How to Run Your Car Using Water

delvis11 | May 24, 2009

For more information please visit http://www.greenfuelh2o.com

'Solar Ballet': NASA releases spectacular 5yrs time lapse of Electric Sun

RT | Feb 13, 2015

February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

Courtesy: NASA


Watch the original here: http://youtu.be/GSVv40M2aks

How learning artistic skills alters the brain

SOTT | Feb 12, 2015 | Tom Jacobs

New research finds neural changes not only reflecting increased technical capacities, but also enhanced creativity.

© Miramax Films
John Cusack (left) in Bullets Over Broadway.

Are artists born, or made? At the end of Woody Allen's great comedy Bullets Over Broadway, the John Cusack character concludes that, in spite of his desire and effort, he will never be a creative genius. He simply does not have the gift.

But is his reluctant assumption that artistry is encoded in one's genes, or perhaps one's soul, really true? A recently published paper suggests otherwise.

"Creativity is another concept that is often thought of as something we are either born with or will never have," says Dartmouth College psychologist Alexander Schlegel, lead author of a paper published in the journal NeuroImage. "Our data clearly refute this notion."

Schlegel and his colleagues report that taking an introductory class in painting or drawing literally alters students' brains. What's more, these training-induced changes didn't only improve the fine motor control needed for sophisticated sketching; they also boosted the students' creative thinking.

Start doing the work, and the brain responds, allowing one to build and retain not just technical knowledge, but also the imaginative capacity needed to utilize it fully.

Their study featured 35 college undergraduates, 17 of whom took a three-month introductory course in observational drawing or painting. All underwent monthly brain scans using fMRI technology.

At the beginning and end of the study, all participants completed a standard test of creative thinking, which measures such factors as fluency, originality, and the creative use of imagery and language.

During each of the monthly sessions, their brains were scanned under two conditions: as they "judged properties of illusory visual stimuli," a test designed to track the development of their perceptual abilities; and as they made "quick, 30-second gesture drawings based on observations of human figures."

"We did not find any improvements in the art students' purely perceptual skills or related brain activity relative to a control group of students who did not study art," the researchers write. "We did, however, find that the art students improved in the ability to quickly translate observations of human figures into gesture drawings, and that fine-grained patterns of drawing-related neural activity in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex increasingly differentiated the art students from the control group over the course of the study."

In other words, the researchers were able to watch as the brain adapted to learning new skills. But more importantly, they also observed changes in their prefrontal white matter that corresponded to an increase in their ability to think creatively.

The art students specifically increased "their ability to think divergently, model systems and processes, and use imagery," the researchers write. The results suggests that, in a matter of a few months, "prefrontal white matter reorganizes as (art students) become more able to think creatively."

So here is still more evidence of the plasticity of the brain, and its ability to adapt to new habits, new skills, and new information. Start doing the work, and the brain responds, allowing one to build and retain not just technical knowledge, but also the imaginative capacity needed to utilize it fully.

"Maybe there are gene variants that give individuals a proclivity toward art (e.g. make them more open to new ideas or more prone to make connections or see patterns), but that is a long way from saying they were born an artist and that those without such gene variants are doomed to being uncreative," Schlegel concludes. "It also propagates the strange myth of the artist as a special class of human. I hope our study will help to debunk the notion that there are "artists" and "the rest of us."

Source: Pacific Standard

Ideas on How to Build a Composting Toilet

© R. Mark Sink

Ideas on How to Build a Composting Toilet 

By R. Mark Sink

In these times, having an alternative emergency toilet is not a bad idea, especially with the ever increasing unstable nature of both the planned obsolescence of building methods, and our uncertain future brought on by our normalcy biases that everything is just fine.

Wood How To presents the idea of a stand-alone portable unit capable of receiving a standard 5 gallon bucket along with a standard toilet seat from Kohler© (sells for $20). The factory seat has a self-closing mechanism and is easy to clean.

Composting requires various mediums where some can be purchased locally. A mixture of saw dust (60%), and peat moss (40%), provides a good starting medium that can be transferred for additional mediums. There is mention of hemp stalks also as another medium, although, there might be a plethora of possible mediums available to further the processes and make use in soil restoration.

To learn more about composting this type of material, watch this video. Although you may use this methodology inside your bucket to some extent making the transfers into your own composting area that you have created more frequent. A consideration for additional compost material such as chicken manure can be combined for the ultimate garden soil once organisms have reduced the compost into a suitable growing medium.

© R. Mark Sink

Building Your Compost Toilet

In the U.S. a 5 gallon bucket (18.9 liters) range in height from 14" (35.5cm) up to 15" (38.1cm), be sure and check the height of your bucket so that it will fit into the cabinet you build. This particular cabinet is 19 inches tall. (48.26cm) The seat is slightly higher yet, so a consideration for use can be tested, and also consider who will be using the compost toilet when needed.

