(NaturalNews) More and more health reasons for eating dark chocolate keep coming in. Many will be pointed out here, then explained further in the sources indicated by numbers in parenthesis. But first, understand thatorganic dark chocolatebrought into the market place under fair trade agreements is best.
Some of the major cheap chocolate producers use child slaves in Africa to pick cacao. The more dark the chocolate with less sugar, milk, and other ingredients, the closer it is to cacao. A range of at least 70% to 90% cacao in dark chocolate is both tasty and healthy.
Milk chocolate contains milk, which negates the health benefits, and sugar, which feeds cancer cells. Avoid it.
According to Dr. Debra Miller’s statement inChemistry Central Journal, “Cacao seeds are a ‘Super Fruit’ providing nutritive value beyond that of their macronutrient composition.” (1)
Interestingly, one doesn’t have to gorge lots of chocolate every day to get the health benefits. A little treat, like a square or two daily will support good health.
A study of almost 20,000 participants in Germany concluded that those who ate 7.5 grams of dark chocolate a day received most of the heart protection benefits of chocolate. Organic dark chocolate bars are usually 100 grams. (1)
Benefits of dark chocolate
Cardiac and stroke protection :Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, which lowers risks of heart attacks and strokes. (1)
Reduces risk of colon cancer :Cocoa polyphenols from dark chocolate reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. This was determined in a study by the Science and Technology Institute of Food and Nutrition in Spain, which was published in the journalMolecular Nutrition.(2)
Healthy fats :The fat in chocolate does little to raise cholesterol. It contains abundant oleic acid, the type of fatty acid found in olive oil, which helps prevent heart disease and promote antioxidant activity. (3)
Enhances glucose metabolism :Dark chocolate (70% plus) candy bars inhibit blood sugar issues to help prevent diabetes and obesity. How’s that for a surprise! (3)
Improves mood :Studies have shown that dark chocolate contains serotonin and increases endorphin production. It’s a natural anti-depressant. (4)
Improves brain function :Nottingham University professor Ian MacDonald used MRI analysis to determine improved brain activity with people who had just consumed cocoa drinks. (4) Hopefully they didn’t have to undergo too many MRI scans that would fry their brains!
Eases PMS issues :Here’s a hint for husbands and boyfriends to give dark chocolate to your wives and lady friends. (5)
There you have it: many reasons to enjoyorganic dark chocolate that is at least 70% cacao.There are brands with 80% to 90% as well. These aren’t your kiddy chocolates with lots of sugar or milk or creamy nugget fillings, etc. They are semi-sweet at best.
The more bitter the better. It’s not difficult to get used to if you really like chocolate. Enjoy chocolate with the knowledge that it’s actually good for you.
Life-threatening infectious disease responds better to homeopathy than allopathic medicine
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by: Carolanne Wright
(NaturalNews) Homeopathic medicine has a long, successful history of prevention and treatment of illness without harmful side effects. Documentation spanning several centuries has shown the incredible effectiveness of homeopathy during some of the most deadly epidemics in history.
Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician in the 1800s, is considered the father of homeopathy. Dr. Hahnemann, a man deeply rooted in the scientific method, critically condemned the medical practices of the day such as bloodletting and purging with medicines made with mercury, lead, and arsenic. He discovered the “Law of Similars” while researching cinchona bark which is used to treat malaria. Hahnemann, in perfect health, began taking this Peruvian bark two times a day for several days. He reported that he began showing identical symptoms to malaria. Upon conclusion of the experiment, he realized medicinal substances create symptoms in healthy people that were almost identical to the diseases they were meant to treat. This was the beginning of Dr. Hahnemann’s distinguished career in homeopathy which lead to widespread acceptance of his method around the world.
Epidemics: Fertile ground for the usefulness of homeopathy
Homeopathic medicine has been used successfully by Hahnemann and others for treatment during some of the most devastating epidemics in history. During the European Typhus Epidemic of 1813, those treated in homeopathic hospitals had a mortality rate of less than 1 percent while those treated with allopathic medicine had a mortality rate well over 30 percent. Documentation for the Russian Cholera Epidemic of 1831 confirmed a death rate of under 10 percent for those treated homeopathically while conventional treatments had a death rate of up to 80 percent.
