Life & Style | Airbnb looking for 100 of the best home chefs for a trip

Airbnb is launching a global search for 100 top home cooks and treating them to a trip to Italy to learn how to refine their recipes with teachers including David Chang (pictured) and his mom.

The lucky chosen will travel to the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, for a week’s worth of workshops and tastings to take their food “to the next level.” Their recipe will also feature in Airbnb’s first cookbook.

Applications open today. Airbnb users who are 18 and a resident of one of 30 or so eligible countries can nominate their favorite home cooks and complete an essay. Applications close Dec. 23.

Winners will be selected by judges from representatives from Airbnb, the Slow Food organization and the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

Colleges struggle with soaring student demand for counseling

More college students are turning to their schools for help with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, and many must wait weeks for treatment or find help elsewhere as campus clinics struggle to meet demand, an Associated Press review of more than three dozen public universities found.

On some campuses, the number of students seeking treatment has nearly doubled over the last five years while overall enrollment has remained relatively flat. The increase has been tied to reduced stigma around mental health, along with rising rates of depression and other disorders. Universities have expanded their mental health clinics, but the growth is often slow, and demand keeps surging.

Long waits have provoked protests at schools from Maryland to California, in some cases following student suicides. Meanwhile, campus counseling centers grapple with low morale and high burnout as staff face increasingly heavy workloads.

“It’s an incredible struggle, to be honest,” said Jamie Davidson, associate vice president for student wellness at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which has 11 licensed counselors for 30,000 students. “It’s stressful on our staff and our resources. We’ve increased it, but [no one] in the mental health field who tells you we have sufficient resources.”

Grocery-carrying robots are coming. Do we need them?

The first cargo-carrying robot marketed directly to consumers is on sale this holiday season. But how many people are ready to ditch their second car to buy a two-wheeled rover that can follow them around like a dog?

Corporate giants like Amazon, FedEx and Ford have already been experimenting with sending delivery robots to doorsteps. Now Piaggio, the Italian company that makes the Vespa scooter, is offering a stylish alternative to those blandly utilitarian machines — albeit one that weighs 50 pounds and costs $3,250.

It’s named the Gita (pictured) after the Italian word for a short, pleasurable excursion — the kind you might take to pick up some lacinato kale and gourmet cheese at the farmers market. Its creators have such trips in mind for the “hands-free carrier” that can hold produce and other objects as it follows its owner down a sidewalk.

Tech industry analysts are already declaring the Gita as doomed to fail unless it finds a more practical application, such as lugging tools around warehouses, hospitals or factory floors.