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POPSBeautiful and immortal advice. A MUST read! Like the guy on the webpage this is linked to, I also found this letter among my dad's printed emails to me while I was away in university in another country. My dad has long departed since then, but every time I read these words Lincoln wrote to his son's teacher, they bring a tear to my eyes. Beautiful and sincere advice for anyone to follow.
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POPSOur Rights Taken Away By Corporations
"He went on to specify how this could happen: direct seed movement by birds, by wind, especially on the prairies, by floods, and through cross-pollination by bees). It doesn’t actually matter how the genetically modified organisms get into an organic farmer’s field or into the fields of a conventional farmer like myself: once there, those seeds and plants become Monsanto’s property.” It was a very startling decision. The judge also ruled that we were not allowed to use our seeds or plants again and that all the seeds and plants that we had developed over 50 years became the property of Monsanto. The judge also ruled that all the profit from my 1998 canola crop was payable to Monsanto. The judge further ruled that even from the land that had no contamination, all profit would be payable to Monsanto because there was a probability that our seed contained some of Monsanto’s GMOs. The really worrying thing is how we can lose our rights and freedoms. The contract from Monsanto, take
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POPSSolving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees This is a fascinating story. It is not the life of bees which is fascinating, but the vast complexity and interconectedness of life it exposes. From humans to beehives to plants to microbes, fungi, viruses, genes, metagenomics and what not. All are partaking in one orchestrated intelligent whole. This is a must read
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POPSOrganic Bees NOT Dying Does size matter? Have we just pushed bees too far? Have they simply just reached their biological breaking point, further aggravated by external stresses?
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POPSFear Factor: How Herd Mentality Drives Us
"Whether it's the fear of being the odd person out, whether it's the fear of uncertainty or the fear of losing your shirt in the market, the fear starts to compel you to do something, because a million years ago, that fear meant you probably had to run or fight," Berns said. But reactions that saved our ancestors from saber-toothed tigers don't make as much sense on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Financial historian Jeff Madrick says that's how we got into trouble in the first place - by developing the notion that the stock is highly rational. "That encouraged this herd behavior," he said. "People would say, 'The stock market is right. Let's get in here.' That was the mythology that fed the herd behavior." So the group think that helped build the bubble is now leading the charge to pop it. "I think there's probably a panic now," Madrick said. Berns agreed: "You could call it panic; I would." But the Bronx Zoo's Pat Thomas says, "It's definitely a survival mechanism."
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POPSDisappearance of Bees Finally Solved ? I really hope that this will start to clear up the mystery of the disappearing honeybees. They are an integral part of our harvest cycle and its really important we find out why the colonies are collapsing.
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POPSSneaky Orchid Drives Wasps Wild A study in the journal Current Biology finds that an orchid mimics the alarm chemical signal of bees to attract the bees' predatory wasps, all to get the wasps to pollinate the orchids.
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POPSSocial Interactions Can Alter Gene Expression In Brain, And Vice Versa A critical insight came in 1992, in a study of songbirds led by David Clayton. He and his colleagues found that expression of a specific gene increases in the forebrain of a zebra finch or canary just after it hears a new song from a male of the same species. This gene, egr1, codes for a protein that itself regulates the expression of other genes.
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POPS Design and Mathematics in Nature The findings of math among nature are endless; the possibilities for future innovations prove to be the same! http://www.abc.net.au/science/photos/mathsinnature/
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POPSBees Can Count To Four They really have a lot of the capacities that we so-called higher human beings possess. This, from an insect! Yet humans still treat animals as second-class citizens of this planet. Let's hope we still have bees around in the future. The bee die-off, or "colony collapse disorder" has still not been resolved. We need them, more than they need us, that's for sure.
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POPSPesticides Blamed for Killing Bees “Other countries have already introduced bans to prevent neonicotinoids from harming bees," he said. “This is the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence yet and it has revealed the disturbing amount damage these poisons can cause."
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POPSBuzzzzzzz Kill "Something is killing the bees, though. Some scientists suspect a virus; others mites, even cellphones. (Bees are not known to use phones, though, having their own communications system -- a dance called the "waggle.")
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POPSHow do we replace a friend? Some days ago, a friend of mine died. Tina was very sick, since many years, but so calm and quite that to stay near her was like to stay under a tree in a summer day. There is no way to replace a friend like her. I'm sad, but today I want to say that I'm grateful I met her.
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POPSMacaques make democratic decisions Whether or not the individual monkeys were successful in getting the rest of the group to follow them didn't seem to relate to their age, sex or status. "Even the children can get the group moving," says Cédric Sueur, a graduate student who worked on the study with Petit. The style of decision-making most frequently documented in the animal kingdom is dictatorial. In mountain gorillas, for example, the obedient tribe will follow the dominant male silverback. Horses, mongooses and wolves also follow despotic leaders. But theories are emerging which suggest that mammals who make democratic decisions may have an evolutionary edge because they can pool the experience of each group member.
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POPSGermany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation The company says an application error by the seed company which failed to use the glue-like substance that sticks the pesticide to the seed, led to the chemical getting into the air. Bayer spokesman Dr Julian Little told the BBC's Farming Today that misapplication is highly unusual. "It is an extremely rare event and has not been seen anywhere else in Europe," he said. Clothianidin, like the other neonicotinoid pesticides that have been temporarily suspended in Germany, is a systemic chemical that works its way through a plant and attacks the nervous system of any insect it comes into contact with. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency it is "highly toxic" to honeybees.
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POPSHumans' response to risk can be unnecessarily dangerous, study The results of Lotem's research may also be used by economists, politicians and psychologists, who need to know when people will take risks, says Prof. Lotem. A wider understanding of this phenomenon can affect business decisions, the economy ― and, hopefully, the number of road accidents in America each year.
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