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Researchers find lab rats on marijuana just can't be bothered  

THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less willing to exert cognitive effort lazy but, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man

The main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana makes lab rats lazy, according to University of British Columbia researchers.

The new research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, looked at the effects of both THC the drug's main active ingredient and the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD, on the male lab rats' willingness to exert cognitive effort.

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This Week In Cognitive Dissonance - Reason (blog)  

Reason (blog)

This Week In Cognitive Dissonance Reason (blog) Item #1: A story in today's New York Times, headlined "After Shake-Up by Trump, Clinton Camp Keeps Wary Eye on 'Conspiracy Theories.'" Here's the lede: ABCIt took just a few hours, after Donald J. Trump announced a major staff shake-up last week, for ... and more »

 
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Omran Daqneesh: the poster child for cognitive dissonance - The Conversation AU  

Omran Daqneesh: the poster child for cognitive dissonance The Conversation AU But as we sit speechless in front of our plasma screens in our air-conditioned lounge rooms, how are we supposed to deal with the acute cognitive dissonance Omran's image induces unless we're equipped with the steely resolve of a great world leader, ... and more »

 
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The London Eye at Sunset  

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Taken at Greenwich

Thanks for all the views, Please check out my other photos and albums.

 
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Sunset, Canary Riverside, London, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016.  

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Sunset, Canary Riverside, London, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016, in the background the River Thames and buildings in the City of London. IMG1017

 
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London sunset  

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'Green News Report' - August 23, 2016  
The Green News Report is also available via...





IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Media criticized for their slow response to Louisiana flood disaster; Louisiana flooding could accelerate spread of the Zika virus; PLUS: A tale of two Arctics -- Native American tribe forced to move, while luxury cruises are just getting started... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Climate change is water change' - why the Colorado River system is headed for major trouble; A Deal With The Devil? Russia Kicks Up Arctic Oil Drilling; High-Price Ethanol Credits Add to Refiners' Woes; China's drive to clean up its coal power, one plant at a time; Widening 80 Mile Crack Threatens One Of Antarctica's Biggest Ice Shelves; Ohio Residents Clash With State and County Government in Fight to Ban Fracking via the Ballot... PLUS: Most Cities Too Hot to Host Summer Olympics by 2085... and much, MUCH more! ...

'Green News Report' is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today's 'Green News Extra', please click right here to listen!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: 'Green News Report' - August 23, 2016  
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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Media criticized for their slow response to Louisiana flood disaster; Lou...

Read more: Barack Obama, Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Energy, Environment, Epa, Extreme Weather, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Global Warming Deniers, Green, Green News, Green News Report, Renewable Energy, Video, Arctic, Cruises, Native Americans, Alaska, Zika, Louisiana, Floods, Donald Trump, John Bel Edwards, Green News

 
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Computers Are For Girls, Too  
I remember three things about my first computer science class in college. First, improbably, the professor was named Ramm, as in "random access memory." Second, the class was about processors, and I only had a vague idea what a processor was. Third, it was the last computer science class for most of my female classmates, who quickly decided they'd rather major in something else.

I never would have guessed that my time as a computer science student would turn out to be pretty much the high water mark for women in the field. The percentage of computer science majors who are women has gone down from 37 percent in 1984 to just 18 percent today. In other words, on average my daughters are half as likely to major in computer science as I was 30 years ago.

My daughters are half as likely to major in computer science as I was 30 years ago.

But the young women in this video are defying these odds -- they're pursuing careers in computer science and dismantling stereotypes about the field. I love hearing them talk about the sense of empowerment and joy that coding brings them. Kimberly got a standing ovation from her high school English classmates when she demonstrated a book review app she made. Kayla is preserving and sharing the rich history of her community with an app that customizes multimedia walking tours. Courtney helped design the landing legs on a rocket when she interned at SpaceX!



The gross underrepresentation of women in computer science is not just a problem for the girls who are left out. It's a problem for all of us, because we're not benefitting from the creativity girls have to offer. There's a mountain of research showing that diversity makes for better companies and better products -- that we're more innovative when we work in teams with different kinds of people -- yet the gender diversity in tech has been getting worse for decades.

One reason why is that somewhere along the way, society decided that computers are for boys. Or, as Aishwarya says, "guys in hoodies." And this toxic stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, virtually guaranteeing that computer science is indeed a male-dominated field.

First, since girls aren't supposed to be into computers, they aren't exposed to computer science when they're young, and even if they are, they often aren't encouraged to pursue their interests in the field. That helps explain why only 22 percent of the high school students who take the AP computer science exam today are girls. Kayla didn't know she wanted to be a computer scientist until she'd already started a totally different career, in library science. It was only when she started training staff to use the library's software that she realized she might be interested in making software herself, so she went back to college for a second time to be a computer scientist. Kimberly had never heard of computer science until she saw it was one of the classes she could take at her local community college.

The gross underrepresentation of women in computer science is... a problem for all of us.

The idea that computers are for boys doesn't just keep girls out of the field, though. It also drives women out. A host of implicit biases affect the way tech companies recruit, train, and promote--and make it easier for men to get ahead.

Luckily, there are great organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), whose mission is to increase the number of girls and women in tech. NCWIT and groups like it aim to make it easier for girls to discover that they love computers--and make it easier for women who love computer science to make a career in it. Eventually, as more and more girls choose this path, it won't seem like computer science is just for boys.

Aishwarya, Courtney, Kayla, and Kimberly all talk about the excitement of using code to turn an idea into a piece of software that can change the world, of creating something important from nothing. Let me tell you, it is a terrific feeling. Kayla says it makes her feel like "superwoman." I hope everyone gets the opportunity to feel that way.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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r0B0t: Tiny robot caterpillar can move objects ten times its size  
Soft robots aren't easy to make, since they require a completely different set of components from their rigid counterparts. It's even tougher to scale down the parts they typically use for locomotion. A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics...  
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r0B0t: Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Cleaning Machines Might be the Future, if the Unions Allow it  

This post originally appeared on Inc.

In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.

The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.

There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.

“Getting unions on board is essential,” says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. “The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail.” The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.

Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first “autonomy as a service” product is navigation software known as EMMA, for “Enabling Mobile Machine Automation.” Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.

The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.

CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology “is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive.” Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.

In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.

Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.

Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.

SEIU declined to comment for this story.

Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.

While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.

“There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet,” Wagner says.

In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials “will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017.”

See also: Meet the Security Firm That's Taking on Cyber Criminals in 176 Countries

 
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r0B0t: Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)  

One of the very first feature-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang's Metropolis took a daring visual approach for its time, incorporating Bauhaus and Futurist influences in thrillingly designed sets and costumes. Lang's visual language resonated strongly in later decades. The film's rather stunning alchemical-electric transference of a woman's physical traits onto the body of a destructive android—the so-called Maschinenmensch—for example, began a very long trend of female robots in film and television, most of them as dangerous and inscrutable as Lang's. And yet, for all its many imitators, Metropolis continues to deliver surprises. Here, we bring you a new find: a 32-page program distributed at the film's 1927 premier in London and recently re-discovered.

In addition to underwriting almost one hundred years of science fiction film and television tropes, Metropolis has had a very long life in other ways: Inspiring an all-star soundtrack produced by Giorgio Moroder in 1984,with Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant, and a Kraftwerk album. In 2001, a reconstructed version received a screening at the Berlin Film Festival, and UNESCO's Memory of the World Register added it to their roster. 2002 saw the release of an exceptional Metropolis-inspired anime with the same title. And in 2010 an almost fully restored print of the long-incomplete film—recut from footage found in Argentina in 2008—appeared, adding a little more sophistication and coherence to the simplistic story line.

Even at the film's initial reception, without any missing footage, critics did not warm to its story. For all its intense visual futurism, it has always seemed like a very quaint, naïve tale, struck through with earnest religiosity and inexplicable archaisms. Contemporary reviewers found its narrative of generational and class conflict unconvincing. H.G. Wells—“something of an authority on science fiction”—pronounced it “the silliest film” full of “every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.” Few were kinder when it came to the story, and despite its overt religious themes, many saw it as Communist propaganda.

Viewed after subsequent events in 20th century Germany, many of the film's scenes appear “disturbingly prescient,” writes the Unaffiliated Critic, such as the vision of a huge industrial machine as Moloch, in which “bald, underfed humans are led in chains to a furnace.” Lang and his wife Thea von Harbau—who wrote the novel, then screenplay—were of course commenting on industrialization, labor conditions, and poverty in Weimar Germany. Metropolis‘s “clear message of classism,” as io9 writes, comes through most clearly in its arresting imagery, like that horrifying, monstrous furnace and the “looming symbol of wealth in the Tower of Babel.”

The visual effects and spectacular set pieces have worked their magic on almost everyone (Wells excluded) who has seen Metropolis. And they remain, for all its silliness, the primary reason for the movie's cultural prevalence. Wired calls it “probably the most influential sci-fi movie in history,” remarking that “a single movie poster from the original release sold for $690,000 seven years ago, and is expected to fetch even more at an auction later this year.”

We now have another artifact from the movie's premiere, this 32-page program, appropriately called “Metropolis” Magazine, that offers a rich feast for audiences, and text at times more interesting than the film's script. (You can view the program in full here.) One imagines had they possessed backlit smart phones, those early moviegoers might have found themselves struggling not to browse their programs while the film screened. But, of course, Metropolis's visual excesses would hold their attention as they still do ours. Its scenes of a futuristic city have always enthralled viewers, filmmakers, and (most) critics, such that Roger Ebert could write of “vast futuristic cities” as a staple of some of the best science fiction in his review of the 21st-century animated Metropolis—“visions… goofy and yet at the same time exhilarating.”

