Monday, May 31, 2010

Natural grocery shoppers less likely to be obese

MAY 25,2010

BY: PAMELA BOND

Healthy People Project falls short of 2010 goals

Whole Foods announces executive team changes

Shoppers at PCC Natural Markets,Whole Foods Marketand Trader Joes are less likely to be obese than shoppers at low-cost grocery stores, according to a new report from the Seattle Obesity Study.

Food shoppers at these higher-price stores, as defined by the study, had an obesity rate of 4 to 5 percent versus nearly 40 percent for Albertsons’ shoppers. The Seattle region, which was the focus of the research, has an obesity rate of almost 20 percent, which is lower than the U.S. average of about 34 percent.

“We are increasingly finding that obesity is a reflection of economic conditions,” said Adam Drewnowski, PhD, University of Washingtonprofessor of epidemiology. “You see higher rates in lower income neighborhoods, poor zip codes, cheaper, fast-food restaurants, and, yes, in downscale supermarkets as compared to places like Whole Foods.”

Prior to the SOS study, access to healthy food has been a defined mostly by geographic proximity to supermarkets. Bringing more grocery stores to low-income, high-minority or rural areas—so-called “food deserts”—is thought to improve residents’ diets and health. As a result, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, plans to spend $400 million in 2011 to bring supermarkets to underserved areas and help convenience stores carry more fresh produce.

But factors other than supermarket access may be at play, according to the Seattle researchers. To determine the top factors, the researchers analyzed actual human behavior of more than 2,000 shoppers in the Seattle area, tracking their choice of supermarkets and comparing it to their education, income and obesity rates.

The SOS researchers found that only 15 percent of study respondents shopped at stores within their census tract. “Six out of seven people shopped for food outside their immediate neighborhood,” Drewnowski said in a release. “The closest supermarket for most people was less than a mile away, but people chose the market that was more than three miles away.”

See more at: http://naturalfoodsmerchandiser.com/tabId/119/itemId/4704/Natural-grocery-shoppers-less-likely-to-be-obese.aspx

Architect Grows Brick From Bacteria, Sand & Urine

by Kimberley D. Mok, Montreal, Canada on 05.18.10

DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE (materials)

BUZZ UP!

bio-engineered brick ginger dosier The first 6 out of 12 steps to create Ginger Dosier's bio-engineered brick (Images: Metropolis)

Growing bricks out of bacteria, sand, calcium chloride and pee? Well, thanks to a recent discovery by an American architecture professor in Abu Dhabi, we may be looking forward to bio-engineered bricks that will be grown out of a laboratory at room temperature, rather than fired in a kiln using tons of trees and coal.

bio-engineered brick ginger dosier

The brick breakthrough happened almost by accident: after years of research beginning with crystal growing kits and experimenting with various chemistry recipes, 32-year-old Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, chanced upon her first Lego-sized "baby brick" after throwing the remnants of other failed trials and waiting a week.

Bricks major source of carbon emissions
Cheap, sturdy and easy to produce, kiln-fired bricks have been around for a long time. But the process required for this widely-used traditional material means rampant deforestation and vast amounts of carbon emissions spewed into the atmosphere.

See more at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/architect-grows-brick-out-of-bacteria-sand-urine.php

eBay's Newest Data Center Uses Half the Energy, Aims for LEED Gold

By GreenerComputing Staff

Published May 26, 2010

Tags: Data Centers, Energy Efficiency

eBay's Newest Data Center Uses Half the Energy, Aims for LEED Gold

SOUTH JORDAN, UT — When your business is global and entirely online, having a reliable and powerful data center is mission-critical, and energy efficiency can at best place a close second.

But eBay's newly opened data center here has managed to achieve high levels of redundancy while also using as much as 50 percent less energy than other facilities that it leases.

In a blog post on Data Center Pulse, eBay's Senior Director of Global Data Center Strategy Dean Nelson lays out what went into building "Project Topaz," the code name for what he calls "the single largest infrastructure project that the company has ever undertaken."

Picture that everything has a backup -- even the backups have backup. Now keep in mind that nothing is really 100% bulletproof, but in terms of a resilient data center, we have built the highest level possible.

