James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

Hmmmm … Be sure to follow Josiah, he has a lot of musical content you will enjoy! 

.

Josiah Wade

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

4. Salmon With Olive Oil-Braised Zucchini and Chickpeas

Slow-cooking zucchini in garlicky olive oil intensifies their natural sweetness and gives them a silky texture.

Recipe: Salmon With Olive Oil-Braised Zucchini and Chickpeas

5. Chimichurri Chicken

.

Suzanne Saroff

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article (sound on to listen, and for all images with links):

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

No one likes to do something they find unpleasant. Who among us hasn’t put off icky things such as a tedious work assignment, a fridge deep clean or a difficult conversation? The reason why someone just can’t seem to get started isn’t a mere failure of willpower: it is rooted in neurobiology.

In a new paper published in Current Biology, researchers describe a circuit in the brains of macaque monkeys that appears to function as a “motivation brake,” a finding that could offer clues to why people hesitate in making certain decisions.

“We were able to causally link a specific brain pathway to a ‘brake’ on motivation when individuals face unpleasant tasks in daily life,” says Ken-ichi Amemori, an associate professor at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology at Kyoto University and a co-author of the study.

In the study, researchers presented macaques with tasks: the monkeys would either get a reward at the end of the task or a reward plus a puff of air on their face. As one might expect, the monkeys took longer to do the task when it meant getting the uncomfortable puff of air.

Then, using a technique called chemogenetics, whereby scientists can use drugs to control specific brain cells, the researchers suppressed a circuit between two brain regions called the ventral striatum and the ventral pallidum—both are known to be involved in motivation.

Once the circuit’s activity was tamped down, the monkeys were less hesitant to act on the task even if they knew the air puff was coming. In other words, the “brake” appeared to have been eased off.

“We hope that understanding this neural mechanism will help advance our understanding of motivation in stressful modern societies,” Amemori says.

He and his team hope the findings could one day inform treatments for psychiatric conditions that involve motivation such as schizophrenia and depression. He also notes, however, that interventions designed to weaken the “brake” should be approached with caution in case they might instead promote the opposite—unsafe risk-taking.

.

(Photo by Lambert/Getty Images)

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

From

Click the link below the picture

.

Don’t sleep on your rice cooker: It just might be the most underrated tool in your kitchen. The countertop appliance is a foolproof way to make, well, rice, but it’s capable of so much more — from porridge to pancakes.

“In a rice cooker, you just set it and know it’s going to hold the right temperature the whole time,” says Joe Nierstedt, chef-owner of Katsubō in Charleston, South Carolina. “It keeps a steady heat, traps all the aroma, and makes even a small kitchen feel capable of big, slow-cooked flavor.” 

Though rice cookers run the gamut in terms of their built-in functions — our top pick comes with presets for “quick,” “porridge,” “sweet,” and more — you don’t need a premium, high-tech machine to reap the benefits of this versatility.

“I’ve been using an off-brand rice cooker with a simple steel base, and honestly, it cooks just as well as any of the fancy models I’ve tried,” says John Ho, chef and manager at FLIK Hospitality Group and chef with Resident, who calls rice cookers “an incredibly budget-friendly alternative to pressure cookers or slow cookers.”

If you’ve only cooked white rice in your appliance, these chef-approved hacks are a great way to branch out — and start giving your rice cooker the love (and counter space) it deserves.

Congee 

“Most people think rice cookers are just for rice, but that steady, gentle heat is perfect for congee,” says Nierstedt. “It holds the temperature perfectly, so you get that silky, spoon-coating texture without stirring for hours.”

To make chicken congee, Nierstedt adds jasmine rice, smashed ginger, scallions, broth or water, and a splash of soy sauce to a rice cooker and cooks the mixture on the porridge setting. 

No specialized porridge function? No problem. For his shrimp and lemongrass congee, Kevin Tien, chef-owner of Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C., toasts aromatics in oil on the cook function, adds stock and rice, then simmers on warm for 45 minutes to one hour, stirring occasionally and tossing in the shrimp near the end of cooking.

