Halloween Safety for Kids

Here's some tips that we have just for you kids, to help keep you safe on Halloween night! Some of these ideas are called "common sense" ideas, that means that they are things that you should know and use every day in life. You are never too young to learn!

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Never, ever go into a strangers house or even ring their door for treats unless your parents are with you and say that it's okay. There are some people in life that aren't very nice to kids and you have to be careful. Always make sure that your mom or dad is within sight when you go out trick-or-treating.
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Be careful when you cross a street. Make sure to look in both directions and make sure that there are no cars coming. If you have a little brother or sister with you, take their hand and help them get across the street, too. If the street has a stop light, wait until the cross walk light tells you that it's okay to cross now, but still check before you cross, look both ways.
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If you are an older kid or young teen, and going out with friends, make sure that your parents know where you are going and who you are going with. This may seem like a pain but they are your parents and they love you. They just want you to be safe.
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If you can drive and are taking a bunch of friends to a party, make sure that you have enough gas to get there. You don't want to run out on a dark street, all alone, like a bad horror movie!
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If you parents give you a curfew, be home when they say. It builds trust between you and them and they are doing it for your own safety. If you are going to be late, call them and let them know.
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Vandalism is never cool! Throwing eggs at cars and houses is not cool. Someone has to clean it up and it could be you, if you get caught. You can also be arrested and punished as a juvenile. So, don't think that it's fun only if you can get away with it. It's never the right thing to do! Think about how you would feel if someone did that to your house and how bad it would make you feel.
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Hurting animals is never acceptable behavior! Some people use Halloween as an excuse to hurt cats and that is just wrong! Not only is it illegal in most places to hurt or torture animals and punishable by law, you should never hurt a helpless living thing.

Have fun on Halloween but keep it safe, have some good, clean fun and your parents will trust you for many Halloweens to come! Showing them how responsible you can be will give you a feeling of pride and make them see just how adult you really are.

Happy Halloween

happy halloween

Remains were being desecrated in this pipeline #NoDAPL

An anonymous donor paid $2.5 million late Saturday afternoon 2 release every1 arrested on Thurs. @ the DAPL. #NoDAPL

http://m.newson6.com/story.aspx?story=33516507&catId=112042
Oklahoma Tribal Leader Arrested at Dakota Access Pipeline Site





Posted: Oct 30, 2016 12:57PM CDT
Jessi Mitchell, News on 6
A local Caddo Nation tribal leader is free after spending two days behind bars in North Dakota, but family members say she was just an innocent bystander in a clash between police and protesters there.
Family members of Caddo Nation chairwoman Tamara Francis-Fourkiller said an anonymous donor paid $2.5 million late Saturday afternoon to release everyone arrested on Thursday at the Dakota Access Pipeline site. They said, however, that Francis-Fourkiller should not have been arrested in the first place.
An expert on sacred burial grounds, Francis-Fourkiller was one of the tribal leaders visiting the Sioux of Standing Rock to advise them during negotiations with the Dakota Access Pipeline construction team.
“Remains were being desecrated in this pipeline, so they had asked a bunch of people to come up there, so there’s a big conference,” Francis-Fourkiller's sister Loretta Francis said.
On the visit, Francis said her sister and other leaders decided to tour the protest camps. They never thought they would wind up in jail.
Francis said her sister had no access to her medication while in custody in Cass County, North Dakota, and now faces charges of conspiracy and rioting.
“Part of my family was removed on the Trail of Tears and they came here to Oklahoma and they suffered,” said Francis. “I always feel like each generation -- our parents, our grandparents -- try to make it better for the next generation and they certainly didn’t want this for my sister.”
Dozens of Native Americans from Oklahoma tribes gathered Saturday afternoon at the state Capitol to voice their anger at the treatment of the protesters in North Dakota, pointing out this week's acquittal of armed protesters at an Oregon wildlife refuge earlier this year.
“We’re not holding guns. We’re not armed, and when we see the military right here in the US use that on us, it’s shameful,” Comanche Nation tribal council member Sonya Nevaquaya said.
One of the fundamentals of all Native American tribes is the protection of the land.
Chanting “Water is life!” Saturday, the Oklahoma demonstrators hope to rally people from around the country to stand with those in North Dakota and stop construction on the pipeline project.
“These pipelines, you hear of a lot of bursts and leaks and it contaminating the waters. What happens when all of our waters and resources are gone?” Nevaquaya said.
Meantime, Francis-Fourkiller will be traveling back to her home in Norman as soon as possible.

