#OccupyWallStreet/ Occupy Wall Street. Commercialization of traditional medicines. A white Rosy Periwinkle Bioprospecting is the process of discovery and commercialization of new products based on biological resources. Bioprospecting often draws on indigenous knowledge about uses and characteristics of plants and animals.[1] In this way, bioprospecting includes biopiracy, the exploitative appropriation of indigenous forms of knowledge by commercial actors, as well as the search for previously unknown compounds in organisms that have never been used in traditional medicine.[2] Biopiracy[edit] Famous cases[edit] The Maya ICBG controversy[edit] The Maya ICBG bioprospecting controversy took place in 1999-2000, when the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group led by Ethnobiologist Dr.
Brent Berlin was accused of being engaged in unethical forms of bioprospecting by several NGOs and indigenous organizations. The rosy periwinkle[edit] The rosy periwinkle case dates from the 1950s. The neem tree[edit] A neem tree In 1994, the U.S. The Enola bean[edit] The Enola bean Hoodia[edit] Does Language Influence Culture? Putting heads together. When it comes to intelligence, the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. A new study co-authored by MIT researchers documents the existence of collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well, showing that such intelligence extends beyond the cognitive abilities of the groups’ individual members, and that the tendency to cooperate effectively is linked to the number of women in a group.
Many social scientists have long contended that the ability of individuals to fare well on diverse cognitive tasks demonstrates the existence of a measurable level of intelligence in each person. In a study published Thursday, Sept. 30, in the advance online issue of the journal Science, the researchers applied a similar principle to small teams of people. They discovered that groups featuring the right kind of internal dynamics perform well on a wide range of assignments, a finding with potential applications for businesses and other organizations. How universal is it? The Rise of the New Groupthink. Early Human News. The Secret Life of the Brain : Mind Illusions - StumbleUpon.
16 Tips for Being Productive When Working from Home. I work from home. My friends think I am the luckiest. I have all the time in the world. I don’t need to commute everyday. My work’s easy. I can go out whenever I want. Great life, right? I wish all of that was true. Despite the benefits of working from home, it is no less challenging than an office job. Scheduling 1. 2. 3. 4. Handling Distractions 5. 6. 7. 8. Monitoring 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Health, Fun & Life 14. 15. 16. Popular search terms for this article: being productive at work, tips for being productive, how to be productive at home, productive while working home, being productive at home, tips on being productive, working from home tips productivity, productive being, working from home routine, tips for being productive at work.
McLuhan Meets the Net. By Larry Press Communications of the ACM, Vol 38, No 7, July, 1995, pp 15-20 In 1964, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media, a classic discussion of media and their effects on society and the individual. Understanding Media helped transform the 52-year old McLuhan from a somewhat obscure English professor at the University of Toronto, to an academic and media star, and industrial consultant. In recognition of the book's importance, it has been reissued by MIT Press with an introduction by Lewis Lapham of Harper's Magazine [10]. McLuhan understood that computers were a communication medium, but did not discuss them in Understanding Media or subsequently, although he lived until 1980 (footnote 1). What would McLuhan have thought of the Net? Media -- Extensions of Man (subtitle) McLuhan defines media in the subtitle of the book -- "The Extensions of Man.
" The medium is the message. (7) This is the title of Chapter 1. We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us (footnote 3) A Map for the Programmable World. At the beginning of the year, Duke professor David Goldstein offered what he described as a "confident but uncomfortable prediction" that by 2020, if advances in genetics continue as he expects, they are "bound to substantially increase interest in embryonic and other screening programmes. " About a month later, a new company, Counsyl, launched a first-of-its-kind direct-to-consumer testing service aimed at telling couples, based on screening each member of a couple for recessive mutations that could put potential offspring at risk for certain hereditary diseases, offering an early signal of Goldstein's forecast, as well as a not so subtle reminder that, as I've heard some colleagues say, sometimes the future gets here faster than we expect. As the New York Times notes, though the tests aren't terribly robust, and only screens for diseases, and, for that matter, is still in its infancy, the company is already the subject of some criticism.
