You probably know already that organic foods are good for you. The major problem most people have with organic food is the expense. However, there are several different ways to radically reduce the cost of your food.

Growing your own is probably one of the best, and can be extremely satisfying. I am convinced that growing sprouts is more practical and useful for most people and takes less space and time but it will be a bit longer before I am able to provide a comprehensive article on how to do that.

In the meantime anyone, regardless of space allowance, can also produce their own food. If you have a back yard, you’re blessed indeed. But apartment dwellers can also grow fresh produce. Alex Mitchell’s book The Edible Balcony is an excellent resource.

One of the major benefits of growing your own food is that you have complete control over the end product, from soil composition to chemical exposure.

Whereas a conventionally-grown garden might include the use of chemical fertilizers and potentially toxic insecticides to protect the crop, an organic gardener will forgo the chemicals and feed the soil with natural fertilizers and insect barriers.

The same goes for weed control. While a traditional gardener may apply synthetic herbicides to control weeds, an organic gardener, just like an organic farmer, will use hand weeding and cover crops with mulches to control weeds. For every toxic solution, there’s usually an equally effective non-toxic alternative.

Growing Seedlings Can Give You a Head Start on the Season

While you can certainly wait until the danger of spring frost has passed, and then plant your seeds directly in the soil outdoors, you can get a head start by growing seedlings and then transplanting them into your garden. This can be particularly useful in areas where the growing season is short.

Growing seedlings, which can take between four and 12 weeks to sprout, will allow you to harvest your vegetables four to six weeks earlier than had you planted the seeds directly outdoors.

The University of Maine¹ has an excellent web site describing how to grow your seedlings, and which ones are best left for direct-seeding due to their rapid maturation:

“Using transplants instead of direct-seeding is especially important for plants that take a long time to mature or are sensitive to frost, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and melons.

Some plants (mostly root crops) do not transplant well, or they mature quickly enough that starting seedlings indoors is not necessary. Vegetables that are typically direct-seeded in the garden include beans, beets, carrots, corn, peas, spinach, turnips, and zucchini.”

To get started on your seedlings, you need just a few supplies:

• Fresh seed, ideally heirloom

• Containers, about 2 to 3 1/2-inch deep with adequate drainage holes

• Growing medium. Use fine-textured soilless mix of equal parts of peat moss and vermiculite or perlite. Do not use conventional fertilizers

Now, once your seedlings are grown and the outdoor temperature is 45 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, the plant will require one to two weeks of “hardening off” before they can be transplanted into the ground, to prevent them from going into shock. This is done by placing them outdoors for just a few hours at a time in a semi-shaded location.

Gradually, over several days, increase the time you leave them outdoors, and gradually increase the amount of direct sunlight they’re exposed to. Transplant your seedlings into your garden in the late afternoon, as the weather starts to cool down (or choose a cloudy day), and water the plants thoroughly. For detailed step-by-step instructions, see the University of Maine’s seedling page².

The Edible Balcony

In her book The Edible Balcony, Alex Mitchell details how to grow fresh produce in small spaces. Filled with beautiful color photographs throughout, the book helps you determine what might work best for you, depending on your space and location, and guides you through the design basics of a bountiful small-space garden. For example, those who live in a high-rise apartment will undoubtedly have to content with more wind than those who live on the bottom floor. There are solutions for virtually every problem, and in this case, wind-tolerant plants can be used, or you could construct some sort of protective screening.

You can use virtually every square foot of your space, including your lateral space. Hanging baskets are ideal for a wide variety of foods, such as strawberries, leafy greens, runner beans, pea shoots, tomatoes, and a variety of herbs. And instead of flowers, window boxes can hold herbs, greens, radishes, scallions, bush beans, strawberries, chard, and chiles, for example.

While you will obviously need to use pots if you don’t have a garden plot, avoid using many small pots. The smaller the pot, the faster it will dry out. Instead, opt for large yet lightweight containers. You may also want to consider self-watering pots, which will reduce the time you have to spend watering. (You could even make your own. Mitchell shows you how in her book.)