During the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 that claimed the lives of millions, homeopathic hospitals had a remarkably low mortality rate. Twenty-six thousand cases of the flu were treated homeopathically with 1.05 percent mortality rate while the 24,000 cases that were treated allopathically had a mortality rate of 28.2 percent. Gelsemium was the most commonly used remedy for the H1N1 influenza virus of the pandemic.
Hahnemann was inspired to use homeopathic medicine as a preventative while treating several ailing children in two families. The first family had three children out of four who were ill with scarlet fever. The fourth, who was taking Belladonna for a finger joint problem at the time, remained free from the illness.
Shortly after, a family with eight children, three of which were already infected with scarlet fever, requested Dr. Hahnemann’s expertise to help protect the other five children. Once again, he used Belladonna with positive result. All five children escaped the illness even though they were exposed repeatedly to their unwell siblings. After observing the protective effects of Belladonna against scarlet fever, Hahnemann continued to use this remedy with extraordinary success during epidemics.
Additional disease prevented by homeopathy
During a 1902 smallpox outbreak in Iowa, a Dr. Eaton reported that 2806 people were given Variolinum as a preventative. The rate of protection was an astounding 97 percent which was unheard of in allopathic medicine.
TheBritish Medical Journalreported that during the 1974 meningitis outbreak in Brazil, those who were given Menigococcium prophylaxis were protected from developing the disease 23 more times than those who did not receive treatment.
Homeopathic medicine has also been shown to be astonishingly effective in preventing polio. In several studies involving over 11,000 children, Lathyrus Sativus was given as a ‘vaccine’ against the disease. Not a single case of polio was reported nor were there any documented side effects.
As safe alternative to conventional medicine, homeopathy is remarkably beneficial in preventing and treating many of the most dangerous communicable diseases known to man.
“Homeopathy in Epidemics and Pandemics,” Jayney Goddard FCMA, Lic.LCCH, Dip.ACH, Scientific Research in Homeopathy Conference. Retrieved on January 28, 2012 from:http://www.slideshare.net
“Homeopathic Prophylaxis: Fact or Fiction,” National Center for Homeopathy, October 2006. Retrieved on January 30, 2012 from:http://www.homeopathic.org
“What is Homeopathy? Definition and Details,” Alan V. Schmukler, Hpathy, November 2009. Retrieved on January 31, 2012 from:http://hpathy.com
“Human Homeopathic Prevention: Records, Studies and Trials,” Homeopathy Plus. Retrieved on January 31, 2012 from:http://homeopathyplus.com.au
About the author:
Carolanne enthusiastically believes if we want to see change in the world, we need to be the change. As a nutritionist, natural foods chef, and wellness coach, Carolanne has encouraged others to embrace a healthy lifestyle of organic living, gratefulness, and joyful orientation for over 13 years. Through her websitewww.Thrive-Living.comshe looks forward to connecting with other like-minded people from around the world who share a similar vision.
Study: Roundup diluted by 99.8 percent still destroys human DNA
Thursday, February 23, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer, Natural News
(NaturalNews) A new study published in the journal Archives of Toxicology proves once again that there really is no safe level of exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide formula for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). According to the new findings, Roundup, which is applied by the tens of thousands of tons a year all around the world, is still toxic to human DNA even when diluted to a mere 0.02 percent of the dilution amount at which it is currently applied to GM food crops.Numerous studies have already identified the fact that Roundup causes DNA damage, not to mention endocrine disruption and cancer. But this new study, which originates out of the Medical University of Vienna, is one of the first to illustrate Roundup’s toxicity at such drastically diluted levels, which is a direct contradiction of the agri-giant’s talking points about the supposed safety of Roundup.
“Comparisons with results of earlier studies with lymphocytes and cells from internal organs indicate that epithelial cells are more susceptible to the cytotoxic effects and DNA-damaging properties of the herbicide and its formulation,” wrote the authors in their abstract.
“Since we found genotoxic (DNA damaging) effects after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to a 450-fold dilution of spraying used in agriculture, our findings indicate that inhalation may cause DNA damage in exposed individuals.”
Interestingly, it is not so much just the glyphosate ingredient in Roundup that is extremely poisonous, as much as it is this chemical’s amplified toxicity in the presence of other additives in the formula. Polyoxyethyleneamine, for instance, a surfactant that facilitates glyphosate’s absorption into cells, has been found to significantly increase Roundup’s synergistic toxicity in humans.
