Researchers have a scientific reason for the value of spending more time outdoors. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Past research has found that bacteria found in dirt can ease allergic reactions, reduce anxiety, and improve a person’s mood. Now, new research finds the bacteria might make us smarter. Mark Brush reports:
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Past research has found that bacteria found in dirt can ease allergic reactions, reduce anxiety, and improve a person’s mood. Now, new research finds the bacteria might make us smarter. Mark Brush reports:
Researchers fed mice M. Vaccae bacteria and found the mice were twice as fast at navigating a maze.
Dorothy Matthews is an Associate Professor of Biology at Sage College in Troy, New York. She presented her research at a recent meeting of American Society for Microbiology. She says the bacteria are something we used to be exposed to more. Her comments were posted on the Society’s website:
“For most of our history we were hunter gatherers, rooting around in the soil, following the tracks of animals. It’s only been a hundred years or so ago, that we moved into cities and have become disassociated with nature.”
Researchers have found that M. Vaccae found in dirt can boost serotonin levels in the brains’ of the mice they studied. Serotonin can affect mood, appetite, memory and learning.
Cline Avenue and its bridge once cut across and over steel mills and refineries in East Chicago, Indiana. Inspectors found it was structurally unsound and the state didn't feel it warranted repair. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The US government estimates about twelve percent of the country’s bridges are in dire need of repair.
Those are hazards, of course, but for towns that pride themselves on their industrial might … a crumbling bridge is a concrete and steel embarrassment.
Shawn Allee found one town that needs to remove a bridge but thinks maybe that’s for the best:
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The US government estimates about twelve percent of the country’s bridges are in dire need of repair.
Those are hazards, of course, but for towns that pride themselves on their industrial might … a crumbling bridge is a concrete and steel embarrassment.
Shawn Allee found one town that needs to remove a bridge but thinks maybe that’s for the best:
East Chicago, Indiana, has been a steel- and chemical-manufacturing powerhouse, and still is, but mills and refineries need fewer workers these days.
That industrial decline is a sore spot that got poked pretty hard last fall.
Some inspectors found structural problems in the Cline Avenue bridge.
It’s an enormous bridge that let drivers soar over canals, trains, and industrial truck routes.
But the local government and the State of Indiana didn’t have the money for a fix, and they closed Cline Avenue bridge for good.
That bothers Monica Serrano.
She wonders, if the town’s losing a bridge, what does that say about the town?
“Why would I stay in this area? If I know the roads are deteriorating, and people are just gonna leave, why would I stay? I want to be in an area that would flourish. I really feel that don’t have the best judgement when it comes to the people here.”
Well, there’re people who think removing the bridge is an opportunity to remake East Chicago for the better.
One person who makes that argument is Kristi DeLaurentiis.
She’s with the Metropolitan Planning Council, a regional land-use think tank.
To make her case, she drives me past East Chicago’s steel mills and refineries.
From your car window … they loom large and dominate the landscape.
“There’s only small pockets of open space that are not privately or corporate-owned.”
DeLaurentiis says back in the day, big industry scooped up enormous stretches of real – estate, including the shoreline along Lake Michigan.
“Maybe but you can kind of see the lake front from here …
It goes on for what seems like it goes on for miles. Nothing but beachfront that’s cut off by fences or very large industrial buildings, smokestacks and the like.
You know, they really have not taken advantage of the shoreline they have.”
DeLaurentiis says the mills use fewer workers these days, and they need less land, too.
So, East Chicago is hoping to reclaim industrial space for an economic boost.
Maybe developers would build new neighborhoods closer to the lake and pay a premium for it.
Or, at the very least, residents could get more parks.
“Here, it seems a real shame not to have people picnicking and using the open space and really not to have personal enjoyment within their own community.”
Well, back to the issue of the Cline Avenue bridge …
DeLaurentiis says it makes things worse – it blocks off the lake from the rest of the town.
It’s so tall, you can’t see past it and you gotta drive a ways to get around it.
If you want to reclaim industrial space for parklands or beachfront neighborhoods, no one will do that if the bridge is in the way.
That’s the practical argument … but what about the idea that big infrastructure is part of East Chicago’s identity?
Surprisingly, big industry won’t miss the bridge much.
Mark Maassel (MAH-zull) heads the Northwest Indiana Forum, a group that represents business in the area, including the steel mills.
