The benefits of juicing are no secret, namely that it’s an extremely efficient way to get a full serving of fruits and vegetables. For athletes, liquid fuel makes even more sense. Cherry juice, for example, helps reduce inflammation, which can speed up muscle recovery. And beet juice is one of the few natural performance enhancers, thanks to high levels of nitrates, which improve blood flow in the body. “There probably wasn’t an endurance athlete in the London Olympics who wasn’t on beet juice,” says Malachy McHugh, director of research at Manhattan’s .

Today there are dozens of companies hawking bottled concoctions at the grocery store, but here’s the reason to do it yourself: heat and sunlight degrade nutrients and antioxidant compounds, so packaged juices aren’t as potent as the fresh stuff. After testing more than a dozen of the top juicers on the market, here are our three favorites.

The Juicers

Breville Juice Fountain Plus ($150)
Best For:��The Time-Strapped Athlete

is a centrifugal juicer, which means that it simultaneously shreds and strains with a spinning filter. And this beast is shockingly powerful. At 12,000 rpm, it will pulverize whole apples, beets, and even fistfuls of carrots in seconds. The pulp bin is large enough to avoid mid-juice dumps, and it cleans easily. The only downside: it spins so fast that it sometimes creates a froth. But if you’re trying to squeeze in a quick juice after a morning run, this one’s for you.

Omega VERT VRT350 ($380)
Best For:��The Purist

No bells or whistles here: with just a single speed setting (on) keeps it simple. By processing foods at an extremely slow 80 rpm, the resulting juice is more nutrient rich and can be stored longer—Omega claims up to 72 hours. Two screens, fine and coarse, allow you to choose between low and moderate fiber. To top it off, the design is compact and clutter-free.

Similar in size and shape to a sewing machine, (the food gets squeezed between two rotating gears) can make everything from nut butter and mochi to, with an optional accessory, pasta. It’s surprisingly quiet at 110 rpm, and it comes with three different screens for juicing various foods (think mangoes versus kale). The price tag is hefty, but the Green Star Elite is durable and worth the expense if you’ll use it for more than just recovery drinks.

The Juice Recipes

Three basic concoctions to get you started on the path of Juicedom

Race-Day Performance Hit

• 2 beets
• 1/2 lemon, pulped
• 5 strawberries

Daily Immune Booster

• 3 kale leaves
• 1 cucumber
• 1 orange
• 10 grapes

Post-Race Recovery Blast

• 2 cups tart cherries (seeds removed)
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 inch ginger root

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As if the threat of widespread furloughs and closures wasn’t enough, the Smithsonian just confirmed via tweet that the imminent government shutdown will make the extremely popular .

The Panda Cam broadcast Giant Panda Mei Xiang giving birth last month.

The National Zoo will close to visitors on Tuesday morning, and the furloughed staff will prepare to take care of the animals on a restricted budget.

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A French mountaineer has found a trove of jewels near the summit of Mont Blanc.��, the young man came across a metal box, containing emerald, rubies and saphires, that is thought to have come from an Air India crash some 50 years ago.

that the stones are not being explicitly identified, but that their worth is estimated between $175,000 and $332,000.

The climber is being commended for handing in the box at a local police station. “This was an honest young man who very quickly realised that they belonged to someone who died on the glacier,” police chief Sylvain Merly

The find was made on the Bossons glacier, which has seen a number of historic Air India crashes.��

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In , Jon Krakauer has verified the cause of death of one of the most vivid characters in ���ϳԹ��� lore.

In 1993, Krakauer published an article on the death of Chris McCandless, a strong-willed 24-year-old who ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in search of a transcendental escape. The article subsequently became the book

In it, Krakauer speculated that McCandless died due to toxic alkaloids in wild-potato seeds. (From his journal: “EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY.”) Subsequent analysis of the seeds at the University of Alaska discredited that theory, finding no alkaloids at all in the plant.

The reason for his death has since been hotly contested. Until today.

Krakauer explains that he recently came across the research of a writer, Ronald Hamilton, who had concluded that a neurotoxin, known as ODAP, in the potato seed was responsible for a degenerative disease known as lathyrism.

