By T. Susan Chang, NPR

At this time of year, we all love tomatoes. Many of us claim we’ll “take a big juicy tomato and bite into it like it’s an apple,” although you won’t often see that happen in actual fact.

Yet, even people who love a juicy fresh tomato also are likely to enjoy it with all the juice sucked out, as in sun-dried tomatoes and — especially — roasted tomatoes. It’s the way the process acts on flavors, caramelizing what’s on the outside, concentrating what’s on the inside. It’s true even for a soulless, pale-pink January tomato. You can count on roasting to isolate and spotlight whatever sugars are to be found in that poor, hardhearted, well-traveled specimen.

But when you roast an August tomato — the Rita Hayworth of nightshades, seething in aromatic volatile compounds, complex with the sweetness of captured sunlight, intrinsically tart with citric and malic acids — well, then, you have something worth stopping the presses for. Dressed in caramel notes, with a suggestion of salt and a big wink toward vinegar, a roasted tomato’s most memorable feature is its long, sensuous, deep and savory finish. It’s a tone poem in umami, and by the time you reach the coda it’s already instructed your brain to reach for the next.

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By Kurt Chirbas, Sacramento Bee

In the last four weeks, Sacramento urologist Louis Giorgi and his wife, Joanne, have received countless cards.

Envelopes, in a rainbow of colors and sent from people across the nation, overflowed from a bowl on a counter in the Giorgis’ Carmichael kitchen. Personal notes offered condolences for a young teen who died too soon. And some expressed gratitude for the message of her grieving parents.

Natalie Giorgi

The Giorgis’ 13-year-old daughter Natalie died on July 27 from a severe allergic reaction to peanut butter while the family was at Camp Sacramento. The couple have since used Natalie’s death as a rallying cry for more education about children’s food allergies.

They helped establish a nonprofit organization called the Natalie Giorgi Sunshine Foundation, which is aimed at promoting public awareness and research of food allergies. They are giving out “Natalie Marie, the Sunshine Girl” wristbands – in her favorite shade of purple – for community members to wear.

On Sept. 15, the parents will be participating in a fundraising walk for Food Allergies Research & Education, a group working on behalf of millions of Americans facing potentially life-threatening food allergies.

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By Gary Klien, Marin Independent Journal

Joseph Naso, the 79-year-old man convicted last week of murdering and dumping four women in the 1970s and ’90s, is also the prime suspect in the murder of a former Lake Tahoe woman who was found in Tiburon in 1981, prosecutors disclosed in court Wednesday.

Sharileea Patton was 56 when her body washed ashore near the former Tiburon Naval Net Depot off Paradise Drive. She had been strangled and placed inside two plastic garbage bags.

Joseph Naso

The reason the case is surfacing now is because prosecutors want to include Patton’s murder as even more evidence why Naso should receive the death penalty. Prosecutors are asking Judge Andrew Sweet to let them present evidence about other alleged Naso sex crimes that were excluded from the trial, including the Patton case.

The jury that convicted Naso returns to court next week to decide on his sentence. Naso argued that the jury should not be allowed to hear about the Patton investigation because the allegations cannot be proved.

Investigators found a Naso diary that mentioned a woman with references to Leavenworth, Lake Tahoe and the Los Angeles area.

Patton — who also used the last names Heckert, Duvalle and Withrow — was a former resident of the Los Angeles area and worked for the county sheriff’s department. She later moved to Lake Tahoe, but a few weeks before her death, she relocated to the Bay Area in search of work.

Naso was arrested in South Lake Tahoe in April 2011 on the murder charges out of Marin County. He had been in custody on unrelated charges.

In 2010 Naso spent a year in El Dorado County jail for a probation violation. In 2008 he had been convicted of committing a burglary in South Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe News contributed to this report.

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Sun

Nevada’s “A world within, a state apart” slogan may have bombed publicly, but some tourism commissioners think the Killers killed it with the Las Vegas band’s rendition of “Don’t Fence Me In” in a television ad, and now the state may look to expand use of the song.

A marketing committee meeting of the Tourism Commission today recommended broadening the use of the 1934 Cole Porter-Robert Fletcher western song that is performed by the Killers in an up-tempo rock style.

“‘Don’t Fence Me In,’ to me, is a lot more powerful than ‘A world within, a state apart,’” said Commissioner Christopher Baum, the president and CEO of the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority. “We need to make it more prominent.”

The Tourism Commission unveiled the six-word state slogan in April.

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By Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times

That head-splitting migraine attack that knocks you off your feet may also put you at risk of permanent changes in the brain, an analysis of 19 medical studies found.

The potential for increased abnormalities in the signal-carrying white matter of the brain appears strongest among those who suffer headache warning symptoms, such as flashes of light, blind spots and tingling, according to the analysis published online Wednesday in the journal Neurology. Those “migraine with aura” sufferers were about 1.7 times as likely to have such anomalies than were the non-migraine population, the analysis found.

But the significance of these white-matter blips and other tissue changes remains elusive, and there is some question about whether the neurological variances from the norm mark a migraine-prone brain or the ravages of the attacks, researchers said.

At best, doctors have concluded that what they see on patients’ magnetic resonance imagery amounts to a “benign imaging correlate” of migraine. They’re there, they are associated with migraine, and that’s where the hard evidence stops.

