Multitasking Myths Debunked.

From The New York Times -

May 3, 2013

Brain, Interrupted

By BOB SULLIVAN and HUGH THOMPSON

TECHNOLOGY has given us many gifts, among them dozens of new ways to grab our attention. It’s hard to talk to a friend without your phone buzzing at least once. Odds are high you will check your Twitter feed or Facebook wall while reading this article. Just try to type a memo at work without having an e-mail pop up that ruins your train of thought.

But what constitutes distraction? Does the mere possibility that a phone call or e-mail will soon arrive drain your brain power? And does distraction matter — do interruptions make us dumber? Quite a bit, according to new research by Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

There’s a lot of debate among brain researchers about the impact of gadgets on our brains. Most discussion has focused on the deleterious effect of multitasking. Early results show what most of us know implicitly: if you do two things at once, both efforts suffer.

In fact, multitasking is a misnomer. In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is really doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks,” and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy to count the added expense of the hassle of change. When your brain is switching tasks, the cost is harder to quantify.

There have been a few efforts to do so: Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, found that a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. But there has been scant research on the quality of work done during these periods of rapid toggling.

We decided to investigate further, and asked Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology, and the psychologist Eyal Peer at Carnegie Mellon to design an experiment to measure the brain power lost when someone is interrupted.

To simulate the pull of an expected cellphone call or e-mail, we had subjects sit in a lab and perform a standard cognitive skill test. In the experiment, 136 subjects were asked to read a short passage and answer questions about it. There were three groups of subjects; one merely completed the test. The other two were told they “might be contacted for further instructions” at any moment via instant message.

During an initial test, the second and third groups were interrupted twice. Then a second test was administered, but this time, only the second group was interrupted. The third group awaited an interruption that never came. Let’s call the three groups Control, Interrupted and On High Alert.

We expected the Interrupted group to make some mistakes, but the results were truly dismal, especially for those who think of themselves as multitaskers: during this first test, both interrupted groups answered correctly 20 percent less often than members of the control group.

In other words, the distraction of an interruption, combined with the brain drain of preparing for that interruption, made our test takers 20 percent dumber. That’s enough to turn a B-minus student (80 percent) into a failure (62 percent).

But in Part 2 of the experiment, the results were not as bleak. This time, part of the group was told they would be interrupted again, but they were actually left alone to focus on the questions.

Again, the Interrupted group underperformed the control group, but this time they closed the gap significantly, to a respectable 14 percent. Dr. Peer said this suggested that people who experience an interruption, and expect another, can learn to improve how they deal with it.

But among the On High Alert group, there was a twist. Those who were warned of an interruption that never came improved by a whopping 43 percent, and even outperformed the control test takers who were left alone. This unexpected, counterintuitive finding requires further research, but Dr. Peer thinks there’s a simple explanation: participants learned from their experience, and their brains adapted.

Somehow, it seems, they marshaled extra brain power to steel themselves against interruption, or perhaps the potential for interruptions served as a kind of deadline that helped them focus even better.

Clifford Nass, a Stanford sociologist who conducted some of the first tests on multitasking, has said that those who can’t resist the lure of doing two things at once are “suckers for irrelevancy.” There is some evidence that we’re not just suckers for that new text message, or addicted to it; it’s actually robbing us of brain power, too. Tweet about this at your own risk.

What the Carnegie Mellon study shows, however, is that it is possible to train yourself for distractions, even if you don’t know when they’ll hit.

Bob Sullivan, a journalist at NBC News, and Hugh Thompson, a computer scientist and entrepreneur, are the authors of “The Plateau Effect: Getting From Stuck to Success.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/a-focus-on-distraction.html

Veggie Burgers Worth Trying

From Yahoo and One Green Planet

5 Delish and Healthy Homemade Veggie Patties for Your July 4th BBQ!

By One Green Planet | Shine Food – Wed, Jul 3, 2013 11:12 AM EDT

 

 

 

To anyone who enjoys a "real" burger, the veggie burger patty has often been dismissed as a laughable imitation of the classic hamburger, with a foundational ingredient missing. While this may have been true in the past, things have started to change for the meatless version of this American classic. In fact, in recent years, the veggie burger has managed to transcend its early incarnations that we're designed to replicate (mostly with limited success) the taste and texture of its famous cousin, the hamburger. Creative chefs discovered that the lack of meat was not a limitation, but instead an opportunity to embrace healthy ingredients like vegetables, quinoa, lentils, beans, brown rice, and other grains to create veggie patties.

