A legume () in botanical writing is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or a fruit of these specific plants. A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides. A common name for this type of fruit is a pod, although the term "pod" is also applied to a few other fruit types, such as vanilla and radish. Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, mesquite, carob, soy, and peanuts. Locust trees (''Gleditsia'' or ''Robinia''), wisteria, and the Kentucky coffeetree (''Gymnocladus dioicus'') are also legumes.

History

The term ''legume'' is derived from the Latin word ''legumen'' (with the same meaning as the English term), which is in turn believed to come from the verb ''legere'' which means "to gather." English borrowed the term from the French "légume," which, however, has a wider meaning in the modern language and refers to any kind of vegetable; the English word legume being translated in French by the word légumineuse.

The history of legumes is tied in closely with that of human civilization, appearing early in Asia, the Americas (the common ''Phaseolus'' bean in several varieties), and Europe (broad beans), where they became a staple, essential for supplementing protein where meat was less available.

Fixation of nitrogen in the soil

Legume plants are notable for their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with bacteria (rhizobia) found in root nodules of these plants. The ability to form this mutualism reduces fertilizer costs for farmers and gardeners who grow legumes, and allows legumes to be used in a crop rotation to replenish soil that has been depleted of nitrogen. The nitrogen fixation ability of legumes is enhanced by the availability of calcium in the soil and reduced by the presence of ample nitrogen.

Legume seed and foliage have a comparatively higher protein content than non-legume material, probably due to the additional nitrogen that legumes receive through nitrogen-fixation symbiosis. The high protein content makes them desirable crops in agriculture.

Uses by humans

Farmed legumes can belong to many agricultural classes, including forage, grain, blooms, pharmaceutical/industrial, fallow/green manure, and timber species. Most commercially farmed species fill two or more roles simultaneously, depending upon their degree of maturity when harvested.

Forage legumes are of two broad types. Some, like alfalfa, clover, vetch (''Vicia''), stylo (''Stylosanthes''), or ''Arachis'', are sown in pasture and grazed by livestock. Other forage legumes such as ''Leucaena'' or ''Albizia'' are woody shrub or tree species that are either broken down by livestock or regularly cut by humans to provide livestock feed.

Grain legumes are cultivated for their seeds, and are also called pulses. The seeds are used for human and animal consumption or for the production of oils for industrial uses. Grain legumes include beans, lentils, lupins, peas, and peanuts.

Legume species grown for their flowers include lupins, which are farmed commercially for their blooms as well as being popular in gardens worldwide. Industrially farmed legumes include ''Indigofera'' and ''Acacia'' species, which are cultivated for dye and natural gum production, respectively. Fallow/green manure legume species are cultivated to be tilled back into the soil in order to exploit the high levels of captured atmospheric nitrogen found in the roots of most legumes. Numerous legumes farmed for this purpose include ''Leucaena'', ''Cyamopsis'', and ''Sesbania'' species. Various legume species are farmed for timber production worldwide, including numerous ''Acacia'' species and ''Castanospermum australe''.

Nutritional facts

Legumes contain relatively low quantities of the essential amino acid methionine - however, this should not be a problem if an adequate amount of protein is consumed.

According to the protein combining theory, legumes should be combined with another protein source such as a grain in the same meal, to balance out the amino acid levels. Protein combining has lost favor as theory (with even its original proponent, Frances Moore Lappé, rejecting the need for protein combining in 1981) - a variety of protein sources is considered healthy, but these do not have to be consumed at the same meal. In any case, vegetarian cultures often serve legumes along with grains, which are low in the essential amino acid lysine, creating a more complete protein than either the beans or the grains on their own.

Common examples of such combinations are dal with rice by Indians, and beans with corn tortillas, tofu with rice, and peanut butter with wheat bread.

References

External links

AEP - European association for grain legume research

Lupins - Geography, classification, genetic resources and breeding

ILDIS - International Legume Database & Information Service

Bioversity International The significance of Vavilov’s scientific expeditions and ideas for development and use of legume genetic resources

Legume Futures A major research initiative to develop novel uses for legumes in environmentally and economically sustainable cropping.

Legumes Category:fruit morphology Category:Vegan cuisine Category:Vegetarian cuisine

ar:بقول an:Legumbre az:Paxlalı bitkilər ca:Llegum cs:Luštěnina de:Hülsenfrucht et:Kaun el:Όσπρια es:Legumbre eo:Guŝo eu:Lekale fa:حبوبات gl:Legume hsb:Łušćinowy płód ia:Legumine it:Baccello sw:Jamii kunde la:Legumen lt:Ankštis nl:Peul (vrucht) ja:豆果 no:Belgfrukt nn:Belgfrukt pl:Strąk pt:Legume qu:Chaqallu ru:Зернобобовые культуры simple:Legume sk:Strukoviny sl:Strok sr:Махуна sv:Ärtväxter ta:அவரை fi:Palko th:ถั่ว uk:Зернобобові культури war:Legume zh-yue:豆類 zh:荚果

Name	Tim Ferriss
Birth date	July 20, 1977
Birth place	East Hampton, NY
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	Princeton University
Genre	Nonfiction
Notableworks	''The 4-Hour Workweek''''The 4-Hour Body'' }}

Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American author, entrepreneur, and public speaker. In 2007, he published ''The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich'', which was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. In 2010, he followed up with ''The 4-Hour Body''. Ferriss' third book, ''The 4-Hour Chef'', was announced in 2011.