STAND WITH THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX — STOP THE DAKOTA ACCESS OIL PIPELINE

#DakotaAccessPipeline

#NoDAPL

#DAPL

#WaterIsLife

This is a taser barb removed by medic from a #NoDAPL protestor's cheek. #DAPL

Cyndy Coppola was arrested on Saturday on her family's farm in Calhoun County Iowa.

http://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/Iowa-woman-arrested-on-own-property-for-interfering-with-DAPL-construction-397658841.html

A Lot of People Aren't Fans of This Pipeline in North Dakota

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-spurs-multiple-hashtags-justice-league-support

Native Americans march on Sept. 4 to the site of a sacred burial ground that reportedly was disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access pipeline.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/30/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-north-dakota-oregon-militia-native-americans?CMP=twt_gu

taking selfies from obscure and dangerous locations has become a social media craze

From Cosmopolitan

According to the BBC, a 12-year-old Russian girl, solely identified as Oksana B, fell to her death after taking a picture of herself sitting on the railing of a seventeenth-story balcony. She allegedly sent the photo to a friend right before falling.

The news organization reports Oksana’s friend noticed the picture was taken from a “risky location” and sent it to the girl’s mother after Oksana didn’t answer her texts, but by that time, the person who allegedly first spotted Oksana’s body on the ground below the building had called the police. Oksana reportedly had told her mother she was going to take a walk when she went up to the balcony.

Police have not confirmed Oksana was taking a selfie before she died or that taking the picture was what caused her to lose her balance and fall to her death, but the BBC reports the alleged photo has not yet been released.

In recent years, taking selfies from obscure and dangerous locations has become a social media craze with people all over the world posting their daring photos online.
And after a number of selfie-related deaths in Russia last year, the Russian government launched an advice campaign outlining when not to take them.



Oksana's uncle has since posted on social media saying: "She was such a friendly girl. She was a good pupil, she had no problems at school. She took dance classes and English classes.
"She had so much to live for and now she has lost her life to the craze of looking to do extreme selfies for social media.
"There can be no other reason why she climbed over the damned handrail."
Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat

A SOCIAL worker who “strangled and dismembered” a cop he met on Grindr “grated his victim’s flesh from his bones before eating some with chopsticks”

Aylett said: “The officers said that, up until this times, the defendant seemed calm and relatively composed.
“Now, however, he said: ‘I spoke to Satan and he was telling me to kill, kill, kill and I agreed at the first opportunity’.
“That led the officer to ask him if he had any problems with his mental health. The defendant said he used a lot of crystal meth but there was nothing apart from that.”
Brizzi said he had dumped PC Semple’s personal items in a sewer in Bermondsey.
He told them he had put some body parts he had not been able to break down into a bag and taken them to Rotherhithe and dumped them in a quiet place by the river.
He also said the mixture in the bath was Caustic Soda and spirit of salt containing hydrofluoric acid, but that it hadn’t been able to dissolve the body.
Aylett said: “He said the chemicals needed to be heated to 300 degrees and he could not get them hot enough.
“He said that he had put what he described as the ‘flabbery’ bits in the buckets in the bathroom.”


https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2022642/breaking-bad-obsessed-social-worker-accused-of-grindr-murder-grated-victims-flesh-and-ate-it-with-chopsticks/



Internet safety unit coming soon!!!!!!

How to Brew Cascara (The Coffee Cherry Tea)

This sounds amazing!

In this video, we're going to show you how to brew the husk or dried skin that comes from the coffee cherry. This beverage is known as Cascara or The Coffee Cherry Tea. Cascara is actually quite a popular beverage in coffee producing countries like Boliva, Ethiopia & Yemen. 
More on us here! http://theroasterspack.com/

Homeschool downtime color page turned Minecraft assignment

Halloween coloring pages!!! I have kids that like to color and draw. These are awesome. I'm only printing one and telling them to make this is Minecraft tomorrow.

Assignment will be: I need a sugar skull Maaaami, haunted house, and Happy Halloween written


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8 Halloween Books on YouTube

In The Haunted House



Spookley the Square Pumpkin




Froggy's Halloween



Room on the Broom




The House on the Lake




The Hallo-Wiener



Here Comes Halloween



skeleton hiccups

Halloween Chant for the Hayride

In the graveyard 
sung to the tune of Clementine

In the graveyard,
In the graveyard
When the moon
Begins to shine
There's a doctor,
Crazy doctor
And his monster,
Frankenstein

Oh, my monster,
Oh, my monster
Oh, my monster,
Frankenstein
You are very,
Very scary
Don't come near me,
Frankenstein

In Iceland, the land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-a-land-of-vikings-braces-for-a-pirate-party-takeover/2016/10/23/f1bfe992-9540-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND — The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and Web geeks. It sets policy through online polls — and thinks the government should do the same. It wants to make Iceland “a Switzerland of bits,” free of digital snooping. It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

And then there’s the name: In this land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

The rise of the Pirates — from radical fringe to focal point of Icelandic politics — has astonished even the party’s founder, a poet, Web programmer and former WikiLeaks activist.

