Pierre Markuse has let the Cat out of the bag!

Hello Gentle People:

 SHHH....keep it a secret! Don't let anybody know how bad the heat is getting! Pretend everything is fine in your air conditioned home or apartment or car. Keep your car motor running and don't worry about global warming. After all, you just bought your new shiny internal combustion engine at zero percent financing and global warming or no global warming, you are not going to give up your cool ride for anybody!

 Who cares if the Glaciers have melted! Who cares if the Arctic has melted! Who cares if old people die in the heat and desertification replaces farm lands! Monsanto will continue to feed you with great tasting genetically modified and pesticide resistant Serial crops grown in other countries and McDonalds can provide you with nice fat and juicy hormone fed beef. And don't worry about those pesky environment protection people. They have limited power and the super rich Oil producing countries will do their best to dominate the governments of the world so that nothing changes to disturb your comfortable life styles.

  In some areas of the world the opposite is true. Flooding and hurricanes and humidity are the norm and native Trees are dying by the thousands to be replaced by tropical species and insects that normally live in jungles. But hey! As long as you are comfortable in your air conditioned offices and homes and cars, the occasional Black Widow spider will not worry you! That's what pesticides are for! Why worry about the millions of suffering people who don't have the luxuries of an oil based industrial economy to keep them comfortable and so keep up the great secret and SHHHH!

Pierre Markuse

Climate Change / Earth

18h

NASA Analysis Finds July 2016 is Warmest on Record

July 2016 was the warmest July in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Because the seasonal temperature cycle peaks in July, it means July 2016 also was warmer than any other month on record. July 2016’s temperature was a statistically small 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than previous warm Julys in 2015, 2011 and 2009.

Full story here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/news/20160816/

More information here:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/

Where to start when looking for information on climate change?

Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change:
http://climate.nasa.gov/

Image credit: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

#science #earth  #climate   #climatechange   #globalwarming   #temperatureanomaly   #nasa   #giss  

HELLO Y.A.L.I. AND PRESIDENT OBAMA!

Why I'm introducing the President today:

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Emmanuel Odama	This is why I'm joining President Obama at today's YALI town hall. I come fro...	11:14 AM (5 hours ago)

Emmanuel Odama <info@mail.whitehouse.gov>	11:17 AM (5 hours ago)
to me

They arrived from every country in Africa to learn and to listen and although I am not from Africa nor am I Black or young, I also listened to president Obama give every ounce of thought and energy he had to inspire and motivate young people. Obama is welcome to write on this Blog for the rest of his life if he should feel the need to communicate after he steps down as president. Signed: Joseph Raglione. Blogger. I come from Uganda -- from a farming community in the countryside where I learned what I know from the farmers I grew up with. When I had the chance to complete my education in agricultural science, the hardest decision I had to make was whether to find a new job or return to my local community and teach them a little bit of what I had learned. More than anything else, I wanted to see improvement in the livelihoods of the farmers that helped me become the agricultural scientist, pastor, and mentor that I am today. So I returned home to the Arua district in Uganda, and spent years working to pass on the knowledge and skills I had gained. My passion is to help bring solutions to the country, and continent, where I grew up. That's how so many of my fellow Africans who are part of the President's Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) feel too. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce President Obama to my YALI fellows, and to you, at a town hall today. You can tune in at 3:20 pm ET to watch live here. As President Obama knows, the African continent is not only in need of transformational leaders, but leaders who will make the deliberate effort to inspire those they lead to take up the mantle -- particularly young leaders, who are looking for seasoned role models to emulate. Thanks to President Obama and the legacy he leaves with YALI, so many of us our are well-poised to do just that. So please join us at the town hall today at 3:20 pm ET to hear President Obama's answers to our questions about the future of young leaders in Africa and around the world. Thanks for listening to my story, Emmanuel Emmanuel Odama Arua District, Uganda

Gut Bacteria are eating our G.A.B.A.! The horror! :-)

 According to the new findings, Gut Bacteria eat a chemical known as G.A.B.A. This chemical produces a calming effect on the human brain and apparently gut bacteria also like to remain calm because GABA is all they eat!  If these little parasites only eat G.A.B.A. why do we need them in our Guts? Apparently they are not helping us digest our food! Do they serve some other purpose? What do these Gut Bacteria secrete after eating G.A.B.A.?