Despite Monsanto’s claims to the contrary, Roundup is clearly an exceptionally toxic chemical that has no legitimate place in agriculture. According to data compiled by GreenMedInfo.com, Roundup is linked to causing Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, imbalanced hormones in children, DNA damage, low testosterone, endocrine disruption, liver cancer, meningitis, infertility, skin cancer, kidney damage, and even uranium poisoning (http://www.greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/glyphosate).
Environmentally, Roundup is a pervasive threat to air, water, and particularly groundwater and drinking supplies, as studies have shown that it does not effectively biodegrade after being sprayed. Back in the fall, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released data showing that air and water all across America’s “bread belt,” where much of our nation’s food is grown, is highly contaminated with glyphosate (http://www.naturalnews.com/033699_Roundup_pollution.html).
Killer whale and Weddell seal.
CREDIT: Robert Pitman/NOAA
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Orcas mourn their dead, right whales have accents and dolphins like to have fun (and they “talk” in their sleep). Because of their special intelligence and culture, marine mammals should have their own set of rights, researchers attending the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting here said.
“Because of their cultural sophistication these are enormously vulnerable individuals,” said Lori Marino, who studies brain and behavioral evolution in mammals at Emory University in Atlanta. “We have all the evidence to show that there is an egregious mismatch between how cetaceans are and how they are perceived and still treated by our species.”
Giving rights to cetaceans, the name for the group of marine mammals that includes dolphins and whales, would allow them better treatment under the law, including making sure they have healthy habitats and enough food to hunt and survive, as well as getting them out of captivity.
Special brains
Scientists point to a few qualities of marine mammals when suggesting the animals deserve some basic rights: they are self-aware, display complex intelligence and even have culture.
“These characteristics are shared with our own species, we recognize them,” Marino said. “All of these characteristics make it ethically inconsistent to deny the basic rights of cetaceans.”
And what do they mean by “basic rights?”
“When we talk about rights, that’s a shorthand way to talk about the fundamental needs of a being,” Thomas White, of Loyola Marymount University in California, said at the symposium. He also draws the difference between “human” and “person,” similar to how philosophers distinguish the two: A human is a biological idea — Homo sapiens, to be specific, while in philosophy, a person is a being of any species with a particular set of characteristics that deserves special treatment. [10 Things That Make Humans Special]
“You have to have a species-appropriate understanding of rights,” White said. These include the basic set of conditions for growth, development, flourishingand even a rudimentary sense of satisfaction in life.
The researchers noted some areas where humans are stripping these animals of their rights. For instance, by keeping them in captivity we are exploiting their right to live in their natural environment without human interference, and taking away their right to physical and mental health, Marino said, adding, “The effects of captivity are well known. These animals suffer from stress and disease in captivity. Many captive dolphins and orcas show physical and behavioral indications of stress.” (Some endangered animals are kept in captivity for specially designed breeding programs meant to protect their population from extinction.)
PETA problems
The meeting comes on the heels of a recent ruling in a San Diego court that animals such as whales and dolphins don’t have human rights, shutting down a lawsuit from the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who had claimed that SeaWorld’s orcas were slaves. PETA claimed that the park broke the 13th Amendment of the Constitution — banning slavery — by forcing their animals, specifically the orcas, to work against their will for the financial gain of their owners.
San Diego District Judge Jeffrey Miller dismissed the case before the hearing even began. “As ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ are uniquely human activities,” he explained in his decision on Feb. 8, “there is simply no basis to construe the Thirteenth Amendment as applying to non-humans.”
His statement makes clear, Marino pointed out, why she and others are fighting for “person” status for marine mammals. “Without obtaining legal status as a person in the law there’s nowhere to go and there’s nothing that judge could have done in that PETA case, even if he wanted to,” Marino said. Before we start asking for legal action, she said, we need to get these animals their basic rights.
Stonehenge Inspired by Sound Illusion, Archaeologist Suggests
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 16 February 2012 Time: 05:04 PM ET
The reason for Stonehenge’s construction is unknown.
CREDIT: Albo, Shutterstock
Theories about the purpose of Stonehenge range from a secular calendar to a place of spiritual worship. Now, an archaeologist suggests that the Stonehenge monument in southern England may have been an attempt to mimic a sound-based illusion.
If two pipers were to play in a field, observers walking around the musicians would hear a strange effect, said Steven Waller, a doctoral researcher at Rock Art Acoustics USA, who specializes in the sound properties of ancient sites, or archaeoacoustics. At certain points, the sound waves produced by each player would cancel each other out, creating spots where the sound is dampened.
