DocMikeEvans's Channel - YouTube: ""
The Doctor has many more of these self-help videos on his channel.
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Saturday, February 11, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Gang Wars
Uploaded by PocoTropoLoco on Oct 16, 2011
No description available.
License: Standard YouTube License
Urban Stress Changes Brain
Urban stress changes brain, scans show
CBC News Posted: Jun 22, 2011 1:01 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 22, 2011 10:18 PM ET Read 146
Living in the city or growing up in one can affect brain function during a stressful situation, a brain imaging study has found.
The world is becoming more urbanized, with almost 70 per cent of people expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to projections by the United Nations.
Studies suggest that living in a city increases the risk of depression and anxiety, and that schizophrenia rates are higher in people born and brought up in cities. But until now, there hasn't been research into how human brain structures might be affected by urban living.
To that end, researchers at McGill's Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal and the University of Heidelberg in Germany used MRIs to study brain responses of healthy German students who were taking a math test under stressful conditions.
Study participants faced time pressure and in some cases they had investigators scolding them through headphones.
When exposed to those stressful conditions, two areas of the students' brains that are known to be involved in processing emotions became more active, the researchers reported in Wednesday's online issue of the journal Nature.
Brain more active
Specifically, the brain's amygdala was more active in those who lived in cities, and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, or pACC, was more active in those who had been brought up in cities, the researchers found.
The study was funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program, the German Research Foundation, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany.
CBC News Posted: Jun 22, 2011 1:01 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 22, 2011 10:18 PM ET Read 146
Living in the city or growing up in one can affect brain function during a stressful situation, a brain imaging study has found.
The world is becoming more urbanized, with almost 70 per cent of people expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to projections by the United Nations.
Studies suggest that living in a city increases the risk of depression and anxiety, and that schizophrenia rates are higher in people born and brought up in cities. But until now, there hasn't been research into how human brain structures might be affected by urban living.
To that end, researchers at McGill's Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal and the University of Heidelberg in Germany used MRIs to study brain responses of healthy German students who were taking a math test under stressful conditions.
Study participants faced time pressure and in some cases they had investigators scolding them through headphones.
When exposed to those stressful conditions, two areas of the students' brains that are known to be involved in processing emotions became more active, the researchers reported in Wednesday's online issue of the journal Nature.
Brain more active
Specifically, the brain's amygdala was more active in those who lived in cities, and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, or pACC, was more active in those who had been brought up in cities, the researchers found.
The study was funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program, the German Research Foundation, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Forums about Meditation
This Blog is not associated in any way with the D.O. site but it looks like a good resource for people who meditate. Particularly, if you are a shut-in or live in an area with no groups to join for mutual support in the meditation journey.
Dharma Overground
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/home
The Dharma Overground is a resource for the support of hardcore meditation practice.
- diligent practice over blind faith: this place is about doing it and understanding for yourself rather than believing someone else and not testing those beliefs out
- openness regarding what the techniques may lead to and how these contrast or align with the traditional models
- personal responsibility: you take responsibility for the choices you make and what you say and claim
a lack of taboos surrounding talking about attainments
- the assumption that the various aspects of meditative development can be mastered in this life
- the spirit of mutual, supportive adventurers on the path rather than rigid student-teacher relationships
- and the notion that the collective wisdom of a group of strong practitioners at various stages and from various traditions and backgrounds is often better than following one guru-type.
There are lots of ways up the mountain, and many interesting skills and insights to develop using many traditions and paths. Make yourself at home. Discover the possibilities of how straightforward, down-to-Earth, and practical the Dharma can be. May all find something here that is of value and contribute to the wisdom represented and conveyed here.
Finding your way around this site
In the Discussion area you'll find a robust and active community of members discussing both the theory and practice of meditation with the most recent posts here.
Dharma Overground
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/home
The Dharma Overground is a resource for the support of hardcore meditation practice.
It is a place where everything related to the support of practice may flourish, including where to go on retreats, what techniques may lead to what, an in depth look at the maps of possible states and stages, discussions about how to determine what experience was what, and in general anything that has to do with actually practicing rather than what typically occurs in standard meditation circles.
Here you will find a robust and variable community of people with a wide range of experience levels, perspectives and interests, though all loosely bound by the same basic principles of empowering, helpful, engaged dharma and exploration of the possibilities of the mind.
Basic principles and attitudes favor:
Basic principles and attitudes favor:
- pragmatism over dogmatism: what works is key, with works generally meaning the stages of insight, the stages of enlightenment, jhanas, freedom from suffering in what ways are possible, etc.
- diligent practice over blind faith: this place is about doing it and understanding for yourself rather than believing someone else and not testing those beliefs out
- openness regarding what the techniques may lead to and how these contrast or align with the traditional models
- personal responsibility: you take responsibility for the choices you make and what you say and claim
a lack of taboos surrounding talking about attainments
- the assumption that the various aspects of meditative development can be mastered in this life
- the spirit of mutual, supportive adventurers on the path rather than rigid student-teacher relationships
- and the notion that the collective wisdom of a group of strong practitioners at various stages and from various traditions and backgrounds is often better than following one guru-type.
