Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Metropolis Magazine
Sunday, March 28, 2010
NY Times article about efforts to eat locally
Push to Eat Local Food Is Hampered by Shortage
Matthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times
DEMAND AND NO SUPPLY Kevin McCollister raises sheep and pigs on his farm in East Montpelier, Vt., and has had trouble arranging for slaughter.
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: March 26, 2010
EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. — Erica Zimmerman and her husband spent months pasture-raising pigs on their farm here, but when the time came to take them to slaughter, an overbooked facility canceled their appointment.
Matthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times
A worker at a slaughterhouse in Athol, Mass.
With the herd in prime condition, and the couple lacking food and space to keep them, they frantically called slaughterhouses throughout the state. After several days they found an opening, but their experience highlights a growing problem for small farmers here and across the nation: too few slaughterhouses to meet the growing demand for locally raised meat.
In what could be a major setback for America’s local-food movement, championed by so-called locavores, independent farmers around the country say they are forced to make slaughter appointments before animals are born and to drive hundreds of miles to facilities, adding to their costs and causing stress to livestock.
As a result, they are scaling back on plans to expand their farms because local processors cannot handle any more animals.
“It’s pretty clear there needs to be attention paid to this,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview. “Particularly in the Northeast, where there is indeed a backlog and lengthy wait for slaughter facilities.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the number of slaughterhouses nationwide declined to 809 in 2008 from 1,211 in 1992, while the number of small farmers has increased by 108,000 in the past five years.
Fewer slaughterhouses to process local meat means less of it in butcher shops, grocery stores and restaurants. Chefs throughout the Northeast are partnering with farms to add locally-raised meat to their menus, satisfying a customer demand. But it is not always easy.
“There are a lot of people out there who raise great animals for us to use, and they don’t have the opportunity to get them to us because the slaughterhouses are going away,” said Bill Telepan, chef and owner of Telepan, a high-end restaurant in New York.
Mr. Telepan’s veal supplier, Duane Merrill of Walton, N.Y., said there was no slaughterhouse in Delaware County, “and it’s the size of Rhode Island.” Mr. Merrill said he also had difficulty finding adequate transport for veal cattle down to New York City.
Brian Moyer, director of Rural Vermont, a nonprofit farm advocacy group, uses the image of an hourglass. “At the top of the hourglass we’ve got the farmers,” he said, “the bottom part is consumers and in the middle, what’s straining those grains of sand, is the infrastructure that’s lacking.”
Vermont, a locavore’s paradise, is seeing increased demand for the facilities from both small-scale meat producers and dairy farmers, who are facing some of the lowest milk prices in years and are trying to diversify with beef cattle.
“People are trying to figure out how to get a little more money out of their herds,” said Randy Quenneville, program chief for the Vermont meat inspection service. “And with the interest in stuff being local, wanting to know where their food is coming from and how it was raised, there are more people looking to do this.”
The state has seven operating slaughterhouses, down from around 25 in the mid-1980s, Mr. Quenneville said. One is a state-inspected facility, meaning that meat inspected there cannot be sold over state lines.
Two slaughterhouses recently closed, one destroyed by a fire and the other shuttered because of animal cruelty charges. The closed facility is expected to reopen soon.
Mr. Quenneville said a number of small, family-owned slaughterhouses started closing when strict federal rules regarding health control went into effect in 1999. Large corporations like Cargill also began to take over much of the nation’s meat market.
He and Mr. Vilsack are both urging farmers to band together and open local cooperatives or mobile slaughter facilities. The Agriculture Department is financing some mobile units and helping to build a regional facility near the Quad Cities in Illinois and Iowa. Helping small farmers, Mr. Vilsack said, will improve struggling rural economies.
“We recognize that the buy-local food movement is a significant economic driver in rural communities,” he said.
But building a regional facility is not always easy. As the locavore movement and self-butchering movements grow, so do cries of “Not in my backyard.”
- 1
- 2
Wearabraille: a virtual wireless keyboard prototype for typing in braille on any surface
Another fantastic product from Josh Miele of Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute for your viewing pleasure.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
mid-review
Proposal:
My solution is introducing a new process of adoption by redesigning the mobile adoption van and providing starter kits box for adopter.
The mobile adoption van includes a glass wall playground and bonding room. It will visit communities. The cages turn into the playground.
The starter kit- all supplies are packed in one box, feeder, scratcher, bed, toy, and the box itself is a carrier. The box turns into products that cat can use thought-out its life. The packaging is used in the shelter and the same packaging is provided when you adopt. The mobile van will promote the way to use it.