“No way,” said 49-year-old Birgitta Jónsdóttir when asked whether she could have envisioned her party governing the country so soon after its launch.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is an Icelandic politician, poet, and activist. She is currently a Member of the Althing for the Southwest Constituency, representing the Pirate Party, having been elected at the 2013 election.

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August 13, 2016 · by Andrew Williams 

After much anticipation, the Icelandic coalition partners have announced the date of the early election to be held this autumn as 29 October 2016. The Prime Minister, Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, who only assumed the office in April, met with opposition party leaders before making his announcement, who reportedly approved the date. Sigurður did offer the caveat that “Judging by how matters progressed in parliament this spring and summer, we expect that that will happen.”

The coalition government had been reluctant to set a date for the election, as they still had a number of pieces of legislation they wished to pass. As late as 10 August, the agriculture and fishing minister told RÚV Radio: “Let’s make it clear that as soon as we have a set date, that gives the opposition a certain weapon; then it can hold parliament hostage and determine exactly what resolutions will pass in parliament. It can, in fact dictate the schedule with a filibuster or demands. That’s the reason we can’t set the date ahead of time.” He said there were over 50 individual pieces of legislation waiting to be passed.

This means the political campaigning can now enter full swing. The three most recent polls have put the Pirate Party as almost neck and neck with the Independence Party, one of the two current coalition partners. The most recent Gallup poll, from 29 July, put the Pirate Party in second place on 25.3%, and Independence in first with 26.2%. With current polling, a possible result could be a three-way coalition between the Pirate Party, the Left-Green Movement and the Social Democratic Alliance. Support for the other coalition partner, the Progressive Party, has collapsed since Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned as Prime Minister in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations. Another interesting development is the rise of new party Viðreisn, which split from the Independence Party, and may attract votes from Icelanders on the right. It is currently polling around 9%.

Based on the 2013 results, with 25% support the Pirate Party is likely to win just under 20 seats, out of the 63 seats up for election in the parliament. In readiness for the election, the party is holding primaries to select the candidates in each constituency. In the primaries, 17 candidates are hoping to stand in the South Constituency, 24 in the North Constituency, and 102 across the capital’s four constituencies, which adds up to 143 people vying to be Pirate Party candidates in total. Already, the results are in from the primary in the South Constituency, with party co-founder Smári McCarthy topping the list. The primaries in the capital constituencies ends on 12 August, and the primary in the North Constituency ends on 15 August. Within a few months, these people will almost certainly be part of the largest party in the Icelandic parliament, no small achievement.

Editors note: 29 October 2016 is the tentative date set but it’s still not formal. The current government demands that some legislation be passed for the election to happen at that date. Thus, if you book a trip to Iceland – to be part of the historic event – make sure it’s a refundable or changeable flight since the date may still change.

Featured image by Democracy Chronicles, CC-BY 2.0.

Rice Krispy Treats

Today we're making rice krispy treats.

3 simple ingredients
crispy rice cereal
marshmallow
butter


line a 9x13 pan with wax paper
melt butter and marshmallow
stir crispy rice cereal into gooey marshmallow mix
spread into the wax paper lined pan

13 Halloween Facts

                  