It’s this pattern of quiet spots that may have inspired Stonehenge, Waller told an audience Thursday (Feb. 16) in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The theory is highly speculative, but modern-day experiments do reveal that the layout of the Stonehenge ruins and other rock circles mimics the piper illusion, with stones instead of competing sound waves blocking out sounds made in the center of the circle.
In support of the theory, Waller pointed to myths linking Stonehenge with music, such as the traditional nickname for stone circles in Great Britain: “piper stones.” One legend holds that Stonehenge was created when two magic pipers led maidens into the field to dance and then turned them to stone.
Waller experimented by having blindfolded participants walk into a field as two pipers played. He asked the volunteers to tell him whenever they thought a barrier existed between them and the sound. There were no barriers in the field, but acoustic “dead spots” created by sound-wave interference certainly gave the volunteers the impression that there were.
“They drew structures, archways and openings that are very similar to Stonehenge,” Waller said.
Waller believes the people who built Stonehenge more than 5,000 years ago may have heard this sound-canceling illusion during ceremonies with musicians and thought it mystical, spurring the creation of the stone circle.
Though the theory is unlikely to settle the mystery of Stonehenge, Waller said he hopes to highlight the importance of considering sound in archaeology. Rock art sites are often in areas where cave acoustics are particularly prone to echoes, he said, suggesting that ancient people found meaning in sound.
“Nobody has been paying attention to sound,” Waller said. “We’ve been destroying sound. In some of the French [rock art] caves, they’ve widened the tunnels to build little train tracks to take the tourists back – thereby ruining the acoustics that could have been the whole motivation in the first place.”
Shrinking Sky! Cloud Tops Dropping Closer to Earth, NASA Satellite Finds
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 22 February 2012 Time: 04:47 PM ET
The average height of clouds has dropped by about 1 percent in the last decade, new research finds.
CREDIT: Sebastian Kaulitzki, Shutterstock
The sky is falling… sort of. Over the last 10 years, the height of clouds has been shrinking, according to new research.
The time frame is short, but if future observations show that clouds are truly getting lower, it could have an important effect on global climate change. Clouds that are lower in the atmosphere would allow Earth to cool more efficiently, potentially offsetting some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases.
“We don’t know exactly what causes the cloud heights to lower,” study researcher Roger Davies of the University of Auckland in New Zealand said in a statement. “But it must be due to a change in the circulation patterns that give rise to cloud formation at high altitude.”
Clouds are a wildcard in understanding Earth’s climate. Ephemeral as they are, they’re difficult to track over time, and factors such as height and location make a big difference in whether clouds will slow the effects of global warming or exacerbate them. And no one fully understands how clouds will respond to a warming climate.
HOW TO BREAK THROUGH
“Hope is the most important thing that people need to regain. I just want to be one example of someone who overcame hardships—one source of hope. That’s all we need to start seeing possibilities for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.”
Henry Red Cloud
Photo by Dan Bihn.
Henry Red Cloud’s address is 1001 Solar Warrior Road on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. But the road sign hasn’t arrived. A windmill towering over the cottonwoods in the draw of White Clay Creek marks the location of Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center and his “Solar Warrior Community.”
It consists of a mud-and-straw-bale roundhouse for trainings, a whimsically painted Quonset hut factory for assembling solar air heaters, an array of solar panels from Germany, a horse trailer that doubles as a paper recycling center for making insulation, a vegetable garden, and a new concrete foundation for what will become a 20-person dormitory.
Here Red Cloud directs the work of Lakota Solar Enterprises, his American Indian-owned and operated business dedicated to providing renewable energy to some of the poorest communities in the United States.
The business has been part of a journey home for the 52-year-old Oglala Lakota man. He left the reservation to join the civil rights movement in the 1970s, then found himself working construction, walking high steel in cities around the country.
Selected by authorNaomi Klein:“Tribes are under intense pressure to allow their lands to be punctured by fossil fuel development. Red Cloud is showing that there is another path out of poverty.”
But when he returned home, he faced the reality of few jobs and little housing. He crafted teepees and took volunteer training from Trees, Water & People, which later became his partner organization.
One night, trying to sleep in the back seat of his car, Red Cloud had the vision for Lakota Solar: training people right on the reservation to build and install solar heaters so they could study at home and support the extended family, or tiospaye. Later, he added a buffalo ranching cooperative to the enterprise.
