Ladies who lunch are creatures of habit. They have their favorite table at celeb-laden Freds at Barneys, their favorite drink at Saks Fifth Avenues femme-friendly Cafe SFA and plenty of time for languid two-hour midday meals safely ensconced in the luxe egg chairs at Bergdorf Goodmans BG restaurant.

But department stores are shaking up peoples routines with a stable of chic contemporary cafes that give frenzied shoppers a respite, without all the pomp and circumstance of the shops flagship restaurants.

Bergdorfs 5F soda shop, Saks SnAKS, and Barneys newly opened Genes@Co-op cafe all cater to this younger, on-the-go crowd.

And talk about the future. Genes boasts Matrix-like tables embedded with extra-large touchscreens from which customers can order. SnAKS offers all of the food and none of the lines its big sister restaurant suffers from, while 5F is renowned for having one of the best low-cal fro-yos in town.

I cant tell you how many requests weve had since Freds opened asking, Is there anyplace we can go just to get a cup of coffee? Something quick, says Barneys chef Mark Strausman. I love Freds. But sometimes you just want a sandwich.

So in November Barneys opened Genes@Co-op, which has communal tables.

My mother will probably never go to Genes, admits Samantha Solmonson, 28, an Upper East Sider who works in digital media.

That may be the point.

Heres the skinny on the latest crop of cafes perfect for a quick bite while spring shopping.

Genes@Co-op at Barneys Location: Eighth floor View: The fancy-shmancy buildings of 61st Street

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Label to table

March 22, 2012

The once thriving captive-born southern white rhinoceros population is being threatened by their diet, according to new research. San Diego Zoo Global researchers predict that phytoestrogens in the rhinoceros food may be causing reproductive failure in the females.

In a press release detailing the research, Christopher Tubbs, researcher with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research explained the importance of the study.

Understanding why the captive white rhinoceros population has been dwindling for decades is an important part of protecting the future of this species. Our work is the first step toward determining if phytoestrogens are involved in this phenomenon and whether we need to reevaluate captive white rhino diets.

Zoologists have only recently found the northern and southern white rhinoceros to be different species rather than a subspecies of the African white rhinoceros. As such, conservation efforts have been specifically designed to increase the population of the southern white rhino.

According to SanDiegoZooGlobal.org, The San Diego Safari Park has had great success in conserving the southern white rhino population and has bred more than 88 rhino calves since the Parks establishment in the early 1970s.

While there have been successes in conservation efforts, scientists at San Diego Zoo have noticed a decline in reproduction in females born into captivity.

Reproductive issues such as cystic endometrial hyperplasia; cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers; and ovarian cysts have placed the sustainability of the captive rhinos is jeopardy. In trying to find the cause of these issues, San Diego Zoo scientists began to look at every aspect of the rhinos daily life, such as social experiences, animal density, enclosure size, premature copulations, and diet. Their research suggests examining the rhinos diet as a starting point for unlocking these reproductive mysteries.

The captive southern white rhinoceros eat a diet of alfalfa hay and soy-based, commercially made pellets. Scientists believe that these foodstuffs may contain phytoestrogens such as isoflavinoids. Previous research has shown abnormalities to occur in livestock exposed to these phytoestrogen-rich foods. The abnormalities occur particularly during embryonic development and are similar to those found in captive-born rhinos. The phytoestrogens activate estrogen sensors in the female southern white rhinos, making it difficult to conceive and reproduce. As the southern white rhino is genetically different from other species of African white rhino, the phytoestrogens affect them much differently than other rhinos, such as the one-horned rhinoceros.

Second only to elephants, the southern white rhinoceros is one of the worlds largest land animals. While captive-born populations now face the threat of reproductive difficulty, wild rhinos face the threat of poachers and sport hunting. These factors have placed the southern white rhinoceros on the International Union for Conservation of Natures near-threatened species list. According to the San Diego Zoo, there are currently 17,500 southern white rhinos in the wild, with 500 rhinos in captivity.

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Rhino Diet May Affect Reproduction

Legislation to partially roll back the postal system privatization is expected to sail through the current Diet session because the ruling Democratic Party of Japan will join the two major opposition parties that agreed Thursday to jointly submit a reform bill to this end, lawmakers said.