Broth and soups 

“At Katsubō, we simmer broth all day, but at home I take a shortcut,” says Nierstedt. For his streamlined ramen broth, he combines chicken wings, kombu, onions, and water in the rice cooker and sets the mixture on slow cook for a few hours, which “quietly extracts all the gelatin and flavor without boiling the broth to death.” (No slow cook preset? You can also “cook” through two cycles, then keep on warm to mimic the function, Nierstedt says.) As he explains, “The sealed pot keeps moisture and aroma locked in, so the result tastes clean and rich — no cloudy stock, no babysitting the stove.” 

Ho is also an advocate of using the rice cooker for broth — and even soup. “The rice cooker is ideal for low-and-slow cooking, allowing the meat to become tender and infuse the broth with deep flavor,” he says.

For his one-pot pork and daikon udon soup, Ho cooks blanched pork spare ribs, chicken stock, daikon, and aromatics on the brown rice setting in 20-minute intervals until the meat is tender, then finishes with udon noodles on the white rice setting. “I’ve tested this recipe both in a rice cooker and on the stove and found no noticeable difference in texture or flavor.” 

Braised meats 

Anywhere you’re slow-cooking meat until fall-off-the-bone tender — from short ribs to chicken thighs — the steady, controlled heat of a rice cooker makes it a smart, handy alternative to traditional methods.

“For adobo, it keeps everything juicy without boiling it too hard,” says Cédric Vongerichten, executive chef-owner of Wayan and Ma•dé in New York City, who recalls making the classic Filipino dish with his college roommate in a kitchen-less dorm. 

“We would add the chicken or pork straight in the rice cooker with soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves, garlic, and black peppercorns, press cook, [and] let it simmer. When it switched to warm, we would leave it for another 30 to 40 minutes to finish,” says Vongerichten. The space-saving machine turned out a flawless, hassle-free meal. “The meat came out super-tender, and the sauce got rich from cooking down slowly — the trick was not opening the lid too much and letting the steam do the work.” 

Fried rice 

Don’t limit your rice cooker to freshly steamed rice: It also excels at transforming leftover grains into a delicious day-after meal. “I use the rice cooker almost like a small wok,” Vongerichten says.

After toasting oil, garlic, and sambal on the “cook” function, he adds rice and kecap manis (an Indonesian sweet soy sauce) and cooks the mixture for about 10 minutes. “I half close the lid so it steams and fries at the same time,” he says. The result? “You get that little crispy layer at the bottom — [a rice cooker] gives just enough heat to toast it without burning.”   

Cheesecake 

“My favorite alternative uses for a rice cooker always tend to be desserts or sweet applications because there’s a bit of a ‘surprise’ factor there,” says Paul San Luis, chef de cuisine at Wild Common in Charleston, South Carolina. He particularly enjoys making cheesecake.

“I prepare the filling [like] any ordinary cheesecake and use the rice cooker in lieu of a water bath,” says San Luis, who notes that “the gentle, even heat of a rice cooker completely replaces the need for water.” Cook the cheesecake on the white rice setting for two cycles, then add a third cycle if necessary for about 70 to 80 minutes of total cook time, he instructs. “Checking it periodically will tell you when it’s done.”  

Puddings 

Because a “rice cooker doubles as a gentle steamer,” it also turns out beautifully set puddings, says Nierstedt.

Plus, “most rice cookers are non-stick, so you can easily pour [in] a batter and hit the on button until the pudding gets cooked the way you like it,” notes Sophina Uong, executive chef-owner of Mister Mao in New Orleans, who has utilized her no-frills rice cooker for corn pudding spoon bread.  

For his Thai-style pumpkin pudding, Saran “Peter” Kannasute, chef and cofounder of YUME Hospitality Group, which includes YUME Sushi in Arlington, Virginia, and KYOJIN Sushi in Washington, D.C., enhances the steam effect by adding an inch or two of water to the inner pot before setting a heat-safe bowl with his pudding mixture inside. He then cooks the pudding for half an hour on steam or cook mode. “It’s very convenient, less [messy], and [provides] steady control over heat,” says Kannasute.

Pancakes 

Skip the griddle and take advantage of a rice cooker’s “even, gentle heat distribution” to make “ultra-thick, eye-popping pancakes,” suggests San Luis. “You get this picture-perfect golden browning on the ‘show side’ of the pancake that’s hard to achieve with other cooking mediums,” he says. It’s as easy as pouring standard pancake batter right into the rice cooker, setting it to the white rice function, and checking intermittently to gauge doneness.