The program really is an astonishing document, a treasure for fans of the film and for scholars. Full of production stills, behind-the-scenes articles and photos, technical minutiae, short columns by the actors, a bio of Thea von Harbau, the “authoress,” excerpts from her novel and screenplay placed side-by-side, and a short article by her. There's a page called “Figures that Speak” that tallies the production costs and cast and crew numbers (including very crude drawings and numbers of “Negroes” and “Chinese”). Lang himself weighs in, laconically, with a breezy introduction followed by a classic silent-era line: “if I cannot succeed in finding expression on the picture, I certainly cannot find it in speech.” Film history agrees, Lang found his expression “on the picture.”

“Only three surviving copies of this program are known to exist,” writes Wired, and one of them, from which these pages come, has gone on sale at the Peter Harrington rare book shop for 2,750 pounds ($4,244)—which seems rather low, given what an original Metropolis poster went for. But markets are fickle, and whatever its current or future price, ”Metropolis” Magazine is invaluable to cineastes. See all 32 pages of the program at Peter Harrington's website.

via Wired

Related Content:

Metropolis: Watch a Restored Version of Fritz Lang's Masterpiece (1927)

Fritz Lang Tells the Riveting Story of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Germany

Metropolis II: Discover the Amazing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture by Chris Burden

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

 
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r0B0t: Morris From America  

“We're the only two brothers in Heidelberg, man,” Curtis Gentry (Craig Robinson) reminds his 13-year-old son Morris (Markees Christmas) in writer-director Chad Hartigan's Morris From America. “We've gotta stick together, you know what I'm saying?” Morris From America is a foul-mouthed, but gentle-souled, coming-of-age comedy that follows the Gentrys' struggle to stick together as father and son—even as they adjust to their strange new lives as conspicuously black American expatriates in a provincial German town where the prevailing skin tone is not just white but marzipan-pig pink.

Curtis and Morris, we soon realize, are also mourning a beloved wife and mother who's referred to only obliquely, as if any more concrete evocation of her (a photo, a flashback) would be too much for even the camera to bear. The audience never learns precisely what sequence of events landed the Bronx-born Curtis—a former soccer player who now works on the coaching staff of a less-than-successful German team—and his shy, chubby son in this unlikely place. But this very absence of information works on the film's behalf, leaving the viewer as disoriented as the two shell-shocked protagonists.

Hartigan is at his most adept and original in the scenes involving this fractured two-person family, embodied to perfection by Robinson and then16-year-old newcomer Markees Christmas, a nonprofessional the director first spotted in a series of homemade comedy videos on YouTube, causing him to rewrite his script-in-progress around a character based on the boy.

A second plot, in which Morris falls head over heels for the 15-year-old school beauty, Katrin (Lina Keller), and subjects himself to a series of humiliations in an attempt to impress her, felt more overfamiliar from other teen coming-of-age movies. For example, the sporadic appearance of the blonde and beatific Keller (a ringer for a teenage Julie Delpy) in backlit, super-slo-mo fantasy sequences brought to mind the camera-as-horny-teenager move in such high-school classics as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Risky Business. In fact, Hartigan (whose last film was 2013's This Is Martin Bonner) has spoken of his love for the 1998 romantic comedy Can't Hardly Wait, a movie that takes two decades of high-school movie clichés and whirs them merrily in a blender before serving them up sweeter than they already were.

Morris From America is both more nuanced and less sunny in its view of interteen relations. The interest that Katrin and, most especially, her bullying pack of pals take in Morris is initially motivated by the kind of racism-via-exoticization often experienced by blacks in Europe. Morris is constantly asked by his new schoolmates to demonstrate his authenticity: placed on the spot to prove his worth as a rapper, a player, or a gangster rather than as the quiet, awkward, secretly lonely 13-year-old kid he really is.

Gradually, Morris and Katrin develop something like a real friendship, maybe even—or is that only in Morris' dreams?—something more. The look of the fantasy-like party scenes is bold and jubilant, with the young characters (sometimes high on drugs, sometimes not) picked out in silhouette against backgrounds of pulsing color. But however lively the filmmaking got, whenever Craig Robinson wasn't around some part of me was just waiting for him to come back.

Robinson, best known as a comic sidekick in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Pineapple Express, and for TV roles on The Office and Mr. Robot, hasn't been given many big-screen chances to showcase his dramatic gifts, which come as this slight but easy-to-love movie's richest and most rewarding surprise. In one scene, the embattled Curtis tries to draw out his sullen son during a long car ride by telling a tale from his early courtship of Morris' mother. The speech that follows is a tour de force and serious acting challenge: the kind of lengthy parental soliloquy, delivered to a dead-silent and inexpressive audience, that requires both an ironclad ego and a healthy sense of one's own inherent ridiculousness.

Robinson invests that moment, and everything he does as this conflicted but loving dad, with so much brain and heart you find yourself hoping there are scripts with meaty dramatic parts stacking up even now on the comedian's front porch. I wish there were more films every year like Morris From America, the kind that surprise you by revealing a hidden side of something—an actor, a genre, a situation—you thought you had figured out.

 
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r0B0t: How will you survive when the robots take your job?  
The robots are coming, and they're taking our jobs. Or that's the concern, anyway. A recent Oxford University study surmises that over the next two decades, about 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being made obsolete thanks to automation. This i...  
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r0B0t: With Human Emotion Recognition AI, MJI's Communication Robot Tapia Can Now Understand Your Emotion - Robotics Tomorrow (press release)  

With Human Emotion Recognition AI, MJI's Communication Robot Tapia Can Now Understand Your Emotion Robotics Tomorrow (press release) ... call centers, and entertainment. With Empath, Tapia can understand human emotion through dialogue with users: joy, calm, sorrow, anger, and vigor. ... "Collaboration with the robot interface using speech recognition technology such as Tapia expands ...

 
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r0B0t: Robot and I - brand-e.biz  

Robot and I brand-e.biz AI robotics Those robots are slowly turning emotional on us, writes Steve Mullins. Take Olly, the maker of which claims will develop a unique personality through the interactions users have with it. That's because Olly is powered by 'nuanced ...

 
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Why Eye Exams Are the Future of Alzheimer's Screening  

Getting screened for Alzheimer's disease could soon mean taking a trip to the eye doctor. Decreased retinal thickness, the presence of abnormal proteins, and changes in how the retinal blood vessels respond to light all appear to be signs of neurodegenerative disease, according to researchers who spoke at the recent Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC 2016) in Toronto.

All of these could be detected with non-invasive eye exams, which would represent a huge leap forward for patients and Alzheimer's researchers alike.

Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia, and it's irreversible. It affects an estimated 5 million Americans, and the numbers are growing. But right now, there's no perfect way to diagnose it: Doctors perform memory tests on their patients, or take a detailed family history, which means the disease sometimes isn't caught until it's progressed. A definitive diagnosis generally can't be done until after the patient's death, when clusters of abnormal proteins called amyloid plaques (a hallmark of the disease) can be found in brain tissue samples.

Earlier detection would mean that patients and their families could plan ahead, and that researchers could better study the disease. Improved screening methods would enable doctors to identify who's at risk, maybe even before their symptoms start to show.

Read More: Can Learning to Code Delay Alzheimer's?

The eyes are attracting attention as a portal to what's happening in the brain. At a session at the AAIC 2016, researchers focused on the retina, which sits in the back of the eye and is made up of nerve tissue. The eyes are like windows into the brain, said Melanie Campbell, professor of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo. She told Motherboard in an interview that amyloid plaques can appear in the back of the eyes on the retina.

It's possible amyloids leak into the vitreous fluid of the eye from the cerebrospinal fluid, Campbell said. Researchers also hypothesize that amyloid proteins are synthesized by neural cells within the eye, a similar process to what happens in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, appearing in both the retina and the vitreous fluid.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Right now, in the lab, amyloids can be detected on retinas using rather complicated and expensive eye-imaging techniques. But Campbell and colleagues developed a prototype device that does the job more easily and cheaply. This new technology, called polarimetry, uses polarized light.

“It turns out amyloids show up very clearly under polarized light,” she said.

Image: The University of Waterloo

She presented results of a series of proof-of-concept scans done on human and canine retinas. The scans were conducted on a series of cadaver retinas from the Eye Bank of Canada (20 from people who had Alzheimer's, and 22 controls), as well on living and postmortem canine retinas.

The researchers found that amyloid deposits were not only easy to detect with this new technology, but it was relatively easy to count them, and to measure their size—something other imaging techniques can't do. The next step will be testing the device clinically on patients with Alzheimer's disease, Campbell said. However, the presence of amyloids isn't a guaranteed way to diagnose it; they show risk so this would be for screening.

Image: The University of Waterloo

Another clue of the disease is thin retinal nerve fiber layers (RNFL). In fact, the thinner RNFLs are, the poorer the cognition levels of subjects, according to Fang Ko, clinical associate professor of ophthalmology, Florida State University and Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK, who also spoke at the conference.

Here, researchers used data from the UK Biobank, which included medical and health details of 500,000 volunteers aged between 40 to 69 years from across England. Of these, 67,000 underwent eye exams, which included retinal imaging. Many were ultimately excluded (including those with diabetes or other conditions that affect the retina), leaving about 32,000 subjects. They completed four different cognitive tests. Of those, a total of 1,251 participants went on to repeat the cognitive tests after three years.