There are lots of ways up the mountain, and many interesting skills and insights to develop using many traditions and paths. Make yourself at home. Discover the possibilities of how straightforward, down-to-Earth, and practical the Dharma can be. May all find something here that is of value and contribute to the wisdom represented and conveyed here.
Finding your way around this site
In the Discussion area you'll find a robust and active community of members discussing both the theory and practice of meditation with the most recent posts here.
You need only sign up for a free account to participate there. If possible, use your real name as your name unless you really need to not be discovered posting on a place like this by someone for whatever reason. This makes things more real-world, which is what this place is about. For those who must remain cloaked behind a pseudonym, this is better than nothing and acceptable.
In the Dharma Wiki section you'll find an exposition of the various foundational principles, concepts, teachings, techniques, maps that are often referenced here on the Dharma Overground.
In the Dharma Wiki section you'll find an exposition of the various foundational principles, concepts, teachings, techniques, maps that are often referenced here on the Dharma Overground.
This is an amazing resource for new and seasoned practitioners alike. Check out the Blog where some of our core members post original and thought-provoking articles, though it hasn't had much activity of late.
Finally, if you still don't know what the Dharma Overground is about check out the Frequently Asked Questions.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Krugman: It's time for solar power
Solar Power has been my pick for the future of alternative, sustainable energy for a while now - years not weeks. China has weighed in on solar by with aggressive trade practices to kill competition, distorting pricing and otherwise upsetting the course of the industry built up around solar power. Its not a walk in the park to see how to invest in this area. Lots of money has been lost already by investors and companies bankrupted....
Solar Power
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES
Updated Monday, November 7, 2011
For decades the story of technology has been dominated, in the popular mind and to a large extent in reality, by computing and the things you can do with it. Moore's Law - in which the price of computing power falls roughly 50 percent every 18 months - has powered an ever-expanding range of applications, from faxes to Facebook.
Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.
The success story you haven't heard about is Solar Energy
But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.
If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives.
These days, mention solar power and you'll probably hear cries of "Solyndra!" Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste - although claims of a major scandal are nonsense - and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.
But Solyndra's failure was actually caused by technological success: The price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn't keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, "there's now frequent talk of a 'Moore's law' in solar energy," with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.
This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues - and if anything it seems to be accelerating - we're just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.
And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it's likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.
But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?
A large part of our political class, including essentially the entire GOP, is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers' money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.
So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we're willing to let it in.
Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times.
Source:
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Krugman-It-s-time-for-solar-power-2257045.php
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Mindful Living Can Help Heal the World
Pay Attention to what is a need and what is a want in your consumer behavior. Reduce your wants and be less of a burden on the limited resources of the Planet. Leave something for the next guy. We consume too much and need to change our behavior.
We need to become more mindful of the effects we are having on the world. The air,oceans, rivers and animals are all suffering the negative effects of human activity.
It is time we change our behavior and learn to live in a more sustainable manner.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Peanut Crop Worst In 30 Years! Peanut Butter Prices Explode to the Upside!!!
- Quick Goober Facts:
- The peanut is otherwise known as a groundnut or "goober nut" from the Congo name "nguba" and is actually a legume.
- The US president Jimmy Carter is one of the world's most famous peanut farmers.
- There are about 50,000 peanut farms in America.
- An American botanist is known to have developed over 300 different uses for the peanut ranging from the dull to the utterly spectacular including shoe polish, shaving cream, toothpaste, grease and ink.
- An Australian inventor is said to have devised a car which runs on peanut butter.
- The famed butter spread based on peanuts was invented by an American doctor back in 1890 to provide a nutritious and easily digestible food for his elderly patients.
- Surveys have revealed that men prefer smooth peanut butter while women prefer crunchy.
- Peanut butter is responsible for over half the consumption of US peanuts.
- The world record for eating 100 peanuts, one at a time is 59.2 seconds.
- Americans consume an average of 12 pounds of peanuts per person per year.
- Peanuts are adaptable and can be used whole, flaked and ground in sweet dishes, cakes and biscuits, whilst nutbutters can be added to soups and stews to thicken them, as well as eaten raw or roasted or made into the famous peanut butter.
- Peanuts contain about 40-50% oil and peanut oil is used in cooking as salad oil, in margarine's and the residue is fed to animals.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Mankind's Report Card
20 ways the world has changed since 1st Earth Summit - Politics - CBC News
The United Nations says humans are more concerned about damage done to the environment than we were 20 years ago — but we're still destroying it faster than we can fix it.
That's part of a snapshot prepared by the United Nations Environment Program in a report called Keeping Track that looks at a wide range of changes that have occurred since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
The report is designed to be used by legislators at the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio next May.