In my project, and leading up to this idea, I had experienced some plumbing issues, and found that having the off-the-grid unit around the house would be a major benefit. It would also get me thinking more about soil restoration and building instead of the never-ending mowing the yard which burns and wastes energy.

Unfortunately, our world is designed around wasting energy instead of utilizing the yard for much more productive means.

Underneath the factory seat there are ridge plates surrounding the oval shape that are intended to rest upon the bowl ring of standard toilets. Make sure you cut your hole in the cabinet top in parallel range of these ridges, about 1 1/2 inches (3.81cm) larger in diameter than the actual factory hole in the seat. You may want to also check the actual brand of seat you purchase for your unit. Drill two holes where the seat fastens in the back which seem to be a standard 5 1/5 on center to center (13.97cm).

Arrange the seat so that the bucket underneath can be slide into place easily with the seat not to far from the front edge, to make the seat easier to access. You may also want to allow for the lid to be on the bucket when installed or removed.

© R. Mark Sink

This cabinet is 20 1/2 inches deep (52.07cm), 19 1/2 inches wide (49.53cm), and also has a back that stands at 29" (73.66cm) tall. Legs were added along with the scrap material (this means it was extra, or left over from other work) used mostly of (1/2 inch (1.27cm) cherry plywood, solid cherry, and solid mahogany scappings.

The back was added because the seat is a bit delicate in that regard, the seat could be damaged by swinging back to far or by accident, so a back was created as support. To make use of the compost toilet, one certainly does not need to build a throne, these materials also could be just about anything that is workable to get the job done.

Assuming that our systems are not outdated in the middle of horrible economic burdens now present and covered over by the media, being prepared for the unexpected has its values, especially with all the uncertainties abound, such as electric failure, which drives the water pump to allow flushing to occur.

The power in Florida goes out several times each year like clockwork, and this is expected to continue. There is also the issue of water availability that with a little research, one immediately learns that our water supplies are in serious trouble in the days ahead, as these sources are continually being degraded.

REFERENCES:

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Third Edition

Prepper's Long-Term Survival Guide: Food, Shelter, Security, Off-the-Grid Power and More Life-Saving Strategies for Self-Sufficient Living

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

One Awesome, Natural Way to Reduce Stress and Feel Better

Natural Society | Dec 14, 2014 | Christina Sarich

© Natural Society

Connecting with Earth

Did you know that connecting to the Earth with bare skin may offer a host of health benefits – including healing the tired, stressed, and holiday-weary? This practice of connecting with nature is called ‘grounding,’ or ‘earthing,’ and it should be tried by everyone.

Do you remember running in green grass at the park with bare feet? Or sitting in mud or sand piles building castles? Even walking around on an earthen floor can electromagnetically ‘ground’ us, causing our bodies to absorb negatively charged atoms from the Earth. Since our bodies are naturally positively charged, the negative ions ‘neutralize’ disease and strain. This might be why gardeners feel so good! They are always re-charging their bodies with negative ions form the Earth.

Adrenal fatigue is caused by the ever-presence of stress, causing our adrenal glands to be overloaded. It can arise after prolonged periods of emotional crisis, but also after physical illnesses like the flu or pneumonia.

In the most serious cases of adrenal fatigue, the activity of the adrenal glands is so impaired that you may have difficulty getting out of bed for more than a few hours per day. With each increment of reduction in adrenal function, every organ and system in your body is profoundly affected.

This means that our ‘fight or flight’ system, which is largely comprised of the adrenal glands, is switched to a constant ‘on’ with no ‘off’ switch easily accessible.

The adrenals sit right on top of your kidneys, and are made up of two distinct parts:

• The adrenal cortex, which produces vital hormones like cortisol (which helps regulate metabolism and helps your body respond to stress) and aldosterone (which helps control blood pressure).

• The adrenal medulla, which produces nonessential hormones, such as adrenaline and norepinephrine (which help your body react to stress).

Too much cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline can also cause you to be in a forever-stressed state. You won’t sleep well, eat well, or do anything really, with much ease, if these hormones are not balanced.

One article published in the Journal of Complimentary Medicine states that:

“. . . grounding the human body results in [positive] changes in sleep, pain, and stress (anxiety, depression, irritability).”

They measured cortisol levels, specifically in patients who participated in their grounding study.

“[The adrenal system] normally works very efficiently for overt threats . . .such as in the face of a prowling predator, an accident or medical emergency. Yet unfortunately the HPA Axis responds not only to these actual, embodied stressors, but also to those that are anticipated and perceived – our looming worries and fears. The HPA system is helpless in differentiating between psychosocial stressors like getting stuck in traffic or planning a dinner party, and physical threats such as dodging wooly predators.

Thus in our far-from-perfect bustling modern world, where stressors are everywhere and worry is rampant, the HPA alarm is almost constantly stuck in the glowing red ON position. Cortisol levels soar in an unruly and destructive manner at bizarre times of the day and night, and suddenly small tasks such as packing a lunch or responding to an email, morph into treacherous evil threats that we feel like we just can’t handle.”

