Are you ready for tomorrow? Are you sure you?re ready for the crowd that is about to enter your home? Do you have everything? Gifts, food, dress, food? Drinks? Yeah, drinks! Ain?t no party without some spirits and wine, now, is there?
Allow me to help you out with that answer; No.
Moreover, allow me to help you out with the drinks part. How about we create a delicious hot beverage in the slow cooker? Mulled Wine is a great option! All we have to do is turn the slow cooker dial on low and forget about it until it is time to serve. Best part ? it?s low in sugar!
You can thank me for that after the holidays when you realize that I saved you a few calories and carbs.
As part of the DailyBuzz Food Tastemaker program I was selected to create a low-sugar beverage recipe with Sweet?N Low sweetener.
No problemo!
We love wine. Underline, Bold, Italicize, Caps ? LOVE.?Now you definitely know how much we love wine.
But this time of year, we like our wine a bit spiced. And warm. Don?t you? That is why it was a no-brainer for me when I was given this assignment.
Sweet?N Low has made life a bit easier for people like my dad that are either borderline diabetic or diabetic. Because of my dad, we usually go around about adding sugar to many of my recipes by using Sweet?N Low sweetener in place of sugar.?My dad loves his sweets and these hot drinks, but without the help of Sweet?N Low sweetener, he wouldn?t be able to enjoy them.
For more information about Sweet?N Low Sweetener, hop on over to their website where you will be able to find more great recipe ideas and special offers.
Now you can go rest easy knowing that for tomorrow you have a low-sugar option on that menu, which in turn will allow you to double up on that pie.
I would like to thank DailyBuzz Food and Sweet?N Low for this opportunity -?Cheers and Merry Christmas!
Disclaimer: I was provided with a Sweet?N Low Sweetener Gift Pack and ?a stipend as part of the Tastemakers program from DailyBuzz Food. The opinions expressed are my own.
ENJOY!
Slow Cooker Mulled Wine {Low Sugar}
Ingredients
1 bottle, 750mL, red wine (I use Merlot)
zest of 1 orange
1 orange, peeled, segmented
2 cinnamon sticks
1 small piece of ginger root (about 1-inch piece)
2 tablespoons Maker's Mark Brandy
10 packets Sweet'N Low sweetener
Instructions
Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker pot.
Stir and cover.
Cook on LOW for 4 hours or on HIGH for 2 hours.
Ladle into mugs without the spices.
When serving, take the lid off and leave the slow cooker on LOW or WARM.
Can a long distance relationship survive? By the way, are long distance relationships realistic? Yes? No? If you think yes, how??? I am curious?
It?s always assumed that relationships are blissful ? but wait! It?s not all candies and kisses, sometimes there a lot of hardship to deal with and it can be really emotionally taunting and mentally demanding. What?s worse is, pairing the idea of a long distance relationship with the sad soppy case of losing communication.
What?s going on? They seemed happy. Although they were going to be far away from each other, they seemed like they were in it forever but then suddenly everything changed! Did he find someone else? Or is it just a simple misunderstanding? Relationships are an uphill battle or sometimes a downwards spiral ? it?s really how you manage it but these two sadly went the wrong way. Who?s that guy at the end? Does he like her? And does she like him too?
Most importantly, in the case of Amy & Nick?s relationship, it shows that if there is no data, you?ll lose it all. After all, everything is on the internet now and it costs almost nothing at all. Just as long as you have data, relationships will go smooth sailing so dial *128# to sign up for any pack to have it all.?
NEW YORK (AP) ? Stock futures are down in very light trading with markets set to close early for the holiday.
The driving force on markets Monday was so-called fiscal cliff, now just seven days away.
Dow Jones industrial futures are down 39 points to 13,097. The broader S&P futures have slipped 5.6 points to 1,420.30. Nasdaq futures are down 12 points to 2,648.50.
Key lawmakers are already predicting that much of their holiday season will be spent in Washington. Many believe that the most that will be achieved is a stop-gap measure to avoid the federal spending cuts and broad tax hikes that would take effect Jan. 1 if no budget deal is reached.
U.S. trading closes at 1 p.m. Eastern and a number of markets overseas, including Germany and Italy, are closed.
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III (10) and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (9) greet each other after their NFL football game, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2012, in Arlington, Texas. The Redskins won 38-31. (AP Photo/Matt Strasen)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The Dallas Cowboys-Washington Redskins game that will decide the NFC East is moving to prime time.
The NFL says that Dallas' matchup with rival Washington on Dec. 30 would be on NBC's "Sunday Night Football."
Starting in Week 11, the league's flexible scheduling policy allows it to move a more appealing game to Sunday night. This is the second time this season a switch has been made.
The Cowboys are 8-7 heading into their trip to Washington, which beat the Cowboys 38-31 on Thanksgiving. The Redskins are 9-6.
Another matchup with playoff implications, Packers-Vikings, shifts to 4:25 p.m. EST on Fox.