“The house, the buffalo, renewable energy: I’m not into it to become a millionaire,” Red Cloud says. “I’m just here passing it on to the next generation like the grandfathers did for us. That way surely their prophecy is going to be realized.”
Red Cloud’s 16-month-old granddaughter is the seventh generation descended from Makhpiya Luta, or Chief Red Cloud, who negotiated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which left 60 million acres of buffalo hunting grounds to the Great Sioux Nation—until Congress later whittled it into smaller reservation parcels.
“Our ancestors made a treaty with the U.S. government,” Red Cloud recounts. But they also made “a pact with the Creator for seven generations”—hearkening to a well-known prophecy that they would suffer if they did not provide for their descendants’ future prosperity.
Red Cloud was raised by his grandparents. “You can get an education and you can live a comfortable life,” he remembers his grandfather saying, “but if you want to have a really good life, create some work for other people.”
To date, the Red Cloud Center has trained 84 people, most of whom have secured jobs based on the experience—a striking accomplishment given the staggering unemployment across Indian country.
Lakota Solar Enterprises has built and installed more than 1,200 small-scale individual solar heating systems. The heaters save low-income homeowners up to 30 percent on utility bills that, over the course of a freezing Northern Plains winter, can add up to more than $1,000. The systems are Red Cloud’s own innovation: For two years, he fiddled with a 1970s design to come up with the $2,500 unit his business produces today. “We’re using 21st century material and tweaking it Lakota-style,” he says.
Recently, Red Cloud has engaged 24 Northern Plains tribes as partners. The tribes have been spending millions of dollars of federal funding to assist tribal members with energy costs, such as propane. Now they can use some of the money for energy efficiency and to send tribal members to Red Cloud’s renewable energy courses.
Red Cloud also has contracts to install wind turbines and solar arrays atop public health clinics on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. He hopes the projects will help topple what he considers to be a wall of skepticism about green building techniques—the legacy of failed development projects on the reservations.
“We are just getting back to the memory of the old way and becoming sustainable again,” Red Cloud says. “We have always had our Sun Dance ceremonies. We’re warriors doing our warriors’ deed in the 21st century for the seventh generation.”
Talli Nauman wrote this article for The YES! Breakthrough 15, the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Talli is co-founder and co-director of the Aguascalientes, Mexico-based bilingual independent media project Periodismo para Elevar la Conciencia Ecológica, PECE (Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness), initiated with a MacArthur grant in 1994.
watch the video here… links you will need to monitor the earthquake unrest are below:
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Don’t be scared. Be prepared.
screenshots below from earthquake 3d 420am CST 2/21/2012:
Food, water, appropriate clothing, communications, self defense, and transportation. These are the basic things you need to have ready in case of ANY disaster.
I do not speak of this lightly, as I reside in Saint Louis, Missouri — just a short distance the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) hotspot.
If you live in South Indiana, South Illinois, Central and South Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, or Oklahoma — then you too reside inside this large midwestern earthquake threat zone.
With the OTHER movement occurring around the planet, along the west coast , and along the edge of the craton — be aware that the NMSZ is primed and ready for a larger earthquake. Add this area to the growing list of zones showing the sign of large scale movement……. west coast americas, west pacific ring of fire, north american craton — just to name a few.
Read more about the north American craton movement:
Science and Spirituality: Observations from Modern Consciousness Research
by STANISLAV GROF on JULY 30, 2010
The leading philosophy of Western science has been monistic materialism. Various scientific disciplines have described the history of the universe as the history of developing matter and accept as real only what can be measured and weighed. Life, consciousness, and intelligence are seen as more or less accidental side-products of material processes. Physicists, biologists, and chemists recognize the existence of dimensions of reality that are not accessible to our senses, but only those that are physical in nature and can be revealed and explored with the use of various extensions of our senses, such as microscopes or telescopes, specially designed recording devices, and laboratory experiments.
In a universe understood this way, there is no place for spirituality of any kind. The existence of God, the idea that there are invisible dimensions of reality inhabited by nonmaterial beings, the possibility of survival of consciousness after death, and the concept of reincarnation and karma have been relegated to fairy tales and handbooks of psychiatry. From a psychiatric perspective to take such things seriously means to be ignorant, unfamiliar with the discoveries of science, superstitious, and subject to primitive magical thinking. If the belief in God or Goddess occurs in intelligent persons, it is seen as an indication that they have not come to terms with infantile images of their parents as omnipotent beings they had created in their infancy and childhood. And direct experiences of spiritual realities are considered manifestations of serious mental diseases—psychoses.