There is no refuting the potential benefits of connecting with nature and the Earth. Grounding is one of the simplest, most effective ways of allowing the body to right itself.

Crafting offers meditation-like benefits

© culturbia.net

SOTT | Nov 6, 2014 | Dr. Mercola

More than half of US households craft at least once a year,1 but for some it becomes a daily pastime. If you're an avid crafter - knitting, quilting, scrapbooking, etc. - you've probably lost yourself in a project on more than one occasion.

This tendency to become so absorbed in your craft that you're able to forget about your worries, obligations, and even physical pains is called "flow" - and it's a key reason why crafting may be phenomenal for your mental and emotional health.

Getting Creative Boosts Brain Health, Happiness

Crafts such as knitting and crocheting are no longer viewed as a pastime for the elderly. In fact, they're popular among all age groups, from 18 year olds to those over 65.

People in their 20s and 30s are actually taking up knitting in droves, and not because there's a shortage of baby blankets and hats. The number one reason why people are drawn to this hobby, according to a survey by the Craft Yarn Council, is because it's a wonderful creative outlet.²

Creating is beneficial for a number of reasons, one being that it allows you to become fully immersed in the moment to the extent that your worries fade away. This "flow," according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is the secret to happiness. As he stated during a TED talk:³

"When we are involved in (creativity), we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life... You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger."

Not to mention, crafting likely offers many of the same health benefits to your brain that have been associated with brain games and crossword puzzles, which are known to boost memory and cognitive function.

Read more..

Once a Sea - now it's the Aral Desert

What was once the Aral Sea at Muinak,
Qoraqalpoghiston, Uzbekistan.
Photo: so11e via Flickr.

The Ecologist | Oct 16, 2014 | Anson Mackay

The Aral Sea is a well known environmental disaster zone. But this year, it got a whole worse, writes Anson Mackay, as its biggest basin dried up completely to expose a toxic, salty wasteland. With continuing irrigation and declining river flows due to climate change, the desert is only set to expand. 

The Aral Sea has reached a new low, literally and figuratively. New satellite images from NASA show that, for the first time in its recorded history, its largest basin has completely dried up.

However, the Aral Sea has an interesting history - and as recently as 600-700 years ago it was as small, if not smaller, than today.

The Aral recovered from that setback to become the world's fourth largest lake, but things might not be so easy this time round.

Today, more people than ever rely on irrigation from rivers that should instead flow into the sea, and the impact of irrigation is compounded by another new factor: climate change.

Really a lake - but now, a wasteland

Sandwiched between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea is actually a lake, albeit a salty, 'terminal' one. It is salty because evaporation of water from the lake surface is greater than the amount of water being replenishing through rivers flowing in.

It is terminal because there is no outflowing river. This makes the Aral Sea very sensitive to variations in its water balance caused either by climate or by humans.

Indeed, the sea has long been a cause celebre in the world of environmental catastrophes, an exemplar of the devastating harm that ill thought-out economic policies can have on the environment.

Intensive irrigation of cotton plantations in the deserts of the western Soviet Union prevented water reaching the Aral Sea, leading to the drastically low levels we see today. This in turn meant the highly-salty waters killed off many plants and animals.

During early Soviet Union times, the Aral Sea and its fringing wetlands were a significant resource for the fishing industries, agriculture, animal husbandry and fur trapping.

Six decades of profligate cotton irrigation

But in the 1950s, the extent of irrigated land used for 'white gold' (cotton) increased dramatically from 4 billion to 8 billion hectares, with Uzbekistan becoming one of the world's largest cotton producers. To feed cotton's insatiable demand for water, the Karakum Canal was built out of the desert sands and because it was unlined, water losses were extremely high.

During the late 1960s, the amount of water evaporating from the Aral Sea become greater than the amount of water entering the lake, so lake levels declined dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 75% of the surface area and more than 90% of the lake's volume has been lost.

In 1987-1988, the lake split into two, and the Large and Small Aral Sea basins were created. International efforts have been made to protect the Small Aral Sea through the construction of dams, and this has meant that lake levels here have increased.

The Large Aral Sea continued to shrink and subsequently split itself into two basins; a deeper, smaller west Large Aral and a more shallow, but expansive, east Large Aral. And it is this latter basin which NASA images show had dried out completely this summer.

Toxic, salty dust storms causing disease and death

The environmental impact of the drying Aral has been devastating. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and hundreds of species have disappeared. Toxic metals and agrochemicals (herbicides, pesticides, insecticides), used to prevent disease and pests from lowering cotton yields, found their way into the sea through its rivers.

But because the Aral is a terminal lake, the pollutants were never washed out, and they instead sunk to the bottom sediments.

Now these bottom sediments are exposed to the air, they are blown up into the atmosphere as toxic, salty dust storms, which can spread for many hundreds of kilometres causing increased deaths and chronic disease, especially the young.

