ANTIGO, WI - One of the many goals I have seen across the board in fresh produce, is the mission to find better ways to extend shelf-life through innovation. When it comes to the potato category, Volm Companies has retailers covered with its Light-Blocker Half-N-Half Bags.

Matt Alexander, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, joined me to discuss the highlights of Volmstechnology and what recent studies can share about the packaging product.

In an effort to gather even more data and benefits of the product, Volm recently engaged the Michigan State University School of Packaging with the objective of researching the best bag to prolong potato shelf-life during retail storage.

We have made a real impact at retail and with the end-consumer with our Light-Blocker Half-N-Half bags which MSU researchers found can extend shelf-life by 12 to 17 days over traditional poly and paper bags for Russet potatoes on the measurement of weight loss, Matt shared with me, adding that potatoes lose weight when exposed to light because their temperature rises. When measured by greening, the shelf-life extension was unlimited with the Light Blocker Half-N-Half bags versus traditional poly and paper bags for Yellow, Red, and Russet potato varieties.

The Half-N-Half bags were analyzed and evaluated by the team, measuring thickness and light transmission, while shelf-life was measured by monitoring physio-chemical changes in the potatoes, Matt noted. Yellow, Red, and Russet potato varieties were stored over a period of several weeks (four or six depending on the bag type) under controlled conditions of 22.5 C and 40% relative humidity with exposure to fluorescent light.

Light Blocker Half-N-Half bags were also found to block greater than 99.5% of all visible and ultraviolet lightan achievement that has gathered positive feedback from consumers and customers alike. While potatoes thrive more in the darkwhich slows greening, decreases potato weight loss, slows sprouting, and keeps tubers firmconsumers buying behaviors have evolved and shoppers want to see the products they are purchasing. Volms light-blocking Half-N-Half bag addresses that as a lightweight, mesh back packaging design that showcases potatoes for the consumer and allows retailers to merchandise front-and-center in potato displays.

Though light-blocking film packaging is available from multiple manufacturers, we found that no formal research had been done on how well it actually works. And this was a project we felt needed to be researched, Matt said.

Let there be light? Not for this packaging.

Volm Companies

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Volm Companies' Matt Alexander Talks Light-Blocker Half-N-Half Bags - And Now U Know

The past few years seem to be setting a challenging trend for gardeners in our region and across the country. Each year from 2013 to the present seems to be getting warmer and drier, and our state has been the unfortunate recipient of a few new invasive insects that challenge gardeners.

To understand how to successfully garden in a hotter climate with longer dry spells, often less snow pack melt recharging our rivers during summer, and troublesome pests, it is important to find educational classes from a trusted source like Oregon State University Extension. Our Extension agents and Master Gardeners are trained to keep you ahead of serious new challenges.

If you dont have time to take our in-depth 11-week Master Gardener program, it would be helpful for you to attend our Spring Into Gardening Seminar held at Umpqua Community College, Wayne Crooch Hall, Saturday, Feb. 25.

The seminar is a series of gardening classes for a total fee of $30. This seminar is broken into four sections: 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., 10:30 to noon, 1 to 2:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 4 p.m. During each section, you can select one of three classes offered.

Our classes will help you understand how to modify your landscape to adapt to longer, drier summers. I have helped people go from landscapes requiring a $400 two-month water bill to a more sustainable $100 two-month bill.

Xeric landscaping will teach you what plants can tolerate a minimum of water for 4 to 5 months. The traditional lawn can be modified to an attractive landscape that includes a great variety of plants that provide color and food sources for native beneficial insects and birds.

If you are set on producing more of your own fruits and vegetables and want to do it in a low input sustainable way, we have the classes to coach you. Producing healthy food starts with great soil. Creating great garden soil is something anyone can do with the right information.

Our classes will talk about the steps needed to produce and maintain productive soil. You will hear about cover crops, biochar, soil tests, nutrient management, soil additives and if or when you should till your soil. Worm and regular composting will also be discussed as part of great soil fertility program.