Today, the veggie burger may not have yet achieved iconic status as an American sandwich, but it has definitely found a place in our meat-dominated food culture. So, if you're looking to skip on meat this summer, avoid the frozen veggie burger patties found in grocery stores around the country and try one of these amazing recipes instead. Not only are they versatile, adaptable and delicious, but unlike the hamburger, they also come with countless benefits.

Here is our list of 5 Must-Try Veggie Patties!

1. The Ultimate Veggie Patty

If a recipe doesn't rock your socks off, we are not going to call it ultimate. Folks, this veggie burger is vegan, gluten free, grain free, low carb, and doesn't taste like the socks it rocked off. These miraculous patties of joy are endlessly customizable to whatever you want. Add in different veggies, beans, flavors… you have no excuse not to make these because they adapt to whatever you have on hand. So actually… you should go make these now. Let your imagination (and your taste buds) run wild!


Serving size: 2 patties (entire recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup chickpeas
• 3/4 cup veggies, fresh or frozen and defrosted (see note above)
• 2 Tablespoons chickpea flour
• 1 egg white or 1 1/2 teaspoons egg replacer plus 2 Tablespoons water
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

 In a food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse until blended (but not completely pureed; you still want the burgers to have some texture). Heat a greased or nonstick sprayed skillet over medium high heat. Spoon half the chickpea mixture onto the pan and spread it out with the back of a spoon to form a patty shape. Repeat with the other half of the chickpea mixture. Cook for 3-5 minutes, or until golden, and flip. Cook on the other side for a few more minutes or until golden and beautiful then turn off the heat, transfer to a plate, and devour.

2. Red Lentil Veggie Patty with Kale Pesto
 While you may enjoy veggies, getting your loved on to eat a veggie burger may require some persuasion. Use this recipe to get them to cross over; it's not chewy or mushy. It is crispy on the outside, so they feel grilled. The patties are super tasty and they won't even care it's veggie!

Inspired by Mike Chung from the blog, Chung Eats.

I have been working hard trying to perfect a recipe for a hearty, filling, and scrumptious vegan burger patty. While I totally enjoy being vegan, my boyfriend still needs constant persuasion that eating vegan food can bring all the pleasures a meat-eater enjoys. As per his request the burgers cannot be chewy or mushy. They also need to be crispy enough on the outside so we can pretend the patties were grilled. The patties should, of course, be super tasty so I can keep convincing my omnivorous boyfriend that being vegan is cool and delicious.

Red Lentil burgers

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of dry red lentils (cooked in 4 cups of water with bay leaves and dashi seaweed to reduce gas)
• 1 cup of raw almonds, pulsed into a rough meal
• 1/2 cup of raw sunflower seeds
• 1 carrot, shredded
• 2 small potatoes, shredded
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• Black pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1-2 tbsp agave nectar

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

1. Mix the chia seeds with 1/4 cup of water. Set aside so the mixture can gel.
2. Wash and cook your lentils. Set aside and let them drain and cool as much as possible.
3. Cook the carrot and the potatoes with the spices in olive oil just until they soften. About 5 minutes. Do not overcook.
4. Combine the drained lentils, almond meal, chia gel, soy sauce, and agave nectar in a food processor and mix until a uniform but slightly chunky mass is formed.
5. Combine the lentil mixture, sunflower seeds, and the cooked vegetables in a bowl. If the mixture is too wet, add more almond meal. If the mixture is too dry add some water. Do not make it too dry or the burgers will fall apart in the oven.
6. Measure out about 1/4 cup of the mixture and shape into patties. Bake the patties for about 20 minutes on each side or until each side is crispy.

