Sugar substitute

A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweet taste like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are natural and some are synthetic. Those that are not natural are, in general, called artificial sweeteners.

An important class of sugar substitutes is known as high-intensity sweeteners. These are compounds with many times the sweetness of sucrose, common table sugar. As a result, much less sweetener is required and energy contribution is often negligible. The sensation of sweetness caused by these compounds (the "sweetness profile") is sometimes notably different from sucrose, so they are often used in complex mixtures that achieve the most natural sweet sensation.

If the sucrose (or other sugar) that is replaced has contributed to the texture of the product, then a bulking agent is often also needed. This may be seen in soft drinks or sweet tea that are labeled as "diet" or "light" that contain artificial sweeteners and often have notably different mouthfeel, or in table sugar replacements that mix maltodextrins with an intense sweetener to achieve satisfactory texture sensation.

Home

A home is a dwelling-place used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for an individual, family, household or several families in a tribe. It is often a house, apartment, or other building, or alternatively a mobile home, houseboat, yurt or any other portable shelter. Homes typically provide areas and facilities for sleeping, preparing food, eating and hygiene. Larger groups may live in a nursing home, children's home, convent or any similar institution. A homestead also includes agricultural land and facilities for domesticated animals. Where more secure dwellings are not available, people may live in the informal and sometimes illegal shacks found in slums and shanty towns. More generally, "home" may be considered to be a geographic area, such as a town, village, suburb, city, or country.

Transitory accommodation in a treatment facility for a few weeks is not normally considered permanent enough to replace a more stable location as 'home'. In 2005, 100 million people worldwide were estimated to be homeless.

Heart

The heart is a muscular organ in humans and other animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. Blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients, and also assists in the removal of metabolic wastes. The heart is located in the middle compartment of the mediastinum in the chest.

In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria; and lower left and right ventricles. Commonly the right atrium and ventricle are referred together as the right heart and their left counterparts as the left heart. Fish in contrast have two chambers, an atrium and a ventricle, while reptiles have three chambers. In a healthy heart blood flows one way through the heart due to heart valves, which prevent backflow. The heart is enclosed in a protective sac, the pericardium, which also contains a small amount of fluid. The wall of the heart is made up of three layers: epicardium, myocardium, and endocardium.

Dunmore Pineapple

The Dunmore Pineapple, a folly ranked "as the most bizarre building in Scotland", stands in Dunmore Park, near Airth in Stirlingshire, Scotland.

The walled garden at Dunmore Park

Dunmore Park, the ancestral home of the Earls of Dunmore, includes a large country mansion, Dunmore House, and grounds which contain, among other things, two large walled gardens. Walled gardens were a necessity for any great house in a northern climate in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as a high wall of stone or brick helped to shelter the garden from wind and frost, and could create a microclimate in which the ambient temperature could be raised several degrees above that of the surrounding landscape. This allowed the cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and also of ornamental plants, which could not otherwise survive that far north.

The larger of the two gardens covers about six acres, located on a gentle south-facing slope. South-facing slopes are the ideal spot for walled gardens and for the cultivation of frost-sensitive plants. Along the north edge of the garden, the slope had probably originally been more steep. To allow both the upper and lower parts of the garden to be flat and level at different heights, it was necessary to bank up the earth on the higher northern side (away from the main house), behind a retaining wall about 16 feet high, and a solid 3 feet, 3 inches thick, which runs the entire length of the north side of the garden.

Michael Greger

Michael Herschel Greger (born 25 October 1972) is an American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues. He is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He started eating a plant-based diet in 1990. He is currently the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Humane Society International. Greger is the author of several books and various scholarly publications on animal agriculture, nutrition, and human health. In 2011, he founded the website NutritionFacts.org. He also is a founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

Greger's promotion of veganism has been criticized for including exaggerated claims of health benefits and for cherry-picking research.

Career and advocacy

Greger is licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. Greger contributes to the HSUS's efforts to shape public policy on agriculture and nutrition.