If you struggle to control insect pests in your vegetable or fruit crops, we will help you understand what low-input programs work for controlling the new invasive pests, and what doesnt. You may be thinking that you dont have a large yard and really dont need to understand these issues of high water use, building great soil and invasive insect pests. We want to help educate container gardeners, too.

We will have a class that will teach you how to make hypertufa troughs (lightweight cement). These containers hold up for years, look great and are light and easy to move around your deck or porch. Well also talk about small space gardening in all kinds of containers. How to create beautiful flower containers or fresh food in a limited space.

This is our second year for including a series of classes on food preservation brought to you by the OSU Master Food Preservers. They will be teaching introduction to canning, dehydrating, fermenting foods and food storage for emergencies.

There will be one food preservation class in each of the four class sections. Bring your food preservation questions to understand the safest way to preserve your fresh produce and learn the best way to preserve food quality, flavor and nutrition.

For complete details, check the web page at http://extension.oregonstate.edu/douglas/. (Scroll down page to Upcoming Events and find the date.) Or, visit the OSU Extension office to register for this program and make your class selections. Registrations are due by Feb. 23.

Steve Renquist is the Horticulture Extension Agent for OSU Extension Service of Douglas County. Steve can be reached by e-mail at

steve.renquist@oregonstate.edu

or phone at 541-672-4461.

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Extension Spotlight: The importance of a good education | Life ... - NRToday.com

A globe-trotting Paolo Macchiarini once epitomized the excitement around pioneering uses for stem cells in medicine. The Italian regenerative scientist and surgeon's goal was to use stem cells to create replacement organs for the terminally ill. And only a few years ago, there were indications that he'd found a way.

Except that his patients kept dying.

So after nine headline-grabbing operations in Sweden, Russia, Britain, and the United States in which most of his patients died after receiving artificial tracheas made from plastic and coated with stem cells, Macchiarini became the focus of media and peer criticism so strong that he was dismissed by his most prestigious employer.

The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm fired him in March for breaching its "fundamental values" and damaging its reputation. Three months later, in June, Swedish police opened an investigation -- which is continuing -- into whether he might have committed involuntary manslaughter.

Meanwhile, despite the ongoing criticism of his record in Europe, Macchiarini continues to lead a research team in bioengineering and regenerative medicine at the University of Kazan, on the banks of the Volga River in Tatarstan, about 800 kilometers east of Moscow.

But there are signs his welcome in Russia may be running out. Today, Macchiarini is restricted purely to research activities in a country that previously allowed him to perform four artificial trachea transplants.

"The grant that Paolo Macchiarini has for work at Kazan Federal University is exclusively for preclinical studies and applies to creating tissue-esophageal structures to replace damaged organs in test nonhuman primates," university spokeswoman Natalia Darashkevich told RFE/RL's Russian Service recently.

Working With Baboons

The restriction to preclinical studies means Macchiarini conducts research that might later be applicable in organ transplants for humans but that he is not operating on human patients. Instead, he is working with baboons.

He also no longer works with tracheas, commonly known as windpipes, but with a different organ, the esophagus, and he no longer pursues the difficult goal of using synthetic materials for the "scaffold," or base structure, of the replacement organ. Instead, he is restricted to using biological tissues, which have been studied by researchers far longer than synthetics such as plastic, and are widely seen as a less challenging substrate on which to grow stem cells.

Roman Deev, the director of science at the Human Stem Cells Institute in Moscow, a leading Russian biotech company, has followed Macchiarini's work in Russia for many years. He told RFE/RL that the surgeon's existing grant from the Russian Science Foundation, which funds his work at Kazan Federal University, automatically expires in 2018.

Deev expressed skepticism that Macchiarini would get another research grant in Russia. "I don't consider [his work now] as something on the front line of real science," he said.

Paolo Macchiarini carrying out the world's first transplant of a synthetic trachea or windpipe on Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene in Stockholm in 2011. The patient later died in 2014.

That is a long way from Macchiarini's early work in Russia in the late 2000s, when he was a rapidly rising star in his field. Macchiarini was initially brought to the country by Russian businessman Mikhail Batin, an enthusiastic promoter of life-extension technologies and the founder of the Science for Life Extension foundation.

