• Nutritionist and registered dietitian Emily Field takes an unconventional approach to eating healthy.
• She encourages clients to think about macronutrients when they choose a meal.
• Balancing fat, carbohydrates, and protein can help curb cravings and keep energy levels steady throughout the day.

Instead of adding fries to that order, you might want to consider a second burger. 

While conventional wisdom might tell you that eating a second anything is a bad choice from a nutritional perspective, there's something more important to consider: balance.

Registered dietitian and nutritionist Emily Field encourages her clients to think about that word before a meal, rather than labeling certain foods "bad" or "good."

To do this, she encourages people to think about three components of a food — fat, carbohydrates, and proteins. Protein fuels your muscles and keeps you feeling full, carbohydrates provide energy, and fat helps us absorb vitamins and minerals while keeping cells healthy. Keeping those nutrients roughly even means you'll have fewer cravings, less desire to binge, and more control when you do eat, Field told Business Insider. So if a meal has a good balance of those three things, it's an okay choice. 

"I want people to be able to approach any food, any situation, and know that they can still make a responsible choice for their body," she said.

A recent study published in the journal Nutritional Metabolism suggests balance is important because of the role different macronutrients play in regulating our blood sugar levels — the energy our cells carry and distribute throughout the body after a meal.

In the body, fats and proteins slow the breakdown of carbs into sugar, acting as a sort of buffer against sharp dips and spikes in insulin levels. So when you eat a meal that's high in carbs and low in protein, such as a bowl of cereal, you're more likely to see rapid spikes and falls in blood sugar. 

That can translate into a short-lived burst of energy followed by hanger and fatigue, symptoms that typically manifest between one and three hours after a meal, Field said. However, adding some protein and fat to the same bowl of cereal — such as a protein-rich Greek yogurt or some nuts — can help avoid that crash.

Field advises her clients to keep this in mind when planning a meal by asking, "How am I going to feel two hours after I eat that?"

Applying that wisdom to fast-food could mean opting for two burgers instead of an order of fries, she said.

Think about a typical fast-food burger. Two small pieces of bread (the bun) plus a slab of meat. Without cheese or sauce, most burgers like this have about 300 to 400 calories. Those calories come from carbs in the bread (roughly 40 grams), protein in the meat (around 17 grams) and fat (around 10 grams). An order of fries, on the other hand, is just a tray of fried potato. It has a lot of fat and carbs (which give it about the same number of calories as a burger) but very little protein.

By swapping the fries for a second burger, then, you're nearly doubling your protein intake while reducing the amount of fat and carbs you're eating. Since fast-food is already high in fat and carbs and pretty low in protein, this simple switch could help steady your blood sugar levels.

Don't take my word for it, though.

"Try it out and see how you feel," Field said.

SEE ALSO: Americans have been making a huge diet mistake for 100 years — here's what they should do instead

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tried a burger from the chain that wants to be the McDonald's of vegan fast food

Melinda Gates is the third most powerful woman in the world, and the top American to make the Forbes 2017 most powerful women in the world list.

Gates — who shares an estimated fortune of nearly $90 billion with her husband — has become one of the most prolific philanthropists in the world as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she helmed virtually on her own for the first six years of operation.

In addition to the pair's education and healthcare initiatives, Gates takes a personal interest in women's issues around the world. At the forefront of her agenda is expanding the availability of contraception and bringing awareness to the concept of time poverty — the notion that hours of daily unpaid work like household chores end up "robbing women of their potential."

In 2016, Gates was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US, by President Obama.

Keep scrolling to learn more about her life and how she became one of the world's richest and most powerful women.

SEE ALSO: Inside the daily routine of billionaire Bill Gates, who loves cheeseburgers, tours missile silos, and washes the dishes every night

DON'T MISS: There are over 1,500 billionaires worldwide — here are the 14 countries where the world's richest people live

Melinda Gates (neè French) grew up in Dallas, Texas, with her parents — a stay-at-home mother and an aerospace-engineer father — and her three siblings. The family belonged to the local Roman Catholic parish.

Source: Telegraph

The Frenches were intent on sending all four of their children to college, so Melinda's father started a side business for rental properties. "We would help him run the business and keep the books," she said. "We saw money coming in and money going out."

Source: Fortune

Gates was valedictorian and head of the drill team at her high school, Ursuline Academy of Dallas. In 2007, the Gates Foundation donated $7 million to Ursuline for the construction of The French Family Science, Math, and Technology Center — a 70,000 sq. ft. LEED Gold certified laboratory and classroom building.

