Food is my obsession. A scholarly study on the benefits of eating locally, not just for our own healthy development, but also the longevity of our mother Earth. A collaboration of health sciences and anthropology of diet and nutrition.
Researchers look back more than 100 years using DNA from Skeena River salmon
A new study that suggests sockeye returns have dropped by three-quarters in the Skeena River over the last century should serve as a “wake-up call” for B.C., the lead researcher says.
The paper, published in the journal Conservation Letters, used genetic tools to trace the historical trends in sockeye populations in the country’s second largest watershed for salmon.
It pushes estimates of sockeye abundance all the way back to 1913 — previously used data only began in the 1960s — suggesting a much more dramatic decline.
The research indicates annual sockeye returns to the Skeena have dropped from about 1.8 million to 469,000 in the last 100 years, an overall decline of about 74 per cent.
ugh fine my personal blog is not cutting so I’ll post here
DO! NOT! DONATE! TO! AMAZON! CONSERVATION! NGOs! DO NOT!
they don’t act on the root of the problem, they don’t mitigate the effects of deforestation, they do have limited action and they don’t help conserve the forest land outside their very small grounds besides doing little to nothing to help the people who actually live in the amazon and conserve it on a daily basis
DONATE TO THE INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS INSTEAD
they are organized, they can keep woodcutting companies away from their land, they are getting murdered for it, they are the only reason there is any forest left at all
Subtle defects in T cell function alter rodents’ microbiome and fat absorption, providing hints of what might also be going on in people.
A problem with an immune system gene may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, a study done in mice suggests.
Mice gained weight and developed health problems when they had a genetic defect that impairs some immune cells. The immune problems were linked to shifts in the gut microbiome. That’s the collection of friendly bacteria and other microbes living in the intestines. Altering the gut microbe mix could increase the amount of fat absorbed from food, researchers say. They reported their findings July 26 in Science.
Scientists Say: Microbiome
More studies are needed to see if these findings hold up in humans. If so, it might be possible to boost a person’s immune system function. That might, in turn, help prevent obesity and related health problems.
People with obesity and those with type 2 diabetes also have an unusual gut microbe mix and immune system deficiencies. The people’s bacteria mixes are similar to those seen in the mice. And obese people’s immune systems don’t always work very well, says June Round. She’s a microbiome researcher who worked on the new study. She’s at the University of Utah School of Medicine. That’s in Salt Lake City. “It’s possible that things that are happening in our mice are also happening in individual [humans],” she says.
The researchers studied mice that had a defect in the Myd88 gene. That defects stops the mice from making the Myd88 protein in their T cells. T cells help the immune system recognize and kill bad bacteria and viruses.
Scientists Say: Insulin
The researchers noticed that the mutant mice started gaining weight at about 5 months old. By about a year old, those mice weighed up to 60 grams (about 2 ounces). That’s about twice as much as a normal mouse. The mutant mice also had a problem associated with obesity called insulin resistance. This is a condition in which the body’s cells can’t process dietary sugars efficiently. It is a hallmark of type 2 diabetes in people.
Brazil’s handling of forest fires set to top agenda of G7 countries at meeting in Biarritz this weekend
France and Ireland have said they will oppose an EU trade deal with South American countries unless Brazil takes action to stop the burning of the Amazon. On the eve of a meeting of the G7 nations in Biarritz, an Élysée source said Emmanuel Macron thought Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, “lied” to him at the G20 meeting in Osaka in June about his climate commitments and therefore France would oppose the Mercosur treaty.
“The decisions and comments of Brazil show that President Bolsonaro has decided not to respect his commitments on the climate or biodiversity,” a French official told AFP. The Mercosur treaty with four Latin American countries – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – was signed in June after two decades of negotiation but has not yet been ratified.
Earlier on Friday, Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said his government would oppose Mercosur’s ratification. “There is no way that Ireland will vote for the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement if Brazil does not honour its environmental commitments,” Varadkar said.
Perhaps Europe should have done its research on Bolsonaro beforehand. He’s a fascist and fascism goes hand-in-hand with environmental destruction. He has not been coy about his dislike of indigenous people or what he intends to do, eg “In 2019 we’re going to rip up Raposa Serra do Sol [Indigenous Territory in Roraima, northern Brazil]. We’re going to give all the ranchers guns” (Congress 2016).
Also, we should not fool ourselves that the Mercosur treaty will not impact on the rate of deforestation. One of the chief exports of the area is beef and if they are to sell more beef they will need more grazing land, and water which will not be there because there is no forest. It will also lead to more methane from all those extra cattle.
The town of Baarle-Nassau is split between Belgium and the Netherlands.