Early life

Ferriss grew up in East Hampton, NY and graduated from St. Paul's School. He received a degree in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2000.

Career

In 2001, at the age of 23, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, a San Jose-based online company that sold profitable unregulated sports nutrition supplements without any clinical studies (such as a double-blind study) to confirm their efficacy. He sold the company in January 2009 to a London-based private equity firm. He is a full-time angel investor and has invested in Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee), Reputation Defender, Foodzie, Badongo, RescueTime, and SimpleGeo.

He also acts as an advisor to StumbleUpon and Shopify in exchange for equity, according to his interviews with Kevin Rose.

He holds the ''Guinness Book of World Records''' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute. Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record live on the show ''Live with Regis and Kelly''. Prior to his writing career, Ferriss wrote that he became the national champion in the 1999 USAWKF Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) championship through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring. In 2008, he won ''Wired Magazine'''s "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize and was named one of ''Fast Company'''s "Most Innovative Business People of 2007". Ferriss has also spoken at the EG Conference.

His show ''Trial By Fire'' aired on the History Channel in December 2008. In the show, Ferriss had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years, and in the pilot episode he practiced yabusame, the Japanese art of horseback archery.

The Aspen Institute named Ferriss a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow in March 2009.

Productivity and teachings

Ferriss is known for his application of both the Pareto principle and Parkinson's Law to business and personal life. He has also taken the position that technology such as email, instant messaging and internet-enabled PDAs complicate life rather than simplify it. His teachings fit under the umbrella of what he calls "lifestyle design", in which he promotes "mini-retirements" as an alternative to the "deferred-life" career path where one would work a 9 to 5 job until retirement in one's 60s. This involves breaking what he calls "outdated assumptions" and finding ways to be more effective so that work takes up less of people's time.

''The 4-Hour Workweek''

In April 2007, Random House released his book ''The 4-Hour Workweek'' through its Crown imprint. The book warns against information overload, recommends what Ferriss calls "selective ignorance" and coins the phrase "lifestyle design". He marketed the book heavily through bloggers with whom he created personal relationships. He has since been praised for this technique. The book eventually hit number 1 on both the New York Times bestseller list and the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. On December 15, 2009, ''The Four-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated'' was released by Random House with several more case studies of people who have utilized Ferriss' methods.

The book also spawned a blog run by Ferriss, which shares the same name but covers many topics. It remains in the Top 1000 on Technorati. Ferriss stated, in a Fast Company interview, that 4HWW is read by many of the "top tech CEOs in the world". His blog has since become publishing clearing house for many notable entrepreneurs, bestselling authors and thinkers including Chip Conley, Neil Strauss, Tucker Max, Ramit Sethi, Ryan Holiday, Noah Kagan of AppSumo, Chase Jarvis and others. The resulting influence from such posts on book sales and other metrics has been dubbed the "Tim Ferriss effect."

''The 4-Hour Body''

On December 14, 2010, Ferriss' second book, ''The 4-Hour Body'', was published by Crown Archetype. The book reached the #1 position in the ''New York Times'' Hardcover Advice & Misc. list that week. It also appeared on the ''Dr. Oz'' TV show.

The book, while commercially successful due to Ferriss' innovative marketing and his enlistment of his blog readers in a successful effort to manipulate the book's rating on Amazon, was not as well received by some critics. In a rare ''New York Times'' review of a self-help book, Dwight Garner wrote, "'The 4-Hour Body' reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog."

Ferriss has acknowledged using steroids—including testosterone cypionate, testosterone enanthate, Sustanon 250, and human growth hormone (HGH)—under medical supervision during his recovery from shoulder surgery.

''The 4-Hour Chef''

Ferriss' third book, ''The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life'', is set for publication by Amazon in 2012. Ferriss intends the book to be as much about "the skill of learning skills" as cooking food.

References

External links

Tim Ferriss Blog

Problogger Interview: with Tim Ferriss

Former desk slave Tim Ferriss on why you only need to work a four-hour week from ''The Independent''

Tim Ferriss: The Clock Watcher from ''The Daily Telegraph''

Better, Faster, Stronger from The New Yorker

Category:American bloggers Category:American business writers Category:American business theorists Category:American motivational writers Category:American Internet personalities Category:Life coaches Category:Technology evangelists Category:Princeton University alumni Category:1977 births Category:Living people Category:Angel investors

cs:Timothy Ferriss ru:Феррисс, Тимоти