One downside of this method is the time it takes to cook the flapjacks — upwards of 50 minutes depending on the thickness. For both pancakes and cheesecake, San Luis advises using a rice cooker with at least a 5.5-cup capacity, as “the smaller, personal sized rice cookers don’t have enough bottom surface area for the amount of browning you want, let alone volume for the prepared batter.”

However, apart from the size, any rice cooker with cook and warm settings is fair game. 

.

Credit: Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Hmmmm … This is interesting information!

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

On Sunday evening, news broke that the Trump administration was targeting Jerome Powell — the Federal Reserve chair, whom President Trump has been raging about for months — with a highly dubious criminal investigation into supposed financial improprieties. Usually reserved in his public statements, Mr. Powell posted a video bluntly calling the allegations a dishonest attempt at revenge for the Fed’s refusal to simply follow the president’s wishes.

The episode is a shocking violation of the central bank’s historical independence, one that puts the United States in league with authoritarian nations careening toward financial ruin.

On Monday, markets reacted with something along the lines of “meh”: The dollar and stock prices edged down, while gold prices and interest rates rose.

Mr. Trump’s attack on the Fed is a breathtaking departure from precedent, a dangerous and scary power grab, but it’s already backfiring. If anything, this latest episode has weakened his ability to bend the institution to his will, at least in the short run. It definitely increases the chance that Mr. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May, but whose appointment as a board member does not, will remain at the Fed longer than he might otherwise have. It will also raise the hurdle for whoever Mr. Trump nominates as the next Fed chair. And it will make other members of that body a lot less likely to go along with the president’s agenda.

Mr. Trump’s attempt to tighten control of the central bank has many international precedents, all of them depressing. In 2010, Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, pressured the head of her country’s central bank to heed her orders. When he refused, she accused him of abuse of authority and dereliction of duty and forced him to defend his decisions in court. Economic disaster ensued.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has, like Mr. Trump, long been obsessed with low interest rates, and he once accused those who defend high rates of committing treason. He fired multiple central bank governors and initiated at least one criminal investigation. Duly intimidated, the central bank did what he wanted, helping to drive inflation as high as 85 percent.

Despite Mr. Trump’s efforts, the United States is not Argentina or Turkey.

Part of the reason is Jay Powell. In 2019, I was sitting just a few feet away from Mr. Powell at the Fed’s Jackson Hole conference when Mr. Trump tweeted, “who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” While quaint by the standards of today’s White House, at the time it felt like an outrageous provocation. Mr. Powell did not take the bait.

As recently as November 2024, Mr. Powell was saying as little as possible, replying simply “no” when asked whether he would resign if requested to do so by Mr. Trump. That restraint is what made the video he released on Sunday night so powerful. This is not a man looking to become a resistance hero.

When Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends in May, he could stay on as a governor — and one of 12 voters on monetary policy — through January 2028. With threats intensifying, the case for his continued presence as a quiet but firm defender of Fed independence grows only stronger.

Mr. Trump has made it harder for his nominee as the next Fed chair to be confirmed. Almost immediately after news of the criminal investigation broke, Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican member of the Banking Committee, issued a striking statement: “If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none.” He added, “I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved.” Another Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, endorsed that view, as did several Democrats.

In 2024, Scott Bessent — now the Treasury secretary — floated the idea of confirming a “shadow Fed chair” well before the end of Mr. Powell’s term, to prematurely turn him into a lame duck. Today, we do not have a shadow chair, and the confirmation of a real one looks further away than ever. The Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, could even choose to extend Mr. Powell’s tenure as chair until a successor is confirmed.

Further complicating matters, Mr. Trump’s attack on the Fed ensures that when a successor is eventually confirmed, he or she will have to do more to demonstrate independence, or else be remembered as the person who surrendered it. The Fed’s 11 other monetary-policy voters have increasingly been voting their own views. That is likely to accelerate if they feel that the new chair is just trying to please the president, rather than working in the best interests of the economy.

Mr. Trump’s overt assault on the Fed’s independence creates an inhospitable backdrop for the Supreme Court, which is preparing to hear a case next week involving the president’s attempted dismissal of a Federal Reserve governor. The justices will now be even more acutely aware of what is at stake.

