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A Historic Moment for New England: A Marine National Monument in the Atlantic!  


With Marine National Monument designation in the Atlantic, President Obama seals environmental legacy

President Obama is making history today, announcing the designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which will become the only fully protected large marine area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean. Until today, zero miles of the U.S. Atlantic were fully protected from the imminent threats of climate change and increasing industrial activity.

The announcement comes just as the third annual Our Ocean Conference is held in Washington, DC, hosted by the U.S. State Department. Thanks to the president's use of the century-old Antiquities Act, ancient coral formations will no longer face potential ruin from commercial fishing activity, and diverse and pristine habitats will allow an abundance of marine life to thrive.

It is a good day to be a New Englander. So much of our region's history is rooted in the ocean; so much of our economic success depends on a healthy ocean off our coast. Unlike our impressive conservation efforts on land, however, the ocean's critical ecosystems beneath the surface have been overlooked. With the impacts of climate change already upon us, little action has been taken to protect these ecosystems and allow them to build resilience to changing conditions. With President Obama's two recent marine monument designations, that may no longer be the case.

Monument Momentum

Today's announcement comes on the heels of the President's expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii, creating the largest marine preserve in the world. And a week prior, President Obama designated the Katahdin Woods and Waters Monument, safeguarding pristine forested wilderness right in our own backyard in the North Woods of Maine.

The canyons and seamounts marine monument designation is especially timely and important for New England, where the ocean has the compounding threats of climate change, overfishing, and proposed extraction of oil, gas, and other resources. The Gulf of Maine is warming at a rate faster than almost any other ocean area in the world, and this monument will provide areas where biodiversity and marine life can continue to thrive; it will also provide an area for scientists to study climate change and possible strategies to better protect the ocean's living resources against climate impacts.

With the announcement made surrounding the third annual Our Ocean Conference - a gathering of international leaders on ocean issues - President Obama sets a high global and local precedent; he has now protected more acres of lands and waters than any president in U.S. history.

Conservation Law Foundation is proud to have been a leader among a coalition of groups in the campaign to permanently protect the canyons and seamounts, helping to translate compelling science into a broad public advocacy to bring about permanent protection of the resource.

Working with the New England Aquarium, leading marine scientists presented a body of research in March that made it emphatically clear that the New England Canyons and Seamounts, along with the Gulf of Maine's Cashes Ledge, deserve and require permanent protection.



More than 300 scientists and 300,000 supporters signed petitions urging a marine monument in the Atlantic, and a summer poll showed that an incredible 80 percent of New England residents want permanent protection of important ocean areas.

Then, Senator Richard Blumenthal led the entire Connecticut congressional delegation in calling upon President Obama to designate the Canyons and Seamounts as a Marine National Monument, introducing a formal proposal for consideration by the Administration. Regional congressional leaders like Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, Rhode Island Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, and Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo then helped the White House shape the final proposal, including thoughtful efforts by Senator Markey to strike a balance between the conservation imperative and the need to sustain New England's iconic commercial fisheries. The designation just announced serves both, because research has shown that fully protected marine areas are more resilient to the negative effects of climate change.

President Obama's designation of the Atlantic's first marine monument has cemented his legacy on both conservation and climate change, while demonstrating the continued importance of the venerable Antiquities Act, first used by President Theodore Roosevelt, in protecting natural resources at risk.

Celebrate with us: Send a message to President Obama to say "Thank You!" for designating the Coral Canyons and Seamounts as a Marine National Monument!

-- 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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FDA Finds Monsanto's Weed Killer in U.S. Honey  


The Food and Drug Administration, under public pressure to start testing samples of U.S. food for the presence of a pesticide that has been linked to cancer, has some early findings that are not so sweet.

In examining honey samples from various locations in the United States, the FDA has found fresh evidence that residues of the weed killer called glyphosate can be pervasive - found even in a food that is not produced with the use of glyphosate. All of the samples the FDA tested in a recent examination contained glyphosate residues, and some of the honey showed residue levels double the limit allowed in the European Union, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. There is no legal tolerance level for glyphosate in honey in the United States.

Glyphosate, which is the key ingredient in Monsanto Co.'s Roundup herbicide, is the most widely used weed killer in the world, and concerns about glyphosate residues in food spiked after the World Health Organization in 2015 said its cancer experts determined glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. Other international scientists have raised concerns about how heavy use of glyphosate is impacting human health and the environment.

Records obtained from the FDA, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, detail a range of revelations about the federal government's efforts to get a handle on these rising concerns. In addition to honey, the records show government residue experts discussing glyphosate found in soybean and wheat samples, "glyphosate controversies," and the belief that there could be "a lot of violation for glyphosate" residues in U.S. crops.

Even though the FDA annually examines foods for residues of many pesticides, it has skipped testing for glyphosate residues for decades. It was only in February of this year that the agency said it would start some glyphosate residues analysis. That came after many independent researchers started conducting their own testing and found glyphosate in an array of food products, including flour, cereal, and oatmeal. The government and Monsanto have maintained that any glyphosate residues in food would be minimal enough to be safe. But critics say without robust testing, glyphosate levels in food are not known. And they say that even trace amounts may be harmful because they are likely consumed so regularly in many foods.

The residue issues are coming into the spotlight at the same time that the EPA is completing a risk assessment to determine if use of this top-selling herbicide should be limited. The agency has scheduled public meetings on the matter Oct. 18-21 in Washington. The EPA's risk assessment report was initially due out in 2015, but still has not been finalized. The agency now says it will be completed in "spring 2017."

In the records released by the FDA, one internal email describes trouble locating honey that doesn't contain glyphosate: "It is difficult to find blank honey that does not contain residue. I collect about 10 samples of honey in the market and they all contain glyphosate," states an FDA researcher. Even "organic mountain honey" contained low concentrations of glyphosate, the FDA documents show.

According to the FDA records, samples tested by FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem showed residue levels at 107 ppb in samples the FDA associated with Louisiana-based Carmichael's Honey; 22 ppb in honey the FDA linked to Leighton's Orange Blossom Honey in Florida and residues at 41 ppb in samples the FDA associated with Iowa-based Sue Bee Honey, which is marketed by a cooperative of American beekeepers as "pure, all-natural" and "America's Honey." Customers "can be assured that Sue Bee Honey is 100% pure, 100% all-natural and 100% American," the Sioux Honey Association states.

In a Jan. 8, 2016 email Chamkasem pointed out to fellow FDA scientists that the EU tolerance level is 50 ppb and there is no amount of glyphosate allowed at all in honey in the United States. But Chris Sack, an FDA chemist who oversees the agency's pesticide residue testing, responded by reassuring Chamkasem and the others that the glyphosate residues discovered are only "technically a violation."

"The bee farmers are not breaking any laws; rather glyphosate is being introduced by the bees," Sack wrote in response. "While the presence of glyphosate in honey is technically a violation, it is not a safety issue."

Sack said the EPA had been "made aware of the problem" and was expected to set tolerance levels for honey. Once tolerance levels are set by EPA - if they are set high enough - the residues would no longer be a violation. When contacted this week, the EPA said there are currently no pending requests to set tolerance levels for glyphosate in honey. But, the agency also said: "there is no dietary risk concern from exposure to glyphosate residues in honey at this time."

Sioux Honey Vice President Bill Huser said glyphosate is commonly used on farm fields frequented by bees, and the pesticide travels back with the bees to the hives where the honey is produced.

"The industry doesn't have any control over environmental impacts like this," Huser said. Most of Sue Bee's honey comes from bees located near clover and alfalfa in the upper Midwest, he said. Beekeepers located in the South would have honeybees close to cotton and soybean fields. Alfalfa, soybeans and cotton are all genetically engineered to be sprayed directly with glyphosate.

The FDA results are not the first to find glyphosate in honey. Sampling done in early 2015 by the scientific research company Abraxis found glyphosate residues in 41 of 69 honey samples with glyphosate levels between 17 and 163 ppb, with the mean average being 64 ppb.

Bee keepers say they are innocent victims who see their honey products contaminated simply because they might be located within a few miles of farms where glyphosate is used.

"I don't understand how I'm supposed to control the level of glyphosate in my honey when I'm not the one using Roundup," one honey company operator said. "It's all around me. It's unfair."

The FDA did not respond to a question about the extent of its communications with Monsanto regarding residue testing, but the records released show that Monsanto has had at least some interaction with the FDA on this issue. In April of this year, Monsanto's international regulatory affairs manager Amelia Jackson-Gheissari emailed FDA asking to set up a time to talk about "enforcement of residue levels in the USA, particularly glyphosate."

The FDA routinely looks for residues of a number of commonly used pesticides but not glyphosate. The look for glyphosate this year is considered a "special assignment" and came after the agency was criticized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2014 for failing to test for glyphosate.

The FDA has not released formal results of its testing plans or the findings, but Sack made a presentation in June to the California Specialty Crops Council that said the agency was analyzing 300 samples of corn; 300 samples of soy; and 120 samples each of milk and eggs. He described some partial results achieved through April that showed glyphosate levels found in 52 samples of corn and 44 samples of soybeans but not above legally allowed levels. The presentation did not mention honey. The presentation also stated that glyphosate testing at the FDA will be expanded to "routine screening."

The USDA also will start testing for glyphosate, but not until next year, according to information the agency gave to the nonprofit group Beyond Pesticides in a meeting in Washington in January. Documents obtained through FOIA show a plan to test in syrups and oils in 2017.

Soybeans and Wheat

Like the FDA, the USDA has dragged its feet on testing. Only one time, in 2011, has the USDA tested for glyphosate residues despite the fact that the agency does widespread testing for residues of other less-used pesticides. In what the USDA called a "special project" the agency tested 300 soybean samples for glyphosate and found more than 90 percent - 271 of the samples - carried the weed killer residues. The agency said then that further testing for glyphosate was "not a high priority" because glyphosate is considered so safe. It also said that while residues levels in some samples came close to the very high levels of glyphosate "tolerance" established by EPA, they did not exceed those levels.

Both the USDA and the FDA have long said it is too expensive and is unnecessary to test for glyphosate residues. Yet the division within the USDA known as the Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) has been testing wheat for glyphosate residues for years because many foreign buyers have strong concerns about glyphosate residues. GIPSA's testing is part of an "export cargo sampling program," documents obtained from GIPSA show. Those tests showed glyphosate residues detected in more than 40 percent of hundreds of wheat samples examined in fiscal 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The levels vary, the data shows. GIPSA has also been helping FDA access soybeans to test. In a May 2015 email, GIPSA chemist Gary Hinshaw told an FDA food safety official that "it isn't difficult to find soybeans containing glyphosate." In a December 7, 2015 email from FDA chemist Terry Councell to Lauren Robin, also a chemist and an FDA consumer safety officer, Councell said that glyphosate was present even in processed commodities, though "way below tolerance."

The fact that the government is aware of glyphosate residues in food, but has dragged its feet on testing for so long, frustrates many who are concerned about the pesticide.

"There is no sense of urgency around these exposures that we live with day in and day out," said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.

-- 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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Vampire bat  

Full Text:

This is a vampire bat, named for its meals of blood. Scientists are discovering new links between vampire bats and rabies. Rabies will likely reach the Pacific Coast of Peru -- where the virus currently does not occur -- within four years. Researchers reported that the vector-borne virus, which is moving at a rate of 10 miles per year, is likely being carried by infected male vampire bats, and could arrive at the Peruvian coast by June 2020. Additional analyses showed that male bats, which leave their colonies upon reaching maturity, are using Andes Mountain corridors to carry the virus westward.

Image credit: D. Streicker

 
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Flutter  

Kieran Williams Photography posted a photo:

 
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Great British Great Bake off gets new judge  

Madeira cake, Madeira cake, Madeira cake!

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CITES= oxymoron! If a species is ENDANGERED why the trade? https://t.co/Ei7zruLZnN 
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CITES= heaven for trophy hunters&traders. If a species is ENDANGERED you should not touch it! Reform or get lost! https://t.co/iu7aaJ16rb 
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Will this be the decade of ocean protection?  


I am attending the Our Ocean, One Future conference organized by the US State Department under the leadership of US Secretary of State, John Kerry. A number of major announcements are anticipated as States are expected to come to the table with specific ocean initiatives and achievements to share with their peers and the world.

Only a few days ago, some of the world's largest carbon emitters, including the United States China and Brazil, announced they will formally join the Paris Agreement, bringing the crucial climate deal a step closer to commencement. This should trigger far more ambitious action for the climate both nationally and internationally; action that will have a direct impact on the future of our oceans.

According to an IUCN's (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) report on ocean warming published last week at the World Conservation Congress, we have only seen a small fraction of the likely impacts of ocean warming on key marine and coastal organisms and ecosystems. And while the cost of the ocean crisis is being felt by those people in coastal nations and communities who rely on the oceans for food and their livelihoods, the impacts are starting to become evident on a global scale.

Many of us have seen the heartbreaking images of beautiful coral reefs turning white and dying after temperature driven bleaching episodes. What is less well known is that in addition to urgent action on climate change and ocean acidification, protecting coral reefs from other stressors, such as overfishing, destructive fishing and pollution, can have a huge effect on their ability to cope with increasing ocean temperatures.

Creating large scale networks of ocean sanctuaries - "no-take" havens for marine life - increases ocean resilience against the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification, protects vital ecosystems and supports food security by rebuilding fish stocks. Ocean sanctuaries can also help to preserve important carbon sinks.

Greenpeace has supported the scientific community's call for a global network of ocean sanctuaries covering 40% of the oceans. At one time this target was seen as too ambitious, but today more and more scientists and governments are calling for at least 30% of the ocean to be set aside as no-take areas. Just last week, a resolution at the IUCN World Conservation Congress called for governments to protect at least 30% of the world's oceans by 2030. This was adopted by a landslide vote.

The sooner we change the way we treat our Blue Planet the greater chance we have to safeguard key habitats and species, along with the livelihoods of the millions of people who depend on healthy oceans. There is much the governments attending the Our Ocean, One Future conference must do to kick-start this change.

Last week, U.S. President Obama announced the expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea sanctuary around Hawaii, now the largest no-take area in the world. A number of other countries including the UK, France and Palau have taken similar initiatives. However, only 2.1% of the world's oceans are under some form of protection - and far less than 1% of the high seas is protected. This is far below existing global targets, and sensitive and pristine marine environments such as the High Arctic and the Ross Sea are currently left open for business.

We will never achieve the protection levels science tells us are needed if the high seas, which cover two thirds of the ocean, are left unprotected. We will never secure a sustainable future for all if governments and corporations simply continue exploiting the ocean to meet short term economic interests.

"There are no more natural ocean sanctuaries. It is up to us to create them," said Oscar- winning actor, writer and activist Emma Thompson. Her plea was delivered from the Arctic where she joined Greenpeace Canada and the Inuit community of Clyde River in pushing back against destructive seismic blasting (prospecting for oil and gas) in their home, to the nations represented at the plenary. Outside the conference room it reached more than four million people online who have united their voices for ocean protection.

Since 2014 the US has become a more constructive player in the UN negotiations. Today the need to take action is no less urgent and we are asking the US and other leaders currently gathered in Washington DC to show strong leadership in moving 'our ocean', including waters beyond national boundaries, to the top of the global political agenda.


