Amazon accused of selling expired food! The American site CNBC unveiled a survey on October 20, highlighting dozens of dissatisfied customer reviews claiming to have received expired food ordered via the platform of the American giant. To establish this survey, the media also relied on data analysis established by a specialized company. As Business Insider reports, the disputed products include Doritos crisps, dried beef, tea, and baby food. These foods have been the subject of complaints from customers ensuring that they were expired, damaged or even moldy.

According to data gathered by CNBC, 40% of the hundred most popular food products on the Amazon marketplace are offered by companies subject to more than five complaints related to the distribution of expired products. Among the examples cited, lots of portions of organic vegetables for children whose expiration date has been passed according to comments. Infant formula is also said to be released too late, with potentially harmful effects on children. Some cookies were delivered six months after the expiration date. Another example, that of Teavana tea, still offered for sale on Amazon two years after the end of its production by Starbucks.

In an emailed statement to Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson said the site has put in place "proactive processes to ensure customers receive products with sufficient shelf life". Processes are listed online, but the exact application by Amazon is not known.

The spokesman assured Business Insider that "if Amazon found a product that did not meet these guidelines, it would be quickly withdrawn from sale". Contacted by CNBC, the American giant claims that the sales of expired products constitute "isolated incidents" which do not require the implementation of new control measures.

You can find almost everything on Amazon. It is even an integral part of Jeff Bezos' strategy. The company, which recently announced its ambition to sell drugs, also allows teachers to sell their lessons. In short, we are now very far from the early e-commerce platform. But it's not all good either. Beyond the classic scams finally, there were also recently expired products that found themselves on sale. Not really reassuring when it comes to baby milk or brownies for example. But, in the food sector, the bad surprises do not stop there.

This is an investigation that was carried out by the Wall Street Journal after reports from several users that food recovered from trash cans was sold on Amazon.

Between freegan and gleaning, the concept of recovering food that would be thrown away when necessary by supermarkets is nothing new. Part of the population eats frequently this way, legally. However, it is the resale part that is the problem.

Journalists were thus able to sell a jar of lemon cream that they had collected outside a supermarket. It was approved for resale through Amazon Prime.

According to the Wall Street Journal, workers inspect these products well when they arrive in warehouses. Or rather they try. But faced with the quantity, it would often be superficial. If there is no rot on top, everything is fine.

While some of these products can be fully compatible with human consumption, they still pose serious health problems. Amazon has promised to investigate what the multinational defines as problems.

The American Medicines Agency (FDA) has rejected the request for marketing authorization of Qnexa, the experimental anti-obesity treatment of the laboratory Vivus Inc, because of health risks, according to a press release from the firm.

If the government takes no action, half of the American adult population will be obese by 2030. In any case, this is what a report published last week by the English medical journal, The Lancet, claims.

For public health experts, the societal changes that have taken place over the past century have helped to create an "obesogenic" environment which, whatever the will of Americans, makes it very difficult to maintain a healthy weight.

This study on the global obesity crisis gives some ideas for combating this scourge. The researchers recommend, in particular, to tax food that is too rich and unhealthy, and to invest in research and in monitoring programs.

The healthcare system on the front line

The authors of the text also specify that the obesity crisis will continue to worsen and therefore weigh more and more on the finances of the health system.

According to an article published last year by an American researcher at Duke University, Eric A. Finkelstein, obese people have 48% more hospital days per year than people who are not. Another example shows that an obese diabetic spends 6 times more on pharmaceutical products than a “classic” diabetic.

Companies also affected

According to the same article, the proper functioning of businesses would be more disturbed by obese employees than by others. An overweight person would have 0.5 to 5.9 more days of absence per year than an employee with a healthy weight. Also, according to the study, the obese would make more claims. They would ask for studied infrastructures, additional scheduling arrangements, etc.

More anecdotal, the rising rate of obesity among young Americans could jeopardize the future of their military. "It threatens the strength of our future army," said two former chiefs of staff, John Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton. In fact, the more the number of obese people increases, the more the number of potential recruits decreases.