1. Halloween beliefs and customs were brought to North America with the earliest Irish immigrants, then by the great waves of Irish immigrants fleeing the famines of the first half of the nineteenth century. Known in the North American continent since colonial days, by the middle of the twentieth century Halloween had become largely a children's holiday.
2. Halloween, also known as All Hallows' Eve, can be traced back about 2,000 years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival held around Nov. 1 called Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"), which means "summer's end" in Gaelic, according to the Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries. 
3. Samhain is not fully understood, but it was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures.
4. In Great Britain, Jack-O-Lanterns are traditionally made from turnips. The Halloween custom came to American through Irish immigrants, and since turnips weren’t cheap state-side, Americans used pumpkins. Today, pumpkins are used worldwide, to the disappointment of turnip farmers everywhere.                                                      
5. The Jack-O-Lantern tradition comes from another Celtic tale. Jack tricked the Devil into paying for his drink, so the Devil gave Jack a hellish ember. But crafty Jack placed the ember safely into a turnip, which he carved and carried with him so as to scare away any future hellish encounters.
6. Trick-or-treating didn't start in the United States until World War II, but American kids were known to go out on Thanksgiving and ask for food — a practice known as Thanksgiving begging. The practice may also be related to the medieval custom of "souling" in Britain and Ireland, when poor people would knock on doors on Hallowmas (Nov. 1), asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead.
7. These days, the "trick" part of the phrase "trick or treat" is mostly an empty threat, but pranks have long been a part of the holiday. By the 1920s and '30s, the celebrations more closely resembled an unruly block party, and the acts of vandalism got more serious. Some people believe that because pranking was starting to get dangerous and out of hand, parents and town leaders began to encourage dressing up and trick-or-treating as a safe alternative to doing pranks
8. The night of Oct. 30, which goes by a variety of names including Devil's Night in Detroit and Miggy Night in parts of England, sees neighborhood youngsters pull pranks just as diverse as the customs monikers, ranging from the innocent to the downright dangerous.
9. Apples are associated with Halloween, both as a treat and in the game of bobbing for apples, a game that since the colonial era in America was used for fortune-telling. Legend has it that the first person to pluck an apple from the water-filled bucket without using his or her hands would be the first to marry. Apples were also part of another form of marriage prophecy. According to legend, on Halloween (sometimes at the stroke of midnight), young women would peel an apple into one continuous strip and throw it over her shoulder. The apple skin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her future husband's name.
10. Another Halloween ritual involved looking in a mirror at midnight by candlelight, for a future husband's face was said to appear. (A scary variation of this later became the "Bloody Mary" ritual familiar to many schoolgirls.) Like many such childhood games, it was likely done in fun, though at least some people took it seriously. 
11.  Black cats do not need to have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil — simply crossing their path is considered bad luck any time of year.
12. A 1951 Peanuts comic strip can be credited with the popular spread of trick or treating as we know it nationwide. So dress up as Snoopy if you want to be historically accurate.   
13. Candy-makers are pretty happy about that. Halloween is a $6 billion industry. But with or without candy, everyone loves a Halloween party. Traditionally, a Halloween Cake was baked with a thimble inside. Whoever got the thimble in their slice was to be unfortunate in love for the next year.

Storks Movie 2016

Storks have moved on from delivering babies to packages. But when an order for a baby appears, the best delivery stork must scramble to fix the error by delivering the baby.

Cute movie, Lillian, age 6, really enjoyed it.

winterizing the chicken coop

Over at http://hencam.com/winter-care-for-chickens/

We learned:

An average chicken has 8,500 feathers. Like its wild bird cousins, a chicken will fluff up, trap air under her down, and stay cozy, even in below freezing temperatures. However, a sharp, cold wind that ruffles the feathers can sent a chill to the skin. Icy rain on a hen’s head and mud frozen on a feathered legged hen’s legs, can chill her to the bone. So, although that fine-feathered garment can keep a hen plenty warm even in the coldest weather, there are some things to do to keep your chickens comfortable and healthy in the winter.

some hens, and often roosters, have big combs, prone to frostbite. Slather on some vaseline if you know the temperature is going to drop

 keep coop shoveled out weekly and bedded with fresh pine shavings

Chickens need to be high and dry. If your run gets muddy, add a few bags of sand, or put down wood chips, to give the hens a place to roam above the muck

One of the most important things to give your chickens in the winter is fresh water. If you have electricity in the barn, get one of these base heaters for the waterer.

give them an added ration of cracked corn or scratch grains

hang a cabbage in the pen. They peck at it (they do like a rousing game of tetherball) and so don’t peck at each other. The added benefit is that they’re eating greens

Hens need 14 hours of sunlight to lay. You can increase the light using a 40 watt bulb on a timer, and you’ll bring production up. If you do decide to use a light, turn it on in the early morning. Do not use it at night – if it’s dark out and the light suddenly goes off, the hens won’t have a chance to settle into their roosts for bedtime. They’ll be miserably stuck on the ground.