Image: Fang Ko et al

Researchers found that people with thinner RNFLs performed worse on each of the cognitive tests than those whose RNFLs were thicker. And those who started the study with thinner RNFL had greater cognitive decline at the three year follow-up than those who had thicker ones.

It may be possible to use thin RNFL as a predictor of cognitive decline, she said, but it isn't a surefire method: diseases like glaucoma can also affect its thickness, so once again, this could be a useful tool for screening rather than diagnosis.

A third technique, using a flickering light exam of the retinal blood vessels, could also help screen for Alzheimer's, according to Konstantin Kotliar, a biomedical engineer at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

In healthy eyes, a flickering light shone on the retina causes immediate dilation of both retinal arteries and veins. “In people with Alzheimer's disease, retinal arteries and veins have a delayed reaction to a flickering light test,” he said. But, they undergo greater dilation than in people without the disease. (Diminished and sometimes delayed dilation is also seen in eye diseases like glaucoma, he said.)

At the conference, Kotliar presented a study (unpublished as of yet) measuring and comparing retinal vessel reactions to flickering light in patients aged 60 to 79. Fifteen had mild-to-moderate dementia due to Alzheimer's; 24 had mild cognitive impairment, also from Alzheimer's, and 15 were healthy controls with no cognitive impairment. Retinal artery and vein reactions to 20-second-long flicker stimulation were measured.

Both arteries and veins dilated more in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's than in controls. Also, the start of dilation in the retinal arteries took longer in people with Alzheimer's than in controls—though the delay wasn't as pronounced in the veins. How the retinal vessels behaved in Alzheimer's patients was a surprise, and this might contribute to another screening test, he said.

Finding new ways to screen for Alzheimer's has never been more important: with the number of patients expected to balloon in years to come, so finding new ways to detect it will crucial.

 
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On the Poetics—and Elusive Subtext—of Kanye West's Poem About French Fries  

Who knew that Kanye West's feelings about McDonald's French fries were so complicated they could only be expressed in verse? Over the weekend, West published a poem in Frank Ocean's zine Boys Don't Cry, which came out in conjunction with Ocean's new album, Blonde. The magazine is 360 pages long, flush with interviews and photography and poetry, but West's stanzas are what push it to the edge of sanity. They are great, in their way. They go like this:

McDonalds Man McDonalds Man
The french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan
The salad bar and the ketchup made a band
Cus the french fries had a plan
The french fries had a plan

McDonalds Man
McDonalds
I know them french fries have a plan
I know them french fries have a plan
The cheeseburger and the shakes formed a band
To overthrow the french fries plan
I always knew them french fries was evil man
Smelling all good and shit
I don't trust no food that smells that good man
I don't trust it
I just can't

McDonalds Man
McDonalds Man
McDonalds, damn
Them french fries look good tho
I knew the Diet Coke was jealous of the fries
I knew the McNuggets was jealous of the fries
Even the McRib was jealous of the fries
I could see it through his artificial meat eyes
And he only be there some of the time
Everybody was jealous of them french fries
Except for that one special guy
That smooth apple pie

This is some artfully artless jibber-jabber, with irregular rhymes and no consistent meter I could figure out (despite a strong rhythm helped by repetition). The lines are end-stopped—no enjambment—so you don't get the feeling of thoughts twisting, turning, or gathering steam (though in reading the piece aromatic steam is never far from your mind).

The speaker's observations announce themselves in the same flatly gleaming monochrome as a McDonald's logo. Few clauses, no real argument. Unlike the fries, this guy doesn't appear to have a plan. But that declarative simplicity belies a frightening instability.

The speaker himself fails to show up as a character until the middle of the poem—why the secrecy, and then the egoistic interruption? This West mouthpiece is dealing in certainties: “I know” the French fries are planning something, he says, and “I knew” other menu items envied the fries. But how does he know? Did the taters tell him? That would be problematic, because the “evil” golden spuds smell too delicious to “trust.” We already suspect our speaker may not have the firmest grasp on reality. (Since when does McDonald's have a “salad bar”?) Could it be that the speaker is, in fact, jealous of the fries and projecting that onto the McNuggets? And why is he constitutionally incapable of trusting something that smells good? (“I just can't.”)

Toward the end, the speaker seems so bedeviled by his simultaneous attraction to and skepticism of the fries (they “look good tho,” he reminds us wistfully) that he loses the thread. He must retreat into Zen mantras: “McDonalds Man,” he mumbles, “McDonalds Man.” But is the speaker the same person or someone different entirely from this titular “McDonalds Man,” who in the body of the poem registers less as a mysterious entity than as an interjection: “McDonald's, man”?

The real coup in this mystifying work of surrealist darkness is the ninth-inning entrance of its two most vivid and enigmatic characters. “Even” the McRib, who appears and disappears according to a logic the other foodstuffs cannot understand, covets the fries' tempting fragrance, their plots. And he is a single Rib, separated from his fellows. The oven-crisped taters are a brotherhood. The McRib has presumably not been invited to conspire with the ketchup, the shakes, or the cheeseburger, despite his familial relationship with the third. And yet in a transcendental leap, the speaker is able to peer through the McRib's artificial meat eyes, like Emerson through his transparent eyeball, and to perceive a deep, existential angst that transcends the food-human divide.

Then, the masterstroke. Like a dessert after the cognitive and sensory meal this elusive poem proffers, we have “that one special guy,” that “smooth apple pie.” He is the single item on the menu who does not envy the fries, who floats coolly above all the plotting and counterplotting of his fellow lunch options. This mysterious, debonair treat is the poem's twist ending, heralding … well, we are not sure. But he resembles an important piece of West's personal iconography—the “damn croissants” that will not be rushed. He gives those unflappable buttery pastries of 2013 an American spin, one infused with our native fruit, and with all of the hard-won experiential knowledge apples have suggested since the fall of man. In a universe of loneliness, ambition, and epistemological confusion, what precious truth, veiled to the rest of the fast food ecosystem, does this “special guy” know?

The poem won't answer these questions. And yet a pale, speculative allegory emerges from McDonald's' bill of edible fare. You can be the conniving fries, West seems to say, or you can be the sad haters who want to be the fries, squinting out at them with your artificial eyes. (Fries, as potatoes, once had eyes, but no longer do. Their pandering to commercial tastes has corrupted their vision, perhaps.) The fries may smell good and have a lot of fans, but they aren't the real thing.

Only a very few special guys can be the apple pies: self-possessed, secretive, genius. The apple pie is who the speaker ultimately wants to emulate, if he can shake off the hollow, glamorous value system of the fries. He yearns to, but those fries look good. McDonalds, damn.

 
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Corbyn lied, Virgin Trains lied, Harambe died  

Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your train seats

Video So, Jeremy Corbyn recorded a message in which he was sitting on the floor of a train traveling between London and Newcastle, claiming it was "ram-packed" (as exampled by his floor sitting) and that was why all of the trains needed to be renationalised.…

 
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Extinct 'Micro Lion' Is Named For Sir David Attenborough  

Microleo attenboroughi was a tiny, marsupial Australian lion that lived some 18 million years ago. Paleontologists said they named it after the famed naturalist "for his dedication and enthusiasm."

 
science  

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Photos of the Day: Aug. 23, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
images  

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S. oreophila purple throat (MK017)  

meizzwang posted a photo:

This clone is the parent to some of the most stunning purple throated, heavily veined oreophilas in cultivation today. Interestinly enough, the offspring have even darker, more prominent purple throats. Late summer to early fall pitchers can be consistently produced if the plant is kept very happy all grow season long. These late traps are usually the most colorful and spectacular pitchers produced.

 
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What Life Is Like for a Four-Year-Old Diabetic  

Dahlia was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was a toddler. This touching short documentary, Blood Sugar, is filmed from her perspective. Through the lens, we witness her world of blood, needles, and very youthful innocence.

This film comes to us from the Loading Docs initiative, which supports 10 filmmaking teams to create three-minute, creative documentaries that tell New Zealand stories. This year's theme is change.

 
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Health Officials Struggle To Fight Deadly Sepsis Infections  

Although a CDC study released today found that 80 percent of cases develop outside the hospital or at a nursing home, many people still don't know about this lethal medical condition.

 
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What Does A Fish Know And Feel?  


Most of us would cringe at the thought of ripping a dog's mouth open with a hook. Why don't we cringe when we think about doing this to a fish? Our society not only considers hooking and suffocating fish to be socially acceptable, we celebrate it. Fishing shows abound on TV, almost every coastal town holds fishing competitions, and CNN routinely displays photos of fishermen with their latest and largest catch. Fishing is also commonly used as a sentimental symbol of the good life.

Perhaps we don't think twice about the ways we treat fish because we don't really know much about these animals. Biologist Jonathan Balcombe wants to change this. In his New York Times best selling book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents the latest scientific evidence showing that there is so much more to fish than we commonly believe. And, to emphasize that fish are individuals, Balcombe doesn't use the word "fish" as a collective plural. If there is more than one fish, he uses "fishes." I had the occasion to speak with Balcombe about his book.

Why did you decide to write a book about fish and why now?