We need bold political action now to avoid tipping points that will cause ecological, economic and humanitarian devastation.

-- 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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Sept. 14, 1966 - View From Gemini XI, 850 Miles Above the Earth  
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Rare fragile tree snail (Samoana fragilis) on dead coconut leaf.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/12-18-september-2016/london-design-festival-preview-london-design-fair/  
London Design Festival preview: London Design Fair  

To coincide with its tenth anniversary, this year Tent London and Super Brands London have been brought together under the new umbrella brand, London Design Fair.

It has also taken on an additional 3,500m² space on the third floor of the Old Truman Brewery in east London, and will continue to run alongside London Design Festival as one of its design destinations.

One of several large trade shows to be found at London Design Festival, what is now London Design Fair will host the work of hundreds of product and furniture designers, with big brands and small outfits displaying side-by-side at the same venue. There are also some special projects and launches to be found…

Installations

Kit Miles and Moooi Carpets have designed the entrance to the foyer of the Old Truman Brewery this year, which will feature a colourful 150m² carpet.

The carpet design is based on the “interplay of shadows and light”, and inspired by both Mediterranean and London architecture, according to the designers.

Tent London

At 10 at Tent, ten now-established designers will show the pieces they originally debuted at Tent London, alongside their latest collections.

“This is a chance to take a moment and appreciate how far we've all come. Both the designers and the fair itself we've grown up together,' says London Design Fair founder and director, Jimmy MacDonald.

For another of this year's most promising new installations, the fair was invited to propose a project by the trade commission of the Trentino region of Italy. The result is Trentino Collaborations, which matches four British designers with Trentino-based manufacturers to create new retail products.

Max Lamb is working with a quarry company to produce granite furniture, Sebastian Cox is using a weaving technique from Trentino, Lucy Kurrein is designing leather upholstery and Giles Miller is making his first foray into natural stone tiles.

Guest country pavilion

This year, India has been selected to host the first annual guest country pavilion. Co-curated by MacDonald, alongside London-based consultancy Tiipoi's founder, Spandana Gopal, This is India is designed to showcase a “renewed but intimate perspective on established and emerging design practices from India today”, according to the event organisers.

On the lineup are textile designers Leah Singh, Injiri and Safomasi, as well as industrial studio and manufacturers, Taama.

Look out for exhibition designer, Kangan Arora's installation too, featuring more than 500 hand-painted terracotta pots stacked into various colonnades and towers.

Other countries

100% Norway will be returning to the London Design Fair for its 13th edition, curated by Max Fraser. It will include projects from a number of Norwegian designers, including Anderssen & Voll, Andreas Bergsaker and Vera & Kyte.

Other confirmed countries showing this year are China, Scotland Craft & Design, Swedish Design Pavilion, Nordic Design Collective, Portugal, Galicia and the Crafts Council of Italy.

London Design Fair takes place in the Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL from 22-25 September. For more information, head here.

The post London Design Festival preview: London Design Fair appeared first on Design Week.

 
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Natural History Museum and Google launch virtual gallery app  

The Natural History Museum has worked with Google to create an online visitor experience allowing people to virtually walk round galleries and see exhibits.

The new online platform is available at g.co/naturalhistory and uses Google indoor street view to enable virtual visitors to “walk through” galleries such as Hintze Hall, the Treasures gallery, Dinosaurs and others.

The project has been brought to life by the Google Cultural institute, a sub-organisation of Google which has so far created online archival resources for more than 1000 museums worldwide.

Nine virtual exhibitions and 300,000 specimens

Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute, says: “Technology can be used not only to make museums' treasures accessible to people around the world, but also to create new experiences for museum-goers.”

The National History Museum platform contains nine virtual exhibitions, and more than 300,000 digital specimens such as the first T-Rex fossil ever found, a narwhal's skull and visuals of extinct mammoths.

High resolution images and 360° video

It also includes an interactive timeline spanning natural history, and more than 80 million living creatures.

The street view uses gigapixel technology which allows for high resolution photography and video, and also incorporates Google Cardboard and YouTube 360 to provide viewers with virtual reality and 360° video experiences.

The platform also has a learning resource for teachers and students: Google Expeditions uses 360° panorama and 3D images to create interactive imagery, with annotations and descriptions for educational use.

The new online exhibition < g.co/naturalhistory > can be viewed for free on the web, and through the new Google Arts & Culture mobile app available on iOS and Android.

The post Natural History Museum and Google launch virtual gallery app appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/12-18-september-2016/looking-forward-seeing-london-design-festival/  
What are you most looking forward to seeing at London Design Festival?  

“The London Design Festival has grown so much in its international importance; it is now one of the most important design events globally.

This year I am happy that my own area, south east London is represented with South East Makers club where I'm particularly looking forward to Ben Chatfield's talk on Saturday 24 September.

Tord Boontje, our neighbour on Charlotte Road and also at home in Brockley has organised Electro Craft. Made up of new and existing work, this show is about the craft of electronics and electronics made as craft.”

---

“19 Greek Street was the highlight of my London Design Festival last year, so I am really looking forward to this year's exhibition. In the midst of what can feel like a tsunami of consumerism, a gallery that champions the role of art and design to create a more ethical and sustainable future is a breath of fresh air.

From 24 September until 1 October 2016, this Soho townhouse will host “a multisensory experience [that] explores our connection with nature, with ourselves and our surroundings.” Events include design, art, books, tea, meditation and talks. I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

---

“LDF is a brilliant goad to exploring London, in particular seeing familiar spaces in a fresh guise. The one project currently on my list is the RIBA Regent Street Windows where artists, designers and visionaries transform the windows of iconic Regent Street shops.

It's not a part of London I'd regularly visit, but the promise of Design Haus Liberty's elegantly dangling light installations at Kate Spade is more than enough to get me there.

Their beads of light have the curious effect of being so sensual and luxurious that the formal architecture of Regent Street now provokes an erotic response!”

The post What are you most looking forward to seeing at London Design Festival? appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/12-18-september-2016/book-designing-life/  
Book: Designing Your Life  

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans introduced the Designing for Life course to Standford University in the US 15 years ago. Those that enrolled were younger students, mid-career professionals and retirees, who were all taught to “think like a designer.”

The basic idea is to encourage people to design a career and a life that is “meaningful, joyful and fulfilling” to help them reduce anxieties and reach clear goals. 

The course has now been translated into a new book…

Choosing Happiness

Designing a career and a life requires not only that you have lots of options and good alternatives; it also requires the ability to make good choices and live into those choices with confidence, which means you accept them and don't second-guess yourself. Regardless of where you've started, what stage of life and career you are in, how great or dire you perceive your circumstances to be, we would bet our last dollar that there is one goal you all have in this life you are designing:

Happiness

Who doesn't want to be happy? We want to be happy, and we want our students to be happy, and we want you to be happy.

In life design, being happy means you choose happiness.

Choosing happiness doesn't mean you should click your heels together three times while wishing to go to your happy place. The secret to happiness in life design isn't making the right choice; it's learning to choose well.

You can do all the work of life design ideating and prototyping and taking action all leading to some really cool alternative life design plans, but this doesn't guarantee you will be happy and get what you want. Maybe you'll end up happy and getting what you want, and maybe you won't. We say “maybe” because being happy and getting what you want are not about future risks and unknowns or whether you picked the right alternatives; it's about how you choose and how you live your choices once they're made.

All of your hard work can be undone by poor choosing. Not so much by making the wrong choice (that's a risk, but, frankly, not a big one, and usually one you can recover from) as by thinking wrongly about your choosing. Adopting a good, healthy, smart life design choosing process is critical to a happy outcome. Many people are using a choosing model that cuts themselves off from their most important insights and actually prevents them from being happy with their choices after they've been made. We see it all the time, and studies agree: many people guarantee an unhappy outcome by how they approach this all-important design step of choosing.

On the flip side, choosing well almost guarantees a happy and life-giving outcome, while setting you up for more options and a better future.

The Life Design Choosing Process

In life design, the choosing process has four steps. First you gather and create some options, then you narrow down your list to your top alternatives, then finally you choose, and then, last but not least, you… agonise over that choice. Agonise over whether you've done the right thing. In fact, we encourage you to spend countless hours, days, months, or even decades agonising.

Just kidding. People can waste years agonising over the choices they've made, but agonising is a time suck. Of course we don't want you to agonise, and that is not the fourth step in the life design choosing process.

The fourth step in the process is to let go of our unnecessary options and move on, embracing our choice fully so that we can get the most from it.

We need to understand each of these choosing steps to appreciate the important difference between good choosing, which results in reliably happy outcomes and more future prospects, and bad choosing, which preconditions us for an unhappy experience.

Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You, by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans is published by Penguin Random House on 15 September and is priced £14.99  

The post Book: Designing Your Life appeared first on Design Week.

 
design  

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/12-18-september-2016/london-design-festival-2016-5-must-see-exhibitions/  
London Design Festival 2016 5 must-see exhibitions  

A Smile in the Mind, by The Partners

Futurecity, an initiative to regenerate urban spaces through art and culture, has curated an exhibition looking at the use of wit in design and branding.

Created by The Partners, and based on an updated version of Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart's celebrated graphic design book, A Smile in the Mind, the exhibition will explore how wit powers creative thinking among some of the world's biggest brands.

It is set to include original works from designers and artists including Noma Bar, Robert Brownjohn and Dominic Wilcox.

A Smile in the Mind will be go on display at The Gallery at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0DT. For more information, head here.

---

25 Years of Editions, by Sebastian Bergne

Industrial designer Sebastian Bergne will be opening the doors of his Battersea studio to the public for this year's festival, showcasing some of his most famous designs from over the last 25 years in the place they were first created.

Highlights include the relaunched ring soap and lamp shade, as well as new products such as the Drop jug and Cubit beer glass.

25 Years of Editions will run Mon-Fri at 2 Ingate Place, SW8 3NS during LDF. For more information, head here.

---

Toilet Break, by Dirty Furniture and The Shit Museum

Independent design magazine, Dirty Furniture and Italy-based The Shit Museum have teamed up to create an event exploring the potential of arguably our most primordial activity: poo.

Toilet Break features two exhibitions, including one called On the Go, featuring a new commission by Lukas Franciszkiewicz of London-Tokyo design studio Takram.

There will also be a series of talks, including one that will discuss whether gender-neutral toilets are the answer.

Toilet Break will take place at the Basement, 1 North Terrace, SW3 2BA from 17-25 September. For more information, head here.

---

Silhouettes and Shadows, by Photofusion and Rockarchive

Photography collective Rockarchive is collaborating with Brixton-based photo studio and gallery, Photofusion in an exhibition dedicated to the memory of one of the area's most famous residents: the late David Bowie.

As a visual celebration of Bowie's life and career, visitors can expect prints and images by music photographers including Ray Stevenson, Fernando Aceves, Mark Mawston and Steve Rapport, some of which are being shown in the UK for the first time.

Silhouettes and Shadows is running From 17-25 September at 17a Electric Lane, SW9 8LA. For more information, head here.

---

Below Stairs, by Sir John Soane's Museum

Coinciding with the Sir John Soane's Museum's seven-year restoration project, this year's festival will see the Regency kitchens open to the public for the first time

In a nod to the original use of the kitchens by Sir John Soane's servants, Below Stairs will showcase new or recent work from the likes of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, Jasper Morrison, Martino Gamper, and Paul Cocksedge in the reinstated space.

Each of the designers has been selected for their association with culinary and domestic design; Barber & Osgerby has designed ranges of tableware, day-to-day objects and a number of dining tables, while Martino Gamper considers himself part-chef, and part-designer.

Below Stairs will run from 13 September 2016 4 March 2017 at the Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP. For more information, head here.

---

Be sure to check out these other exhibitions as well:

Blend, by Raw Colour

Show 13: Bare Minimum, by Viaduct

Designersblock London 2016, by Designersblock

London Design Festival at the V&A Engineering Season

---

All photos courtesy of London Design Festival 2016 supported by British Land.

The London Design Festival runs 17 25 September across various venues in London. For more information, head here.

The post London Design Festival 2016 5 must-see exhibitions appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/12-18-september-2016/just-eat-reveals-rebrand/  
Just Eat reveals colourful rebrand  

Online food delivery service Just Eat has rebranded, with the aim of adding “discovery” and “excitement” to the company.

The relaunch includes a new logo, app and marketing campaign, an updated website, and a new Chatbot function that can be used with Facebook Messenger.

New spectrum of colours

The new visual identity aims to add a “burst of colour” to the brand, says Michael Zur-Szpiro, co-founder at venturethree.

It sees the old version of the logo italicised, and the clicking cursor icon has been removed from the centre of the “A” in “Eat”.

The red colour is retained, but used for the logotype itself, rather than the background.

A spectrum of colours has also been added underneath the logo, which will be used across delivery bikes, the website and the app. Delivery scooters will also carry lit-up delivery boxes.

Chatbot interacts with customers

The new Chatbot aims to “bring food discovery to life by engaging with customers to coach and inspire their food choices”, says Venturethree.

The feature will offer customers a selection of different restaurants they haven't previously ordered from, or help them order their regular choice.

An advertising campaign created by studio Karmarama accompanies the rebrand.

The new branding is being applied to online platforms, packaging, marketing material and to delivery staff apparel.

The new brand will be rolled out globally over the next 12 months.

The post Just Eat reveals colourful rebrand appeared first on Design Week.

 
design  

%feed  
http://movieposteroftheday.tumblr.com/post/150404495247  
German poster for LA NOTTE (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy,...  

German poster for LA NOTTE (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1961)

Artist: Rolf Goetze

Poster source: Kinoart.net

A new restoration of LA NOTTE opens at Film Forum in New York today.

 
culture  

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http://insider.si.edu/2016/09/gorillas-arent-tricked-faux-sugary-fruit-thanks-mutation/  
Gorillas Aren't Tricked By a Faux Sugary Fruit Thanks to a Mutation  

During the course of a year, a western gorilla in the Lossi Forest of Northern Congo stuffs its face with a profusion of fruit, including figs, mulberries, and the sour-sweet monkey fruit. It's a win-win situation for both animal and plant. The gorilla gets the energy from the sugar, and the plant gets its seeds dispersed—either dropped or ahm, dropped.

But there's one fruit you won't catch a western gorilla eating: Pentadiplantra brazzeana, a bean-sized berry that resembles a red plum, nicknamed l'oubli, meaning forgetfulness, because, as the story goes, the fruit tastes so sweet that in seeking it out, children may forget their mothers. So why don't these gorillas ingest what—judging by their sweetness—seem to be sugar-filled energy bombs?

New research suggests an answer: Because of two genetic mutations, both western gorillas and the closely related eastern gorillas don't taste the P. brazzeana fruit as sweet. The research was reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

It has been known since 1994 that the sweet component of P. brazzeana isn't sugar at all, but rather a sweet-tasting protein known as brazzein. It seems the plant has evolved to entice animals to eat its fruit, which packs the sweetness of a much larger, sugary fruit through only a bit of protein, while the gorillas appear to have evolved to not fall for the trick.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, if the gorillas were eating a lot of the fruit but not obtaining the caloric benefit from it, it would give them a disadvantage over time because they wouldn't be getting the nutrition that they need. So by not eating it and eating other things, they're benefiting from [the mutations],” says Kristin Saltonstall, a co-author of the study from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

The researchers, including co-authors Brenda Bradley from George Washington University and her graduate student Elaine Guevara from GWU and Yale University, happened upon these findings while conducting a survey of variation in taste receptors for 57 primates and other animals. By looking at a particular protein called T1R3 found in taste buds and essential for tasting sweetness, the researchers saw that the T1R3 of many old world monkeys and apes is composed of the same amino acids, the protein's building blocks. These animals also are known to taste brazzein as sweet.

