Pumpkins are synonymous with Halloween; propped up on doorsteps and peering through front windows, their flesh carved into ghoulish smiles, eyes glowing with flickering flames. But their value goes far beyond the Halloween accessory they’ve become known for. They stick around until Thanksgiving, and then peter off the shelves, to make way for the Christmas fare.
In the West, pumpkins may be the main ingredient in a traditional holiday pie, but their true potential lies in their nutritional and medicinal benefits. Rich in various essential nutrients and relatively easy to grow, this hardy, drought-tolerant crop is underrated. Pumpkins offer great promise as farmers battle with water scarcity and increasingly harsh climates, local communities struggle with economic insecurity, and the world’s population is increasingly undernourished.
In Bangladesh, mini deserts – known as sand bars – are formed due to climate change-caused flooding during the torrential rains of the five-month-long monsoon. The sediments deposited contain highly toxic elements due to river pollution, and they render the land infertile. However, these river-eroded, silt-covered lands are now being harnessed to grow pumpkins to help tackle food insecurity, unemployment, and malnourishment.
What started in 2005 a project called “Pumpkins against Poverty”, formed by the non-profit Practical Action, has now turned into a profitable enterprise called Pumpkin Plus. “We are working with over 1,000 agri-entrepreneurs, exporting pumpkins to Qatar, Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries, and building the capacity of the local communities to diversify to commercial agriculture,” says Nazmul Islam Chowdhury, chief executive of the company. “On average, [these communities] earn around £6,000 ($7,340) in a span of five months.”
Pumpkins are an ideal plant for water-insecure regions due to their tolerance of drought. Given their ability to withstand less water and salinity, as well as the fact that Bangladesh farmers can make a good profit compared to other produce, they are the preferred crop to be grown in the sand bars. Researchers from Selcuk University, Turkey, are trying to develop novel varieties of pumpkins based on certain cultivars that will result in a more drought-tolerant crop.
Spotting a tick on your body can be borderline terrifying. After all, not only can the insect suck your blood, it can also carry a range of potentially serious diseases like Lyme disease and babesiosis. Fear not: If you forgot your repellent on your last outdoor trek, here’s how to remove a tick head the right way, according to experts.
Naturally, you’ll want to remove the tick ASAP, but sometimes the bug can break, leaving you with the tick’s mouth-parts embedded in your skin. Not only is that gross, it could raise your risk of getting sick. “The more of a tick that’s removed, the less likely it is to be able to spread a pathogen,” says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Meaning, you really want to try to remove the whole tick—including the head—if you can.
So, how do you remove a tick head after getting a tick bite? Here’s what you need to know.
How to remove a tick
The best way to avoid having to figure out how to remove a tick head is to get the whole tick out in the first place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends doing the following:
Use clean, fine-tipped tweezers to grab the tick as close to your skin’s surface as possible.
Pull upward with steady, even pressure. (Don’t twist or jerk the tick—that can cause the head and mouth-parts to break off and stay in your the skin.
Get rid of the tick by putting it in alcohol, placing it in a sealed bag or container, wrapping it tightly in tape, or flushing it down the toilet.
Introduction:Making social connections and relationships is very important, but it is essential to identify the beauty of living content in your own company. Learning to be happy alone is a helpful skill to improve your well-being and personal growth.Key to living with yourself 1. Self-Acceptance:Self-acceptance is the cornerstone of happiness in loneliness. Embrace your unique […]
A few days before New Year’s Eve, an unfamiliar health insurance card for me arrived in the mail. I assumed there must have been an error and called the human resources department of the medical center where I’m employed as a doctor.
“No,” the representative replied, “it’s not a mistake. You didn’t enroll this year, so you automatically got put on the basic plan.”
“That’s … that’s impossible,” I stammered. “I’ve always signed up my family for the same health plan.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ofri,” the representative said, rechecking her records, “but you didn’t enroll this year.”
Could that be? Could I have somehow forgotten? Or missed the notification? “But don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve put you on the basic plan.”
“OK,” I said, starting to relax and thinking out loud. “I guess my kids will get to meet some new doctors.”
But the representative did not match my tone. “I’m sorry, but the basic plan is just for the employee,” she said, “not your family.”
That’s when a coil of disbelief clamped my heart to a standstill. My spouse and children would be left without health insurance? The panicked questions quickly percolated: What about their ongoing medical treatments? What about their medications? What if someone got hit by a car, or got cancer? There’s hardly a more devastating feeling for a parent than to realize that you haven’t adequately provided for your family.
