Animation with narration: Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
Public Health Advocates Pressure on EPA Flouride Reduction
01 Agriculture, 04 Education, 07 Health, 12 Water, Corporations
EPA to Bar Fluoride-Based Pesticide
Decision aims to protect children’s health
- CONTACT: EWG Public Affairs, 202-667-6982 leeann@ewg.org; Beyond Pesticides: Jay Feldman, 202-543-5450; Fluoride Action Network: Ellen Connett, 315-379-9200
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 10, 2011
Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed to grant three environmental groups’ petition to end the use of sulfuryl fluoride, an insecticide and food fumigant manufactured by Dow AgroSciences.
The Dow product, approved by EPA as an alternative to methyl bromide, is used on hundreds of food commodities.
Citing concerns about children’s health and noting their current overexposure to fluoride through tap water, EPA’s decision is the second major federal action in three days to address the safety of fluoride for children. On January 7, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed to reduce its recommended maximum level of fluoride in tap water from 1.2 to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), a 42 percent decrease.
In 2004, Fluoride Action Network, Environmental Working Group, and Beyond Pesticides challenged EPA’s risk assessment of the pesticide sulfuryl fluoride under the Food Quality and Protection Act of 1996, which regulates pesticide safety. The groups objected that EPA’s methodology relied on an outdated health risk assessment and significantly underestimated children’s exposures to fluoride from all sources.
With today’s announcement, the EPA Office of Pesticide Program has concluded that the current legal limit of the pesticide residue on food does not adequately protect children from aggregate fluoride exposures, such as drinking water and toothpaste.
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Building Democracy Amongst Corporate Personhood Rights, Powers, and Legal Fictions
04 Education, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Government, Videos/Movies/DocumentariesWomens International League for Peace and Freedom is pushing to turn back the Supreme Court ruling that gives corporations personhood and the freedom to spend unlimited money in political ads under freedom of speech. See Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers from 1772-1996 (pdf)
Related:
+ Video: Transpartisan dialog on corporate power (Jan 21, 2011 on CSPAN3)
+ Resolution Calling to Amend the Constitution Banning Corporate Personhood Introduced in Vermont (Jan 22, 2011)
+ Following the Money a Year After Citizens United (Jan 19, 2011)
+ Video: The Corporation (23 parts on YouTube)
+ Links on a Smart Nation for Reform @PhiBetaIota
45 Social Entrepreneurs Showcase at “Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace”
01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Academia, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Gift Intelligence, microfinancing, Technologieshttp://marketplace.unreasonableinstitute.org
The Unreasonable Institute Empowers the Public to Choose the Next Wave of High-Impact Social Entrepreneurs
Global donations will determine which entrepreneurs gain admission to esteemed mentorship program
BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Starting Jan. 20, 45 social entrepreneurs will showcase their ventures in an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace (http://marketplace.unreasonableinstitute.org/). For 50 days, people from around the world are invited to vote with their wallets on the most viable ventures. The first 25 of the 45 finalists to raise $8,000 in the Marketplace will earn access to the highly acclaimed six-week mentorship program at the Unreasonable Institute. At the Institute, these social entrepreneurs undergo rigorous training sessions, including personal and entrepreneurial skill development, intensive workshops and hands-on guidance from leading thought leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors.
The 45 finalists were selected from more than 300 applicants in 60 countries. Each applicant had to present a financially self-sustaining venture that has the ability to scale to serve the needs of at least 1 million people and demonstrates customer validation through sales or pilots. The finalists this year include a Chinese engineer with a prototype for waterless composting toilets; a 2010 CNN Hero from Kenya who has distributed over 10,000 solar lanterns; and an American inventor with a water purification system that can roll up to the size of a ruler.
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Citizen Satellites (1 kilogram)
04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Government, Military, Technologies
Citizen Satellites
Tiny, standardized spacecraft are making orbital experiments affordable to even the smallest research groups
By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and Bob Twiggs | February 9, 2011 (latest issue)
Ever since Sputnik kicked off the age of space satellites more than fifty years ago, big institutions have dominated the skies. Almost all the many thousands of satellites that have taken their place in Earth orbit were the result of huge projects funded by governments and corporations. For decades each generation of satellites has been more complicated and expensive than its predecessor, taken longer to design, and required an infrastructure of expensive launch facilities, global monitoring stations, mission specialists and research centers.
In recent years, however, improvements in electronics, solar power and other technologies have made it possible to shrink satellites dramatically. A new type of satellite, called CubeSat, drastically simplifies and standardizes the design of small spacecraft and brings costs down to less than $100,000 to develop, launch and operate a single satellite—a tiny fraction of the typical mission budget of NASA or the European Space Agency.
(full article requires subscription)
Comment: the article mentions the idea of “printing” low-cost materials as well.
Related:
+ Crowdfunding for a Satellite to Widen Net Access to Help Benefactors to Help Themselves
+ Brooklyn Space Program (weather balloon + iPhone + camera recording most of the flight into space and back)
21st Century Infotention
04 Education, 11 Society, About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools
Are Undergraduates Learning Anything?
04 Education
Drawing on survey responses, transcript data, and results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (a standardized test taken by students in their first semester and at the end of their second year), Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa concluded that a significant percentage of undergraduates are failing to develop the broad-based skills and knowledge they should be expected to master. Here is an excerpt from Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press), their new book based on those findings.
“With regard to the quality of research, we tend to evaluate faculty the way the Michelin guide evaluates restaurants,” Lee Shulman, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, recently noted. “We ask, ‘How high is the quality of this cuisine relative to the genre of food? How excellent is it?' With regard to teaching, the evaluation is done more in the style of the Board of Health. The question is, ‘Is it safe to eat here?'” Our research suggests that for many students currently enrolled in higher education, the answer is: not particularly. Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. At least 45 percent of students in our sample did not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in Collegiate Learning Assessment [CLA] performance during the first two years of college. [Further study has indicated that 36 percent of students did not show any significant improvement over four years.]