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By Betty Hechtman

They’re called second acts, encore careers or reinventing yourself – they’re the completely new and different jobs people take in midlife or later.

Today, making that jump is more likely to be a matter of following the heart than it was during the throes of the economic recession, when professionals caught up in corporate layoffs discovered they were too old to find jobs in a poor market and too young to retire. They started second careers not to follow a vocation but to pay the bills.

I’m glad to see the tide turning again – especially for all the baby boomers who don’t want to retire but do want to do something gratifying.

I have had a lot of practice reinventing herself. I have volunteered as a farmworker on a kibbutz in Israel, waitressed and worked in retail sales, and made connections as a telephone operator, among a host of jobs.

I’ve held jobs just for the paycheck and I’ve pursued my passions, so I know how profoundly different it is to do one versus the other. No matter what age you are, if there’s work you feel called to, you should most definitely give it a try — you may well experience a joy unlike any you’ve ever known.

Here are tips for people considering an encore:

• Do your homework. There’s nothing more disappointing them jumping into something new only to become disillusioned and frustrated because you didn’t take the time to prepare. If your dream is to open a particular business, research the market. Is there a demand for what you hope to sell? Should you give it a trial run as an online business before investing in shop space and other overhead? Start by checking the resources at Score.org, a nonprofit supported by more than 12,000 volunteers dedicated to helping small businesses off the ground. For other encore pursuits, you might take classes or spend a few hours a week working as a volunteer to learn the ropes.

• Join a group of like-minded people. This is particularly helpful for aspiring artists who want to paint, play music, write a book or indulge some other creative talent. You can brush up on your skills and make valuable contacts by becoming a part of a community theater, joining a writers circle, or finding a group of hobbyists. You may find your skills develop much more quickly with the support and guidance of collegial peers who are all helping one another achieve a dream.

• Consider working in one of the five most popular encore fields. Most people seek second their careers in health, education, government, environment and non-profits — all fields expected to provide abundant job opportunities in the next couple of years, according to Encore.org, a non-profit that supports second careers “for the greater good.” If you need training to qualify, now is the time to get it. Invest now in the education, and you can soon have a job that feeds the heart, the mind – and the body.

Betty Hechtman is the author of “Yarn to Go,” the first book in the Berkley Prime Crime Yarn Retreat mystery series, as well as the author of the best-selling Berkley Prime Crime Crochet mystery series. The eighth book, “For Better or Worsted,” comes out in November.

By Shan Li and Andrew Khouri, Los Angeles Times

Motorists hitting the road over the Labor Day weekend may find themselves paying more at the pump as the Syrian conflict fans tensions in the Middle East and roils gas markets.

Experts speculate that prices could shoot up 10 cents a gallon or more in the coming days, a reversal of the lower prices road-trippers have enjoyed this summer thanks to increased U.S. production and higher inventories. A gallon of regular gasoline might again vault past $4.

Prices “are definitely going up,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis. “The situation in the Middle East is very volatile, and it goes beyond the Syrian conflict.”

The question is: How much will prices rise, and for how long?

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Stateline casinos brought in more money in July compared to the previous year, which is the opposite of what happened overall in Nevada.

Statewide gaming revenue dropped 8 percent, according to the Gaming Control Board. Nevada brought in $925.7 million this July, whereas in 2012 the figure was $1.005 billion.

On the South Shore the casinos’ take of $32 million was an increase of 9 percent. July is often a good month for Stateline because of the Fourth of July holiday and American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a dense smoke advisory for the greater Lake Tahoe area, Alpine County, and northern Mono County through 8 tonight.

Expect smoke from the Rim Fire to continue to affect the Reno, Carson City and Carson Valley areas, too. While blue sky has been prominent on the South Shore for the last two days, east of the basin has been more socked-in by smoke.

Visibility is expected to improve as the day goes on.

“Winds are favorable for smoke to persist through the Labor Day weekend,” according to the Weather Service.

Because prolonged outdoor activity is discouraged in these conditions the athletic council overseeing area high school sports has canceled games for today and Saturday unless they can be played outside the eight affected counties.

The fireworks on the South Shore are set to go off Sept. 1 at 8:30pm.

The Rim Fire has burned 201,894 acres and is the fifth largest in California’s history. It is 32 percent contained; full containment expected Sept. 20.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

• New administrators in Lake Tahoe Unified are: Joel Dameral principal at Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School, Cindy Martinez principal at Bijou Community School, Christina Grubbs is principal at Tahoe Valley Elementary School, Pat Harnett as South Tahoe High School assistant principal and Karin Holmes the South Tahoe Middle School assistant principal.

• North Tahoe Public Utility District hired Tracey Towner as the Park and Facilities manager and Nick Saadi will take on a new position of Park and Facilities coordinator.

• The Tahoe Donner Golf Course was mentioned in the article Best 18 Holes of the High Sierra in the August issue of California Golf News. Out of 18 holes mentioned, three holes (1, 8 and 18) at Tahoe Donner were mentioned – the most holes of any golf course in the article.

• Tahoe Cross Country has started a junior mountain bike program.

• South Tahoe High grad Tyler Nesbitt is playing football for Montana State. Check out this video.