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Posted by Admin at 9:47 PM, Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Quotations from the Wise
"Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?" — Nikola Tesla
“Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“He or she who supports a State organized in the military way – whether directly or indirectly – participates in the sin. Each man old or young takes part in the sin by contributing to the maintenance of the State by paying taxes.” — Mahatma Gandhi
"Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life." — Nikola Tesla
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes." — Nikola Tesla
Categories: For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers
Posted by Admin at 7:04 PM, Friday, May 07, 2010
Making Hollow Objects without Injection Molding
In unversities, you may have been taught about injection molding. Injection molding is currently the main technology for making hollow plastic objects such as toys, dolls and plastic flowers. What is little mentioned is the fact that injection molding is an energy intensive process, in which lots of electricity is used on melting plastic resins and injecting the molten plastic into cavity of a mold. Although our standard of living wouldn't have been so good without injection molding, this technology is a real burden to the environment. In my humble opinion, injection molding should be replaced for the sake of the environment, although not many people would agree.
Fortunately, one of our members has developed another technology which enables hollow structures to be fabricated photolithographically without injection molding. The new technology is particularly suitable for making micro parts embedded with cavities. Unlike injection molding, the new technology is very suitable for fabricating ultra-small hollow parts with sub-millimetre resolution. More importantly, since this technology involves virtually thermal melting process, it saves a lot of electricity.
The new technology features the use of preferential surface photo-polymerization to form suspended shells over a selected area. The final structures fabricated in this technology can be:
* hollow or having suspended shell(s);
* installed on a substrate or lift-off from a substrate;
* conical, spherical, etc and etc;
* with areas ranging from a few microns to a few centimeters;
This techology and its derivatives have been patented in many places (e.g. GB 2416599 ). However, if you are seriously interested, you can get it under a license. Please feel free to contact us at b l o g @ p o l y m e r f a b . c o . u k. Equally, you can also fill in the following form to contact us:
Reference:
Posted by Admin at 2:21 PM, Saturday, April 03, 2010
How to Eat Less Without Feeling Weak
Fasting for a short period is not difficult at all. However, most of us cannot starve ourselves for a prolonged period, not because of our hunger for food, but because we are running out of energy. This problem is due to the fact that we rely too much on food as a major source of energy. When the food is not around us, our bodies have no more energy to survive.
Fortunately, it seems that our Creator has already provided a solution for us to survive and stay strong without too much food around us. It seems that we can tap the energy directly from the Sun without we having to eat food for energy. The method of solution is called Sun Gazing.
What we can do is to:
1/ Gaze the rising or setting sun on a daily basis. Then, our appetite will gradually disappear as time goes on. Additionally, scientists have already proven that the far-infrared light from the sun can heal the body of certain ailments. There is no need to suppress the appetite by following the useless nutrition protocols that have been littered on the internet.
2/ Practise oil pulling on a daily basis. According to Ayurveda, it is possible to purify the taste-buds and the entire body system by practising oil pulling.
Oil pulling is very easy to practise. Just rinse the mouth with a tablespoon of sesame oil or sunflower oil on empty stomach for 15 to 20 minutes. After the process of oil pulling, your mouth will be filled with milky white foams. You should spit out all the white foams to the toilet without delay. Finally, brush the teeth and further rinse the mouth with clean water.
3/ Make sure you have enough iodine and chromium in your body. Chromium is an essential element, without which the hormone insulin would not work. Scientists have found that chromium picolinate can be used to ease intense cravings for carbonhydrate and treat atypical depression [1], [2]. On the other hand, there is clinical evidence [3, 4] that atypical depression is linked to thyroid abnormalities and patients with atypical depressionmay benefit from triiodothyronine, a medication used to treat hypothyroidism.
[2] Effectiveness of chromium in atypical depression: a placebo-controlled trial.
[3] Depression, the Thyroid, and Hormones
Categories: Be Veg, DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Health
Posted by Admin at 2:29 PM, Sunday, October 11, 2009
Mercury Poisoning and Meat Consumption - Updated on 21 February 2010
The University of Hongkong has in 1998 conducted a study on the connection between Hongkong male subfertility and fish consumption [1 ]. According to the study, non-vegetarians living in Hongkong have dangeriously high concentration of mercury in their hair samples.
Mercury concentrations found in the hair of 159 Hong Kong males aged 25–72 (mean age=37 years) was positively correlated with age and was significantly higher in Hong Kong subjects than in European and Finnish subjects (1.2 and 2.1 ppm, respectively).
Mercury in the hair of 117 subfertile Hong Kong males (4.5 ppm, P<0.05) was significantly higher than mercury levels found in hair collected from 42 fertile Hong Kong males (3.9 ppm).
The mercury content in the hair of subfertile males was found to be approximately 40% higher than that of fertile males of similar age.
Female subjects had significantly lower levels of hair mercury than males in similar age groups. The hair mercury concentrations of females were found to be 60% less than male participants in the similar age group. Perhaps, the difference in hair mercury concentrations between male and female subjects is due to the role of the sex hormones on mercury toxicity. As suggested in Mark and David Geier's work [9 , 10], the male hormone testosterone potentates the mercury toxicity, while female hormones tend to mask some of the toxic effects of mercury.
Scientists point out that female subjects who are exposed to mercury can have irregular periods.
However, hair analysis on 16 vegans having not consumed any fish, shellfish or meat for at least the last 5 years reveals that the vegans' mean hair mercury concentration was only 0.38 ppm --- that is, about 11 times lower than those of the meat-eating subjects. This figure suggests that vegans are almost immune from mercury poisoning.
According to another study carried out in Taiwan [2 ], mean concentrations of hair mercury of vegetarian, general population living in the main city, fishing village, outlying islands and fishing workers are 0.5±0.5、2.4±1.8、4.4±3.3、4.6±7.4 and 9.1±13.6 mg/kg respectively. The same research also reveals that food mercury is detected, in decreasing order of mercury concentration, in fish, nonfish seafood, eggs, meats, soybean products, vegetables, cereals, dairy products and fruit.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. Unlike other minerals, mercury is highly destructive and totally useless in human bodies. Unlike other metals, mercury is the only metal which is known to be destructive to the nerve tissues in snails [3 ]. There are no such things as safe levels of blood mercury concentration. According to Boyd E. Haley, PhD, a biochemistry professor at the University of Kentucky, even an extremely low level of mercury can cause neurological diseases, including feeling of foggy brain, chronic fatigue Syndrome and even behavioral disorder.
Results from both studies demonstrated how meat eating subjects a person to a substantially higher risk of mercury poisoning.
Forms of Mercury
Mercury exists in bodies of animals in three forms: elemental, inorganic and organic. All forms of mercury exhibit toxicity in different ways.
Elemental mercury
Elemental mercury is usually absorbed as vapor Mercury vaporises even at room temperature. This form of mercury is usually found in dental amalgam fillings (~50% mercury concentration), from which mercury vapor can be easily visualized in black light [3 ].
Because elemental mercury is lipid solulable, elemental mercury vapor can cross the blood brain barrier in the presence of lipids, alcohol or other more powerful organic solvents. Over time, it can cause damage in the central nervous system, kidney malfunction, respiratory failure, and death.. Since elemental mercury can readily escape from one animal's mouth in the form of vapor it is not impossible for this form of mercury poisoning to be spread from one individual to another.
Observable symptoms associated with elemental mercury poisoning include: 1) mood swings, nervousness, irritability, and other emotional changes, 2) insomnia, 3) headache, 4) abnormal sensations, 5) muscle twitching, 6) tremors, 7) weakness, 8) muscle atrophy, and 9) decreased cognitive functions. [15 ].
About 80 percent of inhaled elemental mercury is absorbed into the blood stream through the alveoli. About 0.01% of ingested elemental mercury is absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract. Once absorbed , elemental mercury accumulates in the kidneys, erythrocytes, bone marrow, liver, spleen, lungs, skin and hair. The elimination half-life of elemental mercury in the body is approximately 60 to 77 days.
Inorganic mercury
Inorganic mercury is usually referred as mercury salts. Inorganic mercury compounds have been used in pharmaceuticals, fungicides, Chinese medicines and antiseptics.
It is widely believed that mercury salts in the blood stream cannot cross the blood-brain barrier[5 ]. This means that, when mercury in the brain becomes inorganic for whatever reasons, it will not get out of the brain until it is removed through the use of chelating agents capable of crossing the blood brain barrier.
The UCLA study found evidence linking inorganic mercury in the blood to tissues known to be targets for the toxin, such as the liver, the immune system and the pituitary gland [4 ]. The same study also reveals a connection between levels of the pituitary hormone lutropin and chronic mercury exposure, which might help explain mercury's link to neurodegenerative disease. Inorganic mercury usually comes from meat products.
In general, symptoms associated with inorganic mercury poisoning includes skin rashes and inflammation (dermatitis). Ingesting a large amount of inorganic mercury can lead to bloody diarrhea. Inorganic mercury that is absorbed in the intestinal tissue can spread to other organ systems, causing mood swings and memory loss or renal damage. Muscle weakness may also occur. [15 ].
Organic mercury
The most toxic form of mercury is organic mercury. Organic Mercury includes, but not limited to, methylmercury. Methyl mercury was soon detected in all species of fish and in fish-consuming animals. The source of organic mercury appeared to be inorganic mercury biomethylated by microorganisms in sea animals.
Absorption of methylmercury in the gastrointestinal tract is almost 95%. Its distribution in a human body is surprisingly uniform and this distribution process is usually completed within 30 hours. About 10% of absorbed methylmercury ends up in the brain, and about 5% in the blood. According to the EPA in the US, the mercury concentration in red blood cells is approximately 20 times the concentration in plasma. There is no such thing as placental barrier for methylmercury. It is believed that levels of methylmercury in cord blood is proportional to but slightly higher than levels in maternal blood. Levels of methylmercury in the fetal brain are about 5-7 times that in maternal blood [32].
Methylmercury accumulates in growing scalp hair. Because of this, methylmercury concentrations in hair samples as measured in human hair forensic studies are always an excellent indicator of mercury exposure. Methylmercury can be found in fish, seafood, fungicides, herbicides, and wood preservatives are readily absorbed by living organisms.
Symptoms associated with organic mercury poisoning are mainly neurological malfunctions, and especially in a fetus, impaired neurological development. Other observable symptoms include: 1) peripheral vision impairment, 2) stinging or needle-like sensations in the extremities and mouth, 3) loss of coordination, 4) muscle weakness, and 5) other impairments of speech and hearing. [15 ]
Unlike inorganic mercury, both elemental mercury vapor and organic mercury can pass the blood brain barrier by way of the blood circulation.
Sources of Mercury
Mercury poisoning can occur from ingestion, inhalation and/or dermal absorption.
1/ Mercury From Food
A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995 reveals that mercury from food is by far the most significant source of mercury accumulation in the human body. The mercury ingested from food sources is usually organic.
According to another study carried out in Taiwan [2 ], food mercury is found predominantly in fishes and other sea animals. Fishes and other sea animals retain methylmercury, of which up to 90 per cent can be stored in the body's tissues.
The same study [2 ] also reveals that meat products and eggs contain some degree of mercury. Concentrations of mercury in meat of the animals can be as high as those in fish and seafood, depending on what they eats during their lifetime. Many other studies echo the similar findings[13, 14 ]. In one study [13 ], for example, scientists detected mercury and lead in meat and milk, and they believe that this is probably because of the soil intake of animals during grazing. Meat mainly stores inorganic mercury, of which 10 percent is absorbed in the human body.
Mercury has also been detected in some other less-mentioned food sources, including brassicas, mushrooms, and processed food items high in high fructose corn syrup. According to a study in the US [12 ], food items containing mercury-contaminated high fructose corn syrup are listed in the following table:
| Product Name | Total mercury detected (ppt) | Laboratory detection limit (ppt) |
| Quaker Oatmeal to Go | 350 | 80 |
| Jack Daniel’s Barbecue Sauce (Heinz) | 300 | 100 |
| Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup | 257 | 50 |
| Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce | 200 | 100 |
| Nutri‐Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars | 180 | 80 |
| Manwich Bold Sloppy Joe | 150 | 80 |
| Market Pantry Grape Jelly | 130 | 80 |
| Smucker’s Strawberry Jelly | 100 | 80 |
| Pop‐Tarts Frosted Blueberry | 100 | 80 |
| Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup | 87 | 50 |
| Wish‐Bone Western Sweet & Smooth | 72 | 50 |
| Coca‐Cola Classic | 62 |
50 |
| Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt | 60 | 20 |
| Minute Maid Berry Punch | 40 | 30 |
| Yoo‐hoo Chocolate Drink | 30 | 20 |
| Nesquik Chocolate Milk | 30 | 20 |
| Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Milk | 30 | 20 |
Suggestion: Avoid all artificially sweetened foodstuffs.
2/ Mercury From Amalgam fillings
By far, use of mercury from amalgam fillings is the main cause of exposure to elemental and inorganic mercury [35 ].
Mercury can readily vaporize even at room temperature [3 ]. It is believed that population with amalgum fillings, mercury thermometer spillage, electrical switches and other related accidents are most vulnerable to this form of mercury poisoning. By estimation, a single dental amalgam filling with a surface area of only 0.4 sq.cm can release as much as 15 micrograms of mercury vapor everyday primarily through mechanical chewing and evaporation. The mercury vapor from the amalgams is lipid soluble and passes readily through cell membranes and across the blood brain barrier. Over time, it accumulates in the human body, causes damage to the nerve tissues and continues to plague the body during the entire life of the filling through chewing, brushing, and the intake of hot fluids.
So far, Sweden, Norway and Denmark have already banned the use of amalgam mercury dental fillings. Germany has banned one type of amalgam from further use in Germany.
3/ Mercury From Polluted Environment
Another major source of mercury accumulation in human bodies is atmospheric mercury from human activities, including mining, coal combustion, agricultural use of mercury and waste incineration.
Most of the atmospheric mercury comes from combustion facilities, notably coal fire plants. In the US and Canada, the second largest source of atmospheric mercury is the combined incineration of municipal and medical waste. Medical waste includes dental amalgam waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, medical waste incinerators in the US emit 70,000 pounds of mercury into the atmosphere each year, making medical use of the metal one of the leading contributors to mercury pollution.
The use of mercury in amalgam fillings is also a burden to the environment. It causes not only mercury emissions to air during cremation, but also contamination to water systems as a result of dental practices. Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Canada have banned the use of mercury based amalgam dental fillings.
Execretments from non-vegetarian animals [1] and individuals with amalgam fillings [35] also contain mercury. Since atmospheric mercury can be spread by waste incineration, our failure to maintain a vegan lifestyle free of mercury amalgam fillings is also factor contributing to mercury pollution.
Mercury usually remains in the atmosphere for approximately 1 year. Atmospheric mercury vapor can spread thousand miles away from the point sources by processes not yet fully understood. For instance, a study revealed that mercury levels even in the arctic water were not very different from levels in more southern latitudes. According to some scientists, the mercury vapor is first oxidated into a water-soluble ions in the upper atmosphere, which is then recycled back to the ground as rainwater. This cycle continues in a way to spread the mercury pollution to other remote regions.
According to scientists around the world [7 ], 75% of mercury emissions comes from human activities. Unless we press for go-green movement, the pollution from our environment will continue to pose threat to the public health.
4/ Mercury from Tobacco Smoking
According to a "by the way" study documented in [ 6 ] , the smoke coming off of an additive free tobacco cigarette has approximately 0.014 mg/m3 of mercury, as opposed to 0.004 mg/m3 of mercury from the exhaled smoke of the smoker smoking the same cigarette. In other words, the smoker absorbs approximately 10/14 of mercury in tobacco smoke into his/her own body.
So, if the measurement documented in [6] is accurate, then the smoker effectively deposits at least 8.214 nanograms of mercury per puff into his/her lung. The finding documented in [6] also suggests that the most dangerous to others in the vicinity of a smoker is not the exhaled second-hand smoke.
According to information from a Canadian government webpage [7 ], tobacco smoke is one of the contributors of burden of mercury in human bodies, because mercury from the soil is taken into the plant primarily by the growing root and subsequently translocated to the leaves along with other nutrients. The webpage says, "Cigarette smoke contains up to 11.5 nanograms of mercury per cigarette in mainstream smoke and up to 16.6 nanograms of mercury per cigarette in side stream smoke." It should be understood that the normal acceptable treshold of mercury concentration in air is 5 ng/m3.
So, if the measurement documented in Ref [6] is accurate, then each smoker effectively deposits at least 8.214 nanograms of mercury per puff into his/her lung. The finding documented in [6] also suggests that the most dangerous to others in the vicinity of a smoker is not the exhaled second-hand smoke. Relatively speaking, the amount of mercury from tabacco smoke is relatively small. However, as will be explained later, smoking is known to deplete the serum glutathione, which is the body's natural chelating agent for removal of mercury.
5/ Mercury from beauty products
Since pearl shells contain mercury and some other heavy metals, all pearl based beauty products contain mercury. In fact, some manufacturers even intentionally add mercury into their non-pearl based beauty products in a way to attain their expected whitening effects.
According manufacturers of some mercury-containing beacuty products, the whitening effects of these products do not last for longer than three months. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that the half-life of all forms of mercury in the blood stream is at most half a year. In three months' time, approximately half of the transdermally absorbed mercury will be excreted if the subjects have enough glutathione in the body. The unexcreted mercury toxicity in the blood will be spread to the central nervous system by ways of blood circulation.
All mercury containing beauty products should be avoided at all costs.
6/ Thimerosal-containing vaccines
(will be added later)
7/ Other sources of mercury
- Fungicides (some)
- Limestones
- Some prescription drugs
- Polluted Water
- Diuretics (some)
- Button Batteries
- Broken energy saving lamps
Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning
Short-term inhalation of mercury vapour causes difficulty in breathing, cough and chest tightness (or so-called blocking of the heart charka) within a few hours. In theory, the non-neurological symptoms as a result of exposure to mercury is not expected to last forever. This is because the half-life of elemental mercury in blood for an average individual is just about 77 days. If one lives a strict vegan and amalgam-free lifestyle in a pollution-free environment for at least three months, most of the mercury burden in the blood will disappear, gradually and naturally.
Long-term exposure to mercury or mercury based compounds causes damage to the central nervous system. Very unfortunately, symptoms of mercury poisoning related to the central nervous system can take months, years or even decades to become noticable. The reason is simple. Since mercury has strong affinity for sulfhydryl-groups on amino acids, it bonds firmly to tissues in the central nervous system. Once attached to the nerve tissues, mercury can be rapidly transported inside the axon of the nerves to the spinal cord and brainstem. In the absence of any chelating agents, mercury will remain in the central nervous system for at least 15 years. Typically, the half-life of mercury in the central nervous system can be anywhere between 15 and 35 years.
Mercury is stored preferentially in the pituitary gland, hypothalamus, thyroid gland, adrenal gland, and occipital cortex. Once stored, mercury causes direct damage to these gland. Since the pituitary gland (or so-called the third eye) is involved, most mercury toxic individuals often experience frequent urination and difficulty in meditation. When the thyroid gland is affected, secondary effects on metabolism can appear.
Mercury causes direct damage to the central nervous system. The most common signs of chronic mercury-induced nervous damage include tremor of the hands, tremors in the tongue and eyelids. Ultimately, a mercury toxic individual usually has difficulty walking and balancing.
Mercury toxic individuals can easily become mentally unstable. Signs of mercury-induced mental disruption include: wide mood swings, short-tempered, fear, sadness or pleasure without clear reason, disappointed in all the criticism, lack of confidence, hallucinations, memory loss and inability to concentrate.
Mercury toxicity is associated with cognitive decline. Mercury toxic individuals are usually reluctant to accept new ideas or to learn something new. Typically, the higher the mercury level in the body, the lower the intelligence.