 The following article links low levels of G.A.B.A. to depression and mood disorders. It also explains that certain Gut Bacteria only eat G.A.B.A. That makes me wonder!  What would happen if we limit or remove these particular Gut Bacteria? Fewer of these Gut Bacteria might mean leaving more G.A.B.A. for our human Brains. That might help to calm our brains but here is another question. What is G.A.B.A. doing in our digestive tracts? Should this chemical not remain in our Brains where it belongs? My guess is that we have to keep our Gut Bacteria happy without depleting our brain's supply of G.A.B.A. I theorize that learning how to increase and maintain G.A.B.A. in our brains will keep both our brains and our Guts contented for longer periods.
What do you think gentle Corina Marinescu? 

NEUROSCIENCE

Corina Marinescu

Shared publicly  -  1:34 AM

Gut bacteria spotted eating brain chemicals for the first time
Bacteria have been discovered in our guts that depend on one of our brain chemicals for survival. These bacteria consume GABA, a molecule crucial for calming the brain, and the fact that they gobble it up could help explain why the gut microbiome seems to affect mood.

Philip Strandwitz and his colleagues at Northeastern University in Boston discovered that they could only grow a species of recently discovered gut bacteria, called KLE1738, if they provide it with GABA molecules. “Nothing made it grow, except GABA,” Strandwitz said while announcing his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston last month.

GABA acts by inhibiting signals from nerve cells, calming down the activity of the brain, so it’s surprising to learn that a gut bacterium needs it to grow and reproduce. Having abnormally low levels of GABA is linked to depression and mood disorders, and this finding adds to growing evidence that our gut bacteria may affect our brains.

Source & further reading:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2095769-gut-bacteria-spotted-eating-brain-chemicals-for-the-first-time/

Paper:
http://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4060/presentation/18619

  #neuroscience   #gutbacteria   #GABA   #research  

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OUTSIDE THE INNER CIRCLE!

OUTSIDE THE INNER CIRCLE.

Outside the inner circle

Life's a heavy mop,

Outside the inner circle

You're always eating slop!

Inside the inner circle

You're on a mountain top,

Outside the inner circle

They often let you drop!

Outside the inner circle

You're sleeping in a ditch,

Inside the inner circle

You're a son-of-a ….rich!

Outside the inner circle

Sorry, but you're late!

Inside the inner circle

Please pass the dinner plate!

Copyright: Joseph Raglione. 03-08-2016

Gentle People:
  With all the terrifying bloodshed occurring around the world,  I am forced to remember why I started the non-religious world humanitarian peace and ecology movement. It was after a car accident left me with a chronic and painful disability I decided to smell the Roses...literally. Upon leaving the Hospital which saved my life, I searched for and found a Rose Bush and smelled the Roses. Oh yes, they were pretty but unfortunately genetically modified with zero scent!
  The accident prompted me to view life on Earth as extremely rare and precious and beautiful and something to be protected...not by force but by friendly persuasion using as much logic and science as is humanly possible! Police forces of the world take note! Friendly persuasion works better than a loaded gun! All life includes human life. We humans are part of  Nature which is delicate and beautiful and rare in the Universe and must be gently protected from exploitation by people who believe money and power are all that matters. White collar crime has enormous repercussions on the people who live on or below the poverty line and we need police forces not afraid to look up the social ladder as well as far down below.

  I sincerely hope people working for companies such as Monsanto and Bayer who create genetic experiments and chemical pesticide products which are dangerous to life on Earth, are also reading these words! Have the CEO's of these and similar companies become so desperate for economic and emotional and physical security they have completely lost their sense of Ethics? Are they willing to destroy the natural environment for money and power?                

 It starts with the school systems. Every child should be rewarded for participation within a school system that literally provides the necessities of life. Schools should be productive members of society. They should have school kitchens providing free food for hungry children. Hydroponic Gardens that grow the food. Small Zoos for observing and understanding how other species survive within a living Biology class protected by the students. Science classes that create computers for free distribution to students and for sale outside the schools. Machine and Wood working shops that produce goods for sale outside the schools. There must be every concept imaginable to keep young minds curious and participating within a well structured and government protected school system. Children should love the time they spend within the school system and not fear for their lives as is often happening today!

  When I was in school only a few children with the smartest memories and those who were the best physically fit were rewarded. They used something called credits to reward the smart students and the Athletes were passed through with or without credits. It was Bullshit and most students understood it was Bullshit. We studied and worked hard for credits only because enough accumulated credits allowed us to escape the prison like school system without the humiliating drop-out label. Credits had zero economic value outside the school and we all understood that fact but if we did not appreciate the idea and decided to rebel, we were severely and brutally punished. Myself included. Only a few of the children who had quick memories and who always obeyed the teachers were frequently rewarded. The majority of students encumbered with emotional or psychological or physical problems were often left aside. Many would end up working as hard labor for our corporate industrial society. I became a general handy-man and bounced from company to company learning as much as I could along the road of life, but I had a deep and silent secret. I often read books not sanctioned by the school system. Books that explained secrets most students would never understand. I became a secret intellectual and a handy-man while later my industrial training became good enough for basic survival.