-Feedback
Mary Howard
- Tips for deal with external partner and make the project real.
-Find the floor plan and send the files to them.
- Targeted people
- mechanism of truck
Cho
-Identity of truck
-Use the static and numbers to project the problem/ issue.
-Make inside furniture to understand all process.
Patty Beirne
- Scale of truck and cats.
- Design of truck itself
- Details- material, more playful interior. Not just for mechanism.
- -user testing
- - how to make the final model?
STEVEN
-Transform the space
-Make the inside of working place clear.
Robert Kirkbride
-Two side glass walls
-Packaging the truck it self- whole needed products should be packed in to one truck.
-make the all story/process of truck from carrying to adopting cats.
PJ
-Materials
-Scales and portion of space and cats.
Matthew
- More interesting structure to catch eyes
- -Reference “air stream” “heavy trail”
Friends
-More communicate/interactive ways to visit the truck.
-3D rendering for truck.
- What is the starter kit for?
Make the starter kit clear.
Direction:
I will keep revise the design of truck to make more interactive way of exploring the truck.
Make detail inside division/ furniture
Think of out side/inside of graphic to give the identity.
Start to focus on design of Starter kit.
User testing.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Video clips from the mid review
Here are two very brief clips. Sorry I didn't capture more, but you get a sense of how things looked. Also, sorry that Haewon is sideways for the first half.
Livescribe Developers' Challenge for the Pulse Smart Pen
Please take a look at this. My friend entered this competition, and he needs people to vote for him.
Click here to see all of the entries, or on the video below to just see his entry.
Don't forget to vote (for him). He's a good guy, and it is a fantastic product.
Thanks,
Steven
Click here to see all of the entries, or on the video below to just see his entry.
Don't forget to vote (for him). He's a good guy, and it is a fantastic product.
Thanks,
Steven
Monday, March 15, 2010
NY Times article discussing the strange link between obesity and hunger
The Obesity-Hunger Paradox
J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
FAST FOOD Experts say a key bridge between hunger and obesity is the scarcity of healthful options in low-income areas.
By SAM DOLNICK
Published: March 12, 2010
WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk.
Multimedia
Once, maybe.
But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals ofobesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.
Call it the Bronx Paradox.
“Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty.”
The Bronx has the city’s highest rate of obesity, with residents facing an estimated 85 percent higher risk of being obese than people in Manhattan, according to Andrew G. Rundle, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
But the Bronx also faces stubborn hunger problems. According to a survey released in January by the Food Research and Action Center, an antihunger group, nearly 37 percent of residents in the 16th Congressional District, which encompasses the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. That is more than any other Congressional district in the country and twice the national average, 18.5 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Such studies present a different way to look at hunger: not starving, but “food insecure,” as the researchers call it (the Department of Agriculture in 2006 stopped using the word “hunger” in its reports). This might mean simply being unable to afford the basics, unable to get to the grocery or unable to find fresh produce among the pizza shops, doughnut stores and fried-everything restaurants of East Fordham Road.
Precious, the character at the center of the Academy Award-winning movie by the same name, would probably count as food insecure even though she is severely obese (her home, Harlem, ranks 49th on the survey’s list, with 24.1 percent of residents saying they lacked money for food in the previous year). There she is stealing a family-size bucket of fried chicken from a fast-food restaurant. For breakfast.
That it is greasy chicken, and that she vomits it up in a subsequent scene, points to the problem that experts call a key bridge between hunger and obesity: the scarcity of healthful options in low-income neighborhoods and the unlikelihood that poor, food-insecure people like Precious would choose them.
Full-service, reasonably priced supermarkets are rare in impoverished neighborhoods, and the ones that are there tend to carry more processed foods than seasonal fruits and vegetables. A 2008 study by the city government showed that 9 of the Bronx’s 12 community districts had too few supermarkets, forcing huge swaths of the borough to rely largely on unhealthful, but cheap, food.
“When you’re just trying to get your calorie intake, you’re going to get what fills your belly,” said Mr. Berg, the author of “All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?” “And that may make you heavier even as you’re really struggling to secure enough food.”
For the center’s survey, Gallup asked more than 530,000 people across the nation a single question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”
The unusually large sample size allowed researchers to zero in on trouble spots like the South Bronx.