An Evolutionary Cascade Model for Sauropod Dinosaur Gigantism - Overview, Update and Tests

• An Evolutionary Cascade Model for Sauropod Dinosaur Gigantism - Overview, Update and Tests
• P. Martin Sander 

Sauropod dinosaurs are a group of herbivorous dinosaurs which exceeded all other terrestrial vertebrates in mean and maximal body size. Sauropod dinosaurs were also the most successful and long-lived herbivorous tetrapod clade, but no abiological factors such as global environmental parameters conducive to their gigantism can be identified. These facts justify major efforts by evolutionary biologists and paleontologists to understand sauropods as living animals and to explain their evolutionary success and uniquely gigantic body size. Contributions to this research program have come from many fields and can be synthesized into a biological evolutionary cascade model of sauropod dinosaur gigantism (sauropod gigantism ECM). This review focuses on the sauropod gigantism ECM, providing an updated version based on the contributions to the PLoS ONE sauropod gigantism collection and on other very recent published evidence. The model consist of five separate evolutionary cascades (“Reproduction”, “Feeding”, “Head and neck”, “Avian-style lung”, and “Metabolism”). Each cascade starts with observed or inferred basal traits that either may be plesiomorphic or derived at the level of Sauropoda. Each trait confers hypothetical selective advantages which permit the evolution of the next trait. Feedback loops in the ECM consist of selective advantages originating from traits higher in the cascades but affecting lower traits. All cascades end in the trait “Very high body mass”. Each cascade is linked to at least one other cascade. Important plesiomorphic traits of sauropod dinosaurs that entered the model were ovipary as well as no mastication of food. Important evolutionary innovations (derived traits) were an avian-style respiratory system and an elevated basal metabolic rate. Comparison with other tetrapod lineages identifies factors limiting body size.

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•       
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• http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078573

This review of the biology of the sauropod dinosaurs and the evolution of their gigantism, condensed into the sauropod gigantism ECM, serves to compile and synthesize the rapidly expanding literature on the subject, including this collection in PLoS ONE. It also serves as an update to an earlier review [2] in which the evidence available in late 2009 was synthesized into a unified biological scenario of sauropod gigantism, using the approach of an evolutionary cascade model. Testing the premise that it is mainly intrinsic factors rooted in the biology of the clade Sauropodomorpha that explains the historical pattern of its evolution to gigantic body size, was no the aim of this review. However, the evidence reviewed here shows at least that there is no need to invoke extrinsic, abiological factors to explain sauropod gigantism. Testing the influence of environmental change over geological time scales on the historic pattern of evolution is a valid research program, but it is not the one we pursue.

The rich new evidence accumulated in these last four years was then used to test the ECM by asking how this evidence impacted the component cascades and the entire ECM. Most of the inferred traits, selective advantages, and feedback loops in the ECM found support, sometimes strongly so, while in a few others (e.g. “High growth rate”) support weakened or relationships had to be rejected (the physiological underpinning of the feedback loop “Large gut capacity”). The ECM was also refined by splitting up traits and adding new ones. The general conclusion of Sander & Clauss [1] and Sander et al. [2] that sauropod gigantism was able to evolve because of the complex interplay of a historically contingent combination of plesiomorphic (primitive) and derived traits and characters, has emerged stronger than before. While the principle of parsimony calls for preference of simple solutions over complex ones, it is simplistic to assume that a single factor will explain sauropod gigantism. Finally, the sauropod gigantism ECM is hoped to evolve into a comprehensive framework informing us about evolutionary body size limits in herbivorous tetrapods in particular and other terrestrial tetrapods in general.

References

1. 1.Sander PM, Clauss M (2008) Sauropod gigantism. Science 322: 200–201. doi: 10.1126/science.1160904
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2. 2.Sander PM, Christian A, Clauss M, Fechner R, Gee CT, et al. (2011) Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism. Biological Reviews 86: 117–155. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-185x.2010.00137.x
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Household air pollution and health

http://se4all.org/sites/default/files/l/2013/09/SG_Sustainable_Energy_for_All_vision_final_clean.pdf

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/

Key facts

• Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.
• Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
• More than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 are caused by the particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.
• 3.8 million premature deaths annually from noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are attributed to exposure to household air pollution.
• Indoor air pollution and household energy: the forgotten 3 billion

Around 3 billion people still cook and heat their homes using solid fuels (i.e. wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung) in open fires and leaky stoves. Most are poor, and live in low- and middle-income countries.

Such inefficient cooking fuels and technologies produce high levels of household air pollution with a range of health-damaging pollutants, including small soot particles that penetrate deep into the lungs. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can be 100 times higher than acceptable levels for fine particles. Exposure is particularly high among women and young children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth.

Impacts on health

4.3 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels (2012 data) for cooking. Among these deaths:

• 12% are due to pneumonia
• 34% from stroke
• 26% from ischaemic heart disease
• 22% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and
• 6% from lung cancer.