Another excellent tip for the time-pressed gardener is to install a timer to your outside tap, and have a plastic dripping tube connected to the tap. Position one tube over each pot to be watered. Then all you have to do is set the timer to water your plants twice a day for five or ten minutes. Adding a top layer of mulch will also reduce the amount of watering a plant will need. For smaller containers, mix in a handful of water-retaining crystals or gel, as these will help retain moisture. Mitchell’s book contains creative solutions to take advantage of every nook and cranny, and recycle common household items for your garden. Such tips include:

• Attaching horizontal rows of gutters on a wall, which can hold your leafy greens and herbs

• A hanging bottle herb garden, using discarded plastic bottles

• Two or more stacked tires with a plastic bag to hold the soil can make for an excellent planter for plants that like warm soil, such as sweet potatoes and basil

Another excellent tip is provided in Mitchell’s book: An ancient technique called “3 sisters,” used by the Native American Indians, involves planting specific combinations of plants together, as the plants support each other. For example:

“Corn provides something for the beans to climb up, while they in turn add nitrogen to the soil. This benefits the corn and squash, and the latter helpfully shades the roots of the other plants, protecting them from the drying effects of the sun.”

What Kind of Soil Should You Use for Your Potted Garden?

Quality produce begins with healthy soil. This is because the nutrition your plants require is derived from beneficial microorganisms in the soil. These organisms take the mineral material that’s in your soil and convert it into a plant-available form. Without these bioorganisms, your plants cannot get the nutrients they need. According to Mitchell.

“When you first plant anything, you need to buy potting mix. The one you buy depends on what you are growing: annual vegetables, fruit, and flowers are happy with one that is general, soilless, organic and peat-free; acid-loving crops such as blueberries need lime-free compost; while fruit trees and bushes, which will live for many years, will benefit from a soil-based potting mix, which releases its nutrients slowly.”

If you have enough space to create your own compost, I highly recommend picking up Dr. Elaine Ingham’s book, 10 Steps to Gardening with Nature. Dr. Ingham³ is chief research scientist at Rodale Institute, and is an internationally recognized expert on the benefits of sustainable soil science. Her book explains the mechanisms behind how the beneficial microorganisms in the soil benefit your plants, and how to create compost that support your chosen crops. You can also find valuable information and resources on soil health and composting on the Rodale Institute’s website.⁴

Besides composting, setting up a little worm farm can also help you restore soil health naturally, eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers. In addition to helping create a valuable compost to help plants grow, worms have also been singled out for their ability to break down toxins like cadmium, lead and other heavy metals, helping to detoxify soil. They do this by optimizing the bacterial content of the soil. Worms also can even break down cardboard waste fibers, making them a potential recycling tool.

While we’re touching on larger-scale gardens, it may be useful to know that shrubs and trees require two-and-a-half to four times less water than a lawn. Amazingly, a typical suburban lawn uses an estimated 10,000 gallons of water each season, above what’s provided by rainfall. So planting an edible garden can kill several birds with one stone; not only can you reduce your food bill while eating the freshest food imaginable, your garden can also reduce your outdoor water usage. To learn more about water conservation, see Audubon’s water conservation page.⁵

Keeping Weeds and Pests at Bay

Another important aspect of growing your own food is the ability to avoid chemical exposure. American homeowners apply an estimated 78 million pounds of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides per year to their homes, lawns, and gardens.⁶ The problem is that these toxic chemicals are toxic not just to the weeds or critters they’re designed to kill. They’re also toxic to beneficial insects, birds, wild animals, pets, young children, and anyone who eats foods to which these toxins have been applied. According to Audubon:⁷

“In a recent study of pesticide exposure among children living in a major U.S. metropolitan area, traces of garden chemicals were found in 99 percent of the 110 children tested.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides to be carcinogenic. Pesticides (used to kill insects) are also notoriously hazardous. Commonly used pesticides have been linked to health problems such as:

Fortunately, there are safe and effective natural alternatives for virtually every pest problem you come across. For instance, for a homemade garden spray that will discourage most pests, use some mashed garlic paste combined with a little cayenne pepper or horseradish. Add a small amount to a gallon jug of water and let it sit for a day or two, shaking it occasionally. Just spray a small amount onto a few leaves first to make sure it’s not so strong that it will burn them.