New York’s 10th Congressional District, which zigzags across Brooklyn and includes neighborhoods like East New York and Bedford-Stuyvesant, ranked sixth in the survey, and Newark ranked ninth, both with about 31 percent of residents showing food hardship. (At the state level, the South is the hungriest: Mississippi tops the list at 26 percent, followed by Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, the Carolinas and Oklahoma. New York ranks 27th, with 17.4 percent; New Jersey is 41st, with 15.5 percent; and Connecticut is 47th, with 14.6 percent.)
The survey, conducted over the past two years, showed that food hardship peaked at 19.5 percent nationwide in the fourth quarter of 2008, as the economic crisis gripped the nation. It dropped to 17.9 percent by the summer of 2009, then rose to 18.5 percent.
Though this was the first year that the center did such a survey, it used a question similar to one the Department of Agriculture has been asking for years. The most recent survey by the agency, from 2008, found that 14.6 percent of Americans had low to very low food security.
Bloomberg administration officials see hunger and obesity as linked problems that can be addressed in part by making healthful food more affordable.
“It’s a subtle, complicated link, but they’re very much linked, so the strategic response needs to be linked in various ways,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. “We tackle the challenge on three fronts — providing income supports, increasing healthy options and encouraging nutritious behavior.”
To that end, the city offers a Health Bucks program that encourages people to spend their food stamps at farmers’ markets by giving them an extra $2 coupon for every $5 spent there.
The city has also created initiatives to send carts selling fresh fruits and vegetables to poor neighborhoods, and to draw grocery stores carrying fresh fruit and produce to low-income areas by offering them tax credits and other incentives. The city last month announced the first recipients of those incentives: a Foodtown store that burned down last year will be rebuilt and expanded in the Norwood section of the Bronx, and a Western Beef store near the Tremont subway station will be expanded.
But the Bronx’s hunger and obesity problems are not simply related to the lack of fresh food. Experts point to a swirling combination of factors that are tied to, and exacerbated by, poverty.
Poor people “often work longer hours and work multiple jobs, so they tend to eat on the run,” said Dr. Rundle of Columbia. “They have less time to work out or exercise, so the deck is really stacked against them.”
Indeed, the food insecurity study is hardly the first statistical measure in which the Bronx lands on the top — or, in reality, the bottom. The borough’s 14.1 percent unemployment rate is the highest in the state. It is one of the poorest counties in the nation. And it was recently ranked the unhealthiest of New York’s 62 counties.
“If you look at rates of obesity, diabetes, poor access to grocery stores, poverty rates, unemployment and hunger measures, the Bronx lights up on all of those,” said Triada Stampas of the Food Bank for New York City. “They’re all very much interconnected.”
Saturday, March 13, 2010
NY Times article about women choosing to have their healthy breast surgically removed.
This article is relevant to Monica's and Patricia's projects, but it is an interesting case study of how social trends expose opportunities for entrepreneurs to introduce innovative products
steven
March 8, 2010, 5:32 PM
After Cancer, Removing a Healthy Breast
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Stuart Bradford
For decades, advocates have fought to protect women from disfiguring breast cancer surgery, arguing that it was just as effective to remove only the cancerous tissue rather than the whole breast.
But today, a growing number of women with breast cancer are pushing surgeons in a startling new direction. Not only do they want the cancerous breast removed, but they also want the healthy breast cut off.
“I just didn’t want to worry about it,” explained Liliana Holtzman, 50, an art director in Ann Arbor, Mich., who had both breasts removed after a cancer diagnosis five years ago. “It was for my own peace of mind. I wanted to do everything I could.”
The percentage of women asking to remove both breasts after a cancer diagnosis has more than doubled in recent years. Over all, about 6 percent of women undergoing surgery for breast cancer in 2006 opted for the procedure, formally known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. Among women in their 40s who underwent breast cancer surgery, one in 10 opted to have both breasts removed, according to a University of Minnesota study presented last week in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology.
Surprisingly, the practice is also more popular among women with the earliest, most curable forms of cancer. Among women who had surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ, sometimes called Stage 0 cancer or precancer, the rate of double mastectomy rose to 5.2 percent in 2005, from 2.1 percent in 1998, according to a 2009 study in The Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Women with a known genetic risk for breast cancer can lower the chances of developing it by having both breasts removed before cancer appears. But for most women given a diagnosis of breast cancer, cutting off a healthy breast does not improve the odds of survival.
A new study in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reviews data on 108,000 women who underwent mastectomy, including 9,000 who chose to remove a healthy breast along with the cancerous one. It found that for most women, having a healthy breast removed after a cancer diagnosis had no effect on long-term survival.