Kale Pesto

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cups of washed, chopped kale
• 4 tbsp of agave nectar
• 1 tbsp dry basil (that’s all I had, but to make it extra delicious use 1/4 cup of fresh basil)
• 1 tsp of dry oregano
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup of water

Preparation:

1. Mix all the ingredients except for water in a food processor. Blend until a paste texture is achieved.
2. If the mixture is too dry, gradually add water, 1 tbsp at a time, until desired consistency is achieved.

 We eat these patties as a post workout meal because of the high protein content found in lentils and chia seeds. The carrots and kale pesto take care of your vegetable servings while barley and potatoes provide the carbohydrates. The sunflower seeds take care of some amino acids as well as your healthy fats. This is a vegan meal that is delicious and complete. Kale pesto is raw and is packed with vitamins A, C, and K, as well as calcium. It is also relatively high in protein. Perfect for growing and maintaining muscles.

3. Cajun Burger Patties
 These cajun burger patties are super tasty, and are also really quick to put together. The base is kasha, which are toasted buckwheat grains. They're a gorgeous brown color, and shaped like a pyramid. They also have a nice toasty flavor, which goes really well with the grilling season. These hold up fairly well on the BBQ, since kasha cooks to be fairly dry, but all veggie patties (veggie or meat) are prone to sticking when they're fresh and soft. There are some tips below on preparing the grill and the burgers for cooking, so be sure to read through them first if you plan on cooking these straight on the BBQ.









These cajun burgers are super tasty, and are also really quick to put together. The base is kasha, which are toasted buckwheat grains. They’re a gorgeous brown color, and shaped like a pyramid. They also have a nice toasty flavor, which goes really well with the grilling season.
These burgers hold up fairly well on the BBQ, since kasha cooks to be fairly dry, but all burgers (veggie or meat) are prone to sticking when they’re fresh and soft. There are some tips below on preparing the grill and the burgers for cooking, so be sure to read through them first if you plan on cooking these straight on the BBQ.
You can also check out a free video showing exactly how to make them.
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Time from start to eating: 45 minutes
Makes enough for 4 burgers.
Ingredients:

• 1 cup kasha (toasted buckwheat)
• 2 carrots, grated
• Handful fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 tsp dried basil*
• 1 tsp dried thyme*
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano*
• 1 tsp paprika*
• 1/2 tsp ground mustard powder*
• 1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you like it)*
• Salt and pepper, to taste

*or 1-2 tsp chili powder and 1 Tbsp mixed dried herbs, or 1 Tbsp cajun seasoning
Preparation:

1. Put the kasha in a pot with 2 cups of water. Sprinkle a bit of sea salt in the water, bring it to a boil for a couple of minutes, then turn down to low and simmer for 15 minutes. For these burgers, it should cook to be fairly dry. The ratio of water is important here.
2. Once it’s cooked, stir the grated carrot, fresh parsley and spices into the buckwheat. Form the mixture into patties and bake, fry or BBQ into a burger.
3. To bake: form into patties and lay on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Put them in an oven at around 350 degrees F for 30 minutes, or until browned on the outside. Flip them after about 20 minutes to get both sides browned.
4. To fry: heat a pan, add a teaspoon of olive oil and put the patties in the pan, being sure to get some oil on the bottom side. Allow them to cook for 5 minutes on both sides.
5. To BBQ: heat the grill, then brush it clean and spray with oil (using a sprayer filled with olive oil is the best). Gently lay the burgers on the grill, let them cook for 7 minutes or so, then very gently flip them and cook another 5 minutes.

BBQ Notes: To make them more solid for grilling, you can freeze the burgers before grilling them. Even if they’re only partially frozen, they’ll hold up better. If you want to be sure you’re not going to run into disaster, put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet and BBQ them with the lid down, like an oven.
Serve your burgers on a bun, with tomato, lettuce and your favorite condiments (homemade guacamole is amazing on these), or try having them over a green salad.