“So while I recognize those comments, if we rebuilt that bridge, the one thing we can say for certain is that you’ve spent an enormous amount of dollars and cents resources that would have been potentially used in some other way, and you’ve done it to recreate a barrier between one part of the community and the next.”
Maassel says the whole town of East Chicago, including the remaining steel mills, will benefit from a better local economy.
If that means letting an old symbol like a bridge die, then so be it.
Many chemicals in sunscreens have not been tested for safety. (Photo courtesy of U.S. General Services Administration).
An environmental group is critical of the claims by many sunscreen manufacturers. They’re calling for better regulation of the industry by the government. Lester Graham reports:
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An environmental group is critical of the claims by many sunscreen manufacturers. They’re calling for better regulation of the industry by the government. Lester Graham reports:
Health experts say sunscreen should not be your first line of defense for protection from the sun. They recommend protective clothing and staying in the shade.
Once you’re out in the sun, though, health experts say sunscreen is a must.
But a new study by the Environmental Working Group found a lot of problems with sunscreens. The study says many contain suspect chemicals, some known as hormone disruptors. And Sonya Lunders says her group is skeptical about sunscreens that claim SPF protection of 50 and as high as 100.
“And we know that those products don’t offer a similar amount of protection from the sun-damaging UVA rays.”
Giving users a false sense of security about protection from sun damage.
Of the hundreds of sunscreens on the market, the group only recommends 39 of them on its website.
It blames the FDA for allowing a lot of confusing claims about sunscreens.
Some researchers say telecommuting can be more energy efficient if it's done 5 days a week. (Photo courtesy of Penarc - Wikimedia Commons)
Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:
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Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:
Something like 33 million of us work from home or a coffee shop at least once a month. And the whole idea of telecommuting just sounds like it saves energy. I mean, you’re cutting out your commute. So it saves gas.
And it can save a lot of gas money.
Sun Microsystems has what it calls an Open Work program. It allows employees to work wherever they want… from home or from a coffee shop. The company studied its teleworkers’ habits in 2007. And they found the average employee working from home two days a week ended up saving 500 to 600 dollars a year in fuel costs.
But things are more complicated than that.
Arpad Horvath is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Berkeley. He studies teleworking.
“For example one might telecommute, but also maintain an office at the company as well as at home which of course now means we have to support with energy and other inputs two offices rather than one.”
So – if you have a company office AND a home office… and you’re using both… he says the energy savings might be kind of a wash because you’re using more energy at home. And if you’re not commuting… but you hop in the car to run a bunch of errands to get out of the house… you might not save that much gas.
Horvath says… for telecommuting to save the most energy, it can’t be just a couple days a week.
“The ideal situation is that somebody teleworks full time, gives up the company office and doesn’t increase anything else in one’s individual life, doesn’t travel more for pleasure, doesn’t substantially change the setup at home.”
But for a lot of people it just doesn’t work that way.
Surveys from the Telework Research Network show that less than two percent of Americans work from home all the time.
And experts say the main reason is: it can be a trust issue for the boss.
Rose Stanley is with World-at-Work. It’s a human resources organization.
“It’s a cultural shift within an organization to go to the next level of managing without being able to see their employees. That face time is still a stigma culturally speaking.”
Stanley says bosses just need to be trained on how to manage remote workers. She says her boss pops up on an instant message board throughout the day, just to check in.
Another obstacle to full-time telecommuting is… it’s just YOU. There’s nobody to talk to but the dog.
So some telecommuters are trying co-working. It’s a shared working space for people who would normally work from home.
(snd of espresso machine)
Mike Kessler is the co-owner of Workantile Exchange in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a big, open space… with a coffee shop right up front. Kessler says the whole idea of co-working is… instead of having dozens of individual home offices… there’s one office that dozens of people share when they need to.
“The environmental benefits are everybody needs the same thing to get things done… you need your wifi, table, chair, good coffee, meeting rooms, a bathroom… not everybody needs those at the same time.”
He says also… the space is close to where people live, so they can walk or bike to work.
Some analysts think this kind of setup is where more of us are headed. But they say for most companies… telecommuting is not driven by energy savings… it’s a business decision. It’s more about retaining good employees and increasing productivity. If it saves employees some gas money, that’s just a bonus.
The report says U.S. farmers could see hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue if rainforests are kept intact. (Photo courtesy of the USDOE)
A new report says stopping deforestation in the rainforests will benefit farms in the U.S. Mark Brush reports, it calls for money to be set aside to pay for rainforest conservation:
Researchers have a scientific reason for the value of spending more time outdoors. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
