| Wednesday, January 4, 2006 |  |
| Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia | 2 comments |
 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:26Some of you may not know that I am a gourd crafter. I specifically make ceremonial gourd rattles based on patterns from Neolithic Europe 1500-5000BC. Letecia Layson sent me this article that about the ancient migration of gourds. ----------------------------------------------------- Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia Plants widely used as containers arrived, already domesticated, some 10,000 years ago CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2005 -- Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru. The work, by a team of anthropologists and biologists from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand and the University of Maine, appears this week on the web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Integrating genetics and archaeology, the researchers assembled a collection of ancient remnants of bottle gourds from across the Americas. They then identified key genetic markers from the DNA of both the ancient gourds and their modern counterparts in Asia and Africa before comparing the plants' genetic make-up to determine the origins of the New World gourds. "For 150 years, the dominant theory has been that bottle gourds, which are quite buoyant and have no known wild progenitors in the Americas, floated across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and were picked up and used as containers by people here," says Noreen Tuross, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Scientific Archaeology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Much to our surprise, we found that in every case the gourds found in the Americas were a genetic match with modern gourds found in Asia, not Africa. This suggests quite strongly that the gourds that were used as containers in the Americas for thousands of years before the advent of pottery were brought over from Asia." The researchers say it's possible the domesticated gourds -- differentiated from wild bottle gourds by a much thicker rind -- were conveyed to North America by people who arrived from Asia in boats or who walked across an ancient land bridge between the continents, or that the gourds floated across the Bering Strait after being transported by humans from their native Africa to far northeastern Asia. "This finding paints a new picture of the founding of the Americas," says co-author Bruce Smith of the Smithsonian Institution. "These people did not arrive here empty-handed; they brought a domesticated plant and dogs with them. They arrived with important tools necessary to survive and thrive on a new continent, including some knowledge of and experience with plant domestication." Thought to have originated in Africa, bottle gourds (Lagenaria sicereria) have been grown worldwide for thousands of years. The gourds have little food value but their strong, hard-shelled fruits were long prized as containers, musical instruments and fishing floats. This lightweight "container crop" would have been particularly useful to human societies before the advent of pottery and settled village life, and was apparently domesticated thousands of years before any plant was domesticated for food purposes. Radiocarbon dating indicates that bottle gourds were present in the Americas by 10,000 years ago and widespread by 8,000 years ago. Some of the specimens studied by the team were not only the oldest bottle gourds ever found but also quite possibly the oldest plant DNA ever analyzed. The newest of their archaeological samples, a specimen found in Kentucky, was just 1,000 years old -- suggesting the gourds were used in the New World as containers for at least 9,000 years. ### Tuross and Smith's co-authors on the PNAS paper are David L. Erickson of the National Museum of Natural History, Andrew C. Clarke of Massey University and Daniel H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine. Their work was supported by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of Natural History and by Harvard's Department of Anthropology and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. More > |
| New Balance Vegan Sneakers | 0 comments |
 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:16New Balance Vegan Sneakers January 3, 2006 06:31 AM - Kara, Newport, Rhode Island Next time you need to replace your cross trainers, consider these from New Balance. Available for both men and women, these sneaks are made (and available) in the UK and are suitable for vegans. They can be found at Ethical Wares and come in a few different styles, depending how hardcore you are – shown here are trainers for the mid to high mileage runner. |
| Compressed Air Underground Battery for Wind Farms | 1 comment |
 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:14Compressed Air Underground Battery for Wind Farms January 3, 2006 07:30 AM - John Laumer, Philadelphia Wind energy may become even more important if the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities succeeds in launching an innovative wind-powered compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility project they are working on. CAES technology uses off-peak wind turbine generated electricity to pump compressed air into an underground aquifer for use in later generation. The concept of using stored compressed-air energy to help generate electricity is more than 30 years old. Two plants currently exist—an 11-year-old plant in McIntosh, Ala., and a 23-year-old plant in Germany, both with the compressed air stored in caverns created by salt deposits. For you non-engineers, there's a step-by-step explanation after the fold. Caveat: from an environmental standpoint, CAES is not suitable for every wind farm. Saturating free-moving groundwater with pressurized air would change the redox state while the added carbon dioxide would dissolve calcite, with the combined effect of mobilizing metals. The result could be unfortunate for nearby well owners and would lessen energy efficiency. And CAES is definitely not something to try around a deep waste injection well that has previously accepted volatile hazardous wastes. CAES technology, in otherwords, is suitable for locations where natural underground vaults, essentially places where groundwater can be put under pressure and not flow outward due to that pressure, already exist and have not been contaminated. Having said that, this is a pretty cool innovation. For once Iowa beats Minnesota More > |