For more details on these types of natural solutions to pests of all kinds, I recommend the book Dead Snails Leave No Trails by Nancarrow and Taylor, or visit the website BeyondPesticides.org.⁸ They have a section on do-it-yourself natural solutions⁹ to a wide range of pest problems along with a resource to find pest management companies that use non-toxic products.¹⁰ Mitchell’s book also has a section on how to address a wide variety of specific plant pests.

Sprouts—One of the Most Nutrient Dense Foods, Ideal for Small Spaces

Sprouts are an authentic “super” food that many overlook or have long stopped using. In addition to their superior nutritional profile, sprouts are really easy to grow if you’re an apartment dweller, as they don’t require an outdoor garden.

A powerhouse of nutrition, sprouts can contain up to 30 times the nutrition of organic vegetables grown in your own garden, and allow your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat. During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable. Furthermore, both the quality of the protein and the fiber content of beans, nuts, seeds and grains improves when sprouted. The content of vitamins and essential fatty acids also increase dramatically during the sprouting process.

Sunflower seed and pea sprouts tend to top the list of all the seeds that you can sprout and are typically each about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:

• Support for cell regeneration

• Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage

• Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)

• Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

Planting and Harvesting Sprouts at Home

I used to grow sprouts in Ball jars over 10 years ago but stopped doing that. I am strongly convinced that actually growing them in soil is far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. It is also less time consuming. With Ball jars you need to rinse them several times a day to prevent mold growth. Trays also take up less space. I am now consuming one whole tray you see below every 2-3 days and to produce that much food with Ball jars I would need dozens of jars. I simply don’t have the time or patience for that.

I am in the process of compiling more specific detailed videos for future articles but I thought I would whet your appetite and give you a preview with the photos below. For now you can get instructions on how to grow them by viewing a step-by-step guide at rawfoods-livingfoods.com.¹¹

My two favorites are sunflower sprouts and pea. They provide some of the highest quality protein you can eat. Sprouted sunflower seeds also contain plenty of iron and chlorophyll, the latter of which will help detoxify your blood and liver. Of the seeds, sunflower seeds are among the best in terms of overall nutritional value, and sprouting them will augment their nutrient content by as much as 300 to 1,200 percent! Similarly, sprouting peas will improve the bioavailability of zinc and magnesium.

I have been sprouting them now for a few months and they have radically improved the nutrition of my primary meal, which is a comprehensive salad at lunch. They are a perfect complement to the fermented vegetables. My current salad consists of about half a pound of sunflower sprouts, four ounces of fermented vegetables, half a large red pepper, several tablespoon of raw organic butter, some red onion, a whole avocado and about three ounces of salmon or chicken. It is my primary meal. In the late afternoon, I typically only have macadamia nuts and coconut candy in addition to drinking 16-32 ounces of green vegetable juice. I break it up occasionally by going to a restaurant with friends.

Ready, Set, Garden!

With benefits ranging from fresher, uncontaminated food and cutting your grocery bill, to beautifying your community and educating the next generation, there’s really nothing holding anyone back from creating an edible garden—even if all you have is a couple of window sills or a small balcony. There are tons of creative solutions that will allow you to make the most of even the tiniest space.

Sprouts is one of my favorite tight-space crops, simply because you get so much for so little time, money and effort. It’s hard to find a food that will provide you with so much nutrition. So try it out! Start small, and as you get the hang of it, add another container of something else. Before you know it, large portions of your meals could come straight from your own edible garden.

You want to also make sure you are using only the finest seeds when starting your garden.  Picking the types of seeds can go a long way in helping your garden be plentiful and even determines how juicy or hardy your vegetables are. Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been carefully cultivated to produce the best plants possible; they’re hardy and bountiful. You can find packages containing 26 of the popular heirloom seeds in my Heirloom Variety Seed Collection, available in my online store.

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If the data on a well-known international weather forecasting website, accuweather.com is to be believed, the Ultra Violet (UV) radiation in Chhattisgarh is at critically high levels, exposing residents to the risks of various skin ailments, including cancer.

While the local meteorological department does not collect any data on daily UV radiation, popularly known as UV Index, the website indicates that for the past four days the levels across the state have been recorded above 11, which in meteorological parlance is dubbed as “Extreme” and coded with purple colour.

In fact the UV level was the highest today at 13 in all major cities of the state, including Raipur and Bilaspur.