Swirling in panic, I hardly heard anything else the representative said. There was something about referring my case to a supervisor, but it was a holiday week, so many employees were on vacation. All I could think about was that in a few days, it would be the new year, and my family would be uncovered. I felt tears creep into the corners of my eyes as I realized that I had jeopardized my family’s health. All, it seemed, from missing the email notifications.
Protein is one of the building blocks of all the cells in your body. From your hair to your muscles to your hormones, it’s necessary to make sure you’re consuming enough protein to fuel all these body processes. But there are times in life when you may need a little more protein, such as when you’re very physically active if you’re following a vegetarian or vegan diet, if you’re older than 65, and if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Not to mention, things like injuries or illness can temporarily increase your protein needs.
But there is another major benefit of protein, and that’s the satiety factor it provides. Protein helps you feel full, which can help if you are trying to lose weight. But research suggests that eating too much protein and avoiding carbohydrates—especially those with fiber—can have a negative effect on your bowels and gut microbiota. In addition to protein, it’s important to consume fiber, especially fiber that comes from whole grains and vegetables. Fiber has several functions in the body, including promoting healthy digestion and healthy weight maintenance, supporting heart health, and reducing the risk of constipation that may come along with eating more protein.
Consuming more anti-inflammatory foods alongside more protein and fiber is a triple whammy when it comes to health benefits. The anti-inflammatory diet is similar to the Mediterranean diet that focuses on nutrient-dense foods that are also often high in protein and fiber. But which ones should you focus on?
In this high-protein, high-fiber anti-inflammatory meal plan, we focus on lean proteins, high-fiber vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts to help you feel full and satisfied. Each day has at least 75 grams of protein, which is higher than the recommended 50 grams per day for a 140-pound person. (Protein needs are typically calculated at 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight.) And for fiber, adults should aim for at least 25 grams, but we boosted this plan up to 30 grams of fiber per day. This meal plan is set at 1,500 calories per day, which is a level at which most people will lose weight, but if you require more or fewer calories, adjustments for 1,200 calories and 2,000 calories are also listed.
What Is the Anti-Inflammatory Diet?
The anti-inflammatory diet limits highly processed foods, added sugars, and excessive red meat consumption and instead focuses on healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. By concentrating on nutrient-dense foods (those that give you a lot of nutrients in a serving) you can help reduce chronic inflammation in the body.
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Photo: Photographer: Jen Causey, Food Stylist: Emily Nabors Hall
3. Nutritionally stated, potatoes are a good source of antioxidants, carotenoids, flavonoids and phenolic acid. Also, it is loaded with fibre content, vitamin B6, and minerals and is gluten-free. But, what makes fries calorie-dense is due to the deep frying technique to make them crispy. As a result, the nutritional content is damaged. Due to […]
Former Small Business Administration boss and now senior fellow at Harvard Business School, Karen Mills, wants to create a lending utopia for entrepreneurs — and it all comes down to technology.
Mills believes that modern technology can help reduce friction and barriers within small-business lending. The way she sees it, the two challenges in small-business lending boil down to information opacity — since it’s “nearly impossible” to see inside a small business and know what’s going on — and the sheer variety of small businesses that lenders encounter.
“One day you’re lending to a dry cleaner and the next day to a parts supplier, the next to a hairdresser,” Mills said during a panel discussion at the Money20/20 conference in late October. “How do you get a credit file that allows you to understand that business?”
The answer, Mills suggests, rests with application programming interfaces, better known as APIs. APIs are software intermediaries which connect two applications with one another. If you’ve ever called an Uber or sent money to someone through an online payment system, then you’ve used an API.
Mills is calling for an API to streamline small-business lending. Instead of an entrepreneur photo copying her tax information and compiling financial documents to send over to a lender, have a fintech company plug into the entrepreneur’s financials (like a QuickBooks account). The fintech can then send it directly to the lender.
The underlying thinking is that this enables a fintech company to dramatically shave time from the lending process, which can help small businesses get the money they need faster — and perhaps even highlight businesses that are creditworthy.
The idea is already coming together at Codat. The London-based fintech works as a bridge between lenders and small businesses, providing the software systems small-business customers use (think accounting and bookkeeping systems, like QuickBooks) to lenders. The lender then has real-time visibility into the small business, allowing the business to leverage its data “to access the best product at the best price as quickly and efficiently as possible,” according to Peter Lord, Codat’s CEO. Among others, Codat counts companies like Shopify and American Express as customers.
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Karen Mills, former chief of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Photo: Getty Images
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Ugh, a tick!
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