Pneumonia
Exposure to household air pollution almost doubles the risk for childhood pneumonia. Over half of deaths among children less than 5 years old from acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) are due to particulate matter inhaled from indoor air pollution from household solid fuels (WHO, 2014).

Stroke
Nearly one quarter of all premature deaths due to stroke (i.e. about 1.4 million deaths of which half are in women) can be attributed to the chronic exposure to household air pollution caused by cooking with solid fuels.

Ischaemic heart disease
Approximately 15% of all deaths due to ischaemic heart disease, accounting for over a million premature deaths annually, can be attributed to exposure to household air pollution.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Over one-third of premature deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adults in low- and middle-income countries are due to exposure to household air pollution. Women exposed to high levels of indoor smoke are more than 2 times as likely to suffer from COPD than women who use cleaner fuels. Among men (who already have a heightened risk of COPD due to their higher rates of smoking), exposure to indoor smoke nearly doubles (i.e. 1.9) that risk.

Lung cancer
Approximately 17% of annual premature lung cancer deaths in adults are attributable to exposure to carcinogens from household air pollution caused by cooking with solid fuels like wood, charcoal or coal. The risk for women is higher, due to their role in food preparation.

Other health impacts and risks
More generally, small particulate matter and other pollutants in indoor smoke inflame the airways and lungs, impairing immune response and reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.

There is also evidence of links between household air pollution and low birth weight, tuberculosis, cataract, nasopharyngeal and laryngeal cancers.

Mortality from ischaemic heart disease and stroke are also affected by risk factors such as high blood pressure, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity and smoking. Some other risks for childhood pneumonia include suboptimal breastfeeding, underweight and second-hand smoke. For lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, active smoking and second-hand tobacco smoke are also main risk factors.

Impacts on health equity, development and climate change

Without a substantial change in policy, the total number of people relying on solid fuels will remain largely unchanged by 2030 (World Bank, 2010). The use of polluting fuels also poses a major burden on sustainable development.

• Fuel gathering consumes considerable time for women and children, limiting other productive activities (e.g. income generation) and taking children away from school. In less secure environments, women and children are at risk of injury and violence during fuel gathering.
• Black carbon (sooty particles) and methane emitted by inefficient stove combustion are powerful climate change pollutants.
• The lack of access to electricity for at least 1.2 billion people (many of whom then use kerosene lamps for lighting) exposes households to very high levels of fine particulate matter, as well introduces other health risks, e.g. burns, injuries and poisonings from fuel ingestion, constraining other opportunities for health and development, e.g. studying or engaging in small crafts and trades, which require adequate lighting.

WHO's response

WHO provides technical support to countries in their own evaluations and scale-up of health-promoting household fuels and technologies. WHO is building capacity at the country and regional level to address household air pollution with workshops and the development of tools to help design, implement and monitor policies addressing household energy.

Other WHO activities include the following:

New indoor air quality guidelines for household fuel combustion
To ensure healthy air in and around the home, WHO’s new indoor air quality guidelines for household fuel combustion provide health-based recommendations on the types of fuels and technologies to protect health as well as strategies for the effective dissemination of such home energy technologies. These build upon existing WHO outdoor air quality guidelines and WHO guidance on levels of specific indoor pollutants.

Household energy database
The WHO Household Energy Database is used to monitor global progress in the transition to cleaner fuels and stove combinations, as well as contributes to assessments of disease burden from household energy and the energy access situation in low and middle-income countries. Recently this database has been expanded to include, in addition to extensive data on cooking, information on household fuels and technologies used for heating lighting and other impacts like time spent collecting fuel. The WHO Household Energy Database is used to monitor global progress in the transition to cleaner fuels and improved stoves as well as contribute to assessments of disease burden from household energy and the energy access situation in developing countries.

Research and programme evaluation
WHO is working with countries, researchers and other partners to harmonize methods of evaluation across settings so that health impacts are assessed consistently and rigorously and also incorporate economic assessment of health benefits.

Leadership and advocacy in the health, energy and climate community
Health sector
WHO is working to integrate guidance and resources for supporting clean household energy into global health initiatives and decision-support tools, such as the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrheal Disease (GAPPD), or Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health, as well as into other aspects of WHO's own health policy guidance. WHO advocates about the compelling health arguments for cleaner household energy in a range of global forums addressing maternal and child health issues related to pneumonia as well as forums concerned with noncommunicable diseases in adults. This can help awareness of the importance of providing and scaling up of cleaner household energy as a core preventive public health measure.