Mercury poisoning is positively associated with a variety of health problems. These health problems can be physical or psychological. Physical Health Problems associated with mercury poisoning include:
- Autism
- Chronic fatigue
- Amyotropic lateral sclerosis
- Ankylosing spondylitis
- Myasthenia gravis
- Paresthesias (loss of sensation) and neuralgia
- Vision, taste, smell and hearing disturbances
- Vertigo and tinnitus
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Parkinson’s disease
- Alzheimer’s’ disease
- Other dementias
- Hypothyroidism/Cold Extremities
- Infertility
- Poor libido
- Impotency
- Underactive thyroid
- Other Endocrine problems
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Juvenile arthritis
- Lupus erythromatosus
- Other autoimmune diseases
- Multiple chemical sensitivities*
- Diabetes
- Hypertension
- Fibromyalgia
- Sciatica
- Gastritis and Colitis
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Crohn’s disease
- Sleep disorders
- Yeast syndrome
Psychological health problem associated with mercury poisoning includes:
- “Brain fog” or poor focus/concentration*
- Rage or being quick to anger*
- Mood Swings
- Indecisiveness*
- Panic attacks
- Attention deficit (ADHD)
- Hyperactivity
- Learning disabilities
- Depression
- Unexplainable sadness*
- Joylessness*
- Fearfulness*
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Manic-depressive disorder (now known as bipolar disorder)
- Anorexia nervosa
- Bulimia
Can We Self-diagnose Mercury Toxicity?
It is not impossible to determine if one becomes a possible victim of mercury poisoning, even without any test instrument or health care providers. In general, mercury poisoning can become a possibility if any combination of the following conditions is observed:
- sneezing when looking directly at the sun
- chest tightness
- excessive hair loss
- excessive salivation
- frequent urination
- persistent fatigue
- unbearable headache
- oral inflammation
- gum disease --- including dark line of mercury sulfide on gums, loosening and loss of teeth
- constant runny nose
- sinusitis
- ringing in the ears, or tinnitus
- memory deterioration
- brain fog
- tremor of the hands, tongue and/or eyelids
- "needle sensation" at lymph nodes under arms, in groin and in the liver region
- irregular heartbeat
- metallic taste in the mouth
- difficulty in concentration
- hearing and vision disturbances
- chewing one's own tooth while asleep
- dry eyes
Half-lives of Mercury in the Human Body
The half-life of elemental mercury in the blood is approximately 60 to 77 days. The half-life of organic mercury in the blood can be anywhere between 50 days to 125 days. The half-life of mercury in the central nervous system is anywhere between 15 years to 30 years.
In other words, if one's blood brain barrier is not leaky, the mercury in the blood will be excreted naturally within half a year. However, in the absence of any chelating agents, the mercury in the brain or the central nervous system can last for decades. If one managed to avoid any intake of mercury, his/her brain mercury will be definitely higher than the blood mercury. This is exactly what we need for safe chelation of mercury.
Effects of Sex Hormones on Mercury Toxcities
According to a theory advanced by Mark and David Geier [9 , 10], the male hormone testosterone potentiates the mercury toxicity, while female hormones tend to mask some of the toxic effects of mercury. Geier's research group used the ratio in length of send and fourth figers to estimate the levels of testosterone in prenatal amniotic fluids in autistic children. They successfully observed that the severity of autism correlates with levels of testosterone in prenatal amniotic fluid, suggesting that testosterone may play a key role in mercury-induced neurological disorders. The researchers also propose the use of testosterone-lowering therapies to mitigate the toxicities of mercury. They say that treatments that address the role of testosterone in mercury toxicity could benefit patients with other disorders in which mercury appears to play a role. These, they say, include Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, obesity, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), asthma, and a variety of autoimmune disorders.
Previous studies have shown that female hormone progesterone not only supports the normal development of neurons in the brain, but also offers a protective effect on damaged brain tissue [36 ]. Perhaps, this is the real reason why female hormones tend to suppress some of the toxic effects of mercury.
Hormone therapy has already been practised in some countries or being investigated as a way of preventing cardiovascular and mental diseases [11 ]. However, it has been shown that the risks exceeded the benefits. There is no evidence suggesting that hormone replacement therapies would significantly alter the total amount of mercury accumulated in the human body. In fact, according to some of evidence gathered by the author, some of the toxic effects (including chest tightness, sensitivity to sunlight, mental exhaustion and persistent fatigue) are almost unaffected by replacement of sex hormones. Hormone replacement therapy is unlikely the permanent solution to the problem, because the mercury in the blood or central nervous system will not be removed through a hormone replacement therapy.
Glutathione, the Body's Natural Chelating Agent for Removal of Mercury
Glutathione is the body's natural chelating agent for removal of mercury and many other heavy metals. Glutathione in human declines with age. Perhaps, this explains why glutathione deficiency is believed to be a factor that worsens many degenerative diseases associated with mercury poisoning.
Cadmium, lead, mercury and nickel are glutathione-depleting metals [25]. Production of glutathione in our bodies declines with age or in the presence of oxidative stress. Since our bodies do not have an unlimited supply of glutathione, and since our bodies need glutathione for removal of heavy metals, the presence of any of these metals in the body will slow down the excretion of mercury, cadmium, lead and/or nickel.
It is impossible to increase the body's glutathione levels by taking oral glutathione supplements. The reason is because, before it is absorbed, the ingested glutathione is usually broken down by in the gastrointestinal tract, most notably the liver, by an enzyme called gamma-glutamyltranspeeptidease. However, glutathione can be taken by injection or by inhalation.
Mercury Build-up Contributes to Glutathione Deficiency.
Many studies have independently shown that cadmium, mercury, nickel and lead deplete glutathione and protein-bound sulfhydryl groups, setting free oxidative radicals of superoxide ion, hydrogen peroxide as well as hydroxyl radicals [25]. Glutathione deficiency is associated with many degenerative diseases, including, but not limited to, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome.
However, food based nickel is not as worrying as other glutathione-depleting metals. Although nickel depletes glutathione, independent studies have shown that 27% of nickel sulphate given to humans in drinking water was systematiically absorbed compared with only 1% when it was given in food [26, 27, 31]. Vitamin E and some other food-based antioxidants can mitigate the toxicities of nickel, which is usually poorly absorbed in the body [28]. The elimination half-life of nickel is also very short. According a study [29], urinary elimination half life for orally absorbed nickel of 17 - 48 hours has been observed.
However, stainless steel implant is a different story. Nickel is usually added to the stainless steel alloy to make the alloy non-magnetic. A stainless steel implant releases a significant amount of nickel ions to the blood stream 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Regardless of how short the life time of nickel in the body is, the continuous supply of nickel ions will eventually deplete most of the glutathione, thus weakening the body's immune system to chelate mercury, lead and cadmium [33 , 34 ]. Since production of glutathione declines with age, elderly people with stainless steel implants are particularly prone to nickel toxicity due to the shortage of glutathione in their bodies.
Biological half-lives of cadmium, lead, mercury and nickel are tabulated as follows:
| Elements | Half-life |
| Cadmium in Kidney | 6 to 38 years |
| Cadmium in Liver | 4 to 19 years |
| Cadmium in bone | ~30 years |
| Lead in bone | ~10 years |
| Lead in adult human blood | 28 to 36 days |
| Lead in soft-tissue | ~40 days |
| Organic mercury in blood | 70 days |
| Organic mercury in the head region | 60 to 400 days |
| Organic mercury in brain | 15 to 30+ years |
| Inorganic mercury in liver | 90 days |
| Elemental mercury in the body | 60 to 77 days |
| Nickel in serum/blood | 11 hours |
Gamma-glutamyltransferase, a Body's Enzyme that Leads to Depletion of Glutathione
Gamma-glutamyltransferase is basically a marker of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a well-known cause contributing to depletion of glutathione stores and a compensatory increase in Gamma-glutamyltransferase. However, there is evidence suggesting that gamma-glutamyltransfera is not only a marker of oxidative stress, but also a pro-oxidant that release free radicals to cause oxidative stress [22 ][23 ][24 ].
Found in many tissues, most notably the liver, gamma-glutamyltransferase has been routinely used as a non-invasive marker for liver and bile disorders. It is also a risk marker for a multiplicity of other chronic diseases, most of which are mercury related. People with high serum gamma-glutamyltransferase usually have higher mortality.
A study from German Cancer Research Center even reveals that gamma-glutamyltransferase is a strong risk indicator of all-cause occupational disability and is in particular associated with disability pension due to diseases of the digestive system, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular, and mental diseases [20 ].
Scientists have identified that gamma-glutamyltransferase is positively associated with alcohol consumption, meat intake and smoking. [17 ]
Other factors positively associated with increased levels of gamma-glutamyltransferase include body mass index, diabetes mellitus, serum total cholesterol, and air flow obstruction [21 ].
On the other hand, gamma-glutamyltransferase was found to be inversely associated with intake of plant-based foods, physical activity and lung function.
Contrary to many people think, one study suggests that vitamin supplements were found to be positively associated with gamma-glutamyltransferase [17 ].
Many drugs are known to elevate the gamma-glutamyltransferase levels. These drugs include, but not limited to, barbiturates, phenytoin.[18 ], NSAIDs, St. John's wort, and aspirin.
Why A Strict Vegan Lifestyle is Very Important?
As mentioned previously, food mercury has been detected in Taiwan, in decreasing order of mercury concentration, in fish, nonfish seafoods, eggs, meats, soybean products, vegetables, cereals, dairy products and fruit. In addition, scientists have also detected mercury in mushrooms and many products containing high-fructose corn syrup. It is counter-productive to overload our bodies with more mercury by consuming meat-based foodstuffs. A vegan lifestyle is the best defence against bioaccumulation of mercury through the food chain.
Although meat products contain less mercury than fishes and seafoods, scientists have discovered that meat intake is positively associated with the gamma-glutamyltransferase activity. As opposed to the non-heme iron from plant-based diets, heme iron in meat products is a catalyst in generating oxidative stress which elevates the gamma-glutamyltransferase activity. The increase in gamma-glutamyltransferase activity contributes to uptake of mercury in the body. Heme metabolism is also related to metabolic changes seen in ageing and age-related disorders and highlights the possible role in iron deficiency [37 ].
To chelate the brain mercury safely, we need to make sure the brain mercury concentration is substantially higher than the blood mercury concentration. If we fail to keep this concentration gradient across the blood brain barrier, then the mercury in the blood will diffuse back into the brain during the chelation process, ending up with more mercury in the brain. The mercury in the blood will be excreted naturally within half a year. The mercury in the brain will, however, last for decades. If one managed to avoid any mercury by staying in a strict vegan lifestyle, his/her brain mercury concentration will be naturally higher than the blood mercury concentration. This is exactly what is required for safe chelation of mercury from the body.
Why Vitamin D is Very Important?
Vitamin D is known to increase the glutathione levels. However, glutathione is the body's natural chelating agent to remove mercury. Glutathione is also the safest chelating agent for chelation of brain mercury. This means we can increase the intake of vitamin D in a way to increase our body defense against mercury poisoning. But where can we get eougth vitamin D?
The cheapest and easest way to get more vitamin D is through exposure to ultraviolet-B light. This ultraviolet-B light can come from the sun, electric plasma from tesla coils or simply a UV-B lamp. Vitamin D is naturally produced in the skin in the presence of ultraviolet-B light. Increase in vitamin D from the skin will elevate the levels of activated vitamin D in the brain. The activated vitamin D will in turn elevate the glutathione levels.
In fact, many victims of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have experienced a temporary relief in many symptoms after half an hour's exposure to sunlight. [16 ].
Why Meat, Caffeine, Alcohol and Cigarette Smoke Are So Bad?
Intake of meat, caffeine, alcohol and cigarette smoke elevate the serum gamma-glutamyltranspeeptidease, which, in turn, depletes glutathione. But glutathione is necessary for removal of mercury from the body.
On the other hand, elemental mercury and organic mercury in the human body are dissolvable in lipid and alcohol. Alcohol that has been absorbed after a drinking session can accelerate mobilization of mercury from the blood stream into the brain by way of blood circulation. Remember, in the absence of any chelating agent, the mercury redistributed to the brain or the central nervous system will stay there for at least 15 years.
Which Drugs or Chemicals Deplete Glutathione?
Glutathione-depleting drugs or agents include, but limited to, alcohol, caffeine and acetaminophen (including tylenol and panadol).
As well, drugs that increase the serum gamma-glutamyltransferase can indirectly deplete glutathione, because gamma-glutamyltransferase is an enzyme known to breakdown glutathione. These drugs include barbiturates and phenytoin, NSAIDs, St. John's wort, and aspirin.
What Else will Increase the Serum Glutathione?
Alpha Lipoic Acid is known to increase the production of glutathione. Experimental evidence from Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University [18 ] suggests that alpha lipoic acid tends to restore levels of glutathione, a protective antioxidant and detoxification compound, to those of a young animal. It is also one of the few chelating agents which can cross the blood brain barrier, chelating mercury and some other heavy metals from the brain.
According to the reseach findings from Linus Pauling Institute at lpha Lipoic Acid Oregon State University [19 ], alpha lipoic acid, together with Acetyl-L-carnitine, has been found to significantly increase the ability of "geriatric" beagle dogs to learn a new task. The cognitive gain in animals is possibly due to the fact that alpha lipoic acid increases production of glutathione, which is necessary for removal of mercury.
In addition, alpha lipoic acid has the following benefits:
- It acts as a strong anti-inflammatory agent against many degenerative diseases.
- It acts as a powerful antioxidant that neutralizes the free radicals in the body.
- It alleviates glaucoma and protects the lens and retina of the eyes from degeneration.
- It helps to detoxify the liver.
- It can lower blood sugar levels.
Alpha-lipoic acid is a naturally occurring compound. Our bodies can produce alpha lipoic acid, but only to a limited extent.
However, alpha lipoic acid is not without any side effects. Excessive dose of alpha lipoic acid can lead to nausea, low blood sugar and stomach upset.
Reference
[1] M. D. Dickman, C. K. M. Leung and M. K. H. Leong, "Hong Kong male subfertility links to mercury in human hair and fish ", The Science of The Total Environment Volume 214, Issues 1-3, 18 June 1998, Pages 165-174
[2] Yi-chun Chen, "The relationship of mercury intake from food consumption and hair mercury level of Taiwan population ", Doctoral Dissertation, Chung San University, July, 2009.
[3] Smoking Teeth = Poisoning Gas
[4] Blood Mercury Levels Rising Among U.S. Women
[6] Timothy Ray, "The Mitigation of Mercury Vapor Inhalation and Exhalation in People with Dental Amalgam Fillings", Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, November 2002, #232
[7] "Scientists highlight mercury threat ", BBC News, World Edition, Friday, 13 September, 2002, 20:03 GMT 21:03 UK
[8] How Mercury Kills the Brain ~ Autism
[9] Testosterone: a Key to Understanding Mercury-Autism Link?
[10] Mark R. Geier and David A. Geier, "The potential importance of steroids in the treatment of autistic spectrum disorders and other disorders involving mercury toxicity", Medical Hypotheses, Vol. 64, No. 5, 2005, 946-54. Address: Mark R. Geier, Genetic Centers of America, 114 Redgate Court, Silver Spring, MD 20905.
[11] Hormone replacement in Brazil
[12] MERCURY Found in Thousands of Foods & Soda's Containing High Fructose Corn Syrup!
[13] Dose, Absorption, Distribution, Biotransformation, and Excretion of Mercury
[14] Vegetarian diets and exposure to organochlorine pollutants, lead, and mercury
[15] Charles P. Davis, "Mercury Poisoning", emedicinehealth
[16] How to Manage Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Intelligently
[17] Duk-Hee Lee, Lyn M Steffen and David R Jacobs, Jr, "Association between serum {gamma}-glutamyltransferase and dietary factors: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study ", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 79, No. 4, 600-605, April 2004
[18] Lipoic Acid Explored As Anti-Aging Compound
[19] You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks -- With The Right Diet
[20] Claessen H, Brenner H, Drath C, Arndt V, "Gamma-glutamyltransferase and disability pension: A cohort study of construction workers in Germany ", Hepatology. 2009 Dec 4.
[21] " γ-Glutamyl transferase and airflow obstruction in middle-aged men", European Journal of Internal Medicine, Volume 16, Issue 5, Pages 348-351, H.Sakuta, T.Suzuki, H.Yasuda, T.Ito
[22] Paolicchi A, Tongiani R, Tonarelli P, Comporti M, Pompella A. "gamma-Glutamyl transpeptidase-dependent lipid peroxidation in isolated hepatocytes and HepG2 hepatoma cells"
[23] Drozdz R, Parmentier C, Hachad H, Leroy P, Siest G, Wellman M. "gamma-Glutamyltransferase dependent generation of reactive oxygen species from a glutathione/transferrin system."
[24] Enoiu M, Aberkane H, Salazar JF, Leroy P, Groffen J, Siest G, Wellman M.,"Evidence for the pro-oxidant effect of gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase-related enzyme. "
[25] Oxidative mechanisms in the toxicity of metal ions.
[26] International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) (1991). Chemical. Environmental Health Criteria 108: Nickel. WHO. Geneva.
[27] Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) (2005). Toxicological Profile for Nickel. US Department of Health and Human Services. Atlanta, US.
[29] Exacerbation of Nickel Induced Oxidative Response by Vitamin E
[30] World Health Organization (WHO) (2000). Air Quality Guidelines for Europe. WHO Regional Publications, European Series, No. 91. 2nd edition. WHO Regional Office for Europe. Copenhagen.
[31] Nickel - Kinetics and Metabolism
[32] Cernichiari E, Brewer R, Myers GJ, Marsh DO, Lapham LW, Cox C, Shamlaye CF, Berlin M, Davidson PW, Clarkson TW. Monitoring methylmercury during pregnancy: maternal hair predicts fetal brain exposure. Neurotoxicology 16(4):705-710 (1995).
[33] Comparative study of antioxidant enzymes in tissues surrounding implant in rabbits.
[35] Amalgam derived mercury in feces
[36] Sex hormone progesterone to get head injury trial
[37] Heme, iron, and the mitochondrial decay of ageing.
Disclaimer:
1/ The information in this article is not a substitue for medical advice. However, the author is NOT here to encourage you to seek advice from incompetent doctors without even researching into the problem.
2/ Most of the information in this article is pieced together from a variety of sources and has been filtered according to the author's knowledge and experience. Howevrer, this does not necessarily mean the information appearing in this article is accurate and free of errors. The author believes in the judgement, intelligence and wisdom of the readers of such contents to discern for themselves among the information which is valid, worthy or otherwise.
3/ This article will be actively updated whenever correction is warranted and/or new information on mercury poisoning becomes available. If there are any errors found in this article, please let me know and I will be happy to correct them.
Categories: Be Veg, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Health
Posted by Admin at 1:35 AM, Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Colloidal Gold (updated on 26 January 2010)
Colloidal gold is a form of liquid gold solution, in which gold particles rather than gold ions are suspended in a liquid. The sizes of gold particles are normally in the order of 10 nanometers. Like other group III metals such as silver and copper, gold has its own medicinal use. Since the civilization came into being, liquid gold has been used as a therapeutic agent for treating rheumatoid arthritis, internal heat, loss of consciousness, delirium, agitation, red tongue, sudden fainting, furuncles, smallpox, skin ulcers, measles and baby's sudden convulsion. This article presents an overview of colloidal gold.
Brief History of Colloidal Gold
Gold has been used in medicine for many thousand years. The earliest application of gold as a therapeutic agent was recorded in China. Back in 2500 BC, compounds made with gold were used in China to treat diseases in joints, internal heat, loss of consciousness, delirium, agitation, red tongue, sudden fainting, furuncles, smallpox, skin ulcers, measles and baby's sudden convulsion. Records also suggest that medicinal gold was used for removal of mercury from human bodies.
China was the first country where cinnabar was used to extract gold from gold ores. In China, medicinal gold was once a part of a very important Taoists' medicine, called "紫金丹" in Chinese, or "purple gold distillate" in English. For some unknown reasons, the medicinal gold in China is similar to "Aurum Potabile“ in Paracelsus' teaching. It is unclear if the Taoists' medicine "purple gold distillate" is equivalent to "Electrum" documented in modern alchemists' writing.
