Thank you very much for taking your time to look at my Science Fair Project.
The Aboriginal View and Model of the Unity of Science
 
Everything within us and outside us can be progressively organized from the Mineral People, to the Plant People, to the Animal People, to the Human People. Each Relative has special Gifts, Powers and Spirit.

When we investigate the Mineral People we find they have the gift, power and spirit of togetherness and unity. The Mineral People unify all the other relatives. For instance, the "legos" or basic building blocks of the universe are called elements. There are now 118 elements that Scientists have discovered. They are organized in what is called an Atomic Chart or Chart of Basic Elements.

Of these 118 elements, there are 25 elements that are essential to the life of the Plant, Animal and Human People.  Aboriginal Peoples organized the elements into Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

The Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human People are all interrelated and interdependent.  For instance, the Plant People breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. The Animal People and the Human People breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

The Plant People possess the qualities of the Mineral People, plus the gift, power and spirit of growth.

The Animal People possess the qualities of the Mineral and Plant People, plus the gift, power and spirit of the senses, hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing and touching. The Animal People, also, have the gift, power and spirit of movement and memory.

The Human People have the gift, power and spirit of togetherness, growth, the senses, memory, rational thought and free will. My Elders, also, teach me that we Human People have spiritual gifts and powers, as well. These spiritual gifts and powers are developed through our prayers, songs, and ceremonies, as well as, living a good life and being good relatives. Sometimes they are given by dreams and visions.

The Chanupa Wakan, the Sacred Pipe, has many meanings. Many more than I understand. Some of the meanings are about the Physical World, the world we can see and some are about the Spiritual World, the world we can't see. An important meaning of the Sacred Pipe for my Science Fair Project is how everything is related to everything else, including all the branches of science.

The Stone Bowl represents the Mineral People or Kingdom.
Sciences that study the Mineral People are Astrophysics, Geology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Meteorology, Nuclear Physics, Seismology, Petrology, Physics, Mineralogy, Aerodynamics and Ecology.

The Wooden Stem represents the Plant People or Kingdom
Sciences that study the Plant People are Botany, Phytology, Biology, Genetics, Biology, Marine Biology, Forestry, Taxonomy and Ecology.

The Eagle Feather, other animal designs and symbols on the Sacred Pipe and in the Sacred Bundle represent the Animal People or Kingdom
Some of the Sciences that study the Animal People are Zoology, Biology, Anatomy, Entomology, Genetics, Taxonomy, Ornithology, Marine Biology and Ecology.

When we put the Sacred Pipe together and stand the Sacred Pipe upright, with the bowl upward, it represents the Human People. We contain all the Gifts, Powers and Spirit of Life.
Some of the Sciences that study the Human People are Biology, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Anatomy, Genetics and Ecology.

This can be understood as an Aboriginal Model of the Unity of Science."
 
Source: http://www.fwii.net/profiles/blog/show?id=2429082%3ABlogPost%3A62488&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post
 
Forwarded by Joel and Michelle Levey

* * FUTURE RESEARCH IN WHOLISTIC HEALING * * 

The IJHC/WHR E-Zine features monthly suggestions for future research in healing.
READERS ARE INVITED TO SUBMIT SUGGESTIONS FOR TOPICS TO STUDY

IJHC – WHR Observations
Here is a lovely discussion on left and right brain ways of approaching the world, pointing out some of the disadvantages of linear analyses of our world and the contrasting advantages of more wholistic approaches.

Iain McGilchrist: Things Are Not What They Seem

Dr Iain McGilchrist, author of "The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and The Making of the Western World, puts our society on the couch. He suggests that the bipartite structure of the brain helps us to understand why the world so often seems paradoxical, and why we so often end up achieving the opposite of what we intend.

 

 

 

* * WHOLISTIC APPROACHES * * 

Scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Celiac Research have proven that gluten sensitivity is different from celiac disease at the molecular level and in the response it elicits from the immune system. The research, published online in Biomed Central Medicine provides the first scientific evidence of a different mechanism leading to gluten sensitivity. It also demonstrates that gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are part of a spectrum of gluten-related disorders.