But since mice, who don't taste brazzein as sweet, have been shown in a 2004 study by a team at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to have two different amino acids in key spots along the protein, Bradley and her team took note when they saw that western gorillas also have two different amino acids in the same spots. Eastern gorillas, who share ancestry with western gorillas 25-30 million years back, have the same swapped-out amino acids as western gorillas.

“You see these multiple mutations in gorillas, and they just happen to be (I'm using air quotes here) at those sites that would prevent them from being deceived. I think this is really interesting,” Bradley says.

Paulo Guimarães Jr., a coevolution researcher who was not involved in this study,
is fascinated by this “molecular evidence of potential coevolution,” he writes in an email. He has a few misgivings, though. “I missed some experimental manipulation exploring if and how gorillas avoid brazzein-rich fruits. Also, it is not clear to me why the ‘taster' phenotype was fixed in old world monkeys,” he continues.

Another way to think about the latter point is to ask, why haven't other old world monkeys and apes developed mutations in the same amino acids as eastern and western gorillas have? There certainly has been plenty of time—35 million years—for this to have happened.

“That's a question, perhaps, of historical contingency. Mutation is a random process. So it might be that mutations haven't happened,” Bradley says. Or it could be possible, she continues, that these other species get some benefit from the fruit, and so there wouldn't be strong selection for this particular mutation.

To say for sure, though, that the mutations indicate coevolutionary adaptations in response to brazzein's trickery, more work needs to be done on the natural ecology of flowering plants and their interaction with animal seed dispersers.

“We're not proving absolutely that it's an adaptation—it's really hard to prove that any trait is an adaptation that evolved via natural selection. The best we can do at this stage is say that it's a really interesting coincidence and something worth following up on,” Bradley says.

The post Gorillas Aren't Tricked By a Faux Sugary Fruit Thanks to a Mutation appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

 
culture  

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http://borrachas.tumblr.com/post/150410971474  
383  

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gifs  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543706663852/  
Columnar basalt ston  
Columnar basalt stone in the Umpqua National Forest, Oregon (© Jaynes Gallery/Danita Delimont) 2016-09-14 [www.bing.com/search]  
pin-images  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/MqgHMETuzxs/the-new-cancer-detector-nasa-space-technology-used-to-analyze-galaxies.html  
"The New Cancer Detector" --NASA Space Technology Used to Analyze Galaxies  
 
astronomy  

%feed  
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/29571274742/  
Asteroid Redirect Mission Update  

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

Dr. Holdren (left), Administrator Bolden (center) and Dr. Michele Gates (right) discuss the ARM mission during a live NASA TV briefing. Behind them is a mockup of robotic capture module for the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

More info: Asteroid Redirect Mission Update On Sept. 14, 2016, NASA provided an update on the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and how it contributes to the agency's journey to Mars and protection of Earth. The presentation took place in the Robotic Operations Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Dr. John P. Holdren, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and NASA's ARM Program Director, Dr. Michele Gates discussed the latest update regarding the mission. They explained the mission's scientific and technological benefits and how ARM will demonstrate technology for defending Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids. The briefing aired live on NASA TV and the agency's website. For more information about ARM go to www.nasa.gov/arm.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/Debbie Mccallum

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA's mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA's accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency's mission.

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astronomy  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/aig6eH7nhpk/-pluto-is-a-graffiti-artist-spray-paints-its-moon-charon-with-a-reddish-stain.html  
"Pluto is a Graffiti Artist" --Spray-Paints its Moon Charon with a Reddish Stain  
 
astronomy  

%feed  
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/ViTxzXmzbYU/when-the-lights-came-on-in-the-universe-a-pivotal-epoch-in-our-cosmic-history.html  
"When the Lights Came On In the Cosmos" --New Radio Telescope Array Probes a Pivotal Epoch  
 
astronomy  

%feed  
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/36r1YpEbWXU/nasa-auroras-electric-dance-choreographed-by-solar-winds-and-earths-magnetic-field.html  
NASA: Auroras' Electric Dance Created by Solar Winds and Earth's Magnetic Field  
 
astronomy  

%feed  
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/pTrVxnDdbHY/esas-gaia-satellite-unveils-a-stunning-3-d-map-of-our-milky-way-galaxy.html  
ESA's Gaia Satellite --Unveils a Stunning 3-D Map of Our Milky Way Galaxy  
 
astronomy  

%feed  
http://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/29639661406/  
Gaia GDR1 Sky Map  

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

An all-sky view of stars in our Galaxy the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies, based on the first year of observations from ESA's Gaia satellite, from July 2014 to September 2015.
This map shows the density of stars observed by Gaia in each portion of the sky. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer stars are observed.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, with most of its stars residing in a disc about 100 000 light-years across and about 1000 light-years thick. This structure is visible in the sky as the Galactic Plane the brightest portion of this image which runs horizontally and is especially bright at the centre.
Darker regions across the Galactic Plane correspond to dense clouds of interstellar gas and dust that absorb starlight along the line of sight.
Many globular and open clusters groupings of stars held together by their mutual gravity are also sprinkled across the image.

Globular clusters, large assemblies of hundreds of thousands to millions of old stars, are mainly found in the halo of the Milky Way, a roughly spherical structure with a radius of about 100 000 light-years, and so are visible across the image.

Open clusters are smaller assemblies of hundreds to thousands of stars and are found mainly in the Galactic Plane.

The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Other nearby galaxies are also visible, most notably Andromeda (also known as M31), the largest galactic neighbour to the Milky Way, in the lower left of the image. Below Andromeda is its satellite, the Triangulum galaxy (M33).

A number of artefacts are also visible on the image. These curved features and darker stripes are not of astronomical origin but rather reflect Gaia's scanning procedure. As this map is based on observations performed during the mission's first year, the survey is not yet uniform across the sky.

These artefacts will gradually disappear as more data are gathered during the five-year mission.

High resolution versions of the Gaia map, with transparent background, are available to download from: sci.esa.int/gaia/58209

An annotated version of this image is available here.

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Acknowledgement: A. Moitinho & M. Barros (CENTRA University of Lisbon), on behalf of DPAC

 
astronomy  

%feed  
https://medium.com/kickstarter/the-bureau-of-creative-works-835d5221f803?source=rss----b48742a6a63d---4  
The Bureau of Creative Works  
 
technology  

%feed  
https://medium.com/kickstarter/links-we-like-leonard-nimoy-and-the-immortal-legacy-of-mr-spock-9f151e53a652?source=rss----b48742a6a63d---4  
Links We Like: Leonard Nimoy and the Immortal Legacy of Mr. Spock  
 
technology  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmary-ellen-harte%2Fclimate-change-this-week_b_12019194.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Climate Change This Week: Environmental Sin, Clean Jobs Zoom, and More!  
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.




It's Pretty Black and White: Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in this Amazon treehopper and its child, is another reason to preserve carbon storing forests. Source Pinterest

Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon




Credit Mario Tama at Getty Images

OO More Diversity Helps Amazon Forests adapt to climate change a new study indicates - BUT overall adaptation remains low - there is low recovery in most scenarios.





Cutting Down A Rainforest Stops The Rain - and ultimately has caused drought in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and elsewhere. Source Greenpeace

OO Watersheds Lost Up To 22% Of Their Forests In 14 Years -
Here's How It Affects Your Water Supply - Forest degradation has caused:

• Drought in Sao Paulo, Brazil:
• 
  
• Flooding in the Himalayas;
• 
  
• Pollution in Sumatra.

Credit jarO at flickr

Because upstream forests, wetlands and other "natural infrastructure" play critical roles in:

• supplying clean water downstream;
• 
  
• stabilizing soil, reducing erosion;
• 
  
• regulating water flow to mitigate floods and droughts;
• 
  
• purifying water.

OO Burning Paradise: Conglomerate Accused Of Destroying Indonesia's Last Forests - one of Indonesia's few remaining expanses of pristine rainforest is at imminent risk of destruction by Korean-Indonesian conglomerate Korindo, says a new report.







The Beginning of a Beautiful Relationship if climate change doesn't spoil the fungal communication between these two infant trees, imbedded in the furry fungal networks surrounding their roots. Source www.nature.com

OO Clearcutting, Climate Change Can Disrupt
Critical Networks Among Forest Trees - trees use a network of soil fungi to communicate their needs and aid neighboring plants. A network vulnerable to disruption. Among trees, these fungal networks:

• transfer resources;
• 
  
• provide aid when needed;
• 
  
• communicate environmental dangers;
• 
  
• allow searches for kin trees;
• 
  
• enable dying trees to transfer resources to healthy ones.

Soil fungi are underground traders, exploring and harvesting nutrients and water that they trade with plants for sugar or other photosynthetic products.


When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.

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HOT NEWS




OO Hottest Temperature Ever Measured In September For Europe - with a record high of 114.3 F in Spain, and amazingly hot Kuwait recently clocked in at 124.2 F, which would be the second hottest September temperature ever recorded worldwide.


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CONNECTING THE DOTS



@@ Weather, or Climate Change? An excellent short on the intersection of climate change with the weather, from the best experts in the field today.






Follow the Dotted Line ... go to the webpage for the full sequence, a looong timeline scroll. Credit xkcd.com (Randall Munroe)

Love how the comment "[After setting your car on fire], Listen, your car's temperature has changed before." follows my cursor as it explores the timeline. And then comes the very real punchline:




@@ A Timeline of Earth's Average Temperature - love it, love it, LOVE IT! Gives you a great sense of where we've been, and headed, temperature-wise, touched with humor along the way.

If you're a stickler for prehistory and nitty gritty analytical details, you might get miffed, but he's nailed the general picture. No room for the entire scroll here, so check it out!


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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE



@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.

The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!

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SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS




OO Smoke Signals: Teasing Out Adverse Health Effects Of Wildfire Emissions that can include a range of smoky harmful pollutants.


OO New York City: Flooding Of Coast, Caused By Global Warming, Has Already Begun - huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.





OO Connecticut Fishermen Struggle To Hang On - As climate changes, so do fish populations, but not the rules for catching them.


OO Africa: Climate Change Threatens
To Double Malaria Risk From Dams say researchers.

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SPEAKING OUT




Her Land, Her Future

OO North Dakota Oil Pipeline Protesters Stand Their Ground:
'This Is Sacred Land' - it could also endanger community drinking water.

Related Headline:

OO Dakota Pipeline Was Approved By Army Corps
Over Objections Of 3 Fed Agencies including the EPA, which echoed Sioux tribe's concerns.


OO Insurers Call On Top 20 Global Economies
To Phase Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies By 2020 - at the recent G20 meeting. The insurers have $1.2 trillion under management.




OO Pope Francis Says Destroying The Environment Is A Sin - He:

• calls for urgent action to stop climate change;
• 
  
• proposes that caring for the environment be added to traditional Christian works of mercy.*

*such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick.


Related Headline:

OO Pope Urges Christians To Save Planet From 'Debris, Desolation And Filth' with concerted action against environmental degradation and climate change. Consumerism and financial greed, he said, were threatening the planet. How about too many people?


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GOOD IDEAS



Source www.mthome.com

OO How Three-Day Weekends Could Help To Save The World By:

• Reducing levels of energy consumption,
• 
  
• Due to commuting and workplace maintenance.
• 
  
• This has been demonstrated in Utah.

• It also improves mental and physical health,
• 
  
• And is demonstrated to improve productivity.

OO Baltimore, MD: Green Jobs Helping Ex-Cons Turn Over A New Leaf - the city is quietly hiring formerly incarcerated men to work on environmental restoration projects.







OO Experts Call For A Unified National Conservation Network say agency scientists and conservation leaders.


OO Nature Conservancy Touts Conserving Ecosystems As Best Climate Change Solution says the director of carbon finance with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

BUT...

OO Protected Areas - Effective Conservation Tools, But Useless Against Rising Temperatures - while great for curbing deforestation and preserving Earth's biodiversity, how much will heating limit their effectiveness?







Green Grow The Drones - a new aid to reforestation. Credit DroneSeed

OO Tree-Planting Robots Could Save Northwest Forests - an Oregon startup is developing drones for planting, caretaking and monitoring trees on a large scale.





OO After The Flood: Feds Should Support Mitigation, Not Rebuilding - the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, insuring 5+ million homes, is $23 billion in debt after a string of natural disasters this century. Analysts say it is time to shift from rebuilding to mitigating risk.


OO Maryland Fines Coal Power Plants $1 Million For Polluting Rivers - one of the largest penalties state environmental regulators have levied in years.


OO Australia: Big Sydney Project Aims To Recycle More Water Than It Uses - As rainfall drops, the Australian government is releasing billions of dollars to help fund building the water infrastructure required.


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NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS




OO Montana: Fish Deaths In Yellowstone River Tied To Warming Waters - as parasite that is killing tens of thousands of fish is blamed on low stream flow and warming waters, both impacts of climate change in the West.


OO Melting Antarctic Sea Ice
Might Speed Sea Level Rise, Disrupt Fisheries as the melt water decreases saltiness, which can create currents that speed up melt and suppress the deep sea mixing vital to supplying nutrients to important ecosystems and fisheries.





Feeling Feverish Yet? Ticks can carry some pretty serious diseases.

OO Alaska: Exotic Ticks Appear To Be Establishing Themselves

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GOOD CLEAN NEWS




Solar Is Powering a Job Revolution - creating 1 out of every 80 US jobs since the Great Recession. Photo Source www.solsystems.com

OO US Clean Energy Jobs Are Exploding:
Why Don't Mainstream Reporters Know? Some are still pushing a false narrative on this. For the record:

• solar industry creates 1 out of every 80 new US jobs since 2008;
• 
  
• most of these new, blue collar, solar jobs pay an average21/hr;

The solar industry has:

• hired more veterans than anyone else;
• 
  
• retrained coal workers;
• 
  
• provided a soft landing for unemployed oil and gas workers;
• 
  
• almost all are trained within 6 months, because their skills are transferrable.

• Wind technician is the fastest growing US job;
• 
  
• Solar & wind manufacturing arms employ 10,000s of US jobs - and are expanding rapidly.

Credit Dennis Schroeder, NREL

OO Iowa: New $3.6 Billion Project Could Be One Of Many 'Mega' Wind Orders - MidAmerican Energy will leverage federal incentives to build 2 gigawatts of wind power by 2019. Others may follow suit.



OO Which State Is A Big Renewable Energy Pioneer? Texas - it has added more wind-based capacity than any other, as part of an aggressive energy diversification that seeks to skirt ideology.





Credit Tom Tole at the Washington Post

OO We've Only Just Begun: More Climate Fights Are Coming - the Paris climate agreement is likely to start this year, but is clearly inadequate. What else is cooking? Takeaways:


Fossil fuel subsidies:

• Cost global economy160 Million to5+ Trillion, depending on definition;
• 
  
• The "inefficient" ones will be eliminated by the top 7 global economies by 2025;
• 
  
• Maybe not the top 20 economies, but several African countries and India have stopped federal subsidies.