But some experts foresee new issues. McLuhanisms – MMXI – Marshall McLuhan. Identical men from parallel universes. McLuhan Galaxy. An ad announcing the Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line. Ecocentric : A blog about food, water and energy. This Week in Eco News - April 18, 2014 Did you know that NFL linebacker Will Witherspoon is also an organic beef producer? Or that it's possible to extract water from the air? Or fuel from seawater? See these stories, along with climate news and fun multimedia, in this week's Eco News. Our Heroes: Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island You'd be hard-pressed to find a more enthusiastic, persuasive advocate for clean energy than Gordian Raacke, founder and executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island (reLI) - and solar homeowner.
Real Food Right Now and How to Cook It: A Spring Celebration! Our Real Food Right Now series has hatched out posts on many spring foods, from the history of ramps to the egg's endless uses. Who's Afraid of the Clean Water Act? The long-awaited Clean Water Act draft rules were released in a document known as the "Waters of the United States," marking one of the most substantial steps towards improved US water quality in years. Sustainable Table. Sustainable Agriculture - The Basics Sustainable agriculture provides healthy food for consumers while protecting the environment and human health, safeguarding animal welfare and supporting local communities.
Questions to Ask Asking questions is the best way to ensure that you're purchasing sustainably raised, healthful foods and supporting sustainable farmers. Here are some questions to get you started. Handouts Help promote sustainable food and save family farms. Projects and Events The GRACE Food Program is proud to actively participate in the burgeoning food movement. Food Waste In the US, we throw away 40 percent of our food supply every year. Food & Think - A Heaping Helping of Food News, Science and Culture. Sustainable Food Lab: Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems Sustainable Food Laboratory. SAFSF.ORG :. Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders. GMO Deregulation: An act of war. By Barbara H. Peterson Farm Wars Scotts Miracle Gro has applied for and received complete deregulation for genetically engineered Kentucky Bluegrass from the USDA. Scotts “is Monsanto’s exclusive agent for the international marketing and distribution of consumer Roundup®.” How Scotts GE Kentucky Bluegrass achieved complete deregulation Scotts’ genetically engineered (GE) Kentucky Bluegrass will not be regulated as either a plant pest or noxious weed, and these are the ONLY two ways that GMOs can be regulated by the USDA.
Plant pest strategy: The situation with the Kentucky bluegrass arises because genetically engineered crops are regulated under rules pertaining to plant pests.The rules are really meant for pathogens and parasites, not corn stalks. Noxious Weed strategy: In a 2002 petition from the ICTA and CFS, the organizations asked if APHIS would regulate GE Kentucky bluegrass under its Federal “noxious weed” authority in the Plant Protection Act. The GMO regulatory fiction Conclusion. Monsanto and Gates Foundation Push GE Crops on Africa. Skimming the Agricultural Development section of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation web site is a feel-good experience: African farmers smile in a bright slide show of images amid descriptions of the foundation's fight against poverty and hunger.
But biosafety activists in South Africa are calling a program funded by the Gates Foundation a "Trojan horse" to open the door for private agribusiness and genetically engineered (GE) seeds, including a drought-resistant corn that Monsanto hopes to have approved in the United States and abroad. The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) program was launched in 2008 with a $47 million grant from mega-rich philanthropists Warrant Buffet and Bill Gates. The Gates Foundation claims that biotechnology, GE crops and Western agricultural methods are needed to feed the world's growing population and programs like WEMA will help end poverty and hunger in the developing world.
Seed Boutique. Water Shortage! Ever since the beginning of this nation, Americans have always been able to take for granted that there would always be plenty of fresh water. But unfortunately that is rapidly changing. Due to pollution, corruption, inefficiency and the never ending greed of the global elite, the United States (and the entire world) is heading for a very serious water shortage. Already, there are some areas of the United States where water is the number one local political issue. In fact, water is becoming so scarce in certain areas that some states are actually battling in court over it. Unfortunately, there is every indication that the worldwide water crisis is about to get a lot worse.
According to a new report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than one-third of all counties in the lower 48 states will likely be facing very serious water shortages by 2050. And Americans certainly do use a lot of water. *Lake Mead is the primary supply of water for the city of Las Vegas. Why? Shell’s Niger delta oil spill could be worse than reported. Stop the Canadian Oil Sand Madness Now. Historically, surface mining has been used to extract tar sands and this method has produced at much CO2 as all the cars in Canada. The tailings, what are left when the bitumin has been extracted, are being stored in ponds. In the tailings pond, the sand, clay and water separate out. The water is sent back to the plant to be reused. Even so, the huge amounts of water needed threatens the world's third largest watershed.