Source: Ursuline Dallas, Marie Claire

• Congress for New Urbanism, an urban planning nonprofit, put together a list of highways in America that are causing blight on surrounding neighborhoods.
• The list highlights how mid-20th-century urban planning is starting to fall out of favor.
• Some cities are planning to remove the highways that made the Congress for New Urbanism list.

Cities and states are starting to re-think sprawling highway projects built during the fervor of 20th-century urban development.

As cars were mass produced and made widely available through financing, massive highway systems were constructed to support their ascendance.

Automakers played a key role in this development: The American Highway Users Alliance, which GM founded in 1932, lobbied for tax breaks that would lead to sustained highway funding over time. Just two decades later, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Interstate Highway Act, which allocated $25 billion over 10 years toward 41,000 miles of interstate highways.

All of this is to say there's a story behind America's interlocking highway system and not all of it is rosy. Highways were regularly constructed at the expense of neighborhoods, often ferrying white suburbanites through minority neighborhoods. Some of these freeways developed into "border vacuums," a term coined by urban activist Jane Jacobs that refers to the role infrastructure can play in depriving growth in the surrounding area.

Local governments have only recently started to evaluate what tearing down these aging highways could do for neighborhoods that were hardly considered during their construction.

Congress for New Urbanism, an urban planning nonprofit, put together a list dubbed "Freeways Without Futures," as spotted by the New York Times. The list shows which highway teardown projects have the biggest potential to "remove blight" from neighborhoods.

Some highways the list are already serious contenders for removal projects — scroll down for a closer look:

SEE ALSO: A hated, mile-long highway shows an overlooked problem with America's infrastructure — but it could soon come crumbling down

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BUFFALO, NEW YORK: Scajaquada Expressway

Constructed by urban planner Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1960s, the Scajaquada Expressway runs along Route 198 in Buffalo, New York. It's a 3.6-mile, four-lane highway that cuts right through Delaware Park and is cited as a source of pollution, noise, and dangerous traffic.

The city of Buffalo and New York Department of Transportation has explored ways to redesign the highway since 2005. Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2016 set aside $30 million to convert the Scajaquada into a low-speed boulevard.

DALLAS, TEXAS: Interstate 345

Constructed in 1964, I-345 is a 1.4-mile elevated freeway that cuts through downtown Dallas and Deep Ellum, a historic jazz neighborhood — depriving growth in the immediate surrounding areas.

The Congress for the New Urbanism notes that the resurgence of downtown Dallas in the early 2000s has pushed the state government to reconsider I-345's purpose. A New Dallas, a nonprofit, successfully pushed the Texas Department of Transportation to conduct a feasibility study that will look into tearing down the interstate.

DENVER, COLORADO: Interstate 70

Built in the 1960s, Interstate 70 cuts through three historic minority neighborhoods in Denver: Elyria, Swansea, and Globeville. The highway is said to have deprived growth and contributed to rising pollution rates in those three areas.

The Colorado Department of Transportation is planning to spend $1.2 billion on expanding the highway an additional four lanes. Community groups like Unite North Metro Denver have called for the freeway to be transformed into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard.

Tom Brady, 40, is the greatest quarterback in football history, according to the NFL, sports bloggers, and this New England-bred sports fan. The five-time Super Bowl champ didn't reach peak condition at an age when most players have already retired by eating chips and dip.

Brady owes his longevity to an intense diet and workout plan, which the GOAT touts in his new book, "The TB12 Method." Vegetables make up 80% of what he and his supermodel-wife Gisele Bündchen eat, along with whole grains, nuts, and lean meats.

In 2016, Purple Carrot, a meal-kit delivery service that serves 100% plant-based foods for a vegan diet, partnered with Brady to bring meals based on the way he eats to customers. Using the guidelines laid out in his book, TB12 Performance Meals deliver aim to "help athletes and active individuals stay at their peak" — just like the GOAT. (Though Brady is not a vegan.)

For $78 a week, subscribers receive three meals with two servings of each. I recently tried the TB12 Performance Meals for two weeks. Here's what it was like.

SEE ALSO: We tried the clothes Tom Brady uses to help him sleep better and recover faster after games — and they work surprisingly well

SEE ALSO: We tried the alcohol diet Tom Brady put Rob Gronkowski on, and it was a lot harder than we imagined

My first delivery from Purple Carrot and TB12 came with its own locker-room pep talk plastered on the side of the box.

"What we get out of our bodies is a direct result of what we put in. Food is your fuel, and we believe that food can help you achieve and sustain your peak performance," the box read.

When I opened it up, I found this "hand-written" note from the Super Bowl champ himself.

I was feeling jazzed. I'm a carnivore, but I've been wanting to cut down on my meat consumption for animal welfare-related reasons. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

While Brady eats lean red meat and chicken in limited quantities, Purple Carrot offers only plant-based, vegan meals. Andy Levitt, CEO and founder of Purple Carrot, hopes that the partnership with the football player turns more everyday consumers on to plant-based diets.

