Month: September 2016

Antibiotic resistance is one of the “biggest threats to global health today,” according to the World Health Organization, and as antibiotic use has become more widespread, bacteria are evolving to survive what used to be lethal doses of medicine. Now, you can view that evolution for yourself, as Gizmodo reports. The research is published in the latest issue of Science.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology built a giant rectangular Petri dish—two-by-four-feet wide!—and dumped in 14 liters of agar, the jelly substance used to culture bacteria in the lab. They divided the Petri dish into sections, then watched as E. coli bacteria reacted to various doses of antibiotics in each part of the dish. The outermost section of the dish contained no antibiotics, the next just enough antibiotics to kill the bacteria, and so on. The highest dose of antibiotic administered (seen in the center of the dish) was 1000 times stronger than the lowest dose. Over the course of two weeks, scientists used a ceiling camera to watch as the bacteria adapted to their new environment, then turned the footage into a timelapse.

The bacteria could move through the sections of antibiotics, and as the bacteria reproduced and mutated, they moved into higher and higher dosed sections. The high doses of antibiotic initially killed many of the bacteria, but some microorganisms that started out in the lower doses of antibiotics mutated and evolved, allowing their descendants to survive more and more of the drug. After 10 days, some of the bacteria had evolved to survive the highest dose of antibiotics.

While Petri dishes aren’t an exact analog for the way bacteria evolve in real-life settings like hospitals, the visualization provides a scary glimpse into how bacteria can mutate to confound modern drugs. Watch it below, and remember: Take antibiotics only as prescribed, and skip the antibacterial soaps entirely! (They’ll be banned soon anyway.)

[h/t Gizmodo]

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Aspiring fashion designers have plenty of options to choose from when pursuing higher education—unless they dream of designing sneakers. Basketball shoes have grown into a major sector of the fashion industry; in 2014, Nike’s line of Jordan sneakers alone garnered $2.6 billion in U.S. sales. But for young shoe designers looking to get their foot in the door, it can be hard to know where to start. D’Wayne Edwards set out to change that when he opened the Pensole Footwear Design Academy in 2010.

As Fast Company reports, the school is the first design academy focused around sneakers. Edwards, who’s created shoes for brands like Sketchers and Nike, launched the institution after struggling to find designers to hire straight out of college. He saw a lack of opportunities for young people to make the transition from their formal education to a career in shoe design, so he founded a school that puts footwear front-and-center.

The Portland, Oregon-based academy aims to fit a full semester’s worth of content into classes that span three to four weeks. Days average 14 straight hours, a choice Edwards consciously made to model the classroom experience after life in the design industry. Skills like prototyping and consumer research are taught by real sneaker professionals who come from companies like Nike and Adidas. Tuition and housing is fully covered by the brands sponsoring the program: All students have to do is be one of the 18 selected out of the 850-odd candidates who apply for each class.

This year, that applicant number reached 1400 for one special program. As part of a project called “Fueling the Future of Footwear,” Edwards led a team of students to create designs for a new Asics sneaker. After drafting up 40 different ideas, a winning design was selected to be made into a real-life product that will appear on the shelves in select Foot Locker stores beginning on September 17.

“The beauty of the process is that it’s never going to be perfect,” Edwards says of the project in a video from Footlocker. “For [students] to understand that becomes the actual design challenge: How can you achieve perfection within an imperfect system?”

[h/t Fast Company]

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Owned by Nestlé, Stouffer’s offers frozen classic American comfort dishes such as meatloaf, lasagna, chicken parmesan, spaghetti with meatballs, and macaroni and cheese. But Stouffer’s history is bigger than frozen food: The company started as a dairy stand, became a popular chain of restaurants, and even opened hotels. Here are 10 things you might not know about Stouffer’s.

1. IT STARTED AS A CREAMERY AND DAIRY STAND IN 1914 …

In 1914, Abraham Stouffer and his father, James, opened the Medina County Creamery in Medina, Ohio. The same year, they also opened a dairy stand at Sheriff Street Market in Cleveland to sell their buttermilk and cheese products. Two years later, Abraham and his wife, Lena, moved to Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, to manage the creamery.

2. … AND TURNED INTO A COFFEE SHOP AND RESTAURANT IN OHIO.

In 1922, Abraham and Lena turned their dairy stand into a mini coffee shop, selling coffee, cheese sandwiches, and Lena’s Dutch apple pies. In 1924, they opened a full-fledged restaurant, called Stouffer Lunch, on East 9th Street in Cleveland. Stouffer Lunch served five sandwiches for about a quarter each.