The knowledge of medicinal gold did not remain in China forever and it began to vanish after the Tang Dynasty. Instead, the Taoist religion was later influenced heavily by mercury-based alchemical concepts. Ironically, by 11th and 12nd centuries, much of the knowledge of medicinal gold was lost to Arab, and then to Europe and the British Isles.
E175, an Additive Containing Gold
Nowdays, there are many ways whereby gold can be ingested into human bodies. Gold is one of the food additives with E-number E175. In many countries, one can legally and unknowingly consume gold by consuming foods containing E175. Another way to ingest gold is to take gold salts or colloidal gold. This article focuses on colloidal gold, with emphasis on its science only.
Use of Colloidal Gold as Therapeutic Agent
Colloidal gold has been successfully used as a cure for:
1/ Alcoholism and addictions:
In the nineteenth century, colloidal Gold was commonly used in the United States to cure alcoholism (then called dipsomania, defined as the uncontrollable craving for alcoholic liquors). Colloidail gold has been used with success to reduce dependency on alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, additive drugs and carbohydrates.
2/ Rheumatoid arthritis:
Colloidal gold has been successfully used as a therapy for rheumatoid arthritis in dogs, rats and humans. According to the experience of adults with arthritis, the effects of colloidal gold on joint pain and swelling are usually positive and noticable within a week. There is no published clinical evidence of gold toxicity on any arthritic patients taking colloidal gold .
3/ Mental illness, like depression:
Paracelsus (1493-1541), a physician and a pioneer of gold drugs, wrote a treatise on "Diseases that deprive man of his reason," quoting potable gold as one of his medicamenta comfortativa. According to his writing, potable gold is useful in many forms of mental illness, including epilepsy, mania, St. Vitus dance (Sydenham’s chorea), melancholy, and "suffocation of the intellect" (hysteria).
4/ Tuberculosis:
In 1980, Robert Koch, a bacteriologist from Germany, successfully demonstrated that compounds made with gold suppressed maturation of the bacilli that caused tuberculosis. In eighteen hundred ninety, Koch was awarded a Nobel Prize in Medical science for this work. Since then, Gold is also known to retard prostate cancer in men. Women with ovary cancer are treated with natural colloidal gold, and in surgical operation to patch impaired nerves, blood vessels, bones, and membranes.
5/ Cancer:
In a paper published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry, scientists documented the use of an anticancer plant chemicals, or phytochemicals, found in Darjeeling tea as a reducing agent to turn gold salts into nanoparticles of gold. The process turns the tea from purple-red to pale yellow. The scientists believe that the gold nanoparticles in the tea could be used to zap tumours [1 ].
6/ Toothache:
So far, two persons have successfully used colloidal gold against toothache. Me and my friend. We need some more "guinea pigs".
Use of Gold to Unbind Mercury-containing Compounds in the Human Body
For some unknown reasons, most of the health problems that can be improved through the use of medicinal gold are associated with mercury poisoning. UPI has previously reported that a child diagnosed with autism appeared to improve markedly (and unexpectedly) after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Boyd E. Haley, a biochemistry professor at the University of Kentucky, who strongly supports mercury poisoning as the primary cause of many neurological disorders, tested gold salts in his laboratory following the report by UPI. He suggests that gold salts can "reverse the binding" of mercury to a chemical compound.
In regards to this story, Haley further says, "This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts." He suggests that gold might pull mercury off the enzyme it's inhibiting and reactivate that enzyme. However, he warns, “This issue needs research as it has good possibilities for helping the older autistics but it is also replete with danger if used ignorantly. Also, consider the thiols that are part of the gold salts, namely thioglucose and thiomalate, both analogs of natural compounds. It might be that the delivery of these thiols to the appropriate areas of the body is what reverses any possible mercury effect instead of the gold itself,”
At the time of this writing, Haley did not offer further hint on the role of gold in mercury poisoning. However, it is not difficult to guess how gold works in the presence of mercury toxicity. Elemental gold is known to amalgamate with mercury even at room temperature. In effect, this process unbinds mercury from the body enzymes, thus mobilizing the accumulated mercury in the human body. Though not formally proven in any clinical trial, this process has already been tested and reported in another study[2], in which gold colloids in acetonitrile were used to catalyze the disproportionation of (Hg-Hg)2+ to Hg2+ and Hg0. Chemically speaking, the process looks like:
[Hg1-Hg1]2+ --> Hg2+ + Au0 Hg0
Mercury is highly volatile at room temperature. The radiations from the sun or some other high energy sources can drive off the elemental mercury Hg0 from the mercury-gold amalgam Au0 Hg0, resulting in a release of mercury vapor from the human body. This explains why many victims of chronic fatigue syndrome experience a significant relief following an exposure to the sunshine.
Since the gold particles Au0 cannot evaporate at such a low temperature, they will remain in the body for a week or so and continue to unbind the remaining mercury ions from the body enzymes. It is unclear if these gold particles will unbind Hg2+ as well. If they do, then the overall mechanism should continue to lower the mercury burden in the human body until all the gold particles are excreted.
On the other hand, since colloidal gold can cross the blood brain barrier, it should not be difficult for gold to mobilize mercury in the body. Now, the following questions deserve some answers from the scientific community:
1/ Since mercury itself has strong affinity for sulfhydryl-groups, it bonds firmly with the protein tissues in the central nervous system. The bonded mercury will remain and accumulate with newly added mercury day after day in the central nervous system for a very long period. The half-life of the bonded mercury in the central nervous system can be anywhere between 15 and 30 years. The presence of gold can change this situation, because of the likelihood of formation of mercury-gold amalgam. Then, what is the half-life of the mercury-gold amalgam in the central nervous system?
2/ Does this mercury-gold amalgam as a result of this process have any negative impact on the central nervous system? This is a very tricky question. It is widely believed that the presence of selenium and other trace minerals in the food can mitigate the toxicity of mercury in fishes and other seafoods. It is unclear if gold plays a role similar to the detoxicification activities of selenium and other trace minerals in human bodies.
3/ After zapping (or unbinding) the mercury particles, the colloidal gold particles would contine to attach to the mercury particles and remain trapped somewhere in the human body until the sun heat is present. It is widely believed that DMPS can chelate gold from the human body. To prevent excessive build-up of gold-mercury amalgam in the human body, is it possible to remove this mercury-gold amalgam through the use of DMPS or other similar chelating agents?
Colloidal Gold/Silver mixture and Stem Cell Growth
There is a speculation that stem cells can be cultivated with a proper mix of colloidal silver and colloidal gold [3 ,4 ]. According to some online literature, Dr. Robert Becker discovered stem cells on people on bone fractures after a silver laced bandages was placed. Also, another study has proved excellent results in the Parkinson cases when wet cells batteries combined with colloidal gold and silver solutions have been used during a four-month treatment.
There is likely some more knowledge yet to come. Right now, I am still looking for the original publication in this field for further clarification.
Reference
[1] "Straight from the teapot, a golden anti-cancer brew ", Daily Mail, 25th March 2009
[2] Horst Kunkelya and Arnd Vogler, "Dismutation of Hg2+ catalyzed by colloidal gold ", Elsevier B.V. , 6 October 2004.
[3] Parkinson's Disease - Colloidal Silver or Colloidal Gold
(Disclaimer: This article is provided as a research tool for the purpose of education only. Most of the information in this article is pieced together from a variety of Internet and non-internet sources (including the results of my own experiments). Not all the sources are unbiased, accurate, reliable, current and complete. It is also important to understand that the Internet environment is variable and dynamic.
This article will be actively updated whenever correction is warranted and/or new information on colloidal gold becomes available. If there are any errors found in this article, please let me know and I will be happy to correct them. Meanwhile, I recommend that my readers exercise good judgement when reading this article.)
Categories: DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Health
Posted by Admin at 3:53 PM, Monday, August 31, 2009
Use milk-free and sugar-free cocoa drink to stop unwanted cravings for food (updated on 6 February 2010)
Many studies suggest that milk-free cocoa drink is beneficial to the heart. Cocoa contains theobromide (comes from root Greek, meaning “food of the Gods”) which is is a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant. Throughout the century, theobromine has been used as a treatment for many circulatory problems including arteriosclerosis, certain vascular diseases, angina pectoris, and hypertension.
Some scientists believe that, flavoniods, the antioxidants found in cocoa, can help the body produce more nitric oxide, thereby relaxing the veins, lowering the blood pressure and helping the blood circulation.
According to a study carried out by preventive cardiology center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago [1 ], the best cocoa to drink should be milk-free and sugar-free.
The study involved 45 overweight or obese participants aged 30 to 75. Overweight participants were chosen for the study because they were believed to have higher risks of cardiovascular disease. The participants were instructed to drink an 8-ounce cup of sugar-free cocoa, sugared cocoa, or a hot nonfat milk beverage each morning for six weeks.
Results of the study showed that the ability of arteries to relax and expand to accommodate increased blood flow to the heart increased by about 39% by two hours after people drank the sugar-free cocoa. When they drank cocoa with sugar it improved by about 23%. In contrast, it dropped 12% when they consumed the nonfat milk drink.
The study also demonstrates the fact that milk is counter-productive to the blood circulation system. Some other studies even suggest that adding a diary product actually blocks the body's ability to properly absorb antioxidants found in cocoa .
In another study [2], researchers even suggest that flavanols, the antioxidant found in cocoa, could have a "promising role" to treat brain conditions such as stroke and dementia.
Cocoa may not be qualified as a food for famine. But it is not expensive even in a developing economy. In Hongkong, for example, one can buy a can of cocoa powder from Welcome Supermarket for about HK$40 (approximately, US$ 5). By drinking cocoa everyday, those living in Hongkong can not only enjoy the health benefits of cocoa, but also cost-effectively cut down their food bills without overly taxing their bodies.
On the other hands, scientists in the US have discovered that some of the cocoa products have been contaminated with lead. That's not a big deal. I bellieve some inexpensive vegetable such as cilantro can chelate lead.
Reference
1) Charlene Laino, "Cocoa Boosts Heart Health, Flavonoid-Rich Dark Chocolate Improves Blood Vessel Function ", March 24, 2007, WebMD.
2) Kelley Colihan, "Cocoa Compound Boosts Brain's Blood Flow: Flavanols in Cocoa May Help Treat Stroke, Dementia ", Aug. 21, 2008, WebMD.
Categories: DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Health
Posted by Admin at 11:46 PM, Saturday, August 29, 2009
Reincarnation - Past Unveiling & Modern-day Evidence
Categories: For Scientists and Engineers
Posted by Admin at 2:44 AM, Friday, August 28, 2009
Laughing gas is biggest threat to ozone
Nitrous oxide, also called llaughing gas, is now the biggest threat to the Earth's ozone layer, scientists have said. CFCs deplete ozone in the ozone layer, and so does nitrous oxide. According to a study in the US, man-made nitrous oxide is an ozone-depleting substance that replaces CFCs. Unlike CFCs, however, emissions of man-made nitrous oxide are not regulated by international agreement:
"Published: 7:00PM BST 27 Aug 2009
"Nitrous oxide, better known as the dental anaesthetic "laughing gas", has replaced CFCs as the most potent destroyer of ozone in the upper atmosphere, a study has shown.
"Unlike CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), once extensively used in refrigerators, emissions of the gas are not limited by any international agreement.
""The dramatic reduction in CFCs over the last 20 years is an environmental success story," said Dr Akkihebbal Ravishankara, who led the US research. "But man-made nitrous oxide is now the elephant in the room among ozone-depleting substances."......
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 1:16 PM, Wednesday, July 15, 2009
An Urgent Message from Supreme Master Ching Hai
Welcome,respected dignitaries,media members,notable speakers,and all noble conference participants,hallo. As a very concerned citizen of the world,I humbly greet you,thank you and respectfully salute all of you here today who have come with open hearts and minds for the welfare of this beautiful and beloved planet that we call home.
I am deeply grateful for the conference that is being held here today in Veracruz,Mexico,to address the urgency of global warming due to climate change which,sadly,has killed hundreds of thousands and affects hundreds of millions of humans,not included other species. It is my hope that it will raise higher awareness and inspire action toward the most serious international issue of our time.
The information communicated and the noble work being done here today is of paramount importance.
It is an honor to share the planet with dedicated people such as yourselves,who strive for the betterment of others. We all know that climate change is a grave issue; we all know what it is,and that the current critical condition of our planet calls for immediate and wise action from every one of us.
Please do take note of all info from this conference today and spread them far and wide to save our world from perishing. I take the opportunity to inform you the general urgent scenario,though perhaps some of you or many of you have already known.
URGENT SCENARIO
You see,Our current course of climate change is worse than the worst case scenario projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),with the damaging and often fatal effects already being seen through such extreme events as hurricanes,flooding,droughts and heat waves.
Even if the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions,the planet will take time to recover from the gases already in the atmosphere.
This is why it is necessary to focus on short-lived gases,namely methane. Methane traps at least 72 times more heat than CO2,averaged over a 20 year period. Methane's biggest source is the livestock industry,which is indeed one of the top causes of global warming that must be stopped.
But first,please allow me to share just some of the latest evidence of the impacts of climate change on humans’ and animals’ lives.
A) ARCTIC MELT
Here we have first,Arctic melt. The Arctic,or North Pole,may be ice-free by 2012,70 years ahead of IPCC estimations. Without the protective ice to reflect sunlight,90 percent of the sun's heat can enter the open water,thus accelerating global warming.
The change in Arctic ice cover is dramatic,with climatologists saying that only 10 percent now is older and thick ice,while over 90 percent is newly formed and thin.
Another Arctic change is the thawing of permafrost,a normally frozen layer of earth containing methane stores. The thawing of this layer in recent years has caused methane to be released,with atmospheric levels that have risen sharply since 2004. Further global warming beyond a 2 degree Celsius rise could cause billions of tons more of methane to be released into the atmosphere,leading to mass extinctions of life
on this planet.
As the massive ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic continue to melt as well,catastrophic sea level rise and stronger storms are expected to follow.
If the entire West Antarctic sheet melts,global average sea levels would rise at least by 3.3,3.5 meters,affecting over 3.2 billion people - that is half of the world population - who live within 200 miles of coastline. And US scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center now say that if all of Antarctica were to melt,the sea level could rise to a much higher level than expected,some say even up to 70 meters,which means more deadly to all lives on Earth.
B) LANDS SINKING & CLIMATE REFUGEES
Next problem: We have lands sinking and climate refugees. Right now,at least 18 islands have completely submerged around the world,with more than 40 other island nations at risk from rising sea levels. A report from the International Organization for Migration stated that there may be 200 million,or even up to 1 billion people will be climate refugees by 2050,or within our lifetime.
These are people who must leave their island or coastal homes due to rising sea levels or permafrost melts that cause entire communities or nations to sink and collapse.
C) GLACIER RETREAT & WATER SHORTAGE
Next problem we have: Glacier retreat and water shortage. Most of the planet’s glaciers will be gone within a few decades,jeopardizing the survival of more than 2 billion people.
One billion of these people will suffer the effects of the Himalayan glacier retreats,which have been occurring at a pace more rapid than anywhere in the world,with two-thirds of the region's more than 18,000 glaciers receding. The initial effects of glacier melt are destructive floods and landslides.
As the glacial ice retreat continues,reduced rainfall,devastating droughts and water shortages are the result.
D) OCEANIC DEAD ZONES
Next: Oceanic dead zones. Climate change is creating areas of sea known as dead zones,which now number more than 400. These arise due to fertilizer runoff largely from livestock,contributing to the lack of oxygen which is necessary to support life.
E) RECORD HEAT
Now,we have also record heat. The past decade has twice,at least,seen the hottest average annual temperatures ever recorded in our planet’s history. In 2003,a record heat wave hit Europe,
claiming tens of thousands of lives. Heat waves also preceded the worst wildfires ever in Australia’s history.
F) STORMS INCREASING
Next: Storms increasing. The intensity and duration of hurricanes and tropical storms have been noted to increase by 100% over the past 30 years,which scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA say is likely due to climate-related increases in ocean temperature.
G) WILDLIFE DISAPPEARING
Next we have wildlife disappearance. Leading ecologists say that the decline of wildlife due to species extinction is so rapid that there is no modern comparison.
Scientists also now predicted that the Earth’s 16,000 endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought.
H) DROUGHT & DESERTIFICATION
Next,we have drought,desertification. In Nepal and Australia,wildfires this year have been severely intensified by drought conditions.
In Africa,people in Somalia,Ethiopia and Sudan,to name just a few,have been crippled by drought. According to the United Nations,desertification,which often results from felling too many trees and damages that occurs from such activities as cattle grazing,is affecting the well-being of more than 1.2 billion people in more than 100 countries at risk.
Precious fresh water supplies are also drying up,such as aquifers under the major cities of Beijing,Delhi,Bangkok,and dozens of other regions such as the Midwestern United States; while the rivers Ganges,Jordan,Nile,and Yangtze have been reduced to a trickle for much of the year.
In China’s worst drought in five decades,vital crops were lost in at least 12 northern provinces,costing the nation billions of US dollars in drought relief to farmers with losses.
I) HUMAN HEALTH
Next we have the human health problem. According to Swiss-based research,climate change is already responsible for some 315,000 deaths a year,with another 325 million people who are severely affected. This comes in addition to an economic loss of US$125 billion every year.
The worst affected are developing nations in Africa,with other very threatened areas being in South Asia and small island nations.
SOLUTION
Okay,We have enough with problem,but we have solutions to this problem. It might not be that early,but it’s still not too late,we still can rescue our home,planet home. Okay,Number one solutionis vegan,
organic vegan. Veganism will save our world.
I will report to you one by one how vegan would save our world. Luckily,there are easy actions we can take.
I will list them for your reference. Now,many of these areas where we are seeing such devastating effects of climate change,such as Arctic melt,lands sinking,water shortage from glacier melt,and even storms increasing are all directly related to the Earth’s temperature increasing.
So,we must cool the planet,first and foremost. And the best way to stop global warming is to stop producing the greenhouse gases that create the heat.
Logical,no? Yes.We already know about the efforts to reduce emissions such as from industry and transportation. But changes in these sectors are taking too much time – more than we can afford at this rate,at this hour. One of the most effective and fastest ways to reduce the heat
in the atmosphere is to eliminate methane production.
Methane not only traps up to 72 times more heat than carbon,it also goes away from the atmosphere much faster than CO2. So if we stop producing methane,the atmosphere will cool more quickly than if we stop producing carbon dioxide.
See what I mean?Organic vegan will produce beneficial cooling effect as it will cut down methane and other greenhouse gases which are fatal to our survival.
1) Eliminating Methane
We can start by cutting down on the biggest methane producer in the world,that is,animal raising. So,to cool the planet most quickly,we have to stop consuming meat in order to stop the livestock raising industry,and thus stop greenhouse gases,methane and other toxic gases from the animal industry.
If everyone in the world would adopt this simple but most powerful practice of an animal-free diet,then we could reverse the effect of global warming in no time. We would then have time to actually be able to adopt longer-term measures such as more green technology,to also remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In fact,if we neglect to stop meat production,either all these green efforts will be cancelled out in effect,or we may lose the planet before we are even having a chance to install any green technology such as the wind power or solar power,or more hybrid cars,for that reason.
Please also keep in mind that although livestock has been reported to generate 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions — which is more than the world's transportation sectors combined—this is actually an underestimate because recently revised calculations have placed it at generating possibly more than 50% of total global emissions.
I repeat: Livestock has been recalculated as to generate possibly more than 50% of total global emissions – more than 50% is from livestock industry. So that was the number one solution.
2) Eliminating Other Gases Now,
number two: eliminating other gases. Besides methane,other lethal toxic gases are emitted by the livestock industry as well.
It is the largest source at 65% of global nitrous oxide,a greenhouse gas with approximately 300 times the warming potential of CO2; it emits also 64% of all ammonia,which causes acid rain and hydrogen sulfide,a fatal gas. So to stop livestock production is to eliminate all these deadly gases,
as well as methane.