Although the report recognizes that everyone should be free to decide what they eat and how they want to live their lives, it also notes that the government has largely given up on this scourge.

American billionaire founder Cypress Semiconductor TJ Rogers decided to go into winemaking and become the best producer of wine in the World.

When the vault of a giant tunnel collapses before your eyes, it should be a very dramatic sight, but Rogers talks about what happened very calmly.

“It doesn’t look like a movie when stones and boulders fall from everywhere,” he says. “Yes, you can die, but everything happens relatively slowly, and you can simply run away from the rubble.”

He talks about this in one of the three giant caves on the Santa Cruz Mountain Range in California, where his winery is located.

Building special caves was a tremendous job. It took years, and Rogers needed to resort to the services of specialists who built tunnels in the Austrian Alps. The collapse of the cave was only one of the problems.

The construction site was so remote that it was impossible to bring cement there, since it was frozen along the road. I had to bring all the necessary components to the site and assemble a cement plant directly next to the construction site.

Why was such an inhuman effort needed? "Our goal is to produce the best wine in the New World," says Rogers.

This is not a person who agrees to half measures. He personally founded Cypress Semiconductors in 1982, and now the company is valued at billions of dollars. The chips that Cypress manufactures can be found in millions of mobile phones and other devices.

Rogers himself recently resigned as head of the company. Wine interested him in his youth. The Pinot Noir variety turned out to be his favorite, in particular he loves Burgundy wines (Burgundy is considered the birthplace of Pinot Noir).

He wanted to know more about this wine and went to France, where he visited one vineyard after another. Although some local winemakers looked surprised at the American, Rogers himself says that he learned a lot during the trip.

TJ Rogers tries to reproduce old wine-making techniques in the mountains of modern California.

After he returned to California, his interest in wine grew into true love. He decided to produce wine himself, and the wife of Valeta Massi began to help him.

At first, he experimented in vineyards near his own home. But after he bought land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, his ambitions for winemaking could no longer be contained.

He decided to produce the highest quality wine. To do this, as Rogers decided, it was necessary to copy the winemaking process as it was in Burgundy in the 1830s.

Grapes, for example, should be crushed with their feet and generally handle grapes and wine as carefully as possible throughout the production process.

There are no pumps for pumping wine in his winery; instead, the laws of gravity are used. Three huge caves are located one above the other, and after the fermentation process in the highest of them, the wine flows through pipes into barrels into the second cave, where the process continues.

Despite the attention to traditional methods, Rogers has resorted to modern technology. For example, during the fermentation process, various qualities of the future wine are constantly measured, and special sensors are installed in the vineyards so that the vine receives as much water as it needs.

Rogers emphasizes that modern technology is applied only when there is an urgent need. “Technology is not a substitute for old processes; people in the past knew what they were doing,” he says.

TJ Rogers is not the only person in California who is trying to bring something new to winemaking. But how serious is this? Maybe this is just a personal hobby of a rich person?

Not at all necessary, says Aaron Pott, a winemaker and consultant who worked with the most prestigious winemakers in California. If you picked the right staff and a good vineyard, it’s quite possible to produce great wine, he says.

Pott adds that one should not assume that good wine can only be obtained from old vineyards.

Both Rogers and Pott say that making good wine is possible, but making money on it is much harder. Creating such a winery costs a round sum. If you add the cost of land and all necessary equipment, then the price rises even more.

It is worth remembering the yield of the vineyard. According to Rogers, if you want to produce the highest quality wine, the yield will be small.

"We produce a ton of grapes per acre of land. In commercial vineyards in the Nappa Valley, this figure reaches five tons, and in Modesto, and 12 tons. And then it becomes clear that you have already lost the economic war. Your wine will be expensive," he says.

Nevertheless, despite these problems, what Rogers and his Californian businessmen are doing can be beneficial, says Aaron Potts.

