20160427 - rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with annual rainfall between 250 and 450 centimetres (98 and 177 in). There are two types of rainforest: tropical rainforest and temperate rainforest. The monsoon trough, alternatively known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating the climatic conditions necessary for the Earth's tropical rainforests.
Around 40% to 75% of all biotic species are indigenous to the rainforests. It has been estimated that there may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. Rainforests are also responsible for 28% of the world's oxygen turnover, sometimes misnamed oxygen production, processing it through photosynthesis from carbon dioxide and consuming it through respiration.
The undergrowth in some areas of a rainforest can be restricted by poor penetration of sunlight to ground level. If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs and small trees, called a jungle. The term jungle is also sometimes applied to tropical rainforests generally.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest

20140426 - bloesemtocht

Bloesemtocht in de Betuwe

Bloesemtochten om te wandelen of fietsen

Waar anders dan in de Betuwe kunt u het beste genieten van de bloesem in het voorjaar? Daarom trekken jaarlijkse vele toeristen naar de Betuwe voor een bloesemtocht langs al dat natuurlijk schoon.
Bent u van plan om een bloesemroute te gaan wandelen of fietsen, combineer dat dan eens met een bezoekje aan het oud Hollandse Buren in de Betuwe. Diverse routes lopen langs, of zelfs door onze stad, hetgeen u in staat stelt om even een versnapering tot u te nemen.

Wanneer bloeit de bloesem?

De meeste bloesem bloeit in april en mei, maar het weer is natuurlijk een belangrijke bepalende factor, en daarnaast bloeien niet alle bomen tegelijk. Het is daarom raadzaam om u van te voren goed te informeren welke bloesem u op de bloesemtocht route aan kunt treffen.

http://www.burenstad.nl/site/bloesemtocht

20160425 - lighting

How Just The Right Lighting May Improve Learning In Classrooms

A new study reveals what kind of lighting may best support academic performance.

We all know how just the right lighting can set “the mood” — whether you’re aiming for a romantic ambiance, an energizing workout environment, or a dimly lit atmosphere to relax in.
Now, a new study published in the journal Optics Express this week, suggests that dynamic lighting can support students’ performance in classrooms.
Researchers in South Korea found that lighting can be optimized for many various activities, from test-taking to recess to reading, and they characterized lighting by measuring their CCTs — or different correlated color temperatures — from “warm” to “cool” using the Kelvin scale.
While the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology research findings may seem obvious, they provide more evidence to support the argument that lighting can influence our well-being and that we can manipulate lighting to help improve our well-being, study co-author Dr. Hyeon-Jeong Suk, an associate professor at the institute, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
“Besides improving human performance, variable lighting CCTs also exert a great influence on both the physical and mental conditions of humans,” Suk said. “However, such benefits of lighting have not yet been fully adopted in the educational environment. At the beginning of our research, we were shocked by the fact that the lighting facilities in educational environments were much poorer than we’d anticipated.”

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lighting-boost-learning-concentration_us_5720cb14e4b0b49df6a9b73e?utm_hp_ref=science

20160424 - bosch project

The Bosch Research and Conservation Project

Jheronimus Bosch’s artistic heritage consists of about 45 paintings and drawings spread across 2 continents, 10 countries, 18 cities, and 20 collections. In 2016 it will be 500 years since Bosch died, and to commemorate this, his hometown of ’s-Hertogenbosch will hold an exhibition of his works. Since 2010, the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) has been studying and documenting these works, using modern, standardized methods. In a collaborative effort and with many participating museums, an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars and scientists has been scrutinizing his paintings and drawings minutely.

 http://boschproject.org/

20160423 - flower parade

The Flower Parade of the Bollenstreek April 20 up to and including April 24, 2016