Source www.huffingtonpost.com

The US election:

• Tougher CO2 targets need a Clinton win;
• 
  
• This could spur other countries to further action.

There's also some movement to:

• Regulate aviation emissions;
• 
  
• Cut back on super climate changing HFC coolant emissions;
• 
  
• Increase the flow of wealth from rich to poorer nations.

• A funded International Solar Alliance to spread solar power now exists.
• 
  
• A High Level Panel on Water is working to assure universal access to clean water.

OO 3,500+ UK Churches Now Put Their Faith In Green Energy - rejecting fossil fuels and embracing the power of green energy.


OO The Eastern US Could Get A Third Of Its Power From Renewables Within 10 Years Theoretically. The political, social, and institutional changes are more difficult than the technological challenge.


OO The Eastern US Grid Can Handle A 30% Penetration Of Wind, Solar Power




OO France: Energy Giant Leads $20 Million Investment
In Off-Grid Solar Startup for expansion in Africa. Energy giants are diversifying into distributed energy in developing markets.


OO Sweden Diverts 99 % Of Its Waste From Landfills - already leading environmentally with its electric roads and 100% fossil fuel-free by 2050 plan, it also:

• recycles much of its waste;
• 
  
• generates electricity from about 50% of the country's garbage.

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FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES



Source www.oilandgasjobsadvice.com

Coming Up Dry?

OO Oil Discoveries At 70-Year Low Signal Supply Shortfall Ahead - with 2015 explorers discovering only 10% as much oil as they have annually on average since 1960. This year, they'll probably find even less.

Daily Climate Editor Pete Myers: "Cheap fossil fuels have driven GDP growth for two centuries. The trend reported here does not bode well for continued growth."


OO Biofuels Could Be Bad For Bees research says, as more and more fields of corn and soybean are planted, which beekeepers prefer to avoid.


OO As Coal Companies Go Bankrupt, Who Will Pay To Clean Up Their Old Mines?
Good question - likely taxpayers, in many cases.


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CLIMATE LEADERSHIP




The Clean Energy President Credit AP photo, Julie Jacobson

OO Obama Legacy:
Quiet But Big Changes In Energy, Pollution - with a quiet US transformation in how and where it gets its energy during Barack Obama's presidency, slicing the nation's output of polluting gases that are warming Earth.


OO Climate Change Looms Large In Obama's Final Trip To Asia


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ELECTION YEAR:




If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.

OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.

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If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.




@@ How Parents Can Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.



They can go here to find locations:




And there are many more actions you can do, right here.

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SOLAR KEEPS SURFING



OO US Vets Find A Home In The Solar Industry which employs them at above average rates, and are expected to grow in the overall solar workforce.




Check it out here, right now!

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WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS




Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, Sept 14, 2016

How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California. Meanwhile, Spetember heat records were broken in Europe, and the Mideast got very hot.

Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.


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There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.

To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you'd like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It's our way of letting Congress know there's a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.

-- 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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Big Soda Again Prioritizes Profits Over Your Health  


Big Soda is playing games with your health. Again.

Three months after public health organizations -- including mine, the American Heart Association -- and advocates for health and early childhood development applauded the Philadelphia City Council for approving a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on regular and diet soda drinks, the beverage industry fought back Wednesday with a lawsuit to try blocking the law from taking effect.

The industry's motives aren't steeped in concern about the law. Or medicine. It's about business, of course, and their business is selling sugary drinks, the very item many nutritionists point to first when talking about problems with the typical American diet and this nation's growing obesity epidemic.

This lawsuit was somewhat expected. After all, Big Soda spent $10 million trying to defeat the vote, and dangled another $10 million as a gift to fund Philadelphia's pre-K program for an entire year merely to try delaying the vote on this measure. Since those strategies failed, the industry is looking for another way to delay or prevent the Jan. 1 enactment of the tax.

In the 1990s, the AHA played a strong role in fighting Big Tobacco. So we have an idea of what we're up against. Lawsuits are just part of the drill. This won't be the last, but it is significant because it is the first in this new grassroots approach to controlling our nation's consumption of sugary beverages.

Please understand, the AHA and fellow advocates supporting this tax are not trying to eliminate sugary drinks. Unlike the fight against tobacco, where we continue to recommend zero tolerance, our science shows that some sugary drinks are OK. That science also shows that too many sugary drinks are a problem, and we know that many Americans consume too many sugary drinks. While these beverages are far from the only cause of our obesity epidemic, they are a strong part of the problem. And we know that Big Soda markets its products disproportionately to kids and communities of greatest need. The average child drinks their age in sugary beverages each week.

Just last month, the AHA released its first-ever scientific statement on how much added sugars belong in the diets of anyone 18 or younger. (The answer: 25 grams or less per day; the current average among that age group is 75 grams per day.) In discussing the statement with one of its co-authors -- Dr. Rachel K. Johnson, a former chair of the AHA's Nutrition Committee and a professor of nutrition and pediatrics at the University of Vermont in Burlington -- I was struck by her advice on the best way parents can help get their kids' sugar consumption under control.

"Start with beverages!" she said. "That is No. 1. They are the No. 1 source of added sugars in the diets of children -- and adults!"

In November 2014, Berkeley, California, became the first U.S. city to pass a sugary beverage tax. Voters overwhelmingly supported it despite the $2.4 million Big Soda spent trying to take it down.

The Berkeley breakthrough is great because it's a win-win. The tax offers a reason for people to buy water or other, less-sweet drinks. And if someone does buy a soda and pay the tax, that money goes to good use. As of March, it's generated $1.5 million for Berkeley's health and nutrition programs, including one that plants fruits and vegetables at schools. (In Philadelphia, the money will support expanding pre-K, community schools and renovations for parks, recreation centers and libraries.)

Chicago also taxes retail soft drink sales, although it's rolled into the sales tax and thus handled differently from Berkeley and the Philadelphia proposal as that money doesn't boomerang back to funding health initiatives.

The American Beverage Association -- the trade group representing companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper -- also has helped defeat so-called "soda tax" proposals in more than 30 states.

Other countries are moving more aggressively to curb this problem.

Mexico already has a successful tax on sugary beverages and the United Kingdom will implement one in 2018.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., we're patching together a quilt that stretches from coast to coast. And just when it looked like we were building a border in the East to complement our success in the West, in comes the news of this lawsuit.

I'm confident this will be a bump in the road, one that may even be smoothed over in time to keep the Jan. 1 launch. At the same time, we're also supporting campaigns that are being waged in California, Colorado, Alabama and Illinois.

In every case, it comes down to this. What do you value more: The health of our families and our communities, or beverage industry profits?

-- 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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Megafauna (Mini Vers  
Megafauna (Mini Version) by SameerPrehistoric... on @deviantART  
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Chalcid wasp (Aprost  

Chalcid wasp (Aprostocetus sp.) collected in Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve, Quebec, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG12652-A10; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=CNMIH1932-14 BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACW3983)

 
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thewomb: MIREIA DONAT MELÚS  

thewomb:

MIREIA DONAT MELÚS

 
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ai weiwei to wrap the façade of florence's palazzo strozzi in rubber life boats  

the large orange life rafts, anchored to the palace's windows, aim to draw attention to the fate of refugees who risk their lives daily.

The post ai weiwei to wrap the façade of florence's palazzo strozzi in rubber life boats appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2016/sep/14/european-space-agency-release-highly-detailed-map-of-milky-way-video-report  
European Space Agency release highly detailed map of Milky Way  video report  

The European Space Agency [ESA] have released the most detailed map of the Milky Way galaxy to date, based on the first delivery of data from the ESA's Gaia probe, which was launched in 2013. The map represents 1% of the Milky Way's stars, but this map is at least 20 times more complete than any previous representations

• Astronomers unveil most detailed map of the Milky Way to date
  

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/14/astronomers-milky-way  
Astronomers unveil most detailed map of the Milky Way to date  

The map, based on observations from the European Space Agency's Gaia probe, will transform what we know about the galaxy, say scientists

Astronomers have unveiled the most detailed map to date of the Milky Way, after charting the positions of more than 1bn stars with stunning precision.

The map, based on observations from the European Space Agency's Gaia probe, still only represents about 1% of the Milky Way's stars, but is already 20 times more complete than any previous observations of the night sky.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160914085800.htm  
Astronomers shed light on different galaxy types  
Scientists have taken a critical step towards understanding why different types of galaxies exist throughout the Universe. The research, made possible by cutting-edge instrumentation, means that astronomers can now classify galaxies according to their physical properties rather than human interpretation of a galaxy's appearance.  
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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/09/15/piracy-in-the-uk-could-earn-you-a-decade-in-jail/  
Piracy in the UK could earn you a decade in jail  

In an effort to stamp out online piracy, the United Kingdom could soon impose a maximum 10 year sentence for file sharers. The Digital Economy bill, now on its second reading in Parliament and inching ever closer to becoming law, seeks to jail online pirates with sentences that would normally be reserved for hardened criminals. Due to UK copyright law ‘only' allowing two year custodial sentences under current guidelines, anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) have often chosen to seek harsher sentences intended for those committing fraud, rather than the appropriate charge of copyright infringement. Under the new…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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http://thenextweb.com/security/2016/09/15/fbi-director-says-cover-webcams-tape/  
FBI director says we should all cover our webcams with tape  

It sounds next-level paranoid, but covering your webcam with tape might not be a bad idea. Mark Zuckerberg does it. FBI Director James Comey does too. In fact, he came out today in defense of previous statements about using tape to cover his devices. “Do you still have a piece of tape over your cameras at home?”an interviewer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies conference asked FBI Director James Comey earlier today. Comey responded: “Heck yeah, heck yeah. And also, I get mocked for a lot of things… much mocked for that… but I hope people lock their cars […] lock…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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Month-old Windows 10 anniversary update won't reach everyone until November  

More than a month after August 2, my media center still doesn't have the Windows 10 anniversary update. I'm not alone, and it's not a bug. Microsoft says the release may not roll out to everyone until November. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley noticed a little bit of text, hidden in the bottom of an email blast, that admits this extremely slow rollout is intentional. The Anniversary Update will download and install via Windows Update. The download is automatically available to you. It will begin rolling out on 2 August 2016 and may take up to 3 months to reach all…

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http://thenextweb.com/security/2016/09/14/united-kingdom-getting-great-british-firewall/  
The United Kingdom could be getting its own ‘Great British Firewall'  

The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) is exploring the creation of a national internet filter, according to Ciaran Martin, the head of Britain's newly-formed cybersecurity agency. While the plan is to use the filter to weed out malicious websites and software, for some citizens the mere existence of a government-controlled firewall raises serious questions. According to Martin: Because we know automated defenses work on the Internet. It's possible to filter unwanted content or spam. It's possible to filter offensive content. It's possible to block malicious content. So why aren't we doing more of it? At its surface, a firewall to block internet bad guys…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/09/14/the-first-phone-to-use-googles-tango-ar-technology-just-got-delayed/  
The first phone to use Google's ‘Tango' AR technology just got delayed  

If you were waiting for Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro, the first phone to include Google's revolutionary augmented reality platform ‘Tango,' you'll just have to keep waiting. The official launch page, which once said “coming this summer” has since changed to “fall,” leaving augmented reality enthusiasts to shed virtual tears. TNW reported the launch of the Project Tango/Lenovo partnership at CES and were in awe of the early beta. At Google I/O (part two), we saw another demo of just how far it had come. Both instances left us with the feeling that this was a legitimate game-changer in the AR space. Tango…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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Facebook and Twitter join forces to stop the spread of bogus news  

Facebook and Twitter have joined likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and others to improve the quality of information on social media. The group hopes to target fake news and misinformation, although it stops short of saying what steps it would take or how it'd react once it's found. First Draft Coalition, an Alphabet-backed venture, said it'd create a voluntary code of practice, attempt to increase news literacy among social media users and launch a platform intended to verify questionable sources of information. For both Facebook and Twitter, bogus news has been a growing problem. Just last month, a Facebook…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/14/north-of-england-has-seven-of-britains-top-10-endangered-buildings  
North of England has seven of Britain's top 10 endangered buildings  

Victorian Society says 2016 list, featuring no structures in London or south-east, may reflect ‘vastly different financial climate'

From the former home of explorer Gertrude Bell to a landmark of the Grimsby skyline, seven of Britain's 10 most endangered historic buildings are in the north of England.

The annual list of once-celebrated structures, compiled by the Victorian Society, is dominated by “at-risk” buildings in the north and for the first time features none in London or the south-east.

Related: Lost in the Great Fire: which London buildings disappeared in the 1666 blaze?

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2016/sep/14/soak-steam-dream-sauna-london-design-festival  
Sweatbox heaven: welcome to the sauna and steam of your dreams  

From steamrooms suspended under remote Czech bridges to the Swedish robot sauna straight out of Star Wars, the spa experience is getting a guerilla makeover

An awkward grey creature stands on the edge of Frihamnen harbour in Gothenburg. It looks like a homemade robot elephant, cobbled together from industrial remains strewn around the dock. Clad in rusty sheets of corrugated steel, its truncated body stands on gawky little legs, lurching this way and that with cartoonish wonkiness.

“We wanted people to be curious about what this thing could be,” says Francesco Apuzzo of Raumlabor, the Berlin-based architectural collective behind this mysterious structure. It could be the chubby cousin of one of the laser-wielding AT-AT killing machines from Star Wars, but it has a more benign purpose. “People have to climb up the steps and only then do they discover the soft wooden interior of the sauna within.”

Related: Carnival of design

We're not sauna obsessives … but with everyone stripped of clothing, the sauna is ultimately a democratic space

Related: The naked truth about saunas | Andy Symington

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Steve Bell on David Cameron's intervention in Libya cartoon  
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The Heights of Charm  
Needing to remove Vice President Henry Wallace from the Democrats' 1944 election ticket, President Roosevelt sent him on one of those foreign junkets contrived to refresh sagging egos in the warming balm of publicity. This one took Wallace to China, Mongolia, and Siberia. At his departure, the president said, “I think you ought to see a lot of Siberia.”  
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Steve Bell's If ... on Watson-D2, miracle worker  
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Untitled by Amelie Satzger  

Untitled by Amelie Satzger

Amelie Satzger: Photos

 
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John Scanlon is Secretary-General oWildlife,Endangered Species, trafficking, Extinctf the (CITES). https://t.co/t9aRxXsabj 
https://t.co/t9aRxXsabj 

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St Pauls at sunset  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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Alexandra Palace  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fearth%2Fstory%2F20160908-the-country-with-too-many-elephants&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
The One Country With Too Many Elephants  
While Africa as a continent struggles to protect the elephant species from extinct ion, Malawi has too many.  
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It's ExxonMobil And The GOP Who Are 'Chilling' Scientific Inquiry  


Jesse Bragg, Media Director for Corporate Accountability International, at an ExxonKnew campaign press conference at the Capitol today


As the campaign to hold ExxonMobil accountable for hiding what they knew about climate change gains momentum, Exxon's defenders have fallen back on a bizarre strategy to try and protect the company: claiming that environmental groups and attorneys general are colluding to "silence" scientists and "chill" scientific inquiry.