Mining is the oldest technique for removing the bitumin from oil sands. Today, 80% of the bitumin is recovered in situ, which means the operators drill from oil pads to access the bitumen before bringing into surface. They drill two horizontal safety wells called steam-assisted gravity drainage well. Between the ever increasing air pollution and the poisons and heavy metals built up in the tailing ponds that may now been seen from space, there has been a rise in certain cancers and syndromes since oil sand production ramped up in 2005.
This leopard's death is a familiar tragedy | John Barker. The attack by a leopard on up to six forest rangers in Siliguri in the Sikkim region of north-east India was a tragic result for both the people and animal victims of the conflict occurring between humans and wildlife. In this case it was a male leopard, a species that sometimes adapts to moving into semi-urban areas, that became cornered – and as the photos in the press clearly show, the animal was fighting for his survival as only such a big cat can. The tragedy of its death occurred in a situation where the forest guards were clearly attempting to safely stop it in its tracks. In ideal circumstances it would have been tranquilised, removed and later released in its natural habitat away from urban development. Why the leopard was there in the first place may never be known, but there are other similar incidents with happier outcomes, in which the animal was tranquilised and removed and no party injured.
Apple's Chinese Suppliers Accused of Causing Significant Environmental Damage. Real-Life Chemistry Vol 3 - Physics Vol 1 - StumbleUpon. The Carl Sagan Portal - StumbleUpon. Personal and Historical Perspectives of Hans Bethe - StumbleUpon. Michio Kaku | Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY | Big Think - StumbleUpon. The Big Book of Yoga: The Yoga Family Treehouse (page 1 of 4) Yoga has been around for a long, long time. The earliest reliable evidence we have of Yoga being practiced in ancient India is a carving from the early Indus Valley settlement, Mohenjo-Daro, possibly dating back to 3300 BCE1.
By way of comparison, Lao Tze, Socrates, and Buddha wouldn't be born until almost 3,000 years later. So in order to provide a truly comprehensive history of Yoga would entail the work of a lifetime (or lifetimes!). What follows instead is a brief timeline and "genealogy" of the major influences in Yoga going as far back as we have reliable documentation, which is a bit more than 2,000 years or so. Yoga in Ancient Times Although there were many early writings on Yoga, over time the main text that most scholars and practitioners have come to see as the "Bible" of Yoga is the Yoga Sutra, written by the sage Patanjali. Buddhism and the Brain. Credit: Flickr user eschipul Over the last few decades many Buddhists and quite a few neuroscientists have examined Buddhism and neuroscience, with both groups reporting overlap.
I’m sorry to say I have been privately dismissive. One hears this sort of thing all the time, from any religion, and I was sure in this case it would break down upon closer scrutiny. When a scientific discovery seems to support any religious teaching, you can expect members of that religion to become strict empiricists, telling themselves and the world that their belief is grounded in reality. They are always less happy to accept scientific data they feel contradicts their preconceived beliefs. No surprise here; no human likes to be wrong. But science isn’t supposed to care about preconceived notions. Despite my doubts, neurology and neuroscience do not appear to profoundly contradict Buddhist thought. Buddhists say pretty much the same thing. Mr. The next day Mr. How did Buddhism get so much right? Short on Time? Try This All-in-One Yoga Pose! Biofields. Energetically, we are composed of seven fields of energy, or biofields, each with a specific, vibratory frequency radiating from and around the physical body.
Their radiation is called, aura, expressing externally what we are internally. Their colors are red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, indigo and violet, like the colors of a rainbow. Each of them emits a more or less clear and vibrant color, depending on the influence of Spirit upon our behaviors, words and thoughts, our way of eating, drinking, exercising and resting, but also upon a good, rhythmic and generous oxygenation to keep our human "terrain" clean. Their purity and perfect synchronization express Light on Earth. For this we need to be physically centered, able to breathe correctly, to relax easily, yet to be mentally alert; aware of the present moment, able to respond to our human duties with sincerity, courage and love. Humans, Version 3.0.
Getting started.