Theme 2016: Flowers & Fashion
 
From April 20, 2016 up to and including April 24, 2016 is Corsoweek, Flower Parade Week, in the Bollenstreek, the bulb growing area. The parade floats will be decorated in the Klinkenberghal from Wednesday, April 20 up to and including Friday, April 22.
On Friday evening the illuminated Flower Parade will travel through Noordwijkerhout.
At 9.30am on Saturday April 23 the Flower Parade will depart from the Wilhelminaboulevard in Noordwijk on its way to Haarlem. The parade will pass by Keukenhof just as it did last year.
At around 21.30 hrs the illuminated parade will arrive at the centre of Haarlem. On Sunday April 24 all the parade floats will be on display at the Gedempte Oude Gracht/Nassaulaan.
Apart from the Flower Parade of the Bollenstreek being the only event of this calibre that occurs in the springtime, it is the only parade that is constructed and composed of bulb flowers such as hyacinths, tulips and daffodils. It is for this reason that this Flower Parade of the Bollenstreek is known as the face of spring, as no other parade can come close to the unique spring colours and perfumes that surround this one.
The procession consists of about twenty floats and over forty luxurious and special vehicles richly decorated with flowers. For an extra festive character the procession will be accompanied by several bands. There is plenty of room along the whole route for thousands of visitors.

 https://www.bloemencorso-bollenstreek.nl/en/

20160422 - defence for children

Defence for Children International is an independent non-governmental organisation that has been promoting and protecting children’s rights on a global, regional, national and local level for more than 35 years.

 

 http://www.defenceforchildren.org/

20160421 - prince

Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and actor. Prince was renowned as an innovator and was widely known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence and vocal range. He was the pioneer of Minneapolis sound and his music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia and pop.
Prince was born in Minneapolis and developed an interest in music as a young child, writing his first song when he was seven years old. After recording songs with his cousin's band 94 East, 19-year-old Prince recorded several unsuccessful demo tapes before releasing his debut album For You in 1978, under the guidance of manager Owen Husney. His 1979 album Prince went platinum due to the success of the singles "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover". His next three records—Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981) and 1999 (1982)—continued his success, showcasing Prince's trademark of prominently sexual lyrics and incorporation of elements of funk, dance and rock music. In 1984, he began referring to his backup band as The Revolution and released Purple Rain, which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name. A prolific songwriter, Prince in the 1980s wrote songs for and produced work by many other acts, often under pseudonyms.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_%28musician%29

20160420 - rogge

Rogge (Secale cereale) is een kruisbevruchtende graansoort, dat net als de overige granen behoort tot de grassenfamilie.


Rogge groeit in het wild in midden- en oost-Turkije. Als cultuurgewas is de plant er in kleine hoeveelheden aangetroffen in enkele neolithische vindplaatsen, maar verder wordt het vrijwel niet gevonden tot aan de Midden-Europese bronstijd, rond 1800-1500 v.Chr. Mogelijk werd rogge naar het Westen gebracht als minder belangrijke variant van tarwe, en werd het gewas pas later apart geteeld. Rogge is aangetroffen in Romeins cultuurgebied langs de Rijn en op de Britse eilanden.
De Romeinse schrijver Plinius de Oudere beoordeelde rogge negatief. het zou een slecht soort voedsel zijn, alleen te gebruiken om niet te verhongeren, en werd er spelt aan toegevoegd om de bittere smaak van het roggebrood of de roggepap te verdrijven. Rogge zou ook als groenbemesting gebruikt zijn.
In Nederlandse gebieden is rogge gevonden in de laatste fase van de raatakkers (ook wel 'celtic fields'. Het gewas is waarschijnlijk omstreeks het begin van de jaartelling ingevoerd. Sinds de middeleeuwen is het ook hier een belangrijke grondstof voor brood.

 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogge_%28graan%29

20160419 - bean

Bean is a common name for large plant seeds of several genera of the family Fabaceae (alternately Leguminosae) which are used for human or animal food.