"These investigations have had a chilling effect," said Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith, the Chair of the House Science Committee, who hosted a hearing on the Exxon issue this afternoon in Washington. Other Republicans on the committee echoed him. "If government was put in charge of science, we'd still think the Earth was flat," said one member. "Scientists are being bullied," thundered another.

This Republican committee's eagerness to defend science was rather ironic considering the committee's own track record. The committee is perhaps best known not for its support for science (Republicans consistently vote to defund federal science agencies), but for subpoenaing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for, wait for it, conducting climate science. "The hypocrisy from the majority members defending scientific freedom given their previous actions towards NOAA+Tom Karl is breathtaking," tweeted Gavin Schmidt, himself a scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Space Institute at Columbia Institute.

The hypocrisy from the majority members defending scientific freedom given their previous actions towards NOAA+Tom Karl is breathtaking

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) September 14, 2016

The only science that took place at the committee hearing this afternoon came courtesy of Democratic Representative Bill Foster, the only Member of Congress with a PhD in science, who lamented Chairman Smith's abuse of his position to subpoena various officials and organizations. "At some point I'd like to return to science on this committee," said Foster. He then proceeded to grill one of the Republican's "expert" witnesses, Professor Ronald Rotunda, about some outlandish statements Rotunda had made about how the melting of the entire Greenland ice sheet wouldn't cause sea levels to rise. "This hearing is an example of just another rearguard action by a group of people who deny climate change," concluded Foster, shaking his head.

The claim that the groups behind the #ExxonKnew campaign are silencing or chilling scientific inquiry is especially strange because of our shared focus on, well, science. 350.org is named after the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million -- that's about as scientifically wonky as it gets. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), another group supposedly having a chilling effect, is, as the name suggests, largely made of scientists. UCS released a letter earlier this week with over 2,000 scientists weighing in on their behalf to say it was the committee, not environmental groups, that was chilling scientific inquiry. Greenpeace, another subpoenaed group, is best known for its bold campaigns and actions, but it too has a deep track record of supporting scientific inquiry, often transporting scientists up to the Arctic or other remote areas to conduct research.


350.org Executive Director May Boeve

Our complaint with Exxon has never had anything to do with the science they did or are doing. In fact, we'd like to see them do more climate science. Environmentalists have long urged the fossil fuel industry to do a more thorough study of the impact of their business on the planet. We fully support any scientific research into climate change, renewable energy, or zero carbon fuels. Many have made this case to Exxon directly. At the company's annual shareholder meeting this year, advocates continued to lobby for the company to do a full climate assessment of its business and appoint a climate expert to its board. Exxon shot down both proposals. We also applaud the scientists at ExxonMobil, who as early as the 1970s discovered that their product causes global warming.

Our problem isn't with the science, our problem is with the coverup. When Exxon executives heard from their scientists about climate change, instead of warning the public, or urging Congress to fund more research into solutions to the crisis, Exxon spent millions on a vast misinformation campaign. They donated millions more to climate denying politicians, including many of the Republicans at the commitee hearing today (Rep. Smith, the Chairman, has received over $24,000 from Exxon over his career, for example). Instead of supporting science, Exxon funded front groups who published false studies about global warming, lambasted scientists on television, and went after the reputations and careers of individual scientists. Watch the documentary Merchants of Doubt and you'll see PR hacks like Marc Morano, a former Republican politico aid, laugh gleefully about his own personal track record of intimidating scientists. As he says in the preview below, "I'm not a scientist...but I play one on TV occasionally. Ok, hell, more than occasionally."



If Representative Smith is so worried about the chilling of scientific inquiry in this country, he should be subpoenaing the executives over at ExxonMobil to see what role they had in their company's own scientific coverup. He could even go a step further and subpoena the records of his own committee--we'd like to know, for example, what conversations his staff have had with Exxon or any industry front groups. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said at a press conference before the hearing this afternoon, the public deserves to know "how far the hand of the fossil fuel industry is into the glove of this committee."


Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Today's hearing was designed to distract the public from the real issue at hand: whether Exxon lied about their knowledge that their product caused climate change. Instead, it just reaffirmed why this case is so important. As 350.org's Executive Director May Boeve said at this morning's press conference, "This hearing is Exhibit A in the case study of Big Oil's stranglehold on Congress."

Our hope is that the ExxonKnew campaign can play some role in breaking that stranglehold, because if we don't, Congress and its committees will continue to be run by politicians who deny the basic facts of climate change, let alone are supporting scientific research to help solve it. Now that is a chilling thought.

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Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Brings Pipeline Protest To The White House  
WASHINGTON ― Just hours after 22 more people were arrested for protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota on Tuesday, the Standing Rock S...

Read more: Bernie Sanders, Climate Change, Obama, Environment, Native Americans, Activism, Oil and Gas, Green Energy, Dakota Access Pipeline, Politics News

 
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This Land Is Your Land  

In September, TU will be feeding you a heavy dose of stories about public lands. From the Golden Trout wilderness in California to the Green Mountains of Vermont, public lands are hugely important to wild and native fish. In most Western states, public lands comprise more than 70 percent of the available habitat for trout, and virtually all of the strongholds for native trout.  

My father is the sixth generation of our family to grow up in Newark, NJ. Growing up, the closest public land we had was a local county park called Tuers, where I shot countless hours of hoop. Except for visiting family in Ireland, I didn't leave the Garden State until college in Vermont, and there discovered the Green Mountain National Forest. I spent many hours in that forest catching native brook trout. 

After graduation I took a long, slow trip across the country with my dog, Gus, and a big box filled with Dinty Moore beef stew. Gus and I walked the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. We hiked the Smokies in Tennessee. We took pictures of fields of Black-eyed Susans in the Shenandoah. Swam in hot springs in Idaho and clamored over red rocks in Utah. Camped among the aspen in Colorado. Hiked old growth forests in Oregon, marveled at the coastal redwoods of California.

All those places share one thing. They are public lands that belong to us all. For now. In recent years, more than 50 short-sighted bills have been introduced in state legislatures to transfer, sell, or otherwise take away your birthright—the public lands that are managed for us by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Not to be outdone, Congress has entertained similar proposals. Presidential candidates have campaigned on the issue. As much as we'd all like to think “that can't happen,” the fact is that there are well-heeled special interests dedicated to seeing that it does.

Those who seek this so called “transfer”—county supremacists, sagebrush rebels and their contemporary cicadian progeny—neglect an important fact. At no time did the Western federally managed public lands belong to the states. They were either ceded to the Union by Eastern states or acquired through treaty, conquest or purchase by the federal government acting on behalf of the citizens of the United States.

Public lands are the best idea America ever had. For those of us who want to fish and hunt, camp and hike without having to beg or buy permission, they are a godsend. The ham-handed dialogue about transferring or divesting public lands that drives the debate today is unhelpful and unproductive. To suggest that our land legacy—a legacy that a kid from New Jersey shares with a rancher in New Mexico—should be transferred or sold for a pittance is extreme and offensive.

For the next 30 days, tune into TU for a steady diet of stores about why public lands matter. Share the stories, video, and photos with your friends. Raise your voice and let your member of Congress and elected leaders in your state know that the public lands are a birthright that belongs to all of us, and we are not willing sellers.

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17th meeting of COP to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). https://t.co/TqJSRxIxw9 https://t.co/0iqNEfwXF1 
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Why Humans Are Hard-Wired For Curiosity  
By Vivian Hemmelder and Tommy Blanchard, Harvard University

This post was originally published on Footnote, a website that brings academic research and ideas to a broader audience.

Humans are deeply curious beings. Our lives, economy, and society are shaped so strongly by a drive to obtain information that we are sometimes called informavores: creatures that search for and digest information, just like carnivores hunt and eat meat.¹ What is it that drives our hunger for information?

From an evolutionary perspective, there is a clear reason why animals would seek out information: it can be vital to their survival and reproduction. A bird that spent its whole life eating berries from a single bush and never explored its environment could be missing out on a much better food source nearby. Thus it is not surprising that exploration is common in the animal world. For example, monkeys will push a button at high rates for a chance to peek out of the window,² and roundworms do not crawl to a food source directly, but rather circle towards it in a way that gives them the most information about their environment.³

What drives animals' information-seeking behaviors? One possibility is that each individual animal learns over the course of its life that a greater knowledge of its environment leads to rewards like food or other essential resources. However, while this is something we can imagine humans or monkeys learning, it is probably beyond the capacity of roundworms. Furthermore, we see curiosity-driven behaviors in very young animals, before they have had enough experience to learn the association between knowledge and rewards. For example, human newborns look at new visual scenes for much longer than at known visual scenes.⁴

Another possibility is that evolutionary pressures have made information intrinsically rewarding. The reason so-called "primary rewards" like food and sex are pleasurable is because animals that enjoy eating and reproducing are more likely to survive and produce offspring.^(a) Evolution has therefore built up a reward system in the brain that drives behaviors that help animals acquire essential resources. Could this same reward system be prompting information-seeking behavior by making animals find new information intrinsically rewarding?

If learning is intrinsically rewarding, the brain should respond to new information in a way similar to how it responds to primary rewards like food and sex. Indeed, neuroimaging studies show that when people are curious about the answers to trivia questions or watch a blurry picture become clear, reward-related structures in their brains are activated.⁵ However, since the resolution of neuroimaging is still quite rough, these studies cannot show whether the reward-related structures in the brain actually respond in the same way to information as they do to primary rewards like food. For this we need to study the behavior of single neurons.

Neuroscientist Ethan Bromberg-Martin and his colleague Okihide Hikosaka were the first to find signatures of reward responses to information within single neurons.6 They designed a task in which monkeys saw two pictures and had to choose one. Then, after a short delay, the monkeys would receive either a large or a small reward. If the monkey chose one of the pictures (the informative picture), it would get a cue that indicated whether the delay would be followed by a small or large reward. If it chose the other picture (the uninformative picture), it would see a cue that gave no information about the upcoming reward. Even though the choice of picture did not affect the size of the reward, the monkeys almost always chose the informative picture, presumably because they were curious and found it rewarding to get a hint about the outcome.

While the monkeys performed this task, Bromberg-Martin recorded activity in their dopamine neurons, which play a crucial role in primary reward processing and in motivating behavior. By increasing their activity in the face of both rewards and cues that predict rewards, dopamine neurons flag rewarding situations and experiences for the rest of the brain. Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka looked at how the monkeys' dopamine neurons responded to the pictures and found that activity increased in response to the informative picture and decreased in response to the uninformative picture. The reward-predicting dopamine neurons responded to information in the same way they respond to other primary rewards like food and sex.

Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka's study indicates that a core component of the brain's reward processing system can motivate animals to seek out information as well as primary rewards. Since both food and information can drive behavior that promotes survival, it makes sense that somewhere in the brain they are processed similarly. However, we would also expect that they be represented differently in other parts of the brain. A good book and a candy bar are both rewarding, but in distinct ways - and if you're hungry, you are not going to be satisfied by reading the latest bestseller.

With this distinction in mind, neuroscientist Tommy Blanchard teamed up with Bromberg-Martin and colleague Ben Hayden to investigate how information and primary rewards are represented in the orbital frontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in many complex cognitive behaviors, including evaluating rewards.⁷ By again recording the monkeys, he found that neurons in this area responded to both information and primary rewards, but, unlike dopamine neurons, did not treat these two variables in the same way. For example, an individual neuron in the orbital frontal cortex might increase its activity in response to a primary reward, but decrease its activity in response to information (or vice versa).

Blanchard's research indicates that primary rewards and information are represented differently in the orbital frontal cortex, in contrast to the midbrain (the home of dopamine neurons), where they are integrated into a single representation. Processing these rewards differently in the more advanced part of the brain may allow for behavioral flexibility - the ability to seek out information in some contexts, but focus on primary rewards in other situations.^(b)

What this body of research demonstrates is that primates really are informavores - information stimulates our brains the same way food and sex do. Yet there are also parts of our brains that differentiate between information and other rewards, allowing for behavioral flexibility and complex decision making.

Many questions still remain about humanity's innate curiosity. For example, how do reward circuits in different parts of the brain interact with each other? Why are some types of information more interesting to us than others, and why are different people interested in such different things? Let's hope our curiosity will continue to lead us to a further understanding of curiosity itself!

Sidenotes

• 
  
• (a) Primary rewards are resources or activities that are necessary for the survival of a species. Without a reward system encouraging it to seek out food, water, and sex, for example, a species would go extinct. Secondary rewards are those that can indirectly result in primary rewards, money being a good example.
• 
  

 

• 
  
• (b) Over the course of evolution, the orbital frontal cortex, together with other parts of the frontal cortex, has increased dramatically in size in primates compared to other animals. Perhaps the behavioral flexibility and intelligence we see in primates is facilitated by more complex and differentiated representations of the world, such as those that Blanchard observed.
• 
  

Endnotes

1. 
   
2. Miller, G.A. 1983. "Informavores." Pp. 111-113 in The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, edited by F. Machlup and U. Mansfield. New York, NY: Wiley.
   
3. Butler, R.A. 1957. "The influence of deprivation of visual incentives on visual exploration motivation in monkeys." Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 50: 177-179.
   
4. Calhoun, A.J., S.H. Chalasani, and T. O Sharpee. 2014. "Maximally informative foraging by Caenorhabditis Elegans." ELife 3: e04220.
   
5. Friedman, S., A.N. Nagy, and G.C. Carpenter. 1970. "Newborn attention: differential response decrement to visual stimuli." Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 10(1): 44-51.
   
6. Kang, M.J., M. Hsu, I.M. Krajbich, G. Loewenstein, S.M. McClure, J.T.-Y. Wang, and C.F. Camerer. 2009. "The wick in the candle of learning: epistemic curiosity activates reward circuitry and enhances memory." Psychological Science 20: 963-973. Jepma, M., R.G. Verdonschot, H. van Steenbergen, S.A.R.B. Rombouts, S. Nieuwenhuis. 2012. "Neural mechanisms underlying the induction and relief of perceptual curiosity." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(5). Gruber, M.J., B.D. Gelman, and C. Ranganath. 2014. "States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit." Neuron 84(2): 486-496.
   
7. Bromberg-Martin, E.S. and O. Hikosaka. 2009. "Midbrain dopamine neurons signal preference for advance information about upcoming rewards." Neuron 63(1): 119-126.
   
8. Blanchard, T.C., B.Y. Hayden, and E.S. Bromberg-Martin. 2015. "Orbitofrontal cortex uses distinct codes for different choice attributes in decisions motivated by curiosity." Neuron 85(3): 602-614.
   

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Eivind Hansen Photography http://ift.tt/2cnYJOd by Eivind Hansen  

Eivind Hansen Photography http://ift.tt/2cnYJOd by Eivind Hansen

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Eivind Hansen: Photos

 
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Vulnerable countries urge strong action on Montreal Protocol  

Some of the most vulnerable countries in the world just sent a clear message that they want leaders to agree to a strong agreement to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) this year under the Montreal Protocol. World leaders have a chance to minimize the damages to those countries if they act decisively next month and agree to significant cuts in the use of these super-potent, heat-trapping chemicals.