According to Dr ASRAS Shastri, Professor Department of Agrometerology, Indira Gandhi Agriculture University, said that many factors go into calculating the UV index for a particular area on a given day, including the elevation of the location, cloud coverage for that day, the amount of ozone in the atmosphere over that area and skin’s sensitivity to UV radiation.

He said the scale typically runs from 0-10, with 0 being the lowest risk of UV exposure (night time) to 10, when the conditions for radiation are at their peak. Ratings of 11 or higher are typically only used in areas where there is significant damage to the ozone layer. The higher the number, the more at risk you are, and the more safety measures you should be taking.

Dr Vivek Chaudhary, Cancer specialist and in-charge of Cancer Institute, Raipur said that in Chhattisgarh, sunlight is high, dry heat and due to high industries pollution, UV rays are at extreme level and that is the reason skin cancer cases are high in number. In 2008, only 19 cases were reported while 42 cases were reported in 2012. He said it’s more common in those who are exposed to sunlight for long hours.

Dr AK Chandrakar, head of Ophthalmology department, Dr BR Ambedkar hospital said that in Chhattisgarh, people get cataract at early age (around 40-42) than their counterparts in other states. “We believe that exposure to sunlight, because of work, is one of the biggest risk factors. There has been no study indicating radiation as a risk factor in India. But there is medical literature abroad that shows that it can lead to early cataract.

According to WHO, excessive exposure to UV radiation caused loss of approximately 1.5 million DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) and 60000 premature deaths in the year 2000. It states that between 50% and 90% of skin cancers are due to UV radiation.

What is surprising is that while UV radiation alerts are issued by weather monitoring agencies in all advanced countries, advising people to take adequate precautions, the meteorological here has no clue about it. According to officials here, recording UV radiations does not fall within their purview.

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Now they’re just messing with us. Physicists have long known that quantum mechanics allows for a subtle connection between quantum particles called entanglement, in which measuring one particle can instantly set the otherwise uncertain condition, or “state,” of another particle—even if it’s light years away.

Now, experimenters in Israel have shown that they can entangle two photons that don’t even exist at the same time.

“It’s really cool,” says Jeremy O’Brien, an experimenter at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. Such time-separated entanglement is predicted by standard quantum theory, O’Brien says, “but it’s certainly not widely appreciated, and I don’t know if it’s been clearly articulated before.”

Entanglement is a kind of order that lurks within the uncertainty of quantum theory. Suppose you have a quantum particle of light, or photon. It can be polarized so that it wriggles either vertically or horizontally.

The quantum realm is also hazed over with unavoidable uncertainty, and thanks to such quantum uncertainty, a photon can also be polarized vertically and horizontally at the same time. If you then measure the photon, however, you will find it either horizontally polarized or vertically polarized, as the two-ways-at-once state randomly “collapses” one way or the other.

Entanglement can come in if you have two photons. Each can be put into the uncertain vertical-and-horizontal state. However, the photons can be entangled so that their polarizations are correlated even while they remain undetermined.

For example, if you measure the first photon and find it horizontally polarized, you’ll know that the other photon has instantaneously collapsed into the vertical state and vice versa—no matter how far away it is. Because the collapse happens instantly, Albert Einstein dubbed the effect “spooky action at a distance.” It doesn’t violate relativity, though: It’s impossible to control the outcome of the measurement of the first photon, so the quantum link can’t be used to send a message faster than light.

Read Full Article

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Accrording to a statement from the FBI, two FBI special agents were killed last Friday during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Special Agent Christopher Lorek and Special Agent Stephen Shaw were members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico, Virginia. The cause of the incident is under review, the FBI said.

Prison Plane reports that last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Yesterday, I reported that a man,  who knew Boston bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot dead by an FBI agent Tuesday night in Orlando.

People surrounding the Tsarnaev brothers are dying at a faster than rate those who were somehow connected to the JFK assassination.

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A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained.

In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes.

“What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”

At the heart of the network, Hudes said, are 147 financial institutions and central banks — especially the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress but is owned by essentially a cartel of private banks. “This is a story about how the international financial system was secretly gamed, mostly by central banks — they’re the ones we are talking about,” she explained. “The central bankers have been gaming the system. I would say that this is a power grab.”