The term bean originally referred to the seed of the broad or fava bean,^{[citation needed]} but was later expanded to include members of the New World genus Phaseolus, such as the common bean and the runner bean, and the related genus Vigna. The term is now applied generally to many other related plants such as Old World soybeans, peas, chickpeas (garbanzo beans), vetches, and lupins.^{[citation needed]}
Bean is sometimes used as a synonym of pulse,^{[citation needed]} an edible legume, though the term pulses is more correctly reserved for leguminous crops harvested for their dry grain. The term bean usually excludes crops used mainly for oil extraction (such as soy-beans and pea-nuts), as well as those used exclusively for sowing purposes (such as clover and alfalfa). Leguminous crops harvested green for food, such as snap peas, snow peas, and so on, are not considered beans, and are classified as vegetable crops. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization the term bean should include only species of Phaseolus; however, a strict consensus definition has proven difficult because in the past, several species such as Vigna angularis (azuki bean), mungo (black gram), radiata (green gram), aconitifolia (moth bean)) were classified as Phaseolus and later reclassified. The use of the term bean to refer to species other than Phaseolus thus remains. In some countries, the term bean can mean a host of different species.
In English usage, the word bean is also sometimes used to refer to the seeds or pods of plants that are not in the family leguminosae, but which bear a superficial resemblance to true beans—for example coffee beans, castor beans and cocoa beans (which resemble bean seeds), and vanilla beans, which superficially resemble bean pods.


Unlike the closely related pea, beans are a summer crop that need warm temperatures to grow. Maturity is typically 55–60 days from planting to harvest. As the bean pods mature, they turn yellow and dry up, and the beans inside change from green to their mature colour. As a vine, bean plants need external support, which may be provided in the form of special "bean cages" or poles. Native Americans customarily grew them along with corn and squash (the so-called Three Sisters), with the tall cornstalks acting as support for the beans.
In more recent times, the so-called "bush bean" has been developed which does not require support and has all its pods develop simultaneously (as opposed to pole beans which develop gradually). This makes the bush bean more practical for commercial production.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean
 http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

20160418 - pea

The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the pod fruit Pisum sativum. Each pod contains several peas. Pea pods are botanically fruit, since they contain seeds and developed from the ovary of a (pea) flower. The name is also used to describe other edible seeds from the Fabaceae such as the pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), the cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and the seeds from several species of Lathyrus.
P. sativum is an annual plant, with a life cycle of one year. It is a cool season crop grown in many parts of the world; planting can take place from winter to early summer depending on location. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams. The immature peas (and in snow peas the tender pod as well) are used as a vegetable, fresh, frozen or canned; varieties of the species typically called field peas are grown to produce dry peas like the split pea shelled from the matured pod. These are the basis of pease porridge and pea soup, staples of medieval cuisine; in Europe, consuming fresh immature green peas was an innovation of Early Modern cuisine.
The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. The earliest archaeological finds of peas date from the late neolithic era of current Greece, Syria, Turkey and Jordan. In Egypt, early finds date from ca. 4800–4400 BC in the Nile delta area, and from ca. 3800–3600 BC in Upper Egypt. The pea was also present in Georgia in the 5th millennium BC. Farther east, the finds are younger. Peas were present in Afghanistan ca. 2000 BC, in Harappa, Pakistan, and in northwest India in 2250–1750 BC. In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, this pulse crop appears in the Ganges Basin and southern India.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea#Varieties

20160417 - crocus

Crocus (English plural: crocuses or croci) is a genus of flowering plants in the iris family comprising 90 species of perennials growing from corms. Many are cultivated for their flowers appearing in autumn, winter, or spring. Crocuses are native to woodland, scrub, and meadows from sea level to alpine tundra in central and southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, on the islands of the Aegean, and across Central Asia to Xinjiang Province in western China