Earlier in the day, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito agreed on a bill to overturn the postal privatization spearheaded in the early 2000s by then LDP Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that would have had the government sell off its stockholdings in Japan Post Bank and Japan Post Insurance Co. by 2017 to achieve full privatization of Japan Post Holdings Co.'s financial units, the lawmakers said.

Senior DPJ lawmakers, including Secretary General Azuma Koshiishi, said the ruling party will endorse the accord.

The bill agreed on by the LDP and New Komeito states that the sale of all shares in the postal banking and insurance units should be realized "as early as possible" by taking their financial conditions and roles in the postal business into account.

The wording means Japan Post Holdings will decide when shares in the two units should be sold, the lawmakers said.

The bill, which the LDP and New Komeito will jointly present to the Diet next week, also envisages merging Japan Post Network Co. and Japan Post Service Co. to reduce the number of companies under Japan Post Holdings to three from the current four.

As the postal privatization reform would lift a freeze on the government's sale of postal shares in line with a 2009 law, New Komeito hopes to use proceeds from the sale to finance reconstruction work from the earthquake and tsunami disaster of last March.

But the bill is opposed by a considerable number of LDP lawmakers who want the current privatization plan, which would completely remove the two postal financial units from government control, to stand.

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Diet passage likely of postal privatization partial rollback

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 8:27a.m.

By Diaa Hadid and Daniella Cheslow

Told she was too fat to be a model, Danielle Segal shed a quarter of her weight and was hospitalised twice for malnutrition. Now that a new Israeli law prohibits the employment of underweight models, the 19-year-old must gain some of it back if she wants to work again.

Not that she was ever overweight. At 1.7m, she weighed 53kg to begin with. Feeling pressure to become ever thinner, she dropped another 13kg. The unnaturally skeletal girl weighed 40kg by then, or about as much as a robust pre-teen, and her health suffered.

The legislation passed this week aims to put a stop to the extremes, and by extension ease the pressure on youngsters to emulate the skin-and-bones models, often resulting in dangerous eating disorders.

The new law poses a groundbreaking challenge to a fashion industry widely castigated for promoting anorexia and bulimia. Its sponsors say it could become an example for other countries grappling with the spread of the life-threatening disorders.

It's especially important in Israel, which, like other countries, is obsessed by models, whose every utterance and dalliance is fodder for large pictures and racy stories in the nation's newspapers. Supermodel Bar Refaeli is considered a national hero by many. She is not unnaturally thin.

The new law requires models to produce a medical report no older than three months at every shoot for the Israeli market, stating that they are not malnourished by World Health Organisation standards.

The UN agency relies on the body mass index, calculated by factors of weight and height. WHO says a body mass index below 18.5 indicates malnutrition. According to that standard, a woman 1.72 metres tall (5-feet-8) should weigh no less than 119 pounds (54 kilograms).

Also, any advertisement published for the Israeli market must have a clearly written notice disclosing if its models were made to look thinner by digital manipulation. The law does not apply to foreign publications sold in Israel.

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Israel law eyes super-thin models as bad examples

"When you buy DDGS, you don't have to be concerned about the level of sulfur it contains because there doesn't appear to be any impact on pig performance," said U of I animal sciences professor Hans Stein.

According to the researcher, DDGS, a co-product of the ethanol industry, is used as a feed ingredient in diets fed to swine.

To maintain a stable pH in fermentation vats, ethanol producers use sulfuric acid, which results in a sulfur content in the DDGS that varies according to how much sulfuric acid was used. Until now, the effect of low levels of sulfur in the diet on growth performance in pigs fed DDGS had not been determined, he said.

"Sulfur is toxic to cattle. If there is 0.4 percent sulfur in the diet, cattle start getting sick," Stein said. "Because there hasn't been any work on sulfur toxicity with swine, we wanted to determine how sulfur affects palatability and performance in pigs."

In a recent study, Stein's research team compared a low-sulfur (0.3% sulfur) DDGS diet with a high-sulfur (0.9% sulfur) DDGS diet. The same DDGS was used in both groups. The researchers compared palatability and growth performance of the pigs fed the low-sulfur and high-sulfur diets.