  I was never accepted into the ranks of the middle class.
 In the recent past, economic success and social power was the rallying cry for schools around the world. Many young people were repetitively indoctrinated to believe that money and power were all important tenets of success. Unfortunately, today as adults they are stressed and emotionally unstable and some have given up the struggle altogether and can be found barely surviving on the streets! Many end up in our many prisons and have become dangerous! On the other side of the spectrum, students who became the most successful and richest people on Earth are today often unhappy human beings! Many have become extremely competitive and self-centered and cold-blooded and they know how to accumulate money and power but not how to distribute wealth or create good life sustaining ideas! They do not work for the betterment of all Life on Earth but do however know how to dominate and control the human mind using any method possible! Repetitive hypnosis and peer group pressure as well as Media advertising are social tools often used by clever dominating people to create groups of loyal followers. For examples: political followers, military and police followers, religious followers, fanatic groups of dangerous followers, money oriented company followers and groups of non-profit followers. I prefer groups of friendly Nature followers.

 Today companies of people continue to degrade the natural environment in search of wealth and power and they are dangerously succeeding! They, however, are quietly being asked to change their bad habits and more than a few are using their power and money to help preserve nature and not to exploit what is natural and beautiful. Surprisingly, they are discovering how much fun it is and even, how profitable!

 Money was created as a better method for exchanging goods and services but over the centuries quickly changed to became economic symbols of power representing rulers and governments. People without money were left behind to die in poverty and misery! The extreme rich did not care about the extreme poor until the poor revolted. Unfortunately, that cycle is returning! Today the poor are extremely poor and the rich are...well...you know how it goes!

 Today, using my old computer, I  attempt to help with free publicity as many non-profit organizations as possible and I do not ask for money. My telephone is connected to the Internet and once a month I pay my phone bill. My pension check is minimal and I am always broke!. Saving Life on Earth without government economic help is an expensive proposition and I do realize why people accumulate money. It is sad that accumulating money helps to destroy Nature. Many people today are desperate for money. The price of food and shelter has gone up and the poor are suffering in miserable poverty. That is the reason we need better social programs and a larger Tax on the extreme rich. We also need a Carbon Tax on those who continue to create pollution. We must make the polluters pay! It is to create an equitable economic distribution system based on clean air and water and clean food!

  It is to give every person a fair chance at survival! It is to maintain and to help all those wonderful people who are care-givers and who work without thought to personal gain, a chance to relax once in a while and to enjoy life! We need more people who are willing to help those in desperate need and who are in emotional stress. We need people who like helping people! We need people who enjoy life on this Earth and who work to protect the natural environment and who absolutely refuse to exploit the environment for personal profit! All of the aforementioned people need protection more than the half insane power brokers and exploiters who now control the economic system of the not-so-free world.

  We have to stop the blood-shed with the only tools that work. Friendship with patience and education. We have to use the care givers credo of ALOHA which is: Ask...Listen...Observe...Help....and Ask again.
 Over decades I was never simply satisfied to write words for their own sake but attempted to create social solutions to help stop the murderous bloodshed created by basically extremely sick and lonely human beings. We need a great many more intelligent imaginative minds to help create solutions. We need to completely revamp and improve our early childhood education systems. One important solution is to break up a Policeman's Eight hour work day into two distinct parts.. During one-half of the day he or she patrols the streets keeping the peace and during the other half of the day the police officer wears a different and non threatening uniform to work with children in parks and play grounds as swimming and sport instructors. He or she can also use the power of the police to work along side social services in order to help the homeless and the drug addicts find safe havens without the threat of incarceration.

 Thanks for reading. I hope these words help you create a better world.
Signed: Joseph Raglione          
Executive director: The world humanitarian peace and ecology movement.

How the human brain works. Your included!

Hacker News

The Human Connectome Project zeroes in on the firmware of the brain

• By Jessica Hall on July 27, 2016 at 1:39 pm
• 2 Comments

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Is the mind an emergent property of the brain, or is it something… else? Cartesian dualism is a polarizing topic, but like many other ideas that we thought were the province of philosophers, we’re getting light shed on it from a surprising source. Researchers from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) have just released our best-ever functional map of the human brain. It’s twice as finely detailed as anything that has come before it — and it’s tiptoeing closer to settling the mind-body problem. As it turns out, the brain as computer analogy has its shortfalls.