Background: Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune enteropathy triggered by the ingestion of gluten. Gluten-sensitive individuals (GS) cannot tolerate gluten and may develop gastrointestinal symptoms similar to those in CD, but the overall clinical picture is generally less severe and is not accompanied by the concurrence of tissue transglutaminase autoantibodies or autoimmune comorbidities. By studying and comparing mucosal expression of genes associated with intestinal barrier function, as well as innate and adaptive immunity in CD compared with GS, we sought to better understand the similarities and differences between these two gluten-associated disorders.

Methods: CD, GS and healthy, gluten-tolerant individuals were enrolled in this study. Intestinal permeability was evaluated using a lactulose and mannitol probe, and mucosal biopsy specimens were collected to study the expression of genes involved in barrier function and immunity.

Results: Unlike CD, GS is not associated with increased intestinal permeability. In fact, this was significantly reduced in GS compared with controls... Relative to controls, adaptive immunity markers interleukin IL-6 and IL-21 were expressed at higher levels in CD but not in GS, while expression of the innate immunity marker Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 was increased in GS but not in CD. Finally, expression of the T-regulatory cell marker FOXP3 was significantly reduced in GS relative to controls and CD patients.

Conclusions: This study shows that the two gluten-associated disorders, CD and GS, are different clinical entities, and it contributes to the characterization of GS as a condition associated with prevalent gluten-induced activation of innate, rather than adaptive, immune responses in the absence of detectable changes in mucosal barrier function.

Source: Sapone, Anna. Divergence of gut permeability and mucosal immune gene expression in two gluten-associated conditions: celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. BMC Medicine 2011, 9:23doi:10.1186/1741-7015-9-23 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/9/23

 

By Caroline Cassels

July 14, 2009 (Vienna, Austria) — New research shows that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) significantly increases the risk for dementia in later life.

In the first study to show this association, Kristine Yaffe, MD, from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues found that older veterans with PTSD had nearly a 2-fold increased risk for dementia compared with their counterparts without PTSD.

The findings, which were presented here at the Alzheimer's Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD 2009), showed that veterans with PTSD developed new cases of dementia at a rate of 10.6% over the 7 years of follow-up, vs 6.6% of those without PTSD.

“What we found was that over the 7-year period those with PTSD had about a doubling of the risk of developing dementia,” Dr. Yaffe told reporters attending a press conference.

In addition, PTSD did not appear to be associated with a particular dementia type but rather had an “across-the-board effect” for all dementias, including vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Previous research has shown that PTSD, a common sequela of trauma exposure, is associated with increased mortality and morbidity related to cardiovascular disease and depression, among others. Further, it is estimated that 15% to 20% of individuals experiencing a serious traumatic event will develop PTSD.


PTSD is a Chronic Condition

In addition, said Dr. Yaffe, it is important to understand that PTSD is often a chronic condition. "Just because the exposure that causes PTSD may have occurred 20 or 30 years ago doesn't mean it necessarily goes away or that it is without long-term sequelae,” said Dr. Yaffe.

Further, while some evidence suggests that PTSD can affect cognition and is linked with lower hippocampal volume, until now no one has investigated a potential link between PTSD and dementia, said Dr. Yaffe.

To examine the question of whether PTSD might carry an increased risk for dementia, the researchers used data from the Department of Veterans Affairs National Patient Care Database.

The retrospective cohort study included 181,093 veterans aged 55 years and older without dementia at baseline and compared rates of newly diagnosed dementia or cognitive impairment in 53,155 subjects with a diagnosis of PTSD and 127,938 subjects without PTSD.

Subjects' mean age at baseline was 68.8 years, and 97% were male. Over the 7-year follow-up period, those without PTSD had a rate of dementia rate of 6.6%, vs 10.6% for those with PTSD.

