Meditation Helps Depression As Much As Drugs

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:42:00 -0500

benefits of meditation many times, showing how it improves visual perception, can help with disease, and helps people in jail manage anger. Here's some more on that. A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry shows that for people suffering from depression, who had taking drugs to control it but whose symptoms were in remission, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy was just as good at preventing the return of symptoms as was continuing with drugs. From Read the full story on Planet Green

What Do The New TSA Naked Body Scans & Pat-Downs Have to Do With Green?

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:54:00 -0500

brouhaha about the new options the Transportation Security Administration has given you before boarding your flight: Either get naked pictures taken of you or get publicly groped in rather intimate places. On a personal level I don't much mind some underpaid glorified security guard seeing a naked photo of me�though I admit it certainly seems that the health jury's still out on whether or not I'm going to eventu]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

One More Reason Why Zero Waste Is Important: That Plastic Bag Takes 1,000+ Years to Decompose

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:45:00 -0500

America Recycles Day�which a number of us at Planet Green and TreeHugger really ought to be transformed into Zero Waste Day, recycling being the least important part of the classic three, no, ten Rs�I thought I add some really interesting stats to the pile. The folks over at MindBodyGreen have a great infographic on how much do we really recycle and what we could do with all of it if we recycled more. It's all good, but the part which really stood out to m]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Two Billion Years of Information in the Palm of Your Hand: The Seed

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:03:00 -0500

The Archdruid Report, the blog of John Michael Greer, Grand]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

New Dean of Invention Shows Us How We Can Turn Poo Into Power

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:45:00 -0500

humanure not too long ago, I've been a little bit fascinated by it. Say it with me... humanure. Much better than excrement, poo, poop, crap, or any of the other words used to describe our biological waste. Manure is a pretty nice word too, but not so nice as humanure. Why am I droning on about dung? Because in the next new episode of Dean of Invention, airing this Friday, November 12 at 10pm Eastern is going Gonzo for Guano. In any case, this la]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Operation Wild Patrols Florida Keys During Lobster Season - New Episode

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:00:00 -0500

Operation Wild premiering this Friday, November 12 at 9pm on Planet Green. This week's episode is called Lobster Monsters and follows FWC officer Jimmy Johnson as he patrols the Florida Keys during the two-day period where anyone with a fishing license can catch up to 6 lobsters per day, and don't always behave themselves while doing so. So in the spirit of the shining some light on some of the issues]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Margaret Mead, the Origins of War & Building a Greener Future

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:02:00 -0500

Scientific American that offers some great insight. After going through a brief recap of popular explanations from neo-Darwinian and Malthusian analysis, author John Horgan comes to some thoughts on the subject from Margaret Mead and those who've elab]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Next Operation Wild Takes Us Back to the Gulf Oil Spill

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:10:00 -0500

Operation Wild this season premiers Friday, November 5th at 9:30pm Eastern on Planet Green and takes a look at what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did during the Gulf oil spill, with officer Dana Klein redeployed from her home region of Jacksonville to other areas of the state to help test what affect the spreading oil might be having. Thankfully, it's been over two months since the oil stopped flowing from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon and we can watch this episode knowing that]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Fairness & Equity Concepts Have Deep Primate Roots

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:10:00 -0500

South Pacific goes on about how racism is a learned trait, interesting research into primate behavior shows that apparently you have to be taught that the world is unfair and inequality is acceptable as well. OK, so I may be waxing philosophical a bit about the implications of the research I'm about to relate, but at the least individual chimps and monkeys don't much like it when their comrades receive a sweet grape and they only get a hard and earthy piece of carrot. Forgive me if you've already read about this piece of research, The Primate Diaries wrote about it back in April but it's new to me ]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Could Community-Owned Banks Stop Future Financial Meltdowns?

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:55:00 -0500

Yes! Magazine on how to prevent a repeat performance of the Great Recession. Sumerian Money Was Representational Not Commodity-Based But first let me point out an interesting historical tidbit about money, which I hadn't realized before: While money today isn't tied directly to precious metals in the way it once was, rather than]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

No Need to Wait For The Wired Brain to Improve The Mind

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 08:05:00 -0500

Dean of Invention episode premiering on Planet Green this Friday, October 29th at 10pm Eastern; it's called The Wired Brain and goes into new ways in which computers are being interfaced with the human brain and may be so in the future�that's the brain controlled bionic limbs and wheelchairs par]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

How Noisy is the World We're Creating?