However, lower lake levels have also exposed ancient irrigation systems and mausoleums surrounded by settlements (some remains of which are still under water), built during the late Middle Ages. This means that in certain parts of the Aral, lake levels during 13th-14th century must have been lower.

We still aren't sure exactly what caused such extreme regression, but a cooler, drier climate played a role. The 13th century Mongol invasion of central Asia also led to the Amu Dar'ya, one of two major rivers that feed the Aral, being diverted to the Caspian Sea. Clearly humans were a major factor in the Aral's previous dry spell.

By the late 16th century, the Aral Sea started to fill up again, in part because irrigated channels meant the Amu Dar'ya once more flowed into the lake.

With climate change and continuing irrigation, water flows will cease

A key question that remains today therefore is how much of the lake's current regression is due to intensive irrigation and how much may be due to climate change over the past 50 years. Recent studies suggest only 14% of the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the 1960s was caused by climate change, with irrigation by far the biggest culprit.

Researchers looking at what will happen to Aral Sea levels with global warming over the next few decades have combined several model predictions together and expect net water loss to increase as more evaporation leads to less river inflow.

However, if irrigation of the rivers continues, then net water loss will be even greater as river flow into the Aral Sea will essentially cease.

Climate change may be one of the world's great problems but over-irrigation is at least possible to reverse with the right policy changes. But the two issues together make a disastrous combination.

The future for much of the Aral Sea does not look great.

---

Anson Mackay is Professor of Environmental Change at University College London. He received funding from INTAS between 2003-2005 to research water level change in the Aral Sea over recent millennia.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Wildlife Put at Risk from Dumping of Pharmaceuticals

(photo: Passaic River Basin)

ALLGOV | Oct 15, 2014 | Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

Hundreds of millions of pounds of pharmaceuticals are dumped into wastewater systems each year, posing serious threats to many species and ecosystems, researchers say.

Multiple studies show that drugs discarded into systems carrying human and animal waste have contaminated the environments upon which wildlife depends. In some cases, the consumption of pharmaceuticals can prove deadly for animals.

The antidepressant fluoxetine has caused starlings to spend less time foraging for food, one study found, while contraceptives flushed into lakes have reduced fish populations.
Other research has revealed anti-inflammatory drugs fed to cattle in India can wind up killing vultures that feed on the animals’ carcasses.

Drugs are often disposed of in wastewater systems by hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and other facilities where many people are on medication. There’s currently no rule that forbids this practice and as a result, some facilities dispose of 1,000 or more pills a month in this way.

Drugs make their way from sewer systems into waterways where even trace amount of pharmaceuticals can have a negative effect on wildlife.

“With thousands of pharmaceuticals in use globally, they have the potential to have potent effects on wildlife and ecosystems,” Kathryn Arnold of the University of York, told The Guardian. ”Given the many benefits of pharmaceuticals, there is a need for science to deliver better estimates of the environmental risks they pose.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is working on a proposal to manage pharmaceutical waste, but any rule might be a long time coming. The agency attempted to impose standards in 2008, but never finalized the rule.

In 24 Hours We Lose 80,000 Acres Of Rainforest – This Invention Could Help Change That

Collective Evolution | Oct 12, 2014 | Joe Martino

New innovative ideas to help improve the dire situation we face when it comes to our climate and ecosystem are coming from all areas. Whether it be large scale systems and infrastructures or smaller ideas like the new invention below (Hydria Pot,) no idea is too small and all are very important.

With our climate changing and rainfall becoming inconsistent, potentially worsening over the coming years, coming up with outdoor solutions to create and support new vegetation in forests, and rainforests is a priority.

We are destroying our forests and rainforests at a rate that is astonishing. Over 80,000 acres a day are cut and another 80,000 are degraded. We need to not only stop this issue but work to begin replacing these lost trees.[1] The Hydria Pot could help with that. One of the greatest contributors of rainforest degradation is actually something that touches most of us. Find out here. 

During the early stages of a newly planted tree, getting the support it needs to grow can sometimes be tough. A new invention and concept called The Hydria Pot looks to remove that challenge. The Hydria Pot is an innovative solution that attempts to mimmick nature.

 Read more..

Scientists Prove Goats Are Better Than Chemical Weedkillers

Photograph By Thinkstock

Rodale News | Sep 29, 2014 |  Julia Westbrook

Science proves what farmers already know: Goats make excellent weedkillers.

Herbivores—not herbicides—is the way to go, according to research published in the journal PeerJ.

The researchers compared the effectiveness of goats versus chemical herbicides against the common reed—a grass that is overrunning coastal wetlands from New England to the Southeast. "For more than two decades, we've declared major chemical and physical warfare on this grass, using all the latest man-made weapons," says Brian R. Silliman, PhD, associate professor of marine conservation biology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "We've used helicopters to spray it with herbicides and bulldozers to remove its roots. More often than not, however, it returns."