"Tom has shown the world what is possible by being a part-time plant-based eater," Levitt said.

I was about to find out.

There's no rule that says fast food has to make you feel terrible.

In recent years, American consumers have shown a craving for healthier fast food. Restaurant chains that offer low-calorie meals — that remain convenient and affordable — have sprouted across the US, forcing legacy brands like Taco Bell and McDonald's to rethink their menus.

The fast-food revolution is no more apparent than in Rohnert Park, California, where a Chick-fil-A sits across the street from up-and-coming vegetarian fast-food chainAmy's Drive Thru. On a visit to both restaurants, we found Amy's buzzing with diners long after the lunch hour.

We tried sandwiches from both Amy's and Chick-fil-A. Here's what we liked better.

SEE ALSO: I tried Tom Brady's vegan meal-kit delivery service and learned I don't have what it takes to cook for the greatest quarterback

On a recent visit to California's wine country, I stopped in Rohnert Park for a bite to eat.

There was no shortage of options. A highway exit off Redwood Drive offers access to Arby's, Taco Bell, Burger King, Amy's Drive Thru, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, and El Pollo Loco.

I decided to eat at Chick-fil-A before visiting Amy's. They're located across the street from each other, and they both make sandwiches the star of the menu.

Plus, Chick-fil-A generates more revenue per restaurant than any other fast-food chain in the US — a testament to the fried-chicken chain's loyal fan base — according to QSR magazine.

Within the last few years, Chick-fil-A has remodeled hundreds of stores to give them a modern farmhouse feel. The Rohnert Park location showcased that new image.

A staggering 95% of roads in Africa wash out every year, which makes it nearly impossible for people in some developing countries to receive medical supplies when they need them most.

Zipline, a startup out of Silicon Valley, wants to replace traditional modes of transportation with drones. In Rwanda, the company's delivery service flies blood bags — plasma, platelets, and red blood cells needed for transfusions — from a central hub to primary health clinics and hospitals.

The company has flown 100,000 kilometers in Rwanda since the program's launch last year, delivering 2,600 units of blood over 2,000 flights, according to a press release.

In early 2018, Zipline will launch what it says is the world's largest drone delivery network through a partnership with the Tanzanian government. Its four distribution centers will service an area that covers 10 million to 11 million people, roughly a quarter of the population.

In 2016, we toured the top-secret Zipline headquarters in Half Moon Bay, California. Here's how drone delivery is saving lives in some of the most remote places on Earth.

SEE ALSO: Tim Cook and Eric Schmidt stripped down to try this new kind of shower head and wound up investing

This little guy — a drone that looks more like a character from the "Cars" spinoff movie "Planes" than a quadcopter — could be the future of the healthcare industry.

In Rwanda, 30,000 people receive blood transfusions annually for postpartum hemorrhaging, severe anemia due to malaria infection, and other potentially fatal conditions.

Typically, a hospital worker will drive two hours to the nearest blood bank to collect donations, if the roads are passable. Storms often wipe out roads in rural areas.

• Generation Z is embracing a food trend that replaces animal products with plant-based alternatives.
• Startups that make fake meat and seafood are targeting college and university cafeterias for distribution, because it's where they expect to find enthusiastic consumers.
• Global sales of plant-based meat are expected to top $5.2 billion by 2020.

Millennials have a reputation for killing all sorts of food-related industries and products, including casual dining chains like Applebee's, cereal, light yogurt, and even beer.

Meanwhile, Generation Z is shaping a billion-dollar food market.

Fake meat is a fast-rising food category that could change the way we eat. It replaces animal products with alternatives made from plants that look and taste like meat, with the goal of reducing the global dependence on animal agriculture. Generation Z is embracing the trend.

Generation Z includes people born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, which means the oldest members of the demographic are getting ready to graduate college. This group makes up a quarter of the US population and will account for 40% of all consumers by 2020.

In 2015, Y-Pulse, a market research firm that specializes in millennial preferences, led a survey of college and university food-service operators. It found "plant-based menus" and "sustainable seafood" were among the trends their youngest students craved the most.

Research by Barclays shows that Generation Z consumes 57% more tofu and 550% more non-dairy milk than millennials. Many are part of a growing movement of "flexitarians" who eat meat and animal products sparingly.

According to Google Trends, public interest in a vegan diet has never been higher. Generation Z isn't the only group interested. The substitute meat market is expected to grow 8.4% annually over the next three years, reaching $5.2 billion globally by 2020, according to Allied Market Research.