“The brain is not like a computer that can support any operating system and run any software,” says neuroscientist David Van Essen, Principal Investigator of the Human Connectome Project. “Instead, the software — how the brain works — is intimately correlated with the brain’s structure — its hardware, so to speak. If you want to find out what the brain can do, you have to understand how it is organized and wired.”

Image: Glasser, Van Etten et al

Because different subsurface brain structures look more or less the same from the outside, neuroscientists have heretofore relied mostly on gross anatomy and unfortunate happenstance to tell us what parts of the brain did what. (Here’s looking at you, Phineas Gage and Patient H.M.) Structure and function are tightly coupled in the brain, down to the molecular level. But the brain does so many things. Missing borders between brain structures can badly compromise our ability to understand how the brain works.

The HCP has been working for nigh unto six years to shed light on this problem. Their most recent announcement is impressive: The project just doubled the spatial resolution of our best known functional map. In doing so, they also integrate several different ways of explaining differences between brain regions. The researchers report that they’ve found a total of 180 distinct areas per hemisphere, regions which are bounded by sharp changes in cortical architecture, function, connectivity, and/or topography. This development stands to change neuroscience, by opening up our understanding of the relationship between structure and function.

Using multimodal MRI data from the HCP and a semi-automated approach, the new “parcellation” of cortical function checked its predictions by comparing them with brain scans from hundreds of healthy volunteers, so that the model could divide functional regions with exquisite accuracy. The parcellation divides both the left and right cerebral hemispheres into 180 areas based on physical differences like cortical thickness, functional distinctions like which areas respond to language stimuli, and differences in the connections between functional regions. If you think of it using the metaphor of, say, Google Maps, this approach combines political maps with satellite imagery; the most important divisions are invisible from a zoomed-out perspective, but important all the same.

Like cartographers from the Age of Exploration, brain cartographers are creating a tool for others to use in exploration and discovery. Prior work on the connectome gave us a directional diagram of information flow through the brain, and a startling semantic atlasthat shows where we process the meanings of certain words and abstract topics. This team of researchers hopes that their work will prove an asset to other researchers as they push back the frontier of ignorance.

“We were able to persuade Nature to put online almost 200 extra pages of detailed information on each of the 180 regions as well as all of the algorithms we used to align the brains and create the map,” Van Essen said. “We think it will serve the scientific community best if they can dive down and get these maps onto their computer screens and explore as they see fit.”

The Human Connectome Project zeroes in on the firmware of the brain

• By Jessica Hall on July 27, 2016 at 1:39 pm
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When Collards VS Kale, Collards win!

Alex P. On Collards VS Kale.

Cooked Collard greens have 30 times more lutein-zeaxanthin essential for good vision than do Carrots. (They are Carotenoids for the human eye macula)...and Collards have 20% more protein per calorie than does cooked broccoli.

Collard Greens also have 3% more protein per calorie than cooked lentils...11% more protein than cooked kale and higher protein quality than: lentils, kale or milk. The amino acid score is 94 versus 91 for kale, 86 for lentils, 85 for milk. Collard is also 3 times better digested by the human system than is Calcium and Collards have many more nutrients than does broccoli. (See the top vegan sources of Calcium at Https://plus.google.com/+AlexP/posts/W5iRpgBk3iS, 

Collard greens are easy to steam and unlike other cruciferous vegetables, have far fewer goitrogens which are compounds mostly destroyed during cooking and which interfere with the thyroid when eaten raw in large amounts - too much of any food is bad! 

Because of these things, I have started eating a lot more collard greens with the aid of the pressure cooker ► https://plus.google.com/+AlexP/posts/HcNA6yU4UDS. Not to mention, steamed/cooked broccoli has 47% more carbs than steamed/cooked collard greens per 100 grams - which is not ideal for glucose control ► check your glucose 1 hour after meals with https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexP/posts/5ocD2zDyUkW. Steamed/cooked kale has 14% more carbs than collard greens, but less than broccoli, so I gave up eating kale - since collards have more easily absorbed Calcium and 11% higher quality protein. The Amino Acid score is (94 versus 91).

Neonicotinoids kill Bees. Bayer and Monsanto want to merge. Stop them!