So, they were excited when goats—cheap, environmentally-sustainable goats—proved to be an effective solution. "We find that allowing controlled grazing by goats or other livestock in severely affected marshes can reduce the stem density of [reed] cover by about half in around three weeks," Silliman explains.

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Not only are goats less toxic (obviously), but they're also much more affordable than chemical sprays. Separate studies also showed that horses and cows are also effective against this invasive grass.

Silliman points out that everyone (well, except the chemical companies) wins with this solution: The marshes aren't polluted with toxins, the farmers get a new source of income by renting out their livestock (and the goats get a free meal), and the land managers get a cheap fix for the issue. Plus, with a cheap, effective, and safe solution, the problems caused by the grasses can be solved quickly, allowing everyone to enjoy the beautiful beach views again.

H/T Health Impact News

NASA Sound of the Sun Miracle

David Sereda | Sep 16, 2014

The Sound of the Sun is the Great Mantra OM in Rig Veda! Jesus truly prayed to LOGOS as God in the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. Find out in this short video!

Food Forests Could Bring Healthy Organic Food To Everyone – For Free (VIDEO)

Sleuth Journal | Sep 5, 2014 | Andrew Martin

Food forests or Forest gardening have been around for a long time with many of the native cultures practicing this form of sustainable agriculture. It is a form of low-maintenance plant-based food production which replicates natural ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, running vines and perennial vegetables. Beneficial plants and companion planting is a big part of the food forest system.

Unlike much of the modern industrial agricultural system which relies heavily of inputs such as fossil fuels and artificial herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, a food forest once established is self-regulating and highly abundant in yield.

Why Food Forests?

• Forests are home to approximately 50-90% of all the world’s terrestrial (land-living) biodiversity — including the pollinators and wild relatives of many agricultural crops (Source: WWF Living Planet Report 2010)
• Tropical forests alone are estimated to contain between 10-50 million species – over 50% of species on the planet.
• Rainforests cover 2% of the Earth’s surface and 6% of its land mass, yet they are home to over half of the world’s plant and animal species.

It is evident that forests themselves are synonymous with life, biodiversity and fertility. Where life gathers, complex and mutually beneficial relationships are created between organisms; natural harmonious communities form, and life forms multiply and proliferate.

Read more..

Did You Know: California Legalized Selling Food Made From Home & 1001 Local Businesses Sprung Up

© Natural Society

Natural Society | Aug 27, 2014 | Christina Sarich

Imagine growing your own heirloom, non-GMO tomatoes and then brewing up a batch of pasta sauce that would make Pavarotti sing from his grave. Or, an angel food cake from a recipe your great, great grandmother passed down to you that makes everyone’s mouth water, full of fresh, free-range, organic eggs from chickens roosting in your backyard. Now, imagine being able to sell these confections to the locals in your own town without being regulated, taxed, and FDA’d to death. California has made this possible for thousands in their state in January 2013, all because they legalized selling food made at home.

In a time when food sovereignty is threatened and Monsanto wants to control every forkful of sustenance we put into our mouths, this isn’t just a great revenue and local business support, but a radical, in-your-face move that tells the Feds just where they can stick their regulations.

It used to be, if you sold a loaf of home baked bread, you could get a knock on your door from a government official. No exaggeration. It has happened to Mark Stambler, of Los Angeles, and many others. He was forced to stop making bread for over 18 months. Stambler was even featured in an LA Times piece, with mention of his specially created brick oven and artisan baking skills.

Read: Small-Scale Organic Farming CAN Feed the World

Mark’s loaves came in first place at the county state fair, but no matter, the government wouldn’t allow him to sell his grains to anyone – until now.

Assemblyman, Mike Gatto, and Stambler helped to draft the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) to legalize home-made food. AB 1616 was overwhelmingly popular with lawmakers, passing the California State Assembly 60 to 16 and unanimously passing the state Senate in August 2012. Upon signing the bill, Gov. Jerry Brown praised AB 1616 as a way to “make it easier for people to do business in California.”

Fortunately, as of January last year Stambler has been back to making bread again – one of the first to do so ‘legally’ in his state. Now there are over 1200 home-made food businesses to thank him and Rep. Gatto for their efforts. Power to the people – and let them eat some good bread!

Food as Medicine: How One Hospital Is Using Organic Produce to Help Heal Patients

EcoWatch | Aug 22, 2014 | Mark Smallwood

In 431 B.C. Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

A sign directs visitors and patients to the St.
Luke’s Rodale Institute Organic Farm, adjacent
to the hospital. Photo credit: Bill Noll

More than 2500 years later, we are inundated with advertisements boasting the latest, greatest cure-all super drug. From a young age, we learn that it doesn’t matter how or what we eat, there is a quick fix around the corner for whatever ails us—whether we’re obese, have high blood pressure or bad cholesterol—just to name a few of the issues plaguing our society.

It now seems almost revolutionary to think that we can change our health by changing the food we eat.