Batin invited Macchiarini to perform a trachea transplant in Russia using not a synthetic trachea but one from a human cadaver. The recipient was a 26-year-old woman from neighboring Kazakhstan named Zhadrya Iglikova, whose own trachea had been seriously injured in a car accident four years earlier.

Failed Experiments

The operation took place in Russia in December 2010 and was initially celebrated by Russian media as a success. Russia's Channel One quoted Iglikova as saying afterward that she was looking forward to going back to work after rehabilitation. But then she dropped out of sight until a TV crew from Swedish national broadcaster SVT interviewed her parents in mid-2016 for a three-part documentary aired by the BBC on Macchiarini titled Fatal Experiments: The Downfall Of A Supersurgeon. The parents told the broadcaster that their daughter was unable to speak or stand and only left their home to visit health facilities.

Just six months after his first operation in Russia, Macchiarini performed his first synthetic trachea transplant in Sweden. That operation, in June 2011, propelled the surgeon to the height of fame and then to the depths of notoriety as he initially claimed full success but, 2 1/2 years later, the patient Andemariam Beyene died when the plastic trachea came loose because the stem cells had failed to fix it to his throat.

In the meantime, Macchiarini went on to perform four more synthetic-trachea transplants in Russia. His other patients were Yulia Tuulik and Aleksandr Zozulya, who died within two years of their 2012 operations; Jordanian citizen Sadiq Kanaan, who died after his operation in 2013; and Dmitry Onogda, who survived the implant in 2014 and its subsequent removal.

Paolo Macchiarini with Chris Lyle, another patient on whom he performed a trachea transplant in Stockholm in 2011. Lyles died a few months later.

Throughout his controversial career, Macchiarini has rejected any suggestions of misconduct.

"I always believed that my operation is able to help the patient," he told RFE/RL in a written response to questions about his activities.

Macchiarini also said that data he received on his patients' postoperative condition justified optimism about their progress.

"None of the reports that I had from the patients' clinicians contained information that was unexpected and concerning, and none of the clinicians raised any urgent or unresolvable issues until the very last days of the first patient's life," he wrote.

Macchiarini added that he had responded in detail to peer criticism and that "my responses to all the accusations made so far are publicly available."

As Macchiarini carries out research in Russia, he continues to come under pressure from scientists in Sweden, including former colleagues, who criticize his work.

Courageous Or Irresponsible?

In October, the editors of the respected online scientific journal, Nature Communications, appended an "Expression Of Concern" to a research report by Macchiarini and co-authors published in April 2014. The editors' note said that an investigation conducted on behalf of the Karolinska Institute had raised concerns regarding the accuracy of some of the data in the report.

In December, a group of Swedish doctors published a petition asking Russian authorities to conduct an investigation into Macchiarini's activities in Russia in light of allegations about his work in Sweden. The petition was handed to Moscow's ambassador to Stockholm but has yet to receive a response.

Still, it remains to be seen whether the criticism will realize its goal of ending Macchiarini's research career. That appears to depend on whether he is offered any new grants in Russia or elsewhere in the future.

As to whether Maccharini's once-revolutionary goal of using synthetic organs combined with stem cells as made-to-order replacement parts for humans will one day be reached, some experts say they are confident it will.

But some of them also argue that it will not be through the former superstar scientist's working methods.

"Further progress is possible, but in science you cannot move forward with giant leaps -- you need to go by small steps," Bengdt Gerdin, a retired professor of surgery at the University of Uppsala who suggested Maccharini had "relied on chance" in his research, told RFE/RL. "Can I call it courage? Perhaps this is a form of courage that borders on irresponsibility."

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From Confines Of Russia, Controversial Stem-Cell Surgeon Tries To Weather Scandal - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

TIVERTON-

A planned maintenance outage and inspection will put Bruce Power's Unit 5 out of service for about 90 days, the nuclear operator announced in a news release Monday.

