Miscellaneous
Sensors allow plants to talk
Do plants talk to us? The 1973 book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants, described many controversial experiments that seemed to proof plant sentience. A new initiative has found that plants communicate indeed. PLants Employed As SEnsing Devices (PLEASED) comprised of Read More...
A trend toward patient-driven health care
Ezekiel Emanuel, a medical doctor and former chief health policy advisor to President Obama, has a pretty good idea of what we can expect to see in health care over the next decade – things like the end of insurance companies as we know them, an increased focus on treating the chronically and Read More...
India creates 300,000 new jobs with planting 2 billion trees
Most governments embark on public infrastructure projects during a recession to create jobs. India is now taking that approach to a new inspirational level. Indian youth unemployment is above 10% and deforestation is a major challenge in the country with the world’s second largest population, the Read More...
Apartment design that encourages relationship building
One day I encountered my upstairs neighbor in the hallway of my apartment building. We both had been living there already for a couple of years, but never met her before. It turned out we had a lot in common and we became good friends, and we always wondered why we didn’t meet earlier, living Read More...
Unexplained symptoms? It could be past trauma
Most people relate trauma to soldiers who have fought in war zones or to victims of abuse. Trauma is also thought to be a permanent condition without a real solution. Enter psychologist Peter Levine who developed a breakthrough treatment for trauma called Somatic Experiencing. Levine has found that Read More...
Churches go green
Churches are hardly known as leaders of change, but even that perspective may become outdated. The World Council of Churches (WCC)—the governing body that represents 345 member churches in over 100 countries—added fossil fuels to the list of morally objectionable industries it no longer Read More...
‘Doing nothing can mean a lot’
Gerhard Hormann thinks we should spend more time doing nothing. In The New Doing Nothing (Het Nieuwe Nietsdoen) available only in Dutch for now, the journalist writes of a growing need for more free time. His ideal life consists of a simple house, on a lake, with a record player and a vegetable Read More...
Exposing slavery becomes easier, bringing elimination closer
A lot of stuff we use on a daily basis is still far too often made under highly questionable labor circumstances. But the Internet can help to create more transparency and that will bring about the elimination of forced labor. Made in a Free World, a group of anti–slavery advocates, has Read More...
Friends Have More DNA in Common Than Strangers
People choose friends that they share more DNA with. Researchers at Yale University conducted a study that looked at 2,000 individuals and found that friends have more gene variations in common than strangers. The study concluded that friends have the same number of gene variations as a 4th cousin, Read More...
New buses provide showers to homeless people in San Francisco
In San Francisco there are only 7 places for the city’s homeless population of 3,500 to clean themselves. Based on the idea of mobile food trucks, the San Francisco initiative Lava Mae, takes the same idea and applies it to showers. Lava Mae uses San Francisco’s donated old buses then retrofits Read More...