After adjustment for demographics and medical and psychiatric comorbidities, PTSD patients were still nearly twice as likely to develop incident dementia. The results were similar when investigators excluded subjects with a history of traumatic brain injury, substance abuse, or depression.

Need for Replication

Because the study is the first to show this association, Dr. Jaffe said these findings should be considered “somewhat preliminary” and need to be replicated. Nevertheless, she added, if the results can be reproduced and the mechanisms identified, the implications could be significant.

“In light of current wars and other traumatic exposures, if you could effectively treat people with PTSD, it may provide us with a way to prevent dementia. The other thing we need to do is increase awareness that PTSD is not just a one-time diagnosis. It could potentially be a lifetime diagnosis, with the possibility of maybe major sequelae down the line associated with aging,” said Dr. Jaffe.

Commenting on the study, Alzheimer's Association spokesperson Maria Carillo, PhD, said the findings are particularly critical in light of the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will likely add to the growing burden of Alzheimer's disease, which is expected to increase exponentially over the next 20 to 30 years as the population ages.

The study is funded by the US Department of Defense.

Source: Medscape Conference Coverage, based on selected sessions at the:Alzheimer's Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD)

Alzheimer's Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease: Abstract 09-A-459-ALZ. Presented July 13, 2009.

 

* * COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES * * 

Background: Coffee contains many biologically active compounds, including caffeine and phenolic acids, that have potent antioxidant activity and can affect glucose metabolism and sex hormone levels. Because of these biological activities, coffee may be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer.

Methods: We conducted a prospective analysis of 47 911 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study who reported intake of regular and decaffeinated coffee in 1986 and every 4 years thereafter. From 1986 to 2006, 5035 patients with prostate cancer were identified, including 642 patients with lethal prostate cancers, defined as fatal or metastatic. We used Cox proportional hazards models to assess the association between coffee and prostate cancer, adjusting for potential confounding by smoking, obesity, and other variables. All P values were from two-sided tests.

Results: The average intake of coffee in 1986 was 1.9 cups per day. Men who consumed six or more cups per day had a lower adjusted relative risk for overall prostate cancer compared with nondrinkers (RR = 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.68 to 0.98, Ptrend = .10). The association was stronger for lethal prostate cancer (consumers of more than six cups of coffee per day: RR = 0.40, 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.75, Ptrend = .03).

Conclusions We observed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and risk of lethal prostate cancer. The association appears to be related to non-caffeine components of coffee.

Source: Wilson, Kathryn M. et al. Coffee Consumption and Prostate Cancer Risk and Progression in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/05/17/jnci.djr151.abstract?sid=58275d02-0524-40b8-9772-1c911cdba5ea

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735381/?tool=pubmed


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Cellphone-Enabled Healthcare: A cellphone microscope that can diagnose disease cheaply and effectively anywhere in the world
By Logan Ward and the Editors of Popular Mechanics

Innovator Aydogan Ozcan, University of California, Los Angeles hopes to make microscope lenses obsolete. “Microscopes are analog technology,” says the 31-year-old electrical engineer. Bulky and expensive, they rely on finely polished curved glass to refract and focus light. By hacking a cellphone’s software to perform the same function, Ozcan has brought an invention with Renaissance-era origins into the 21st century.

Ozcan’s cellphone microscope focuses LED light on a slide positioned over the camera’s image sensor. The sensor converts light bouncing off and around a sample of, say, blood cells into electrons and records them as a digital hologram. Image-processing software analyzes the hologram once it’s uploaded to a computer. One application, which will be field-tested in Brazil this year, identifies red blood cells misshaped by the malaria parasite—the same thing a technician searches for using a standard microscope. Unlike a scan by a trained human eye, however, software analysis is instantaneous. Future apps could screen for disease-causing parasites in drinking water and help monitor the health of HIV patients by counting T-cell levels in their blood.