The Fed in particular is at the very center of the network and the coverup, Hudes continued, citing a policy and oversight body that includes top government and Fed officials. Central bankers have also been manipulating gold prices, she added, echoing widespread concerns that The New American has documented extensively. Indeed, even the inaccurate World Bank financial statements that Hudes has been trying to expose are linked to the U.S. central bank, she said.

“The group that we’re talking about from the Zurich study — that’s the Federal Reserve; it has some other pieces to it, but that’s the Federal Reserve,” Hudes explained. “So the Federal Reserve secretly dominated the world economy using secret, interlocking corporate directorates, and terrorizing anybody who managed to figure out that they were having any kind of role, and putting people in very important positions so that they could get a free pass.”

The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”

As far as intervening in the gold price, Hudes said it was an effort by the powerful network and its central banks to “hold onto its paper currency” — a suspicion shared by many analysts and even senior government officials. The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. Even congressmen and foreign governments have tried to find out if the precious metals were still there, but they met with little success. Hudes, however, believes the scam will eventually come undone.

“This is like crooks trying to figure out where they can go hide. It’s a mafia,” she said. “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together.… Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

Of course, the major corruption at the highest levels of government and business is not a new phenomenon. Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.

“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”

But it is not going to happen, Hudes said — at least not if she has something do to with it. While the media are dominated by the “power grabber” network, Hudes has been working with foreign governments, reporters, U.S. officials, state governments, and a broad coalition of fellow whistleblowers to blow the entire scam wide open. There has been quite a bit of interest, too, particularly among foreign governments and state officials in the United States.

Citing the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers in creating a federal system of government with multiple layers of checks and balances, Hudes said she was confident that the network would eventually be exposed and subjected to the rule of law, stopping the secret corruption. If and when that happens — even if it may be disorderly — Hudes says precious metals will once again play a role in imposing discipline on the monetary system. The rule of law would also be restored, she said, and the public will demand a proper press to stay informed.

“We’re going to have a cleaned-up financial system, that’s where it is going, but in the meantime, people who didn’t know how the system was gamed are going to find out,” she said. “We’re going to have a different kind of international financial system…. It’ll be a new kind of world where people know what’s going on — no more backroom deals; that’s not going to keep happening. We’re going to have a different kind of media if people don’t want to be dominated and controlled, which I don’t think they do.”

While Hudes sounded upbeat, she recognizes that the world is facing serious danger right now — there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, she said. The next steps will be critical for humanity. As such, Hudes argues, it is crucial that the people of the world find out about the lawlessness, corruption, and thievery that are going on at the highest levels — and put a stop to it once and for all. The consequences of inaction would be disastrous.

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For more than 60 years now, many conventional bee farmers have been dousing their hives with antibiotic drugs to prevent their bees from dying of foulbrood, a bacterial disease that has the potential to wipe out entire bee colonies if left unaddressed.

But the unabated use of these drugs has had the unintended, long-term consequence of generating antibiotic-resistant genes within entire species of bees, and particularly among bees in the U.S. that have endured the longest and most substantial chemical exposures.

Similar to the type of antibiotic resistance emerging as a result of conventional rearing methods for livestock, antibiotic resistance among bees is a relatively new phenomenon, at least as far as scientific observation is concerned. A recent study published in the online, open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, widespread use of oxytetracycline, an antibiotic drug that disrupts the bacterial balance of bees’ guts, has resulted in gradual genetic changes taking place throughout the generational cycles of bees’ lives.

“[Resistance] seems to be everywhere in the U.S. There’s a pattern here, where the U.S. has these genes and the others don’t,” said Nancy Moran, senior author of the study from Yale University. “It seems likely this reflects a history of using oxytetracycline since the 1950s. It’s not terribly surprising. It parallels findings in other domestic animals, like chickens and pigs.”

Utilizing sensitive molecular techniques, Moran and her colleagues conducted a comparative analysis of U.S. bees, as well as bees obtained from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Based on the results of a comprehensive gene analysis, the team determined that U.S. bees had the highest number, and most diverse set, of genes with resistance to tetracycline, which is similar in structure to oxytetracycline.

In Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand, where the use of oxytetracycline is banned, bees were generally observed to have only two or three resistance genes on average. But in the U.S., where oxytetracycline continues to be permitted for use in hives, bees were found to have as many as eight antibiotic-resistance genes, which has made them more prone than ever to foulbrood and other deadly pathogens.