Many political questions — the just distribution of wealth, the appropriate scope of regulation, who gets to live in this country — are fundamentally about values. Since we don’t all agree on those values, we have elections to sort out which should prevail. The work of the Fed is different. It’s not about navigating opposing values; it’s about achieving goals we pretty much all agree on, like lower inflation, higher employment, and a more stable economy.

That’s why it makes sense to let the Fed proceed outside the realm of politics and why it makes sense that presidents sometimes re-up the term of a chair who was appointed by a member of the opposing party (as Mr. Biden did with Mr. Powell, who Mr. Trump appointed chair during his first term as president). The Fed is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but there is broad agreement that it performs better on all of these dimensions when it operates independently than when a president personally calls the shots.

Moreover, we have a relatively rapid feedback mechanism to measure the success of economic policy: Markets and business leaders react in real time, in a way they do not on issues like immigration enforcement and whether to invade Greenland.

The Fed is likely to win this battle. The broader war will probably continue as long as Mr. Trump remains president. One possible consequence is that the Fed becomes a victim of its own success, with people mistaking the markets’ mild initial response for proof that independence is no big deal. In reality, that calm reflects confidence in the defenses that were rapidly deployed: senators from both parties, former economic officials, the politically neutral judgment of markets themselves and ultimately the wisdom of the public.

The greater risk is time. Independence will not be lost overnight, but at least every two years, the president can nominate a new governor for the Fed. With sustained effort over six to eight years, an administration could gradually transform the institution. That would require patience from Mr. Trump and complacency from everyone else. So far, at least, on this issue, we are seeing neither.

.

Stephen Voss/Redux

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

At this point, millions of people in the U.S. have tried at least one of a variety of glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs such as Zepbound or Wegovy. For some, these medications have led to profound weight loss and often improvements in heart health. But many have ended up discontinuing the use of the drugs—despite the fact that they have been touted as lifelong treatments. That raises the question: What happens to people’s health after they stop taking these medications?

A new review study offers some clues to the answer. Research published on Wednesday in the BMJ found that people who stopped taking weight-loss drugs, including GLP-1 medications, are likely to see all the weight-loss and heart health benefits disappear in less than two years. The results also indicated that people who discontinue any kind of weight-loss medication regain the weight four times faster than those who stop dieting or working out to shed pounds.

“Weight regain after a period of weight loss is really common, no matter what approach you take,” says Sam West, lead author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Oxford, who specializes in integrated metabolism. “The fact that people regained weight after stopping medication wasn’t too surprising, but what was striking is just how fast it occurred.”

In addition to the newer GLP-1 drugs on the market, the study evaluated clinical trials on various weight-loss drugs, including older-generation GLP-1 medications and those outside of the class, such as orlistat and the combination of phentermine and topiramate. They compared the data on those treatments with a previous analysis on behavioral weight-loss interventions that included different dieting programs and exercise regimens.

People who took weight-loss drugs regained about a pound (0.4 kilogram) a month on average after they stopped treatment. All their cardiometabolic markers, including blood glucose levels, blood pressure, and cholesterol, also reversed.

Ultimately, people may see weight return to its pretreatment level within 1.7 years of stopping the drugs, and heart health markers return to their pretreatment state within 1.4 years, the study estimated. West says long-term data are needed to confirm these projections, however.

What these findings suggest is that, while weight-loss drugs lead to faster results than diet and exercise alone, quitting them also results in weight being regained much faster, regardless of how much was initially lost.

“If you look at the study’s charts, which I thought were striking, you see that you might regain more weight and end up worse off than you were before,” says Rozalina McCoy, an endocrinologist and internist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

People who take a weight-loss medication lose fat, muscle, and bone mass—but they tend to mostly regain fat if they don’t regularly exercise, McCoy says. “Even if you end up at the same weight as you were before, metabolically, you are likely a lot less healthy,” she says.

One possible strategy would be for people to go straight into a behavioral program, such as a diet or exercise regimen, as they came off the drugs. But that approach would need to be trialed and tested, McCoy says.

West says more assessments of people’s weight and health reversals after they stop treatment, conducted outside of the clinical trials, would help researchers fully understand what’s happening.