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus

20160416 - envrionmental epigenetics

Epigenetics investigates heritable changes in gene expression that occur without changes in DNA sequence. Several epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation and histone modifications, can change genome function under exogenous influence. We review current evidence indicating that epigenetic alterations mediate effects caused by exposure to environmental toxicants. Results obtained from animal models indicate that in utero or early-life environmental exposures produce effects that can be inherited transgenerationally and are accompanied by epigenetic alterations. The search for human equivalents of the epigenetic mechanisms identified in animal models is under way. Recent investigations have identified a number of environmental toxicants that cause altered methylation of human repetitive elements or genes. Some exposures can alter epigenetic states and the same and/or similar epigenetic alterations can be found in patients with the disease of concern. On the basis of current evidence, we propose possible models for the interplay between environmental exposures and the human epigenome. Several investigations have examined the relationship between exposure to environmental chemicals and epigenetics, and have identified toxicants that modify epigenetic states. Whether environmental exposures have transgenerational epigenetic effects in humans remains to be elucidated. In spite of the current limitations, available evidence supports the concept that epigenetics holds substantial potential for furthering our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of environmental toxicants, as well as for predicting health-related risks due to conditions of environmental exposure and individual susceptibility.

 http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v105/n1/full/hdy20102a.html

20160415 - epigenetics

What Is Epigenetics?

As an organism grows and develops, carefully orchestrated chemical reactions activate and deactivate parts of the genome at strategic times and in specific locations. Epigenetics is the study of these chemical reactions and the factors that influence them.

Epigenetics and Inheritance

We used to think that a new embryo's epigenome was completely erased and rebuilt from scratch. But this isn't completely true. Some epigenetic tags remain in place as genetic information passes from generation to generation, a process called epigenetic inheritance.
Epigenetic inheritance is an unconventional finding. It goes against the idea that inheritance happens only through the DNA code that passes from parent to offspring. It means that a parent's experiences, in the form of epigenetic tags, can be passed down to future generations.
As unconventional as it may be, there is little doubt that epigenetic inheritance is real. In fact, it explains some strange patterns of inheritance geneticists have been puzzling over for decades.


 http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/
 http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritance/

20160414 - moment

Time Slices: What Is the Duration of a Percept?

We experience the world as a seamless stream of percepts. However, intriguing illusions and recent experiments suggest that the world is not continuously translated into conscious perception. Instead, perception seems to operate in a discrete manner, just like movies appear continuous although they consist of discrete images. To explain how the temporal resolution of human vision can be fast compared to sluggish conscious perception, we propose a novel conceptual framework in which features of objects, such as their color, are quasi-continuously and unconsciously analyzed with high temporal resolution. Like other features, temporal features, such as duration, are coded as quantitative labels. When unconscious processing is “completed,” all features are simultaneously rendered conscious at discrete moments in time, sometimes even hundreds of milliseconds after stimuli were presented.


 http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002433
 http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/02/time-slice-photography-captures-cities-during-suns.html

20160413 - archaea

The Domain Archaea wasn't recognized as a major domain of life until quite recently. Until the 20th century, most biologists considered all living things to be classifiable as either a plant or an animal. But in the 1950s and 1960s, most biologists came to the realization that this system failed to accomodate the fungi, protists, and bacteria. By the 1970s, a system of Five Kingdoms had come to be accepted as the model by which all living things could be classified. At a more fundamental level, a distinction was made between the prokaryotic bacteria and the four eukaryotic kingdoms (plants, animals, fungi, & protists). The distinction recognizes the common traits that eukaryotic organisms share, such as nuclei, cytoskeletons, and internal membranes.
The scientific community was understandably shocked in the late 1970s by the discovery of an entirely new group of organisms -- the Archaea. Dr. Carl Woese and his colleagues at the University of Illinois were studying relationships among the prokaryotes using DNA sequences, and found that there were two distinctly different groups. Those "bacteria" that lived at high temperatures or produced methane clustered together as a group well away from the usual bacteria and the eukaryotes. Because of this vast difference in genetic makeup, Woese proposed that life be divided into three domains: Eukaryota, Eubacteria, and Archaebacteria. He later decided that the term Archaebacteria was a misnomer, and shortened it to Archaea. The three domains are shown in the illustration above at right, which illustrates also that each group is very different from the others.
Further work has revealed additional surprises, which you can read about on the other pages of this exhibit. It is true that most archaeans don't look that different from bacteria under the microscope, and that the extreme conditions under which many species live has made them difficult to culture, so their unique place among living organisms long went unrecognized. However, biochemically and genetically, they are as different from bacteria as you are. Although many books and articles still refer to them as "Archaebacteria", that term has been abandoned because they aren't bacteria -- they're Archaea.