“Studies have suggested that the bacterial residents of the honeybee gut play beneficial roles in neutralizing toxins in the bees’ diet, nutrition, and in defending the bee against pathogens,” states a press release about the study. “By disrupting the honeybee microbiota and reducing its diversity, long-term antibiotic use could weaken honeybee resistance to other diseases.”

Sources for this article include:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-10/asfm-hha102612.php

http://www.naturalnews.com/035920_beekeeper_Illinois_raid.html

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The claim that greenhouse gases add heat to the atmosphere hinges upon the Stephan-Boltzmann constant. Logic shows that the claims are absurd. The Stephan-Boltzmann constant quantifies how much radiant heat is given off by a surface at a particular temperature. Simple observations indicate that 10-20 times too much radiation is projected by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant.

Without such excessive radiation, the claimed greenhouse effect would not exist. Since numerous other lines of logic also show that the greenhouse effect cannot exist, they show the absurdity of the quantities produced by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant.

The Stephan-Boltzmann constant indicates that so much radiation is given off by the surface of the earth that it would give up all energy from the sun at an absurdly low temperature of -18°C (0°F), if it all radiated into space. But since the average temperature of the earth’s surface is 15°C (59°F), only greenhouse gases could add the extra heat needed to get to present surface temperatures, according to global warming alarmists.

If however, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant were reduced to one twentieth, at 15°C (59°F) only about 5-10% of the heat leaving the earth’s surface would be radiation, while the remainder would leave as conduction, convection and evaporation, which is more in line with what is really happening. No greenhouse gas effect would be involved.

With the Stephan-Boltzmann constant used by climatologists, the surface of the earth must be giving off 390 watts per square meter of radiation at its average temperature of 15°C (59°F). To get their numbers to balance, climatologists have only 24 W/m² leaving the surface by conduction and convection. That’s 6% as much conduction and convection as radiation, even though the earth’s surface has a lot of moving air across it.

If such conditions really existed, cooling fans would never be used. To get a 6% increase in cooling? That’s not what fans do. Fans remove about 10-20 times as much heat as radiation alone would.

Alarmist climatologists were forced to state such absurd conditions to balance equations. To account for the extremely high radiation indicated by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant, there had to be a lot of radiation interacting with the earth’s surface-specifically 324 W/m² going from the atmosphere back to the surface. This amount left almost nothing for conduction, convection and evaporation.

The 390 being emitted from the surface included 40 going into space and 350 going into the atmosphere. The 324 coming back out of the atmosphere and onto the surface had to be less than the 350 going in. As a result, the 324 left almost no space for conduction, convection and evaporation, because most of it had to be used to create the 390.

In other words, balancing ridiculous numbers was more important to alarmist climatologists than a credible logic. Throughout the global warming issue, logic is sacrificed to absurd claims and fake mathematics including falsified data (as in hockey stick graphs and temperature measurements, see www.nov79.com).

It means physicists made up the Stephan-Boltzmann constant off the top of their heads with no relationship to objective reality. It rationalizes fake math and numbers for greenhouse gases but contradicts logic and evidence.

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Popular committees have appealed to both sides to observe a ceasefire within any Palestinian camp in Syria.

(HOMS Palestinian Refugee Camp) – Historically, Palestinian refugees, wherever they have sought temporary sanctuary following the ethnic cleansing of their country by the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise, and pending their return to Palestine, have insisted on avoiding local and international conflicts while seeking a modicum of interim civil rights from the host countries.

This was true in Jordan during the run up to Black September in 1970, at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil war in 1975, the 1991 Kuwait crisis, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and obtains especially today in the current crisis in Syria. For a number of reasons including poor tactical decisions by their leadership they have not always succeeded, and consequently they have paid s steep price in lives, jobs, housing and expulsions from host countries.

In Syria, both the largest Palestinian refugee camp, Yarmouk, with its 125,000 residents, and Khan al-Sheeh, the second largest of the 14 camps with 45,000 before the crisis but currently swelled by another 26,000 mainly from Yarmouk camp, have become virtual war zones with large sections of the camps being overrun by gunmen fighting in support of the “Free Syrian Army.” All but two of the camps in Syria have been infiltrated by opposition forces and consequently have been targeted by government forces seeking to destroy the rebels.