3) Halting Dead Zones
Number three: Halting dead zones. There are other huge benefits gained by halting livestock production. Oceanic dead zones,for example,are caused primarily by fertilizer runoff from agriculture that is mainly used for animal feed.
Dead zones are a serious threat to the ocean’s ecosystems,but they can be revived if we stop polluting them with our livestock-related activities.
Stop fishing,too,then marine life will rebound. Since the heavy fishing that caused the sardines to disappear from the coast of Namibia,eruptions of harmful gases have created a dead zone that is destroying the area's ecosystems due to the absence of that one humble but eco-beneficial,powerful species. Can you imagine?Just the sardines.
So we have to stop fishing as well as all animal products,to protect our living ocean and water bodies,which is crucial to our survival. You know it.
4) Stopping Desertification
Now number four: we have to stop desertification. We can. Desertification is another climate change effect that is linked to livestock,again.
For example,in Mexico,recent research stated that 47% of your country has already taken the toil of desertification,has become desert,due to damage from the cattle industry.
you see And another 50-70% of the country of Mexico is also suffering from some degree of drought. Overgrazing by livestock,which occupies nearly a third of our Earth’s land surface worldwide,is a major cause of desertification and other damages,and is responsible for more than 50% of land erosion.
Now,we must stop livestock grazing to protect our soil and protect our life.
5) Stopping Water shortage
Number five: We can stop water shortage.
While droughts are plaguing more populations,we cannot afford to waste water.
Meat production uses massive amounts of water,as you know. It takes up to 1,200 gallons of fresh and good clean water to produce just one serving of beef.
In contrast,a full vegan meal costs only 98 gallons of water. That is like 90 plus percent less. So,if we want to stop water shortage and to preserve precious water we have to stop animal products.
6) Banning Deforestation
Now,six: we can stop deforestation. We have to ban deforestation. And we have to plant more trees,of course. Wherever there’s erosion or empty land we have to plant trees. Ok. Now,Deforestation is also largely driven by meat production. With the United Nations estimating that deforestation accounts for approximately 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions,nearly all deforestation itself is related to meat production.
Eighty percent of cleared Amazon forest is designated as a cattle grazing area to prepare the animals for slaughter,and the remainder is planted as soy crops used also largely for animal feed.
So to stop animal products is to protect our precious forest,the lungs of our Earth,and the crucial factor for our survival.
7) Alleviating Financial Cost Now,
seven: We have to alleviate financial cost. See,Our leaders are worried about the cost of mitigating climate change. However,the good news is,if the world shifted to a reduced,or meatless diet,animal-free diet,then we could reduce the cost by half or more. That means,that means we would reduce tens of trillions of US dollars.
If the world shifted to vegan diet we could save more than 80% of the cost,or approximately US$32 trillion.
8) Minimized Health Cost Number
eight: we must minimize health costs. The health risks of eating meat are more and more evident these days. Livestock are routinely given excessive hormones and antibiotics,which then,when consumed as meat can in turn endanger human health. There are also toxic byproducts in slaughter places such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.
These poisonous substances have caused deaths among workers due to their extreme toxicity.
As a so-called food,meat is simply one of the most unhealthy,poisonous,unhygienic items that could ever be ingested by humans.
We should never eat meat at all if we love and cherish our health and our life. We will live longer without meat,healthier,wiser without meat. Meat has been scientifically shown to cause all kinds of cancers,
also heart disease,high blood pressure,stroke and obesity. The list goes on and on and on.All these diseases kill millions of people every year. millions Millions of people die due to meat related diseases,and making millions of others seriously sick and disabled as well.
There is no end to tragedies caused by the meat diet. Meat eating is a no-no. We should know this by now through all the scientific and medical evidence. Please stop eating meat.
Just even for your health’s sake. You want to live long for your children and your grandchildren,and live healthily. We did not even mention the filthy condition,the confined environments where the animals are kept until their slaughter,which promote the transmission of diseases such as the swine flu virus. In fact,some meat-transmitted diseases,like the human form of mad cow disease,are tragically fatal in every case.
Whoever contracts mad cow disease is doomed to die,sadly and sorrowfully. sadly,etc.
Other contaminants such as E. coli,salmonella,etc.,
can also causeserious health problems,long-term damages,sometimes even leading to death. In short,simply saying no to meat will make us richer,healthier,and most importantly,it will make us a wiser person,and a great hero. Because it is the only timely way that we ensure the survival of our children and grandchildren.
CLOSING
To conclude my report:
Respected,honorable,wise,beloved,esteemed audience members,we now can see how imperative it is to stop the warming of the planet with the greenest of all green policies and actions,the most compassionate,the most heroic,the most life-saving action,that is: the vegan diet,organic vegan to be exact. It’s better for your health as well. It is the long-term insurance against climate change. We must be the solution and encourage others with all the convincing and supporting scientific,physical and moral data that is available to us so they do the same. Adopting a plant-based diet can halt as much as 80% of global warming,eradicate world hunger,stop war,promote peace,and it will free up the Earth’s water as well as many other precious resources,offering a lifeline for the planet and for humanity.
In short,it will very quickly halt many of the global problems facing us right now. Therefore,it is vital that we change our lifestyle – it’s very easy to do it – setting a noble example for others to follow,and do our part to bring to the public’s attention the urgent climate change issues and its solutions;
the foremost being the vegan diet,to safeguard our precious planet. It is time to walk the talk,because there is not much time left now.
In coming here today,it is quite clear that all of you already know that the issues at hand are very urgent and need to resolve immediately.
Thank you all statespersons,media members,speakers,conference participants,ladies and gentlemen,for all your time and care in coming here today. And thank you all noble persons involved in organizing this awakening event.
I truly appreciate your sincerity and willingness to join with those who share the same goal,for taking initiatives to inform the public,and for wanting to implement prompt actions. Together we can usher in a new golden era where we can all live the noble qualities of love,compassion and benevolence as was intended,live up to the principles of nonviolence and forgiveness,exemplifying the human standard of virtuous living,righteous living,and live a more sustainable life in peace,joy and harmony with each other,with all our co-inhabitants - humans,animals,plants,trees alike.
I am quite sure that this conference will contribute greatly to the worldwide efforts of all nations to save our planet.
My most heartfelt gratitude to all who took part in making this a reality. May Heaven bless you,your loved ones and your countries. And may all your noble endeavors be graced with glorious success!
Now,due to my travel,regrettably it’s not feasible to reply to your questions. But should you have any,I will be glad to reply to the best of my knowledge on a later date on Supreme Master Television. Or you can log on to the internet,www.SupremeMasterTV.com,to get the required answer to your questions.
God bless us all. God loves us all.
Thank you for you attention. Thank you for everything you do for the planet.
SOURCE: http://www.suprememastertv.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=sos_video&wr_id=117&goto_url=&url=
Categories: Be Veg, Climate Change, For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Save the Planet
Posted by Admin at 6:54 AM, Sunday, May 31, 2009
Gold Stained Glass Windows Purify the Air
Scientists from Queensland University of Technology have discovered that stained glass windows painted with gold paint purify the air when heated by the sun. Gold paint in the glass windows contain trace of gold nanoparticles. in the presence of sunlight, electrons in these gold nanoparticles become activated and oscillate. The magnetic field strength of the electrons is magnified by resonance with the electromagnetic field of sunlight by up to 100 times, which is enough to destroy molecules of some airborne pollutants.....
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 9:44 PM, Friday, April 24, 2009
Tesla on vegetarianism, no smoking and no drinking
A MACHINE TO END WAR. Liberty, February 1937 by Nikola Tesla as told to George Sylvester Viereck: "MORE people die or grow sick from polluted water than from coffee, tea, tobacco, and other stimulants. I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat. I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system with harmful ingredients. Bernarr Macfadden has shown how it is possible to provide palatable food based upon natural products such as milk, honey, and wheat. I believe that the food which is served today in his penny restaurants will be the basis of epicurean meals in the smartest banquet halls of the twenty-first century. There will be enough wheat and wheat products to feed the entire world, including the teeming millions of China and India, now chronically on the verge of starvation. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900."
THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING HUMAN ENERGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO THE HARNESSING OF THE SUN'S ENERGY. by Nikola Tesla, Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900: "A thousand other evils might be mentioned, but all put together, in their bearing upon the problem under discussion, they could not equal a single one, the want of food, brought on by poverty, destitution, and famine. Millions of individuals die yearly for want of food, thus keeping down the mass. Even in our enlightened communities, and not withstanding the many charitable efforts, this is still, in all probability, the chief evil. I do not mean here absolute want of food, but want of healthful nutriment. How to provide good and plentiful food is, therefore, a most important question of the day. On the general principles the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable, because, in the sense interpreted above, it must undoubtedly tend to the addition of mass of a "smaller velocity." It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarious habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton and cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals. To free ourselves from animal instincts and appetites, which keep us down, we should begin at the very root from which we spring: we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food. There seems to be no philosophical necessity for food. We can conceive of organized beings living without nourishment, and deriving all the energy they need for the performance of their lifefunctions from the ambient medium. In a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence of a formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is none the less a living being."
SPEECH ON BEHALF EDISON MEDAL PRIZE, A speech delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 18, 1917: "On this occasion, you might want me to say something of a personal and more intimate character bearing on my work. One of the speakers suggested: "Tell us something about yourself, about your early struggles." If I am not mistaken in this surmise I will, with your approval, dwell briefly on this rather delicate subject. I may say, also, that I am deeply religious at heart, although not in the Orthodox meaning, and that I give myself to the constant enjoyment of belleving that the greatest mysteries of our being are still to be fathomed and that, all the evidence of the senses and the teachings of exact and dry sciences to the contrary notwithstanding, death itself may not be the termination of the wonderful metamorphoses we witness. In this way I have managed to maintain an undisturbed peace of mind, to make myself proof against adversity, and to achieve contentment and happiness to a point of extracting some satisfaction even from the darker side of life, the trials and tribulations of existence. I have fame and untold wealth, more than all this, and yet - how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccesful man, and how many poor, struggling writers, have called me a visionary. Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world!"
PRODIGAL GENIUS, The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill (1944): With the passing decades, Tesla shifted away from a meat diet. He substituted fish, always boiled, and finally eliminated the meat entirely.He later almost entirely eliminated the fish and lived on a vegetarian diet. Milk was his main standby, and toward the end of his life it was the principal item of diet, served warm.
As a youth he drank a great deal of coffee, and, while he gradually became aware that he suffered unfavorable influences from it, he found it a difficult habit to break. When he finally made the decision to drink no more of it, he adhered to his good intentions but was forced to recognize the fact that the desire for it remained. He combated this by ordering with each meal a pot of his favorite coffee, and having a cup of it poured so that he would get the aroma. It required ten years for the aroma of the coffee to transform itself into a nuisance so that he felt secure in no longer having it served. Tea and cocoa he also considered injurious.
He was a heavy smoker in his youth, mostly of cigars. A sister who seemed fatally ill, when he was in his early twenties, said she would try to get better if he would give up smoking. He did so immediately. His sister recovered, and he never smoked again.
Keywords: be veg, go green, save the planet, vegan/vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian, ahimsa, vegan meat, vegan t-shirt, vegetarian restaurant, vegan restaurant, meat-free, be veg, go green, save the planet, vegan/vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian, ahimsa, vegan meat, vegan t-shirt, vegetarian restaurant, vegan restaurant, meat-free
Categories: Be Veg, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Save the Planet
Posted by Admin at 11:26 PM, Saturday, April 18, 2009
Poor man Solar Cooker made with Cardboard Sheets wins a climate change award--助窮人太陽能煮食 「京都紙盒」奪環保大獎
Poor man Solar Cooker made with Cardboard Sheets known as "Kyoto Box" wins a $75,000 worth climate change award. The inventor of this inventiion was Jon Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya. According to the inventor, this prize-winning invention can be used to cook food and bring water to the boil under a sunny sky.
(credit due to http://news.sky.com)
09 April 2009
Poor man solar-powered cardboard oven, also known as the Kyoto Box, has won a $75,000 climate change award. The inventor of this inventiion was Jon Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya. According to the inventor, this prize-winning invention can be used to cook food and bring water to the boil under a sunny sky.
The Kyoto Box is a simple invention made from two cardboard boxes, one inside the other with a transparent acrylic cover to let in the sun's energy. Between the inner box and the outer box is straw or newspaper which serves as an insulation. The reflective foil on the outer box and black paint in the interior of the inner box ensure maximum absorption of solar energy.
Bohmer named his invention the Kyoto Box, after the international environmental treaty to reduce global warming.
The cooker costs around $5.00 to make and will be given away for free to the 3 billion poor people who currently rely on firewood to cook.
Introducing the Kyoto Box to such communities would cut carbon emissions from burning wood. In addition, there are also sanitary benefits from boiling water to drink.
The invention was pitted against nearly 300 other entries, including a machine that turns wood and other organic material into charcoal, wheel covers that make trucks more fuel efficient by reducing drag, and a garlic-based feed supplement for livestock that reduces the methane they emit by 15 percent.
"A lot of scientists are working on ways to send people to Mars. I was looking for something a little more grassroots, a little simpler," Jon Bohmer said Thursday.
"In the West, we cook with electricity, so it's easy to ignore this problem," he said. "But half the world's population is still living in a stone age. The only way for them to cook is to make a fire.
"I don't want to see another 80-year-old woman carrying 20 kilos of firewood on her back. Maybe we don't have to."
.... CLICK HERE FOR TECHNICAL DETAILS OF ANOTHER VERSION OF SOLAR BOX COOKER
Chinese version of the news:
"助窮人太陽能煮食 「京都紙盒」奪環保大獎
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/090410/4/bmei.html
"助窮人太陽能煮食 「京都紙盒」奪環保大獎
"(明報)4月11日 星期六 05:05
"【明報專訊】想以廉價及環保方式煮食?只需買一個紙盒就可以。非洲肯尼亞一名發明家把常見紙盒改裝成太陽能煮食爐,可助全球數以億計窮人減少燒柴煮食,以減少排放溫室氣體。這項成本僅6美元(46.8港元)的發明,在環保大賽中贏得7.5萬美元(約58萬港元)獎金。
"兩紙盒製成 成本僅HK$46。
"這一設計獨特的煮食爐名為「京都紙盒」(取名源自規範溫室氣體排放的《京都議定書》)。它由兩個紙盒製成,盒蓋包上錫紙集中熱力,盒身塗上黑油吸熱,紙盒內有一個煮食用黑煲,透明煲蓋可助保存熱力及水分。
"在肯尼亞開設能源公司的發明家博默(Jon Bohmer)表示,他希望「京都紙盒」能把太陽能煮食推廣至發展中國家,取代燒柴,「發展中國家人口眾多,他們不可只靠木材及山火煮食,這會摧毁所有樹」。
"評審:有望改善數十億人生活
"在環保組織Forum for the Future舉辦的環保大賽上,評審對「京都紙盒」能在發展中國家立即大量生產,都感到印象深刻。評審馬登說﹕「紙盒有改善數十億人生活的潛力,是一項可大量生產的革新發明。」
(Note: Chinese version of this news is by no mean the exact translation of the English version.)
Keywords: be veg, go green, save the planet, vegan/vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian, ahimsa, vegan meat, vegan t-shirt, vegetarian-restaurant, vegan-restaurant, meat-free, non-dairy, dairy-free, egg-free, no-smoking, no-drinking
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 7:56 PM, Monday, March 09, 2009
Nikola Tesla on Money
Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.
-- Nikola Tesla
Categories: For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers
Posted by Admin at 7:10 PM, Friday, February 20, 2009
Experiment: Effects of greenhouse gases on global temperature
A lot of stories are being circulated on the internet in an attempt to discredit the theory of man-made climate change. Some websites even challenge the conventional greenhouse theories. In the light of this problem, the author has conducted a very simple experiment that hopefully will help to clarify the basic understanding of man-made climate change.
In this experiment, a solar cooker was used to observe the effects of greenhouse gases on temperature. The purpose of this experiment was to better understand the role of greenhouse gases on climate change.
Procedures
Step 1: Prepare the following materials:
* two metal cans, both of which are painted in black.
* two plastic bags.
* a solar cooker (for example, this one ).
* an infrared thermometer or any other non-contact temperature measuring device.
Step 2: Each metal can is placed in a tightly closed plastic bag. One bag is filled with air and the other bag is filled with predominately carbon dioxide.
Step 3: Use the solar cooker to heat up both cans under sunny and cloudy skies. The experimental setup is shown in the following figure:
Figure 1. Experimental setup for proving the role of carbon dioxide on climate change
Step 4. Use the infrared thermometer provided to measure the temperature of the metal cans under sunny and cloudy weathers.
Experimental results under a cloudy sky
The follwing figure shows the temperatures of both metal cans (that is, one enclosed in carbon dioxide and the other enclosed in air) under a cloudy sky.
Before the measurement, both cans have been carefully treated to the same temperature.
As shown in the following figure, the temperature of the can enclosed in carbon dioxide were noticably higher.
Figure 2. Temperature of the cans in cloudy weather
Experimental results under a sunny sky
Under a sunny sky, the temperatures of both cans rose up so quickly to the point that I could not manually record the temperature of each can.
Before the experment, both cans were at 36 degree C.
After about 5 minutes, I broke both plastic bags and removed both metal cans from the solar cooker, allowing the metal cans to cool down naturally. At that time, the temperature of the can enclosed in carbon dioxde gas reached 95 degree C, while the can enclosed in air reached 85 degree C.
During the cooling phase, I measured the temperature of each can again. The follwing figure shows the temperatures of both cans after being removed from the solar cooker.
As shown in the following figure, the temperature of the can enclosed in carbon dioxide were noticably higher.
Figure 3. Temperature of the cans in sunny weather
Concluding remarks
In this experiment, the gases inside each bag act as a greenhouse enclosure. Each black metal can acts as a blackbody radiator that absorbs solar radiations and that radiates predominately infrared light at room temperature. The results of this experiment suggest that greenhouse effects due to increased concentration of carbon dioxide contribute to a noticable heat gain in the blackbody radiator (i.e. the metal can enclosed in carbon dioxide).
In the earth context, the reflective surface of the solar cooker is equivalent to the icy glacier regions of the earth. The black metal can is the non-reflective surface of the earth. The gases inside each bag is our atmosphere. The heat gain in the black metal can as a result of increased carbon dioxide represents global warming (or climate change).
While this experiment may be easy to understand, the implication of the results is stunning. In the Arctic region, the sea ice is supposed to reflect solar radiations. However, it has been reported that, as shown in following figure, the northen hemisphere has experienced significant ice loss over the past few years. According to NASA, the total Arctic sea ice has decreased by 38% since 1979. This suggests that the area of the reflective surface on the northern hemisphere is shrinking, increasing exposing the non-reflective surface that serves as blackbody radiators. Therein, the blackbody radiators include not only the non-reflective surface, but also those surface and undersea volcanoes. Our experimental results have already demonstrated that increase in carbon dioxide level will lead to noticable heat gain in a blackbody radiator. It is not difficult to understand why some parts of the earth experience an unprecedented hot climate.
Figure 4. Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly (credit due to Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois)
The ozone hole over Antarctic has not been patched, while some other regions of our ozone layer have experienced serve ozone loss during the past few years. In the absence of any sunshine, say during the evening time, some heat or other blackbody radiations on the planet lose to outerspace through the broken ozone layer, making some places unprecedentedly cold. However, when the sunshire reappears during the daytime, the solar radiations penetrate through the same thinned regions of the ozone layer, heating up the same places that are bitterly cold during the evening time.
It is important to understand that, at the time of this writing, we are still at a solar minimum. This means any rebound in solar radiations will potentially lead to further ice loss in the polar regions.