Last month Krakauer sent a modest sample of the seeds for testing, discovering that they contained “.394 per cent beta-ODAP by weight, a concentration well within the levels known to cause lathyrism in humans.”

Krakauer concludes:

Hamilton’s discovery that McCandless perished because he ate toxic seeds is unlikely to persuade many Alaskans to regard McCandless in a more sympathetic light, but it may prevent other backcountry foragers from accidentally poisoning themselves. Had McCandless’s guidebook to edible plants warned that Hedysarum alpinum seeds contain a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis, he probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today. If that were the case, Chris McCandless would now be forty-five years old.

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Several teams of Sherpas are for a British trekker who has been missing for a month. George Abboudi, 22, set off alone on August 5 for an 11-day trek in northern Nepal and has not been heard from since.

Due to several disappeared hikers in recent years, the government of Kathmandu announced last summer its intention to require all trekkers to hire a guide. The tourism industry opposed the requirement, and the measure has yet to be implemented.

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The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that rates of Lyme disease are 10 times higher than previously reported, bringing the estimated number of Americans diagnosed each year to a massive 300,000 people. Sunday night, at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Diseases, the CDC released the results of three ongoing studies that indicate that the 30,000 cases reported to the government is just the tip of the iceberg.

Paul Mead, chief of epidemiology and surveillance for the CDC’s Lyme program, said that the extent of the disease calls for a reconsideration of current medical strategy.

“We know that routine surveillance only gives us part of the picture, and that the true number of illnesses is much greater,” said Paul Mead, M.D., M.P.H. “This new preliminary estimate confirms that Lyme disease is a tremendous public health problem in the United States, and clearly highlights the urgent need for prevention.”

For more on the growing threat from tick-borne diseases, read The Rise of the Tick.

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According to Roger Shepherd, from New Zealand, is the first foreigner to hike in the remote mountains of North Korea since the division of North and South Korea. The 47-year-old plans to return to North Korea in August in hopes that the two countries will let him cross the demilitarized zone.

Mr. Shepherd’s ambition draws upon the near-religious reverence Koreans feel for Baekdudaegan, and for Baekdusan, its tallest peak at 2,744 meters, or about 9,000 feet. The South Korean national anthem opens with a reference to Baekdusan. North Koreans calls themselves the “Baekdusan nation.”

“Koreans often say that mountains are part of their DNA, part of who they are,” Mr. Shepherd said in an interview. “When I talk about mountains in South and North Korea, people just ease up and talk about a subject that has no enemy.”

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Eight people Sunday night as unruly crowds from the U.S. Open of Surfing ripped up street signs, overturned portable toilets, and threw heavy objects through shop windows. The week-long surfing event ended with Alejo Muniz winning the $100,000 purse.

It’s not clear what sparked the rioting, captured on camera below.

A video from the OC Register showed riot police using rubber bullets to attempt to disperse the crowds.

The Huntington Beach Police Department says it is and intends to make more arrests.

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In the news this week, we saw several stories that sketched a grim prognosis for our favorite edible sea creatures. Baby oysters are under immediate threat from the rapidly acidifying oceans, according to , and in an article from , we learned that warming waters have driven lobsters to cannibalism.

If you live on the east coast, you’re probably well aware that a glut of lobsters has dropped prices through the floor. It has also, unfortunately, driven lobsters to the unthinkable.��

Warming waters can cause lobsters to grow larger and produce more offspring, and the last decade has been the warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine. That, combined with overfishing of lobster predators and an excess of bait left in lobster traps (see info box below), has driven the Maine lobster harvest to thoroughly smash records that stretch back to 1880. One of the side effects of this boom, Oppenheim says, is cannibalism: There are countless lobsters down there with nothing much to eat them and not much for them to eat, besides each other.

Noah Oppenheim, a graduate student in marine biology at the University of Maine, produced the video below, showing the unhappy result.

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“We can’t ignore the mounting evidence that competition from barred owls is a major factor in the northern spotted owl’s decline, along with habitat loss,” said Service Director Dan Ashe in a statement.

Barred owls are considered by the USFWS to directly compete for resources with the less aggressively spotted owl.

The , saying in a response to the announcement that “To move forward with killing barred owls without addressing the fundamental cause of spotted owl declines, from our perspective, is not acceptable.”

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