The border isn’t a straight line, so bits of each country are scattered throughout the town, and some of the buildings are even divided between the two countries. Dutch restaurants close earlier, so when closing time comes, the tables are all moved to the Belgian side.
Seven environmental and animal protection groups teamed up to file the first lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s rollback of the Endangered Species Act.
The environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice filed the lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, WildEarth Guardians and the Humane Society of the United States. The lawsuit comes after the federal government earlier this month announced a series of changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
In a filing , the groups argue that the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to analyze the effects of the new rules. They also charge that the administration unreasonably changed requirements to comply with part of the Endangered Species Act that would have prevented any changes that could threaten the existence or habitat of any listed species.
“In the midst of an unprecedented extinction crisis, the Trump administration is eviscerating our most effective wildlife protection law,” Rebecca Riley, legal director of the nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “These regulatory changes will place vulnerable species in immediate danger — all to line the pockets of industry. We are counting on the courts to step in before it’s too late.”
The states of California and Massachusetts have also vowed to sue to block changes in the law.
The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white “allies” that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.
To explain what I mean, the conversation around cultural appropriation was started by black and native people to discuss the frustrations we feel at being punished socially and financially for partaking in our cultural heritage while white people could take, I.e. appropriate, aspects of our culture that we are actively shamed for and be heralded as innovators. It was about the frustrations we feel when the same white people who shamed us would take our culture and wear it as if they were the ones who created it while still actively shaming us for doing the same.
The original push behind naming cultural appropriation and having these conversations were so that we as a society could evaluate why we were punished for our heritage while white People were not. It was supposed to be about seeking solutions. The idea was to create a society where we could celebrate our cultures with impunity. It was never about telling white people that they “weren’t allowed” to do certain things. We did ask that white People stop doing certain things because they weren’t doing them respectfully and were not invited to do them, but the primary reason we asked them to desist was to reclaim the things they had stolen and to reassign them culturally back where they belonged.
White “allies” saw these conversations happening and instead of trying to aplify our own voices or even try to learn about the complexities behind why we were saying what we were saying, they instead began screaming over us and creating a narrative that was hardly even the bones of what we originally set out to say. It was like they took the conversation we were trying to have, completely decontextualized it, and stripped it of all it’s nuance in order to gain social currency by seeming progressive.
So the conversation around cultural appropriation went from “This aspect of our heritage belongs to us and we find it egregious that we are shamed for it. What steps can we take to address the racism that’s creating this situation as well as rehome the things that have been stolen” to “you’re not allowed to do that because if you do that you’re racist, we don’t really understand why that’s racist but you’re not allowed to do that and if you do that you’re a klansman no exceptions. So you’re not allowed because because”
At the end of the day, did I like the fact that sally was wearing dreads? No. But my primary concern was not that sally was wearing dreads but rather that sally could wear dreads and I couldn’t. THAT was the intended focus of those conversations. It was about addressing the inequality. It was about us. Now the conversation is just about sally and were completely forgotten.
White People are always asking me what they can do to help. You want to know? Stop talking. Aplify our voices and shut the fuck up because you all have pretty much derailed this conversation and many more like it to the point that we no longer are trying to make steps to understand and dismantle the racism around cultural appropriation and instead are just using it as social shaming tactics.
TL;DR: read my post. Most things worth learning about can’t be summarized in the bullet points of a buzfeed article. Don’t come into academic circles and complain because everything hasn’t been conviently summarized for you. Stop pretending that things aren’t accessible to you because you refuse to do the intellectual labor that is learning.
A look at five years of published studies finds that most primate species and habitats remain understudied. There are ways to fix that.
An endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. (Photo by Ming Li)
Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:
There are more than 500 known primate species, but it would be hard to tell that by looking at recent research. Want to know how chimpanzees are doing across Africa? We can tell you plenty about them. But understanding how nocturnal pottos are doing across the same region? That may be more difficult.
Here’s why: A new study by primatologists Michelle Bezanson of Santa Clara University and Allison McNamara of University of Texas-Austin surveyed 29,000 recent journal articles and found a lack of diversity in the species studied, field sites chosen and research topics.
And that’s troubling. Now is a critical time for primate conservation: Approximately 60 percent of primate species are endangered, half of them critically. And yet, as McNamara and Bezanson’s research of peer-reviewed studies published between 2011 to 2015 found, less than 20 percent of research was focused on conservation. Instead the studies focused on topics such as behavior and ecology, which address theoretical questions. And many papers did not acknowledge the contributions of local communities. Without basic research on the most severely threatened primate species, we lack the information and infrastructure needed to save them. And successful conservation efforts can only happen with the cooperation and investment of the local human communities who live alongside them.