4. Raw Yam Burger Patty and Daikon Fries
 All that's in these patties and fries is a whack load of vegetables and spices. Goes like this: throw stuff in the food processor, rub things with your hands, toss something in the dehydrator and you'll get a gourmet raw food meal in no time! (Okay, we may have simplified that process a little.) But seriously - it's pretty much that easy. Look at the colors of this recipe!



 
All that’s in these burgers and fries is a whack load of vegetables and spices. Goes like this: throw stuff in the food processor, rub things with your hands, toss something in the dehydrator and you’ll get a gourmet raw food meal in no time! (Okay, I may have simplified that process a little.) But seriously – it’s pretty much that easy. Look at the colours of this food.
It’s alive. I’m alive. Let’s boogy.
yam burgers & daikon fries with ketchup: serves 5 or so
Burgers:

• 1 yam
• 2/3 cup green onions (or onion)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 4 dates
• 5 tablespoons ground flax seeds
• 4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 4 large mushrooms
• 4 garlic cloves
• Salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, basil, turmeric, paprika (to taste)

Fries:

• 1 daikon radish (the size depends on how many you’re feeding)
• 1 teaspoon veg oil (optional but recommended)
• Salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, basil, turmeric, paprika (to taste)

Ketchup:

• 1-2 tomatoes
• 1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes
• Salt (to taste)
• 3 dates
• Water or lemon juice (as needed)

Preparation:
To make the burgers: prep the veggies as needed and cut them into chunks. Then pulse all the ingredients in your food processor until everything becomes a thick, wet-ish mixture, but don’t pulse too long. You want pieces of the food still visible and you don’t want it to be too wet. Adjust according to taste. Then form into patties and dehydrate for 3-4 hours, or use your oven at it’s lowest temperature.
To make the fries: peel the daikon and slice into fries. Rub in the oil and spices. Dehydrate for 3 hours or in your oven at it’s lowest temperature, (or you could eat them raw if you like).
To make the ketchup: blend all ingredients in your food processor or blender until smooth, adding liquid as needed. Adjust according to taste. Serve the burgers, fries and ketchup with lettuce, tomatoes, marinated mushrooms, onions, sprouts, avocado, and anything else you like. Enjoy!





5. Portobello Patties
Full of flavor, these plant-based burgers are extremely versatile. Time for cooked method: 10 minutes prep; 2-3 minutes to cook Prep time for raw method: 10 minutes; 10-12 hours to dehydrate.

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Full of flavor, these plant-based burgers are extremely versatile. Time for cooked method: 10 minutes prep; 2–3 minutes to cook
Prep time for raw method: 10 minutes; 10–12 hours to dehydrate
Makes 4 burgers
Ingredients:

• 1⁄2 cup ground flax seeds
• 1⁄4 cup hemp seeds
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 1⁄2 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
• 1 tbsp EFA oil
• 2 tbsp brown rice miso paste
• 1 tsp pressed garlic
• 1⁄2 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1⁄4 cup chopped walnut pieces
• 2 medium Portobello mushrooms, (chopped into large cubes)
• 1⁄3 cup quinoa flakes (for cooked method only; omit for raw method)

Preparation:

1. In a food processor, combine all ingredients except walnuts and mushrooms, and process until well combined. Turn off the processor and add in the walnuts and mushrooms.
2. Pulse just 3 or 4 times until the mushrooms are diced, but do not blend. Remove mixture from the processor and transfer to a medium bowl.

Raw Method (best):

1. Shape the mixture into 4 balls and flatten into patties on a teflex or nonstick sheet.
2. Dehydrate for 10–12 hours at 115°F, then flip and transfer to a mesh sheet and “cook” for 2 more hours.

These keep for several days wrapped and refrigerated, and can be reheated as needed.
Cooked method:

1. Mix the quinoa flakes into the mushroom mixture and let stand for 20 minutes.
2. Sauté the chopped mushrooms in a dry pan for 2 or 3 minutes to cook out some of the moisture.
3. Follow the rest of the recipe to form burgers.
4. To cook, shape the mixture into 4 balls (press firmly to compact) and form into patties.
5. Over very low heat, oil the pan with 1 or 2 tbsp coconut oil.
6. Add the patties, and cook approximately 10 minutes on each side. The patties will remain soft on the inside but utterly enjoyable.