As a scientist working on animal sentience, I was often encountering new studies of fishes showing that they have rich, interesting lives. But most of this information was buried away in scholarly journals that most folks never read. Translating science into something lay-readers find engaging is something I find challenging and enjoyable. And with fishes being the most exploited group of vertebrates on Earth, there was also a strong ethical motive to write a book of popular science about fishes.

What has your research found about what a fish knows?

Fishes are incredibly diverse, and many are clearly intelligent. Consider groupers. These large, charismatic reef-dwelling fishes will approach trusted divers for handouts or just for the pleasure of being stroked. Careful studies in the Red Sea have shown that a grouper will perform a head-shaking signal to a moray eel as an invitation to go hunting together. Groupers will also point to a prey fish hiding in the reef where the grouper cannot reach but the eel can. If the prey escapes to open water, the grouper is waiting to catch it. Both species have higher hunting success when they collaborate.

Another sharp fish is the cleaner wrasse. A 2012 study showed that these small fishes learned to solve a mental problem faster than chimpanzees, orangutans, monkeys, and a scientist's four-year-old daughter.

What about what a fish feels? Do they experience emotions?

It's pretty clear that fishes can form attachments to one another, and they can become bonded to their human guardians, too. Several readers wrote to me about the games and affection they shared with individual pet fishes, and one can watch online videos of pet fishes who swim into the hand to receive gentle caresses and other pleasurable or playful interactions.

This behavior is borne out by studies like one in which wild-caught surgeon fishes responded to stress by swimming up next to a moving wand to receive caresses, which caused their stress--measured as blood cortisol--to decline. Stationary wands were ignored by these fishes, whose stress levels remained high.

Why do you think other no other scientist has written this book before?

I'm rather dumbfounded that nobody had. With all the great things we are learning about this hugely underestimated group of animals, it has to have been one of the lowest hanging fruits for an author to pick. The moment I thought of it I knew that it was something that had to be done, and it is an incredible privilege to have written this book.

What is the most interesting feedback you have received so far from a reader?

I enjoy hearing from readers wanting to share their personal stories of fishes, and I find these the most interesting. For instance, I received a letter last week from a woman in her seventies who detailed an experience from over 40 years ago when she used to feed the fishes at the back of a pet store. She had to use a stepladder to hand-feed a tank of Oscar cichlids on the top shelf. Soon these smart fishes were jumping from the water to take morsels from her fingertips. It became a game. One day, one Oscar jumped clear of the tank and made a nosedive toward the cement floor six feet below. Miraculously, a tank holding "feeder" goldfishes protruded from a shelf at floor level and the Oscar landed in it. Megan quickly returned the cichlid to his home tank. When she returned to the shop the next morning she found the same Oscar in the goldfish tank! After this happened three days in a row, she installed a lid on the Oscar tank.

You know I focus on the intersection between animal protection and human health. Why should we care about fish? Is there any benefit for us?

There are many reasons to care about fishes. For one thing, their ocean habitats produce most of the world's oxygen. For another, fishes are a critical part of aquatic ecosystems. As they go, so go their ecosystems (and vice versa). Beyond these practical considerations are the philosophical ones that recognize fishes as having lives of value to themselves. Most of us do not need to harm fishes or their habitats to live happy healthy lives. Today, consumers have many choices in what they eat, and I hope growing numbers of humans will make compassionate, conscientious food choices that no longer support industries that cause ecological harm and animal suffering.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Unlocking the mysteries of the formation of our solar system with CHIMERA  
Register now: Thursday 22 September
A webinar sponsored by Andor  
science  

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Magnetic bacteria target hard-to-treat tumours  
New technique transports drugs into solid cancers  
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The monk and the multiverse  
A journey into the remarkable mind of the 13th-century monk, scholar and proto-cosmologist Robert Grosseteste  
science  

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What Does A Fish Know And Feel?  


Most of us would cringe at the thought of ripping a dog's mouth open with a hook. Why don't we cringe when we think about doing this to a fish? Our society not only considers hooking and suffocating fish to be socially acceptable, we celebrate it. Fishing shows abound on TV, almost every coastal town holds fishing competitions, and CNN routinely displays photos of fishermen with their latest and largest catch. Fishing is also commonly used as a sentimental symbol of the good life.

Perhaps we don't think twice about the ways we treat fish because we don't really know much about these animals. Biologist Jonathan Balcombe wants to change this. In his New York Times best selling book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents the latest scientific evidence showing that there is so much more to fish than we commonly believe. And, to emphasize that fish are individuals, Balcombe doesn't use the word "fish" as a collective plural. If there is more than one fish, he uses "fishes." I had the occasion to speak with Balcombe about his book.

Why did you decide to write a book about fish and why now?

As a scientist working on animal sentience, I was often encountering new studies of fishes showing that they have rich, interesting lives. But most of this information was buried away in scholarly journals that most folks never read. Translating science into something lay-readers find engaging is something I find challenging and enjoyable. And with fishes being the most exploited group of vertebrates on Earth, there was also a strong ethical motive to write a book of popular science about fishes.

What has your research found about what a fish knows?

Fishes are incredibly diverse, and many are clearly intelligent. Consider groupers. These large, charismatic reef-dwelling fishes will approach trusted divers for handouts or just for the pleasure of being stroked. Careful studies in the Red Sea have shown that a grouper will perform a head-shaking signal to a moray eel as an invitation to go hunting together. Groupers will also point to a prey fish hiding in the reef where the grouper cannot reach but the eel can. If the prey escapes to open water, the grouper is waiting to catch it. Both species have higher hunting success when they collaborate.

Another sharp fish is the cleaner wrasse. A 2012 study showed that these small fishes learned to solve a mental problem faster than chimpanzees, orangutans, monkeys, and a scientist's four-year-old daughter.

What about what a fish feels? Do they experience emotions?

It's pretty clear that fishes can form attachments to one another, and they can become bonded to their human guardians, too. Several readers wrote to me about the games and affection they shared with individual pet fishes, and one can watch online videos of pet fishes who swim into the hand to receive gentle caresses and other pleasurable or playful interactions.

This behavior is borne out by studies like one in which wild-caught surgeon fishes responded to stress by swimming up next to a moving wand to receive caresses, which caused their stress--measured as blood cortisol--to decline. Stationary wands were ignored by these fishes, whose stress levels remained high.

Why do you think other no other scientist has written this book before?

I'm rather dumbfounded that nobody had. With all the great things we are learning about this hugely underestimated group of animals, it has to have been one of the lowest hanging fruits for an author to pick. The moment I thought of it I knew that it was something that had to be done, and it is an incredible privilege to have written this book.

What is the most interesting feedback you have received so far from a reader?

I enjoy hearing from readers wanting to share their personal stories of fishes, and I find these the most interesting. For instance, I received a letter last week from a woman in her seventies who detailed an experience from over 40 years ago when she used to feed the fishes at the back of a pet store. She had to use a stepladder to hand-feed a tank of Oscar cichlids on the top shelf. Soon these smart fishes were jumping from the water to take morsels from her fingertips. It became a game. One day, one Oscar jumped clear of the tank and made a nosedive toward the cement floor six feet below. Miraculously, a tank holding "feeder" goldfishes protruded from a shelf at floor level and the Oscar landed in it. Megan quickly returned the cichlid to his home tank. When she returned to the shop the next morning she found the same Oscar in the goldfish tank! After this happened three days in a row, she installed a lid on the Oscar tank.

You know I focus on the intersection between animal protection and human health. Why should we care about fish? Is there any benefit for us?

There are many reasons to care about fishes. For one thing, their ocean habitats produce most of the world's oxygen. For another, fishes are a critical part of aquatic ecosystems. As they go, so go their ecosystems (and vice versa). Beyond these practical considerations are the philosophical ones that recognize fishes as having lives of value to themselves. Most of us do not need to harm fishes or their habitats to live happy healthy lives. Today, consumers have many choices in what they eat, and I hope growing numbers of humans will make compassionate, conscientious food choices that no longer support industries that cause ecological harm and animal suffering.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
gaia  

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Frank Ocean Versus The Real Ocean  
It's nice that Frank Ocean just released his long-anticipated new album, 'Blonde', that some say is truly awesome. But the fact that 12 of 20 stories on a Google News search under the word "ocean" on Sunday were about his music and that on Monday it had proportionately grown to 6 out of 9 "ocean" news stories might also indicate a larger problem with our culture, society and survival odds as a species.

Our increasingly urbanized celebrity-driven culture and corporate ratings-driven news media are reducing people's awareness of how essential the seas are to our economy (90 percent of trade, also fishing, tourism, real estate, etc.) national security (we're still a maritime nation) and yes, survival. Over half the oxygen Frank Ocean breathes in before singing some of his haunting "baritone with tenor moments" comes from the photosynthesis of ocean phytoplankton that is now in decline for reasons science does not yet fully understand.

The global ocean is experiencing a cascading series of disasters linked to industrial overfishing, pollution, loss of habitat and fossil-fuel fired climate change. By mid-century, by weight, there could be more plastic than living fish in the seas. The ocean's basic chemistry is being altered by climate-linked ocean acidification that is making it harder for shell-forming creatures to survive be they plankton, coral, crab or clam. And a warmer more acidic ocean also holds less dissolved oxygen. Within decades it could look more like the seas did 20 million years ago, meaning more jellyfish, harmful algal blooms and microbial mats and far fewer bony fish, seals, whales and dolphins.