The $135-million job. which started Friday, will help extend the life of the Bruce Power site, the company said in a news release.

Each reactor comes due for this type of service every two to 2 1/2 years, company spokesman John Peevers said in a phone interview.

During the maintenance and inspection program, thousands of tasks will be completed by Bruce Power staff, as well as hundreds of contractors who have been hired from across the province for their expertise in maintenance activities, Len Clewett, Bruce Powers chief nuclear officer, said in the release.

Our life-extension program and other site activities directly and indirectly create and sustain 22,000 jobs and inject about $4 billion annually into our local and provincial economies through the procurement of materials, hiring of skilled labour and investing of private dollars into publicly owned assets.

Cobalt-60, used to sterilize single-use medical devices including gloves, masks and stents, will be harvested from the reactor during the maintenance outage. It's also used to control mosquito populations as one way to control the Zika virus.

During the outage, High Specific Activity Cobalt will be loaded into Unit 5 and will be harvested in about two years for delivery to the company Nordion under an agreement. The material is used to treat brain-related cancers.

Peevers said Bruce Power has been doing as much work as it can to the reactors in advance of the major refurbishment of six reactors, beginning with Unit 6, in 2020. Some of the work underway now on Unit 5 is being done to that end.

In 2020, Unit 6's reactor will be refuelled, repiped and receive new steam generators. Each of the remaining reactors in turn will receive this extensive overhaul to their core components between 2020 and 2035. That overhaul is a $13-billion project. Units 1 and 2 were overhauled in an earlier refurbishment.

Bruce Power says it generates 30 per cent of Ontario's electricity at 30 per cent less than the average residential price. It was paid 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour for its electricity in 2016, while the average residential price was about 11 cents per kw/h, the company's news release said.

Bruce Power employs 4,200 people.

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Bruce Power invests millions in maintenance | The London Free Press - London Free Press

Can you slow the sands of time? The research say yes but whats the best option? (Photo: Thomas Ellis)

Most people dont want to die.

Since even before Ponce de Leon and his search for the fountain of youth, man has been on a quest to achieve immortality.

Some people think were getting closer. In recent years, caloric restriction (CR) has been demonstrated to increase lab rat lifespans more than 20%. Intermittent fasting (IF), a much lesser-known and more lifestyle-friendly alternative, has shown results that even surpass CR in some respects.

Following up on the popularity of his last post on this blog (The Science of Fat-Loss: Why a Calorie Isnt Always a Calorie), Dr. Eades examines these two options and his personal experiments with both.

If you want to live longer, this two-part article is an excellent place to start for avoiding common mistakes, pain and wasted effort.

###

Dr. Eades:

How would you like it if I told you there was a way to eat pretty much anything and everything you wanted to eat and still maintain your health? Or better yet, what if I told you that you could eat pretty much anything and everything you wanted and even improve your health? Would you be interested?

There is a way to reduce blood sugar, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce blood pressure, increase HDL levels, get rid of diabetes, live a lot longer, and still be able to lose a little weight. All without giving up the foods you love. And without having to eat those foods in tiny amounts. Sounds like a late-night infomercial gimmick, but it isnt.

When I wrote those words as the lede to an article about a year and a half ago, the idea of intermittent fasting was limited mainly to research scientists and faddists. But a number of studies had been published primarily on rodents showing that intermittent fasting led to a host of benefits that not even caloric restriction could claim.

And these werent studies published by no-name scientists laboring in backwater research departments. The lead author on many of these papers was Mark P. Mattson, Ph.D, the Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences and Chief of the Cellular and Molecular Neurosciences Section of the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health. People were starting to take notice.

Before the work on intermittent fasting, the only real strategy for extending the lives of laboratory animals was caloric restriction (CR). If rats or mice or even primates had their calories restricted by 30-40 percent as compared to those fed ad libitum [at pleasure = as much as they want] they lived 20-30 percent longer. These studies are typically done by dividing genetically similar animals into two groups, then giving one group all the food it can eat in a day. Researchers measure the food consumed, then reduce it by 30-40 percent and give to the other group the next day. Each day this drill is repeated with the calorically restricted group getting a reduced amount of food compared to what the other group got the day before.