To Serve:
Try “protein style” on a salad with a mustard vinaigrette, in a collard green with avocado and vegetables


This post was originally published on One Green Planet.

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/5-delish-healthy-homemade-veggie-patties-july-4th-151200625.html

Drug War Failure Graphed

The most embarrassing graph in American drug policy

By Harold Pollack, Updated: May 29, 2013

When it comes to drugs, it’s all about prices.
The ability to raise prices is– at least is perceived to be–a critical function of drug control policy. Higher prices discourage young people from using. Higher prices encourage adult users to consume less, to quit sooner, or to seek treatment. (Though higher prices can bring short-term problems, too, as drug users turn to crime to finance their increasingly unaffordable habit.)
An enormous law enforcement effort seeks to raise prices at every point in the supply chain from farmers to end-users: Eradicating coca crops in source countries, hindering access to chemicals required for drug production, interdicting smuggling routes internationally and within our borders, street-level police actions against local dealers.
That’s why this may be the most embarrassing graph in the history of drug control policy. (I’m grateful to Peter Reuter, Jonathan Caulkins, and Sarah Chandler for their willingness to share this figure from their work.) Law enforcement strategies have utterly failed to even maintain street prices of the key illicit substances. Street drug prices in the below figure fell by roughly a factor of five between 1980 and 2008. Meanwhile the number of drug offenders locked up in our jails and prisons went from fewer than 42,000 in 1980 to a peak of 562,000 in 2007.
The second embarrassment may reflect policymakers desire to ask fewer questions that bring up the first. We have remarkably little evidence that the billions of dollars spent on supply-side interdiction have much impact. There’s surprisingly little demand in the policy community to collect such evidence, despite considerable investments at every level of American government.
In 2001, the National Academy of Sciences concluded: “Neither the data systems nor the research infrastructure needed to assess the effectiveness of drug control enforcement policies now exists.”  That remains true today, 12 years and hundreds of billions of dollars later.
That’s not to say enforcement has zero effect. The mere fact of a drug’s illegality massively increases its cost of production and distribution. To give one timely example, credible research suggests that the (untaxed) market price of cannabis might fall by as much as 80 percent if it could be legally produced at optimum scale as other agricultural commodities are.
But we have little reliable evidence that any particular change in the intensity of law enforcement exerts much influence on market prices. The few studies which examine this question fail to find much of a relationship between law enforcement intensity and illicit drug prices. A 2004 paper by Kuziemko and Levitt is one of the few rigorous analyses that found such a relationship. Examining a period when cocaine prices were actually plummeting, these authors estimated that a 15-fold increase in the number of incarcerated drug offenders raised street cocaine prices in the range of 5 percent to15 percent, compared with what otherwise would have been the case. That’s not much.
Is there hope? I think so. Drug policy has improved during the Obama years. The president and his key drug policy advisers have largely abandoned the harsh war-on-drugs rhetoric of previous administrations. The number of incarcerated drug offenders has declined for the first time in decades. On the demand side, health reform will greatly expand access to substance abuse treatment. Drug markets are less violent than they used to be, too, which creates greater political space for less punitive policies.
I’m especially heartened that conservative groups such as “Right on Crime” are asking anew whether we really need to incarcerate so many people, for such long periods,because they participated on the supply-side of the drug economy. There is interest, across the political spectrum, in violence-reduction policing strategies, such as those promoted by David Kennedy and Mark Kleiman, that offer more discriminating approaches to police illicit drug markets.
Americans across the spectrum are finally requesting more effective, more evidence-based drug control policies. Americans also are more likely to recognize the human faces of drug users, and even of drug sellers, too. That recognition, however overdue, is the foundation of improved public policies.

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/29/the-most-embarrassing-graph-in-american-drug-policy/?tid=obinsite