Zane Andrews of Monash University in Australia show that mice with no ghrelin are more anxious after stress, but that administration of endogenous ghrelin prevents the over-anxious response.
Previous studies have indicated that ghrelin can be either anxiety-causing or anxiety-relieving. This new set of studies now reveals that this dual role in anxiety behavior is context-dependent. Under non-stressed conditions, normal mice show mild anxiety relative to mice without ghrelin. Under acute stress, normal mice mount an appropriate ghrelin response to stress and are less anxious than no-ghrelin mice. In other words, stress-induced ghrelin release targets the body's stress system to stimulate a hormonal response that will combat the stress.
Ghrelin promotes the drive for food intake and maintains blood glucose during negative energy balance as well as subserving the rewarding nature of food. "We postulate that, under conditions of acute stress, ghrelin limits excessive anxious behavior by promoting the feeling of reward to ensure appropriate food-seeking behavior and maintain energy homeostasis. Consistent with this idea, studies from Jeff Zigman and colleagues showed that elevated ghrelin during calorie restriction produced anxiolytic responses in a test of anxious behavior," said Andrews.
"We hypothesize that ghrelin suppresses anxiety under acutely stressful conditions to encourage food seeking and maintain appropriate energy homeostasis. Indeed, the importance of ghrelin in controlling stress-induced anxiety might manifest only during conditions of elevated plasma ghrelin, such as negative energy balance and calorie restriction," he continued. "This phenomenon represents an important evolutionary adaptation that maintains food-seeking behavior in the face of acutely stressful environments."
"This study highlights the complexity of approaches for reducing the epidemic in obesity," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "In this case, low ghrelin levels stimulate anxiety and anxiety is a factor that increases food consumption in humans, particularly sweet and fatty comfort foods. These studies highlight complex relationships between systems in the body and brain that regulate mood and food consumption."
###
The article is "Ghrelin Regulates the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis and Restricts Anxiety After Acute Stress" by Sarah J. Spencer, Lu Xu, Melanie A. Clarke, Moyra Lemus, Alex Reichenbach, Bram Geenen, Tams Kozicz, and Zane B. Andrews (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.03.010). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 72, Issue 6 (September 15, 2012), published by Elsevier.
Notes for editors
Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Dr. Zane Andrews at +61 3 99058165 or zane.andrews@monash.edu.
The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.
John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.
About Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.
The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.
Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 5th out of 129 Psychiatry titles and 16th out of 243 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports published by Thomson Reuters. The 2011 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 8.283.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Is the Duchess of Cambridge pregnant? For real this time? These new photos of the Princess, who is on a nine day tour of Asia, are sparking the pregnancy rumors once again. Add the fact the she is only drinking water, and opting out of the wine and champagne at the state dinners, and bam! She is knocked up for sure! Check out more potential baby bump photos at our friends, Bitten and Bound and let us know what you think! I don’t know if this is true or just another rumor. people are dying for the princess to get knocked up! I think they Royals need a little royal baby running around! Whether it is true or not, I have a feeling we will be hearing these rumors until they actually come to fruition. She is in the most public eye you can imagine, world wide public eye and it comes with the territory. There may be more to this than just rumor though. After looking around, I came across these photos at the HuffPo and it seems she was sipping just water, while everyone else was drinking wine. Quite suspicious!!! Why add to rumors by drinking water if [...]