Now, many think that when you build a data center with this much redundancy, it will be extremely expensive to operate and very inefficient. Quite the contrary. Besides running the data center operations for the company, I'm also responsible to pay the power bill. So, the datacenter must be built like a tank, be able to brush off major faults, lower our operating costs and be extremely efficient.

“It’s BP’s Oil”

→ BP, Energy, Environment, Top Stories

— Photos by John Hazlett and Mac McClelland

Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana's crude-covered beaches.

— By Mac McClelland

209 Comments | Post Comment

Mon May. 24, 2010 12:14 AM PDT

Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, even after all the warnings, looks worse than I imagined. Pools of oil black and deep stretch down the beach; when cleanup workers drag their rakes along an already-cleaned patch of sand, more auburn crude oozes up. Beneath the surface lie slimy washed-up globules that, one worker says, are "so big you could park a car on them."

It's Saturday, May 22nd, a month into the BP spill, and I've been trying to get to Elmer's Island for the past two days. I've been stymied at every turn by Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies brought in to supplement the local police force of Grand Isle, a 300-year-old settlement here at the very southern tip of Louisiana. Just seven miles long and so narrow in some spots that you can see from the Gulf side to the inland side, Grand Isle is all new clapboard and vinyl-sided bungalows since Katrina, but still scrappy—population 1,500, octuple that in tourist season. It's also home to the only route to Elmer's, a barrier island to the west. I arrived on Thursday with my former University of New Orleans lit prof, John Hazlett; a tandem kayak is strapped to his Toyota Tacoma. At the turn to Elmer's Island Road, a deputy flags us down. Can't go to Elmer's; he's just "doing what they told me to do." We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I've stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.

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The next day, cops drive up and down Grand Isle beach explicitly telling tourists it is still open, just stay out of the water. There are pools of oil on the beach; dolphins crest just offshore. A fifty-something couple, Southern Louisianians, tell me this kind of thing happened all the time when they were kids; they swam in rubber suits when it got bad, and it was no big deal. They just hope this doesn't mean we'll stop drilling.

The blockade to Elmer's is now four cop cars strong. As we pull up, deputies start bawling us out; all media need to go to the Grand Isle community center, where a "BP Information Center" sign now hangs out front. Grand Isle residents are not amused by the beach
closing.Inside, a couple of Times-Picayunereporters circle BP representative Barbara Martin, who tells them that if they want passage to Elmer they have to get it from another BP flack, Irvin Lipp; Grand Isle beach is closed too, she adds. When we inform the Times-Pic reporters otherwise, she asks Dr. Hazlett if he's a reporter; he says, "No." She says, "Good." She doesn't ask me. We tell her that deputies were just yelling at us, and she seems truly upset. For one, she's married to a Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy. For another, "We don't need more of a black eye than we already have."

"But it wasn't BP that was yelling at us, it was the sheriff's office," we say.

"Yeah, I know, but we have…a very strong relationship."

"What do you mean? You have a lot of sway over the sheriff's office?"

"Oh yeah."

"How much?"

"A lot."

When I tell Barbara I am a reporter, she stalks off and says she's not talking to me, then comes back and hugs me and says she was just playing. I tell her I don't understand why I can't see Elmer's Island unless I'm escorted by BP. She tells me BP's in charge because "it's BP's oil."

"But it's not BP's land."

"But BP's liable if anything happens."

"So you're saying it's a safety precaution."

"Yeah! You don't want that oil gettin' into your pores."

"But there are tourists and residents walking around in it across the street."

"The mayor decides which beaches are closed." So I call the Grand Isle police requesting a press liason, only to get routed to voicemail for Melanie with BP. I call the police back and ask why they gave me a number for BP; they blame the fire chief.

I reach the fire chief. "Why did the police give me a number for BP?" I ask.

"That's the number they gave us."

"Who?"

"BP."

See more at: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

Gen Y's Green Demands for the Workplace

By Leslie Guevarra

Published May 19, 2010

Tags: Building Design, Business Operations,More...

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New York, NY — The 18- to 25-year-olds just entering, or poised to enter, the workforce aren't likely to be satisfied with shared "hotel-style" desk assignments, drab cubicles or windowless spaces that have characterized offices in the past, according to new research that could strongly influence space and energy efficiency strategies in the corporate world.