The study of holotropic states has thrown new light on the problem of spirituality and religion. The key to this new understanding is the discovery that in these states it is possible to encounter a rich array of experiences which are very similar to those that inspired the great religions of the world—visions of God and various divine and demonic beings, encounters with discarnate entities, episodes of psychospiritual death and rebirth, visits to Heaven and Hell, past life experiences, and many others. Modern research has shown beyond any doubt that these experiences are not products of pathological processes afflicting the brain, but manifestations of archetypal material from the collective unconscious, and thus normal and essential constituents of the human psyche. Although these mythic elements are accessed intrapsychically in a process of experiential self-exploration and introspection, they are ontologically real and have objective existence.
In view of these observations, the fierce battle that religion and science had fought over the last few centuries appears ludicrous and completely unnecessary. Genuine science and authentic religion do not compete for the same territory; they represent two approaches to existence, which are complementary, not competitive. Science studies phenomena in the material world, the realm of the measurable and weighable, spirituality and true religion draw their inspiration from experiential knowledge of the aspect of the world that Jungians refer to as “imaginal,” to distinguish it from imaginary products of individual fantasy or psychopathology. This imaginal world manifests in what I call “holotropic states of consciousness”—the altered states in which experiences surface that are very similar to those that inspired the great religions of the world—visions of God and various divine and demonic beings, encounters with discarnate entities, episodes of psychospiritual death and rebirth, visits to Heaven and Hell, past life experiences, and many others. Modern research has shown that these are not products of pathological processes afflicting the brain, but manifestations of archetypal material from the collective unconscious, and thus normal and essential constituents of the human psyche. The matrices for them exist in deep recesses of the unconscious psyche of every human being.
Spirituality is a very important and natural dimension of the human psyche, and the spiritual quest is a legitimate and fully justified human endeavor. However, it is necessary to emphasize that this applies to genuine spirituality based on personal experience and does not provide support for ideologies and dogmas of organized religions. To prevent misunderstanding and confusion that in the past compromised many similar discussions, it is critical to make a clear distinction between spirituality and religion.
Spirituality is based on direct experiences of ordinarily invisible numinous dimensions of reality, which become available in holotropic states of consciousness. It does not require a special place or officially appointed persons mediating contact with the divine. The mystics do not need churches or temples. The context in which they experience the sacred dimensions of reality, including their own divinity, is provided by their bodies and nature. And instead of officiating priests, they need a supportive group of fellow seekers or the guidance of a teacher who is more advanced on the inner journey than they are themselves.
Organized religions tend to create hierarchical systems focusing on the pursuit of power, control, politics, money, possessions, and other worldly concerns. Under these circumstances, religious hierarchy as a rule dislikes and discourages direct spiritual experiences in its members, because they foster independence and cannot be effectively controlled. When this is the case, genuine spiritual life continues only in the mystical branches, monastic orders, and ecstatic sects of the religions involved. A deep mystical experience tends to dissolve the boundaries between religions and reveals deep connections between them, while dogmatism of organized religions tends to emphasize differences between various creeds and engenders antagonism and hostility.
There is no doubt that the dogmas of organized religions are generally in fundamental conflict with science, whether this science uses the mechanistic-materialistic model or is anchored in the emerging paradigm. However, the situation is very different in regard to authentic mysticism based on spiritual experiences. The great mystical traditions have amassed extensive knowledge about human consciousness and about the spiritual realms in a way that is similar to the method that scientists use in acquiring knowledge about the material world. It involves a methodology for inducing transpersonal experiences, systematic collection of data, and intersubjective validation. Spiritual experiences, like any other aspect of reality, can be subjected to careful open-minded research and studied scientifically.
Scientifically conducted consciousness research has brought convincing evidence for the objective existence of the imaginal realm and has thus validated the main metaphysical assumptions of the mystical world view, of the Eastern spiritual philosophies, and even certain beliefs of native cultures.
The conflict between religion and science reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both. As Ken Wilber has pointed out, there cannot be a conflict between science and religion if both these fields are properly understood and practiced. If there seems to be a conflict, we are likely dealing with “bogus science” and “bogus religion.” The apparent incompatibility is due to the fact that either side seriously misunderstands the other’s position and very likely represents also a false version of its own discipline.