Certainly the flooding disaster in Louisiana that reflects how fossil-fuel fired climate change can and will put low-lying coastal regions at risk and the mucky green algal bloom that's choking parts of Florida's shoreline are two reasons we ought to be seeing more news stories about our coasts and ocean than we are. Frank Ocean and his family were themselves forced to leave New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. And while no single weather event can be directly linked to climate change, that's kind of like saying no single medal won by Russian athletes at the last Winter Olympics can be directly linked to Russia's state-sponsored doping program, yet the trend lines are clear. Just ask the next president.

As much as some would like to think it's about Donald Trump's policy choices like climate denial, his celebrity status and the media's love of spectacle were contributing factors in turning a former reality show TV star and real estate developer into one of this year's two major party contenders for President of the United States. Still, neither Mr. Trump nor former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton have mentioned ocean issues on the campaign trail. I don't know if they've mentioned Frank Ocean but I'd be less surprised.

In the past two weeks, I've written about what a good ocean policy for the next President should be (in Sierra magazine) where the presidential candidates stand as best we can tell (in The Progressive) and why President Obama should establish an Atlantic Ocean Monument before leaving office (in The Hill).

I've also helped launch a letter to Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump signed by 115 prestigious ocean leaders in the hope we'll get a response from their campaigns in September and thus make the blue in our red, white and blue something voters get a chance to learn and think about when they cast their ballots.

But if the media won't address serious issues beyond border walls and emails then we'll just have to continue to work at the marine grassroots (seaweed) level and hope for a breakthrough in public awareness and citizen action. And of course it would help if some of our major celebrities would also speak out for healthy seas and the practical solutions that can still help turn the tide. That bait ball is in your court, Mr. Ocean.

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Can Future Global Warming Matter Today?  
Scientists studying past and current climate conditions mull the challenges in making future warming matter today.  
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Pascal Mittermaier: Cities, Nature and the Leaders of Tomorrow - An Interview With LEAF Alum Orlando Raez  
Orlando Raez has been working in city planning since 2004, but he's been thinking about environmental issues and the relationship between cities and nature for much longer.

Read more: New York City, Nature, Environment, The Nature Conservancy, Impact News

 
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We're continuing this week's focus on urban planning with...  

We're continuing this week's focus on urban planning with this Overview of Washington, D.C., USA. The city's L'Enfant Plan was developed in 1791 by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant for George Washington, the first President of the United States. L'Enfant designed a compass-aligned grid for the city's streets, with intersecting diagonal avenues that were later named after the states of the union. The diagonal avenues also intersect with the north-south and east-west streets at circles and rectangular plazas in order to create more open, green spaces. Lastly, L'Enfant laid out a 400 foot-wide (122 meter) garden-lined “grand avenue” - what is now know as the National Mall that connects the US Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial (the latter two are visible at right in this Overview). /// Source imagery: @digitalglobe (at Washington, District of Columbia)

 
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Cypress by David Perry  

Cypress by David Perry

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David Perry: Photos

 
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Untitled by Dyln Engls  

Untitled by Dyln Engls

Dyln Engls: Photos

 
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Sarah Jaffe by Matt Lief Anderson Music  

Sarah Jaffe by Matt Lief Anderson Music

VICE / LIVE NATION TV

Matt Lief Anderson Music: Photos

 
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fdean-regas%2Fpluto-not-a-planet-for-10_b_11650536.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Pluto: Not A Planet For 10 Years  


A Grown-Up's View
When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet. Of course, when I was a kid our map of the solar system was very immature. Astronomers knew of nine round planets that went around the Sun, and Pluto was one of them. But Pluto was always the oddball. It was the smallest, the coldest, the last, and the planet with the weirdest orbit. But in my youth, it was always a planet, and I liked Pluto all the more for its eccentricities.

However, in the 21st century we grew up. Astronomers put aside their smaller toy-telescopes of the past and utilized their new big-boy technology. With these grown-up telescopes, we learned that the solar system was much, much more complex. In addition to the planets, there are over 600,000 asteroids of various sizes and shapes that circle the Sun. There are objects that defy easy definition that swing wildly in elongated orbits or hang out near planets or even between planets. Then, there is the big shocker: we found over 1,000 other objects in Pluto's realm and beyond. Pluto, it turned out, was not alone, was not the last, and was not even weird. It had over 1,000 other brother-, sister-, and twin-worlds way out there. There is Eris an object nearly as large as Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, and countless other unnamed orbs plying the outer edges of our solar system. These new objects along with Pluto didn't fit into the categories we set up in our infancy.



Seeing Pluto Clearly
And there is another layer to our solar system, a region even farther from the Sun where a mysterious object named Sedna lives. Sedna takes almost 12,000 years to circle the Sun and it may be the forerunner to a myriad of future discoveries in this region of space. Perhaps a new, never-before-seen planet exists 10-1,000 times farther away than Pluto.

Ten years ago, an international group of astronomers decided Pluto's fate. Pluto was not a planet in the same way that the Earth was a planet. They did not destroy it. Pluto did not fly out of the solar system or get sucked into a black hole. It did not change at all. We changed. It was as if we went to the eye doctor and got new glasses. We see Pluto much more clearly for what it is.

I miss my childhood fascination with Pluto, but it's time to come of age. I know there will be some growing pains, but after ten years let's fully jettison our childish notions of Pluto. Pluto isn't a planet. My new boyish crush is with a true oddball - a lone wolf in the depths of space called Sedna. Let's not bemoan the loss of Pluto but instead revel in what has been gained. Check it out and you'll see that Sedna is the new Pluto!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Joseph Totten Scientist of the Day General Joseph...  

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Joseph Totten Scientist of the Day

General Joseph Gilbert Totten, an American civil engineer, was born Aug. 23, 1788.

read more…

 
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Water: the commodity underwriting our low-carbon future  
The quintessential first thought when you think of saving water, drilled into us at childhood, is turning off the tap when you brush your teeth. As we age and the world advances -- with a global climate agreement and the new Sustainable Development Goals -- a broader view on water is now mainstream. It includes economic pillars such as agriculture; the immense amount of cooling water that power plants need to function; and the water embedded in the food you eat, the cotton shirt you wear and even the smart phones we cannot imagine living without.

We must now take that thinking another step forward, and consider the vital role that water will play as the world moves towards enacting the Paris Agreement and its underlying promise to cut GHG emissions by the nearly 200 countries that signed it.

Water security - access to a stable supply of sufficient amounts of good quality freshwater - is fundamental to achieving our low-carbon ambitions. For instance, China's climate action plan, submitted to the United Nations earlier this summer, outlines the pivotal role that hydropower will have in achieving its goal of reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Hydropower is already the country's second largest source of energy, after coal, and Beijing plans to increase its capacity to 420GW by 2020, up from nearly 300 GW today. To give you an idea of its importance to China's power market, Bloomberg reports that "hydropower accounts for all the increase in China's electricity output over the past two years."


From Bloomberg Gadfly, China's Fossil Fuel Washout

Now consider the fact that in less than 15 years, a 40% global shortfall in water supply versus demand is expected to materialize if we carry on with business as usual. We find ourselves in a position where urgent action is required, in river basins the world over, to secure the water we need to enable us to meet our sustainable development and climate goals.

This reality is already becoming apparent to the business world, as some companies have found that water challenges have the potential to increase GHG emissions. For example, poor water governance in a basin BASF operate in has forced them to increase the amount of recycled water they use, which in turn is now challenging the company's 2020 energy goal. Endesa reports that many of their current activities aimed at reducing GHG emissions require large amounts of water. Carbon Capture and Storage Technology (CCS) for example, will allow the company to generate electricity from coal with nearly zero emissions, but would increase power plant's water needs and dependencies.

So water, and the lack thereof, could put a halt to our low-carbon ambitions. However, better water management could also help us go further in delivering much needed emissions reductions. Clues as to the opportunities available are found in plain sight in CDP's corporate water data, disclosed through our platform by some of the world's largest companies.

Mars reports working with farmers in the Mississippi Delta to use alternate wetting and drying (AWD), an irrigation technique that reduces both water use and GHG emissions with little or no impact on yields. And Lockheed Martin discloses cutting US$77,000 in electrical costs, 800 metric tons of carbon emissions and 8% of its water usage annually in its site in Maryland as a result of a chiller replacement.
By ensuring water security is considered in GHG emissions reductions plans, companies will ensure that their growth strategies and low-carbon transition plans remain on track. Early action and leadership will be beneficial to company's bottom lines as well as contributing positively to the communities and environments upon which they depend.

While it is clear companies have a critical role to play in safeguarding our water resources, they can't do it alone. Policymakers are increasing recognizing that they must not only work with local water users, but also forge impactful partnerships with the private sector. Our new policy briefing, launching at World Water Week in Stockholm at the end of August, offers clear recommendations for policymakers to consider in the run up to COP22. And this Autumn, CDP will be doing more to help companies take their first steps towards improved corporate water stewardship, in partnership with the We Mean Business coalition. We'll be revealing more on this at Climate Week New York in September. Be sure to follow @CDP and @WMBtweets to keep up to date with our news.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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A Market-Based Strategy for Sustainable Water Management  

By Brian Richter, Chief Scientist, Water, The Nature Conservancy

Australia is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Yet nearly two-thirds of the country's land area is devoted to agriculture, generating 93 percent of the domestic food supply. The country is only able to sustain this level of food production through irrigation and an active water market—a system in which water-use entitlements can be bought and sold and water can be transferred from one user to another. The system is working for farmers, but Australia is still trying to figure out how to meet the needs of one specific water user—nature. One potential solution to balance the water needs of people and nature, though, may lie with the power of impact investment.