On the one hand, billionaire vineyards create problems for smaller winemakers, but on the other, the expert says they raise the quality level of all California winemaking, and this can only lead to positive results.

TJ Rogers himself and his wife say that they are happy to do their new business and admit that they learned a lot in the process of creating the winery.

But the most important thing in this matter is the grape itself.

"As the French say, wine is created in the field," Rogers says. "The potential of the wine depends on the vineyards. The best thing you can do is find grapes of one hundred percent quality and make one hundred percent quality wine from it."

Passion and a lot of work are the things that can lead us to succeed in life. However, there are certain elements that we never think about, but they can make a difference in the future.

According to a study by Harvard researchers, there is an indicator of success so strange that you probably would not have imagined it: colored socks!

The success on the feet

You probably wonder what the stockings have to do with professional success. In a study, people using colorful garments that don’t fit the formal context are seen as mavericks and more competent than the rest.

Of course, doing so comes with risks. According to them, people adhere to the rules of dress and conduct in a work environment that fit their professional status, while others don’t risk being excluded from the group with some exceptions.

People in positions of authority have more freedom to dress as they wish, while low-ranking employees tend to adhere more to the rules. That's why people like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, among other Silicon Valley magnates dress casually.

But that's not all – dressing differently can change the perception others have of you in other areas of life, according to the study.

The researchers surveyed 109 women. Of these, 52 worked in luxury boutiques, while the remaining 57 had no experience in that work. They had to describe their perceptions of customers of such stores. A fictional woman enters the store "wearing gym clothes and a jacket" and the volunteers had to answer if they thought that woman was a VIP customer or not.

The results revealed that both experienced women and others assigned a high status to the client wearing casual clothes.

Being informal is being able

In a second investigation for the study, the researchers focused on the professional field and discovered that the formula of successful Internet men, such as Zuckerberg, is correct.

They recruited 159 people from Harvard University and again had to describe their perceptions of fictitious people, in this case university professors. Once again, they concluded that the more casual a person's clothes are, the higher their status. People who wear t-shirts instead of shirts and suits are seen as more competent.

You are what you wear

The key to success is not in wearing extravagant clothes, but in expressing yourself without fear. Fashion communicates, and people who wear out of the ordinary clothes show their individuality without shame and that is why they are seen as special.

Facebook users' IDs, names and phone numbers of 267 million users are exposed online and shared on the dark web. Most of these users are American. Facebook is highly concerned about this and now investigating the matter.

Facebook is concerned that 267 million users’ data may leak. The leak was revealed by a cybersecurity researcher, who found identifiers, phone numbers and usernames exposed on hacker forums.

This wasn’t the first time something like this happened. Data on 419 million Facebook users turned out to be freely available on the Internet – the American publication Tech Сrunch, citing cybersecurity expert Sanyama Jane, reported this last month. The database even contains the names of celebrities.

According to the publication, the leak was a database of IDs — the unique numbers of Facebook users — and the phone numbers associated with them. Some entries included username, gender, and country of residence.

The archive turned out to be 133 million records of users from the United States, 18 million from the UK, and another 50 million from Vietnam. Tech Сrunch does not report a data leak from all the countries, but it was highlighted that users were mostly Americans. The publication turned to the hosting provider, on the servers of which the unknown posted this information, after which it was deleted.

Up to 50 Million Facebook accounts may be accessible to unknown hackers. Facebook spokesman Jay Nankarrow said the information in the database is out of date. "The database has been deleted, and we do not have evidence that Facebook accounts have been hacked," he said.

Tech Сrunch correspondent Zack Whittaker did not agree with Facebook's findings that the leak affected only 217 million users. "This is only one database. And there is much more data and not so much evidence that they are duplicated," he wrote on his Twitter account.

Facebook believes that the database was collected using the user search function by phone number, disabled in April 2018.

In July, the company settled the claims of the US Federal Trade Commission regarding the handling of user data due to data leakage through Cambridge Analytica. According to media reports, this data could be used during the presidential election in the United States and the referendum on Britain's exit from the EU in 2016.