Slightly less than half of the 504 known primate species were the subjects of published research. Only 18 percent of publications focused on primates that were critically endangered or lacking the necessary data for IUCN assessment. The most frequently studied primates were the common chimpanzee in Africa, followed by long-tailed macaques and rhesus macaques in Asia, mantled howler monkeys and black howler monkeys in Central America, and western gorillas in Africa. Of the 10 most commonly studied primates, only the western gorilla is critically endangered.
cooking dinner with the one you love while they wrap their arms around you. taking quick kiss breaks in between folding fresh laundry. washing each other’s hair in the shower. giggling and rolling around in the fresh sheets you both just finished putting on. dusting while showing off your latest dance moves and having your sweetheart show off their vocals.
it’s so comforting to have someone that you just enjoy making a home with. because chores done with someone you love isn’t such a chore after all.
THE WORLD OF PARSI COOKING: INTERVIEW WITH NILOUFER MAVALVALA:
IN this exclusive interview, Niloufer Mavalvala, author of The Art of Parsi Cooking: Reviving an Ancient Cuisine, speaks to James Blake Wiener of Ancient History Encyclopedia (AHE) once again about the joys of Parsi cuisine and her new title: The World of Parsi Cooking: Food Across Borders.
A growing number of people are eschewing soap and trusting bacteria to do the job instead – and an entire industry has sprung up to accommodate them
David Whitlock has not showered or bathed for 15 years, yet he does not have body odour. “It was kind of strange for the first few months, but after that I stopped missing it,” he says. “If I get a specific part of my body dirty, then I’ll wash that specific part” – but never with soap. As well as germs, soap gets rid of the skin’s protective oils and alters its pH level. Although Whitlock appreciated gaining an extra 15 minutes a day from soap-dodging, his primary motivation was to encourage friendly microbes to live on him in symbiotic harmony. The bacteria get to feast on the ammonia from his sweat and he gets low-maintenance, balanced skin.
Just as awareness of the importance of the gut microbiome has led to a boom in probiotic and fermented foods and supplements, there is increasing interest in our skin microbiome: the trillions of microbes that protect us from pathogens and keep us healthy by making vitamins and other useful chemicals. In this unprecedentedly sanitised era, in which eczema, acne and problems associated with dry skin are rife, consumers are hungry for solutions. Even the mainstream brand Dove claims vaguely that its products are “microbiome-gentle”….
…“There’s nothing wrong with just rinsing,” says Sandy Skotnicki, a Toronto-based dermatologist and the author of the 2018 book Beyond Soap. “I’ve talked to people who haven’t used any kind of detergent in years and they’re perfectly fine.” She says that, since 1950, we have gone from bathing once a week to every day. “Has that changed our skin microbiome? I think the answer is yes. And has that caused a rise in inflammatory skin diseases? I think the answer is yes, but we don’t know.”
I shower once a week. In these times more is a waste of water. I do use soap although I make it myself so I know what’s in it. I’m also sure bathing more often has changed our skin microbiome.
I haven’t used soap actively now in about two years, and this year i have found that i don’t smell period. I smell even less than I used to. If something is dirty i will wash that area, and still wash my hair once every week and a half or so. But yah, it works.
One quarter of the world’s population are living in areas where the competition for water resources is extreme, according to a new report from the Washington-based global research group World Resource Institute (WRI), as The Guardian reported.
Around the world 17 countries, including India, which is home to 1.3 billion people, face extreme water stress. That means, “irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80 percent of their available supply on average every year,” the WRI report said. “Such a narrow gap between supply and demand leaves countries vulnerable to fluctuations like droughts or increased water withdrawals,” the report said, as Deutsche Welle reported.
The report cautioned that increased water stress and the climate crisis could lead to more “day zeroes,” a term that was coined when Cape Town, South Africa approached the brink of completely running out of potable water, according to The Guardian
“The picture is alarming in many places around the globe, but it’s very important to note that water stress is not destiny,” said Betsy Otto, WRI’s global water director, to The Guardian. “What we can’t afford to do any longer is pretend that the situation will resolve itself.”
In addition to the 17 countries facing extreme water stress, New Mexico ranked on par with the United Arab Emirates and Eritrea in Africa as the only state with extremely high pressures on its water system.
After New Mexico, California ranked second with its water pressure under high stress. It was followed by Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska.
Looking at the global picture, Qatar, with a total score of 4.97 on a scale of 5, tops the list of 17 extremely high water-stressed countries. It is followed by Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, UAE, San Marino, Bahrain, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Oman and Botswana. The Middle East and North Africa are home to 12 of the 17 countries suffering from extreme stress.