Taren S-K, SumOfUs.org <us@sumofus.org> Unsubscribe	10:56 AM (11 hours ago)
to Joseph

Joseph, When I started SumOfUs five years ago I had little more than a laptop and an idea: that corporations had too much power over our lives and that it was time for ordinary people to stand up to them. Today I’m part of a global community of more than 10 million people who have taken action with SumOfUs. It’s incredible that together we’ve become such a big global force for change in such a short space of time. This year I made the difficult decision that it is time for me to take on different challenges and hand over to a new Executive Director to take our community from strength to strength. I’m so enormously proud of what we’ve achieved together.So, before I go I wanted to remind you of some of our greatest hits... Saving our bees One of our earliest campaigns was to help protect the world’s bees from dangerous and harmful pesticides produced by chemical companies for profit. SumOfUs members understand that all life is linked. If we lose one part, we all suffer. That’s why our community has mobilised in the millions to stand up for the planet’s bees. Thanks to members likes you, we haven't missed an opportunity to share our message at the Bayer AGM itself in Germany, and protest its support of bee-killing neonics. We forced brands like Home Depot and Lowe’s to remove neonic pesticides from their shelves and recently we helped force the French government to announce a complete ban on the use of neonicotinoids. That’s a huge win for people power. Only a few weeks ago, Bayer announced a giant merger attempt with the other big producer of toxic chemicals, Monsanto. We’re gearing up for the mother of all battles to save the bees. If the deal goes through then the power of a combined Bayer-Monsanto company would be huge. It’ll take all our collective power to stop the deal. Helping stop deforestation caused by conflict palm oil Two years ago, we launched one of the biggest ever SumOfUs campaigns to stop conflict palm oil production. And what a campaign it’s been! Together, by running petitions, protesting outside of stores and pressuring corporate executives, we helped force mega-brands like Starbucks, McDonald’s, and KFC into adopting sustainable palm oil sourcing policies. One of our biggest targets is the snack food giant, PepsiCo. With thousands of small donations we launched a parody video exposing PepsiCo’s palm oil policy that went viral -- with over 20 million views. PepsiCo sat up and took notice and came out with a new policy. But PepsiCo’s policy still has a huge loophole: it doesn't cover its producer in Indonesia. That means that deforestation, worker exploitation, and the destruction of the habitats of orangutans, rhinos, and elephants is still happening. We need to amp up the pressure on PepsiCo to cut its ties to conflict palm oil -- but we can't do this without your support. Can you please chip in to support palm oil campaigning and protect the Indonesian rainforest? We can't do this without you. Protecting workers' rights around the world More than 1,000 people were killed when a garment factory collapsed in Dacca, Bangladesh. Our community knew we had to act to get justice for workers. We worked closely with partners around the world and on the ground in Bangladesh to harness the power of global consumers to pressure clothing brands to do the right thing for garment workers. SumOfUs members handed in letters to GAP store managers, and chipped in to bring Bangladeshi trade unionists to the United States to try to meet with Walmart executives. Because hundreds of thousands of us protested, we saw results: big brands took action and signed a fire safety accord.  We know that workers in factories are still often exploited, and global brands often look away when they see the big bucks rolling in. SumOfUs will continue to stand up for workers wherever in the world they are. We’ve proven our movement can play a critical role, and we’ll be continuing to make sure global brands live up to their responsibilities. Stopping dangerous trade deals Current trade policies are bad news for people and the planet. Global trade policy lies at the heart of a system that impoverishes millions, rolls back vital protections for workers and our environment, and allows corporations to override democratic decisions. Two of the biggest trade deals -- the Trans Pacific Partnership, and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership -- are being pushed by politicians and corporate lobbyists. Our campaigns against the deals have leveraged the power of our global community making sure we were there at every secret negotiation or remote location where trade negotiators were selling us out to global corporations. They show that when we work together our collective voice is louder and stronger than when we act alone, that is the meaning of SumOfUs, the sum is greater than its parts. We’re making progress but we haven’t stopped these deals yet, and our campaign won’t be over until all these deals are dead in the water. The fight to hold corporations accountable has never been more important or more challenging. It can often feel like we’re isolated and powerless in the face of the mighty and powerful, but what SumOfUs shows is that we are strong when we stand together. When we come together in our hundreds, thousands, or even millions, we can take on huge corporations -- and win! Even though I’m stepping down from my official role as Executive Director of SumOfUs, I’ll still be signing petitions, making phone calls, and showing up to demonstrations just like the rest of you. I have no doubt that all of us will keep fighting, and together we’ll achieve our mission of challenging corporate power and reshaping our world in favour of people over profit. Keep fighting the good fight! Taren SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. Please help keep SumOfUs strong by chipping in CA$3 or become a SumOfUs core member with a regular monthly donation. 1.Can you please chip in to stop the Bayer-Monsanto merger now? Together, we can save the bees. 2.Can you please chip in to continue our workers' rights campaigning? Together we can stop the exploitation. 3.Can you please chip in to stop these corporate-backed trade deals now? A little bit goes a long way in edging our community closer to success. Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter This email was sent to human4us@bell.net. | Unsubscribe