___
Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
Philip M. Parker, a marketing professor at INSEAD (the European Institute of Business Administration), has written and patented a system that uses an algorithm to automatically compile data into book form. Between his works and those of his research group (ICON Group International), he has over 900,000 books currently for sale on Amazon. More than a smart search engine, his system only requires a few minutes or a few hours to scan the databases relevant to any given topic and organize that data into a technical report. Next stop? Romance novels.
There are few things in life quite as boring as writing a technical report. You accumulate all available data on the topic, then categorize and prioritize the information. A general structure within with which to present the data is then chosen from a few common structures, whereupon the collected and sorted information is presented as a report. Such reports are formulaic ? produced in accordance with a slavishly followed rule or style, and their generation is largely a process of intellectual drudgery requiring very little creativity. It's exactly the sort of task for which computers were developed.
Prof. Parker, an author of several conventionally written technical and business reports, realized one day that the process of writing such a report can be described in terms of a reasonably well defined algorithm. He then set out to program a computer to carry out this algorithm, for which he was issued US Patent 7,266,767 (Method and apparatus for automated authoring and marketing.).
Parker designed the algorithm to follow (hopefully closely) the path that an expert would take in writing a summary about a data-rich subject. There are similarities to IBM's Jeopardy grandmaster Watson, which also casts a wide data net, then organizes and summarizes the data so it can respond rapidly to questions.
Some examples of books written by Parker's program include:
Satirists: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases
The 2007 Report on Little Cigarette-Size Cigars Weighing Less Than 3 Pounds Per 1,000 Cigars: World Market Segmentation by City
Webster's English to Portuguese Brazilian Crossword Puzzles: Level 10 (Portuguese Edition)
Webster's Hiligaynon - English Thesaurus Dictionary
The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Blepharitis
While some of these titles seem difficult to believe, there is a (generally small) market for each of them. If a person or company needs in-depth data about a subject, however narrow, that data has value in organized form. Parker's program works especially well with modern distribution technologies, turning print-on-demand into written-on-demand.
Parker has also used an outgrowth of his algorithm to write a comprehensive set of poems about roughly 80,000 words in the English language. Totopoetry is a collection of algorithmically authored poetry that neatly illustrates the strengths and limitations of algorithmic writing. Poems are written in 17 styles (e.g., Haiku, limerick, sonnet) for each word in English.
Each poem is intended to illuminate the meaning of the word on which it is based. For example, the octosyllable poem for "poetry" reads:
???????? "Really instant and overt. ???????? But also distant and covert." ? Totopoetry
And then there is the modern Haiku form, again on "poetry":
???????? "An executive, ???????? evokes many directions, ???????? numbers and manners" ? Totopoetry
At present Parker's algorithm cannot judge its work against some intrinsic or personal measure of poetic merit.
The next area of formulaic writing to which Parker wants to adapt his algorithm is romance novels, which are widely (perhaps unfairly) denigrated as "cookie-cutter" literature. Parker believes their simplicity and limited plot structure suggest romances as the best target for an early attack on fiction writing. Regardless of his level of success, human authors are likely to face progressively more competition from algorithmic authors over the next decade or so. At this point it seems likely that the place of the best human writers is probably safe, but for how long? Time will tell.
Chinese medicine yields secrets to scientists at The Scripps Research InstitutePublic release date: 23-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
Atomic mechanism of 2-headed molecule derived from Chang Shan, a traditional Chinese herb, is shown in unprecedented detail
LA JOLLA, CA December 23, 2012 The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shana Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malariahave been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).
Described in the journal Nature this week, the structure shows in atomic detail how a two-headed compound derived from the active ingredient in Chang Shan works. Scientists have known that this compound, called halofuginone (a derivative of the febrifugine), can suppress parts of the immune systembut nobody knew exactly how.
The new structure shows that, like a wrench in the works, halofuginone jams the gears of a molecular machine that carries out "aminoacylation," a crucial biological process that allows organisms to synthesize the proteins they need to live. Chang Shan, also known as Dichroa febrifuga Lour, probably helps with malarial fevers because traces of a halofuginone-like chemical in the herb interfere with this same process in malaria parasites, killing them in an infected person's bloodstream.
"Our new results solved a mystery that has puzzled people about the mechanism of action of a medicine that has been used to treat fever from a malaria infection going back probably 2,000 years or more," said Paul Schimmel, PhD, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology and Chemistry and member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. Schimmel led the research with TSRI postdoctoral fellow Huihao Zhou, PhD.
Halofuginone has been in clinical trials for cancer, but the high-resolution picture of the molecule suggests it has a modularity that would make it useful as a template to create new drugs for numerous other diseases.
The Process of Aminoacylation and its Importance to Life
Aminoacylation is a crucial step in the synthesis of proteins, the end products of gene expression. When genes are expressed, their DNA sequence is first read and transcribed into RNA, a similar molecule. The RNA is then translated into proteins, which are chemically very different from DNA and RNA but are composed of chains of amino acid molecules strung together in the order called for in the DNA.
Necessary for this translation process are a set of molecules known as transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which shuttle amino acids to the growing protein chain where they are added like pearls on a string. But before the tRNAs can move the pearls in place, they must first grab hold of them.