“The key to everything is the cellphone,” Ozcan says. In 1990, fewer than 12.5 million people worldwide had them; today, 4.6 billion do. While conventional lens-based microscopy has essentially plateaued, fierce competition causes cellphone-camera technology to advance rapidly even as prices plummet. Eventually, Ozcan believes, point-of-care facilities in the U.S. will begin replacing expensive and time-consuming lab procedures with cellphone-based diagnostic tools. “Once insurance companies start to accept this,” he says, “we will have better, more affordable healthcare and better quality of life.”

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/breakthroughs/cellphone-enabled-healthcare
(Forwarded by Remy Chevalier)

The Solar Roadways project is working to pave roads with solar panels that you can drive on. Co-founder Scott Brusaw provides an exclusive update on the project, including the first ever video recorded of the Solar Roadways prototype.
For more information visit http://www.solarroadways.com 

 

 

 

A packed greenhouse produces a crop value of $5 Square Foot! ($200,000/acre). That is if the whole acre was under greenhouse.
Source: posted on YouTube by Green Learning 


* *  HUMAN ECOLOGY * * 

 
FDA’s new sneak attack on supplements

The FDA is mounting yet another attack on the availability of vitamins and supplements. Exempted are synthetic vitamins. Duh! Who might be behind this?

This is an attack by Pharma on access to natural remedies, following success in the CODEX rules that have already succeeded in doing this in Europe.

Take action now: Help oppose the FDA's proposed new rules by signing this online petition:

Just before the July 4 holiday weekend, hoping to limit media attention, the FDA dropped a bomb on dietary supplements. Don’t let them get away with it! A new Action Alert.

On July 1, the US Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidance for complying with the New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notification protocols contained in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Ever since DSHEA was enacted in 1994, supplement manufacturers have had very little guidance on what counts as an NDI and when or how to send an NDI notification. The government has arbitrarily ignored or enforced this section of DSHEA, doing as it liked, without spelling out the rules.

Why does this matter? Because when you hear New Dietary Ingredient (NDI), substitute “New Supplement” in your mind. What we are dealing with here is whether the supplement industry is allowed to innovate and create new supplements—and if so, under what rules.

Now, seventeen years after the passage of DSHEA, the FDA has finally come out with draft guidance on NDIs—that is, on new supplements. They had to do this because it was mandated by the recent Food Safety Modernization Act.

We have reviewed the very complicated new regulations in detail. In the hands of an agency charged with regulating supplements fairly—one not hostile to supplements the way FDA is—they might be made to work. But in the hands of the FDA, which wants everything, supplements and drugs alike, to go through the vastly expensive new drug approval process, we fear the new rules will be used to forbid the development or sale of any new supplements—where “new” means anything after 1994, when DSHEA was passed.

Please note that many important supplements sold today were developed after 1994. Others the FDA will say were developed after 1994, even though they are just variants of what was “grandfathered” by DSHEA. For example, the FDA has already banned a critical form of vitamin B6, pyridoxamine, because that particular form of B6 couldn’t be shown to have been sold prior to 1994, even though B6 in general was certainly sold prior to 1994.

There are many other important new supplements that could be banned depending on how the NDI process is run. We won’t mention the names because to do so would be to put a target on their back. But we can assure you they are important and many of you are taking them.

The FDA already has the power to pull from the market any supplement, whether “grandfathered” or not, if they are unsafe, do not comply with Good Manufacturing Practices, etc. The oft-repeated claim that the supplements market is unregulated or “the Wild West” is patently false. But the FDA cannot pull a grandfathered supplement arbitrarily. They must show cause. What we don’t want is for the FDA to have the power to ban all new supplements arbitrarily. We fear that they will use this power to ban any supplement innovation unless the supplement is turned into a drug and brought through the drug approval process.

Since nobody can afford to pay for the new drug approval process if the substance is not patented, and supplements generally already exist in nature and cannot therefore be patented, to require full new drug approval is to ensure that there will be no new supplements. This should suit the drug industry very well and, based on past behavior, the FDA as well.

The draft guidance clearly outlines the conditions under which an ingredient is considered an NDI (a new supplement) and when it is considered grandfathered. Further, it details the circumstances under which it is necessary to submit a notification for an NDI and when it is not. Not surprisingly, the FDA has applied a very narrow definition of grandfathered dietary ingredients, and so by extension a very broad definition of NDI.