| Architecture2030.org: New Website about Sustainability | 2 comments |
| 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:10 Architecture2030.org: New Website about Sustainability January 3, 2006 04:34 PM - Lloyd Alter, Toronto We were perhaps less than charitable when the AIA announced its call for a 50% reduction in fossil fuel use- after all, it is primarily a group of volunteer architects working to improve their profession and the work that is produced by it. Similar initiatives are being started by others as well- Architecture2030.org is a new website started by Edward Mazria, a Santa Fe architect who wrote the Passive Solar Energy Book. He teaches, and is taking a slightly longer term approach: "in our professional architecture and planning schools, we should require the establishment of a mandatory, full-year, innovative, studio-based program which promotes creative problem-solving relevant to climate change—one which incorporates a deep understanding of the relationship between nature and design in all core courses."- most architects know very little about sustainability and you have to get'em while they're young. Great choices in case studies, good resource lists, we wish them well. More > |
| India Stopping Theft of Ancient Knowledge | 0 comments |
| 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:08 India Stopping Theft of Ancient Knowledge [link] By Gavin Rabinowitz The Associated Press Saturday 24 December 2005 Protection: The nation is building a database of indigenous knowledge to keep entrepreneurs from making a profit from it. New Delhi - For thousands of years Indian villagers have used an extract from seeds of the neem tree as an insecticide. So when a US company patented a process for producing the substance in 1994, India reacted with outrage. After spending millions of dollars in legal fees to successfully overturn the patent, India's government now is creating a 30-million-page database of traditional knowledge to fend off entrepreneurs trying to patent the country's ancient lore. India is not alone in worrying about "bio-prospectors" profiting from the genetic resources of its plant life with no benefit to its people. It joined China, Brazil and nine other nations a few years ago to begin pushing for international protections. The database project already has caught the interest of others. A South African team recently visited and a Mongolian mission is coming in January, said V.K. Gupta, chairman of India's National Institute for Science Communication and Information Resources. The database, called the Traditional Knowledge Data Library (TKDL), will make information available to patent offices around the world to ensure that traditional remedies are not presented as new discoveries. "If societies have been using it for centuries, why should it be patented?" asked Shiv Basant, a senior official at the Health Ministry's Department of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, India's traditional health and medical disciplines. The government also has successfully challenged patents on the use of the spice turmeric to heal wounds and rashes and a patent on a rice strain derived from India's famed basmati rice. But that is a fraction of the problem. A 2003 study by Gupta's institute estimated some 7,000 patents worldwide are based on Indian indigenous knowledge, far too many for India to challenge in expensive legal fights. But officials hope the database will head off future battles. "If we have all the data in TKDL, we will not have to spend all those millions of dollars," said Ajay Dua of the Commerce Ministry's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. It is difficult for overseas patent office researchers to prove purported innovations are really based on old lore because, while the information is widely published in India, it is often in ancient languages like Sanskrit or modern regional languages like Tamil. Gupta convened a group of 150 experts in traditional medicine, scientists, doctors, patent lawyers and computer programmers to put together the database of traditional knowledge. Instead of laboriously translating the manuscripts, the scholars structured the texts into classifications widely used by patent examiners. The texts are then entered in the database, where specially developed software translates them into Hindi, English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish. More than 10 million pages already have been loaded into the system and 20 million more will be available by the end of 2006, Gupta said. |
| Cash-Strapped Schools Turn School Buses into Corporate Billboards | 0 comments |
| 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:06 Cash-Strapped Schools Turn School Buses into Corporate Billboards December 27th, 2005 Advertisers Catch the School Bus By Emily Bazar USA Today School districts desperate to plug budget holes are turning their buses into billboards for soft drinks, credit unions and car dealerships. Advertisements have popped up on buses in Arizona and Massachusetts. New ones are set to appear in Michigan and Colorado. Dozens more districts from Florida to Pennsylvania may join them. "This will spread across the nation, because there's so much money that will come into schools as a result of doing this," says Daniel Shearer, director of transportation at the Scottsdale Unified School District. The Arizona city just outside Phoenix began displaying ads on the sides of its buses last December. Advertisers include real estate agencies, a local toy store and an ambulance company. The district anticipates the ads will bring in $300,000 this year and up to $900,000 in a few years. Children 'for sale'? But some consumer groups and parents are alarmed. They say America's children < already bombarded by ads < shouldn't become captive audiences on their way to and from school. "It teaches children that ... they're for sale," says Gary Ruskin, executive director of the consumer group Commercial Alert. "They're just a bunch of sardines packed in a bus being sold to an advertiser." Read More More > |