Around the world, more than 30 percent of all rivers, lakes and aquifers are being heavily tapped, mostly for irrigated agriculture. These sources are spread across 60 countries, and dependence on them continues to grow. But as use grows, so does the impact on people and nature. Since 1970, freshwater species populations have declined by an estimated 76 percent globally. And depletion of water sources leaves our communities and economies vulnerable to water shortages in drier times.

To date, our approach to overcome these water scarcity challenges has been to invest more in infrastructure to increase water supplies, such as large reservoirs that store river water, canals that import water from distant sources and wells that go deeper into our aquifers. But we can no longer build our way out of water scarcity—the cost of new infrastructure remains out of reach for many communities, and there are no new supplies to tap.

Water markets have proven immensely effective in many regions—from Australia to the western United States—for stimulating water conservation and enabling the transfer of saved water to other users who need more. By making water a tradeable asset, the system rewards those who can save some water and make it available to others. Furthermore, the cost of providing water to new users through markets is far less than the cost of infrastructure-based approaches and further damage to the environment can be averted.

Water markets can be especially effective when implemented in areas where water is mainly consumed for irrigation. If we can find ways to save just a small percentage of the water used on farms, it will free up a great volume of water that can be used for other purposes, including the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems. But having a water market does not necessarily ensure benefits for nature. In Australia's Murray-Darling Basin and many other areas with water markets, too many entitlements were originally issued, too much water has been withdrawn from the environment and freshwater ecosystems are suffering the consequences.

This is where impact investment can help. Investors who wish to see environmental and social returns, as well as financial returns, can put their money toward market-based solutions that direct water back to the environment while still preserving human uses. One example of this is Water Sharing Investment Partnerships (WSIPs), which operate within existing water markets and use investor capital and other revenue sources to acquire water-use entitlements from willing sellers.

These rights can then be reallocated to depleted freshwater ecosystems or sold or leased to other water users seeking more supplies, thereby generating financial returns for investors. While the primary purpose behind WSIPs is to move water back into the environment, another critically important purpose is to keep farmers farming. In some areas, funds from WSIPs could even be used to help farmers invest in more efficient water technologies, freeing up some of their water to be returned to the environment or sold on the market.

The Nature Conservancy, through a partnership between the Conservancy's impact investing unit, NatureVest, and its Australia and Water teams, launched its first WISP, the Murray-Darling Basin Balanced Water Fund in Australia, in April 2016. This and other impact investment-driven solutions are explored in a new report released by the Conservancy, titled “Water Share,” which shows the potential to return water to depleted ecosystems in many of the 37 water-scarce countries that already have water rights systems, the basic prerequisite for a water market. If all regions with existing water rights systems could establish water markets functioning on par with the Australian market, they could collectively generate total annual water sales of US$13.4 billion per year, equating to market assets of US$331 billion.

Those numbers indicate the great potential water markets hold for nature and investors, and it is high time to unleash that potential—because scarcity is expanding and intensifying around the globe. But with creative financial solutions, nature and people can better share the most precious resource on our planet.

 
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London / Sunset from Primerose Hill  

Paol0 posted a photo:

Primrose Hill is a hill of 213 feet (65 m) located on the northern side of Regent's Park in London, and also the name given to the surrounding district. The hill summit has a clear view of central London.

 
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NASA tried turning lost spacecraft STEREO-B off and on again... but it didn't work. True story  

But Deep Space Network brought her back online

NASA has managed to reestablish a connection with the STEREO-B spacecraft after contact was lost in October 2014.…

 
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Slow  

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via 500px ift.tt/2bakRjI

 
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The Light Will Guide  

Kieran Williams Photography posted a photo:

 
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Do You Read Terms Of Service Contracts? Not Many Do, Research Shows  

During an experiment, people consented to sharing their private information with the NSA, and to surrendering their first-born as payment for access to a fictitious social networking site.

 
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This light Spotify theme for Mac is a tribute to Rdio design  

For those who still mourn the loss of Rdio, Devin Halladay has a solution. The 19-year-old designer has hand-crafted a Spotify skin for Mac, which brings Rdio's best design principles to the streaming service that has survived the booms and busts of the modern music industry. You can download the skin over at Halladay's website, and it requires you to switch your Mac security settings to permit apps downloaded from anywhere. Halladay says there's some kinks he has to work out, but it should operate like a light mode replacement for Spotify's desktop app.

Rdio's shutdown was an emotional moment for a certain subset of forward-looking music lovers. The streaming service was a bastion of an era when Apple, Google, and Spotify didn't yet...

Continue reading…

 
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Sunset HC9Q4168-1a  

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Cheers! by Anne  

Cheers! by Anne

Anne: Photos

 
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Beyond Slurpees: Many Japanese Mini-Marts Now Cater To Elders  

Convenience is in the eye of the generation. Increasingly, corner markets in Japan target the 27 percent of residents over 65 — offering nursing care advice and home delivery of meals and groceries.

 
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Paulina's dream by Rarindra Prakarsa  

Paulina's dream by Rarindra Prakarsa

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | instagram

Rarindra Prakarsa: Photos

 
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Proton pump found to regulate blood pH in stingrays  

Full Text:

Researchers have discovered the same enzyme used by “boneworms” to dissolve whale carcasses, and that helps promote photosynthesis in corals, also regulates blood pH in stingrays. The study could help scientists better understand the enzyme's function in human kidneys to regulate blood and urine functions.

Image credit: Scripps Oceanography/Martin Tresguerres/Jinae Roa

 
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Tiny origami robot  

Full Text:

This tiny origami robot is made of laser cut PVC and polystyrene. Once heated, the body folds around a magnet and the robot is controlled using an external magnetic field, allowing it to move around on land or in water. Once finished, the robot can dissolve to nothing in acetone (except the magnet). The body of the robot is made of PVC, with creases where it is supposed to fold, and a magnet. Heating the magnet activates the sheet to self-fold into a functional 3-D robot capable of conducting basic tasks and behaviors like swimming, delivering and carrying blocks, climbing a slope and digging. The researchers have developed three models of the origami robot: A water-degradable model, whose outer layer dissolves in water; a conductive model (aluminum coated polyester); and an acetone-degradable model, whose entire body (except the magnet) dissolves in acetone. The researchers say these origami robots could be used to access unreachable sites and show promise for use in medical applications.

Image credit: Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum

 
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Scientists map migration paths of Arctic breeding birds  
Conservation of intertidal habitat -- 65 percent of which has been lost over the last 50 years -- is critical to the survival of countless birds during migration on the East Asian Australasian Flyway.  
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You vs. Future You; Or Why We're Bad At Predicting Our Own Happiness  

Researcher Dan Gilbert says that human beings are the only animals that think about the future. But we don't always do the best job at predicting what will make us happy — or even who we will be.

 
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Could She Be Hillary's Secretary of Space?  
Entrepreneur Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux is laying the groundwork for a policy on space for the masses.  
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'Cyclops' beetles hint at solution to 'chicken-and-egg' problem in novel trait evolution  
Beetles with cyclops eyes have given scientists insight into how new traits may evolve through the recruitment of existing genes -- even if these genes are already carrying out critical functions.  
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Beetles pollinated orchids millions of year ago, fossil evidence shows  
When most people hear the word 'pollinator,' they think of bees and butterflies. However, certain beetles are known to pollinate plants as well, and new fossil evidence indicates that they were doing so 20 million years ago.  
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FBI Releases Mobile App for Finding Bank Robbers  

The new app enlists public's assistance in identifying bank robbers with wanted posters at your finger tips.

 
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Uber Competitor In NYC Promises Drivers Benefits, Even Employee Status  

While Uber and Lyft both fight in courts to keep their workers as independent contractors, new ride-hailing startup Juno is moving to offer full employee status and other benefits.

 
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On Six Flags' Virtual Reality Coaster, The Ride Is Just Half The Thrill  

Magic Mountain in Southern California has a roller coaster in which riders put on VR goggles to see an imagined world while their bodies undergo the physical thrills. How is it? We get a review.

 
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http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/21/489765987/the-last-razor-repairman-in-paris?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=technology  
The Last Razor Repairman In Paris  

In a tiny shop from a bygone era, Jacques Guillaume gets calls about more than razors because there's nobody to fix things anymore. "Today, manual work like this is passé and obsolete," he says.

 
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Microsoft's maps lost a city because it used bad Wikipedia data  

Bing Maps relies on Wikipedia? Even a bit? Umm, guys, you do know anyone can edit it?

Microsoft has laid part of the blame for Bing Maps' mis-location of the Australian city of Melbourne by a whole hemisphere on Wikipedia.…

 
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Wildlife And 12-Year-Old Girls  
Who takes to social media and calls a 12-year-old girl a "stupid bitch?"

There has been a firestorm of activity about a young lady from Utah named Aryanna who has been posting pictures on social media of her recent kills in Africa: zebras, giraffes, and many other animals shot with a gun or the pink arrows she pulled from her quiver. Aryanna refers to these hunts as a dream come true and something she will forever cherish.

Interestingly, she has also issued a lengthy formulaic defense of her barbarism, working through the checklist of pro-hunting claims to justify her young bloodlust: money from hunts goes back into conservation; these animals are not endangered; meat from the kills feeds poor African families; hunters are precise killers who only take the shot when they feel guaranteed in their ability to kill swiftly.