Aminoacylation is the biological process whereby the amino acid's pearls are attached to these tRNA shuttles. A class of enzymes known as aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is responsible for attaching the amino acids to the tRNAs, and Schimmel and his colleagues have been examining the molecular details of this process for years. Their work has given scientists insight into everything from early evolution to possible targets for future drug development.
Over time what has emerged as the picture of this process basically involves three molecular players: a tRNA, an amino acid and the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzyme that brings them together. A fourth molecule called ATP is a microscopic form of fuel that gets consumed in the process.
The new work shows that halofuginone gets its potency by interfering with the tRNA synthetase enzyme that attaches the amino acid proline to the appropriate tRNA. It does this by blocking the active site of the enzyme where both the tRNA and the amino acid come together, with each half of the halofuginone blocking one side or the other.
Interestingly, said Schimmel, ATP is also needed for the halofuginone to bind. Nothing like that has ever been seen in biochemistry before.
"This is a remarkable example where a substrate of an enzyme (ATP) captures an inhibitor of the same enzyme, so that you have an enzyme-substrate-inhibitor complex," said Schimmel.
###
The article, "ATP-Directed Capture of Bioactive Herbal-Based Medicine on Human tRNA Synthetase," by Huihao Zhou, Litao Sun, Xiang-Lei Yang and Paul Schimmel was published in the journal Nature on December 23, 2012
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grants #GM15539, #23562 and #88278 and by a fellowship from the National Foundation for Cancer Research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Chinese medicine yields secrets to scientists at The Scripps Research InstitutePublic release date: 23-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
Atomic mechanism of 2-headed molecule derived from Chang Shan, a traditional Chinese herb, is shown in unprecedented detail
LA JOLLA, CA December 23, 2012 The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shana Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malariahave been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).
Described in the journal Nature this week, the structure shows in atomic detail how a two-headed compound derived from the active ingredient in Chang Shan works. Scientists have known that this compound, called halofuginone (a derivative of the febrifugine), can suppress parts of the immune systembut nobody knew exactly how.
The new structure shows that, like a wrench in the works, halofuginone jams the gears of a molecular machine that carries out "aminoacylation," a crucial biological process that allows organisms to synthesize the proteins they need to live. Chang Shan, also known as Dichroa febrifuga Lour, probably helps with malarial fevers because traces of a halofuginone-like chemical in the herb interfere with this same process in malaria parasites, killing them in an infected person's bloodstream.
"Our new results solved a mystery that has puzzled people about the mechanism of action of a medicine that has been used to treat fever from a malaria infection going back probably 2,000 years or more," said Paul Schimmel, PhD, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology and Chemistry and member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. Schimmel led the research with TSRI postdoctoral fellow Huihao Zhou, PhD.
Halofuginone has been in clinical trials for cancer, but the high-resolution picture of the molecule suggests it has a modularity that would make it useful as a template to create new drugs for numerous other diseases.
The Process of Aminoacylation and its Importance to Life
Aminoacylation is a crucial step in the synthesis of proteins, the end products of gene expression. When genes are expressed, their DNA sequence is first read and transcribed into RNA, a similar molecule. The RNA is then translated into proteins, which are chemically very different from DNA and RNA but are composed of chains of amino acid molecules strung together in the order called for in the DNA.
Necessary for this translation process are a set of molecules known as transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which shuttle amino acids to the growing protein chain where they are added like pearls on a string. But before the tRNAs can move the pearls in place, they must first grab hold of them.
Aminoacylation is the biological process whereby the amino acid's pearls are attached to these tRNA shuttles. A class of enzymes known as aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is responsible for attaching the amino acids to the tRNAs, and Schimmel and his colleagues have been examining the molecular details of this process for years. Their work has given scientists insight into everything from early evolution to possible targets for future drug development.
Over time what has emerged as the picture of this process basically involves three molecular players: a tRNA, an amino acid and the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzyme that brings them together. A fourth molecule called ATP is a microscopic form of fuel that gets consumed in the process.
The new work shows that halofuginone gets its potency by interfering with the tRNA synthetase enzyme that attaches the amino acid proline to the appropriate tRNA. It does this by blocking the active site of the enzyme where both the tRNA and the amino acid come together, with each half of the halofuginone blocking one side or the other.
Interestingly, said Schimmel, ATP is also needed for the halofuginone to bind. Nothing like that has ever been seen in biochemistry before.
"This is a remarkable example where a substrate of an enzyme (ATP) captures an inhibitor of the same enzyme, so that you have an enzyme-substrate-inhibitor complex," said Schimmel.
###
The article, "ATP-Directed Capture of Bioactive Herbal-Based Medicine on Human tRNA Synthetase," by Huihao Zhou, Litao Sun, Xiang-Lei Yang and Paul Schimmel was published in the journal Nature on December 23, 2012
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grants #GM15539, #23562 and #88278 and by a fellowship from the National Foundation for Cancer Research.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 23-Dec-2012
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