It is also important to understand that carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas that contributes to atmospheric greenhouse effects. There are many other more potent greenhouse gases whose concentrations are on the rise as of right now. Methane is one of those. If this trend is to continue, and if the sun refuses to be quiet during the upcoming solar cycle 24, then we will be in deep deep trouble!
Keywords: be veg, go green, save the planet, vegan/vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian, ahimsa, vegan meat, vegan t-shirt, vegetarian-restaurant, vegan-restaurant, meat-free, non-dairy, dairy-free, egg-free, no-smoking, no-drinking
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green
Posted by Admin at 1:33 AM, Thursday, February 19, 2009
Li Ching-Yuen: Secret of Longevity (李清雲: 長壽養生之道)
In China, there was a herbalist called Li Ching-Yuen. He was believed to have lived 256 years. He was also a life-long vegetarian. Records from Professor Wu Chung-chien, dean of the department of Education in Minkuo University, show that Li Ching-Yuen was actually born in 1677 and that Imperial Chinese Government congratulated him on his 150th and 200th birthdays. He died in 1933. During his lifespan, he was reported to have buried 23 wives and had 180 descendents.
Li Ching-yuen was famous not only for his longevity, but also his unusual achievements in Chinese medicine. According to the generally accepted hearsays spread in his province. Li was able to read and write as a child, and by his tenth birthday had traveled in Kansu, Shansi, Tibet, Annam, Siam and Manchuria gathering herbs. For the first hundred years he continued at this occupation. Then he switched to selling herbs gathered by others. Towards the end of Qing dynasty, he became a scholar in Chinese medicine. He was specially awarded by Imperial Chinese Government for his achievements in Chinese medicine. When he was about 200 years old, he was constantly invited to interview with western scholars and to deliver lectures in universities.
Li Ching-yuen attributed to his longevity and health to the following secrets:
1) Be a life-long vegetarian;
2) Keep peace of mind and be always happy;
3) regularly drink Chinese wolfberry tea.
Domestic and Foreign magazine published his story in the 1950s. In his own account (from an interview in the 1920's) Li Ching-yuen says,
“When I was 139 years old, and before I met my Master, I could still walk and do the power walk, as if I practiced Chinese martial arts. As a result some people thought I might be a deity or an accomplished swordsman.
At the time I thought it was really amusing. I think the reason that I have lived this long and am still perpetually healthy is because nothing has irritated me since I was 40 years old. Because of that, my heart is very calm, peaceful and divinely tranquil. That is why I am free from any illness, and always healthy and happy.
At the age of fifty when I went to a mountain to collect some herbs, I met an elderly man who lived on the secluded mountain. He didn't appear to be a supernormal man, but he took big strides when he walked, as if he was flying in the air. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep up with him. Later, I met him again. I knelt before him and begged for his secret. He gave me some wild fruits and said, “My only secret is that I only eat these fruits.” I took the fruits, and found that they were Chinese Wolfberries. Since then I consumed three qian of Chinese Wolfberries daily (a qian is the weight used to measure Chinese medicine which is equal to five grams). From then on I became healthy and agile. I can walk a hundred li (a li equals half a kilometer) and not feel tired. I became better in strength and stamina than an average person.”
(My comments:
1) It is unclear what makes Chinese wolfberries so different from other plants, except for the fact that Chinese wolfberrries have a very high Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC). ORAC is the standard test to measure the potency of antioxidants in food. According to scientists at the USDA, eating high-ORAC foods may slow diseases associated with aging (source ). If the link between intake of antioxidant foods and anti-aging is not a myth, then there is no reason why we cannot stay youthful by increasing intake of other high antioxidant foods. High antioixdant foods include:
| Item | ORAC Value |
| Spices, cloves, ground | 314,446 |
| Sumac, bran, raw | 312,400 |
| Spices, cinnamon, ground | 267,536 |
| Sorghum, bran, hi-tannin | 240,000 |
| Spices, oregano, dried | 200,129 |
| Acai berry, freeze-dried | 161,400 |
| Spices, turmeric, ground | 159,277 |
| Sorghum, bran, black | 100,800 |
| Sumac, grain, raw | 86,800 |
| Cocoa, dry powder, unsweetened | 80,933 |
| Spices, cumin seed | 76,800 |
| Maqui berry, concentrated powder | 75,000 |
| Spices, parsley, dried | 74,349 |
| Sorghum, bran, red | 71,000 |
| spices, basil, dried | 67,553 |
(source: http://oracvalues.com/sort/orac-value/ )
2) According to some online sources, however, the herbs which Li recommended to his student were actually ginseng and Hydrocotyle Asiatica. Hydrocotyle Asiatica is also called Gotu Kola. In fact, Indian yogi Nanddo Narian informed his followers that this very same herb contains a vital ingredient that is missing in the general human diet, an ingredient without which it is very difficult to control the rapid decay that leads to premature death. Unlike Chinese wolfberries, Gotu Kola is not easy to find! Chinese wolfberries and Gotu Kola are not the same things, are they?
3) ORAC Scores of Various Fruits/Vegetables:
| Item | ORAC Value |
| Wolf berry | 25,300 |
| Prunes | 5,770 |
| Blueberries | 2,400 |
| Garlic | 1,939 |
| Cranberries | 1,750 |
| Strawberries | 1,540 |
| Spinach | 1,260 |
| Yellow Squash | 1,150 |
| Alfalfa sprouts | 930 |
| Beets | 840 |
| Oranges | 750 |
| Grapes, Red | 739 |
| Grapefruit, pink | 495 |
| Grapes, White | 460 |
| Beans, Kindey | 460 |
| Peas, Frozen | 375 |
| Potato | 300 |
| Leaf Lettuce | 265 |
| Cantaloupe | 250 |
| Banana | 210 |
| Apple | 207 |
| Tomato | 195 |
| Pear | 110 |
| Watermelon | 100 |
| Cucumber | 60 |
)
中國的一位老中醫,李清雲先生,就活了256歲,而他是一位素食主義者!
李清雲出生於1677年,死於1933年,在世256年歲,是清末民國初年的中醫中藥學者,也是世界上著名的長壽老人。在他100歲時(1777 年)曾因在中醫中藥方面的杰出成就,而獲政府的特別獎勵。在他200歲的時候,仍常去大學講學。這期間他曾接受過許多西方學者的來訪。李清雲一生娶過24 個妻子,子孫滿堂。他認為自己健康長壽的原因有三:
1) 是長期素食;
2) 是內心保持平靜、開朗;
3) 是常年將枸杞子煮水當茶飲。
英國、法國及荷蘭的醫學科研工作者們聽到這一消息后,便對枸杞進行了深入研究。他們發現枸杞中含有一種沒見過的維生素,便取名為「維生素X」,也稱之為「駐顏維生素」。經動物實驗証實,維生素X,對人及動物的腦細胞和內分泌腺有激活和新生作用。法國政府為此開始大面積種植並加強研究。
枸杞子含有胡蘿卜素,硫胺素、核黃素、鹽酸、抗壞血酸等多種有益人體的維生素。研究証明,枸杞具有抑制脂肪在纖維內蓄積、促進肝細胞的新生、降低血糖、降低膽固醇等作用。枸杞的「返老還童」作用表現為:可刺激性腺及內分泌腺,增加荷爾蒙的分泌,強化腦細胞和神經細胞的生理功用,還可避免人隨年齡增長而出現血中積存毒素的現象,從而維持休內各組織的正常功能 。
《本草經疏》云:「枸杞子,潤而滋補,兼能退熱,而專於補腎、潤肺、生津、益氣,為肝腎真陰不足,勞乏內熱補益之要藥。老人陰虛者十之七八,故服食家為益精明目之上品。」
《本草匯言》云:「枸杞能使氣可充,血可補,陽可生,陰可長,火可降,風濕可去,有十全之妙用焉。」
《本草通玄》云:「枸杞子,補腎益精,水(腎)旺則骨強,而消渴、目昏、腰疼膝痛無不癒矣。」
《本草正》云:「枸杞,味重而純,故能補陰,陰中有陽,故能補氣。所以滋陰而不致陰衰,助陽而能使陽旺。其功則明耳目,添精因髓,健骨強筋善補勞傷;尤止消渴,真陰虛而臍腹疼痛不止者,多用神效。」
Keywords: be veg, go green, save the planet, vegan/vegetarian, vegan, vegetarian, ahimsa, vegan meat, vegan t-shirt, vegetarian-restaurant, vegan-restaurant, meat-free, non-dairy, dairy-free, egg-free, no-smoking, no-drinking
Posted by Admin at 10:10 PM, Sunday, February 15, 2009
How to make your own solar oven
Inspired by Solar International Cooking's Cookit , the following is the method that I have been using to construct my own solar panel cookers for months. The method to be described here is basically the same as the version supplied by Solar International Cooking, with exception that all the round corners of the original version are now replaced with sharp corners.
Like many other solar panel cookers, this one looks deceptively simple and does not cost a lot of money to build. However, its usefulness and efficiency surprise many. We have already used it to grill sweet potatoes with great success.
Many vegetarian meals involve prolonged cooking of grains and beans at a moderate temperature. Most panel cookers do not need a hugh investment to start with, as opposed to other more efficient but less cost-effective counterparts. I believe panel solar cooking is a way to go for those who want to be vegetarian without taxing the environment.
Solar cooking involves no carbon footprint. Panel cookers can be built inexpensively. You can run multiple panel cookers in parallel without incurring additional costs so that you can serve a large group of people. I believe portable panel cooker is a must-have item during the time of disasters. Even in the absence of any disasters, you can extend the idea of solar cooking using panel cookers to other go-green related applications, such as pasteurizing potting soil and solar distillation.
How to assemble and how to use your own solar oven
Step 1: First of all, get hold of the following materials:
Two rolls of adhesive aluminum tape.
One can of black spray paint. (Ideally, the paint should be non-toxic when dry.)
One high temperature plastic bag. (If you can't find one, just buy a glass container or microwavable box)
One piece of 4 feet x 3 feet cardboard paper. (Note: If you cannot find a sheet of cardboard that is bigger enough to cover 3 feet by 4 f feet, you can join several pieces of cardboard paper together in a way to make up the same area.)
One metal food pot (Note: If foot pot is too expensive for you, you substitute it with a sheet of aluminium foil. We will teach you how to cook without a metal pot in next post.)
One steel or bamboo steamer
Step 2: Cut the cardboard according to the solid line of the following plan. (Note that, instead of having round corners in the plan, as was done in the version from Solar International Cooking, I prefer to have sharp corners.):
Figure 1: Solar Oven Plan
Step 3: Cover one side of the sheet of cardboard with adhesive aluminium tape. Then, you are done. What you end up with shouldn't be overly different from the one shown in the following figure. Like it or not, this lousy thing is called a solar oven:
Figure 2: The thing so-called solar oven.
Step 4. Lay the solar oven flat with the shiny side up. Fold the solar oven from step 3 according to the fold lines shown in Figure 1. Close the front flap with clothes pins left and right. The final sharp should look like the following diagram:
Figure 3a. Schematic of the Solar oven.
Figure 3b. Photo of the solar oven that we made from scrap cardboard.
Step 5: Blacken the exterior of the food pot with black paint (See the following figure):
Figure 4: Paint the exterior of your food pot with black paint.
Step 6: Put food stuff into the blacken foot pot (see the following figure):
Figure 5: Put food stuff into the pot.
Step 7: Place a steamer into a high temperature plastic bag or glass container. Technically, the high temperature plastic bag or glass container is equivalent to a greenhouse enclosure. The steamer will be used to support the foot pot from step 6 (see the following figure):
Figure 6: Place the steamer into the bag
Step 8: Place the food pot from step 6 into the bag. The food pot should be well supported by the steamer (see the following diagram):
Figure 7: Place the the pot into the bag in a manner that the pot is supported by the steamer.
Step 9: Make sure the bag is filled with air. Now, close the bag with a string (see the following figure):
Figure 8: Close the bag with a string.
Step 10. Place the bag enclosing the foot pot onto the solar oven for cooking. Make sure the solar oven is in the sunny area:
Figure 9a: Final setup --- schematic
Figure 9b: Final setup --- photo
Categories: DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Renewable Energy
Posted by Admin at 1:25 AM, Friday, February 13, 2009
Global Warming Forecast to Delay Ozone Layer Recovery
Since the launch of this blog, I have quoted a lot of literatures on the link between climate change and the ozone layer. This one is another example. The reason is because, I believe, the unprecedented coolness in many places is probably due to leakage of heat on earth through the broken ozone layer. (EDIT: Since the recent volcano eruption in Iceland, I discovered the ambient temperature is more stable than before. It is unclear whether or not this is due to the fact that the sulphur dioxide is shielding the earth surface from the solar UV radiations.
"BALTIMORE, Maryland, February 6, 2009 (ENS) - Increasing greenhouse gases could stall the recovery of stratospheric ozone in some regions of the Earth, according to new research by a team from Johns Hopkins University. The scientists warn that increased rates of skin cancer in those regions might result.
"Darryn Waugh, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and his colleagues reported Thursday that climate change could provoke variations in the circulation of air in the lower stratosphere in tropical and southern mid-latitudes, including Australia and South America.
"The circulation changes would cause ozone levels in these areas never to return to levels that were present before decline began, even after ozone-depleting substances have been wiped out from the atmosphere.
"In tropical and southern mid-latitudes, Waugh says, "Global warming causes changes in the speed that the air is transported into and through the lower stratosphere. You're moving the air through it quicker, so less ozone gets formed."
CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
CLICK HERE FOR THE LEAD RESEARCHER'S WEBSITE
Categories: Be Veg, Climate Change, For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, News Archives, Save the Planet
Posted by Admin at 11:29 PM, Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Colloidal Silver --- a natural antibiotic (updated on 04 February 2010)
Colloidal Silver is a well-known natural antibiotic that can be inexpensively homemade. It is formed by electrolytically pulling microscopic silver particles from a silver electrode into a liquid, such as distilled water. The sizes of these microscopic silver particles are normally less than 100 nanometers so that they remain suspended in the liquid without forming silver ions, or dissolved solution. Because of their ultra-small dimensions, these nano-particles of silver can easily penetrate and travel throughout a human body.
General Track Record of Colloidal Silver
It has been reported that colloidal silver is effective against more than 679 different disease-causing pathogens. Diseases which Colloidal Silver has been used successfully against include (but not limited to): acne, allergies, appendicitis, blood parasites, bubonic plague, burns (colloidal silver is one of the few treatments that can keep severe burn patients alive), cancer, candidasis, cholera, conjunctivitis, diabetes, gonorrhea, hay fever, herpes, leprosy, leukemia, lupus, lymphangitis, Lyme disease, malaria, meningitis, parasitic infections both viral and fungal, pneumonia, rheumatism, ringworm, scarlet fever, septic conditions of the eyes, ears, mouth and throat, shingles, skin cancer, staph infections, strep infections, syphilis, toxemia, trenchfoot, all forms of viruses, warts and stomach ulcer.
University of North Texas has carried out a study that tests a colloidal silver product against a wide range of illness-causing pathogens. Although the study is specific to one colloidal silver product only, its implication convincingly suggests that colloidal silver at 15 ppm or above is chemically effective as an anti-biotic against Staph, Candidas, Salmonella and Psuedomonas [7 ].
The benefits of silver in medicine, and as a purifier have been well acknowledged for centuries. In ancient times, silver containers had been used in Greece, Rome and Vietnam to keep liquids fresh. Around 400 B.C. Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, listed as a singular treatment for ulcers “the flowers of silver alone, in the finest powder.” Herodotus describes how the King of Persia carried with him boiled water in silver flagons to prevent sickness. In 69 B.C., silver nitrate was described in the contemporary pharmacopoeia. In 1869, Ravelin reported that silver exerted its germicidal effect at very low concentrations. In 1881, Crede advocated silver to prevent eye infections in newborns, and silver drops were used to prevent gonorrhea of the eye in newborns. In 1920, the microbiological action of silver was determined to be due to the Ag+ ions formed by tarnishing, surface-oxidation, or ionization.
How It Works
Colloidal Silver may be ingested by drinking it in a diluted form. When ingested, it takes one to two days for colloidal silver particles to go to the body cells in an amount sufficient for benefits to begin.
After the silver particles entered the body cells, they reacts with thiol (sulphydryl, SH) groups in the bacterial cell, producing structural change in the cell membranes. Silver particles further penetrate into the bacterial cell, interacting with nucleic acids. These process, in essence, disable the oxygen metabolism enzyme that all one celled bacteria, fungi and viruses use for their oxygen metabolism. Within a few minutes, the pathogen suffocates and dies, and is cleared out of the body by the immune, lymphatic and elimination systems.
Colloidal silver will not remain in the body forever. After three months, it will be eliminated by the kidneys, lymph system and bowel. In general, increasing water intake tends to increase silver elimination through the urine.
Simplest Method of Making Your Own Colloidal Silver
First, prepare the following materials:
three 9-volt batteries,
a glass of distilled water,
two pieces of pure silver wire (.999 fine).
(Note: in the UK, you can buy distilled water from Boots, or Superdrugs, or some other chemists.)
Now, follow the following steps:
1/ Heat up the glass of distilled water to just below the boiling point. The purpose of this step is to improve the conductivity of the distilled water. (This step is optional.)
2/ Clean the silver wires (or silver electrodes) with alcohol.
3/ Insert the silver wires into the distilled water. Placement of wires is not critical, but they must not be touching each other.
4/ Connect a circuit in the following manner:
5/ Wait for about 30 minutes, or until the distilled water becomes slightly yellowish. The yellowish solution is called Colloidal Silver.
Caution: When the final solution turns milky white rather than yellow, the water you use may be mineral water rather than pure distilled water. This situation is very common in the UK, as bottled distilled water is not always available. Do not use mineral water to make colloidal silver. If one has to make colloidal silver out of mineral water, reduce the time duration in step 5, say from 30 minutes to 1 minute.
Caution: If you end up with brown stuff in your colloidal silver solution, this means that you have left the process for too long. The brown stuff is silver oxide.
Caution: Some people end up with a greyish solution at the end of the process. The greyish particles in the solution comes from the unwanted impurities in the silver electrodes. This means that the silver electrodes they use are not 0.999 pure. Do not use impure siliver electrodes because they may contains lead and other impurities which may harm your bodies. Use only the pure 99.99 fine silver electrodes provided.
Caution: Under normal circumstances, the smallest nanoparticles are a clear yellow color. Increases in size lead to amber, brown, and finally a cloudy brownish/green color, which are increasingly less effective as antimicrobial agents.
Storage
According to the author's experience, colloidal silver can be stored for more than a year. Since colloidal silver is photo reactive, the solution will become less clear after a prolonged exposure to light. Therefore, it should be placed in dark or brown glass containers or empty hydrogen peroxide bottles that exclude light and do not affect ion charge.
Colloidal Silver will NOT Reach the Large Intestine
However, although many studies have demonstrated the fact that colloidal silver can chemically inactivate almost all kinds of viruses or bacteria, the large intestine is the place where colloidal silver will not penetrate when taken in normal dosage. The majority of the colloidal silver that is taken orally is normally absorbed before reaching the large intestine, with very little ending up in the large intestine or colon. On the positive side, the friendly bacteria in the large intestine are mostly unaffected by the germicidal effects of colloidal silver. Unfortunately, a number of diseases such as cholera, canine parvovirus or other diseases where the problematic pathogen is active in the large intestine not only have negative impacts on our health, but are also life-threatening, mostly due to the dehydration caused by severe and prolonged diarrhoea and vomiting.
How to use Colloidal Silver
1/ As a liquid antibiotic for animals:
Colloidal silver can be used as an antibiotic for almost all kinds of infections caused by single-celled viruses or bacteria.
Colloidal silver can be mixed with colloidal gold.
For nonchronic conditions, the maximum daily dosage for humans is [10 ]:
12 x Your body weight (in Pounds) / concentration (in PPM) = Number of Drops per day.
According to a report published by WHO, United Nation, toxic intake of silver for humans is 60 mg/day, while lethal intake is 1.3 to 6.2 mg/day.