Time after time, Born Free has debunked these hunting myths in numerous fora. We have revealed the paltry sum from hunts that is actually returned to conservation efforts and the comparatively small amount of tourism revenue generated by thrill kills as opposed to non-lethal tourism activities; that hunting disrupts family systems and ecosystems, regardless of whether the species is predator or prey, endangered or plentiful; that there is much more community value from having wildlife alive to benefit local communities in perpetuity rather than a one-off slaughter; and that individual animals suffer from being shot (think Cecil), whether with bullet or arrow.

But, here's what really engaged my interest about this specific girl and this specific explosion of vitriol on both sides of the wildlife slaughter industry: I'm the father of a 12-year-old girl. I am looking at pictures of Aryanna, posing with her kills, poised to shoot an arrow. Here's what I see, aside from the horror of the kill: a little girl with her hair up, a backwards baseball cap, a t-shirt, jean shorts, and sneakers. My 12-year-old daughter, Mia, works hard to get her hair up just right, wears a baseball cap backwards, and wears t-shirts, jean shorts, and sneakers.

They are just little girls. Little girls who are influenced by their parents, by their fathers, and who view wildlife as amazing... just in very different ways.

Mia and I just returned from a week-long father/daughter summer trip to Yellowstone. Mia wanted to go to Wyoming. Mia wanted to see wildlife. And, there we were, hiking the Grand Tetons, looking up at bird nests, and driving through Yellowstone searching for wildlife: a herd of elk; a male with antlers taller than Mia; a lone coyote searching for food in the tall grass; chipmunks scurrying to and fro; and buffalo... so many buffalo!

For more than an hour, we sat watching hundreds of buffalo in the valley below grazing, dust-bathing--just really existing in peace. I glanced over at Mia, all of 12, and noticed the tears. My little 12-year-old was crying, so deeply and personally moved at the experience of seeing these animals--just living naturally and being there, in front of us.

As I read the Facebook posts and online commentary about Aryanna, I was truly astounded by the level of anger and viciousness. The incendiary language. The hate. Make no mistake; we who object to animal slaughter for sport, or fun, or commerce receive the hatred back ten-fold.

At the end of the day, they are, genuinely, just little girls. So, I teach Mia compassion, care, and concern for all living things. Aryanna's dad teaches her to kill animals for sport and to justify it with a litany of defenses.

I believe to my core that we should raise our children to respect other living beings: to protect them and, at the very least, to leave them alone to behave and live naturally in the wild. Mia believes this, too, and is literally moved to tears at the mere sight of thriving, heaving herds of buffalo.

Step one, I think, is to dial down the rhetoric in a significant way. We can believe different things but behave respectfully toward one another; it's what compassion is all about. Step two is a bit more challenging, though, isn't it? There is not a simple or straightforward strategy for changing minds. I doubt I will sway Aryanna's father and I know he will not sway me.

I wonder what might happen, however, if two 12-year-old girls, backwards baseball caps and all, could just talk to each other without external influence... or maybe build a friendship around humane activities. Perhaps fewer animals would suffer and their happiness in life would be equally strong.

Perhaps Aryanna would no longer see a giraffe or zebra as something to selfishly covet, dead, on display in her home. Perhaps she would desire a world with wild animals safe and free. Perhaps she would realize that she could enjoy nature while still shooting bullets and arrows at inanimate targets, just as the archers and shooters do in the Olympics. Perhaps there would be more common ground there than anyone might expect.

Maybe while Aryanna and Mia are exploring compassionate friendship, I'll buy her dad a beer.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Adam

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BABY ZEBRA  

Robert Aycock posted a photo:

A picture I took of a baby zebra at the zoo in Arizona. It's a beautiful creature and looks even better in black and white than in color. Then again, the zebra didn't change color, only the background. Enjoy.

Follow me in Instagram: www.instagram.com/bobbyaycock/

Please visit my Gallery at:
www.robert-aycock.artistwebsites.com

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by the side  

thatgirlwiththekicks posted a photo:

 
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fdaniel-rutherford%2Fis-carbon-neutral-growth_b_11656784.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Is carbon neutral growth on the horizon for aviation? That depends on your definition.  
In October 2013, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the specialized UN agency that acts as the de facto regulator for aviation worldwide, established an aspirational climate goal of Carbon Neutral Growth (CNG) for the aviation sector from 2020 on. Since then, various working groups in ICAO have been meeting regularly to flesh out an industry proposal to promote carbon offsets through a global market-based measure (MBM) for decision at the ICAO's 39th Assembly next month.

Questions about the likely effectiveness of ICAO's MBM are many. Here we focus narrowly on the potential coverage of the MBM, and how consistent these various approaches are with ICAO's CNG goal. There is general agreement that the smallest and least developed countries, which have contributed little to historical emissions, should be exempted from the scheme. But those exemptions, if not made up by extra offsetting for the carriers that are included, would mean that the MBM would allow emissions growth beyond 2020. The question is how much.

There have been many iterations of ICAO's offsetting system along the way. A recent draft Assembly resolution proposed to implement the MBM in two phases. In Phase 1, states accounting for at least 1% individually or within the top 80% of aggregate international 2018 aviation activity in the form of revenue tonne kilometers (RTKs) must offset post-2020 emissions growth. Phase 2 would tighten the exclusion criteria via percent thresholds of 0.5% on an individual basis or 95% on an aggregate basis. Most recently, a news report indicated that the system may rely upon countries voluntarily "opting-in," with countries like the US, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, and the 44 European members of the ECAC as likely participants. India, on the other hand, has expressed hostility toward to any system covering its airlines.

So how do the current proposals stack up in terms of coverage? To figure this out, we estimated the coverage of several MBM systems based upon different threshold percentages (e.g., 1% and 80%) as well as any opt-in or opt-out countries (e.g., India). Key inputs included OAG Schedules data from 2016, growth rates from ICAO's 2013 Environmental Report and global average load factors from ICAO's Annual Report.

Several graphs depicting the estimated coverage of potential MBM approaches are shown below. The first graph shows the coverage of the current draft Assembly resolution, with excluded international aviation activity (2020 RTKs) shown in dark blue, post-2020 growth requiring offsetting shown in green, and growth not subject to offsetting shown in light blue. Surprisingly, what looks like near complete coverage on paper (~80% in Phase 1, and ~95% in Phase 2), ends up allowing for emissions growth that is not insignificant. Between 2020 and 2030, about 76% of growth, or 17% of total international RTKs, is covered in the base case scenario. This leaves behind about 8.6 trillion RTKs that would not be subject to carbon offsetting.



Why does a proposal that looks like 80% coverage on paper for the first five years end up covering only 56% of international activity? Two issues are at work, both related to ICAO's definition of a country's "individual share of international aviation activities." ICAO's approach is to define activity as the RTKs flown by air carriers registered to a given country via an air operator's certificate (AOC). If a foreign registered carrier provides most of the international flights to and from a country, this can make a decent sized market, like Brazil or South Africa, look small (and therefore exempt). However, once the list of exempt countries is determined, ICAO would exclude flights from all carriers flying to and from that country regardless of where there are registered. This makes sense to prevent airlines that do not need to pay for carbon offsets from having an unfair price advantage over included airlines, but has the side effect of allowing more emissions growth.

A second, and larger, effect occurs if the calculation of which countries would be exempt from the MBM and which flights would then be excluded are not properly aligned. The draft resolution's approach is generally understood to determine whether a country is exempt based upon its percentage share of global RTKs by departures only, or an equivalent value. The current proposal, however, excludes all flights to and from an exempt country, approximately doubling the coverage gap of the MBM. These two ways of defining aviation activity, combined, explain why what looks like 80% coverage on paper in fact leaves a 44% coverage gap through 2026.

Unfortunately, the numbers look even worse for an opt-in system focused on richer countries. The chart below shows our analysis of that system. When only the 48 countries identified in the article above are included under the MBM, the coverage falls significantly; in 2030, less than 22% of growth RTKs, or 8% of international RTKs, would be covered by the measure.



These estimates are subject to significant uncertainty, but clearly even the mandatory approach under consideration today would fall short of the CNG2020 goal. What could ICAO do to plug this gap? A number of solutions have been proposed. ICAO could base its exemption calculation upon all flights to and from a country regardless of where a carrier is registered, as recommended by industry. It could also tighten the exclusion criteria for a mandatory MBM, either by reducing the RTK numerical threshold or by aligning the method of exempting countries and excluding flights. Finally, the system could be designed so that uncovered emissions growth due to country exemptions is offset by carriers participating in the scheme, an idea advocated by environmental NGOs, but opposed by industry.

ICAO has struggled to develop an MBM for international aviation for the past 15 years. We'll know soon whether it succeeds this time and, if so, how close to its goal of carbon neutral growth it comes.

This blog was original posted at the International Council on Clean Transportation's staff blog.

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Sustainable Fish Do Not Exist  

Image Credit: Huffington Post Images

Right now, we humans are creating the biggest experiment of all time. We are experimenting with our oceans, with our fisheries, and with our climate.

When we walk into our local grocery store or fish market, we walk into the biggest farce of all time.

We see a plethora of fish and shellfish. We see the beautiful flaky whites, The thick fatty orange salmons, and the deep red tunas. We think nothing of it. Because they've always been there.

But, this will not always be the case.

Read the book, or watch the movie "The End of the Line" or "Racing Extinction." These movies highlights the plight of our oceans and their wildlife. In fact, the United Nations Environmental Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization, report that we are running out of fish. We have overfished or overexploited more than 80% of our fish stocks. We are running down the foodchain of fish.