Companies that produce fake meat and seafood, ranging from "bloody" burgers to sushi made from tomatoes, have targeted college campuses as testing grounds for their creations. It's a big market. Food service accounts for about half of ground-beef consumption in the US.

In October, startup Impossible Foodsannounced it will expand distribution of its vegan burger, which sizzles on the grill and bleeds juices like real beef, to universities and company cafes. Until now, consumers could only find the venture-backed burger in high-end restaurants including Chef David Chang's Momofuku Nishi and gourmet chains like Umami Burger.

Impossible Foods opened its first large-scale production facility in September, which will allow it to produce at least four million meatless burgers a month by year's end.

New Wave Foods, which manufactures an algae-based shrimp alternative, and Ocean Hugger Foods, which is working on plant-based seafood — including a raw tuna substitute made from tomatoes — have also set their sights on food-service companies as a path for distribution.

"College campuses feed the consumers of tomorrow," Sharon Olson, cofounder of Y-Pulse, told Civil Eats in an article about seafood alternatives popping up in dining halls. "These students are developing habits of a lifetime, including products they'll look for when they graduate."

David Benzaquen, CEO of Ocean Hugger Foods, described the company's relationship with food-service companies as a "natural fit." Colleges and universities buy huge volumes of food, and young people show an open-mindedness when it comes to plant-based foods.

The world's population is expected to top nine billion people by 2050 — a figure thathas someworriedthere won't be enough resources on the planet to support animal agriculture at that scale. Generation Z could at least put a dent in the world's obsession with meat.

SEE ALSO: Meet Generation Z, the 'millennials on steroids' who could lead the charge for change in the US

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What those mysterious white stripes on chicken are — and what it means for cooking

A library can be a second home for a bibliophile.

They come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of embellishment. The nearly 300-year-old State Hall in Vienna, Austria, boasts carved wooden galleries, baroque-style statues, and frescos, while Taipei's Beitou Branch resembles a treehouse more than a shelter for books.

We scoured the internet and found 20 of the most beautiful libraries around the world.

SEE ALSO: 11 eerie photos of abandoned places around the world

The New York Public Library is an architectural landmark, where grand, marble lion statues guard more than 50 million books inside. It serves 18 million patrons a year.

Year Established: 1911

Architect: Carrère and Hastings

Source: New York Public Library

It's hard to keep your eyes glued to the page in The Austrian National Library's baroque-style State Hall, where carved wooden galleries and frescos captivate.

Year Established: 1726

Architect: Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach

Source: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek and Vienna Unwrapped

Rio de Janeiro's Royal Portuguese Reading Room houses the largest collection of Portuguese works outside of Portugal. The dazzling neo-Gothic style was popular at the time of construction.

Year Established: 1887

Architect: Rafael da Silva e Castro

Source: Real Gabinete Português de Leitura

We sat down with Anthony Bourdain of "Parts Unknown" and Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese to discuss Bourdain's new film, "Wasted!" and the ever-changing food landscape. Here, they discuss some of their favorite underrated foods that you should be on the lookout for. Following is a transcript of the video.

Anthony Bourdain: So many of traditional foods that we sort of fallen out of touch with are underrated. You know, things like a traditional Italian ragu of, you know, oxtail and, you know, a neck bone. Pigs feet can be, you know — these days, pigs feet, you have to go to an expensive hipster restaurant to get. The next – the new lobster? I don’t know. Pig tails would be nice. They can be really, really great. And they’re, you know, in limited supply, just like lobster. And takes some skill to eat.

Danny Bowien: For me, I moved to San Francisco when I was 19 and started, like — I had Korean food for the first time when I got off of the airplane. One of the first things that I had at that meal was grilled, griddled mackerel. Like a piece of griddled mackerel and I was, like, “This is amazing.” It’s very fishy, but not in a bad way. ‘Cause I’d only grown up eating catfish that was deep-fried. You know what I mean?

I never ate, like, grilled fish or knew the flavor of the ocean. We’re really starting to showcase more oily fish, like, little smelt and sardines, anchovies, even like, little bait fish. Using those in innovative ways and getting people excited about them. ‘Cause that’s what we’re excited about.

Bourdain: Across America people have lost touch with what used to be a staple at a certain lower-income point. So it’s really a lot of these ingredients we are talking about — we’re urging people to use more of, so as to avoid waste. The techniques we’re talking about — slow-cooking, braising, stewing, pickling — these are nothing new to, you know, people, you know, even today in rural West Virginia, all across the South. And, you know, in huge parts of America, particularly in the cities, we have lost touch with them.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Rent the Runway is a fashion company that allows customers to rent and return designer clothing. 
• It recently renovated its New York City headquarters, and Business Insider got a look inside.
• The offices have a meditation studio and lots of places to try on clothes.

