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We are standing in front of a huge bank of screens, in the middle of which is a glowing map that changes focus depending on what the dozens of controllers are looking at.

The room looks like something straight out of a NASA shuttle launch. The men and women manning the floor are dressed in identical white jumpsuits. With a flick of a mouse, they scroll through dozens of streaming video images coming into the center.

This is Rio de Janeiro in real time.

"This whole building is based on technology and integration," said Pedro Junqueira, the chief executive officer of the Rio Operations Center.

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The Mediterranean diet has long been a darling of nutrition experts as a proven way to prevent some chronic diseases. Heavy on olive oil, vegetables, fruit, nuts and fish, the diet most recently has been shown to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and dying compared with a typical low-fat diet.

But in many regions, including Nordic countries like Denmark and Sweden, it's not easy to go Med. Olive oil, for one, is hard to find. And while obesity rates in the Nordic countries are much lower than in the U.S., there are still plenty of people at risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases who could use some dietary inspiration.

That's why a group of nutrition researchers in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway set out to design a "healthy" Nordic diet around locally produced food items, like herring, rapeseed oil (also known as canola) and bilberries (a relative of the blueberry). To test whether it was actually healthy, they prescribed the diet to people with metabolic syndrome — a precursor to diabetes — and compared them to others on an "average" Nordic diet higher in red meat and white bread.

The study was randomized and lasted 18 to 24 weeks in 2009 and 2010, with 96 people in the healthy diet group and 70 in the control group. The healthy Nordic diet group ate mostly berries (currants, bilberries and strawberries), canola oil, whole grains, root vegetables and three fish meals (preferably fatty fish like salmon and mackerel) per week, and avoided sugar. The rest of the time, they could eat vegetarian, poultry or game, but no red meat. The researchers provided them with some of the key ingredients for their meals.

The control group, on the other hand, ate butter instead of canola, fewer berries and vegetables, and had no restrictions on red meat, white bread or sugar intake.

While the researchers didn't see changes in blood pressure or insulin sensitivity in the people on the healthy Nordic diet, their bad cholesterol/good cholesterol ratio improved significantly, as did one marker for inflammation, according to Lieselotte Cloetens, a biomedical nutrition researcher at Lund University in Sweden who co-authored the study. In the long run, Cloetens says, the change in the inflammation marker could result in a 20 to 40 percent reduction in the risk of type 2 diabetes for people on the healthy diet.

The results appear this week in a European journal, the Journal of Internal Medicine.

The research coincides with a similar, but distinct movement in the region — "New Nordic" cuisine. Claus Meyer, the owner of the acclaimed Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, boldly defined New Nordic with a manifesto. His aim? To inspire chefs and highlight the culinary wealth of the Nordic region — foods like fungi, beech leaves, birch juice, reindeer, and chick weed. New Nordic has become "a mentality of sort of scientific and creative exploration," Ben Reade, head of culinary research and development at the Nordic Food Lab, told NPR freelancer Sidsel Overgaard last year.

While Meyer has collaborated with researchers at the University of Copenhagen to explore whether a New Nordic diet could help overweight people drop pounds, his diet places a special emphasis on seasonal, local foods, and on foraging. "It is more defined, from a culinary point of view," than the healthy Nordic diet in the recent study, says Cloetens.

So will the Nordic diet be competing with the Mediterranean diet in far-flung countries seeking to emulate svelte Europeans? Cloetens is confident in its healthfulness, but warns, "since it contains many local produced food items, it might not be easy to consume by people outside the Nordic countries."

And, she says, next she and her colleagues need to investigate whether the healthy Nordic diet can also help people lose weight and keep it off.

Many people in Syria are accustomed to the sound of daily gunfire. It is normal in battle-scarred cities like Damascus or Qusair.

But along the beaches and in the cafes of Tartous, an area that is a center of support for the embattled President Bashar Assad, the sounds are a bit more peaceful.