But, one hospital in Pennsylvania thought just that.

In 2014, Rodale Institute, in partnership with St. Luke’s University Health Network, launched a true farm to hospital food program.

The five acre farm at the St. Luke’s Anderson
campus in Bethlehem, PA. Photo credit: Bill Noll

The Anderson Campus at St. Luke’s has more than 300 acres of farmland, much of which had historically been farmed conventionally with crops like corn and soy. The hospital administration recognized the impact that providing fresh, local organic produce could have on patient health and approached Rodale Institute to transition the land to organic and farm vegetables to be used in patient meals as well as in the cafeteria.

Lynn Trizna, or Farmer Lynn, as she’s known around St. Luke’s, provides food to all six hospitals within the network. This year, she is growing five acres of vegetables with plans to expand to ten acres in 2015. She estimates about 44,000 lbs of produce from her farm will be served in the hospital, just this season. She is paid a salary through Rodale Institute and has employed three staff members, all aspiring farmers.

Farmer Lynn Trizna.
Photo credit: Bill Noll

With a three-year plan in place, Rodale Institute and St. Luke’s see the potential for expansion. We envision growing the program to include fifteen to twenty farmers—supporting new farmers who don’t have access to land; greenhouses that allow for year round production of produce; and a small batch cannery, ensuring that we can enjoy the harvest, even in the coldest months of winter.

We have created this model with the belief that it can, and should, be replicated at every hospital throughout the U.S.

So, the next time you’re feeling a bit under the weather, stop—think of us and Hippocrates’ words of wisdom. Maybe you’ll then look to the garden for a cure, instead of the medicine cabinet.

A birds-eye view of the bird scorching Ivanpah solar electric power plant

WattsUpWithThat | Aug 19, 2014 | Anthony Watts

At the start of the weekend, and quite by accident, I found myself aloft and looking directly into the glare of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. I can tell you that not only does it roast birds in mid-air, it certainly seems to be a hazard to aviation. First, a story today from AP, via my local newspaper. Photos follow.

Emerging desert solar plants scorch birds in midair-Chico Enterprise-Record

IVANPAH DRY LAKE (AP) >> Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

The deaths are “alarming. It’s hard to say whether that’s the location or the technology,” said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. “There needs to be some caution.”

The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed birds, including numerous raptors.

“We take this issue very seriously,” said Jeff Holland, a spokesman for NRG Solar of Carlsbad, the second of the three companies behind the plant. The third, Google, deferred comment to its partners.

Read more..

History Secrets: The Sphinx, Gobekli Tepe, Ancient Catastrophes - Dr. Robert Schoch

Suspicious0bservers | Aug 17, 2014

www.robertschoch.com
www.Suspicious0bservers.org
www.ObservatoryProject.com
Help Support the Educational Information: http://tiny.cc/f195ww
[...]

This Secret to Massive Yields Could Rock the Farming World

Activist Post | Aug 15, 2014 | Heather Callaghan

According to a new study, it lies in an unpatented technique...

 What will ultimately feed the world? Is it really genetic engineering? Is it biodiversity?

What can maintain and stoke that diversity - I mean, make it really flourish with bountiful food using less land?

Of course, using this discovery might mean severing ties with monolithic Big Ag and chemical corps whose actions could block this dream from becoming reality. Monoculture fans need not apply.

Typical pollination from species like honeybees might be enough to generate a crop, but can we do better? Yes!

New research from North Carolina State University demonstrated that blueberries produced more seeds and larger berries if they were visited by more groups of different bee species. In other words - not just honeybees. Combining their power with that of other species led to astounding results.

Amazingly, this allowed farmers to harvest significantly more pounds of fruit per acre.

The researchers looked at blueberries in North Carolina because it is an economically important and well-understood crop that relies on insect pollination.

Dr. Hannah Burrack, an associate professor of entomology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research said:

We wanted to understand the functional role of diversity - And we found that there is a quantifiable benefit of having a lot of different types of bees pollinating a crop. [emphasis mine]

And for each bee group introduced, the yield growth and profit appeared to be exponential.

First, the researchers zeroed in on the five different bee species in the regional blueberry fields: honeybees, bumblebees, southeastern blueberry bees, carpenter bees and a functionally similar collection of species that they termed small native bees.

They even tested a mathematical algorithm that found an increase of $311 worth of yield per acre for each additional new species of pollinators. Example: one group would be typical yield, if two bee groups pollinated the field it would boost the yield by $311 per acre; for three bee groups, the boost becomes $622 per acre and so on!

So what is the sum value of each bee group to North Carolina blueberries?

Burrack says:

For North Carolina blueberries as a whole, we calculate the benefit of each group to be approximately $1.42 million worth of yield each year.

Holy blueberries, Batman! Holy bees, more like it. Then again, maybe that's not a lot of dough in ag terms, but think of the yield for the farmer, and think of all the extra food. Not to mention, what it could do for beekeepers and farmers markets.