The highly educated, mobile and tech-savvy age group that falls within the demographic band known as Generation Y wants a workplace that's like them: urban, flexible, collaborative, environmentally sensitive and unconventional.

For them, work isn't just a place they go to from 9 to 5, then go home. They want an office and a work culture that's an extension of themselves and their home life -- a place that supports what they value -- and it better be green, according to a new study by Johnson Controls Inc. that has implications for employers, facility managers, human resources departments and building and office space designers.

Johnson Controls released the results of its research project OXYGENZ at the WORKTECH10 Conference in New York. The study is aimed at providing the first look at the workplace expectations of Gen Y -- a group often considered as transformers or invaders depending on one's viewpoint. Chart Made from Report Elements

With the Baby Boomers retiring and millions fewer in the younger generations to replace them in the workforce in the U.S., U.K. and Western Europe, employers are trying hard to understand what makes Gen Y tick.

And many employers are apprehensive about what it will take to attract and retain the top talent from this pool -- and how their demands can be reconciled with those of the other generations in the workplace: Generation X, the Baby Boomers and those who preceded from them, the Veterans, said Marie Puybaraud, Johnson Controls' director of Global WorkPlace Innovation and the author of the report.

"i think a lot of people thought they would be very demanding," said Puybaraud. "They're scared about Generation Y in the workplace."

The OXYGENZ project queried 3,011 18- to 25-year-olds in the United States, U.K. Germany, India and China. Using a survey with office furniture firm Haworth and the IDEA design consultancy based in the United Kingdom, researchers also included almost 1,300 26- to 35-year-olds and nearly 400 36- to 45-year-olds for further context. In all, 5,375 people responded to online surveys in research conducted earlier this year.

Although their work habits and desires are closest to those of Gen X, Gen Y's approach to the workplace is unique. "There's a very different story coming across with this group," said Puybaraud.

"That they consider work as a social element in their lives comes through very strongly," she said. "For them the workplace is a social construction and work is social. They want emotional engagement and the sense of community. They choose employers [because] they are looking for meaningful work and opportunities for learning, because of quality of life issues and work colleagues."

That's not to say the group's work ethic is diminished. Given their preferences for elastic schedules and multitasking, their workday may span longer hours or pack in more activity. They may also spend more time around the office as well, given that they'd like snack and coffee bars on site -- and want places like clubs, cocktail bars and gyms nearby, if not in, the building. That said, employers can expect these employees will want to manage their duties and tasks to satisfy their needs for work-life balance.

Based on the study findings, employers can also expect that Gen Y:

Wants their jobs to be located in an urban area within an easy commute by foot, public transportation or by car. In the U.S., 79 percent said they prefer to work in an urban setting, 51 percent they'd get there by car (and for 34 percent that would be a hybrid vehicle) 18 percent would walk,15 percent would use public transit and 9 percent said they'd use a motorcycle or scooter.
See more at: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/05/19/gen-y-green-demands-workplace#ixzz0p8f54P2D

Proxy Topics

Shareholders are assuming a more active voice in the boardroom. Many proxy statements include shareholder proposals that showcase this interest. We have seen proposals for greater activism in such areas as director voting policies, director nomination, compensation, and company policies on sustainability.

With regard to direct communication between shareholders and the board of directors and responses to shareholder concerns, public companies are now expected to have communication procedures that are consistent, clear, and candid and allow for a two-way dialogue. More companies are including policies for shareholder communication on their websites and providing mechanisms for communication through portals, e-mail, interactive webcasts, and the annual meeting.

See more at: http://www.corpgov.deloitte.com/site/us/nominating-corporate-governance-committee/proxy-topics/

Compensation Committee

The role of the compensation committee is to set appropriate and supportable pay programs that are in the organization’s best interests and aligned with its business mission and strategy.

With the adoption of the executive and director compensation disclosure rules by the SEC, changes to the accounting for certain equity awards, and more active shareholder groups wanting a “say on pay,” the compensation committee is working harder to meet the requirements of all observing parties. A number of constituents, including investors, analysts, the media, government, and governance rating agencies are now shining a spotlight on compensation committees.

See more at: http://www.corpgov.deloitte.com/site/us/compensation-committee

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