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Sadly, according to fans of the low-carb mania that is sweeping the United States, the Italian gastronomic landscape is the equivalent of a minefield. Our diet of pasta, rice and an abundance of fruits and vegetables is loaded with evil carbs.

So why is it that Italians are shrugging off America’s latest dietary obsession?

For one thing, the mere idea of giving up pasta would be cause for severe depression in an Italian. I experience withdrawal if I go more than four or five days without it.

And why is it that the number of Americans who are overweight or obese continues to increase at an alarming rate while here the percentage of overweight or obese people is half of what it is in the United States? After all, those trim and fit Italian men with flat bellies and women with hourglass figures are all sitting in restaurants eating pasta, polenta and crusty bread.

Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s natural ability to “count” calories based on foods’ sweetness. This finding may explain why increasing numbers of people in the United States lack the natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight.

Contrary to popular opinion, research published about 10 years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows weight cycling does not have negative effects on body fat, metabolism, or the success of future weight-loss efforts. The National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity reviewed 43 studies on the effects of weight cycling on metabolism, psychological functioning, and health. According to the report, there is no compelling evidence that weight cycling is riskier than remaining obese. “While the notion that weight cycling has negative effects on metabolism and health has become accepted by many, careful review of studies in humans does not support this conclusion,” said Dr. Susan Z. Yanovski, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. In addition, weight cycling does not appear to have negative effects on risk factors for illness, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

This would have been improbable except for a factoid in the long-forgotten history of beer: Upstate New York grew 80 percent of America’s hops beginning in the mid-1800s.

Now a group of professors, preservationists, farmers, brewers and assorted beer nuts are working to restore the Empire State’s beer credentials as a grower of heritage hops.

These koans, or parables, were translated into English from a book called the Shaseki-shu (Collection of Stone and Sand), written late in the thirteenth century by the Japanese Zen teacher Muju (the “non-dweller”), and from anecdotes of Zen monks taken from various books published in Japan around the turn of the 20th century.

The w3c’s XHTML validation service is tremendously useful, but it’s a pain to be continually checking it for breakages, and then working through the errors when they occur. Their user interface leaves a bit to be desired as well.

Personally, I like nice to-do lists and automatic checking of my pages. So to combine the two, I’ve made a widget to create a XHTML Validation Results RSS feed from any page.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Riverside have discovered a dramatic increase in human longevity that took place during the early Upper Paleolithic Period, around 30,000 B.C.

In their study of more than 750 fossils to be published July 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, anthropologists Rachel Caspari and Sang-Hee Lee found a dramatic increase in longevity among modern humans during that time: the number of people surviving to an older age more than quadrupled.

When using CSS image rollovers, two, three, or more images must be loaded (and often be preloaded for best results). We’ve got one image for each state (normal, hover, active, visited etc). Putting all states into one image makes dynamic changes faster and requires no preload.

The plan for the second edition of the classic reference work The King’s English was dictated by the following considerations: (1) to pass by all rules, of whatever absolute importance, that are shown by observation to be seldom or never broken; and (2) to illustrate by living examples, with the name of a reputable authority attached to each, all blunders that observation shows to be common.

The Partnership for Essential Nutrition, led by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s Shape Up America! group, cautions that studies show the low-carb approach can starve the brain of carbohydrates, produce constipation and other gastrointestinal problems, reduce energy levels and cause difficulty concentrating.

In the long run, the groups warn, the regimens can stress the kidneys and increase the risk of liver disorders, gout, coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and several types of cancer.

Bill Westerman, an associate partner at hi-tech consultancy Accenture working on the project, said wireless was a natural choice for the grape growers.

“It’s prohibitive to run cables through the growing fields,” he told BBC News Online.

They are the building blocks of flab, the wages of cheesecake, the bloated little sacks of grease that make more of us — more than we can fit into our pants. Scorned and despised, they are sucked out surgically by the billions from bulging backsides, bellies and thighs.