At the recent meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, many island nations put their support behind an ambitious deal at the Montreal Protocol negotiations in October. Capable of avoiding warming of up to 0.5°C by 2100, an agreement on HFCs is critical to upholding the Paris Agreement's ambition of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. As the Pacific Islands Forum communique states:

"Leaders stressed that the amendment should include an early freeze date for HFC production and consumption followed by a rapid phase down of HFCs."

Proposals vary widely for the timing of the HFC phase down schedule. Countries are already converging on a phasedown schedule for developed countries, likely to start in 2019. The timing for the phasedown schedule of developing countries is under serious debate, with widely diverging proposals. The Africa Group, Pacific Island countries, leading Latin American and Caribbean countries, the U.S., European Union, Japan, and other developed countries have the most ambitious proposal, with a freeze on HFC use for developing countries to begin in 2021. Other Latin American and Asian countries have indicated their willingness to freeze in 2025, while China and Pakistan are proposing 2025--2026 as their preferred freeze years. The Chinese recently committed to help achieve an "an early freeze date and ambitious phase down schedule," so there might be flexibility in this initial proposal. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States suggested 2028, and Iran 2029. India, seeking to continue HFC growth for another 15 years, is proposing a freeze in 2031. The 10-year gap between leading and lagging proposals makes a major environmental difference: waiting for the developing countries to freeze in 2031, would allow at least 15 billion extra CO₂-eq tons of HFC use - close to half the entire world's CO₂output for an entire year.

A strong HFC phase down schedule matters a lot to the most vulnerable. The Pacific Island leaders welcomed the Dubai Pathway for reaching an amendment on HFCs this year, and pushed for an agreement to be reached at the Kigali meeting this October. Without a strong global commitment to reaching a deal in Kigali, the very existences of these island nations is threatened. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Marshall Islands John Silk emphasized:

"Today's communique is a clarion call to action that even with the Paris Agreement, there remains a lot of work to do to guarantee there will still be 16 seats at the Pacific Islands Forum in a hundred years from now."

Members of the Pacific Islands Forum account for less than 2 percent of global emissions, with many island stands accounting for less than 0.01 percent of global emissions. But these states have already suffered devastating storms and cyclones of increasing severity and flooding. When leaders debate the exact freeze date, we should keep in mind the consequences for these most vulnerable nations that had such a small role in creating the problems we face.

Over 100 countries currently support an early freeze on the use and production of HFCs. Next month, when parties gather in Kigali, the key task will be for other world leaders to seize the moment and agree to a strong freeze date and phasedown schedule. The most vulnerable need an agreement, but as the Pacific Island leaders pointed out, they don't just need any agreement - they need an ambitious one.

The stage has been set - now can we get a deal that the climate, and the Pacific Islands, deserve?

---------------------------

(The Forty-Seventh Pacific Islands Forum was attended by Heads of State and Government and Deputies from Australia, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Republic of Fiji, Niue, the Republic of Palau, and Kiribati. Additional attendees included French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Tokelau as Associate Members, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, Timor-Leste, and Wallis and Futuna.)

This post was co-written with Han Chen and Alex Hillbrand.

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Why Are You Wearing Dirty Oil?  


Image: "Clothing Spill" by Savers. Credit: Ecouterre


Co-Authored by Kathrine Nasteva CEO Lozena

The reason I care about sustainable fashion isn't that my wife is the founder of the eco and ethical fashion brand Lozena (although that helps). No, the real reason I care is that fashion is one of the most polluting and energy-intensive industries in the world. From raw material acquisition, to textile production, to apparel manufacturing, to product disposal, fashion's environmental footprint is atrocious and it's time that changed.



Image: Fashion Products Lifecycle. Credit: The Sustainable Angle


We Wear Oil

One of the first and most disturbing things you learn about fashion is just how toxic the materials we wear are. That's because nearly one quarter of all chemicals produced worldwide are used in textiles. Worse, much of this comes in the form of polyester and other synthetic fibers which requires large amounts of crude oil. That's right, we literally wear oil.

Production of these fibers emits particulate matter and gases such as CO2, nitrous oxide (with a per kilogram global warming potential of 310 times more than that of carbon dioxide), hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, and other by-products into the atmosphere. These processes also release volatile organic compounds and solvents in waterways from manufacturing plants. In short, wearing dirty oil may be the least of our worries.

Why is polyester so widely used in apparel production?

Polyester (polyethylene terephthalate), or PET has textile and industrial applications - it's a plastic, used as film for food packaging, electrical insulation, and water and soft drink bottles, among other things. Developed in 1941 in the UK most production now takes place in China - 33 million tons, or 65% of global production in 2015. The popularity of this fiber grew as a result of its stretch and shrink-resistant, low moisture absorption, and thermally stable properties. But it spread because it's really cheap. In 2014 one ton of conventional cotton cost $2,200 compared to $1,400 for one ton of polyester.

Although competition between conventional cotton, the most prevalent natural fiber, and polyester continues to fluctuate according to commodities prices, the production capacity of cotton plateaued and demand for polyester has surged since 1980. Production is forecast to grow to nearly 100 million tons by 2025, while at the same time its price is expected to fall in line with oil prices.



End of day commodity futures price for crude oil 9/13/16 closed at $44.90 USD per barrel. Image credit: McKinsey

It's not hard to see why apparel brands prefer polyester - it's inexpensive, blends well with other fibers, and new technological advances have dramatically improved qualities such as draping and denier, and enhanced performance features like breathability and sweat-wicking.

Why should you care?

The emergence and dominance of a fast fashion culture has resulted in skyrocketing demand for cheap, trendy clothing where frequent purchases are alluring and the disposal of heaps of barely-worn clothing is usually painless. While issues of environmental health and safety do not only apply to items made from synthetics (conventional cotton is a discussion for another time), the pervasiveness of these materials in our wardrobes has broader consequences. As of 2007, polyester became the most prevalent fiber used in apparel. This is a problem - not only because synthetic fibers aren't biodegradable and stockpile in landfills, but because the rise of synthetics is allowing consumer culture around fast fashion to proceed as "business as usual."



Image: Global fiber consumption, 2015. Credit: Lenzing

Inditex, the parent company of Zara, produces garments to the tune of 948 million per year - and that's just one company in an extremely fragmented and competitive industry. Low barriers allow for new entrants to the market at an incredible pace; and fast fashion brands introduce new trends every two weeks at ever-lower price points. The growth rate for women's apparel is expected to approach 5% per year by 2025, driven primarily by emerging market cities that will contribute an additional $100 billion to the market.

With 80% of the polyester manufactured used for textiles, MIT's Materials Systems Laboratory estimates that roughly 700 million tons of greenhouse gas can be attributed to fashion in 2015. That's because compared to a cotton t-shirt, a polyester t-shirt emits between 20-40% more greenhouse gases. All told polyester emits the equivalent of about 185 dirty coal plants - filthy stuff.



Image: Total impact of polyester used in the textile industry per year. Credit: MIT Materials Systems Laboratory

So what can be done when everyone in the world wants the newest styles - and they want them now?

Slow Fashion Gaining Speed

Now, more than ever before consumers are more conscience about the items that fill their closets. They're checking garment labels and purchasing high-value, lasting pieces. They're buying clothes that matter. Trends are disappearing as designers are attempting to be original and remain true to their aesthetic. And, more and more emerging brands, large corporations, and retailers are taking environmental and social issues seriously. While sustainable fashion still remains a niche market, the energy and environmental crisis doesn't have to start in your closet. For fashion, the future looks green.

Kathrine is the Co-Founder of LOZENA, a family-owned fashion house with a mission to produce designer womenswear in an ecological and socially responsible manner. Since launching, LOZENA fashion has been seen on the runways of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Berlin; is featured in British Vogue and ELLE UK, and has been blogged about by numerous style writers. LOZENA is distributed exclusively via Kickstarter until October 8th, 2016.

-- 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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Larger marine animals at higher risk of extinction, and humans are to blame  
In today's oceans, larger-bodied marine animals are more likely to become extinct than smaller creatures, according to a new report. It's a pattern that is unprecedented in the history of life on Earth, and one that is likely driven by human fishing.  
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Whales might be hidden, but these new buoys can help find them  
How do you find whales that dive so deep and spend so little time at the surface that some species have never been observed alive? Sometimes you just have to listen closely.  
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Bike bell, Highbury Fields  

sltaylor001 posted a photo:

Close up of handlebars showing a ladybird bicycle bell on a bicycle locked up at Highbury Fields, North London

 
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The Man Who Wants to Build a Village Out of Plastic Bottles  

Robert Bezeau is the creator of Plastic Bottle Village—a community in Panama that reuses plastic bottles to build houses, roads, and more. Over the years, he's accrued more than a million bottles, and construction is well underway. This documentary by MEL films goes inside the Plastic Bottle Village and introduces us to Bezeau and the young couple about to move into one of his plastic bottle homes. To see more films from MEL, visit their website and Vimeo page.

 
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Humans And Neanderthals Had Sex. But Was It For Love?  
In 1911, Marcellin Boule, a French paleontologist, published the first scientific description of the Neanderthal species .  
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Humanity driving 'unprecedented' marine extinction  

Report comparing past mass extinction events warns that hunting and killing of ocean's largest species will disrupt ecosystems for millions of years

Humanity is driving an unprecedented extinction of sealife unlike any in the fossil record, hunting and killing larger species in a way that will disrupt ocean ecosystems for millions of years, scientists have found.

A new analysis of the five mass extinction events millions of years ago discovered there was either no pattern to which marine species were lost, or smaller species were the ones that disappeared.

Related: We'd never kill an albatross or gorilla: but we let others do it on our behalf | George Monbiot

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Frances Moore Lappe: To Endorse, Or Not To Endorse--That Is The (Wrong) Question  
What if "endorsement" is a political red herring? "Endorsing" suggests approval, but for a lot of us that option is closed. But, hey, we still have to choose--we must choose because democracy itself is at stake today.

Read more: Politics, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Democracy, Donald Trump, Election Day, Lyndon Johnson, Fdr, Franklin Roosevelt, Epa, Environment, Climate Change, Money in Politics, Voting Rights, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, Constitutional Amendment, Bill Moyers, Mlk, Labor, Selma, Politics News

 
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London - The Thames, Houses of Parliament, The London Eye on a magical night  

Christine's Observations posted a photo:

31.8.16. Very low tide means I can walk to areas of the Thames which are usually well under water. The sun is still setting and the sky is highlighted in the most amazing tones... these splash onto the surface of the water... I think this picture of London is one of my all time favourites. If you have not yet visited London, what are you waiting for? It is the greatest city on earth :)

 
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Instagram : @_monologist by Monologist  

Instagram : @_monologist by Monologist

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Monologist: Photos

 
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Transducer  

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A misty and bright, yet moody early morning in Barbican, London

 
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Tropical crow species is highly skilled tool user  
An international team of scientists and conservation experts has discovered that the critically-endangered Hawaiian crow is a highly proficient tool user.  
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New book details South America's surprising prehistoric mammals  
South America was home to a host of unique animals during the 60-some million years the continent was isolated, during most of the Cenozic Period. Details and constructions of mammals ranging from mouse-sized marsupials to elephant-size sloths, with photos of fossil remains and 15 collections sites across the continent are included in a new book.  
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How Fighting the Bushmeat Trade Protects Lions  

Sometimes, when traveling through Maasai Mara, visitors may see elephants with half of their trunk missing. The poor creatures must kneel to pluck grasses, and they are unable to reach leaves from the canopies of trees at all.

It is no mystery what maims these elephants.

Over smoky fires, well hidden from passersby on the road and the wary eye of law enforcement officers, people burn the rubber from tires and harvest the steel wire within them. Twisting these metal strands together and tying a slipknot in one end, they form deadly nooses with which to catch wild animals. The bushmeat poachers set these snares in between shrubs to trap wildebeests or zebra, high in trees to catch giraffes, and low to the ground to snag warthogs. The result is gruesome. Animals die from thirst or exposure, from deep lacerations caused by the biting wire cinched around their throat or leg or from spears and clubs when poachers return to check their traps. Some animals manage to break free on their own but sustain life-threatening injuries while doing so. The elephants that have lost their trunks are examples.

(Above: The AKTF Anti-Poaching Team removes snares in Maasai Mara National Reserve)

Elephants are not the intended targets of these snares, as zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, eland, warthogs and antelope are, but they get caught all the same. The same is true for lions.

In partnership with National Geographic's Big Cat Initiative, The Anne K. Taylor Fund (AKTF) tackles the main threat to lion populations, human-wildlife conflict, ‘head on' through our work with predator-resistant, fortified bomas. By protecting livestock from wild predators in these stockades, we are able to significantly reduce the number of lions that die from retaliation attacks by herders. In addition to building bomas, though, we also protect lions by combatting threats to their habitat and prey populations from poachers, their snares and their spears.

Our Anti-Poaching Team, in partnership with the Mara Conservancy Rangers and Kenya Wildlife Service/David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust veterinarians, runs regular patrols in and around Maasai Mara to ambush and arrest poachers, remove snares from the bush, and rescue as many wildlife caught in snares as possible.

(Above: AKTF & Mara Conservancy Rangers rescue a wildebeest caught in a poacher's snare)

This past week we removed 582 snares, rescued 40 animals trapped in them, and discovered eight more animals that had succumbed or been slaughtered already. It was a good week for the wildlife we protect. Those snares that our team removed represent more than just nearly 600 wildlife lives saved: because the steel wires are nearly indestructible, poachers use them over and over again, meaning that those snares, had they been left in the bush, could have taken the lives of thousands of animals a year.

(Above: AKTF Anti-Poaching patrollers holding dozens of snares removed from the Reserve; their faces are obscured to protect their identities)

We see the role of our work in Maasai Mara ‘buying time' until local education, society, and values change in ways that eradicate poaching organically. By addressing threats to lion populations from these angles, there is a better chance for a lasting difference to take hold. We are deeply grateful for the generous support of National Geographic, as well as many other private and institutional donors, that make our work possible and keep us optimistic about the future of Maasai Mara's ecosystem and the lions it nurtures.

 
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Hawaiian crows can use sticks as tools but are nearly extinct  
Like their cousins the New Caledonian crows, island-welling Hawaiian crows seem naturally disposed to using tools for getting food  
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The Conversation Africa: Climate change health risks will hit the poor hardest - so what can be done?  
Bob Mash, Stellenbosch University

Discussions about climate change and the effects it will have on public health and the global burden of disease hav...

Read more: Environment, Climate Change, Health, Malawi, World News

 
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Hawaiian Crows Use Tools to Reach Tidbits  
This rare crow can select a tool and manipulate it to pry tasty treats from crevices in under a minute. This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on September 14, 2016. It is...

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Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 (11 photos)  

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, founded in 1965, is an annual international showcase of the best in nature photography. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. This year, the contest attracted nearly 50,000 entries. The owners and sponsors have been kind enough to share the following 11 finalists from this year's competition. Their website has images from previous years and more information about the current competition and exhibition. Captions provided by the photographers and WPY.

 
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Stag Horizon  

alex saberi posted a photo:

 
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Saving Our Ocean  
The Ocean in South America and worldwide is in danger. A recent study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlights the perils of ocean warming for humans. It points out that that the waters of the Southern Hemisphere are increasingly impacted by higher temperatures, leading to changing fish stocks and crop yields, extreme weather events and higher risk from water-borne diseases. The Chilean coast has become increasingly colder as the high seas warm up, leading to the migration of species, and to other effects upon the marine environment. Whales, turtles and birds are all feeling the changes, as are our fishermen, who must seek new fishing grounds.