Near the water's edge of the Mediterranean, tables, chairs and umbrellas sit upon huge stones. At one of these tables sits a brother and sister on vacation.

The brother, a 21-year-old Syrian soldier who didn't want to give his name, is given a few days off every few weeks. He doesn't talk about his duties, but says he has been under fire. Going from combat to the beach is a bit strange, he says.

"Of course I think about it," he says, "and it's hard to ignore that I could have been killed. But I believe in what I'm doing."

His sister is a law student, though her studies have been delayed since her university is in the embattled city of Homs. Their father is a real estate developer. She says one thing Americans don't understand about Syria is the love and respect they have for the president and their country.

Refuge From Conflict

Many, though not all, of Syria's elites have stayed loyal to the Assad regime, under which they prospered. And many people now rely on this Assad stronghold for more than vacation; many are displaced and looking for work as well.

Around 300,000 Syrians have fled to the Tartous area. Some live in relatives' apartments, in converted schools and some stay in a government office building.

At a main route into the center city, the newcomers see a steadily expanding row of high-rise buildings. Even as the destruction of many Syrian cities continues, construction continues in Tartous, including many buildings intended to be apartments for young people.

The newcomers may have plenty of time to study those buildings.

A military checkpoint nearby stops people entering the center city for as many as 40 minutes at a time to check credentials or search their cars. Above the checkpoint hangs a poster of President Assad.

The intensity of the search betrays something of the authorities' tension about preserving this stronghold. It's a strategically important spot, as Russia, one of Syria's few allies, maintains a naval base there.

It's also politically important because the whole Syrian coastline remains supportive of Assad. Nizar Mahmood, a provincial official coordinating aid to refugees, say there's a reason for that.

"The rebels have a hard time finding support here," Mahmood says, "[because] the coastal area has a higher proportion of educated people than other areas ... making them less likely to be deceived into accepting foreign money."

Assad supporters here regularly blame outsiders for fueling the rebellion. They blame "the media," "the international media" or in some cases "the Jewish media" for creating the impression the rebels have legitimate grievances.

A Non-Sectarian Issue

There may, however, be a different reason Tartous remains quiet. The region is home to a heavy concentration of Muslims from the Alawite sect, the minority group to which President Assad belongs.

Sheikh Ahmad Bilal, an Alawite religious leader, is a traditional adviser to the community on religious matters, just as his ancestors were. He says he worries about what would happen if the Assad regime should lose. There are fears of a bloodbath because many believe the rebels will open the borders to terrorists.

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Watching From The Rooftops As A Fierce Syrian Battle Unfolds

Gar then told his own story. He grew up in South Africa and immigrated to Israel on his own. He says he spent five years in a religious youth movement in Australia, married an Israeli immigrant from Canada and fathered four children.

Gar is good with imagery. As a reservist with a counterterrorism unit, he always has two weapons with him. "It looks a bit odd," he says, but he pushes his young twins in a stroller to synagogue with an M16 strapped to his back.

In addition to his counterterrorism service and teaching at Caliber3, Gar told the group that he is studying to become a rabbi and runs a Torah program for Jewish youth with special needs, like Down Syndrome and autism.

His storytelling has a purpose: humanize the image of Israeli soldiers.

"I wanted to tell you this because I want you to see what we're all about. I'm a family man. I see myself as an educator."

About his military work: "We do this because we love, we don't do this because we love killing."

Gar asks the American visitors to "help fight terrorism" by speaking up against negative views of Israeli soldiers they might see or hear back home. To seal the deal, there's one more story. Gar describes how five members of a Jewish family — a husband, wife and three of their children — were killed two years ago in their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar. He says he was part of the team that took two Palestinian suspects back to the family's house to re-enact the murders, using toy knives and dolls.

"They had smiles on their faces as they went from room to room slaughtering a family," Gar said. "Once they left, they heard a baby crying. They responded. One terrorist held the baby while the other took a knife and slit her throat."

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