2/ As a water purification agent:
Water can be purified by adding 1/2 to one teaspoon of 30 ppm colloidal silver and a few drops of iodine to one gallon of water. Legionella pnuemophilia (Legionnaire's disease) is lethal in water with a temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It has been reported that water with a colloidal silver concentration of only 20 ppb (parts per billion) kills Legionella pnuemophilia.
3/ As an antibiotic for plants:
A colloidal silver solution can also be sprayed directly onto plants and shrubs in the garden or the water-reservoir of a self-watering planter. The action of the colloidal silver positive ions work on the outside of the plants to destroy bacteria, virus, fungus, etc. Garden food plants that have been sprayed with colloidal silver leave no residue, as do poison sprays, and are safe for human consumption.
Tests in a hydroponics greenhouse have shown that Colloidal Silver is absorbed and used by the living plant as are any other minerals. Hydroponics is an ideal gardening method having only one problem: Viruses, funguses and bacteria tend to thrive in the plant nutrient fluid. The presence of silver in the hydropnic solution will not only kill the viruses, fungues and bacteria present in the solution, but also prevent mosquitoes from hatching.
4/ Keeping algae, mosquito larvae and parasites out of still water:
Tests have shown that algae, larva of mosquitoes and eggs of some parasites are effectively killed by colloidal silver. Colloidal silver may not kill mosquitoes and parasities. However, since the eggs of mosquitos or parasites are mostly single-celled, their reproduction process will end in the presence of colloidal silver. It should be remembered that to remove mosquitoes or parasites by killing their eggs or larvae means that one must continue the course of treatment until all of the adults die.
5/ As a wound healing spray for burns:
As a trained first aider, I have been taught to spray pure water or Coca Cola onto burned flesh immediately following an accident. But according to an example shown in Young's famous book, entitled "Sick and Tired: Reclaim Your Inner Terrain ", colloidal silver solution is apparently much better and more reliable than pure water or Coca Cola. Colloidal silver is not only an effective cooling agent which can be absorbed into skin and flesh instantly, but also assists in regrowth of new tissues. However, pure water and Coca Cola are devoid of the tissue regrowth benefit.
6/ As a nasally administered medicine for treatment of sinus infection, nasal conjection, runny nose, sore throat, cough, flu, or the like:
Since most disease-causing organisms enter your body through the mucous membranes of the nose, the mouth, and/or the pulmonary system, it is possible to treat the disease by killing the disease-causing organisms through the same channel ---- i.e. the mucous membranes of the nose, the mouth, and/or the pulmonary system. Inhalation of colloidal silver can be a better alternative to oral ingestion of the same by virtue of the fact that the colloidal silver itself can directly irrigate and disinfect the loose foreign bodies and particulate debris from the nasal cavity and posterior nasopharynx.
An ultrasonic fogger is a device that uses ultrasonic energy to simulate low clouds and fog in the terrarium. It is mainly used for increasing humidity levels to create a naturally misty and damp environment. The mist from any ultrasonic fogger can be made with a colloidal silver solution, instead of just pure tap water. According to a message posted in curezone [8 ] , the colloidal silver mist can form an extremely effective yet easy lung/bronchial/nasal treatment that clears up sinus infections, nasal conjection and many related allergies.
Even without an ultrasonic fogger, one can nasally take coloidal silver solution by pouring, pumping or spraying colloidal silver solution directly through the nose in a way to achieve the similar effects. According to the author's experience, it is not difficult to use this method to treat a cold or other similar infections in less than one afternoon.
How to test if a Silver Solution is Actually Ionic Silver?
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding whether a solution is ionic silver. According to [11 ], you can easily test the presence of silver ions in a solution by mixing it with table salt (i.e. sodium chloride). If silver ions are present, then the chloride ions will combine with the silver ions and create a white, cloudy appearance.
Possible Tricks to Minimize the Chance of Getting Argyria
Argyria is the only known side-effect associated with excessive exposure to silver products. Whether or not an individual exposed to silver products contracts argyria depends on many factors, including the dose of exposure, the duration of exposure, the form of exposure (ie: ingested, inhaled, skin contact) and the chemistry of the silver products.
Although argyria is believed to be an irreversible condition that cannot be cured, some online literatures have uncovered successful cases of argyria cured (CLICK HERE FOR THE SOURCE ).
According to a document released by European Comission, antioxidant deficiencies (e.g. vitamin E and selenium) appear to enhance silver toxicity. Some researchers believe that silver can reduce the intracellular content of selenium, with eventual inhibition of glutathione peroxidase synthesis, which is selenium-dependent. On the other hand, supplemental vitamin E and selenium in diets of rats and chickens have been shown to increase the animals' tolerance of high dose of silver.
A document from Environmental Protection Agency in the USA echoes the same finding. According to Environmental Protection Agency (CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS ), individuals with low vitamin E and selenium levels are more susceptible to argyria.
A formula for curing argyria has been published on a website (CLICK HERE FOR THE SOURCE ), which surprisingly contains very high doses of vitamin E and selenium. The formula is as follows:
3 Vitamin E 1000 mg 100% Natural d-alpha Tocopheryl
1 Selenium 100mcg yeast free
2 vegetarian Vitamin C 1000 mg
1 teaspoon MSM organic
1 super potency Vitamin B 100,
1 teaspoon of Kelp powder.
(Taken every morning with 2 16oz glasses of water, with close to 3/4 of a gallon distilled water a day. This procedure may take from several weeks to several months to be totally effective, depending upon the severity of the Argyria.)
Although the cure for argyria has not been very much mentioned on the Internet, the role of selenium in detoxifying silver has been documented in medical and scientific literatures ( example ). According to an article from eMedicine (CLICK HERE FOR THE SOURCE ), for example, selenium has been shown to have favorable modifying effects on the metabolism and toxicity of silver by forming complexes with silver. Silver can react with selenium to form silver selenide in human bodies. Since silver selenide is inert and highly insoluble in vivo, monovalent silver becomes less available to interfere with normal enzymatic activities in tissues.
In human bodies, selenium is an essential constituent of a number of enzymes, most of which have antioxidant functions. For example, selenium protein complex (Biomin S-P-C) has been shown to neutralize free radicals on the skin, which is thought to minimize the aging effects of the sun. According to research as well as my experience, selenium can be taken in conjunction with Vitamin E to help prevent severe damage from sunburn.
Selenium also acts in conjunction with glutathione peroxidase by binding with toxic heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium through a process called chelation and flushing them out of the body through urine (SOURCE ).
The link between argyria and deficiencies of selenium and/or Vitamin E is apparently stronger than many wish to believe. Perhaps, when taking colloidal silver, it is not a bad idea to consider a body cleansing protocol involving high doses of vitamin E and selenium. Wheat germ oil is the major source of Vitamin E (SOURCE ). Brazil nuts are probably the better choice, because brazil nuts are not only a very good source of Vitamin E, but also contain an unusually high amount of selenium (SOURCE ).
The Institute of Medicine in the US has set the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for selenium at 55 micrograms per day for adults. One single Brazil nut far exceeds the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of selenium (see below). Perhaps, one or two brazil nuts a day is more than enough.
Brazil Nut Nutrition Facts ( serving size, 1 oz, 6 nuts)
calories: 185
fat: 19 g
saturated fat: 4 g
fiber: 2 g
carbonhydrates: 3 g
protein: 4 g
Thiamin: 12% RDA
Iron: 4% RDA
Magnesium: 27% RDA
Phosphorus: 20% RDA
Potassium: 5% RDA
Zinc: 8% RDA
Copper: 25% RDA
Manganese: 17% RDA
Selenium: 774% RDA
Other Sources of Silver
Silver is present in food additive E174. E174 (Silver) is commonly used to decorate cakes, candies, and other sweets. In addition, silver can be found in a number of other foodstuffs. Refined wheat, for instance, contains approximately 0.3 microgram/gram, wheat bran 0.9 microgram/gram, and mushroom hundreds of microgram/gram (SOURCE ).
Current Uses of Colloidal Silver
1/ The American space agency NASA has chosen silver as the water-purification agent for its space shuttles; so do the Russians.
2/ Water-filters based on Colloidal Silver are approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency and also by the Swiss government for use in homes and offices.
3/ Silver-based water filters have been used by many airline companies, including Air France, Alitalia, British Airways, Canadian Pacific, Japan Air Lines, KLM, Lufthansa, Olympic, Pan Am, SAS and Swissair, to curtail water borne diseases.
4/ Silver is often used in place of chlorine for disinfection in swimming pools, because, unlike silver, chlorine reacts with organic compounds and nitrogen compounds present in chlorinated swimming pools and forms objectionable by-products such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and chloramines. These by-products are blamed for irritation of eyes, nasal passages, and skin, as well as with objectionable odors in the pool environment.
5/ A few Japanese companies have very good success in silver-based technologies for air purification. For instance, one Japanese firm managed to convert 50 ppm carbon monoxide into harmless carbon dioxide by passing the carbon monoxide gas through a stack of filters coated with silver compounds. Another company successfully uses a similar technology to eliminate 200 ppm nitric oxide. One firm uses silver compounds to remove vinyl cyanide, methyl cyanide and hydrocyanic acid from its discharges.
Other Less-mentioned Concerns of Colloidal Silver
Whilst colloidal silver can kill almost all kinds of single-celled viruses, there is no evidence suggesting that colloidal silver can eliminate free-radicals. In fact, since silver is a reactive metal in human bodies, there is a likelihood that the opposite is true if the silver particles become too small [5 , 6 ].
Our grassroot wisdom has evolved to a level where we can fight Swine flu without even consulting a doctor. However, colloidal silver is not designed to fight free-radicals which are either naturally produced in our bodies in response of a virial attack, or multiplied when colliding with metal particles in our bodies. The outbreak of swine flu is due to our hunger for meat. Due to the presence of nano-silver particles in our bodies, swine flu or other animal bonre viiruses may not be able kill us immediately, but the excessive build-up of free-radicals because of the silver crystalioids in human bodies will eventually manifest themselves as one or more age-related diseases, which may or may not be life-threathening. Perhaps, this is the price we need to pay if we choose to consume meat, alcohol, cigaratte smoke and/or other additive drugs.
The oxidative stress due to excessive build-up of free-radicals is believed to be the main cause of many degenerative diseases, including heart disease, boss loss, aging, DNA damages, cancers and arthritis. Free-radicals, in general, come from pollution, over-cooked oil, smoking, alcohol drinking, meat-eating, excessive exercises, panicking, or drug abuse. The only way to combat unwanted free-radicals is to follow the following steps:
1) minimize exposure to pollution and ionizing radiations,
2) cut down consumption of meat, seafoods, cigarette smoke, alcohol and problematic drugs,
3) increase the intake of anti-oxidants from plants or from minerals, and optionally.
Disclaimer
This article is provided as a research tool for the purpose of education only. Most of the information in this article is pieced together from a variety of Internet and non-internet sources (including my own experimental results). Not all the sources are unbiased, accurate, reliable, current and complete. It is also important to understand that the Internet environment is variable and dynamic. This means that websites which I considered relevant in the first place may change from day to day.
This article will be actively updated when correction is warranted and/or new information on colloidal silver becomes available. If there are any errors found in this article, please let me know and I will be happy to correct them. Meanwhile, I recommend that my readers exercise good judgement when reading this article.
Recommended Literatures
1/ Dog's cataract healed with colloidal silver
2/ Colloidal silver beats the swine flu!
3/ This War Against Germs Has a Silver Lining - Wall Street Journal
5/ Scientists Study Health Implications Of Products Using Nanosilver
6/ Nanosilver disinfects — but at what price?
7/ University of North Texas: Time-Kill Study on SilverKare Colloidal Silver
9/ Colloidal silver using ultrasonic humidifier for sinu infection, etc.
--> <Categories: DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Health
Posted by Admin at 11:08 PM, Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A Machine to End War --- by Nikola Tesla, February 1937
Forecasting is perilous. No man can look very far into the future. Progress and invention evolve in directions other than those anticipated. Such has been my experience, although I may flatter myself that many of the developments which I forecast have been verified by events in the first third of the twentieth century.
It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally. I announced the cosmic ray and my theory of radio activity in 1896. One of my most important discoveries--terrestrial resonance--which is the foundation of wireless power transmission and which I announced in 1899, is not understood even today. Nearly two years after I had flashed an electric current around the globe, Edison, Steinmetz, Marconi, and others declared that it would not be possible to transmit even signals by wireless across the Atlantic. Having anticipated so many important developments, it is not without assurance that I attempt to predict what life is likely to be in the twenty-first century.
Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors. We may definitely say that it is a movement even if we do not fully understand its nature. Movement implies a body which is being moved and a force which propels it against resistance. Man, in the large, is a mass urged on by a force. Hence the general laws governing movement in the realm of mechanics are applicable to humanity.
There are three ways by which the energy which determines human progress can be increased: First, we may increase the mass. This, in the case of humanity, would mean the improvement of living conditions, health, eugenics, etc. Second, we may reduce the frictional forces which impede progress, such as ignorance, insanity, and religious fanaticism. Third, we may multiply the energy of the human mass by enchaining the forces of the universe, like those of the sun, the ocean, the winds and tides.
The first method increases food and well-being. The second tends to bring peace. The third enhances our ability to work and to achieve. There can be no progress that is not constantly directed toward increasing well-being, peace, and achievement. Here the mechanistic conception of life is one with the teachings of Buddha and the Sermon on the Mount.
While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal--religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian--to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.
There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call "soul " or "spirit," is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the "soul" or the "spirit" ceases likewise.
I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life. The acceptance by mankind at large of these tenets will not destroy religious ideals. Today Buddhism and Christianity are the greatest religions both in number of disciples and in importance. I believe that the essence of both will he the religion of the human race in the twenty-first century.
The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.
Hygiene, physical culture will be recognized branches of education and government. The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will he far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War. The pollution of our beaches such as exists today around New York City will seem as unthinkable to our children and grandchildren as life without plumbing seems to us. Our water supply will he far more carefully supervised, and only a lunatic will drink unsterilized water.
More people die or grow sick from polluted water than from coffee, tea, tobacco, and other stimulants. I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat. I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system with harmful ingredients. Bernarr Macfadden has shown how it is possible to provide palatable food based upon natural products such as milk, honey, and wheat. I believe that the food which is served today in his penny restaurants will be the basis of epicurean meals in the smartest banquet halls of the twenty-first century.
There will be enough wheat and wheat products to feed the entire world, including the teeming millions of China and India, now chronically on the verge of starvation. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.
Long before the next century dawns, systematic reforestation and the scientific management of natural resources will have made an end of all devastating droughts, forest fires, and floods. The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines.
Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere "stick" in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
"It will be possible to destroy anything approaching within 200 miles. My invention will provide a wall of power," declares Tesla.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war. Like other inventors, I believed at one time that war could he stopped by making it more destructive. But I found that I was mistaken. I underestimated man's combative instinct, which it will take more than a century to breed out. We cannot abolish war by outlawing it. We cannot end it by disarming the strong. War can be stopped, not by making the strong weak but by making every nation, weak or strong, able to defend itself.
Hitherto all devices that could be used for defense could also be utilized to serve for aggression. This nullified the value of the improvement for purposes of peace. But I was fortunate enough to evolve a new idea and to perfect means which can be used chiefly for defense. If it is adopted, it will revolutionize the relations between nations. It will make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack. My invention requires a large plant, but once it is established it will he possible tb destroy anything, men or machines, approaching within a radius of 200 miles. It will, so to speak, provide a wall of power offering an insuperable obstacle against any effective aggression.
If no country can be attacked successfully, there can be no purpose in war. My discovery ends the menace of airplanes or submarines, but it insures the supremacy of the battleship, because battleships may be provided with some of the required equipment. There might still be war at sea, but no warship could successfully attack the shore line, as the coast equipment will be superior to the armament of any battleship.
I want to state explicitly that this invention of mine does not contemplate the use of any so-called " death rays." Rays are not applicable because they cannot be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with distance. All the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being, because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an extent as to be ineffectual.
My apparatus projects particles which may.be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. Many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist. This wonderful feature will make it possible, among other things, to achieve undreamed-of results in television, for there will be almost no limit to the intensity of illumination, the size of the picture, or distance of projection.
I do not say that there may not be several destructive wars before the world accepts my gift. I may not live to see its acceptance. But I am convinced that a century from now every nation will render itself immune from attack by my device or by a device based upon a similar principle.
At present we suffer from the derangement of our civilization because we have not yet completely adjusted ourselves to the machine age. The solution of our problems does not lie in destroying but in mastering the machine.
Innumerable activities still performed by human hands today will be performed by automatons. At this very moment scientists working in the laboratories of American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a "thinking machine." I anticipated this development.
I actually constructed "robots." Today the robot is an accepted fact, but the principle has not been pushed far enough. In the twenty-first century the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. There is no reason at all why most of this should not come to pass in less than a century, treeing mankind to pursue its higher aspirations.
And unless mankind's attention is too violently diverted by external wars and internal revolutions, there is no reason why the electric millennium should not begin in a few decades.
Categories: For Scientists and Engineers
Posted by Admin at 7:30 PM, Thursday, January 01, 2009
How to cure diarrhea naturally?
To cure diarrhea, just eat pineapple. It works for me very well. I got this trick from HERE . Pineapples contain bromelain which is a mixture of protein-digesting enzymes. According to a study, bromelain can prevent diarrhea in piglets infected with pathogenic E. coli. The study suggests that, in about 30 hours, bromelain blocks receptors on gut endothelium necessary for successful invasion by the bacteria and apparently directly interferes with bacterial toxins.
Thanks to the NDEr who offered such a simple but effective trick.
Categories: DIY Library, For Scientists and Engineers, Health
Posted by Admin at 8:44 AM, Monday, December 29, 2008
Huge Losses Found in Arctic Ozone Layer -- old news, published in April 6, 2000
As pointed out by the following news article, the loss of ozone over the Arctic region is not new. The recent volcano eruption in Iceland releases about 400 tones of sulphur dioxide. Sulphur dioxide can also shield the earth surface from harmful solar radiations. Hopefully, the presence of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere would alleviate the negative impacts due to the damage on the ozone layer:
"Huge Losses Found in Arctic Ozone Layer
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2000/2000-04-06-06.asp
"By Cat Lazaroff
"WASHINGTON, DC, April 6, 2000 (ENS) - More than 60 percent of the ozone layer blanketing the Arctic Circle was lost this past winter, due to record cold and continued pollution by humans, scientists from the United States and the European Union said Wednesday. The researchers also warned that global warming may speed up ozone loss and slow the recovery of the ozone layer.
"arctic
"A computer generated image of the thinning ozone layer, with the thinnest areas shown in dark blue (All photos courtesy NASA)
"The ozone losses are likely to affect the ozone levels over Europe during spring, the scientists said.
"Studies by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Union have revealed ozone losses of over 60 percent in the Arctic stratosphere around 18 kilometers (11 miles) above the Earth, during one of the coldest stratospheric winters on record. This is one of the most substantial ozone losses at this altitude ever recorded in the Arctic.
""Last winter's results have heightened concerns that ozone levels over the north polar region may continue to decline despite the benefits of international agreements to stop production and release of ozone-destroying chemicals," said Dr. Hanjürg Jost of NASA's Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley.
"More than a decade ago scientists determined that ozone depletion is caused mostly by man-made chlorine and bromine compounds. Manufacturers made the chlorine compounds, chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, for use as refrigerants, aerosol sprays, solvents and foam-blowing agents. Fire fighters used bromine-containing halons to put out fires. Manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons ceased in 1996 in developed countries under the terms of the Montreal Protocol and its amendments.
"But climate change in the stratosphere will likely result in increased ozone losses in the Arctic winter in the coming decades, even as the amount of chlorine and bromine introduced into the atmosphere is decreased, the researchers said. The buildup of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, tends to trap more heat near the Earth's surface, while at the same time colder than normal temperatures are experienced in the stratosphere, where the ozone breakdown occurs, scientists explained.