But the study “is on par with what we see clinically” in many people who stop GLP-1 medications, says Chika Anekwe, an obesity medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, who was not involved in the research.

“It goes back to the effects that the GLP-1 medications have on appetite control. And once that’s gone, it’s really difficult to maintain any sort of behaviors that were helping you to keep the weight off,” she says.

Treating obesity is not just a matter of willpower for some people, Anekwe says, and the results underscore what happens when a helpful weight-loss intervention is interrupted.

“I think it’s a good reminder to insurance companies: when they change patients’ coverage abruptly or limit access to the medications, it may have long-term effects,” she says.

.

Tatsiana Volkava/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Now, a court ruling has Grumet worried. The decision, by Justice Nicholas Moyne in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, upheld a 450 percent increase in the rent that Grumet’s co-op pays the group that owns the land beneath the building. To cover the jump, he said he had been told, his monthly maintenance could skyrocket to more than $9,000 a month, from just over $3,700 now.

“Can we stay here?” asked Grumet, who uses a walker and whose wife navigates in a wheelchair. “I don’t know.”

The ruling involved a case brought by the landowner, which sought to confirm a three-person arbitration panel’s finding on the ground rent. The co-op had challenged the impartiality of the “umpire” on the panel, who was appointed to be neutral but did not disclose that the landowner’s lawyer had approached him about working on an unrelated project.

Justice Moyne said that “created the appearance of impropriety.” But he concluded that the co-op had not met “the very heavy burden of proof” required to show that the arbitration panel’s decision had been “prejudiced.”

Many co-ops own the land their buildings stand on. But the Ground Lease Co-op Coalition, a nonpartisan group of co-op owners, says that Carnegie House is the first of more than 12,000 ground lease co-ops potentially facing “land grabs from their landowners” because property values have surged since the first ground lease co-ops were formed, in the 1950s.

Richard Hirsch, the president of the Carnegie House co-op board, said the idea behind ground lease co-ops was “to allow middle-class people to live in the city.” By the coalition’s count, more than half of ground lease co-ops are in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens in areas where residents’ income is just under the citywide median of $79,000.

At Carnegie House, Hirsch said that prices of apartments in the building have plunged 90 percent since the dispute began and that banks would no longer write mortgages for prospective buyers.

‘An amount building residents simply cannot afford.’

Hirsch called the judge’s decision “a devastating blow.” He said the increase would bring the ground rent, now between $4 million and $5 million, to roughly $25 million a year, “an amount building residents simply cannot afford.”

“In the middle of a housing crisis, our billionaire landowners are pulling out all the stops to push out middle-class New Yorkers,” he said in a statement. He said in an interview that the co-op planned to appeal the ruling, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for the group that owns the land under Carnegie House said that the co-op residents are responsible for only 65 percent of the rent. Some 25 percent of the total is paid by the owner of the stores on the ground floor, he said, and another 10 percent comes from the parking garage in the building.

.

Katherine Marks for The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

If you read the research on microplastics, these pollutants appear to be as frightening as they are ubiquitous. Found throughout our bodies, food and environment, both microplastics and their ingredients have been linked to heart attacks, stroke, respiratory conditions, fertility issues, and death—to name just a few issues.

Yet despite these traits, scientists don’t fully understand how all the minuscule filaments of plastic get into our environment. A study published last month in Science Advances offers some new clues as to how water may be contributing to their spread.

Scientists already knew that plastics degrade through exposure to sunlight and repeated weathering by waves, sand, or other debris. But the new study suggests contact with water itself is also a factor: in both marine and river environments, researchers found that microbubbles can form on the surface of a piece of plastic, breaking it down—and releasing tiny, practically invisible plastic bits into the surrounding water.

From there, nanoplastics and microplastics often enter the food chain—and, in turn, us. An estimated 130 million metric tons of plastic waste enters our bodies and the environment every year, with that number on track to more than double by 2040.

The results, the researchers write, could inspire future research on how to control the release of microplastic into, well, everything. “Plastic degradation is an invisible threat to the environment and human health,” said John Boland, a professor in the School of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin and senior author of the study, in a statement. “Society urgently needs to come to grips with the enormity of the challenge posed by our ubiquitous use of plastics.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________