In November 2018, the BBC Russian service discovered freely available information about 257 thousand Facebook users – 81 thousand accounts even had private messages available. The hackers behind the leak claimed they had a total of 120 million people.

A Facebook investigation revealed that cybercriminals used malicious browser extensions.

From the animated films we see as children, until the day we graduate from university, we come across the images that solemnly tell us: "Follow your passion."

That figure is usually an old man with an air of sage who offers his advice with the best intention, but now a group of psychologists think that ignoring it may be a bad idea.

"It's a quick way to say something that sounds inspiring," tells Gregory Walton, a psychologist at Stanford University. "I think that when people say so, they don't think about the psychological implications that that can have."

Walton, along with other researchers conducted a series of experiments in which that romantic idea that we all have a passion and that it is only a matter of finding and following it does not come out well.

"Fixed Mindset"

For their research, Walton and his colleagues gathered 470 of their students and subjected them to a series of experiments.

According to researchers, passion is not something you are born with, but it is built with effort.

With them, they wanted to measure the effects of a concept called "fixed mentality," which refers to people who have the idea that intelligence or passions are something innate.

In one of the tests, they selected students who identified themselves as more interested in technology and others as more inclined to the humanities.

Each one was given two articles, one on technology and the other on humanities.

The result of the experiment showed that people with fixed mindset are not as open to learning and reading something outside of their area of interest.

For researchers, focusing too much on one area may deprive people of developing knowledge in other fields that could be useful in their own specialty.

Following your passion sounds inspiring but perhaps not as effective. "Many advances in science and business occur when people see connections between fields that they had not seen before," says Walton.

And what does this have to do with passion? According to experts, this shows that passion is something that is built, not something that is sought.

"Having the mentality that you are developing a passion is very useful because if what you think is that your passion is something you must find, then it will be very easy for you to give up any difficulty, because you will think that in reality that was not your passion" says Walton.

For Walton, the problem is that we usually see passion as a miraculous gift that great scientists, businessmen or artists have.

"We usually look at someone from the outside and say 'oh look, he's passionate, he's sure he's never procrastinated, he's always motivated, ' but that may not be what that person is really experiencing," says Walton.

"Passions don't have to start being strong," says Walton. "Since we don't have access to your private information, we romanticize it and think we can't do it."

For Walton, the reality is very different. "Passion is a development process, with ups and downs and frustration stages," he says.

"If something is difficult, that does not necessarily mean it is not for you."

Therefore, instead of looking for the passion with which each one supposedly arrived in the world, Walton and his colleagues recommend developing it with an open mind, visualizing what is important for you, thinking about what you can contribute.

"The passions don't have to start being strong, they can be small, sometimes just look at the things that interest you, that make you curious," says Walton.

"It may be something very subtle that requires a little effort on your part to detect it and start from there."

A university professor from Georgia Gwinnett College (USA) held the baby of one of her students during class so the mother could take notes. The image of the professional has been disseminated in social networks, and several users have congratulated her noble work, local media reports.

Ramata Sissoko Cisse, assistant professor of biology, offered a conference for 3 hours with the baby resting on her back. The previous night, the teacher received a call from her student to indicate that the babysitter had become ill and therefore, should take her son to class.

After failing to get a babysitter, a student decided to attend the class while carrying her baby. This teacher took over and carried her little guy for three hours while giving her lecture, just so the student could make notes of her lecture. She even fed him!

At the beginning of the class, the academic noticed that the child was restless and decided to hold it. Cisse looked for a lab coat in the classroom and wrapped the baby as African mothers usually do. According to his testimony, the child fell asleep shortly after loading it and woke up near the end of the chair.

"I am teaching love," Cisse told AJC in a telephone interview on Friday. "I am teaching honor. I am teaching dignity. I am teaching respect. I take it very seriously," said the teacher, who is also the mother of three children.