These CR verses ad libitum-fed studies almost uniformly demonstrate an increase in longevity in the CR animals. The CR animals not only live 30 percent or so longer, they dont develop cancers, diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. And these animals have low blood sugar levels, low insulin levels, good insulin sensitivity, low blood pressure and are, in general, much healthier physically than their ad libitum fed counterparts. But not so psychologically.

As we saw in the Keys semi-starvation study, caloric restriction isnt much fun for humans, and it apparently isnt all that much fun for the animals undergoing it either. When rats live out their ratty lives calorically restricted in their cages, they seem to show signs of depression and irritability. Primates do as well. If primates dont get enough cholesterol, they can actually become violent. But they do live longer. Even though CR has never been proven in humans, based on lab animal experience it does work. So, if youre willing to put up with irritability, hostility and depression, it might be worth cutting your calories by 30 percent for the rest of your long, healthy miserable life.

But could there be a better way?

An enterprising scientist decided to try a little twist on the CR experiment. He divided the genetically-similar animals into two groups, fed one group all it wanted and measured the intake, then fed the other group all it wanted except every other day instead of daily. When the intake of the group fed every other day was measured, it turned out that that group the intermittently fasted group ate just about double on the eat days, so that overall both groups consumed the same amount of food. Animals in the one group at X amount of food per day while the animals in the other group ate 2X amount of food every other day. So both groups ate the same number of calories but the commonality ended there.

The intermittently fasted group of animals despite consuming the same number of calories as the ad libitum fed group enjoyed all the health and longevity benefits of calorically restricted animals. In essence, they got their cake and ate it, too. They got all the benefits of CR plus some without the CR.

Intermittent fasting (IF) reduced oxidative stress, made the animals more resistant to acute stress in general, reduced blood pressure, reduced blood sugar, improved insulin sensitivity, reduced the incidence of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and improved cognitive ability. But IF did even more. Animals that were intermittently fasted greatly increased the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) relative to CR animals. CR animals dont produce much more BDNF than do ad libitum fed animals.

BDNF, as its name implies, is a substance that increases the growth of new nerve cells in the brain, but it does much more than that. BDNF is neuroprotective against stress and toxic insults to the brain and is somehowno one yet knows how, exactlyinvolved in the insulin sensitivity/glucose regulating mechanism. Infusing BDNF into animals increases their insulin sensitivity and makes them lose weight. Humans with greater levels of BDNF have lower levels of depression. BDNF given to depressed humans reduces their depression. And increased levels of BDNF improve cognitive ability. In short, you want as much BDNF as you can get, and with IF you if youre a lab animal at least can get a lot.

As the animal study data poured in, a few researchers began tentatively studying human subjects. A few studies appeared in the literature, and all showed positive benefits to humans who intermittently fasted. In none of the studies did subjects go completely without food for a day most had one meal per day or ate ad libitum one day and reduced consumption markedly the next.

Even some academic physicians (including Don Laub, my old mentor when I did a plastic surgery rotation at Stanford) put themselves on a modified version of an IF and wrote about it the the journal Medical Hypothesis. Since May 2003, these folks have been on a version of the IF in which they consume about 20-50 percent of their estimated daily energy requirements on the fast day and eat whatever they want on the non-fast days.

Since starting their regimen they have

observed health benefits starting in as little as two weeks, in insulin resistance, asthma, seasonal allergies, infectious diseases of viral, bacterial and fungal origin (viral URI, recurrent bacterial tonsillitis, chronic sinusitis, periodontal disease), autoimmune disorder (rheumatoid arthritis), osteoarthritis, symptoms due to CNS inflammatory lesions (Tourettes, Menieres) cardiac arrhythmias (PVCs, atrial fibrillation), menopause related hot flashes.

It all sounded good. But before I try anything out of the ordinary, and certainly before I suggest it to any of my own patients or readers, I view the idea through the lens of natural selection. In other words, I ask myself if the regimen in question would have been congruent with our Paleolithic heritage. If so, I move forward. If not, I take a long, hard look at all the biochemistry, physiology and pharmacology involved before I make any sort of recommendation.

