good morning sunshine....i have to keep saying that to myself b/c i am far from being a sunshine this AM.  walker is "off the bottle" therefore he woke up at 5:30 this morning.  trying to be cheery but all i really want to do is crawl back into bed.....or pour my 3rd cup of coffee....

*images courtesy of anthropologie, pobox 607, stephmodo

Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part VII

Now that I've explained the importance of food reward to obesity, and you're tired of reading about it, it's time to share my ideas on how to prevent and perhaps reverse fat gain.  First, I want to point out that although food reward is important, it's not the only factor.  Heritable factors (genetics and epigenetics), developmental factors (uterine environment, childhood diet), lifestyle factors (exercise, sleep, stress) and dietary factors besides reward also play a role.  That's why I called this series "a dominant factor in obesity", rather than "the dominant factor in obesity".
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just in case....

 

you felt the need to make those cookies from friday's post......
i did and they didn't disappoint, well my shorts were a little tighter and that might have been disappointing  but besides that they were pure heaven.  best- hot out of the oven and with a big glass of milk, followed by a nice, long nap.  enjoy :)
ps. love the picture recipe...so easy to follow!!

*images from are so happy, styleswoon/pinterest, katy elliot/ chance co.

Google search by image

Last week Google introduced Search by Image feature. There were a handful of web-sites that suggested content-based image retrieval in the Internet, but the quality was low, as I blogged earlier. I repeated the queries TinEye failed at, and Google image search found them both! It found few instances of Marion Lenbach (one of them from this blog, which means the coverage is large!), and I finally remembered the movie from the HOG paper: The Talanted Mr. Ripley.

So, from the quick glance Google finally accomplished what the others could not do for ages. Why did they succeed? There are two possible reasons: large facilities that allow building and storing large index efficiently, and a unique technology. The former is surely the case: it seems the engine indexed a large portion of the photos in the web. I cannot say anything about the technology: there is nothing about that among the Google's CVPR papers, so one need to do black-box testing to see which transformations and modifications are allowed.

Google seems to expand to the areas of multimedia web, even where the niche is already occupied. Recently they announced their alternative to grooveshark, the recommendation system for Music beta (the service is unfortunately available on invitation basis in the US only). The system is not based on collaborative filtering (only), they (also) analyse the content. I planned to investigate this area too, but given that it is becoming mature and thus not so alluring. I am eager to see if the service will succeed. After all, Buzz did not replace Twitter, and Orkut did not replace Facebook.

Back to School

Ben Field

Ben is the recently appointed manager of Sport Pembrokeshire at Pembrokeshire County Council

With schools across Wales being asked to get their pupils to fill in the national School Sport Survey, Ben describes his work so far to sell the benefits of the project.

When details of the survey came out I could certainly see the benefits of having the data – both for my team working in sport and the schools themselves – and I wanted to make sure we did our bit to sell the benefits.

We started off with an e-mail from the Director of Education to all our schools. This wasn’t a directive but an opportunity to stress the importance and encourage them to take part. It was good to have that endorsement from the Director.

I met with the Education Advisors for the School Improvement Teams to talk them through the detail and gain their support.

I presented to Primary School Headteachers while my Head of Service presented to Secondary Headteachers.

All Sport Pembrokeshire staff work in some form or another with local schools – peripatetic PE tutors, 5x60, Dragon Sport and sport specific officers – and they are key to reminding schools about the survey and giving that extra encouragement.

We’ve got a newsletter that goes out to schools and the public and we’ve included a full page article on the survey in our current edition.

I’m maintaining regular contact with Headteachers via phone and email. If the school has completed or started the survey I’m e-mailing them to make sure I thank them for their support. And also trying to build up some healthy competition.

The key message I’ve been selling is around the well-being agenda and the information that will be made available for schools to use, particularly as evidence for any impending Estyn Inspections.

I’ve had some constructive feedback about the questions, the terminology and the length of time it’s taken some pupils to fill in.

With the data that we could have, I certainly hope the end will justify the means.

For more information on the School Sport Survey visit: http://www.sportwales.org.uk/research--policy/our-surveys/school-sport-survey-2011.aspx