Wacky Physics: New Uncertainty About the Uncertainty Principle
Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 21 February 2012 Time: 10:34 AM ET
The uncertainty principle posits, for instance, that if you make a measurement to find out the exact position of an electron around an atom, you will only be able to get a hazy idea of how fast it’s moving.
CREDIT: Dreamstime
One of the most often quoted, yet least understood, tenets of physics is the uncertainty principle.
Formulated by German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the rule states that the more precisely you measure a particle’s position, the less precisely you will be able to determine its momentum, and vice versa.
The principle is often invoked outside the realm of physics to describe how the act of observing something changes the thing being observed, or to point out that there’s a limit to how well we can ever really understand the universe.
While the subtleties of the uncertainty principle are often lost on nonphysicists, it turns out the idea is frequently misunderstood by experts, too. But a recent experiment shed new light on the maxim and led to a novel formula describing how the uncertainty principle really works.
Perplexing logic
The uncertainty principle only applies in the quantum mechanical realm of the very small, on scales of subatomic particles. Its logic is perplexing to the human mind, which is acclimated to the macroscopic world, where measurements are only limited by the quality of our instruments.
But in the microscopic world, there truly is a limit to how much information we can ever glean about an object.
For example, if you make a measurement to find out exactly where an electron is, you will only be able to get a hazy idea of how fast it’s moving. Or you might choose to determine an electron’s momentum fairly precisely, but then you will have only a vague idea of its location.
Heisenberg originally explained the limitation using a thought experiment. Imagine shining light at a moving electron. When a photon, or particle of light, hits the electron, it will bounce back and record its position, yet in the process of doing so, it has given the electron a kick, thereby changing its speed.
The wavelength of the light determines how precisely the measurement can be made. The smallest wavelength of light, called gamma-ray light, can make the most precise measurements, but it also carries the most energy, so an impacting gamma-ray photon will deliver a stronger kick to the electron, thereby disturbing its momentum the most.
Though not imparting as much disruption to the electron’s momentum, a longer wavelength of light wouldn’t allow as precise a measurement.
Marbles and billiard balls
“In the early days of quantum mechanics, people interpreted the uncertainty relation in terms of such back-reactions of the measurement process,” said physicist Georg Sulyok of the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics in Austria. “But this explanation is not 100 percent correct.”
Sulyok worked with a research team, led by physicists Masanao Ozawa of Japan’s Nagoya University and Yuji Hasegawa of Vienna University of Technology in Austria, to calculate and experimentally demonstrate how much of the uncertainty principle is due to the effects of measurement, and how much is simply due to the basic quantum uncertainty of all particles.
In quantum mechanics, particles can’t be thought of as marbles or billiard balls — tiny, physically distinct objects that travel along a straight course from point A to point B. Instead, particles can behave like waves, and can only be described in terms of the probability that they are at point A or point B or somewhere in between.
This is also true of a particle’s other properties, such as its momentum, energy and spin.
This probabilistic nature of particles means there will always be imprecision in any quantum measurement, no matter how little that measurement disturbs the system it is measuring.
“This has nothing to do with error or disturbances due to a measurement process, but is a basic fundamental property that every quantum mechanical particle has,” Sulyok told LiveScience. “In order to describe the basic uncertainty together with measurement errors and disturbances, both particle and measurement device in a successive measurement have to be treated in the framework of quantum theory.”
Calculating the uncertainty
To test how much this fundamental property contributes to the overall uncertainty, the researchers devised an experimental setup to measure the spin of a neutron in two perpendicular directions. These quantities are related, just as position and momentum are, so that the more precise a measurement is made of one, the less precise a measurement can be made of the other.
The physicists used magnetic fields to manipulate and measure the neutrons’ spin, and conducted a series of measurements where they systematically changed the parameters of the measuring device.
“You have this basic uncertainty, and then by measuring you add an additional uncertainty,” Sulyok said. “But with an apparatus performing two successive measurements, you can identify the different contributions.”
Using their data, the physicists were able to calculate just how the different types of uncertainty add together and influence each other. Their new formula doesn’t change the conclusion of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but it does tweak the reasoning behind it.
“The explanation that Heisenberg gave is very intuitive,” Sulyok said. “On a popular science level it is hardly ever distinguished at all, and sometimes it’s even not correctly explained in university textbooks. The quantum-mechanically correct calculation reinforced by our experimental data is a valuable step in achieving a more consistent view on the uncertainty principle.”