©Viviana Urra, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile

The Chilean government is taking action, along with the private sector, the international community and national and international NGOs. On August 24th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with the Ministries of Defense, Economy, and the Environment, inaugurated the Council of Ministers for the Development of a National Ocean Policy. This initiative aims at creating an integrated and inclusive oceanic policy and is a new step towards fulfilling our commitment to the international governance of the oceans. We are placing our sea at the forefront of our foreign policy.

In addition, Chile actively participated in the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, whose objective number 14 refers to oceanic sustainability. We also led, along with France and Monaco, the adoption of the "Because the Ocean" declaration at the CoP21, which highlights the essential role oceans play in the fight against climate change, and in the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Last October, Chile organized the second version of the Our Ocean initiative, at which countries and civil society adopted more than 80 projects, equivalent to 2.1 billion dollars, dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of the ocean.

In the lead up to this year´s third Our Ocean Conference, in Washington DC, Chile created the new Marine Park Nazca-Desventuradas, which has a surface area of 300 thousand square kilometers and surrounds the Islands of San Félix and San Ambrosio, making it the largest marine protected area in Latin America. In parallel, along with the Rapa Nui community of Easter Island, we are moving forward on a huge marine conservation area surrounding the island.

We have also taken measures to fight illegal fishing, including the adoption of monitoring mechanisms coherent with the New York Agreement on Fish Stocks of 1995 and the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures.

We will continue to stress the importance of developing an oceanic policy to solidify the foundations of our future actions, emphasizing the conservation and sustainable use of our ocean and its resources, the fight against marine pollution, and the effects of climate change in the ocean, with a special emphasis on marine protected areas. This policy will not only establish national guidelines for oceanic matters, but also project them into the international arena, including through South-South cooperation programs to fight marine pollution in areas like the Caribbean.

We know that the ocean is a gathering point for the planet, for people and for prosperity. This is precisely what drives sustainable development. The fate of Chile, an oceanic country, and of many others, is directly tied to the measures we take today to address global warming. We are confident that growing awareness is leading to a greater worldwide commitment towards this goal. Action to save our ocean admits no delay.


1 - Explaining ocean warming: Causes, scale, effects and consequences, September 2016.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post in partnership with Secretary of State John Kerry's Our Oceanconference and Ocean Unite, an initiative to unite and activate powerful voices for ocean-conservation action. The series is being produced to coincide with the Our Ocean Conference (September 15th, 16th) as part of HuffPost's "What's Working" initiative, putting a spotlight on initiatives around the world that are solutions oriented. To read all the posts in the series, read here. The State Department does not endorse the content of this blog. Follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #OurOcean #MakeASplash.

-- 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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Asteroid assault on early planets was more like a gentle massage  
Most models of the early solar system say it endured a period of intense asteroid strikes dubbed the Late Heavy Bombardment - but new isotope data paints a calmer picture  
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Map to the stars: Gaia's first data dump a piece of 3D Milky Way puzzle  

Calibrating relationships between celestial objects

The European Space Agency has revealed the first catalogue of stars mapped during its Gaia mission today.…

 
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Today I'll be traveling throughout the freeway network of...  

Today I'll be traveling throughout the freeway network of Los Angeles, well known for its massive interchanges (and traffic). The Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange is a stack highway interchange located near the Athens and Watts neighborhoods in South LA. This junction is composed of five levels that scale to a staggering height of more than 40 meters (132 feet).

33.9287°N 118.281°W

Instagram: http://bit.ly/2crrtYn

 
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On the lake by Michael Tighe  

On the lake by Michael Tighe

Michael Tighe: Photos

 
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The doppelganger by Felicia Simion  

The doppelganger by Felicia Simion

www.feliciasimionphotography.com

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Something Different by Michael Cleary  

Something Different by Michael Cleary

One of my shots taken at the beginning of the year, something a bit different from the backyard.

Michael Cleary: Photos

 
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Charleroi by David Bouchat  

Charleroi by David Bouchat

Belgium 2016

David Bouchat: Photos

 
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As the Crow Flies by Perri Schelat  

As the Crow Flies by Perri Schelat

Landmannalaugur from the air. I took a trip to Iceland that was planned around 7 hours of flight time for aerial photography. I have always found the shots from Landmannalaugur to be fascinating while still partially covered with snow. The landscape patterns are very interesting. The aerial portion of the trip was very challenging. It was my first time, but I wasn't really fearful, I was just happy we had a chance to fly. We ended up doing all 7 hours in one day, the only day in 10 days that had clearer weather. Aerial photography is very freeing. You can really let your creativity flow while pointing and shooting and trying to remember not to fall out of the doors off helicopter. I was slightly worried about the rather primitive security measure used to keep us from accidentally releasing our seatbelt..... electrical tape wrapped around the buckle :) The river deltas were really flooded due to the overabundance of rain. They look different all the time depending on weather conditions. It was a cool experience that I'd like to try again.

Perri Schelat: Photos

 
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Raluca by Mike Monaghan  

Raluca by Mike Monaghan

www.mikemonaghanphoto.com | Instagram

Mike Monaghan: Photos

 
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Treat by Iza Łysoń  

Treat by Iza Łysoń

More photos: https://www.facebook.com/IzaLysonArts/

Iza Łysoń: Photos

 
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Mosca vanitosa by Roberto Aldrovandi  

Mosca vanitosa by Roberto Aldrovandi

Roberto Aldrovandi: Photos

 
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Rising Temperatures Are Making Life in Tropical Cities Precarious for the Poor  

HONG KONG ― The numbers are in: NASA announced Monday that August 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded since global records began in 1880. Several parts of Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore, have also recently had their hottest months ever recorded.

Standing outside in the middle of the day in Jakarta, Manila or Mumbai is sometimes almost unbearable. Calling it “humid” would be an understatement. In Singapore, the mean annual relative humidity is 84 percent, frequently reaching 100 percent during prolonged rain. A World Bank report released last week estimates that the “welfare losses” as a result of air pollution have dramatically increased over the last 25 years as developing countries urbanized and industrialized.

This is the environment that millions of urban dwellers in the tropics currently live in. It does not need to be like this. Tropical cities can be made livable again. But it will require governments to make very difficult decisions.

If the people living in tropical cities are to survive our hot future, governments need to radically rethink how they manage urbanization.

Tropical Asia's dense and overcrowded cities are already subject to the heat-island effect, which makes them significantly warmer than their rural surroundings. As temperatures threaten to increase by a further two to three degrees, as some scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict, tropical cities are quickly becoming unlivable. And this is not even taking into account overcrowding, poor housing and slums, water and sewerage issues, solid waste disposal and the curses of urban traffic and pollution.

Yet like the proverbial frog in boiling water, city inhabitants appear helpless ― as if resigned to their fate with no other options. If tropical cities, and the people that live in them, are to survive our hot future, governments need to radically rethink how they manage the urbanization trend ― and perhaps even consider moving people away from these unlivable cities.

For those who live in temperate or sub-tropical zones (or in climate-controlled rooms), it can be hard to know what a tropical city life feels like. The humid air sits on you, preventing your body from cooling itself properly, thus affecting productivity. For the poor, without air-conditioning, heat can make entire homes unlivable. Night temperatures can be so high that deep sleep becomes impossible. Many have to work in the heat outdoors or in a poorly ventilated, uncooled office, sometimes a long uncomfortable and pollution-ridden commute away.

The upper and middle classes have an escape from the unbearable heat: air-conditioning. Cooling is not seen as a luxury, but a necessity: as an article in the New York Times notes, “an air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.” When air-conditioning first arrived in Asia, it was only available for the wealthy at a time when cities were a quarter the size they are now. But air-conditioning is now wildly popular in Asia, which now makes up half the global market for cooling units.

Rich cities like Singapore have even been able to ensure much broader access to artificial cooling; in Hong Kong, opposition politicians blocked the construction of a new homeless shelter, calling its lack of air-conditioning “inhumane.” For well-off households across Asia, air-conditioning is, to quote Lee Kuan Yew, “the greatest invention of the century.” One is perhaps also reminded of Noel Coward's old song: that only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Yet for hundreds of millions in these cities, escaping the midday sun is not an option ― they must live, work and sleep in uncooled and sweltering surroundings.

Air-conditioning is an unsustainable solution to the problem of hot cities. A/C units release heat as waste, which is then trapped between dense skyscrapers. This pushes cooling units to work harder and use more energy. All these units consume electricity, which is likely produced by fossil fuels. As more and more people in the tropics buy air-conditioning, more carbon is released into the atmosphere. A/C units are also a major contributor to other less known but potent greenhouse gases. Research suggests that the energy demand for air-conditioning will increase by 40 times this century, overtaking the energy used for heating by around 2060. 

An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.
New York Times

Tropical cities in general are getting hotter even before we include the effect of climate change. The combination of heat absorbed by building materials and waste heat from transportation and homes means that cities can be up to 3 degrees warmer than rural areas. The temperature difference is greatest at night, as concrete and asphalt radiate the heat absorbed during the day. Waste heat from cities can even be carried to remote areas by air currents, with some scientists finding a temperature increase of 1 degree in some rural areas due to nearby urban development. 

The well-off, thanks to air-conditioning, are insulated from a warming climate, and so there is little political will to make cities cooler. The upper and middle classes live and sleep in climate-controlled apartments, work in cooled offices and sit in air-conditioned cars when traffic is gridlocked. Their children enjoy the same and can sometimes cool off in private swimming pools. But for the vast majority of urban dwellers in tropical cities, these luxuries are out of reach.

The problem of these hot and unlivable cities has been worsened by uncontrolled and poorly conceived urbanization. According to the World Bank, 200 million people (equivalent to what would be the world's fifth-largest country) have moved to cities between 2000 and 2010. Urban areas have grown by an area the size of Taiwan. These migrants all need housing and transportation. Many are migrants who live in shanties or poorly constructed buildings and often work in uncooled environments that have become unbearable as temperatures have soared in recent years. They sit sweltering in congestion: in Jakarta, where the number of vehicles on the road increases by about 10 percent each year despite no growth in roads, 12 people reportedly died from heat and carbon-dioxide poisoning in a three-day-long traffic jam. 

To make matters worse, urban migration often disproportionately targets one city: the capital. All cities are growing, but major cities like the capital attract the most migrants, which tests their provision of basic needs and social services ― in which regard most have failed. One would think that an urbanization drive that is much more equally shared amongst several cities and towns would lessen population pressures, but that is not what has been seen in the developing world because of poor economic policies and regional planning.

It is too often assumed that urbanization and economic development must go hand in hand. It is true that urbanization does unlock economic potential in a country's population. However, the problem is that many developing countries have not properly controlled and channelled urbanization. The enormous number of man-hours lost in traffic jams and persistent illnesses in crowded and hot cities decreases productivity and quality of life.

Letting people move to the city is “easy” but it is an archaic short-term path to growth with long-term negative consequences, as evident by the all-too-obvious and deteriorating conditions in tropical cites. It is also easy for the government to focus its energy and attention on the capital where big business is concentrated and where the rich tend to live, rather than developing a broad-based program that develops multiple reasonably sized cities and small towns simultaneously.

The well-off, thanks to air-conditioning, are insulated from a warming climate, and so there is little political will to make cities cooler.

If countries in the tropics are serious about mitigating and reducing the effects of climate change, they need to understand urbanization differently and appreciate that their increasingly unlivable cities must be the target of new and daring economic planning and environmental policy. Countries must find a way to channel people to less crowded areas, by providing economic opportunities in the countryside and developing secondary towns in order to broaden the economic base. They may need to do something that few have ever considered: moving people out of these large cities, to make sure that urban environments are actually livable.

All the efforts to make cities in the tropics adapt to climate change need a fresh dose of reality ― to move beyond hypothetical approaches towards reducing carbon demands, green cars and “smart cities” and toward an acceptance that these cities are too large and unmanageable to survive in a new climate that makes them too hot to live in. Only by cooling its drive to urbanize will Southeast Asia cool its sweltering cities.

-- 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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Feds must dismiss unhinged advice on wild horses  

Our nation's management of wild horses has been a long-running debacle of poor execution layered over questionable intentions and flagging resolve. Those problems have been compounded by violence toward horses by ranchers and other private resource users. The latest incident involves an attack on a number of wild horses living on a ranch overseen by the philanthropist and wild horse advocate Madeleine Pickens.

Since 1971, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had the task of managing wild horses, who are now classed, for administrative purposes, into 179 Herd Management Areas in 10 western states. The bureau's primary strategy over the past 20 years has largely consisted of rounding up and removing the animals from our public lands, ostensibly in an effort to protect the range from overgrazing. The original plan was to adopt out horses to private parties - which has been fraught with its own set of problems - but the removals have happened at a volume that not even a spirited adoption program can offset. This has resulted in approximately 45,000 wild horses and burros being maintained in government-financed holding facilities throughout the United States.

Because the captive horse management has cannibalized so much of the funding, the BLM has scarce funds for protecting horses remaining on the range, including fertility control programs that offer the only real hope of humane population management.

Last week, in an attempt to solve this financial crisis -- a self-inflicted wound created by serial round-ups -- a volunteer body called the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board (the majority of whose members' main focus is not, and has never been, the humane treatment of wild horses) made a recommendation that the BLM consider euthanizing all unadopted horses in holding facilities. That's a prescription for mass slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale and it would perhaps make the United States the biggest horse killing enterprise in the world. While the Advisory Board has no legal authority to mandate action on the agency's part, the agency will consider this recommendation, a sort of "Final Solution" cooked up by public-lands ranchers and their allies.

In 2015, the Department of Interior's Office of the Inspector General released a long-awaited investigative report, which found that the BLM had sold thousands of wild horses to a livestock hauler named Tom Davis who subsequently sold these horses to kill buyers. Though they are not being sold directly by the agency, wild horses are still going to slaughter by a variety of circuitous pathways. Sources at the Sugarcreek, Ohio, livestock auction last week documented BLM freeze-branded horses, in very poor condition, being sold to kill buyers.

Our nation's wild horses deserve better than this sort of mismanagement and abuse, and an attitude that they are throwaway objects. A sensible program must be grounded on controlling the population on the range through fertility control, obviating the need for dangerous round-ups that betray the national interest in protecting horses, and ending wasteful spending that ultimately solves no problems and just builds a massive captive wild horse program.

This headlong and heedless advisory committee recommendation should be summarily rejected. But it's so outrageous and overreaching that it may be just the kick in the pants that Congress and the agency need to overhaul the entire broken and battered program.

Act now to save America's wild horses »

This article first appeared on Wayne Pacelle's blog, A Humane Nation

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The UK's Science Museum will reconsider its 'sexist' brain quiz  

Apparently, it was designed to be 'tongue in cheek'

The Science Museum has announced it will reconsider its exhibition on sex and gender after it faced criticism over a quiz that tested whether a brain was male or female.…

 
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Rising Temperatures Are Making Life in Tropical Cities Precarious for the Poor  

HONG KONG ― The numbers are in: NASA announced Monday that August 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded since global records began in 1880. Several parts of Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore, have also recently had their hottest months ever recorded.