The study found a slight survival benefit among a small subset of breast cancer patients — women under 50 with early stage estrogen-receptor-negative tumors, which don’t respond to risk-lowering drugs like Tamoxifen.
“A lot of patients coming into my clinic are asking for it,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who conducted the new study. “Part of the reason women are frightened is we haven’t given them good information. Part of my hope with this study is to tell most breast cancer patients that it’s O.K. not to do this.”
The data are confusing, because a diagnosis of breast cancer or ductal carcinoma in situ does carry a slightly higher risk (about 0.6 to 1 percent a year) of developing a new, unrelated cancer in the second breast — although many women wrongly believe this means their cancer has “spread” to the other breast. And because of more vigilant screening among breast cancer survivors, second breast cancers are more likely to be detected at an early, more curable stage. As a result, the higher risk for a second cancer does not mean a higher risk of dying.
Doctors say that the highest risk to a woman is not from a future cancer, but from the potential spread of the cancer she already has. Removing a second healthy breast doesn’t change those odds.
“Women say the reason they’re going to have both breasts removed is because they want to see their children graduate or watch their grandchildren grow up,” said Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. “But having that other breast removed doesn’t help them at all in being able to survive another 10 or 20 years.”
But women who have opted for the procedure say it’s not about the statistics. Once they receive a breast cancer diagnosis, they never again want to experience the stress of a mammogram or biopsy.
“Why would you want to risk getting cancer a second time?” asked a 46-year-old marketing executive in New York City who had both breasts removed last year after learning she had early stage breast cancer. (She asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy.)
“I think the risks were pretty well presented to me, but I didn’t care,” she continued. “I told the doctor, ‘Just take them.’ ”
Patients also say they opt for a double mastectomy to make sure that their breasts after reconstruction surgery are more symmetrical. Even so, many women don’t realize that reconstruction surgery is not like getting cosmetic implants. After a traditional mastectomy and reconstruction, women lose all sensation across their chest.
“When you’re lying next to someone, skin on skin, it’s sort of sad,” the New York woman said. “It’s not implants, and you have to make sure people understand that. But I wouldn’t do it differently.”
Dr. Susan Love, the breast surgeon and women’s health advocate who wrote the best-selling “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” (Da Capo, 2000), fears that women are making decisions about prophylactic mastectomy without having all the facts.
Compounding the issue, she said, plastic surgeons usually prefer to remove both breasts. So they tend not to argue with women who ask to have a healthy breast removed as well. Dr. Love emphasized that doctors needed to listen to women’s reasons for choosing the more aggressive surgery.
“To a certain degree, women are right, because it’s their choice,” she said. “They need to choose the one that feels right for them.”
steven
March 8, 2010, 5:32 PM
After Cancer, Removing a Healthy Breast
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Stuart Bradford
For decades, advocates have fought to protect women from disfiguring breast cancer surgery, arguing that it was just as effective to remove only the cancerous tissue rather than the whole breast.
But today, a growing number of women with breast cancer are pushing surgeons in a startling new direction. Not only do they want the cancerous breast removed, but they also want the healthy breast cut off.
“I just didn’t want to worry about it,” explained Liliana Holtzman, 50, an art director in Ann Arbor, Mich., who had both breasts removed after a cancer diagnosis five years ago. “It was for my own peace of mind. I wanted to do everything I could.”
The percentage of women asking to remove both breasts after a cancer diagnosis has more than doubled in recent years. Over all, about 6 percent of women undergoing surgery for breast cancer in 2006 opted for the procedure, formally known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. Among women in their 40s who underwent breast cancer surgery, one in 10 opted to have both breasts removed, according to a University of Minnesota study presented last week in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology.
Surprisingly, the practice is also more popular among women with the earliest, most curable forms of cancer. Among women who had surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ, sometimes called Stage 0 cancer or precancer, the rate of double mastectomy rose to 5.2 percent in 2005, from 2.1 percent in 1998, according to a 2009 study in The Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Women with a known genetic risk for breast cancer can lower the chances of developing it by having both breasts removed before cancer appears. But for most women given a diagnosis of breast cancer, cutting off a healthy breast does not improve the odds of survival.
A new study in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reviews data on 108,000 women who underwent mastectomy, including 9,000 who chose to remove a healthy breast along with the cancerous one. It found that for most women, having a healthy breast removed after a cancer diagnosis had no effect on long-term survival.