3. STOUFFER’S SONS HELPED OPEN MORE RESTAURANTS OUTSIDE OHIO.

Vernon Stouffer, a recent graduate of Wharton, had helped his parents open Stouffer Lunch’s first location. Along with his brother, Gordon Stouffer, who joined the family business in 1929, he helped his parents expand their restaurant business. They went public that year as The Stouffer Corporation and by 1937, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York City got their own Stouffer’s restaurants.

4. IT GOT INTO FROZEN FOOD TO SATISFY CUSTOMERS’ DESIRE FOR TAKE OUT.

In 1946, Stouffer’s got into the frozen food business after customers at one of Stouffer’s Cleveland restaurants asked the restaurant manager to freeze the dishes so they could take them home and reheat them later. The frozen take-out component of the restaurant’s business became so popular that customers could bypass the restaurant and go next door to buy frozen Stouffer’s entrees at their 227 Club.

5. STOUFFER’S ONCE OWNED A PENTHOUSE RESTAURANT IN NEW YORK CITY.

Stouffer’s restaurants expanded from locations in Cleveland and the midwest to the east coast, and the chain also opened restaurants at the top of tall buildings and towers in Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, and New York. In the penthouse of 666 5th Avenue in New York—just a block north of St. Patrick’s Cathedral—Stouffer’s opened a restaurant in 1958 called Top of the Sixes. People reportedly went to the restaurant more for the view than the food (one restaurant reviewer in the ’70s wrote “My ‘beef stroganoff’ was a Swiss steak on noodles reminiscent of a hundred airline meals”), and Stouffer’s eventually sold the restaurant in 1992.

6. STOUFFER’S BECAME A SUCCESSFUL HOTEL CHAIN.

Stouffer’s branched out into the hotel business in 1960. After buying the Anacapri Inn in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Stouffer’s opened hotels everywhere from Nashville to St. Louis, Indianapolis to Houston, Chicago to Los Angeles. The company was acquired in the late 1960s and again in the early 1970s, and Nestlé sold Stouffer Hospitality Group (the hotels and restaurants division of the company) to a hotel conglomerate in the mid-’90s.

7. STOUFFER’S ALSO HAS A CONNECTION TO PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL.

In 1966, Vernon Stouffer bought the Cleveland Indians. Although the baseball team had won the World Series in 1920 and 1948, the team didn’t win much or attract big crowds in the 1960s. Stouffer considered moving the team from Cleveland to New Orleans, but his plans didn’t pan out. In 1972, he sold the team to a Cleveland sports businessman, Nick Mileti, who already owned two Cleveland teams, including the Cavaliers.

8. ASTRONAUTS LOVE STOUFFER’S.

Stouffer’s isn’t exactly space food, but NASA fed Stouffer’s to astronauts who had just arrived back on Earth and were in a mandatory quarantine. Astronauts on Apollo 11, 12, 13, and 14 ate Stouffer’s foods during their quarantines (which lasted for at least 2 weeks), and Stouffer’s proudly touted the endorsement in their advertisements.

9. LEAN CUISINE IS A LOWER CALORIE VERSION OF STOUFFER’S.

Eventually, Stouffer’s wanted to reach customers who were concerned with the amount of calories in their frozen entrees. In 1981, the company started selling Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine, a line of lower calorie and lower fat versions of Stouffer’s frozen entrees. Lean Cuisine was an immediate hit, and the frozen food line continues to offer a variety of cuisines—Mexican, Italian, Asian, Mediterranean, and American—to calorie-conscious consumers.

10. APPLEBEE’S SUED STOUFFER’S OVER SKILLET SENSATIONS.

In 1996, the casual-dining restaurant chain Applebee’s introduced a line of dishes called Skillet Sensations, a name Stouffer’s began using the following year for a line of their own frozen entrees. Stouffer’s applied to trademark the term in 1997, which Applebee’s opposed, and in 2003, Applebee’s officially sued Nestlé over their continued use of the name. The two companies settled the lawsuit, and Nestlé renamed their products as Stouffer’s Skillets by 2005.

Gene Wilder fans who missed out on last weekend’s cinematic tribute to the late actor when two of his classic films, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Blazing Saddles, returned to theaters won’t have to wait long to see the beloved comedian on the big screen again. On October 5, Young Frankenstein will return to theaters across the country for a one-night-only screening, with a special live introduction from the film’s creator—and regular Wilder collaborator—Mel Brooks (who co-wrote the film with Wilder).

The screening comes courtesy of Fathom Events, who will bring the 1974 comedy to 500 theaters across the country.

“The idea for the screening had actually been in the works for about six months,” Brooks told GOOD. “After Gene died, they didn’t want it to seem like they were taking advantage. But it’s still going to be wonderful to see him in his most beautiful and magnificent performance. He was never better.”

Plus: Who wouldn’t want to see Wilder’s performance on “Puttin’ on the Ritz” on the biggest screen possible?

[h/t: CBS News]

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