"clouds
"Opalescent polar stratospheric clouds help turn chlorine into the ozone destroyer chlorine monoxide
"The cold air helps form high altitude clouds (at about 18 kilometers or 60,000 feet), called "polar stratospheric clouds" or PSCs, which play a unique role in atmospheric ozone loss. The opalescent clouds form only in the cold temperatures found at the poles. These clouds help trigger the conversion of chlorine from relatively non-reactive forms to a form (chlorine monoxide, or ClO) that, in combination with sunlight, destroys ozone.
"PSCs were observed to extend widely over the Arctic region from early December to early March. "We were somewhat surprised to see PSCs so early in December," said Dr. Mark Schoeberl, who was the SOLVE co-project scientist for observations made from NASA's DC-8 aircraft. "Some of the PSC types and their locations which we observed in December did not fit within our current understanding."
"The last PSCs were observed on March 8 by instruments aboard the DC-8, and on March 15 by satellite.
"The polar stratosphere temperatures were extremely low over the course of this last winter. At 20 kilometers (66,000 feet) on January 28, the area covered by temperatures low enough to form PSCs was 14.8 million square kilometers (5.7 million square miles), which is larger than the continental United States. This is the largest area coverage recorded in more than 40 years of Northern Hemisphere stratospheric analyses.
""The polar stratospheric clouds covered a larger area, and persisted for a longer period of time, than for any other Arctic winter during the past 20 years. These conditions heighten our concern regarding possible couplings between climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion," said ozone researcher Dr. Ross Salawitch of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
"DC-8
"One of NASA's DC-8 aircraft prepares for a data gathering flight
"The mixing of polar air into middle latitudes, both during the winter and as the polar circulation broke down in late March, influences ozone levels over the populated middle regions, particularly in Europe.
"In March, the World Meteorological Organisation Mapping Centre at the University of Thessaloniki reported that the average ozone amounts over Europe were 15 percent below the pre-1976 average, lending credence to concerns that thinning ozone will significantly impact species living outside the Arctic Circle.
"More than 350 researchers from the United States, Europe, Canada, Russia and Japan took part in the combined NASA/European Union-sponsored field campaign, said project manager Mike Craig of NASA Ames. Researchers measured ozone, other atmospheric gases, particle amounts and air motions in the Arctic stratosphere, the atmospheric layer between roughly eight and 50 kilometers (five to 31 miles) altitude.
"From November 1999 to March 2000, investigators used spacecraft, aircraft, large, small and long-duration balloons, and ground-based instruments to gather data. The aircraft and large balloon launch teams were based in Kiruna, Sweden.
"A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ozone instrument aboard NASA's high altitude ER-2 aircraft was used to measure ozone losses in the lower stratosphere. Data from the ER-2 show ozone in the Arctic decreasing by about 60 percent between January and mid-March, said ER-2 co-project scientist Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
"balloon
"Researchers prepare to send an instrument package up on a weather balloon
"These measurements are comparable to the large ozone losses in the lower stratosphere observed during several winters in the mid-1990s. Total ozone losses throughout the depth of the atmosphere were slightly reduced because ozone losses were smaller above 66,000 feet (20 kilometers). Spacecraft observations by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth Probe clearly showed an area of low ozone over the polar region during February and March.
"The average total polar ozone for the first two weeks of March was 16 percent lower than scientists observed during the same time period in the early 1980s.
"The campaign - the biggest field measurement campaign yet undertaken - included the NASA-sponsored Stratospheric Aerosols and Gas Experiment (SAGE III) Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment (SOLVE), and European Union-sponsored Third European Stratospheric Experiment on Ozone (THESEO-2000).
"balloon
"A weather balloon heads for the Arctic stratosphere
"The joint investigations into the Arctic stratosphere have provided better insights into the processes that control polar ozone. These insights considerably add to scientists' ability to predict ozone levels in the future as chlorine levels decline and as greenhouse gases increase.
""European cooperation within an international team has made it possible to achieve these research results," said Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin. "They will provide the best possible scientific advice to the regulatory process concerning ozone depleting substances in the framework of the Montreal Protocol and, equally important, to the citizens."
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 12:29 PM, Thursday, November 27, 2008
Going Veg Is Enough to Save the Planet, Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, Monaco, May 4, 2008
Even if everyone in the whole population of the planet eats only half vegetarian, we can save the planet already. That’s the best and the quickest way. Because meat is not only about the land, it’s about the water, medicine, energy, pollution from transportation, and the conscience; that’s what makes people sick.
So if you can tell people to be vegetarian, that’s the best thing
you can do for them and for the planet. Then we can even keep all the
airplanes; we can keep all the cars; we can keep all the things now,
because CO2 is not as bad as “conscience sickness,” and not as bad as
spending so much water on animal raising, and wasting land, and
deforestation and transportation. If we eat vegetarian, we still can
keep all the airplanes, cars, trains and even everything as usual. We
don’t even need to rely on the government, because the government cannot
always do everything. The government cannot forbid people to eat meat,
for example. Maybe they can, but they don’t want to do it.
So, the individual is the best to save the planet. Just go vegetarian, and we’ll save a lot of methane gas, a lot of transportation pollution, a lot of wasted water and land - land that we can cultivate, with enough food for everyone. And the food we feed the animals, we can feed the hungry. We would never go hungry. The whole planet can be fed if people go vegetarian. And then we can even keep all the styles that we have now, like the airplane. Of course it’s the best if we don’t. But even if we still have cars, airplanes and trains and so on, if the planet’s people are vegetarian, then we can save the planet still. Not everyone knows that. So, tell whoever you can to save the planet. But even if we cannot, then we cannot.
One more thing about the climate that everyone worries about: If we have the blessing of the government, it would be good. But otherwise, everyone can do it. Just be vegetarian, and we can save it. We can save a lot. Because of the bad karma, “As you sow so shall you reap,” if we do bad things, then we get bad things. It’s not just about the physical energy or even the ways of war and all that. The bad karma will come back on us, and no one can save us, not even God. Because even if God tells us to do this and we don’t do it, Hes lets us be free. If you want to make a mistake, it’s your freedom. God is not someone who controls you all the time. It would be good if Hes does some controlling, but Hes doesn’t do that.
So we have to control ourselves; we have to know what’s good and what’s bad. Read the Bible or the scripture of your religion. Really study well to see what the scripture tells you to do. All the tips in any scripture of any religion tell you how to survive here, how you can save the planet, how to live well and how to go to Heaven afterwards. It’s all in the scriptures; it’s not me saying anything.
To view the complete Supreme Master Television coverage of this exclusive discussion, please visit the following link: http://video.Godsdirectcontact.net/magazine/BMD640.php
Categories: Be Veg, For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Save the Planet
Methane – More Potent than CO2, by Brisbane News Group, Australia (Originally in English)
As the world’s governments strive to implement solutions to combat climate change, its effects continue to increase and intensify with more frequent and severe storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes and more.
The most prominent recent information shows that methane is up to 25 times more potent, per ton, than CO2 in causing global warming. These calculations are based on averaging the heating impact of methane over 100 years. However, after only a decade, methane is barely traceable and almost disappears after 20 years, thus averaging it over a century dramatically reduces its impact. And as we don’t have 100 years left to reduce our greenhouse gases, more recent calculations averaged over a period of 20 years rate methane as 72 times more potent.
Methane emissions are produced from natural sources such as oceans, permafrost, some wetlands, and also from human-made sources. Human-produced methane is one of the largest emitters especially from biomass burning (the burning of vegetation for land clearing and land-use change) and the livestock industry. Methane from the energy sector such as coal mines, oil refineries and leaking gas pipelines can be minimized through technological changes and advancements. But it is the methane from the livestock industry that is the worst human-derived emitter, as recently stated by Dr. Kirk Smith, Professor of Global Environmental Health at the University of California, Berkley. He said, “And that is something that we all contribute to, all of us who eat meat and I must say, drink milk as well.” Fortunately then, reducing methane levels is something that all of us can have a hand in right now by consuming less meat and dairy products. Professor Smith verifies this by boldly stating: “The immediate fix is to eat less meat.”
Currently, governments worldwide are focusing on strategies to reduce CO2 emissions; however, this latest information about methane points to the fact that we should be concentrating on methane reduction much more. Dr. Smith added, “Methane is the second most well-known greenhouse gas but is much more powerful.” He described it as an insidious gas; one that is not only an intense greenhouse gas but one that also helps create ground-level ozone, which is damaging to human health. If high levels of methane reduce oxygen concentration in the atmosphere to below 19.5% then asphyxia can occur. Increased levels can also be highly flammable forming explosive mixtures with air.
Dr. Kirk Smith believes that climate scientists need to stress the dire consequences of methane more. “Sure we have to deal with CO2, but if you want to make an impact on climate in the next 20 years, the place to do it is with the shorter-lived greenhouse gases, most important of which is methane.” Nations worldwide need to take heed of this advice and make the reduction of methane top priority by placing the animal-free diet at the forefront of all greenhouse gas reduction strategies; because, as Dr. Smith explained, “The biggest single source of human-caused methane emissions is livestock.” Reducing global methane levels right away will also buy us more time to transition into using sustainable energies.
Put simply, the science is now telling us that methane is several times more powerful in warming the planet than CO2 and that we need to drastically reduce our methane emissions immediately for the sake of the Earth and all her inhabitants. The quickest and most effective way to make this happen is something that all individuals can do and that is to adopt an animal-free or vegan diet.
To view Supreme Master Television’s full interview with Dr. Kirk Smith please go to:
http://video.Godsdirectcontact.net/magazine/AW643.php
References:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-missing-link-in-the-garnaut-report-20080709-3cjh.html?page=-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
Categories: Be Veg, Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, Go Green, Save the Planet
Posted by Admin at 3:25 PM, Thursday, October 30, 2008
Dramatic Decline in the Population of Honeybees
According to the following articles, we are seeing a rapid decline in population of honey bees. Like many other research reports, these articles suggest that the mysterious disappearance of honey bees is due to sprayed pesticides, disease and/or poor weather conditions. But according to my source, their disappearance is mainly due to the increase in concentration of methane. My source warns that honey bees will go extinct.:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2008/10/26/news/top/93278a954cfce2e6862574eb006ecd03.txt
Any thought?
World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch
The Living Planet has in October, 2008 published a report suggesting that the world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet. According to the following news article from Guardian, the report warns that humans are using 30% more resources than sustainable, and, at this consumption rate, two planets will be needed by 2010. The report is here:
"* Juliette Jowit
"* The Guardian,
"* Wednesday October 29 2008
"The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.
"The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection.
"The problem is also getting worse as populations and consumption keep growing faster than technology finds new ways of expanding what can be produced from the natural world. This had led the report to predict that by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle. "The recent downturn in the global economy is a stark reminder of the consequences of living beyond our means," says James Leape, WWF International's director general. "But the possibility of financial recession pales in comparison to the looming ecological credit crunch."
"The report continues: "We have only one planet. Its capacity to support a thriving diversity of species, humans included, is large but fundamentally limited. When human demand on this capacity exceeds what is available - when we surpass ecological limits - we erode the health of the Earth's living systems. Ultimately this loss threatens human well-being." Speaking yesterday in London, the report's authors also called for politicians to mount a huge international response in line with the multibillion-dollar rescue plan for the economy. "They now need to turn their collective action to a far more pressing concern and that's the survival of all life on planet Earth," said Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the president of WWF International.
"Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific adviser, said: "We all need to agree that there's a crisis of understanding, that we're removing the planet's biodiverse resources at a rate which is as fast if not faster than the world's last great extinction."
"At the heart of the Living Planet report is an index of the health of the world's natural systems, produced by the Zoological Society of London and based on 5,000 populations of more than 1,600 species, and on an "ecological footprint" of human demands for goods and services.
"For the first time the report also contains detailed information on the "water footprint" of every country, and claims 50 countries are already experiencing "moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis". It also shows that 27 countries are "importing" more than half the water they consume - in the form of water used to produce goods from wheat to cotton - including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands.
"Based on figures from 2005, the index indicates global biodiversity has declined by nearly a third since 1970. Breakdowns of the overall figure show the tropical species index fell by half and the temperate index remained stable but at historically low levels. Divided up another way, indices for terrestrial, freshwater and marine species, and for tropical forests, drylands and grasslands all showed significant declines. Of the main geographic regions, only the Nearctic zone around the Arctic sea and covering much of North America showed no overall change.....
TO VIEW THE WHOLE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE
Categories: Climate Change, For Economists and Investors, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 11:13 AM, Thursday, October 23, 2008
Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking
This entry is about Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking detected by Nasa scientists. What follows are paragraphs extracted from the article entiled "Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking" by Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Telegraph
"The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, Nasa scientists have warned.
"New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.
"Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment."
"The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.
"At the boundary where they meet a shock wave is formed that deflects interstellar radiation around the solar system as it travels through the galaxy.
"Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
"Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.
"If the heliosphere continues to weaken, scientists fear that the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the inner parts of our solar system, including Earth, will increase.
"This could result in growing levels of disruption to electrical equipment, damage satellites and potentially even harm life on Earth.
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 12:43 AM, Saturday, October 04, 2008
Rising Arctic methane threatens efforts to reverse global warming
Methane gas is now bubbling from the Artic ocean. It is now unclear if the recent volcano eruption in Iceland would accerlate the methane rellease from the ocean bed. While methane is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, it is also a toxin. Its presence in the atmosphere will displace the oxygen which survives all the animal species on the planet. Most articles, like the following one, only highlight the issue of global warming:
"Rising Arctic methane threatens efforts to reverse global warming
"GWYNNE DYER
"Article Last Updated: 09/29/2008 12:12:16 AM MDT
"Scientists have their own way of putting things. This is how Dr Oerjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University announced the approach of a climate apocalypse in an e-mail sent last week from the Russian research ship "Jakob Smirnitskyi" in the Arctic Ocean.
""We had a hectic finishing of the sampling program yesterday and this past night. An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface."
"Gustafsson's preliminary report, published in The Independent of Sept. 23, is a development far more frightening than the current financial crisis, although it will get only one-thousandth of the coverage. The worst that the financial crisis can bring is some years of recession. The worst that massive methane releases in the Arctic can bring us is runaway, irreversible global warming.
"Molecule for molecule, methane gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a warming agent. However, since methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long - around 12 years, on average, compared to a hundred years for CO2 - and human activities do not produce all that much of it, concerns about climate change have mostly been focused on carbon dioxide. The one big worry was that warmer temperatures might cause massive releases of methane from natural sources.
" There are thousands of megatons of methane stored underground in the Arctic region, trapped there by the permafrost (permanently frozen ground) that covers much of northern Russia, Alaska and Canada and extends far out under the seabed of the Arctic Ocean. If the permafrost melts and methane escapes into the atmosphere on a large scale, it would cause a rapid rise in temperature - which would melt more permafrost, releasing more methane, which would cause more warming, and so on.
"Fear of this runaway feedback is why most climate scientists (and the European Union) have set a rise of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the average global temperature as the limit which we must never exceed. Somewhere between 3.5 and 5.2 degrees, they fear, and massive feedbacks like methane release would kick in and take the situation out of our hands.
"Unfortunately, the heating is much more intense in the Arctic region. The average global temperature has only risen 1.1 degrees so far, but the average temperature in the Arctic is up by 7 degrees. So the permafrost is starting to melt and the trapped methane is escaping.
"That is what the research ship "Jakob Smirnitskyi" has just found: areas of the Arctic Ocean off the Russian coast where "chimneys" of methane gas are bubbling to the surface. What this may mean is that we have no time left if we hope to avoid runaway global warming - and yet it will obviously take many years to get our own greenhouse gas emissions down. So what can we do?
"There is a way to cheat, for a while. Several techniques have been proposed for holding the global temperature down temporarily in order to avoid running into the feedbacks. They do not release us from the duty of getting our emissions down, but they could win us some time to work on that task without running into disaster.
"The leading candidate, suggested by Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2006, is to inject sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere in order to reflect some incoming sunlight. (This mimics the action of large volcanic eruptions, which also lower the global temperature temporarily by putting huge amounts of sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere.
"Another, less intrusive approach, proposed by John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and Prof. Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University, is to launch fleets of unmanned, wind-powered vessels, controlled by satellite, that would spray seawater up into low-lying marine clouds in order to increase the amount of sunlight that they reflect. The great attraction of this technique is that if there are unwelcome side effects, you can turn it off right away.
"These techniques are known as "geo-engineering," and discussing them has been taboo in most scientific circles because of the "moral hazard": the fear that if the public knows you can hold the global temperature down by direct intervention, people will not do the harder job of cutting their emissions. But if large-scale methane releases are getting under way, the time for such subtle calculations is past.
"Starting now, we need a crash program to investigate the feasibility of these and other techniques for geo-engineering the climate. Once the thawing starts, it is hard to stop, and we may need them very soon.
* GWYNNE DYER is an independent, London-based journalist.
Article source: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10586023
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Posted by Admin at 5:36 PM, Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Old Article: Methane Climate Time-Bomb
The following news article highlights a very alarming issue: bubbling of methane from Artic ocean. Contrary to what Climategate is trying to demonize, the problem of climate change is not just about the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide or 1~2 degree change in temperature. But the oil industry has been trying to force us to focus on carbon dioxide and the definition of global warming only:
"Study Says Methane a New Climate Threat
"Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb' - Methane Bubbling Up From Permafrost
SOURCE
"By SETH BORENSTEIN
"The Associated Press
"September6, 2006
"WASHINGTON - Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.
"Methane a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published Thursday in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques.
""The effects can be huge," said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. "It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out."
"Scientists worry about a global warming vicious cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.
""The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. "That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off."
"Some scientists say this vicious cycle is already under way, but others disagree.
"Most of the methane-releasing permafrost is in Siberia. Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called yedoma is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It won't all come out at once or even over several decades, but if temperatures increase, then the methane and carbon dioxide will escape the soil, scientists say.
"The permafrost issue has caused a quiet buzz of concern among climate scientists and geologists. Specialists in Arctic climate are coming up with research plans to study the permafrost effect, which is not well understood or observed, said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a study group of 300 scientists.
""It's kind of like a slow-motion time bomb," said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study in Science.
"Most of the yedoma is in little-studied areas of northern and eastern Siberia. What makes that permafrost special is that much of it lies under lakes; the carbon below gets released as methane. Carbon beneath dry permafrost is released as carbon dioxide.
"Using special underwater bubble traps, Walter and her colleagues found giant hot spots of bubbling methane that were never measured before because they were hard to reach.
"I don't think it can be easily stopped; we'd really have to have major cooling for it to stop," Walter said.
"Scientists aren't quite sure whether methane or carbon dioxide is worse. Methane is far more powerful in trapping heat, but only lasts about a decade before it dissipates into carbon dioxide and other chemicals. Carbon dioxide traps heat for about a century.
""The bottom line is it's better if it stays frozen in the ground," Schuur said. "But we're getting to the point where it's going more and more into the atmosphere."
"Vladimir Romanovsky, geophysics professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said he thinks the big methane or carbon dioxide release hasn't started yet, but it's coming. In Alaska and Canada which have far less permafrost than Siberia it's closer to happening, he said. Already, the Alaskan permafrost is reaching the thawing point in many areas.
Categories: Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, News Archives
Save the Ozone Layer!, By The Taipei News Group, Formosa
High in the atmosphere hovers the thin but important ozone layer, which absorbs most of the Earth's solar ultraviolet radiation and converts it into heat energy. Only a small portion of the ultraviolet radiation is left to reach the Earth. Now the ozone layer is undergoing severe destruction and becoming thinner and thinner. As a result, all life forms on Earth are being exposed to more ultraviolet radiation, which causes sunburn, disruption of DNA and other bio-molecules, an increased incidence of skin cancer and cataracts, and suppression of our immune systems. The attenuation of the ozone layer also tips the balance of the ecosystem and retards the growth of crops, leading to possible food shortages. It is also associated with the greenhouse effect, which causes global warming and, in turn, a rise in the sea level.