Colleague and co-author Dr. David Tarpy said:

We think the benefit stems from differences in behavior between bee groups, in part depending on the weather.

Different bees for different weather - an important factor during difficult changing weather patterns.

For example, southeastern blueberry bees work well regardless of inclement weather, whereas honeybees only perform at their best on calm, warm, sunny days.

Burrack adds:

This can make a big difference, since blueberries bloom in March and April in North Carolina. That means the weather can swing from great to awful, as we saw this year. 

We've shown that there is a real financial benefit associated with biodiversity. The next step is to figure out how to foster that diversity in practical terms.

Some research allegedly points to having native, flowering plants near blueberry fields to increase native bee populations over time, but the researchers wish to see what role crop management can play in fostering bee diversity at crop sites - whatever that entails...

This is incredibly good news but more and more studies, including this one from Harvard, are demonstrating that neonicotinoid pesticides are largely responsible for major bee declines. So in order for this bee-diversity finding to rock the world, their health needs to come first - and as you can see, the bees pay it forward to us many times over.

Could this secret be why giant biotech and chemical corps like Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta undermine studies that implicate their pesticides in Colony Collapse Disorder? And...why they rush to pull the strings behind more studies to "help the bees"? To make matters worse, they blame the farmers when their seeds and chemicals finally show negative consequences - but the farmers are left holding the empty bag.

Do we really want to live in a shriveling monoculture where patented robobees are the only ones able to pollinate - for the right price? Knowing the above would rock agriculture because it would decentralize the monopolistic power system and place it back in the right hands. It would breathe new life into local agriculture and the local economy.

The paper, "Bee species diversity enhances productivity and stability in a perennial crop," was published May 9 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Lead author of the paper is Shelley Rogers, a former graduate student at NC State who received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support this work.

Image credit

Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.

Ebola and Climate Change: How Are They Connected?

In light of the recent Ebola outbreak, some researchers are
connecting deforestation in countries such as Liberia to
the disease, noting that the change in landscape is
bringing wildlife in closer contact with humans.
Creative Commons: Stefan Koopmanschap, 2007

EcoWatch | Aug 14, 2014 | Ziona Eyob

As the Ebola virus is ravaging parts of West Africa, recent reports are linking the outbreak to past studies holding climate change accountable for the uptick in viral diseases.

In 2006, a study published in the journal Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene revealed that Ebola, a “violent hemorrhagic fever that leads to internal and external bleeding,” would be more frequent with global warming due to its intermittent connection to wildlife and climate. In 2008, another study reiterated the same fears, noting that Ebola outbreaks would be among a cluster of other diseases gaining momentum, such as bird flu, cholera, plague and tuberculosis.

“We are calling for increased attention and action in developing global monitoring networks to look at a wide variety of infectious diseases in a wide variety of wildlife since they are such sensitive indicators of the health of the systems in which they live,” said veterinarian William Karesh, Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) vice president of global health programs, back in 2008.

In light of the recent outbreak, some researchers are connecting deforestation in countries such as Liberia to the disease, noting that the change in landscape is bringing wildlife in closer contact with humans. According to researchers, the virus is typically found in wildlife, and transmission from animals to humans occurs through contact with infected bodily fluids, causing a “spillover” in species. The virus can also be contracted from another human being when a person is in direct contact with infected blood, vomit or feces during contagious periods, putting health workers in West Africa primarily at risk.

Among other causes, “seasonal droughts, strong winds, thunderstorms, landslides, heat waves, floods and changed rainfall patterns,” are also accused of instigating wildlife migration away from their natural habitat to human proximity. WCS affirms that Ebola outbreaks typically occur after “unusual downpours or droughts in central Africa—a likely result of climate change.” Climate change would in turn amplify food insecurity, and prompt even more remote West African communities to eat virus-carrying animals like bats.

“We already know climate change is weakening crop yields,” explains Kristie Ebi, professor of global health at the University of Washington. “When there’s high food insecurity, how will people go about making sure that they have enough food for their families?”

Thus far, the virus has claimed nearly 1000 lives in West Africa with 1800 currently suffering from the illness. According to reports from the CBC, there are no vaccines or antiviral drugs available to treat the disease, and the mortality rate is estimated at 60 percent.

Protecting Community Forests Important Key in Biodiversity and a Healthy Planet - Study Says

In the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation rates
are 11 times lower in community forests
than in other forested areas.

Environment360 | Jul 24, 2014

Expanding and strengthening the community forest rights of indigenous groups and rural residents can make a major contribution to sequestering carbon and reducing CO2 emissions from deforestation, according to a new report. The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Rights and Resources Initiative said that indigenous people and rural inhabitants in Latin America, Africa, and Asia have government-recognized rights to forests containing nearly 38 billion tons of carbon, equal to 29 times the annual emissions of all the world’s passenger vehicles. By enforcing community rights to those forests, the study said, governments can play a major role in tackling climate change. In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, deforestation rates are 11 times lower in community forests than in forests outside those areas. In areas where community forest rights are ignored, deforestation rates often soar. The report made five major recommendations, from better enforcement of community forest zones to compensating communities for the climate and other benefits their forests provide.