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:40:00 -0500

allure of being silent has pulled at me for some time and only gotten more so since my profession for the past two and a half years has specifically to be the exact opposite of silent. From writing five days a week, all day, to promoting that writing on all sorts of social media, my job is to make noise. It may not be literal noise most of the time, occasional appearances on radio aside, but it is constant communication directed outwards. It's the exact opposite of being silent, which forces you to look inwards. Well, a new article over at BBC News details the benefits of being silent psychologically and spiritually�all based around the quest]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Viewing Nature Scenes Eases Pain For Cancer Patients

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:40:00 -0500

benefits of experiencing non-man made surroundings on a person's psychological as well as physical outlook are increasingly well established. Now a study from Johns Hopkins University finds that simply viewing nature scenes can ease pain for cancer patients. BBC News explains: Patients undergoing bone marrow aspiration and biopsy were tested for pain perception. Patients were either treated normally, or with either natural scenes around them or with city scenes. The nature scenes were accompanied by appropriate sounds such as birds chirping or water running, while the city scenes were accompanied]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Love Is A Painkiller, Actually

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:50:00 -0500

PLoS ONE done by scientists from Stanford University. For the study students in the first nine months of a relationship�"the first phases of intense love"�were given mild doses of pain and then either shown photos of their partner, photos of an acquaintance who the participant deemed to be equally attractive to their partner, or a word-association distraction task which previous research demonstrated could reduce pain perception. When viewing photos of their beloved and performing the distraction task pain perception was reduced, but the photos went further a]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Walking More Slows Mental Decline & Dementia

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0500

Neurology (highlighted by BBC News), elderly people who walk regularly�as in six to nine miles a week, as part of their normal routine�are less likely to suffer from mental decline as they age and are less likely to suffer from dementia. The study done by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh studied current brain scans of volunteers, whose average age was 78, and ones taken four years previously, checking for signs of cognitive impairment. Over the four year difference, 40% of the group developed measurable signs of imp]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Group Intelligence Based On Relationships More Than Individual Smarts

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:03:00 -0500

Discovery News are highlighting a really interesting new study on how the cognitive intelligence of a group of people can exceed the abilities of the individual group members, with how well everyone works together being the most important factor. The study, done by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Union College, found that "groups featuring the right kind of internal dynamics perform well on a wide range of assignments." As for that right kind of dynamics, the researchers found that groups whose members had higher levels of "social sensitivity" (how well group membe]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Can Dogs Be Pessimists?

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:08:00 -0500

The Economic Times glibly describes it, there are dogs that see the glass (uh, bowl) half empty and those which see it half full. The experiment to demonstrate this consisted of training dogs at two UK rehousing centers that when a bowl was]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

27% of Western Chinese Glaciers Gone by 2050 - Up to 10% Reduction in Crops Before That

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:26:00 -0500

Himalayan glaciers were melting�they won't be entirely gone by 2035, even under the most pessimistic climate change scenarios�the whole topic of climate change inducing glacier melting has died down in its coverage. Which is really too bad, as the fact of the matter is that the world's glaciers continue to melt due to climate change and the consequences of this remain pr]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

We Must Break The Low Exercise - Air Conditioning - Obesity Vicious Circle

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:30:00 -0500

Grist via The Guardian and one from BBC News) got me thinking. Exercising Regularly Helps You Better Deal With Heatwaves The BBC article is about a study about the differences between how much and when men and women sweat, and how this changes for people that are trained or untrained (that is, whether they athletic or not). It turns out (probably no surprise to many Planet Green readers) that both untrained and trained men sweat mor]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Great Apes May Be Much Smarter Than We Thought - Bonobo Talks on Oprah

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:05:00 -0500

Great Ape Trust in Iowa posted a number of really interesting examples on their Facebook page that quite amazingly illustrate this. First, via AboutMyArea.co.uk: According to comparative developmental psychologist Kim Bard from the University of Portsmouth the notion that humans are mo]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Happiness Isn't Something To Consume, It's Something To Cultivate

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:05:00 -0500

santosha in Sanskrit). That's not to say that transient pleasure isn't, well, pleasurable or bad at all in itself and in perspective, only that though the stated or unstated assumption of modern consumer society is that if you have enough of that transient pleasure you will be happy, that's both not practically the case (there are ]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

200 Pounds of Smuggled Ivory Seized From Passenger's Luggage at Bangkok Airport

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:50:00 -0500

interconnectedness and global reach of the illegal wildlife trade which I recently wrote about: Monitoring organization Traffic reports that officers from Thai Royal Customs have seized nearly 200 pounds of illegal ivory from a passenger attempting to smuggle it into the country in his luggage. Apparently a 62-year old Malaysian national, who arrived on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, was stopped at Suvarnabhumi Airport and found to have 16 cut pieces of ivory in his luggage. There have already been three large seizure this year at Bangkok's international airport: Customs officials seized two tons of i]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Illegal Fishing & Fishermen Threatening World's Most Isolated Tribe

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:15:00 -0500

illegal fishing and poaching, as indigenous rights group Survival International is highlighting. In fact remote tribal groups on Indian Ocean islands are coming under threat from Burmese poachers, more than one hundred of whom have been arrested in recent weeks off North Sentinel Island, in the Bay of Bengal. The Sentinelese Islanders who live there number between 50 and 400 people attack anyone who approaches their island, including people in helicopters ch]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Wildlife Trafficking, Organized Crime & You

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:31:00 -0500

Italian Mafia attempting to control wind power development in Sicily and some disturbing stats about tiger populations have dropped 97% in the past two decades, a recent article in New Scientist on your role role in wildlife crime, increasingly linked to organized crime syndicates worldwide, is particularly timely. Increasingly, Rosaleen Duffy from the University of Manchester says, it's not poverty that's drivin]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Make More Than $75,000 a Year in the US? More Money Won't Buy You Happiness