The results of the study were published in January 2012 in the journal Nature Physics.
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Perplexing logic
The uncertainty principle only applies in the quantum mechanical realm of the very small, on scales of subatomic particles. Its logic is perplexing to the human mind, which is acclimated to the macroscopic world, where measurements are only limited by the quality of our instruments.
But in the microscopic world, there truly is a limit to how much information we can ever glean about an object.
For example, if you make a measurement to find out exactly where an electron is, you will only be able to get a hazy idea of how fast it’s moving. Or you might choose to determine an electron’s momentum fairly precisely, but then you will have only a vague idea of its location. [Graphic: Nature’s Tiniest Particles Explained]
Heisenberg originally explained the limitation using a thought experiment. Imagine shining light at a moving electron. When a photon, or particle of light, hits the electron, it will bounce back and record its position, yet in the process of doing so, it has given the electron a kick, thereby changing its speed.
The wavelength of the light determines how precisely the measurement can be made. The smallest wavelength of light, called gamma-ray light, can make the most precise measurements, but it also carries the most energy, so an impacting gamma-ray photon will deliver a stronger kick to the electron, thereby disturbing its momentum the most.
Though not imparting as much disruption to the electron’s momentum, a longer wavelength of light wouldn’t allow as precise a measurement.
Marbles and billiard balls
“In the early days of quantum mechanics, people interpreted the uncertainty relation in terms of such back-reactions of the measurement process,” said physicist Georg Sulyok of the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics in Austria. “But this explanation is not 100 percent correct.”
Sulyok worked with a research team, led by physicists Masanao Ozawa of Japan’s Nagoya University and Yuji Hasegawa of Vienna University of Technology in Austria, to calculate and experimentally demonstrate how much of the uncertainty principle is due to the effects of measurement, and how much is simply due to the basic quantum uncertainty of all particles.
In quantum mechanics, particles can’t be thought of as marbles or billiard balls — tiny, physically distinct objects that travel along a straight course from point A to point B. Instead, particles can behave like waves, and can only be described in terms of the probability that they are at point A or point B or somewhere in between.
This is also true of a particle’s other properties, such as its momentum, energy and spin.
This probabilistic nature of particles means there will always be imprecision in any quantum measurement, no matter how little that measurement disturbs the system it is measuring.
“This has nothing to do with error or disturbances due to a measurement process, but is a basic fundamental property that every quantum mechanical particle has,” Sulyok told LiveScience. “In order to describe the basic uncertainty together with measurement errors and disturbances, both particle and measurement device in a successive measurement have to be treated in the framework of quantum theory.”
Calculating the uncertainty
To test how much this fundamental property contributes to the overall uncertainty, the researchers devised an experimental setup to measure the spin of a neutron in two perpendicular directions. These quantities are related, just as position and momentum are, so that the more precise a measurement is made of one, the less precise a measurement can be made of the other.
The physicists used magnetic fields to manipulate and measure the neutrons’ spin, and conducted a series of measurements where they systematically changed the parameters of the measuring device.
“You have this basic uncertainty, and then by measuring you add an additional uncertainty,” Sulyok said. “But with an apparatus performing two successive measurements, you can identify the different contributions.”
Using their data, the physicists were able to calculate just how the different types of uncertainty add together and influence each other. Their new formula doesn’t change the conclusion of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but it does tweak the reasoning behind it.
“The explanation that Heisenberg gave is very intuitive,” Sulyok said. “On a popular science level it is hardly ever distinguished at all, and sometimes it’s even not correctly explained in university textbooks. The quantum-mechanically correct calculation reinforced by our experimental data is a valuable step in achieving a more consistent view on the uncertainty principle.”
The results of the study were published in January 2012 in the journal Nature Physics.
(NaturalNews) A new study published in the journal Archives of Toxicology proves once again that there really is no safe level of exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide formula for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). According to the new findings, Roundup, which is applied by the tens of thousands of tons a year all around the world, is still toxic to human DNA even when diluted to a mere 0.02 percent of the dilution amount at which it is currently applied to GM food crops.Numerous studies have already identified the fact that Roundup causes DNA damage, not to mention endocrine disruption and cancer. But this new study, which originates out of the Medical University of Vienna, is one of the first to illustrate Roundup’s toxicity at such drastically diluted levels, which is a direct contradiction of the agri-giant’s talking points about the supposed safety of Roundup.
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