We started out with the really big ones, the bluefin tunas, the swordfish, the groupers, the cods. Fisherman used to catch them when they weighed close to 400kg (~900 pounds). Now when they're caught, sometimes they barely weigh a quarter of that.

They are being caught younger and smaller. Even too young to reproduce. In fact, a number of the species have been declared as critically endangered and threatened with extinction by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Metaphorically speaking, eating these fish is like eating a rhinoceros, an elephant, an orangutan, or a cheetah.

And, while we may believe that consuming farmed fish is a more sustainable and ecological choice, and many groups are bent on convincing us of this, in many instances farmed fish are even worse for the environment.

Farmed fish not only harbor pests, diseases, require specialized dyes in chemicals in their feed; but, they in fact consume more wild fish then they create in flesh.

It takes approximately five pounds of wild small fish such as herring, menhaden, or anchovies to create one pound of salmon, a predatory fish. Not only that, but the proportion of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon is lower pound-for-pound than it would be simply in the smaller fish.

To further exacerbate the issue, medical institutions and nutrition establishments continuously recommend people to take fish oil. But, this also, is not sustainable. In fact, current statistical analyses and estimates indicate that in a "business as usual" world, we will run out of the fish we eat by 2048. That means, no more tuna, no more salmon, no more sushi. We are simply taking the fish out of the oceans faster than they can reproduce. We are simply consuming fish at rates that are too high to be ecologically sustainable.

Therein lies the rub. There are groups that advocate for consuming sustainably-grown fish; either wild or farmed. But the fact of the matter is, it's near impossible to grow or to take a fish in a sustainable way. In a way, nearly every fish humans eat is threatened with extinction.

And this will be felt worst for those who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods, for their food. This will disproportionately affect the poorest coastal countries and the poorest coastal peoples.

Nearly one-fifth of the worlds population roughly 1.2 billion people depend on the oceans as their main source of protein and as their main source of livelihood.

We are on the brink of a Global food-security crisis. We are on the brink of potentially a global-security crisis. For eons people have fought over resources. This may be no different, particularly when it involves hundreds of millions of starving people.

So, what can you do?

1. Never order bluefin tuna. It would be akin to eating a rhinoceros.

2. Look lower down the food chain. If you are going to eat fish, consume the small ones. The anchovies, the herring; the bottom of the food chain.

3. Skip that fish oil. You don't need it, there's no real benefit, and you can get those healthy oils from other foods including algal oils, flaxseed, seeds and nuts.

4. Ask your grocer where they source their fish. Confirm that it is not an endangered species simply renamed for marketing purposes.


To contact Dana: recipe.for.survival@gmail.com
Twitter: recipe4survival
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecipeForSurvival/
PlanetExperts: http://www.planetexperts.com/author/danahunnes/

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Dana Ellis Hunnes: Sustainable Fish Do Not Exist  
Right now, we humans are creating the biggest experiment of all time. We are experimenting with our oceans, with our fisheries, and with our climate.

Read more: Bluefin Tuna, Endangered Species, Sustainable-Fisheries, Farmed Fish, Iucn Red List, Green News

 
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How Big, Really, Is The Zika Outbreak In Florida?  

So far, health officials know of 37 confirmed cases of people who contracted Zika from mosquitoes in Miami. But computer models suggest the underlying outbreak in Miami is bigger — and spreading.

 
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Sunset in south London  

bibigrenouille posted a photo:

 
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Demolition order (2 of 3) by Marco Grassi  

Demolition order (2 of 3) by Marco Grassi

I'm publishing three photos today, with the intent to stoke your attention on what's happening to this place right now. What before was the largest buddhist settlement in the world and a remote place out of the modern society where nuns and monks led a pacific life, is now being demolished by Chinese authorities. First, the access to Larung Gar has been blocked for non-chinese residents and every single tourist trying to visit the place has been stopped by military forces and forced to leave. Then, a 7-point demolition order with the purpose to destroy thousands of monastic dwellings and expel monks and nuns has been issued (you can read the complete order here: http://tchrd.org/china-issues-demolition-order-on-worlds-largest-religious-town-in-tibet ). Long story short, by the end of August 2016 more than 5.000 houses will be demolished. Houses that monks and nuns have payed for, with their own efforts, will be soon washed away, turning these people into homeless who don't have a place to go anymore. Since June 2016, everything has changed in Larung Gar, but almost nobody knows about that. www.marcograssiphotography.com FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM

Marco Grassi: Photos

 
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Liberty Bonds: Bringing Ordinary People into the Energy Transition  
What can start a serious and rapid transition to renewable energy and thus to a reduction of global warming?

Looking back to the early 1980s, I recall that ending the Cold War was widely assumed to be impossible. Several changes broke the logjam, including the needs, vision and daring of Mikhail Gorbachev. On the US side, despite Reagan's early rhetoric as President, we had the "nuclear freeze" movement with a campaign of local initiatives culminating in a monster rally in Central Park , plus the publication of Jonathan Schell's book about nuclear abolition, The Fate of the Earth (all in 1982), a TV movie about the ghastly effects of a nuclear strike on the heartland U.S. ("The Day After," broadcast to a huge audience in 1983), the pioneering of citizen diplomacy (early 1980s), an astonishing summit meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan (in Reykjavik, in1986), and "Soviets Meet Middle America" (part of an extensive exchange program, begun in 1988).
I was able to play a little role when a wealthy San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur and philanthropist invited me to work with him through a new foundation, which was dedicated to the single goal of helping to end the Cold War standoff. When I responded to this offer by initially expressing the conventional view that ending the Cold War would be very difficult, he said, "Craig, I know it's impossible, but it's necessary." My admiration for his initiative led to a pair of books (Citizen Summitry and Securing Our Planet), financial support for some thirty groups, trips to Moscow plus an appearance on All-Soviet TV, and around a hundred appearances in the U.S. by authors of the books.
Along with the street demonstrations, TV, and the rest of the useful hoopla, one thing that was new about the era was a huge program of citizen exchange between this country and the Soviet Union. Watching from the Bay Area, we were impressed both by the Esalen Institute program and by a new venture pioneered by Sharon Tennison. (Her deeply revealing book about this under-reported phenomenon is called The Power of Impossible Ideas.)
Ctizen diplomacy provided what lawyers call a "form of action," a way of doing something. U.S. citizens could travel to the other side, and vice versa. With the help of a Gorbachev appointee who could give exit visas, Tennison brought unofficial Soviets to hundreds of cities in the U.S., where they were hosted by "middle Americans" who brought them to backyard barbecues, schools, houses of worship, small businesses, radio stations. In the same way, ordinary Americans, instead of stopping in Western Europe, could go a little further, land in Moscow, and meet ordinary Russians. Politically, this awakening helped to gave the leaders something to move into. As citizen diplomats used to like to say, "when the people lead, the leaders follow."
What changed was the provision of a form of action for people who would otherwise say, "I know, but what can one person do?"
In facing climate change, rather than denying it or acting as if it's a problem for somebody else, later, can we create forms of action for ordinary people,soon? For example, could there be bonds to support a rapid energy transition, the way we had war bonds (also called liberty bonds) to support the military effort in the 1940s? Such bonds could be bought by ordinary people, and would be used to buy and install renewable energy devices, whether solar panels, wind turbines or other modalities. The bonds would be repaid out of the revenue streams from these devices, and out of secondary purchase of the devices themselves. The goal would be to make these devices easily available, starting immediately after the program began, devices that could be owned, for example, by corporations (which could even be non-profit), municipalities, and homeowners. People who choose to buy a bond will be open to the rapid growth of renewable power and to talking with their neighbors.
This is only an illustration of a form of action that would appeal to ordinary people who, despite the propaganda spread by fossil fuel industries trying to repeat the success of the tobacco lobby, know that they and their children will be better off after a rapid energy transition. The point is, we can't wait for the political elite to act, not to the extent that they are bought off by "campaign contributions" and grotesquely large speaking fees, and misled by the denialism of so-called "think tanks."
In the absence of forms of action for ordinary people, we would witness the spectacle of increasingly less cautious scientific warnings, natural disasters (for example, wildfires, floods), absurd self-congratulation by diplomats as after the Paris meetings (COP21), all followed by panic when it's too late to act. The needs for an energy transition is so much bigger than such issues as abortion, or gross economic inequality, or the other matters that arouse such passion. Of what use would be the "right to life" or an acceptable band of inequality in an unlivable world?
It is hard to explain the lack of action on climate change, which I have elsewhere called the "issue from hell." Is the difficulty because a rapid switch to renewable energy would leave us with less energy than we're accustomed to using, and thus inevitably raise the issue of gross economic inequality? Is it because those who respect the scientific consensus are satisfied to laugh at Trump even when they recognize the shortcomings of the other major candidate? Is it because a serious solution involves not only the changing of transportation, but also the raising of methane-emitting animals for food, and the preserving of rain forests? Is it because of the temporal gap between emission of greenhouse gases and the ultimate effects, leading some observers to predict complacency followed by panic? In any case, global warming is low on surveys of public concerns, after such items as the provision of good jobs.
Whatever role will be played by street demonstrations, to get involved in the invisible war, ordinary people need additional forms of action that can't be easily blocked by the cash of fossil fuel industries. A vigorous program of energy bonds is one possibility. Another is local initiatives, such as the new tribe training.

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