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:32:00 -0500

Beyond $75,000, money is important for life evaluation, but does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness or stress. Both factors are important; it is good to have high emotional wellbeing, but it is also good to think your life is going well. The study, p]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

On James Lee and the Events at Discovery Communications Headquarters

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:20:00 -0500

James J. Lee, entered the building, brandishing a pistol and carrying explosives, and began taking hostages. The situation ended four hours later with the hostages unharmed and Lee losing his life.   Discovery Communications' Executive Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Affairs, David Leavy later expressed w]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Let Go of The 'Need' to Save the Planet: Thich Nhat Hahn

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:08:00 -0500

Thich Nhat Hanh (colloquially known as Thay) over at The Guardian. Time For Us is Urgent, But Geologic Time Is Different There're lots of great nuggets of wisdom in it, but consider this one first: 

"Without collective awakening the [environmental] catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilizations ]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Redefining Poverty: From Financial to Rights-Based Measures

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:26:00 -0500

Ending poverty is both a huge topic conceptually; one which, much like creating ecological sustainable societies, requires not only deep soul searching as to the roots of the problem in the first place but also multiple practical approaches. Also akin the ecological sustainability, how we define the problem informs how it gets solved. Perhaps the most commonly used definition of absolute poverty�relative poverty being a different but no less important topic�is how many people are living on a dollar a day or less. It's good because, for one thing, it's very hard to argue that having the equivalent of that much income means you've barely got the proverbial pot to pee in (maybe we should amend that to toilet to pee in that doesn't contaminate the water supply), no matter where you are in th... Read the full story on Planet Green

Lake Under Mont Blanc Glacier Drained to Protect French Town Flooding

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:57:00 -0500

BBC News reports that a lake under Mont Blanc glacier is about to be drained so that it doesn't flood the St Gervais valley. The lake contains 2.3 million cubic feet of water, containing enough volume to flood the valley in 15 minutes, affecting some 900 families. To drain the water, a team of engineers will drill through 130-165 feet of ice to reach the water cavity. Through an eight inch wide hole they will pump out the water. Though this lake can't be directly attributed to global warming�indeed, a similar lake flooded the St Gervais valley in the late 19th century, killing 175 people�as glaciers m]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Antibacterial, Odor-Killing Socks Can Boost Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:56:00 -0500

silver nanoparticles in a wide range of products, from sunscreens and cosmetics to antibacterial socks and underwear, is receiving some more attention. Researchers from Duke University have looked at what might be the environmental impact of these nanoparticles in a more realistic setting than the laboratory. New Scientist describes the experiment:

[The scientists] added a high dose of silver nanoparticles - 1.25]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

LEED Buildings Make Workers Feel More Productive & Healthier

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:55:00 -0500

Michigan State University have discovered an interesting side benefit from building greener buildings: Workers who occupy them not only report feeling more productive, but they also are less likely to suffer from depression, stress, or be absent from work. The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, surveyed employees in the same area of East Lansing, Michigan--one group occupying conventional office buildings and the other in LEED-certified buildings (one was LEED platinum rated and the other silver rated). In terms of perceived productivi]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Why Fighting Corruption & Bribery Needs to be Placed Higher on Green Agenda

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:20:00 -0500

China Dialogue, is a decidedly not good thing. Elkington makes a very good case while fighting corruption should be more solidly on the green agenda. Here's why:

The evidence of the problem is all around us. Think of the scandalous reports emerging from the erstwhile US Minerals Management Service (MMS), respons]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Oiled Blue Crab Larvae Place Food Chain & Fishermen's Livelihoods at Risk

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:28:00 -0500

blue crab larvae have been discovered to will specks of oil in them. The AP quotes biologist Bob Thomas, from Loyola University, on the significance of this finding:

It would suggest that oil has reached ]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Wolves Return to French Pyrenees Decades After Extermination

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:21:00 -0500

gray wolves now being protected (again) under the Endangered Species Act throughout all of the United States, let's look across the Atlantic to the Pyrenees where wolves are also on the rise--and raising the ire of farmers in France, for much the same reason that ranchers oppose protecting wolves here. As the Independent reports, French officials have confirmed that gray wolves now live in 15 of the 94 d�partments (counties) of mainland France, at extent of population which hasn't occurred for 100 years. Wolves had been exterminated in France i]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Want A Creativity Boost? Stop Brainstorming

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:05:00 -0500

Newsweek backs up one of the other reasons why I love walking and love traveling as well. If you want to boost your creativity and productivity, brainstorming is probably not the best way to go about it�which is comforting here as I've frankly never liked brainstorming and have never found it to actually yield better results than just sitting and contemplating the task at hand, without all the note-taking and weighing of competing ideas. Rather the article suggests that moving the body and engaging the world is a far better way ]]>... Read the full story on Planet Green

Recent Posts By Planet Green's Matt McDermott