Rent the Runway has been working to democratize fashion since 2009. The startup allows customers to rent articles of clothing from more than 450 designers, with tiered monthly subscription services and items that start at $30 for a four-day rental. 

Last November, the startup surpassed $100 million in annual sales, and this year, it's celebrating its eighth anniversary with the opening of a freshly renovated Manhattan headquarters.

The nearly 40,000-square-foot space, which was designed by Hyphen, is adorned in pink wallpaper, and its perks include a meditation room, photo studio, and fitting room for employees to change into their own rentals.

"Even though we're 1,200 people it still feels like it did in the early days when we first founded the company," co-founder and CEO Jenn Hyman told Business Insider.

She added: "That entrepreneurial spirit, the warmth, the friendships, are all there. We wanted the office to reflect that energetic entrepreneurial spirit."

Ahead, get a look around the office and Hyman's favorite spaces.

SEE ALSO: Go inside the gorgeous New York apartment where everything is for sale

The offices house around 250 employees, though Rent the Runway employs about 1,200 people in total, including in their stores and warehouses.

In the front lobby are two large closets that have rotating wardrobes hanging inside them. "These closets are in the shape of our logo," Hyman said. "We continuously rotate to feature things that are new. New brands, new arrivals — they're continuously changing to evidence this statement: 'I have everything to wear.'"

On the left wall is what Hyman calls her favorite thing in the office: photos of customers, employees both past and present, and other female entrepreneurs that have used Rent the Runway's services.

A mega-mansion that's fit for James Bond has hit the market in San Francisco.

47 Chenery Street sits on one of the largest private lots in the city, but passersby in the Glen Park neighborhood might not know it exists. The main residence is tucked behind a three-unit building located on the street (included in the price) and is surrounded by trees on all sides.

The decoy house isn't even the most surprising thing about San Francisco's top-secret compound, on sale for $11 million. Take a look inside 47 Chenery Street.

SEE ALSO: San Francisco's housing market is so out of control, a home has sold for nearly $1 million over asking

People walking by 47 Chenery Street might not think much of its curb appeal.

But there's more than meets the eye.

Pritikin, a former ad man who claims to have named Google (but was never credited), accesses the compound through the three-unit dwelling on Chenery Street.

Source: Gizmodo

• TripAdvisor users report that the site has deleted their accounts of being raped and assaulted while traveling.
• The users say they were told their reviews were deemed hearsay or unsuitable for the family-friendly site.
• The site makes money from hotels that pay commissions and advertising fees. A TripAdvisor spokesperson said that the company will introduce a new "badge" notification system. 

The travel booking and review website TripAdvisor is built on trust between itself, its users, and the businesses that receive reviews and customers from the site.

But that trust is breaking in dangerous ways, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which found numerous examples of users reporting first-hand accounts of rape and assault in reviews for hotels and resorts, only to find that their testimonies had been removed by the site.

The users were given a variety of reasons for the deletions, from accusations of hearsay to violations of the site's family-friendly policy. In one case, at least three users reported being raped or sexually assaulted at the same Mexican resort, only to find that their posts had been removed. The deletion of these reviews has likely resulted in subsequent travelers being put in harm's way.

"Maybe we wouldn't have gone or maybe that wouldn't have happened to me," Jamie Valeri, a mother of six from Wisconsin, told the Journal Sentinel, speculating as to how she might have been able to avoid being assaulted had a review of a prior guest's similar experience not been removed from the site.

Like other review sites, TripAdvisor must strike a delicate balance between allowing users to speak freely and protecting businesses from lies or exaggerations, but it's worth noting that the company receives advertising revenue and commissions from some hotels and resorts. 

The company has a review filter and employees who monitor reviews they may deem unsuitable for the site. This review infrastructure includes some users and partners who work at or near the destinations that users can book on TripAdvisor, though the company has not been clear about how either are chosen.

A TripAdvisor spokesperson provided the following comment to Business Insider: 

TripAdvisor has always maintained — since our founding — a strict separation between our commerce and content businesses.  Despite assertions and statements made by a recent USA Today article, there is no tie between commercial relationships with our partners and how our content guidelines are applied to reviews or forum posts published on the site. 

We apologize to the sexual assault victim, reported on in the article, who had her forum post removed 7 years ago on TripAdvisor. Since 2010, when the forum post was removed, our policies and processes have evolved to better provide information like this to other travelers.  As a result, when recently brought to our attention, the victim's initial forum post was republished by our staff.