The study found a slight survival benefit among a small subset of breast cancer patients — women under 50 with early stage estrogen-receptor-negative tumors, which don’t respond to risk-lowering drugs like Tamoxifen.
“A lot of patients coming into my clinic are asking for it,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who conducted the new study. “Part of the reason women are frightened is we haven’t given them good information. Part of my hope with this study is to tell most breast cancer patients that it’s O.K. not to do this.”
The data are confusing, because a diagnosis of breast cancer or ductal carcinoma in situ does carry a slightly higher risk (about 0.6 to 1 percent a year) of developing a new, unrelated cancer in the second breast — although many women wrongly believe this means their cancer has “spread” to the other breast. And because of more vigilant screening among breast cancer survivors, second breast cancers are more likely to be detected at an early, more curable stage. As a result, the higher risk for a second cancer does not mean a higher risk of dying.
Doctors say that the highest risk to a woman is not from a future cancer, but from the potential spread of the cancer she already has. Removing a second healthy breast doesn’t change those odds.
“Women say the reason they’re going to have both breasts removed is because they want to see their children graduate or watch their grandchildren grow up,” said Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. “But having that other breast removed doesn’t help them at all in being able to survive another 10 or 20 years.”
But women who have opted for the procedure say it’s not about the statistics. Once they receive a breast cancer diagnosis, they never again want to experience the stress of a mammogram or biopsy.
“Why would you want to risk getting cancer a second time?” asked a 46-year-old marketing executive in New York City who had both breasts removed last year after learning she had early stage breast cancer. (She asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy.)
“I think the risks were pretty well presented to me, but I didn’t care,” she continued. “I told the doctor, ‘Just take them.’ ”
Patients also say they opt for a double mastectomy to make sure that their breasts after reconstruction surgery are more symmetrical. Even so, many women don’t realize that reconstruction surgery is not like getting cosmetic implants. After a traditional mastectomy and reconstruction, women lose all sensation across their chest.
“When you’re lying next to someone, skin on skin, it’s sort of sad,” the New York woman said. “It’s not implants, and you have to make sure people understand that. But I wouldn’t do it differently.”
Dr. Susan Love, the breast surgeon and women’s health advocate who wrote the best-selling “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” (Da Capo, 2000), fears that women are making decisions about prophylactic mastectomy without having all the facts.
Compounding the issue, she said, plastic surgeons usually prefer to remove both breasts. So they tend not to argue with women who ask to have a healthy breast removed as well. Dr. Love emphasized that doctors needed to listen to women’s reasons for choosing the more aggressive surgery.
“To a certain degree, women are right, because it’s their choice,” she said. “They need to choose the one that feels right for them.”
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
CHELSEA BRIGANTI: MID REVIEW BOARD
LEN
-Fix Mademoicell to always match logo
-Make pitch punchier
TESS
-Look into 'factor five' gene
-Does the design need a cap?
-Make sure its secure
SETH
-Mention that I am using medical grade silicone sooner
-Push how it benefits men
-Talk more about public use--how?
-Push change in perception visually
RICK
-Had trouble pronouncing name
-Make more legible
-Label scenario
-Instruct through the idea
-Look at other medical instructions
SKYLER
-What's the incentive for the obgyn?
NEELIMA
-Mention that you only use it for one day in the begining
GABRIELLA & ANDREA
-How does it work?
-This is a very futuristic product
-Make it an activity
-Women's Day
WILL NEIRMEIR
-Not sure about the form
DYLAN
-Packaging has to work well
-Packaging has to work well
-Talk about fedex more
-Do you get a pre-paid label--how much?
-Mention how much private storage will be
MATTHEW HOEY
-Look at other materials
-Not sure about the form
-Should look more biological
-3 petals?
-Look to vagina for more inspiration
-More futuristic looking --like the year 2020
SIRI
-Very compelling project
MAGNUS
-Put more text next to the images
-Make images relate more to eachother
-Describe the future investment visually
CHO
-Nice name and logo
-Change composition to flow better
-This project requires some previous knowledge
-Show more stats---data!
-Play around with different reds
-Play around with different reds
DEBORAH OTTENHEIMER, OBGYN, EXTERNAL PARTNER
-Do a version with a loop and a string
-Radiopaque materials--look into this
-Loves the board and concept
-Thinks women will love this product
STEVEN
-Maybe prototype with dental material so you can test it?
SILKA
-Think about whole cycle of material--what happens to device after use?
CHRISTIAN
-Very compelling board
-Get one more gynecologist on board.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)