"We conducted four experiments: two with weanling pigs and two with growing-finishing pigs," said Stein. "In both weanling pigs and growing-finishing pigs, there was absolutely no difference between the two. The levels of sulfur we used in our experiments had no impact on palatability or pig growth performance."

Stein said that the results of this research would be useful to producers interested in incorporating DDGS into swine diets, but further research is needed to determine whether excess sulfur from a high-sulfur DDGS diet is deposited into swine tissues.

This research was published in the Journal of Animal Science. Researchers included Hans Stein of the U of I, Beob Kim of Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, and Yan Zhang of the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center in Edwardsville, Ill. Funding was provided by the National Pork Board, Des Moines, Iowa.

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (news : web)

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Study: Distiller's grain safe for pigs, even with sulfur content

Public release date: 21-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Phyllis Picklesimer p-pickle@illinois.edu 217-244-2827 University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

URBANA University of Illinois research reports that swine producers can feed distiller's dried grain with solubles (DDGS) to their pigs without concern for sulfur content.

"When you buy DDGS, you don't have to be concerned about the level of sulfur it contains because there doesn't appear to be any impact on pig performance," said U of I animal sciences professor Hans Stein.

According to the researcher, DDGS, a co-product of the ethanol industry, is used as a feed ingredient in diets fed to swine.

To maintain a stable pH in fermentation vats, ethanol producers use sulfuric acid, which results in a sulfur content in the DDGS that varies according to how much sulfuric acid was used. Until now, the effect of low levels of sulfur in the diet on growth performance in pigs fed DDGS had not been determined, he said.

"Sulfur is toxic to cattle. If there is 0.4 percent sulfur in the diet, cattle start getting sick," Stein said. "Because there hasn't been any work on sulfur toxicity with swine, we wanted to determine how sulfur affects palatability and performance in pigs."

In a recent study, Stein's research team compared a low-sulfur (0.3% sulfur) DDGS diet with a high-sulfur (0.9% sulfur) DDGS diet. The same DDGS was used in both groups. The researchers compared palatability and growth performance of the pigs fed the low-sulfur and high-sulfur diets.

"We conducted four experiments: two with weanling pigs and two with growing-finishing pigs," said Stein. "In both weanling pigs and growing-finishing pigs, there was absolutely no difference between the two. The levels of sulfur we used in our experiments had no impact on palatability or pig growth performance."

Stein said that the results of this research would be useful to producers interested in incorporating DDGS into swine diets, but further research is needed to determine whether excess sulfur from a high-sulfur DDGS diet is deposited into swine tissues.

Original post:
U of I study: Distiller's grain safe for pigs, even with sulfur content

Published: March. 21, 2012 at 7:30 PM

SAN DIEGO, March 21 (UPI) -- Southern white rhinoceros populations in zoos have been showing severely reduced reproductivity and it may be down to their diet, U.S. researchers say.

San Diego Zoo researchers say they may have determined why the rhino populations in managed-care facilities are declining: phytoestrogens in their diet might be contributing to reproductive failure in the females.

The southern white rhinoceros is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "near-threatened" species.

Wild populations face poaching and sport hunting, but captive populations have been declining because of reproductive issues in the females including cystic endometrial hyperplasia; cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers; and ovarian cysts, the Zoological Society of San Diego reported.

Researchers say they believe the diets of the captive population is a concern and that phytoestrogens such as isoflavinoids found in the alfalfa and soy they eat activate their estrogen receptors more than those of the greater one-horned rhinoceros, another captive population that receives a similar diet but has better reproductive success.

"Understanding why the captive white rhinoceros population has been dwindling for decades is an important part of protecting the future of this species," Christopher Tubbs, researcher with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, said.

The researchers compared populations that are doing well with populations whose reproductivity is placing them at risk, and said diet is a key difference between the two.

"Our work is the first step toward determining if phytoestrogens are involved in this phenomenon and whether we need to re-evaluate captive white rhino diets."

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Zoo diets may be harming rhinos