In viewing IF through the lens of natural selection I came to the conclusion that IF was probably the way Paleolithic man ate. We modern humans have become acculturated to the three square meals per day regimen. Animals in the wild, particularly carnivorous animals, dont eat thrice per day; they eat when they make a kill. I would imagine that Paleolithic man did the same. If I had to make an intelligent guess, I would say that Paleolithic man probably ate once per day or maybe even twice every three days. In data gathered from humans still living in non-Westernized cultures in the last century, it appears that they would gorge after a kill and sleep and lay around doing not much of anything for the next day or so. When these folks got hungry, they went out and hunted and started the cycle again.

If you accept, as I do, that the Paleolithic diet is the optimal diet for modern man due to our evolved physiologies, then you should probably also buy into the idea that a meal timing schedule more like that of Paleolithic man would provide benefit as well.

With this in mind, I recruited my wife into the process and we went on an intermittent fast . It wasnt all that difficult, but I can tell you that the non-eating days were long. And the eating days were spent eating and dreading the non-eating day soon to follow.

After a few weeks, it dawned on me that we werent really following the same IF that all the lab animals were. The lab animals got food for 24 hours then went without for 24 hours. We, on the other hand, got food for about 16 hours (the waking hours) then went without for about 32 hours (8 hours sleeping, 16 hours awake and the next 8 hours sleeping). We decided to modify our fasting strategy

(Continued in Part II)

Related and Most Popular Posts: How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days Without Doing Any Exercise From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks The Science of Fat-Loss: Why a Calorie Isnt Always a Calorie Relax Like A Pro: 5 Steps to Hacking Your Sleep How to Travel the World with 10 Pounds or Less (Plus: How to Negotiate Convertibles and Luxury Treehouses) The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction)

Posted on: March 2, 2008.

Please check out Tools of Titans, my new book, which shares the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers. It was distilled from more than 10,000 pages of notes, and everything has been vetted and tested in my own life in some fashion. The tips and tricks in Tools of Titans changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for sample chapters, full details, and a Foreword from Arnold Schwarzenegger!

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Real Life Extension: Caloric Restriction or Intermittent ...

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The Life Extension Foundation Buyers Club is an organization whose long-range goal is the extension of the healthy human life span. In seeking to control aging, our objective is to develop methods to enable us to live in vigor, health and wellness for an unlimited period of time. Life Extension was established in the early 1980s, but its founders have been involved in the anti-aging field since the 1960s. Life Extension publishes the very latest information on anti-aging and wellness in its monthly publication, Life Extension Magazine, the Disease Prevention and Treatment book of integrative health protocols, the Life Extension Update e-mail newsletter and the Daily Health Bulletin, and at this website. All to support more informed health choices.

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In addition to a wealth of information, Life Extension offers 300+ premium-quality vitamins, minerals, hormones, diet and nutritional supplements, and even skin care products, which are often the fruits of research reported on or funded by the Life Extension.

The Life Extension Foundation is one of the worlds largest membership organizations dedicated to investigating every method of extending the healthy human life span and funding anti-aging research. When seeking methods to slow aging, the non-profit Life Extension Foundation often uncovers potential therapies to fight the conditions associated with aging.

Based on current scientific research, Life Extension is continually formulating and upgrading its science-based multivitamin, vitamin, and nutritional supplement formulas to include the latest novel ingredients that are years ahead of mainstream offerings. As such, Life Extension has originated such innovative supplements as Life Extension Mix, a multivitamin that incorporates many recent research findings in health and nutrition.

Life Extensions stringent approach to quality assurance and 100% Satisfaction Guarantee make its supplements the gold standard of the industry.

As part of a total health and nutrition program

What began as a newsletter over 30 years ago has evolved into a total health offering, including:

Learn how you can access all of the above services, as well as receive discounts on dietary supplements and blood testing, by joining the Life Extension Foundation.

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