Standing outside in the middle of the day in Jakarta, Manila or Mumbai is sometimes almost unbearable. Calling it “humid” would be an understatement. In Singapore, the mean annual relative humidity is 84 percent, frequently reaching 100 percent during prolonged rain. A World Bank report released last week estimates that the “welfare losses” as a result of air pollution have dramatically increased over the last 25 years as developing countries urbanized and industrialized.

This is the environment that millions of urban dwellers in the tropics currently live in. It does not need to be like this. Tropical cities can be made livable again. But it will require governments to make very difficult decisions.

If the people living in tropical cities are to survive our hot future, governments need to radically rethink how they manage urbanization.

Tropical Asia's dense and overcrowded cities are already subject to the heat-island effect, which makes them significantly warmer than their rural surroundings. As temperatures threaten to increase by a further two to three degrees, as some scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict, tropical cities are quickly becoming unlivable. And this is not even taking into account overcrowding, poor housing and slums, water and sewerage issues, solid waste disposal and the curses of urban traffic and pollution.

Yet like the proverbial frog in boiling water, city inhabitants appear helpless ― as if resigned to their fate with no other options. If tropical cities, and the people that live in them, are to survive our hot future, governments need to radically rethink how they manage the urbanization trend ― and perhaps even consider moving people away from these unlivable cities.

For those who live in temperate or sub-tropical zones (or in climate-controlled rooms), it can be hard to know what a tropical city life feels like. The humid air sits on you, preventing your body from cooling itself properly, thus affecting productivity. For the poor, without air-conditioning, heat can make entire homes unlivable. Night temperatures can be so high that deep sleep becomes impossible. Many have to work in the heat outdoors or in a poorly ventilated, uncooled office, sometimes a long uncomfortable and pollution-ridden commute away.

The upper and middle classes have an escape from the unbearable heat: air-conditioning. Cooling is not seen as a luxury, but a necessity: as an article in the New York Times notes, “an air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.” When air-conditioning first arrived in Asia, it was only available for the wealthy at a time when cities were a quarter the size they are now. But air-conditioning is now wildly popular in Asia, which now makes up half the global market for cooling units.

Rich cities like Singapore have even been able to ensure much broader access to artificial cooling; in Hong Kong, opposition politicians blocked the construction of a new homeless shelter, calling its lack of air-conditioning “inhumane.” For well-off households across Asia, air-conditioning is, to quote Lee Kuan Yew, “the greatest invention of the century.” One is perhaps also reminded of Noel Coward's old song: that only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Yet for hundreds of millions in these cities, escaping the midday sun is not an option ― they must live, work and sleep in uncooled and sweltering surroundings.

Air-conditioning is an unsustainable solution to the problem of hot cities. A/C units release heat as waste, which is then trapped between dense skyscrapers. This pushes cooling units to work harder and use more energy. All these units consume electricity, which is likely produced by fossil fuels. As more and more people in the tropics buy air-conditioning, more carbon is released into the atmosphere. A/C units are also a major contributor to other less known but potent greenhouse gases. Research suggests that the energy demand for air-conditioning will increase by 40 times this century, overtaking the energy used for heating by around 2060. 

An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.
New York Times

Tropical cities in general are getting hotter even before we include the effect of climate change. The combination of heat absorbed by building materials and waste heat from transportation and homes means that cities can be up to 3 degrees warmer than rural areas. The temperature difference is greatest at night, as concrete and asphalt radiate the heat absorbed during the day. Waste heat from cities can even be carried to remote areas by air currents, with some scientists finding a temperature increase of 1 degree in some rural areas due to nearby urban development. 

The well-off, thanks to air-conditioning, are insulated from a warming climate, and so there is little political will to make cities cooler. The upper and middle classes live and sleep in climate-controlled apartments, work in cooled offices and sit in air-conditioned cars when traffic is gridlocked. Their children enjoy the same and can sometimes cool off in private swimming pools. But for the vast majority of urban dwellers in tropical cities, these luxuries are out of reach.

The problem of these hot and unlivable cities has been worsened by uncontrolled and poorly conceived urbanization. According to the World Bank, 200 million people (equivalent to what would be the world's fifth-largest country) have moved to cities between 2000 and 2010. Urban areas have grown by an area the size of Taiwan. These migrants all need housing and transportation. Many are migrants who live in shanties or poorly constructed buildings and often work in uncooled environments that have become unbearable as temperatures have soared in recent years. They sit sweltering in congestion: in Jakarta, where the number of vehicles on the road increases by about 10 percent each year despite no growth in roads, 12 people reportedly died from heat and carbon-dioxide poisoning in a three-day-long traffic jam. 

To make matters worse, urban migration often disproportionately targets one city: the capital. All cities are growing, but major cities like the capital attract the most migrants, which tests their provision of basic needs and social services ― in which regard most have failed. One would think that an urbanization drive that is much more equally shared amongst several cities and towns would lessen population pressures, but that is not what has been seen in the developing world because of poor economic policies and regional planning.

It is too often assumed that urbanization and economic development must go hand in hand. It is true that urbanization does unlock economic potential in a country's population. However, the problem is that many developing countries have not properly controlled and channelled urbanization. The enormous number of man-hours lost in traffic jams and persistent illnesses in crowded and hot cities decreases productivity and quality of life.

Letting people move to the city is “easy” but it is an archaic short-term path to growth with long-term negative consequences, as evident by the all-too-obvious and deteriorating conditions in tropical cites. It is also easy for the government to focus its energy and attention on the capital where big business is concentrated and where the rich tend to live, rather than developing a broad-based program that develops multiple reasonably sized cities and small towns simultaneously.

The well-off, thanks to air-conditioning, are insulated from a warming climate, and so there is little political will to make cities cooler.

If countries in the tropics are serious about mitigating and reducing the effects of climate change, they need to understand urbanization differently and appreciate that their increasingly unlivable cities must be the target of new and daring economic planning and environmental policy. Countries must find a way to channel people to less crowded areas, by providing economic opportunities in the countryside and developing secondary towns in order to broaden the economic base. They may need to do something that few have ever considered: moving people out of these large cities, to make sure that urban environments are actually livable.

All the efforts to make cities in the tropics adapt to climate change need a fresh dose of reality ― to move beyond hypothetical approaches towards reducing carbon demands, green cars and “smart cities” and toward an acceptance that these cities are too large and unmanageable to survive in a new climate that makes them too hot to live in. Only by cooling its drive to urbanize will Southeast Asia cool its sweltering cities.

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Flash Physics: HERA observatory bags $9.5m, rare-isotope decay eludes detection, putting pressure on iron  
Today's selection of need-to-know updates from the world of physics  
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Pipeline Company Desecrates Graves On Sioux Sacred Land  
Metropolitan Community Churches know what it means to have our sacred sites defaced with spray-painted slurs. We know what it means to have our ministers murdered. We know what it means to be turned away from funeral homes because of who we are. We know what it feels like to have all we hold sacred desecrated.

So we have some idea what the Sioux nation in Standing Rock Dakota and all the First Nations people gathered in the Dakotas are facing as they resist the desecration of their graves and sacred lands.

When graffiti taggers deface gravestones with their mark -- or symbols of hate like swastikas, outcries and headlines condemn the scurrilous act. But in the Dakotas, Native American gravesites were bulldozed recently in a shocking act of grave desecration. The bulldozers cut a swath through historic grounds to destroy evidence of the graves and to stake corporate claim to the land as a preemptory act of violence instead of waiting for a pending court decision. The company brought in vicious dogs that bit peaceful protestors. Despite dogs and pepper spray, the resisters continued to stand in the way until the bulldozers finally stopped. I thought, as a nation, we were done with using dogs to control and punish protestors, but this is not the case.



Tribal Chairman, David Archambault II said, "This demolition is devastating. These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient Cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground."

The pipeline company, Energy Transfers Partners (ETP), blatantly ignored the recommendations of multiple official departments: the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Each of these groups recommended more study before moving ahead with the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

Because burial grounds do not resemble European-style headstones, companies like ETP consider the burial sites to be open prairie. Just as when Europeans arrived in the Americas and decided there was nothing there since settlements did not look European, to this day, Native peoples are invisible and inconsequential to business interests. Racism's strategy of invisibility is alive and well today.

When the court decision came down, shockingly, it went against the Native American claims of burial grounds and allowed the bulldozing to continue. In virtually the same moment, I learned that the Obama administration had stopped the construction of the pipeline through Native lands in the Dakotas. I can only imagine that President Obama and I shared similar feelings of horror as we watched dogs viciously attack Native Americans as they stood to protect the land and water against oil defilement. It may well be another legacy of the Obama Administration that this plea for justice from Native Americans was not ignored.

As the Global Moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches, I join religious leaders from Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, UCC, and others who have spoken out to support the stand of Native Americans. We know that both the government and the churches have a long history of exploitation, betrayal, broken treaties and wars. We have learned enough to know that when Native Americans are treated as trespassers on their own land, something is deeply wrong. We must act now. When the land is gone and the water is gone, there will be nothing left to save. For all Americans, the future of our children depends on a rapid shift to sustainable energy sources.

In the Dakotas, construction is paused, but we call on the U.S. government to stop construction on all pipelines. Oil is poisoning our waters and land. For Native Americans, this is just one more expression of genocide. Even the American Petroleum Institute projects spills of 40,000 barrels of petroleum products this year. Right now, almost 15 billion barrels of oil traverse the pipelines. Global warming and the poisoning of our land and water give us no option but to end the burning. This is a crime against humanity and a crime against nature. Those who are most vulnerable, the poor, those with little power or voice, will be the ones most impacted.

When will we learn? How do we stop the defilement of sacred lands and the despoilment of our waterways while our climate heats beyond all recognition? We must stop the burning and turn to renewable energies. It can be done, but there is not much time to do it. May all our relatives be blessed.

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How To Be An Organic Pioneer  

This past weekend we celebrated the Organic Pioneer Awards at the Rodale Institute, and it gave me a moment to reflect on the past 70 years and what it takes to be a pioneer and create change. But first some context... The change we have created has come in four distinct phases, and we are about to enter the fifth.

1. Invent organic
The first phase was when my grandfather, J.I. Rodale, invented the idea of organic. If you put it into scientific language, this is the hypothesis he created: Healthy soil equals healthy food equals healthy people.

2. Prove organic
Like any good hypothesis, it must be proven scientifically, which is what we started doing in 1983 with the Farming Systems Trial. As the picture shown above reveals, we have more than proven scientifically that organic is a viable, productive, and profitable way to farm--and the only way to feed people for the long term and mitigate climate change. (It was about 100 degrees inside the barn that night, by the way.) There are still many things left to prove, but that organic farming works better than conventional is not one of them.

3. Institutionalize organic
Our next step was to work together with all the people and organizations involved in organic farming to create the USDA Organic Certification. It took more than a decade, and it was what propelled the organic movement and market to a whole new level.

4. Demand organic
Through all our research and education, we have now succeeded in convincing the majority of consumers that organic is healthy, delicious, and worth it for both health and environmental reasons.

5. Supply organic
The biggest obstacle we now face is that there is not enough organic food in America to supply the demand! As a result, we need to transition as many farmers and acres to organic as possible. And that is where the Rodale Institute will now be focusing the majority of its efforts.

We've also learned at least four things on this journey...and now we are in the process of learning the fifth thing...

1. To be an organic pioneer takes courage and resilience
OPA award winner David Vetter talked about overhearing three farmers take bets on how long it would take for him to fail at organic farming. They gave him between 1 and 3 years. Five years later, he was the only one still farming, and now over 60 years later, he has helped many other farmers transition to organic.

2. We need need patience and persistence
True, lasting, pioneering change takes time. Generations! So taking one step forward every day is important and the only way to get there.

3. Emotions and experience change hearts and minds faster than facts do
Maybe someone gets sick, or has a financial crisis, and then suddenly they are open to a new way of doing things. People are stubborn and tend not to look for alternatives until they need to. It's just human nature.

4. But you need the facts
For so many reasons, we need to be ready with facts for when people are finally willing to change and are looking for alternatives.

Every single one of our organic pioneers has been part of this journey, and all of them are amazing leaders and models of what is possible. I am so proud of all of them. (For a complete list through the years, click here.)

And now for number 5...what we still need to learn...

The other day I brought a friend to the institute for the first time, and he asked a simple question: "How did we get into this mess in the first place?" At first I didn't want to answer because it was too complicated. But then I realized we are in this mess for two reasons: People have been afraid of nature and tried to control it. And lots of people have made lots of money taking advantage of that fear.

So how do we get out of "this mess" and move beyond fear?

5. Love. We need to love nature. Love diversity. Love our differences. Love each other.
Money can buy a lot of things--and we rely on it to do our research and support our staff and do our work. But it can't buy love. And that's what I'm most grateful for--the love I have felt and feel for so many of you: readers, farmers, supporters, friends, family, anyone who eats and appreciates where food comes from.

So take a minute out of your busy day and think about it. Think about love. And more importantly feel the love. And with that positive energy, you too can be an organic pioneer.

For more from Maria Rodale, visit www.rodalesorganiclife.com/bymaria

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Coastal occupation affects tropical reefs in Brazil  
Researchers in Brazil warn of the negative environmental impacts of unplanned coastal occupation on tropical reefs and consequently on the conservation of marine biodiversity. Researchers state that this process has already taken place in Western Mediterranean.  
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Say No To A Holocaust For Horses: 44,000 Horses Won't Die On Our Watch  
This headline stopped me cold: "Breaking News: BLM's Wild Horse Advisory Board Just Voted To Kill All 44,000 Captive Wild Horses In Holding."

That couldn't be real.... The wild horse is our iconic American image and heritage. Wouldn't everyone protect them at any cost? Unfortunately, the answer is "no" unless we do something about this right now.

No group has the power to kill off almost the entire remainder of the species. There is an estimated 67,000 wild burros and horses left across all states so this would be devastation beyond measure.

This situation is not only real, it's dire and timely. The good news -- there are solutions and you can help and it doesn't take long.

The immediate solution is to sign this petition and write a personal letter letting all decision-makers at the BLM and government know you oppose the killing of healthy, protected wild horses and burros (see addresses).

The time for you to rise up and make a difference is NOW. Your voice is needed. Thank you for signing, writing, and sharing this article.

In a couple days I will be posting a follow-up that highlights longer term solutions to this issue. It's a complicated one but requires a shift in consciousness that I trust humanity will choose.

Please join me in my vision that horses are actually here to partner with humanity to help us learn how to be the best versions of ourselves. It starts with you now and the next choice you make.


(Photo credit Kate Neligan. Taken at Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary)

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Land-based food not nutritionally sufficient for wild polar bears, according to new study  
On average, a polar bear loses up to 30 percent of its total body mass while fasting during the open-water season. Although some scientists previously believed land-based foods could supplement the bears' nutritional needs until the sea ice returns, a new study has revealed that access to terrestrial food is not sufficient to reduce the rate of body mass loss for fasting polar bears.  
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Cornelius Agrippa Scientist of the Day a German authority on...  

http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/emblematic/id/1511

Cornelius Agrippa Scientist of the Day

a German authority on natural magic, was born Sep. 14, 1486.

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