But they are not without admirers.

“Fat cells are beautiful cells to look at,” said Dr. Philipp E. Scherer, an associate professor of cell biology and medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “I’ve been working with them for 10 years and I still enjoy looking at them.”

Persistent flooding of their corn and soybean fields led Robert and Verneel Noerrlinger to return 535 acres to wetlands. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is urging other landowners along the Missouri River in Nebraska to consider doing the same.

Last week, the Noerrlingers’ property was the site chosen by the USDA to announce a project that makes $26 million available through 2007 to restore 18,200 acres of wetlands along the river from Ponca to Rulo, about 200 miles running the entire length of the state.

[Ed.: Guy from “The River” finally figures out that corn likes it dry!]

New York does have its own thriving barbecue tradition, but it’s more about star anise than smoke. At places like Big Wong King and Kim Tuong in Chinatown, pit masters turn out hundreds of racks of magnificently glazed ribs every day, with the moist meat, salty-sweet perfume and burnt edges so beloved of barbecue fanatics across the land. And at other Asian restaurants up and down the dining scale, from Nam and 66 to Big Wong and Pig Heaven, chefs have capitalized on New Yorkers’ passion for Chinese spareribs by developing their own styles. With judicious spicing and steaming, a glaze here and a dry rub there, Asian ribs have evolved into a hybrid Asian-American-New Yorkese barbecue. They may not be authentic anything, but they might still hold their own at the Jack Daniels invitational.

Red raspberry canes are normally planted in late winter and produce two crops.

Second-year canes, called floricanes, bloom from late spring to early summer, and first-year canes, called primocanes, from late summer to fall.

Walking long rows of canes on trellises rimmed by strawberry fields and lemon groves, Mr. Reiter explained how Driscoll is able to produce in the months when the canes usually do not bear fruit. The growers dig up dormant plants from northern nurseries, hold them in cold storage, then plant them in Southern California from April to September. The discombobulated plants then bear fruit from late fall to early spring.

My panic-banishing program is straightforward: concentrate on food that can be prepared in advance. In the summer, you might automatically, and understandably, think of providing plates of salads and cold tidbits, but they do not stand up well in the heat. Nor, actually, am I keen on canapés. I want to give people food that they can pick at while they talk to one another but that will also provide sustenance.

I am a complete convert to skewers — or kebabs, whatever you want to call them. You marinate the meat overnight — which ensures it will be tender as well as flavorful — then grill or broil the skewers as you need them. And because of the moisturizing marinade, you will find that if you leave the skewers out after cooking — food does not have to be piping hot in the summer — they will not harden and become tough.

Time: About 40 minutes, plus 2 hours’ refrigeration

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs (8 ounces graham crackers, finely crushed)
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 to 3 teaspoons lime juice, or to taste
• 2 tablespoons seedless raspberry jelly
• 24 small mint leaves, optional
• 24 (about ⅜ cup) fresh raspberries.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor or mixer, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter. Process until mixture clumps like wet sand.
2. Place a tablespoon of crumb mixture in each well of a pan for 24 mini-muffins. Using a spoon or fingers, press mixture on bottom and up sides of each well to make a tartlike shell for filling. Refrigerate pan while making filling.
3. In a clean processor bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, egg, sour cream, vanilla and lime juice. Process until very smooth. Adjust lime juice to taste, and mix again to blend. Spoon enough filling into each muffin well for just the top edge of the crumb shell to show. Bake until cakes are set, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, and cool in pan on a wire rack. Transfer pan to refrigerator, and chill 2 to 3 hours.
4. To remove cheesecakes, turn pan upside down, and rap firmly on back with a spoon. Place cheesecakes on a serving tray.
5. Place jelly in a small pan over low heat until melted. Put a dab (about ⅛ teaspoon) in center of each cake. Place a mint leaf on jelly and a raspberry on top. Refrigerate.

Yield: 24 cheesecakes.