Cisse is originally from Mali and has been working at the university for 3 years. The teacher reiterated that with her actions she intends to demonstrate that teachers are willing to help students to get ahead and assured that other faculty members would have acted in a similar way.

Stephen Westaby, one of the largest medical eminences in the United Kingdom, has operated more than 12,000 hearts throughout his 40-year career, and estimates that he saved 97% of his patients.

However, it is the deaths he could not avoid that he remembers most.

Westaby has not only saved lives with his hands, he also created inventions that will continue to save lives once he is gone.

His story began in Scunthorpe, in the north of England, where he grew up in a state dwelling.

The renowned cardiac surgeon talked about his life and his work and recalled how he suffered during his childhood, watching his grandfather - a lifelong smoker - die slowly because of a heart problem.

"He suffered from severe heart failure, which is a miserable way of life," he said.

"Patients with this condition," he said, "can't wear shoes because their ankles are too swollen, they need bigger clothes because their bellies swell and there comes a time when they can't sleep lying down because they lack air."

Little Stephen, at 7, was present at the last moments of his grandfather's life. " I saw how it turned blue and died without being able to breathe, " he says.

That experience would mark him for life.

At that time - in the mid-1950s - cardiac surgery was just beginning to develop.

Doctors in the United States had just invented the heart-lung machine, better known as "the pump", which allowed a cardiopulmonary bypass: a technique that temporarily supplements the function of the heart and lungs during surgery.

This meant a giant breakthrough. Westaby learned of this novelty in 1955, when his parents bought his first black and white television and watched a program which showed cardiac surgery.

" I want to do that, " he thought.

The accident

He believed he could become talented as a surgeon because of something his grandfather had discovered when he was little: Stephen was ambidextrous and could use both hands with skill.

He was also a very good student and was the first of his family to go to college. But while studying in London, Westaby discovered that he had a great flaw: he was very shy and nervous.

"I was not encouraged to raise my hand in class to ask a question," he recalls.

The problem was no less for someone who aspired to become a cardiac surgeon, a profession that requires a lot of boldness to make life or death decisions in seconds.

However, your problem was solved in the most unexpected way.

One day, playing rugby, he suffered a severe blow to the head that fractured his skull. The impact damaged the part of your brain that controls inhibition and risk taking.

"Suddenly, I became the social secretary of the Faculty of Medicine and organized the parties," he says. "Very soon they named me captain of the rugby team. I was just fiercer."

This is how Westaby acquired the three talents necessary to be a successful surgeon: skillful hands, intelligence and boldness.

Operating children

He obtained scholarships to train abroad, working in a hospital in New York (USA) and in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). And he specialized in pediatric surgery, one of the most difficult branches of medicine.

The stories he tells about his little patients who failed to survive move even tears. One of the most heartbreaking was the case of a baby who managed to operate successfully in Riyadh.

The baby had a heart tumor and Westaby managed to remove it. But during the night the little boy died due to a failure in his pacemaker. The boy's mother, broken by pain, took her son, went to the roof of the hospital and jumped.

When Westaby tells it, one's blood is frozen. But he says that hours after that incident another baby continued to operate.

"I strongly believe that if you are going to perform extreme surgeries, if you are going to help patients who are sicker, you have to take distance if things do not go well," he says.

His dedication to medicine also had a high personal cost: he married and had a daughter, but less than a year later, he was already divorced.

When it's cold, would you put multiple layers of clothes instead of turning the heater on? Daniel would.

What would you do if you earned $270,000 dollars a year? You’d probably dress very well, travel a lot, spend a hell lot of money and without a doubt, eat in the best restaurants in New York. However, this isn’t Daniel, a 36-year-old corporate lawyer who, despite earning this good sum of money, lives only on rice and beans to save as much money as he can.

In addition, Daniel – whose last name was not disclosed – not only economizes on what he eats. Although his employment is in Manhattan, he lives in New Jersey to avoid paying the city's housing taxes. Also, he only has one suit for each day of the week he goes to the office and, when it is cold, he prefers to put on multiple layers of clothes instead of turning on the heating.