What is responsible for this consumption of the ozone layer? Scientists discovered that high flying supersonic jet aircraft, atomic weapons testing, chemicals such as CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and halons are among the first of the culprits. The CFCs were once considered harmless and used extensively in spray cans, cleaners for electronic and optical components, foaming agents, styrofoam, and freon. Halons were used as an effective agent in fire extinguishers, and they are more potent than CFCs in damaging the ozone layer. International agreement is therefore required to effectively limit the use of CFCs and halons.
Apart from the tangible factors mentioned above, very few people have approached this problem in terms of invisible spiritual vibrations. Master has given some interesting opinions in this regard, in which She mentioned the axis of the Earth is changing its direction, and reminded us to repair the holes in the ozone layer with our spiritual energy. In these opinions, we can see that living a virtuous life is also a way to protect the world.
Today's Fairy Of The Ninth Heaven
Spoken By Supreme Master Ching Hai,
Hsihu Center, Formosa, June 18, 1995 (Originally In Chinese)
The climate has changed a lot in many countries. In Ireland, Britain and some other countries, there used to be a lot of fog and hardly any sun. The people often joked, "We only see the sun once a year in Britain." But now in these countries, people go to the hospital because of sunburns. Why? It's so strange and scary! Maybe it's because the protective layer around our planet is being damaged and has not been properly repaired. Maybe the Earth is turning and gradually changing the direction (of its axis). I heard the ancient Egyptian history recorded that it used to be very hot in the Arctic and Antarctic areas. That means where the sun comes up now is where the sun used to set. Maybe the Earth is about to change the direction (of its axis). I don't know. There are many possibilities!
Spoken By Supreme Master Ching Hai,
Chiayi, Formosa, January 16, 1989 (Originally In English)
Q: I heard that the atmosphere has been broken. What can we do about it?
M: It has been broken for a long time. Now you ask me. But the Fairy of the Ninth Heaven has come to repair it! (Laughter) We have to repair it! We should do it ourselves instead of just standing there asking what to do. We should practice the Quan Yin Method and patch those holes with our magnetic field, and drive the astral beings back to where they belong. Now our world is under a lot of influence from the astral world. That's why there are so many bad things such as gambling and drinking. We should try our best to control and resist this influence and protect our world as quickly as we can.
Posted by Admin at 7:50 PM, Monday, July 28, 2008
Its Time to Clean Up Our Earth in Peace, Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, December 31, 2006, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Germany
So, the time is right that everyone should push for peace now, at any price, because without peace we cannot build anything up. There are more pressing matters now than killing, my God! There’s global warming; there’s ice melting. And it’s not just the warming: after it has warmed it might get cold. And that’s even worse. If it’s warm, you can jump into the water, but if it’s too cold I don’t know if you have enough things to keep you warm when it’s freezing all the time. Because of the changes in the atmosphere, it might get worse and become freezing even, after the warming period. Sometimes the pollution damages the ozone layer and then maybe all the heat escapes. Then after a while we won’t have any heat, because then maybe too much pollution covers the sun and with too many changes then everything will get so bad and it might be freezing. That’s even worse also.
Start Now to Implement Life-sustaining Solutions for the Planet
I watched on one of the British channels before, there was a very scary documentary. They said that along with the global warming, the sun is also getting cooler somehow. So warming and cold: it’s too warm in some parts, and then some parts will be too cold. Or after the warm will be cold, and if it’s too warm then the ice will melt and then we’ll have floods. And if after that there’s no ice left to balance the things anyway, either the planet will become very heated or it could be very cold, because of too much cover or the ozone layer being broken.
So, many things can happen, and they could happen soon. Several decades are not long. So right now it’s time that all the people of every country should get together and think of the solutions quick, like biofuel or something with sustainable energy like solar power or wind power. You can install it in your home if you can afford it. Or, you can put money together and install one home at a time, OK! For instance, two of you could pitch money together and install it in your home. Draw a lotto to see who’s house gets installed first, so it’s fair. And then next time, pitch money together and install it in her home. When I lived in the, in the cave in the mountains I lived only with solar energy. I charge my phone with solar energy. I watched TV with solar energy. My fridge ran on solar energy. It’s a little complicated but you can learn. To save lives, we must learn. To save the planet, it’s worth it. It’s complicated but it’s not un-doable, you know. It’s simple enough to do it. You have to capture the solar energy into some batteries, and then you connect with those batteries to use it to run your household. At least you can save energy, and you save money in long run anyway. You can even sell it back to the government. In Spain it’s like that.
There’s wind power also; it might be difficult, but you can install a small wind mill. (D: A turbine, or wind mill.) A wind mill, the old fashioned way, it also does work. The turbine takes a longer time and a lot of money and maybe it’s not so ‘in’ yet, so you can’t get it so easily. But you can do that. Do what you can, OK? And go together in one car to work or go shop together, in one car. It saves money and saves energy. And if you can, buy a hybrid car,. They’re not that expensive. I got one; maybe it costs you in the beginning, but later it saves you a lot. It saves your life, too, and saves the life of everybody else! But you can check on the Internet to see which car is cheaper and more convenient for you. And soon in the future we will run it on biodiesel and biofuels like corn fuel, sugar cane or garbage. We can recycle garbage. And maybe we don’t even have to do that if they push the wave energy program! A long time ago in Norway they began that program, to use ocean waves as energy. That would be limitless. You can use it forever, just like the sun.
enews169-hi-226 (Small) Energy is free everywhere actually. You can even harness power from thunder and so on. And that would be limitless, limitless! There would be no cost for anybody. It should be free for everyone, the basic things in life, like water and electricity - should be free actually, yeah! And it soon will be free. All this money that’s put into war, my God we could build a paradise on Earth! It’s about time everyone should know about this. So if you know of any of government important persons, you can remind them by writing or doing something. Do something in your power. Or, if you know how and where, just write. Write to the government. Remind them; help them; support them. Support their idea of environmental protection.
If we don’t act now, we won’t have any Earth left to even fight over with each other: no land to possess, no land to put the guns on or to install the cannons. It’s about time; my God, it’s the 21st Century already and we so called civilized humans are still fighting. I cannot believe it! Sometimes when I sit down, I don’t know how it’s possible. It’s not possible that we live in an era in which humans kill humans. How can we do that? How do you train such a beautiful, pure, handsome, strong, heroic young man to go into battle and just shoot someone like that? There was no quarrelling and no cause before, except the ‘big one’ somewhere behind telling him to go and do it: “That guy is an enemy; you go and shoot him for me.” That’s it.
War Is Never a Solution
This is wasting human resource also. These soldiers are the most brilliant generation of our time! They’re there to pass down better DNA for the new generation. They’re not to go there; they’re not born to die. I don’t care if it’s to die a hero or die a what; it’s the same. It’s a waste of resource! Do you know how much money it costs to grow a man like that? At least a million dollars until he grows into maturity. Growing men is not like growing trees: it’s not cheap. And he has so much love from the family, so much friendship from companions, so much teaching from the teacher and the school - so much affection going on around him. He’s not just ‘nobody’ - he is somebody. He has family; he might even be married and have children already. But he is forced to go out there and shoot someone he doesn’t even have any enmity with. Isn’t that ridiculous? This is crazy, and we live in it!
My God, what kind of the world is this? It’s about time they stop all this - just stop it! We cannot tolerate this. It’s incredible that humans can kill humans! Even animals don’t do that. They might kill one for some reason, but they don’t go out and kill a whole mass like that. For the sake of whatever, I don’t care. I don’t care who is right, who is wrong; it’s all wrong.
For example, even now, I read in the media or saw on television that the number of deaths of American soldiers is exceeding the number of victims from 9-11. And that’s not counting the other people: the women and the children, the victims of war, the innocent bystanders. So war is never a solution. The more war, the more death; the more death, the more enemies; the more enemies, the more war, and so on. It’s a vicious circle, and there is no end to it. So we just have to stop. We just have to shake hands and forgive each other and then let’s go on with our lives, because there are so many pressing matters now. With all the money that’s spent on war, can you imagine? Africa would become like Europe if they used all that money on Africa, on one continent alone. And with all the money that’s still going into the war, we could build space ships. We could have more time, more energy and recruit more talent. Instead of all these young men dying, they would become living bodies of the future, building houses for the needy.
Let There Be Soldiers of Peace
If all the soldiers changed their jobs, we’d have soldiers of peace: buildings soldiers who bring medicine to the sick and build homes for the homeless. They are able-bodied, intelligent, strong and handsome. They are beautiful beings; it is a waste that that they go there and just die like that. Just one bullet like this. (Master gestures to show the small size of a bullet) Can you imagine? It can go anywhere from anywhere and kill one handsome, beautiful, aspiring, pure, energetic, young human being - just like that. Can you imagine? And it costs millions of dollars even, to raise him, and so much love from the family and friends so that he grows up like that. We cannot teach him hatred when he grows out of love. You cannot change that into hatred; this is not right.
You should continue to nurture the love that he has in him, the trust that he has with his family and friends, and with the nation that he’s born into. You cannot change that love into hatred and tell a young man who has been loved all his life until now, to come out and turn into a hateful person - and then use a gun to kill another person who has also grown out from the love of a mother and father somewhere, and who has somehow has been nourished and nurtured all this time like a beautiful flower in the garden with all love and care, attention and hope for the future. And then - boom, just like that - with one bullet, finished. Such a beautiful dream is gone, collapsed.
How many more generations until we can cultivate many young beautiful men like that? They are at their prime, and they are so inspired by heroism. We cannot use that to turn it into hatred for any reason at all, because it is wrong; it’s wrong. You who have children, you know that! You nurture your children up, not to just to die like that. Can you imagine all these mothers, all the fathers and all the loved ones, all his friends, even his neighbors - it’s terrible! It’s time we have to stop all this nonsense. Anyone with intelligence cannot tolerate this, cannot continue to support this kind of world, can we? (Audience: No) One doesn’t have to be a Quan Yin practitioner or a Zen monk to understand this. It’s just common for a human being to have this knowledge, this understanding that humans are born to live.
God’s Gift of Life Is for Love, Not War
There’s nothing worth dying for. Nothing! God doesn’t give birth to you so that you have to die for something. Except to find God, there is nothing really worth dying for. People should be given hope, inspiration to live, not to die. Remember in one of my poems, I said that I don’t ever want to grow up to be a hero, to keep the war and die? It’s not my job, is it? It’s nobody’s job. You’re not born to grow up just to keep a war and then die for it. Isn’t that ridiculous? We should never have a war anyway; we’re so backward. If it hadn’t been for you, the Quan Yin practitioners who grace this Earth, who bless the atmosphere with love and universal energy, this Earth would soon be ‘kaput’ (meaning “ended”) already. So, we’re just holding it and waiting for humankind to wake up more and do something. If not, it has to go. We can leave it sooner or later anyway; we don’t care. But it’s such a negative way.
Suppose the Earth became kaput now, we could go up to a higher level. We are already there and we already have our ’security card,’ but the people out there, if they die like that, they will be living in shock in such a state of stupor, for a long, long time - thousands of years - before they wake up. And then their atmosphere will manifest in another kind of world again, and they’ll war with each other again, because they haven’t finished their thinking process. They haven’t gotten to the understanding about peace and “Love thy neighbor.” They haven’t done that. So if they wake up again from their stupor after thousands of years, they’ll do the same thing again.
Peace Costs Far Less than War
I therefore really hope that this is the time they understand this very simple concept. Even a child understands peace at all costs. But peace doesn’t cost anything: that is the thing. Only war costs something. War costs human resource, war costs emotional upheaval, war costs tremendous financial resource and every other resource of humankind. All this equipment they build for war could be used to build houses, to build railways for the tram, to build underground train stations or build bridges for the poor countries.
enews182-hi-14 (Small) And all this money - billions of dollars - something like $7 million per day or week in Iraq, for example, and how many weeks or years have already gone by? Do you understand how much that is? You don’t because it’s too much. It’s too much for us to even want to think about. It’s just too ridiculous when people are hungry or starving and don’t even have the basic things like clean water to drink. And we spend tons of money and tons of human resources, tons of world metal resources or any resource just to build a killing weapon. This is beyond imagination! No wonder our world is lagging behind, compared to all others in the galaxy.
But mind you, be happy. Our Earth is getting better of course, number one. Number two, our Earth is still better than many other planets. There are worse planets. There are planets whose people are evil, just pure evil. And they will harass you day and night. Some of the warlords have been born there; I don’t know how much longer; I don’t want to see. It’s terrible. Even if they repent, they don’t even have time to pray. Can you understand that? That’s why they have to stay there forever, because they don’t have time for anything. They’re just running and running, running and hiding, running and hiding, all day long, with no time. It’s such mental torment that hell even sounds better. So at least we’re born on this planet, where it’s half-and-half, and we’re pushed to go nearer to God. But even then I don’t know if I could ever get used to the kind of people who go out and kill each other like that. I mean, if you want to be a soldier, you have to have instilled in you the hatred; otherwise how can you kill? Just killing at random like that, killing as ordered. There’s no turning back. If you turn back, then you are killed too, by your own people for betraying your country.
Use Earthly Resources to Build and Help Others
We should use all this money and intelligence and time and resource to train people to love and to build. This makes more sense, yes? We should use it for a peaceful purpose. The soldiers are so strong and healthy and in the prime of their life, and they also very idealistic. When we are young, we are very idealistic; we are heroes. We want to do good for the world. So this good and pure energy and enthusiasm has to be used for a peaceful purpose, for building the world and for helping the needy. That is the kind of heroism that the young people love to spend their energy on; they will love it. Suppose any government tells the soldiers, “Look here: no more war, you go out and build houses,” they’d be very, very happy. They would be relieved. They would feel that this is really what they want. I bet you that’s what would happen. Any soldier - you ask them - they would want to do that.
We can retrain them. There’s still time. Because they are young, they can learn fast. What I mean is that their youthful inspiration and heroism and idealism should not be misused. It’s a waste. The young people are the best. You tell them what to do, and they will do it. They are so eager to serve, they’re eager to learn, they’re eager to do something good because they’re full of energy. If they are used for war, it is a pity. It’s a misuse of their purity and their idealism. So it’s better to use the soldiers for peaceful purposes. We can keep the army. Keep it and use it to build things up. In the Philippines, they are trying to do that. That is a very good idea, and I hope they will. Maybe the Filipino soldiers should do that first, and everyone else will follow. We have to start somewhere.
Our world would have been a paradise a long time ago if we did not have so much war going on, which is wasting a lot of the energy, finances and resources of the Earth. There’s no need to believe me; you know it yourself. This is terrible; so now I hope that all signs of peace are coming our way. It is coming, and I hope more will come. The true peace really must come, because that’s the only way to survive on this planet, my God. We must use our time now, to change the course of history; otherwise we’ll all die together. The good and the bad, the powerful nations and the weak nations, will all be gone.
Being gone is no problem; the problem is that not all of the people on the planet are ready to integrate into paradise. After they’re gone they’ll still stay in shock or in misery. And that state of mind will keep them for a long time in a hellish existence, worse than this planet’s. They’ll be warring with each other in that kind of existence and then wake up and become human again, warring with each other again. Have you heard of those stories that in some of the big major battlefields, sometimes those who have psychic power can see that the soldiers in their astral forms are walking around and trying to fight each other still? Or, looking for the fighting or thinking that the war is still going on, because if you’re not enlightened now, you won’t ever be. Not after you die; you just suffer more, because you can see more. With a body you can shield yourself from some of the emotional distress, and recover or don’t see the suffering. But without the body you’ll see more; you’ll see the naked misery in hell and you will suffer more and more. And this is terrible.
Making a Model for the World
MASTER 92So the question is not whether I care that the planet is still alive or not, it’s just for the people who live in it. They have to know this concept; they have to awaken to this peaceful solution, to the real human purpose, to build up the peaceful atmosphere, to find God or to remember God at least, and to be at peace with each other, just like God wants us to be, like one time paradise. Otherwise if they die like this, they will suffer more than what they do now. You understand me? That is the reason why they have to stop the war and begin to build peace now. Otherwise if they die, it would be terrible: more terrible than being alive, more terrible than the war in Iraq, more terrible than 9-11, more terrible than any terrorism can ever cause you to feel.
So that’s the reason we practice hard, we really pray for peace in our way, and we’re pushing for it inside our hearts. And then peace has to come; people have to stop. Just stop like that! Just shake hands, with no conditions. There shouldn’t be any condition for peace at all because both sides will gain. Maybe you lose one piece of land but who cares? If Noah and the flood ever come again, you’ll lose everything. You’ll lose the whole land, not to talk about one piece! Because suppose a typhoon like Katrina comes, we would also lose billions of dollars for nothing. So if we lose billions of dollars or a piece of land or even a country for a peaceful purpose, let it be. Why do we need a frontier? Why do we need the country anyway? If you don’t have Egypt, you can go to live in Germany. If they dissolve the border, for example, between your countries and you become another citizen, why not! Just like me, I’m Aulacese and I’m British and now I’m in Germany, who cares? And you guys even come from England, Finland, Poland, Greece, Croatia, France, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Russia, Spain, Romania, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Africa, Ukraine - welcome! Bulgaria, Italy and Israel even. (Congratulations, your country is getting good. We celebrated your country’s peace with the Palestinians for one week. We had cakes and dancing, just to support more peace and make it more real, make it getting better, like a little push.) Where else? Sri Lanka, Columbia, Belgium, of course Germany, India, Armenia, Australia, New Zealand, Iran - Oh, wonderful. It’s international, a big United Nations, and we are happy together. (Applause)
This is a model for the world to follow. So your actions of coming here have many meanings. Number one, you of course want to see me, your lovely Princess; that I understand. (Applause) Second, you want to meditate together, which is very important, and third… eating! (Laughter) But the most important thing is that you make a model; I let you come so we can realize peace in one section of the world. Because we are all telepathic, I told you already. And if we are peaceful here, we will be peaceful everywhere. (Applause) This is a mini-model for the world to follow; this is how the world should be, and they should follow our example, that we live peacefully together. Here no one cares if we are from Iran or Czechoslovakia. We eat the same food and we sit on the same floor, if you have a seat at all. So here you fighting for property and also for food, but in a loving and peaceful way. And we are so happy; even you can sit in the corner like that. This is all we need, just a little square and we’re so happy! So whatever you do here with us together, it will affect the world. Whatever you do in your house, in your group meditation weekly, it will affect the world. And then it will change. Some people learn slowly; some people learn fast. They better learn fast! There’s not too much time. But they are learning fast.
Be Prepared to Act Positively and Quickly
I think the world is getting very aware now that they must do something. There’s no more excuse to say they don’t know; they do know, because what affects the neighbor affects you. Imagine if all the people from the lowlands, when the flood arrives, they don’t have time to build a Noah’s boat. They will not know and it will hit them quick, according to the reports, which is logical also unless a miracle happens. Imagine these people who have nowhere to go and who will then all run into the city, to higher land, where there’s no flood, no disaster - where do they go? They’ve lost everything by then. At that time there’s too many people for us even to go and rescue or to help because there’s so many, and then they will have no home. They will have lost everything; there’s nothing to lose anymore and they will be very chaotic. They will go looting the cities, and they might even have worse war than we’re having now.
enews180-hi-141 (Small)So, whatever affects them, affects everyone. It’s not like, “OK, I am the President, it doesn’t concern me.” Or, “I am the Governor, a high official; it doesn’t concern me,” or, “I live on the high land; I don’t live next to the sea; it doesn’t concern me.” It does concern everyone because if they come in hundreds of thousands at the same time, hungry, stressed, disoriented, starving and confused, they’ll do anything. They will be like so-called zombie soldiers and that’s the worst you could ever be confronted with. They don’t know anything anymore at that time. It’s too big a grievance for them to even keep their mind together. And there’s no weapon that can stop this kind of war. It will be terrible.
So we’d better be prepared, and whoever has the authority and the power must use it to change the way we live our life. We have to clean up our planet, and quick.
Categories: Be Veg, Climate Change, For Scientists and Engineers, Save the Planet