In fact, a simple Internet search will show numerous reviews from travelers over the last several years who wrote about their first hand experiences that include matters of robbery or theft, assault and rape.  We believe any first hand experience should be posted to our site as a means to communicate to other consumers looking for information on where they should travel.

We are horrified that this victim experienced this assault on her vacation in Mexico, and other travelers should be aware of this incident.

In order to better inform consumers and provide them with even more information about their travels, TripAdvisor is creating a "badge" notification to apply to businesses to alert consumers of health & safety or discrimination issues at that business reported on within the media or other credible sources of information. 

We will continue to work to improve and evolve our moderation and publishing guidelines as we work to provide the most accurate information in the travel industry available online.

SEE ALSO: A mother has been threatened with imprisonment after posting a negative restaurant review on TripAdvisor

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are changing the world like no other humans in history

• Heidi Klum's Halloween parties are known for being over the top.
• This year, Klum dressed as the werewolf from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.
• Lots of other celebrities, like Questlove and Mike Myers, showed up in costume.

The so-called Queen of Halloween, supermodel Heidi Klum, may have outdone herself this year.

For her annual party, now in its 18th year, Klum appeared in full makeup as the werewolf from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. The costume took seven hours to complete.

"Michael Jackson was always such an icon and the 'Thriller' video is such an iconic video and I was like, 'I have to redo that,'" Klum told People.

Hosted at Magic Hour Rooftop Bar at Moxy Times Square, the party was DJ'd by Questlove and attended by plenty of stars, including Heather Graham, Ice-T, Mike Myers, and Kyle MacLachlan.

Below, see the best costumes of the night.

SEE ALSO: Michelle Obama's White House photographer reveals in a new book what being around the former first lady was like

Jay Manuel arrived as a bionic man.

Model Anastasia Machekhina dressed in blue.

Model Sommer Ray wore cheetah print.

• Ivanka Trump's fashion brand and Trump Hotels are among the brands with the lowest consumer perception in the US, according to a new survey. 
• Out of 1,600 brands, both Ivanka Trump and Trump Hotels made the bottom 10.  
• Republican perception of Ivanka Trump is declining. 

Americans have an extremely low perception of Trump family brands. 

Both Ivanka Trump's fashion line and Trump Hotels fell to the bottom 10 of more than 1,600 brands analyzed in a YouGov consumer perception survey, Axios reports. YouGov surveyed 4,800 people in a representative national sample to arrive at the result. 

With the exception of Trump family brands, most of the bottom 30 are cable companies, energy drinks, and dating sites, spokesperson Drew Kerr told Business Insider. 

While Republicans have better perceptions of both Trump-related brands, neither is doing exceptionally well among the right.

Hotel industry rivals like Four Seasons and The Ritz-Carlton beat out Trump Hotels among Republicans. And, Republicans' perception of the Ivanka Trump brand has fallen since May — though it's been rising among Democrats and Independents. 

SEE ALSO: An anti-Trump movement is calling for the boycott of these 51 companies

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We visited the 'McDonald's of Russia' that's trying to take over America — here's what it was like

What do you picture when you imagine a hedge-fund office? A noisy trading floor full of hedge-fund guys in fleece vests?

Two Sigma, a $45 billion hedge-fund firm that uses advanced technologies to find investment opportunities, is a little different. The firm, which says it has seen head count grow by more than 400% in the past seven years, is as much a technology company as it is a finance company, analyzing over 10,000 data sources to find patterns in markets.

That approach seems to have paid off. Two Sigma ranked as the fifth-biggest hedge fund in the world in Institutional Investor's Alpha's 2017 Hedge Fund 100 list, while cofounders David Siegel and John Overdeck each made $750 million last year, according to the magazine's list of the top-earning hedge-fund managers. The firm also runs an insurance business, Two Sigma Insurance Quantified, a market-making arm called Two Sigma Securities, and a venture-capital arm.

In August, Business Insider took a tour of the firm's two New York offices, which are across the road from each other in the SoHo neighborhood. The offices are stashed with arcade games, computing memorabilia, gyms, a hacker space, and a music room.

SEE ALSO: These before-and-after photos show tech billionaires' dramatic transformations

There was a teach-in on Python for Research when we visited 101 Avenue of the Americas, one of three talks the firm hosts weekly.

The kitchen was well stocked.

You may be able to see a Juicero machine on the left side. Two Sigma Ventures, the venture arm of Two Sigma, is an investor in Juicero, which recently announced a price cut and layoffs.

Across the road at 100 Avenue of the Americas, there's another kitchen, with staff taking time out to play games.

A new kind of school crafted by the minds and wallets of Silicon Valley influencers is struggling.

AltSchool, an educational software developer and network of "micro-schools" with nine locations in California and New York, is shuttering at least one location and is scaling back its ambitious plans for expansion, according to a new report in Bloomberg.