| New Resource Site for Organic and Organic-Related Products and Services | 1 comment |
| 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:04 Press Release by: Organic World Online Published on openPR 12-19-2005 01:13 pm - CET (openPR) - Recently OrganicWorldOnline launched its new website, www.OrganicWorldOnline.com, featuring services for finding articles, resources information and news relevant to organic and organic-related products and services via the internet. www.OrganicWorldOnline.com is a new resource site for organic and organic-related products and services. You'll find all the resources needed to assist with understanding, living and enjoying an organic lifestyle. Organic promotes and enhances ecological harmony, using materials and products that minimize pollution from air, soil and water. Organic agriculture protects the health of people and the planet by reducing the overall exposure to toxic chemicals from synthetic pesticides that can end up in the ground, air, water and food supply, and that are associated with health consequences of all living things, in particular people, from any health disorder. By using organic products, people can protect themselves from the toxins of pesticides. www.OrganicWorldOnline.com will assist in the search for organic and organic-related products and services. Whether the organic interest be in helping to save the environment, healthy eating, home and garden, skin care or more you will find resources and information to assist you with the knowledge of living an organic lifestyle as well has how and where to purchase what you desire. OrganicWorldOnline offers quick and easy access to the resources, products and services needed to assist you with your organic lifestyle. www.OrganicWorldOnline.com offers resources, news and information for organic and organic-related products and services. www.OrganicWorldOnline.com goal is to offer fast and easy access to news, resources and information about organic and organic-related products and services on the internet. About OrganicWorldOnline: OrganicWorldOnline promotes fast and easy references and resources for organic and organic-related products and services. OrganicWorldOnline can be contacted through its website at www.OrganicWorldOnline.com More > |
| Organics Booming: 65% of Americans Tried Organic Foods in 2005 | 0 comments |
| 4 Jan 2006 @ 03:01 Organics Booming: 65% of Americans Tried Organic Foods in 2005 Americans Consuming More Organics than Ever: Whole Foods Survey NOVEMBER 21, 2005 -- AUSTIN, Texas -- The number of Americans who've tried organic foods has jumped to 65 percent in 2005, compared to 54 percent in 2003 and 2004, and a quarter of 1,000 people responding to a survey said they're consuming organics more than they did a year ago, said Whole Foods Market here. According to an annual survey released on Friday by Whole Foods here, 10 percent of respondents said they consume organic foods several times per week, up from just seven percent last year. The 2005 Whole Foods Market Organic Trend Tracker found that Americans are buying organic foods and beverages for a variety of reasons. The top three are: avoidance of pesticides (70.3 percent), freshness (68.3 percent), and health and nutrition (67.1 percent). More than half (55 percent) buy organic to avoid genetically modified foods. Also, more than half of all respondents agreed that organic foods and beverages are "better for my health" (52.8 percent) and better for the environment (52.4 percent). "Organic foods continue to move into the mainstream, and more Americans are choosing organic foods as part of a lifestyle aimed at wellness," said Margaret Wittenberg, v.p. of communications and quality standards at Whole Foods and a former member of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board. "It's long been acknowledged that organic food is a better choice for the environment, and we applaud organizations like The Organic Center who are working to more clearly define how organics are better and more nutritious for our bodies through long-term and meaningful scientific studies." The survey unveiled significantly higher taste and quality ratings from Americans who regularly consume organic foods and beverages. Fresh fruits and vegetables remains overwhelmingly the most frequently purchased category of organic foods at 73 percent. Produce is followed by non-dairy beverages (32 percent), bread or baked goods (32 percent), dairy items (24.6 percent), packaged goods such as soup or pasta (22.2 percent), meat (22.2 percent), snack foods (22.1 percent), frozen foods (16.6 percent), prepared and ready-to-eat meals (12.2 percent), and baby food (3.2 percent). One quarter of respondents said they purchase organic foods at natural foods supermarkets, while 18 percent shop for organics at farmer's markets. The main barrier to purchasing continues to be price; almost three-quarters (74.6 percent) of respondents said the price of organic food and beverages is the main reason for not consuming more. Other reasons Americans are not consuming more organics, according to the survey, include: availability (46.1 percent) and loyalty to non-organic brands (36.7 percent). The Whole Foods survey of 1,000 Americans, now in its fourth year, was conducted by Equat!on Research in August 2005 and is representative of the United States adult population. |