WRI and the Rights and Resources Initiative studied 14 forest-rich countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Niger, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. Indigenous people and other local communities currently have legal or official rights to 513 million hectares of forest, or about one-eighth of the world’s forest cover. But the report said those rights are frequently ignored by national or local governments, leading to severe deforestation. The report cited the example of three indigenous forest lands in the Amazon region of northwestern Peru. Despite supposed recognition of those rights, the Peruvian government allocated indigenous lands to mining and oil and gas drilling, leading to deforestation rates of 24 to 51 percent in those three community forest areas from 2000 to 2010.

In Papua New Guinea, the report said, all forests are owned by communities, but the Papuan government has given leases to private companies — often for oil palm plantations — on about 4 million hectares, an area the size of Switzerland. Indonesia, which has one of the world’s worst deforestation records, legally recognizes only 1 million of the 42 million hectares of forest reputedly controlled by local communities.

By contrast, Brazil, which has half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, is more rigorous about recognizing and protecting community forests, the report said. Roughly 300 indigenous territories have been legally recognized in Brazil, and protection of these areas, while not perfect, is far better than in some other countries, according to the report. That protection is crucial: The report noted that from 2000 to 2012, forest loss was 0.6 percent inside indigenous territories, compared to 7 percent outside.

In parts of the Mexican Yucatan, deforestation rates are 350 times lower than in unprotected areas, the report said. In Guatemala’s Peten region, deforestation rates are 20 times lower.

“The bottom line is clear,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at WRI. “Strengthening community forest rights is a critical policy approach to mitigate global climate change through reduced deforestation and carbon sequestration.”

For example, the report said that fully protecting indigenous territories and government forest reserves in the Brazilian Amazon could prevent 27.2 million hectares from being deforested by 2050 — an area larger than the United Kingdom. If the carbon in those forests were released as CO2, it would amount to 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide — equivalent to three years of CO2 emissions from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The report made five major recommendations to enhance the ability of community forests to slow climate change:

• Give communities legal recognition of their forest rights.
  
• More rigorously enforce community forest rights, including mapping boundaries and evicting trespassers.
  
• Provide forest communities with technical assistance to sustainably manage their forests and get forest products to market.
  
• Involve forest communities in decisions involving investments in their forests.
  
• Compensate communities for the benefits provided by their forests, including mitigating climate change.

Mysterious dance of dwarf galaxies may force a cosmic rethink

At approximately 2.5 million light-years away, the
Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is our
Milky Way's largest galactic neighbor.

Sott.net | Jul 21, 2014

The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved.

The finding, by an international team of astronomers, including Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney's School of Physics, is announced today in Nature.

"Early in 2013 we announced our startling discovery that half of the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy are orbiting it in an immense plane" said Professor Lewis. "This plane is more than a million light years in diameter, but is very thin, with a width of only 300,000 light years."

The universe contains billions of galaxies. Some, such as the Milky Way, are immense, containing hundreds of billions of stars. Most galaxies, however, are dwarfs, much smaller and with only a few billion stars.

For decades astronomers have used computer models to predict how these dwarf galaxies should orbit large galaxies. They had always found that they should be scattered randomly.

Our Andromeda discovery did not agree with expectations, and we felt compelled to explore if it was true of other galaxies throughout the universe," said Professor Lewis.

Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a remarkable resource of colour images and 3-D maps covering more than a third of the sky, the researchers dissected the properties of thousands of nearby galaxies.

"We were surprised to find that a large proportion of pairs of satellite galaxies have oppositely directed velocities if they are situated on opposite sides of their giant galaxy hosts," said lead author Neil Ibata of the Lycée International in Strasbourg, France.

"Everywhere we looked we saw this strangely coherent coordinated motion of dwarf galaxies. From this we can extrapolate that these circular planes of dancing dwarfs are universal, seen in about 50 percent of galaxies," said Professor Geraint Lewis.

"This is a big problem that contradicts our standard cosmological models. It challenges our understanding of how the universe works including the nature of dark matter."

The researchers believe the answer may be hidden in some currently unknown physical process that governs how gas flows in the universe, although, as yet, there is no obvious mechanism that can guide dwarf galaxies into narrow planes.

Some experts, however, have made more radical suggestions, including bending and twisting the laws of gravity and motion. "Throwing out seemingly established laws of physics is unpalatable," said Professor Lewis, "but if our observations of nature are pointing us in this direction, we have to keep an open mind. That's what science is all about."

Journal Reference:

Neil G. Ibata, Rodrigo A. Ibata, Benoit Famaey, Geraint F. Lewis. ''Velocity anti-correlation of diametrically opposed galaxy satellites in the low-redshift Universe''. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13481

Source: ScienceDaily