 http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/archaea/archaea.html

20160412 - languages

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. No actual biological relationship between speakers is implied by the metaphor.
Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of one's definition of "language", and in particular on how one classifies dialects. The 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A "living language" is simply one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also many dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified, or even unknown outside their respective speech communities.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family
 https://myenglishwebsite.wordpress.com/varieties-of-english/

20160411 - esperanto

Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language. It is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. The Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, on 26 July 1887. The name of Esperanto derives from Doktoro Esperanto ("Esperanto" translates as "one who hopes"), the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published Unua Libro. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy-to-learn, politically neutral language that would transcend nationality and foster peace and international understanding between people with different languages.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

20160410 - marathon rotterdam

Kipserem steps out of the shadow of the favourites in sunny Coolsingel during NN Rotterdam Marathon

Marius Kipserem was the surprise winner of the 36th edition of the NN Rotterdam Marathon. In the sunny Coolsingel street, the Kenyan athlete stepped out of the favourites’ shadow. With a personal best of 2:06:11 hours, he is now ranked 9th in the world for the season.
Kipserem didn’t know what hit him at the finish line. The sheer number of congratulations and compliments he received left him speechless, but his wide smile told the story. “I’m very happy with this victory,” he said later, quite taken aback by all the attention. A little shyly he raised the victor’s cup above his head, the trophy sparkling in the sunlight.
It was a great day for a marathon, as it wasn’t too windy and it was 9.4 degrees Celsius at the 10am start. All eyes were trained on the Ethiopians Ayele Abshero and Tsegaye Kebede, who were the favourites, having logged personal best times of 2:04:23 and 2:04:38, respectively. Nobody was counting on Kipserem, who had never completed a marathon in less than 2:09:21 hours.


 http://www.nnmarathonrotterdam.org/report-2016/race-report/

20160409 - alien life

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is life that does not originate from Earth. It is also called alien life, or, if it is a sentient and/or relatively complex individual, an "extraterrestrial" or "alien" (or, to avoid confusion with the legal sense of "alien", a "space alien"). These as-yet-hypothetical life forms range from simple bacteria-like organisms to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity. Although many scientists expect extraterrestrial life to exist, there is no unambiguous evidence for its existence so far.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life

20160408 - reflexology

Reflexology is an alternative medicine involving application of pressure to the feet and hands with specific thumb, finger, and hand techniques without the use of oil or lotion. It is based on a system of zones and reflex areas that purportedly reflect an image of the body on the feet and hands, with the premise that such work effects a physical change to the body.
There is no convincing evidence that reflexology is effective for any medical condition.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexology

20160407 - world health day

Beat Diabetes

World Health Day 2016: Action needed to halt rise in diabetes

6 April 2016 -- The number of people living with diabetes has nearly quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million adults, with most living in developing countries. WHO is marking World Health Day, 7 April, by calling for action on diabetes. In its first “Global report on diabetes”, WHO highlights the need to step up prevention and treatment of the disease.


 http://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2016/en/

20160406 - bkor

Over BKOR

Beeldende Kunst & Openbare Ruimte

 

Er is geen stad in Nederland met zo veel beeldende kunst in de openbare ruimte als Rotterdam. BKOR (Beeldende Kunst & Openbare Ruimte) beheert en vernieuwt de omvangrijke stadscollectie in samenwerking met betrokken Rotterdammers, bedrijven en instellingen. BKOR zorgt voor het beheer en onderhoud van ruim 250 kunstwerken van de Rotterdamse Beeldencollectie en adviseert gemeente, burgers en kunstenaars met betrekking tot het realiseren, plaatsen, herplaatsen en saneren van openbare kunstwerken. BKOR bemiddelt tussen de vraag uit de stad naar kunst en stadsverfraaiing en het aanbod van (Rotterdamse) kunstenaars. BKOR is een kennis- en documentatiecentrum met betrekking tot alle openbare kunstwerken in Rotterdam en verzorgt daartoe onder meer het programma Z-Files, Kunst en de Stad in samenwerking met Sculpture International Rotterdam (SIR), programma’s van CBK Rotterdam. 


http://www.bkor.nl/over-bkor/

20160405 - 12 mistakes

12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem — these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you start noticing some patterns. Inspired by a recent post titled “Grammar Police: Twelve Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes,” I decided to make a list of my own.

