Is mindfulness meditation good for kids? Here’s what the science actually says
First period, 8:45 am, a circle of high school students sits so quietly that all you can hear is the whirl of computer fans. Today’s lesson: attention to breathing. “Just notice your breath,” says the instructor, Satyani McPherson, “where it manifests in the body and the abdomen. ... And Read More...
Social housing is good. But let’s make it beautiful too
Ostentatious parsimony was the phrase used by Kate Macintosh, the woman responsible for some of the most ambitious local authority housing of the 1960s and 70s, to describe the spending environment for the social architect. Housing ministers would speak with pride of stripping out unnecessary Read More...
Home energy system produces electricity, heating, cooling, hot water, and more
This is not an easily understandable new technology, but it has game-changing potential as it shows how stand-alone systems can revolutionize the centralized energy world as we know it today. Imagine a fridge-sized box in your home that not only generates and stores electricity on-site but heats Read More...
Solar-powered MP3 player supports a top priority: Educating third world women
As we noted recently girls’ education and family planning are the most important elements of a successful climate change strategy and poverty alleviation. However, educating people in very poor countries that don’t have electricity is a challenge—especially when the majority of the population Read More...
India plans to leapfrog western car ownership and goes straight to car-sharing
Developing countries have the opportunity to bypass stages of development that don’t make sense anymore given the current status of technology. And that can make a big difference for the health of their societies and the planet. Why would all people in India buy their own cars when car-sharing Read More...
Eating nuts reduces the risk of cancer recurring by 42 percent
Nuts and especially tree nuts such as hazelnuts, chestnuts and walnuts reduce the chances of the cancer coming back, a new study shows. People eating two ounces a handful or more of nuts every week reduce the risk of cancer recurring by 42 percent, and lower their chances of dying from the cancer Read More...
Ford names Jim Hackett as new CEO in push to build self-driving cars
Ford has named the head of its driverless cars division as its chief executive in a sudden regime change, as the company that pioneered the assembly line looks to the next stage of the industry’s evolution. The Detroit-based carmaker said Mark Fields, who has run the company since July 2014, Read More...
Meet Mexico city's first bike mayor
Mexico City falls far short of the cycling infrastructure that bike activists dream of: as many residents say, it’s no Amsterdam. Although only 30 percent of daily trips in the city are made via private car (the other 70 percent are made by public transportation, by bike, or on foot), Mexico Read More...
Black Lives Matter awarded 2017 Sydney peace prize
The human rights movement Black Lives Matter has won this year’s Sydney peace prize. The movement, which was founded in the US by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2012 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, will be honoured in Read More...
How to start thinking like a permaculturist for a thriving garden year-long
Read any manual, permaculture included, and there will be a slew of jargon through which we must sort. Subject specialists tend to speak in a language very difficult for others to understand, not necessarily because they are trying to exclude novices but perhaps because the topic and its vocabulary Read More...