How Mushrooms Can Save the World

Posted on July 25, 2013 by ammaramz

How Mushrooms Can Save the World | DiscoverMagazine.com

via How Mushrooms Can Save the World | DiscoverMagazine.com.

Most Americans think of mushrooms as ingredients in soup or intruders on a well-tended lawn. Stamets, however, cherishes a grander vision, one trumpeted in the subtitle of his 2005 book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Mushroom-producing fungi, he believes, can serve as game changers in fields as disparate as medicine, forestry, pesticides and pollution control.

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Mayor Bloomberg Just Vetoed The Community Safety Act.

Posted on July 24, 2013 by ammaramz

Mayor Bloomberg Just Vetoed The Community Safety Act: Gothamist

via Mayor Bloomberg Just Vetoed The Community Safety Act: Gothamist.

The Community Safety Act, which is comprised of two separate laws meant to crack down on the NYPD’s racial profiling

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Fish on Prozac

Posted on June 15, 2013 by ammaramz

Fish on Prozac | DiscoverMagazine.com

via Fish on Prozac | DiscoverMagazine.com.

Over the past few years, ecologists surveying the waters around waste treatment plants have found contraceptives, synthetic musks, ibuprofen, and other compounds flushed off or out of our bodies and into the environment via municipal effluent. A recent study in Tromsø, in northern Norway, for example, found extremely elevated levels of caffeine in the seawater of the Tromsø Sound. Now the compounds are turning up in animals as well—with unknown consequences.

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Splenda: Not so sweet?

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ammaramz

Splenda: Not so sweet?

via Splenda: Not so sweet?.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit food safety watchdog group, places many popular artificial sweeteners on their “avoid” list—including saccharin (the ingredient in Sweet ‘N Low), aspartame (the ingredient in NutraSweet and Equal) and acesulfame potassium (the ingredient in Sunett and Sweet One). And now comes the news that the group has downgraded its rating for sucralose (better known as Splenda) from “safe” to “caution.”

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‘You Can Touch My Hair’: NYC black hair exhibit draws controversy, as many protest spectacle | theGrio

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ammaramz

‘You Can Touch My Hair’: NYC black hair exhibit draws controversy, as many protest spectacle | theGrio

via ‘You Can Touch My Hair’: NYC black hair exhibit draws controversy, as many protest spectacle | theGrio.

It was all part of a two-day “interactive public art exhibit,” titled “You Can Touch My Hair,” during which people were encouraged to get up close and personal with various forms of black hair on live models.

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(No you can’t) Gene patent ruling hurts Myriad but not fatally

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ammaramz

Gene patent ruling hurts Myriad but not fatally- MSN Money

via Gene patent ruling hurts Myriad but not fatally- MSN Money.

No, private companies, you can’t slap a patent on genes that occur in nature.

You can, however, hold exclusive rights to any Frankensteined gene that comes out of your lab. That’s the leeway the Supreme Court offered on Thursday when it handed down its decision in Association for Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics (MYGN -5.63%),

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A patent on your DNA? What the Supreme Court ruling means for you

Posted on June 10, 2013 by ammaramz

A patent on your DNA? What the Supreme Court ruling means for you – Vitals

via A patent on your DNA? What the Supreme Court ruling means for you .

By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News

Can someone else patent your genes? The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule some time this month on that question – a suit filed against Myriad Genetics for its patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, which raise the risk of breast, ovarian and certain other cancers.

Myriad, the University of Utah and the U.S. government’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences filed an application for the first patent on the BRCA gene mutations in 1994. The Patent and Trademark Office granted the patent on BRCA1 mutations in 1997. Another patent, on BRCA2, was granted in 1998.

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Fundamentalist Christians murder Nigerian children

Posted on May 25, 2013 by ammaramz

Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Child Witches – Nigeria.

From CBS News in the USA:

EKET, Nigeria, Oct. 17, 2009

Nigerian Children Deemed Witches Tortured

Thousands of Youngsters Denounced by Renegade Churches as Practicing Witchcraft Have Suffered, Died From Exorcisms

(AP) The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him – Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved…

View original post 573 more words

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Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land – In Pictures – Al Jazeera English

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ammaramz

Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land – In Pictures – Al Jazeera English

via Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land – In Pictures – Al Jazeera English.

Lolyondo, Tanzania – The Tanzanian government has ordered thousands of Maasai tribespeople to abandon traditional grazing lands to make way for what they say will be a conservation site.

But the Maasai are refusing to leave their ancestral land. They say the real reason they are being forced out is to give a Dubai-based hunting company exclusive access.

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Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land – In Pictures – Al Jazeera English

Posted on May 10, 2013 by ammaramz

Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land –

via Tanzania Maasai evicted from ancestral land – .

Lolyondo, Tanzania – The Tanzanian government has ordered thousands of Maasai tribespeople to abandon traditional grazing lands to make way for what they say will be a conservation site.

But the Maasai are refusing to leave their ancestral land. They say the real reason they are being forced out is to give a Dubai-based hunting company exclusive access.

Posted in Culture, Duplicity, News, Race Issues, Sankofa, Things to Know, Urgent Issues | Leave a comment