The economic recession hit recently and affected a lot of businesses, particularly, large corporations, banks, and governments. However, the one industry that not only remained afloat, but even saw more traffic and business is the fast food industry. Rising sales at fast food industries speak volumes towards our modern food economy, our health, and how we should be saving up for our health insurance. Read on to find out the complicated implications fast food industries bring to the table.

Higher sales for fast food during a recession is an anomaly. Coupled with lower gas prices and increasing numbers of traffic jams reported, the relationship between fast food sales, the economy, and health habits of fellow American become more understandable and transparent. Fast Food has been a direct result of the increasingly fast paced lifestyle that we face. Bad eating habits are one of the many byproducts of a fast food economy. Ultimately, dining in this pattern will pose serious risks to one's health. Of course, everyone knows this and it is practically common sense, but why are fast food chains continuing to thrive? It's because our fast paced lifestyles have been prioritized over the importance of our health. It is now an anomaly for people to sit down and have a healthy breakfast. Since everything is always 'on the go' or "take out" it's hard for quality to be compromised with "fast" and "cheap."

So what implications does our modern food economy represent? It represents convenience over healthy. It shows that not only is obesity on the rise, but unhealthy lifestyles are developing and becoming the norm. So, how do we bring about changes in our eating habits? It starts with revolutionizing our living patterns first. We must make more time for what is important - healthy lifestyles take full commitment and is more time consuming. It takes a lot more effort to cook your own meals, research the best meals with lowest calories, and go grocery shopping the smart way, than it is to drive up and order a happy meal but it's worth it in the long run.

The National Institutes of Health, often known as NIH, is an independent agency operating inside the United States Department of Health and Human services that's mainly responsible for pursuing many of the country's biomedical and health-related scientific studies.

The mission of the NIH has always been to "seek fundamental understanding of the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce the burdens of illness and disability."

In an attempt to contribute to the realization of this mission, the National Institutes of Health has developed the Shared Instrumentation Grant Program wherein they intend to solicit applications from NIH-supported research proposing to upgrade or purchase a single piece of expensive instrumentation (useful to the industry of science and technology) that at a minimum costs $100,000.

Initially, this program seeks to aid the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program. The project looks to provide funds to allow NIH-recognized institutions to purchase rather expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in translational, basic, or clinical areas.

The types of research instruments that can be purchased under this program are nuclear magnetic resonance systems, electron and confocal microscopes, mass spectrometers, protein and DNA sequencers, biosensors, x-ray diffractometers and cell sorters.

In most cases, research studies lead to fascinating medical breakthroughs; and the National Institutes of Health intend to contribute to these discoveries by providing researchers and scientists with high-end and top of the line equipment that could potentially make their work more easier and effective.