simple things

last year headline - still waiting

  

UN Climate Chief: We Are Remaking The World Economy

Michael Bastasch

4:15 PM 02/05/2015

 

 

The United Nation’s climate chief says that reordering the global economy to fight climate change is the “most difficult” task the international body has ever undertaken.
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” Figueres said.

Shawn Colvin- Wichita Skyline

this song haunts me

we are made of stars

we are all starstuff

Particles of Immortality by Lawrence M. Schoen

what we truly need every day

I can think of two things we must have every day:

art and love (not in any order, of course)

And here is a blog I love about art: HERE

That is your Thought Bomb for today...

#enditmovement

Free the Slaves Formula for Freedom from Free the Slaves on Vimeo.

longevity and reverse aging

Blood Plasma Protein Profile as a Biomarker of Aging - December 7, 2015

I think you'll find this open access work on a potential biomarker of aging to be interesting; the researchers use it to assess the results of different lifestyle choices, finding that some of those known to shorten life expectancy produce a higher measure of biological age in their biomarker.

This seems a small step closer to validating the usefulness of such biomarkers. A number of research groups are presently developing biomarkers of aging based on characteristic patterns of epigenetic modifications or altered protein levels.

We should expect to find common patterns because the cell and tissue damage that causes aging, and the evolved reactions to that damage, are the same in everyone. The challenge lies in identifying these common patterns amidst the complex, varied alterations that occur due to individual circumstances and environment, but solid progress has being made in recent years.

Read More:  https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2015/12/blood-plasma-protein-profile-as-a-biomarker-of-aging.php

Confirming Data for the Agelessness of Hydra - December 9, 2015

It has long been suspected that hydra, small freshwater animals, are immortal in that they do not suffer degenerative aging. In practice this means that no changes in mortality rate, reproduction rate, and measures of cellular metabolism are observed over time.

This is a highly regenerative species, with individuals capable of rebuilding themselves from fragments, and it may be the case that their constant regeneration is the source of their agelessness. Regarding that agelessness, the challenge for researchers is that verifying the lack of aging in a species is a slow statistical business of wait and see, and one can always suspect at the end of any given study that the authors did not check rigorously enough for signs of aging.

Perhaps it is there, just too slow to show up over the time allotted. Certainly there has been some back and forth debate over the last twenty years regarding what the data does or does not support. This latest research provides a set of much more robust evidence in support of hydra agelessness.

Read More https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2015/12/confirming-data-for-the-agelessness-of-hydra.php


The Latest US Life Expectancy and Mortality Figures - December 10, 2015

The mortality data for 2014 was recently published by the CDC. The popular press has been making a big deal of the fact that the statistical measure of life expectancy at birth has remained much the same these past few years.

This is something that epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky has suggested might happen as a result of the consequences of greater obesity temporarily outweighing progress in medicine, but a few years is too short a period of time to confirm any departure from the long slow upward trend in life expectancy established over past decades.

Meanwhile we should bear in mind that present trends are the outcome of a period of development in which researchers were making no efforts to treat the causes of aging; gains in life expectancy were incidental. That is now changing, and future trends will reflect a research community increasingly involved in building therapies that target the mechanisms of aging. The past will not reflect the future, and this is a time of transition.

Read More https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2015/12/the-latest-us-life-expectancy-and-mortality-figures.php 

[All of Fight Aging!, with the exception of the introductory articles, is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In short, this means that you are encouraged to republish and rewrite Creative Commons licensed Fight Aging! content in any way you see fit. We only ask that that you are polite and (a) link to the original, (b) attribute the author, and (c) attribute Fight Aging!. ] 

Unprecedented amount of snakes of plague proportions

The Big Wobble : Unprecedented amount of snakes of plague proportio...: Tiger snake Snake attacks following the trend of increased shark and bee attacks around the world! The authorities have urged residen...

the big puzzle and you

A CURE FOR TYPE 1 DIABETES?

During the study, experts were able to create a newly-modified alginate material to encapsulate human pancreatic islet cells - a way of making the body adopt them.

The modified alginate, a material originally derived from brown algae, was used to prevent the body triggering an immune response which can lead to the build-up of scar tissue and the cells ultimately being rendered useless.

Scientists created a library of almost 800 alginate derivatives and evaluated the immune response to each of them. 

This led them to focus on one called triazole-thiomorpholine dioxide (TMTD), which had a minimal immune response in mice and large animals.

The researchers then implanted human islet cells encapsulated in TMTD in mice, which provided the success for the study.

keep reading

Clear Snow the Laziest Way Imaginable

rituals

Over the centuries, historic texts have recorded a large number of rituals – magical or religious – some of which have been preserved in modified forms, while others remain only in obscure, old books. Yet others have been almost completely lost in the mists of time.

Rituals were usually designed ...
You may view the latest post at http://in5d.com/long-forgotten-mystical-rituals-and-magical-practices-in-ancient-history/

big stink

Paul Krugman's latest column is a must-read on the deep and poisonous meanness of thinking that led to the Flint water crisis. Before any of it happened, by the way, the very decision to switch from a safe drinking system to the Flint River to save a few bucks was a shocker. That river was not only corrosive, it was a well-known sinkhole. It was poison incarnate. Various companies had been dumping crud in it forever. It was visibly a way to save a few bucks and spit in the face of the poor and significantly black population of Flint. The governor and those who carried out this act (and then ignored the news of what was happening) really should be brought to court. Tomgram

"In the 1850s, London, the world’s largest city, still didn’t have a sewer system. Waste simply flowed into the Thames, which was as disgusting as you might imagine. But conservatives, including the magazine The Economist and the prime minister, opposed any effort to remedy the situation. After all, such an effort would involve increased government spending and, they insisted, infringe on personal liberty and local control.
"It took the Great Stink of 1858, when the stench made the Houses of Parliament unusable, to produce action. But that’s all ancient history. Modern politicians, no matter how conservative, understand that public health is an essential government role. Right? No, wrong — as illustrated by the disaster in Flint, Mich.
"What we know so far is that in 2014 the city’s emergency manager — appointed by Rick Snyder, the state’s Republican governor — decided to switch to an unsafe water source, with lead contamination and more, in order to save money. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that state officials knew that they were damaging public health, putting children in particular at risk, even as they stonewalled both residents and health experts...
"What we see in Flint is an all too typically American situation of (literally) poisonous interaction between ideology and race, in which small-government extremists are empowered by the sense of too many voters that good government is simply a giveaway to Those People."

http://www.nytimes.com/…/25/opin…/michigans-great-stink.html

hey creatives, read this one

Want to be more creative? Here's what music to avoid at all costs

Whether you listen before or during work depends on the individual. But there is evidence that music during creative work is a big help.  A 2005 study into Canadian Software Developers use of music revealed: “Music helped in relaxation, getting around [mental] blocks by changing thoughts instead of getting “tunnel visioned”

All it takes is the right music. 

snow fall gif by Trace who is creatively choosing new music

READ http://www.creativeboom.com/tips/want-to-be-more-creative-heres-what-music-to-avoid-at-all-costs/