Courtesy: jahalin.org

At times the camp residents have resisted both sides by demanding that the camps’ normally strict neutrality be respected. Engaging initially in peaceful protects when outsiders invaded, some protests turned violent when their demands for camp neutrality were rejected.

Khan al-Sheeh, whose residents are from tribes and clans in northern Palestine, and who lost 22 camp residents to Zionist occupier gunfire during the May 2011 Nakba Day events on the Golan Heights, will be a formidable foe if they take up arms which they have not done for the past 33 years.

In January 2013, the Syria conflict entered into the camp when opposition forces — a combination of Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Nusra Front fighters — arrived and insisted on recruits, offering $200 per month cash, free cigarettes, a uniform, boots and of course an AK-47.

For the past five months, again like Yarmouk, Khan al-Sheeh and the other camps in Syria have been caught in the crossfire as opposition fighters try to advance toward the capital, while regime forces used cannons and rocket fire to block their advance, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries.

This week, so far in vain, the camp popular committees yet again appealed to both sides to observe a ceasefire within any Palestinian camp in Syria and also in Lebanon, the latter currently experiencing increased challenges for its 12 camps to stay out of the conflict.

Pressuring Lebanon’s camps to join Syria’s civil war

Lebanon’s widely respected independent leftist daily, As-Safir, has reported that veteran security and intelligence officers of the Lebanese security services are claiming to have information, but not precise details regarding number and location of “organized Takfiri (Sunni) networks” in Lebanon.

The head of one security service told As-Safir, “the monitoring of the terrorist networks cannot be very detailed since they are solely located in the Palestinian camps, mainly in Ain el Helweh.”

This statement, like others these days in the Lebanese sectarian media, appears intended to incite the public against the refugees, inducing them to join the fighting. Another officer, closely working on the Lebanese government “terrorism” file, claims, again without offering any probative or material evidence, that “the only serious faction in Lebanon right now consists of the Ziad al-Jarrah Units that are affiliated with the Abdullah Azzam battalions.” Both have some Palestinian gunmen.

Abdullah Azzam is the most experienced group and it is present in Ain el Helweh. The officer indicated that he agrees with the general theory that as long as the military situation in Syria remains unsettled, the Lebanese Palestinian camps are open to all possibilities, including Palestinian armed involvement.

Other calls are being heard from Beirut, Saida and Tyre in the south, and also up north in Tripoli for Palestinians to comply with the fatwas being issued for all Sunni to fight the Bashar Assad regime and to build a “Sunni army” patterned after the Lebanese civil war-era PLO forces. How significant is the sentiment favoring this dangerous call is unknown.

However, in all of the above noted areas, some Palestinians, mainly unemployed youngsters have been lured by offers of cash to take part in training, much like occurred before the 26 month old Syria conflict.

Palestinian refugees are being lured by FSA.

Some Salafist-jihadist types in Lebanon, especially near Tripoli’s Bedawi, and Nahr al Bared camps, as well as Ain el Helwe down south in Saida, are pushing among Palestinian youth the argument that if they join the war in Syria they will gain the internationally-guaranteed civil rights that all the other refugees receive except Palestinians in Lebanon.

Part of the argument being pitched is that they are not going to get even elementary civil rights in Lebanon from Israelis, the UN or the international community, and certainly not from the EU or the Americans. Palestinians in Lebanon’s camps are being lectured that they will get civil rights here only when they take them by force, which is their right and their jihadist religious duty.

These arguments will fail, with few exceptions, among the quarter million Palestinian refugees actually still in Lebanon, as they have in the past. But the Palestinians’ decent into deepening sectarian and religious divisions here in Lebanon is worrisome.

Scholars, political analysts and even elements of the National Lebanese Resistance are counseling that an effective, moral, religious, and political measure that could bring Sunni and Shia together in Lebanon, while thwarting the schemes being hatched to get the Palestinians involved in the Syrian crisis, would be for the Lebanese Parliament to use 90 minutes of its ample free time — in as much as the Parliamentary elections will not take place next month as scheduled — to address the issue of Palestinian civil rights in that country.