Additionally, another 27 countries make up the “high baseline water stress” list.
just please think twice before you reblog posts with pictures and videos of animals. ask yourself: does this animal seem to be in distress? is it in a harmful environment? is it causing harm to people or other animals? are wild animals being kept as pets or handled/treated inappropriately? it might not seem like a real issue but the exotic pet trade, wildlife tourism, and untrustworthy animal rescues are all heavily fueled by social media, and uncritically spreading content with animals on any social media platform directly contributes to the success and popularity of these industries and to the normalization of poor animal welfare practices in general
There are only between six and 19 vaquitas left, a new study has concluded, and, unless swift action is taken, the endangered species could go extinct within a year.
I have a feeling I’m going to be mourning the passing (i.e, extinction) of the vaquita very soon. This is a sad story, and what has been happening to this marine mammal is the story of poaching, China, a government (Mexico) unwilling or incapable of controlling its criminal element and a heroic effort by a group of people and organizations who have seen this coming and who have been struggling and struggling to protect the vaquita. When China is paying poor Mexican fishermen a ton of money to buy something that cannot be legally traded, then the efforts of the heroes are tiny by comparison.
The story (all of it, because I’m not excerpting a potential obituary) from EcoWatch:
There are only between six and 19 vaquitas left, a new study has concluded, and, unless swift action is taken, the endangered species could go extinct within a year.
The world’s smallest porpoises, found only in Mexico’s Gulf of California, are threatened because they are caught by mistake in illegal gillnets. The study, published in Royal Society Open Science Wednesday, found that 10 had died this way from March 2016 to March 2019.
“Every day wasted is making a difference. The key thing is that we need action now,” study co-author Len Thomas, an ecological statistician at the University of St. Andrews’ Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling, told Vice. “There are only days to do this.”
Researchers from St. Andrews in Scotland, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Mexican government counted the vaquitas by listening for their echolocation clicks. It is easier to monitor the porpoises acoustically than visually, The Weather Channel explained. Since they began acoustic monitoring in 2011, the researchers have determined that the vaquita population has fallen by 98.6 percent.
That decline is due to the use of gillnets, large vertical nets that fishermen leave in the water to collect the totoaba whose bladders are important in traditional Chinese medicine, The Guardian explained.
Mexico banned fishing with gillnets in 2015, but despite this, the practice has continued. The researchers found that the vaquita population declined by 48 percent in 2017 and 47 percent in 2018. Their numbers are now dangerously low.
“Based on the uncertainty inherent in the models, the number could be as few as six,” Thomas told The Guardian.
But Thomas also told Vice that the animals were not doomed as long as the political will to stop illegal fishing could be generated in time. The vaquitas’ habitat is small enough to monitor effectively, and the animals are otherwise healthy.
“There are many instances of other species that recover from low population numbers,” Thomas told Vice. “If we stopped illegal fishing, they could bounce back. It’s not a reason at the moment to give up.”
Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation group that actively works to help vaquitas by dredging up nets, also expressed hope.
“The important takeaway is that they’re still out there,” the group’s science department coordinator Eva Hidalgo told The Guardian. “No matter how low the numbers are, there’s still hope for the species if we manage to keep them safe. Sea Shepherd is doing as much as possible to ensure the area remains net-free. In recent years we have seen two vaquita calves, so they can be saved. As long as there is one vaquita left, we are going to continue to fight for them.”
A bleak new report highlights how the climate crisis is responsible for deaths and will cause more in the coming decades, along with malnutrition, stunted growth and lower IQs in children directly impacted by the crisis, as the Guardian reported.
The policy report From Townsville to Tuvalu produced by Global Health Alliance Australia in partnership with Monash University in Melbourne looked at how the climate crisis will affect the Asia Pacific Region, the effect it has already had and it makes recommendations for what the Australian government can do to mitigate its impact.
Australia has seen fatalities within the last decade due to extreme weather and heat waves.
“There are absolutely people dying climate-related deaths, [especially due to] heat stress right now,” said Misha Coleman, executive director of Global Health Alliance Australia, to the Guardian. “During the Black Saturday fires [in Victoria in 2009] for example, we know that people were directly killed by the fires, but there were nearly 400 additional deaths in those hot days from heat stress and heatstroke.”
It has also seen a cognitive effect on children who experienced extreme weather events in utero. For example, children born to women who were pregnant during 2011 flooding in Brisbane had, on average, lower IQs, smaller vocabularies and less imagination than their peers at age two.
As the world deals with higher concentrations of greenhouse gasses, the nutritional values of staple crops will decline, leading to stunting, anemia and malnutrition in children, within 10 to 20 years, according to the Guardian.
“What’s the future for our children?” said Coleman to the Guardian. “These events are more common, more frequent and not going to become less so in a short amount of time.”