Consequently, according to the draft guidance, almost all new supplements are NDIs, and thus are subject to NDI notification.

Please look carefully at this word “notification.” The term implies that the supplement company is just telling the FDA about the new product. But this is not the case. It is actually an approval process, and the FDA turns down most NDI applications.

Drug companies can exploit this process by trying to patent common dietary ingredients as drugs before supplement companies have an opportunity to submit their NDI notifications. Once a drug company investigates an ingredient for drug purposes and publishes their findings, the ingredient can no longer be used in supplements. This has happened before—it happened with the pyridoxamine form of vitamin B6 we mentioned above. In other words, what was once a supplement available to consumers at low cost will now be an expensive prescription-only drug, if it is available at all. (And it’s not only the drug that costs more: you’ll need to pay your doctor for an office visit just to get the prescription!)

The draft guidance also states that a synthetic copy of a supplement constituent, or an extract of an herb or other botanical, is not considered a dietary ingredient at all   (much less an NDI). Isn’t this good—isn’t it better not to be an NDI? No. If the FDA says it is not an NDI, that means they are saying it can only be sold as a drug—period. This could knock out a number of important supplements currently sold.

The guidance discusses at length the evidence required for a notification (approval)—and the requirements are extensive, including a strong recommendation to include human studies. We sometimes forget that human studies, in addition to being very costly, do not always fit supplements.

In effect, it appears that the draft guidance pushes the scientific standard for NDI notifications closer and closer to the pharmaceutical  standard. As we have mentioned many times before, supplements are much safer than drugs, yet because of the big Catch-22 (supplements cannot usually be patented, and no non-patentable substance can be taken through a drug approval process which, on average, costs a billion dollars), it is very difficult for supplement manufactures to meet these standards. If they are met, it will push the price of supplements—already high — beyond consumers’ reach. The industry will die.

In these proposed rules, the FDA has effectively created a de facto pre-market approval system without any of the protections of such a system. The FDA has a very high bar that a supplement manufacturer must reach before they can file, but FDA reserves the right to reverse its decision about the safety of an ingredient at any time. It is important for the FDA to  recognize the NDI process was meant by Congress to be an actual notification system, not a pre-approval process run according to arbitrary rules set up by the FDA. Congress gave the FDA power to say no, but this was expected to be rare, while the FDA currently vetoes more often than not, often on trivial grounds.

In general, the draft guidance creates a process that is extremely burdensome and redundant — and is impossible for the FDA to realistically implement anyway.

The FDA even makes the NDI notification specific to the manufacturer, not the ingredient. So if two manufacturers are marketing the same ingredient, at the same quantity—they still each have to submit an NDI notification. They can’t hire a third party to do it for them as a group. This is arbitrary and punitive—there is no reason for this requirement at all.

The FDA also expects a different notification for the same ingredient for every different version of the supplement it is in. For example, the same ingredient at a higher concentration needs a separate notification/approval. Or the same ingredient in a different combination of ingredients requires yet another notification/approval.

The bottom line is that when new and unreasonable burdens are placed on supplement manufacturers, it immediately becomes a financial increase for consumers. And if the pressure becomes too great, the nutritional supplements on which you rely may simply become unavailable.

TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO THE FDA Click THIS LINK

  Go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.

Source:  http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-new-sneak-attack-on-supplements/print/  

The FDA doesn't like having to abide by conflicts of interest rules for its scientists. Maybe that's because they're almost universally Big Pharma sellouts who routinely receive bribery money from the very same companies they claim to regulate.

So FDA commissioner Hamburg has announced she's going to abandon the conflicts of interest rules which were put in place after FDA employees had been caught twisting the science to support their favorite drug companies and medical device manufacturers. Here's the full story on the FDA's unabashed announcement that it wants to be corrupt:


Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/033361_FDA_conflicts_of_interest.html