And far from being a thick report that will just gather dust, Keeping Track is actually a bit of a page-turner, filled with surprising and often encouraging news about our stewardship of the Earth.
The report uses a minimum of text and relies on colourful graphics, charts and satellite pictures to show the major environmental and social changes that have occurred on Earth since the early 1990s, from growing cities in China to the rapidly spreading footprint of Alberta's oil sands.
Changes in the world over the last 20 years.
1. The number of megacities has doubled.
The United Nations says humans are more concerned about damage done to the environment than we were 20 years ago — but we're still destroying it faster than we can fix it.
That's part of a snapshot prepared by the United Nations Environment Program in a report called Keeping Track that looks at a wide range of changes that have occurred since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
The report is designed to be used by legislators at the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio next May.
And far from being a thick report that will just gather dust, Keeping Track is actually a bit of a page-turner, filled with surprising and often encouraging news about our stewardship of the Earth.
The report uses a minimum of text and relies on colourful graphics, charts and satellite pictures to show the major environmental and social changes that have occurred on Earth since the early 1990s, from growing cities in China to the rapidly spreading footprint of Alberta's oil sands.
Changes in the world over the last 20 years.
1. The number of megacities has doubled.
2. The world is eating 26 per cent more meat.
3. Global temperatures continue to rise, with the last 10 years the warmest on record.
4. World industry is 23 per cent more energy efficient.
5. Plastic consumption has skyrocketed — with annual production reaching a record 265 million tonnes worldwide in 2010.
6. The 1990 Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-destroying chemicals is the world's most successful international agreement, producing a 93 per cent drop in the damaging emissions since 1992.
7. Cement production is the fastest-growing source of C02 emissions.
8. The Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest in the Middle East, are recovering from deliberate draining by Iraq in the 1990s.
9. Saudi Arabia has transformed from an importer of food to an exporter due to irrigation.
10. Environmentally protected areas have increased worldwide by 42 per cent.
11. Fish stock depletion is now one of the most pressing environmental issues.
.................................................................
Megacities:
Pop. in millions, 2010
1. Tokyo, Japan
36.7
2. Delhi, India
22.2
3. Sao Paulo, Brazil
20.3
4. Mumbai, India
20.0
5. Mexico City, Mexico
19.5
6. New York - Newark, USA
19.4
7. Shanghai, China
16.6
8. Kolkata, India
15.6
9. Dhaka, Bangladesh
14.6
10. Karachi, Pakistan
13.1
.........................................................................
3. Global temperatures continue to rise, with the last 10 years the warmest on record.
4. World industry is 23 per cent more energy efficient.
5. Plastic consumption has skyrocketed — with annual production reaching a record 265 million tonnes worldwide in 2010.
6. The 1990 Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-destroying chemicals is the world's most successful international agreement, producing a 93 per cent drop in the damaging emissions since 1992.
7. Cement production is the fastest-growing source of C02 emissions.
8. The Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest in the Middle East, are recovering from deliberate draining by Iraq in the 1990s.
9. Saudi Arabia has transformed from an importer of food to an exporter due to irrigation.
10. Environmentally protected areas have increased worldwide by 42 per cent.
11. Fish stock depletion is now one of the most pressing environmental issues.
12. Renewable energy has skyrocketed, with solar energy leading the way — up 30,000 per cent since 1992.
13. Biofuel production — up 300,000 per cent — is converting more land from farming to production of fuel.
14. Organic farming is up 240 per cent since 1999.
15. The Amazon rainforest has been largely destroyed due to drought and farming.
16. Tourism and travel is the world's largest business sector — and ecotourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism, up 20-34 per cent per year.
17. Passenger trips by airplanes have doubled in the past two decades.
18. Clean drinking water access increased to 87 per cent, but widespread sanitation is still slow.
19. 30 per cent more private companies are adopting environmental standards every year.
20. Women's influence is rising with more 60 per cent more seats in national parliaments.
13. Biofuel production — up 300,000 per cent — is converting more land from farming to production of fuel.
14. Organic farming is up 240 per cent since 1999.
15. The Amazon rainforest has been largely destroyed due to drought and farming.
16. Tourism and travel is the world's largest business sector — and ecotourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism, up 20-34 per cent per year.
17. Passenger trips by airplanes have doubled in the past two decades.
18. Clean drinking water access increased to 87 per cent, but widespread sanitation is still slow.
19. 30 per cent more private companies are adopting environmental standards every year.
20. Women's influence is rising with more 60 per cent more seats in national parliaments.
......................................................................................
.................................................................
Megacities:
Pop. in millions, 2010
1. Tokyo, Japan
36.7
2. Delhi, India
22.2
3. Sao Paulo, Brazil
20.3
4. Mumbai, India
20.0
5. Mexico City, Mexico
19.5
6. New York - Newark, USA
19.4
7. Shanghai, China
16.6
8. Kolkata, India
15.6
9. Dhaka, Bangladesh
14.6
10. Karachi, Pakistan
13.1
.........................................................................
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