Oysters to the Rescue

Some people eat them while others use them to make the world a better place. I like using them to clean up pollutants and the like, be warned though oysters are not as plentiful as they were.

Hopefully after this talk you’ll be pro-oyster and spreading the word on how great they are at cleaning the environment! Let’s save the oysters to save our planet.

Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in “oyster-tecture.” Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

11 Predictions for Green Buildings in 2011

Here is one person’s take on predictions for green buildings in 2011, and I like it. The list is pretty focused on the USA but has relevance throughout the world, check it out to see what types of new and proposed buildings to expect this year.

9. District Scale: Living Blocks
Resource allotment and direct collaboration with the private and public stakeholders will continue to provide opportunities for district scale “living blocks.” Taking a page from our European counterparts, block-scale solutions have enjoyed a large amount of attention in 2010. 2011 should represent the year when these practices get put into action in cities like Portland and Denver. The Living City Block and the Alliance for a Sustainable Colorado are working to advance a model that we be implemented throughout the U.S.

10. Mainstream Green
Green building will learn to move away from an elite culture and adopt the language and practices which will deliver a more accessible industry. The mainstreaming of green building is a tough practice given that you are dealing with topics connected to professions like architecture and engineering where acronyms and obscure scientific terms grow like weeds. As it becomes more and more important to provide relevant products and services to the mainstream user, the industry must consider how it names and markets products and services. A bioswale landscape feature does not naturally engage the community it is located in until the public starts to think of it as a beautiful “rain garden” in the neighborhood. Positioning our technology, products, and services in a way that engages the people, business communities and municipalities that they serve will decide who stays in a market that is quickly filling up with competition.

Read the complete list here.

Wikileaks Makes a Difference

Wikileaks is a site dedicated to getting information that is held behind closed doors into the open. The recent leak of a collection of American embassy cables has shone a lot of light on many diplomatic issues around the world.

The good news is that thanks to cables, people in oppressed regimes are seeing what the USA truly believes about their country. The most recent example is in Tunisia where an uprising as thrown out a bad dictator.

I asked our experts at Human Rights Watch to canvass their sources in the country, and the consensus was that while Tunisians didn’t need American diplomats to tell them how bad their government was, the cables did have an impact. The candid appraisal of Ben Ali by U.S. diplomats showed Tunisians that the rottenness of the regime was obvious not just to them but to the whole world — and that it was a source of shame for Tunisia on an international stage. The cables also contradicted the prevailing view among Tunisians that Washington would back Ben Ali to the bloody end, giving them added impetus to take to the streets. They further delegitimized the Tunisian leader and boosted the morale of his opponents at a pivotal moment in the drama that unfolded over the last few weeks.

This point might not be worth dwelling on, except that it suggests something interesting about how the United States, and the State Department in particular, approaches the challenge of promoting human rights and democracy in countries like Tunisia. Consider the following proposition: None of the decent, principled, conscientious, but behind the scenes efforts the State Department made in recent years to persuade the Tunisian government to relax its authoritarian grip — mostly through diplomatic démarches and meetings with top Tunisian officials — had any significant impact on the Ben Ali regime’s behavior or increased the likelihood of democratic change. Nor did the many quiet U.S. programs of outreach to Tunisian society, cultural exchanges and the like, even if Tunisians appreciated them and they will bear fruit as the country democratizes.

My personal take on this is that the people were clearly ready to act but needed a push, Wikileaks helped with that in Tunisia. Hopefully soon we’ll see other countries overthrow evil leaders and bringing more peace and well-being to more and more and more people.

Read the rest of the article.

Weed to Fight Cancer

Medical marijuana is nothing new, in fact it is legal in many places already. What is new is that the active ingredient in marijuana that gets people high has been shown to attack cancer cells that modern science cannot eliminate!

Investigators at Complutense University in Spain assessed the anti-tumor activity of the cannabinoids THC and CBD (cannabidiol) in glioma xenografts (tissue grafts).

Authors reported that the administration of THC in combination with TMZ (the benchmark agent for the management of glioblastoma) “enhanced autophagy” (programmed cell death) in malignant tissue. The combined administration of THC, CBD, and TMZ “remarkably reduce[d] the growth of glioma xenografts … [and] produced a strong antitumoral action in both TMZ-sensitive and TMZ-resistant tumors.”

They concluded, “Altogether, our findings support that the combined administration of TMZ and cannabinoids could be therapeutically exploited for the management of GBM (gliobastoma multiforme).”

A 2006 pilot study published in the British Journal of Cancer reported that the intratumoral administration of THC was associated with reduced tumor cell proliferation in two of nine human subjects with GBM, which is highly resistant to conventional anti-cancer treatments.

Read more here.

An Awesome Foundation

The Awesome Foundation wants you to do something awesome, seriously! This is a great idea, a bunch of people put in some cash (in this case $1,000) and then others submit project ideas revolving around ways to make your city better!

The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences is an ever-growing, worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.

The Foundation distributes a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. The money is given upfront in a paper bag full of cash by a group of ten self-organizing “micro-trustees,” who form autonomous chapters around geographic areas or topics of interest.

Check out The Awesome Foundation