Max Ventilla, founder and CEO of AltSchool, told Bloomberg the startup will shift its focus to licensing educational software to existing schools rather than create new ones.

Ventilla left his role as Google's head of personalization in 2013 to found AltSchool. The network of micro schools, which has headquarters in San Francisco, enrolls between 80 and 150 students at each of its locations and uses technology to tailor its instruction for individual students.

AltSchool charges a tuition fee close to $30,000 per year, but it has been spending about $40 million annually during a period of rapid expansion, according to Bloomberg. The Palo Alto location will be the first to close.

"We know this is tough news that will have a big impact on your family," Ventilla reportedly wrote in an email to parents of children at the Palo Alto school. But the decision is necessary, he wrote, because of AltSchool's "strategy, path to growth and finances."

AltSchool has raised about $170 million from Silicon Valley giants including Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz. 

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley billionaires are sick of normal schools — so they've created this one

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Every year, we pick up new lingo thanks to newsworthy people and events — but some stand out more than others.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Collins Word of the Year 2017 — an annual campaign that gives "a chance to reflect on the words that have defined the last 12 months" — is "fake news."

As defined by Collins, "fake news" means "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting."

The word saw an "unprecedented usage increase of 365%" since 2016, according to the company.

"It has been derided by the leader of the free world and accused of influencing elections, but 'fake news' is today legitimate news as it is named Collins’ Word of the Year 2017," the site states.

You can watch Collins' hilarious announcement of the Word of the Year here:

It added: "In a year that’s been so unbelievable it’s hard to know what is fact and what is fiction, you can rely on Collins to keep you updated on the words you need to know."

The shortlisted words for 2017 include "unicorn," "echo chamber," "gig economy," and "cuffing season."

The 2016 winner was "Brexit," while "binge-watch" took the title in 2015.

You can see the full list here.

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• Michael Dell reportedly just bought a penthouse in a new luxury residence being built by Four Seasons in Boston.
• One of the other penthouses has reportedly sold for $40 million, which would make it the most expensive condo in Boston's history.
• The project is set for completion in 2018.

Boston's rich and famous will have a new luxury housing option when the Four Seasons Residences One Dalton Street is complete in 2018. The complex, which is currently under construction, will contain a hotel, restaurant, residences, penthouses, and other amenities.

Recently, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell went under contract to buy one of the building's three penthouses, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Take a look at what Four Seasons has planned for the complex.

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The complex will rise 61 stories and stand as the tallest residential building in New England.

Source: Four Seasons

Some of the residences will have scenic views of Boston.

The renderings indicate that the condominiums will feature sparse, modern designs with plenty of natural light.

• Zhang Wei, 36, paid 9,999 Swiss francs for a single measure of whisky.
• He believed it was a single malt by The Macallan distillery from 1878.
• A carbon dating test now says it is a blended whisky from the 1970s.
• Wei got a full refund when the hotel realised.
  

A whisky enthusiast who spent £7,623 on a single measure of scotch, thinking it was extremely rare, actually wasted his money on a fake.

Zhang Wei, 36, paid 9,999 Swiss francs (£7,623 or $9,998) for one 20ml measure of what he believed was an 1878 Special Reserve from The Macallan distillery in Speyside, Scotland.

He had the drink during a high-end tasting session Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz, which is famous for its enormous selection of single malts. Business Insider reported on the purchase at the time.

However, scientific tests have sinced revealed that the alleged 139-year-old whisky was probably distilled in the 1970s.

According to the BBC, hotel staff sent the bottle away for testing after whisky experts raised doubts that the bottle could be authentic.

They sent a sample to Rare Whisky 101, a company in Dunfermline, Fife, who used carbon dating technology to discover that the whisky was almost certainly made in the early 1970s.

Furthermore, they found that it was a blended rather than a single malt, making it still less authentic. They declared the end result "almost worthless."

Bar manager Sandro Bernasconi said Zhang thanked him for his honesty.

In August, Bernasconi said he had never expected to sell the whisky, which had been in the bar as a collector's item since his father bought it in the 1990s.

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• Scientists are uncovering promising links between specific parts of our DNA and a range of disorders such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• As with any disease, having certain genes or mutations in those genes doesn't mean you'll go on to develop the disorders, but it may play a key role.
• The research also helps highlight the biological underpinnings of mental illness, something that could help with the development of better treatments.

When you fall and break a bone, an X-ray shows the crack. There's no equivalent diagnostic for disorders of the brain — a shortfall that's made it difficult for millions of people with conditions ranging from anxiety to obsessive-compulsive disorder to get treatment.