By using 20 minutes of the proposed 90, recommended by the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign here, Lebanon’s Parliament can, in one fell swoop, reach out to the Sunni community and the Christian community (about 90% of Palestinians in Lebanon are Sunni and approximately 10% Christian) by employing a quick and tidy yea-nay vote to repeal the 2001 racist law that forbids home ownership for Palestinian refugees here.

This law outlawing the home ownership civil right for Palestinians only, as expressed by the two initial sponsors still in Parliament, was only originally meant as a 2001 election year gimmick to garner anti-Palestinian votes and not ever intended to be implemented.

History teaches us that the 2001 law was in fact part of the anti-Palestinian “pay-back” for the PLO’s involvement in the fifteen-year Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). In what many Palestinians in the camps here objected to then and continue to view as a cataclysmic error, its leadership ignominiously withdrew from Lebanon in the late summer of 1982, under Zionist and Reagan administration pressure and false promises of an immediate Palestinian homeland.

With the remaining 70 minutes, the Resistance-dominated Parliament could reach out to the Sunni and Christian communities as noted above and grant Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the same right to work that every refugee everywhere has, including those in the apartheid state of occupied Palestine. The same right as everyone is immediately granted when their passport is stamped at any Lebanese border post.

Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism behind the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields such as that of the Sun. Scientists have known since the 18th Century that the Sun regularly oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle, but have been unable to fully explain how this cycle is generated.

In the ‘Information Age’, it has become increasingly important to be able to understand the Sun’s magnetic activity, as it is the changes in its magnetic field that are responsible for ‘space weather’ phenomena, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections. When this weather heads in the direction of Earth it can damage satellites, endanger astronauts on the International Space Station and cause power grid outages on the ground.

The research, published in the journal Nature, explains how the cyclical nature of these large-scale magnetic fields emerges, providing a solution to the mathematical equations governing fluids and electromagnetism for a large astrophysical body.

The mechanism, known as a dynamo, builds on a solution to a reduced set of equations first proposed in the 1950s which could explain the regular oscillation but which appeared to break down when applied to objects with high electrical conductivity. The mechanism takes into account the ‘shear’ effect of mass movement of the ionised gas, known as plasma, which makes up the Sun. More importantly it does so in the extreme parameter regime that is relevant to astrophysical bodies.

“Previously, dynamos for large, highly conducting bodies such as the Sun would be overwhelmed by small-scale fluctuations in the magnetic field. Here, we have demonstrated a new mechanism involving a shear flow, which served to damp these small-scale variations, revealing the dominant large-scale pattern,” said Professor Steve Tobias, from the University of Leeds’ School of Mathematics, a co-author of the research.

What is more, this mechanism could be used to describe other large, spinning astronomical bodies with large-scale magnetic fields such as galaxies.

The dynamo was developed through simulations using the high-performance computing facilities located at the University of Leeds.

“The fact that it took 50 years and huge supercomputers shows how complicated the dynamo process really is.” said Prof Fausto Cattaneo, from the University of Chicago’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The presence of spots on the Sun has been known since antiquity, and further analysed after the invention of the telescope by Galileo in the 16th Century. However, their cyclic nature, with periods of high activity (lots of sunspots) and low activity (few sunspots) following each other, was not identified until the 18th Century.

At the start of the 20th Century it was then recognised that these sunspots were the result of the Sun’s magnetic field. Since then much effort has been devoted to understanding what processes lead to the formation of sunspots and the origin of their cyclic behaviour.

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The Harper government’s recent bid to give police more information about Internet users would have unlocked numerous revealing personal details — from web-surfing habits to names of friends, says a new study by the federal privacy watchdog.

The online surveillance bill was effectively a digital key to determining someone’s leanings, the people they know and where they travel, says the office of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

“What’s more, each of these pieces of information can be used to uncover further information about an individual,” concludes the study. “As information technologies become more and more common in our lives, and the more they become an extension of our very selves, the more sensitive and revealing subscriber identification information becomes.”

The Conservative government abandoned the legislation in February following a public outcry.

The bill would have allowed police, intelligence agents and competition bureau officers access to Internet subscriber information — including name, address, telephone number, email address and Internet Protocol (IP) address — without a warrant. Currently, the release of such data held by Internet service providers is voluntary.

Opponents of the bill said allowing authorities access to Internet subscriber information without a court-approved warrant would be a worrisome erosion of privacy because even that limited data can help paint a candid picture.

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