1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage. Many people who write about grammar seem to think that grammar means “any sort of rule of language, especially writing.” But strictly speaking, grammar refers to the structural rules of language, namely morphology (basically the way words are formed from roots and affixes), phonology (the system of sounds in a language), and syntax (the way phrases and clauses are formed from words). Most complaints about grammar are really about punctuation, spelling (such as problems with you’re/your and other homophone confusion) or usage (which is often about semantics). This post, for instance, spends two of its twelve points on commas and a third on quotation marks.

2. Treating style choices as rules. This article says that you should always use an Oxford (or serial) comma (the comma before and or or in a list) and that quotation marks should always follow commas and.......................


 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathon-owen/grammar-mistakes_b_4312009.html

20160404 - biodiversity

The word "biodiversity" is a contracted version of "biological diversity". The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as:"the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems."
Thus, biodiversity includes genetic variation within species, the variety of species in an area, and the variety of habitat types within a landscape. Perhaps inevitably, such an all-encompassing definition, together with the strong emotive power of the concept, has led to somewhat cavalier use of the term biodiversity, in extreme cases to refer to life or biology itself. But biodiversity properly refers to the variety of living organisms.

Biological diversity is of fundamental importance to the functioning of all natural and human-engineered ecosystems, and by extension to the ecosystem services that nature provides free of charge to human society. Living organisms play central roles in the cycles of major elements (carbon, nitrogen, and so on) and water in the environment, and diversity specifically is important in that these cycles require numerous interacting species.
General interest in biodiversity has grown rapidly in recent decades, in parallel with the growing concern about nature conservation generally, largely as a consequence of accelerating rates of natural habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and resulting extinctions of species. The IUCN Red List estimates that 12-52% of species within well-studied higher taxa such as vertebrates and vascular plants are threatened with extinction. Based on data on recorded extinctions of known species over the past century, scientists estimate that current rates of species extinction are about 100 times higher than long-term average rates based on fossil data. Other plausuble estimates suggest that present extinction rates now may have reached 1000 to 10,000 times the average over past geologic time. These estimates are the basis of the consensus that the Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in its history; the present extinction event is termed the Holocene Mass Extinction.

 http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150560/
 http://www.thebluedotpost.com/why-biodiversity-and-the-interconnected-web-of-life-are-important/

20160403 - gene pool

Gene pool

A large gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity, which is associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection. Meanwhile, low genetic diversity (see inbreeding and population bottlenecks) can cause reduced biological fitness and an increased chance of extinction, although as explained by genetic drift new genetic variants, that may cause an increase in the fitness of organisms, are more likely to fix in the population if it is rather small.
When all individuals in a population are identical with regard to a particular phenotypic trait, the population is said to be monomorphic. When the individuals show several variants of a particular trait they are said to be polymorphic.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_pool
 https://adapaproject.org/bbk_temp/tiki-index.php?page=Leaf%3A+How+can+the+gene+pool+of+a+population+decrease+or+change%3F

20160402 - school of life

The School of Life is an organisation founded in 2008 and based in branches in London (Headquarters), Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Istanbul, Melbourne, Paris, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Tel Aviv. The School offers a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well: finding fulfilling work, mastering relationships, achieving calm, and understanding and changing the world. The School also offers psychotherapy and bibliotherapy services and runs online and physical shops which have been described as 'apothecaries for the mind'.
The School of Life is not affiliated to any religious, educational, charitable or other organisations. It declares itself to be a place ‘free from dogma’, where participants are ‘directed towards a variety of ideas—from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts—that tickle, exercise and expand your mind’ and where participants can 'meet other curious, sociable and open-minded people in an atmosphere of exploration and enjoyment'.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Life