Health and climate change
WHO is a partner of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (CCAC). As a member of the CCAC’s health task force, WHO is providing technical support for harnessing health benefits from actions to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, and working to scale up health sector engagement to address such pollutants and improve air quality.

Health, energy and sustainable development
Reductions in air pollution-related disease burden (both for household and outdoor) will be used to monitor the progress towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goal on Health (SDG 3).

Ensuring universal access to clean fuel and technologies is a target of the Sustainable Development Goal on energy (SDG 7). If this target is met it could prevent millions of deaths and improve the health and well-being of the billions of people relying on polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting.

To better assess the health risks, as well as differentiated gender impacts from household energy, WHO is leading an effort with countries and surveying agencies (e.g. USAID’s DHS, UNICEF’S MICS, World Bank’s LSMS) to enhance, harmonize and pilot new questions for national censuses. The effort will also survey to better capture information on all the fuels and technologies used in the home for cooking, heating and lighting, as well as other impacts like time lost to fuel collection.

WHO also contributes to the development and updating of the global tracking framework used to measure progress toward the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative target of universal access to clean energy by 2030.

NIH awards $30M to Emory, Johns Hopkins, Colorado State for household air pollution study

Key facts

• Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.
• Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
• More than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 are caused by the particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.
• 3.8 million premature deaths annually from noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are attributed to exposure to household air pollution.

http://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/10/tom_clasen_air_pollution_study/index.html





The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, in collaboration with the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and Colorado State University, has been awarded $30 million over five years for a multi-country randomized controlled field trial to assess the impact of cleaner burning cooking stoves on household air pollution and health in four low- and medium-income countries.  The funding was awarded by the National Institutes of Health with partial support through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Household air pollution is a leading risk factor for mortality globally, accounting for an estimated 2.9 million deaths annually in 2015.  It is a major cause of pneumonia, the leading killer of young children in low-income settings; it is also believed to contribute to low birth weight and restricted linear growth in children and to increased blood pressure and other cardiovascular and respiratory effects in adults.  The main source of household air pollution is indoor cooking and heating on traditional stoves using solid fuels, such as wood, coal, and charcoal.  Globally three billion people still cook or heat with open fires or traditional stoves using solid fuels.

"Previous interventions have provided cleaner solid fuel-based stoves, but have generally failed to produce expected reductions in exposure to household air pollution and improvements in health," says Thomas Clasen, JD, PhD, professor of Environmental Health at Rollins School of Public Health. "There have been no large-scale field trials with gas stoves, which are likely the cleanest scalable intervention in these settings."

The study is led by Clasen, along with Jennifer Peel, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at Colorado State University, and William Checkley, MD, PhD associate professor of Medicine, International Health, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. The research team includes colleagues at their respective institutions as well as investigators from Sri Ramachandra University in India, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, AB PRISMA and the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru, the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, the University of Georgia, Harvard University, Berkeley Air Quality Monitoring and the University of California San Francisco.

The research team will establish trial sites in India, Guatemala, Peru, and Rwanda that will each recruit 800 pregnant women into the study. Half of the 3,200 participating households will be randomly assigned to receive liquefied petroleum gas stoves and the other half will serve as controls using their customary cooking practices.  Participating households will be followed for 30 months with extensive monitoring of stove use and personal exposure to household air pollution, as well as extensive assessments of health outcomes including birth weight, preterm birth, growth and respiratory infections in children  and respiratory function, blood pressure, inflammation, and other indicators of heart disease in adults. "The broad range of health outcomes that we will assess will provide an unprecedented opportunity to link health and exposure to household air pollution," explains Checkley.

The proposed trial will provide compelling evidence to inform national and global policies on interventions to reduce household air pollution among vulnerable populations.  "The implementation of these common protocols in our four diverse trial sites should provide policymakers with the information they need in order to make decisions about scaling up clean cooking," says Peel.

"Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UM1HL134590. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health."

Emory University social events for non-whites only... Saw this on Drudge Report

Emory University social events for non-whites only... Saw this headline over on Drudge Report
Of course, I went to Emory University's website.
This was the first image that appears. I just had to ..

Emory University 

Click the link below to read the article.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8287

Field Trip Friday: What's around Baltimore?

Be an Art Scholar for a Day at the Maryland Institute College of Art

Enjoy the free exhibits in all of the galleries on campus at MICA.

Here is more information on the Children and Teens classes 

https://www.mica.edu/Programs_for_Children_and_Teens/Young_Peoples_Studios/Young_Peoples_Studio_Courses.html

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, one of the longest-reigning monarchs in history, died Thursday at age 88. His death, and the transition of power, could become a turning point for a country ruled by a military junta and long divided by rival political factions.

Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, 64 is the king's appointed successor. Exactly when Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn will ascend to the throne is unknown. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said "he needs time to jointly mourn with Thai people."

According to the palace statement, all government buildings will fly the Thai flag at half-staff for 30 days starting October 14, and all civil servants have been ordered to wear black clothing for a year as a sign of mourning, the palace said.
"I would like to ask all Thais to listen to the credible source of news and invite all Thais to dress in a way to mourn his passing for one year to offer our condolences," the prime minister said in a television address.
He further urged citizens to remain calm, for the sake of the country's stability, and said soldiers would be stationed in "every area throughout the kingdom" to boost security.
"Do not let anyone seek an advantage during this time of crisis," Prayut said.
Even on Bangkok's famous Khao San Road -- known for its bright lights, nightclubs and swarms of backpackers -- the mood was somber. Restaurants and food vendors remained open, but had been told by police to close by midnight. The usual loud dance music was absent as nightclubs closed for the night.


Also known as Rama IX -- a reference to his lineage stretching from Rama I, the founder of the Chakri dynasty -- Bhumibol commanded great love and respect within Thailand. An energetic public relations machine promoted his popularity, which led to his portrait being adorned with marigolds from Bangkok office lobbies to the poorest of rural homes.
The king's health had been in slow decline for some time. The palace said a team of royal physicians had tried its best and provided the closest care. Toward the end of his reign, his presence in public life waned. Doctors at the Siriraj Hospital had earlier said he was having problems with his kidneys, blood flow to the left side of his heart and blood pressure.
Last month, he was treated for a severe infection, reduced kidney function and fluid in his lung. He had surgery to remove his gallbladder last year.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/13/asia/thai-king-bhumibol-adulyadej-dies/

My Fall 2016 Clothing Must-Have-Now's

***** Im using my Amazon affiliate link****** I don't make any money, but I want my husband to purchase these for me, so using the links will make it easier for him!!!!!!!!!!!!

Freezer Must Have

I have to admit once we started making and freezing PB&Js my life has been a little less chaotic. Take tonight as my example, Lillian was grumpy and refused dinner. 8:30 she comes tip toeing down the stairs. She's hungry  

I said, "..you have your choice of leftovers. Go check out your choices." I get, "there's no frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!!" WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN worth it WIN WIN

Tomorrow, we'll be making more! We found her one in the freezer and she was happy. I'm sure she'll be down any minute for a piece of fruit.

#crustables  #pbandj

A photo posted by Raine Ader ️️️️💄 (@maaaamiraine) on Jul 31, 2016 at 8:42am PDT

Frozen PB&Js

2 slices of grass fed bread (haha)
jelly
peanut butter

Spread thin amount of PB on each slice
slather on the jelly
pop in a sandwich bag
freeze

thaw on the counter or in your lunch bag

My kids say the best way is to eat them frozen

I made a peanut butter jelly video on #musical.ly #easilyamused

A video posted by Raine Ader ️️️️💄 (@maaaamiraine) on May 31, 2016 at 7:34am PDT

Garlic Scapes

We are learning about all things indigenous to our Baltimore Backyard Barnyard. I've recently come across garlic scapes.
As garlic matures, so do the plant’s flowerless green stalks (a.k.a. the scapes). If left intact, the stalks will eventually grow small bulbs, which can be planted. But usually they’re chopped off, to give the growing garlic as much strength and nutrients as possible. Garlic bulbs aren’t the only ones to benefit from these trimmings—chefs and eaters alike can enjoy the long, curling, aromatic stalks in delicious spring dishes.


Where: Scapes grow from hardneck garlic, which prefers a cooler climate, so you’ll have the best luck finding them in areas like the Northeast and the Midwest.


When: June.

What to look for: While the long, super-curly scapes are beautiful, the smaller, shorter ones are much more tender. Look for bright green scapes that have just one curl.

Flavor profile: Scapes have a mellow, garlicky flavor with a hint of spice. Think green onion meets garlic meets chive.

Health benefits: Scapes are high in antioxidants and could help reoxygenate blood and protect the liver. They also contain allium compounds, which are thought to help protect against osteoarthritis.

How to eat them: Trimmed of the tips and bottoms, the scapes are delicious simply sautéed in olive oil for an easy spring side dish. They can also be made into pesto, tossed with olive oil and grilled, or chopped and added to a stir-fry or creamy pasta.