With all these frugality strategies, this man has managed to save 70% of his massive salary, which has helped him accumulate more than $400,000 dollars so far. The most surprising part is that this great achievement will allow you to retire in just 3 years.

Living with little, the key to success

Daniel is part of a new movement known as 'Financial Independence, Retire Early ' (FIRE), where other people with six-figure salaries like him, having similar savings goals ban themselves to buy drinks on the street – they are forced to wear the same pair of shoes until they literally fall apart on your feet.

The FIRE movement promotes frugality as the key to building wealth and getting people to retire early in record time.

Although this system seems to be extreme, it actually seems to be very effective, since Sarah Stanley Fallaw in her book surveyed more than 600 millionaires in the US to find out how they got rich. She discovered that people who get to have a large sum of money tend to save a lot, spend little and stick to a rigid budget. That’s where these saving tactics come from, like eating only beans and rice.

You think you are the person who pollutes the planet the least. You try to avoid plastics, recycle the cardboard and share an Insta Stories every Friday to make people aware. You buy local and you take a house bag to not use a plastic one.

Another Friday comes – you go out to party. The next morning you take ibuprofen, without thinking that the triad of ibuprofen, cocaine and heroin is the dangerous cocktail that pollutes our rivers.

The experts have warned that we must consider the "emerging contaminants" in drinking water, the drugs. You still think that "you are doing well", that you have fulfilled your part and your sustainable quota is settled. Now your environmental cricket nugget will tell you how the drugs you consume are destroying the planet.

Our bodies only metabolize a part of the drugs we consume. This study by Harvard University demonstrates the adverse effects that these substances may have that are excreted through feces, urine and sweat and that end up in drains and surface waters.

When you use drugs and go to the bathroom, showers or loo, you are releasing a few pollutants and contaminants that passes sewage treatment plants because they are difficult to screen.

But there is also drugs that end up directly in the sea because drug traffickers hide them there to get rid of it. Not to mention the amount of gases and waste resulting from cutting and making synthetic drugs.

The current treatment plants were designed to eliminate organic matter and pathogens and although they do stop some substances, they are not designed to eliminate substances of such low concentration. If these pollutants continue to accumulate in the long term, they may end up affecting the health of rivers and their ecosystems.

The problem of drugs in water is nothing new. Already in 2006, a study conducted by the UB on the River showed that in the areas near the mouth the river carried daily loads between 1 and 15 grams of cocaine, 1 to 8 grams of ecstasy and 0.08 to 4 grams of amphetamine. The same study showed that during the holiday period, both summer and Christmas, a higher concentration of drugs in the water had been observed.

In 2011, a study highlighted the presence of drugs in the underground waters and found unmetabolized cocaine in several wells, in addition to other substances such as opiates, amphetamines or benzodiazepines.

From the IMDEA, some of the treatment plants in different regions have been studied – it has been concluded that there is enormous variability in the concentration levels of these substances between some treatment plants and others depending on the area.

The problem is that all these elements can seriously affect marine flora and fauna and rebound our health. The remains of cocaine and ketamine found in prawns in the United Kingdom and the hyperactivity of the Thames eels because of cocaine show that the problem of drug contamination would have reached the animals, altering their behavior.

This is a global problem that is catching up as environmental sensitivities increase. In several European countries, such as in France or Germany, the subject has been investigated to find a possible solution, but so far, we don’t have any.

Not only recreational drugs pose a high risk to the environment – the percentage is relatively small compared to other chemical pollutants that end up in the water and contribute to the destruction of our planet.

Some of the drugs that we usually use and that would most affect the environment would be the consumption of antibiotics, antidepressants, hormones (estrogen, progesterone or testosterone) or analgesics. Other substances such as caffeine, face or body creams or perfumes also potentially contaminate the waters of rivers and seas.