A spate of new research may change that. In a handful of recent studies, scientists have identified what they believe to be some of the most reliable genetic hallmarks of mental illness, a discovery that would transform our current approach to treating the disorders. If we can better understand the genes that influence psychiatric diseases, we can design treatments that accurately target the part of the brain that they appear to effect.

"Beyond giving us so much data to explore, being able to show that depression is a brain disease, that there is biology associated with it, I think that's really critical," Roy Perlis, the director of the Center for Experimental Drugs and Diagnostics at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Business Insider in 2016. "These are brain diseases, like any other. They're not someone's fault."

The latest research suggests that our DNA may play an outsize role in psychiatric disease. As far as diseases go, mental illnesses are among those that are the most likely to be passed down from parent to child, a finding only recently illuminated by decades of research. 

"Genetics plays a very big role in your risk of getting these diseases," Elinor Karlsson, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, told Business Insider. 

Still, looking at someone's genome alone will probably never be enough to determine if they'll go on to develop a psychiatric disease — other factors, including environmental factors like severe stress, play a strong role too. But scientists are discovering more and more clues that suggest that the key to discovering new treatments for mental illnesses will center on a deeper dive into our DNA.

"We need to go after this genetic component," Karlsson said.

In the summer of 2016, Perlis used data from 23andMe to pinpoint 17 genetic variants linked with major depressive disorder. But Perlis and 23andMe aren't the only ones making progress in this arena. Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the Broad Institute identified four genes linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a chronic condition characterized by uncontrollable repetitive thoughts and behaviors. 

'People who have OCD are more likely to have these changes in these genes'

Hyun Ji Noh, a geneticist at the Broad Institute, has read lots of studies showing a link between OCD and genetics. Despite all this promising research, none of the existing papers came to any definitive conclusions about which genes seemed to be tied to the disorder.

So for her latest study, published earlier this month in the journal Nature Communications, she decided to try a different tack.

Instead of just focusing on human DNA, which in the other studies had yielded limited results, she looked at multiple sets of genes — and not just from humans. 

"There are a lot of naturally occurring dog diseases — especially psychiatric diseases — that are very similar to human diseases," Hyun Ji Noh, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and the lead author on the study, told Business Insider. "So to me it was sort of natural to put dog studies in the context of human disease."

Noh's paper looked at hundreds of genes that had been implicated in psychiatric disease in dogs, mice, and people.

In humans, the researchers found 608 genes. To find out which of these 608 genes was actually tied to OCD, Noh compared what they looked like in hundreds of people with and without the disorder. By the end of the analysis, just four genes emerged that showed up repeatedly in mutated form in people with OCD. 

In these four genes, "a lot of mutations kept showing up for OCD patients but not in the healthy individuals," Noh said.

In other words, these four genes likely play a key role in the biology of the disorder. Still, having a mutation in one of these four genes doesn't necessarily mean you'll go on to develop OCD.

"We know people who have OCD are more likely to have these changes in these genes. But this is one of potentially 100 things that will determine if you have OCD," said Karlsson, who also worked on the paper. "It's complicated," she said.

Chasing 'depression genes'

Like OCD, researchers say depression is influenced heavily by our DNA. But unlike OCD, it's fairly common, occurring in an estimated 16.1 million Americans. Current treatments for depression haven't changed much since the 1950s, and they don't work for everyone.

So, in an effort to find out more about what exactly causes the illness, researchers published a paper in the summer of 2016 in the journal Nature Genetics in which they pinpointed 17 genetic variations, or tweaks in particular genes, that appear to be tied to major depressive disorder, the most debilitating form of the disease that's currently the leading cause of disability worldwide.

The researchers got their data from personal genomics company 23andMe. 

Using data from more than 75,600 people who told the company that they'd been clinically diagnosed with depression and more than 231,700 people who reported no history of depression, Perlis and his team were able to identify 17 areas on DNA that appear to be linked with depression. They also found some ties between these areas and those which have been previously identified as possibly playing a role in other psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia.

Scientists have been looking for such genetic hallmarks of depression for years. And while some, like a 2013 study in the journal The Lancet and a 2015 paper in the journal Nature, have yielded promising clues, none have been able to spot any precise, reliable genetic markers of the disease.

At least not until now.

"My group has been chasing depression genes for more than a decade without success, so as you can imagine, we were really thrilled with the outcome," Perlis said.

The hope is that identifying these watermarks in our DNA — tiny areas on genes where high amounts of variation tend to occur among individuals — will help us better understand how genetics and behavior interact to influence disorders like depression.

Still, Perlis said, "this is really just the beginning. Now the hard work is understanding what these findings tell us about how we might better treat [these disorders]."

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