MONTHLY HEADER #59: Nicolas Bouvier

A cool header for a hot month. Sparth is most def one of the best sci-fi artists out there. Looks like he's working for Microsoft's 343 industries.

































Keywords: digital tablet concept spaceship art by nicolas bouvier sparth working in seattle washington 343 industries microsoft game studios

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5 toxics in the Home

5 toxics that are everywhere: Protect yourself - CNN.com

Finally the mainstream press has picked up on this story that has been bubbling for many years. Our homes are toxic - a new TV program 'Toxic America' reveals all - here on CNN who report

'A growing body of research is linking five chemicals -- among the most common in the world -- to a host of ailments, including cancer, sexual problems and behavioral issues.

We encounter them every day -- in plastic bottles, storage containers, food wrap, cans, cookware, appliances, carpets, shower curtains, clothes, personal care products, furniture, television sets, electronics, bedding, cushions and mattresses. In short, every room in almost every house in the United States is likely to contain at least one of these chemicals, many of which did not exist a century ago.

They are bisphenol A, or BPA; phthalates; PFOA; formaldehyde; and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PDBEs. Tests reveal most of us now carry them in our bodies'

London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston reveals, "This is very common knowlege amongst nutrition therapists especially those like myself who do a lot of clinical nutrition work for infertility. One example is we've been campaigning about avoiding using babies bottles and drinking water bottles with bisphenol A, or BPA for some time now. We recommend mud puppy BPA & toxin free drinking bottles made from stainless steel. We even have BPA and Toxin free stainless steel baby bottles." says the nutritionist.

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Pregnant Women - 2 Fish or Not 2 Fish

Pregnant women should be allowed to eat more fish - Telegraph

Nutritionists are arguing about the safe limits of fish during pregnancy following new research that supports the idea that too little of the long chain essential fats omega 3 DHA in pregnant women can result in and possibly cause developmental problems.

'Fish consumption among women of child bearing age and girls is currently restricted due to concerns about the presence of potentially harmful contaminants in fish such as dioxins and methylmercury. ' reports The Telegraph


'Speaking at a conference held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London last week, Professor Jack Winkler, director of the Nutrition Policy Unit at London Metropolitan University, said the benefits of fish oil far outweighed other risks. 

He said: "The Food Standards Agency issued advice to women and pregnant women about fish in 2004 which was ultra conservative. Since then, there has been research which indicates that women who have eaten more fish than those recommendations suffer no harm but their child's brain performance improved. 

"The evidence is beginning to show that this ultra conservative advice is effectively denying women the benefits of fish. Worryingly the current advice is scaring women off eating fish completely as the message it gives is that fish is risky."'

London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston says there is a 3rd solution to the 2 fish or not 2 fish conundrum. "EPA and DHA is now available as a toxin free sustainable plant based alternative to fish and fish oil. If mother's are worried we can test their levels of DHA and if they are low they can take a combination of Echium Oil, Algae and Omega 7."

V-Pure Algae plant based EPA / DHA omega 3 fish alternative
This DHA rich Algal oil also has some EPA in it. The Algae is grown in steel tanks in a controlled environment and then the essential fats are coaxed out using a unique high tech natural process to allow the production of a concentrated omega 3 DHA rich oil

Echium Oil an omega 3 rich plant based fish oil alternative that converts well to EPA
Echium is a most amazing plant that has naturally ocurring longer chain omega 3 and omega 6 fats. The combination of these two longer chain essential fats means that in studies Echium oil converts to EPA 5 times more efficiently than flax oil.

Omega 7 - Sea Buckthorn Oil
Foods for Life Nutritionist Gareth Zeal has revealed that research suggests that omega 7 - particularly Seabuckthorn oil, which is rich in omega 7, like longer chain omega 6 helps with the conversion pathway and makes it easier for the body to convert shorter chain essential fat omega oils into longer chain essential fats such as EPA and DHA.

So the question is not just fish or less fish, now plant oils are a sustainable, economically viable, safe, effective, toxin free, alternative.

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Concept spaceship environments by Stefan Morrell

Extremely lush architectural renders by Stefan Morrell. Let's help him break a million views.











Keywords: concept spaceship environments architecture modeling 3ds max vray by stefan morrell residing in lyttelton new zealand cg portfolio cgsociety.org

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London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston and other top Nutritionists in London - Foods for Life Academy of Food

London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston and other top Nutritionists in London - Foods for Life Academy of Food:

Foods for Life Health and Nutrition launches The Foods for Life Academy of Food this weekend at The Bristol Eco Veggie Fayre.

"The Kitchen Academy pulled out at the last minute leaving hundreds of school children disappointed so we stepped in to fill the gap" says London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston "The more we thought about it the more we thought what a great idea it was for adults too"

Foods for life has been helping Croydon Based Fit Unit to educate kids about healthy eating. Foods for Life now plan to roll this out and offer healthy kitchen secrets to adults with a unique cookery school model.

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Animated concept ship from AZUREUS RISING

Check this quality short on youtube... Watch in 720p if possible. From this CGSociety thread.








Keywords: spaceship scene from short animated concept film movie cinematic trailer from azureus rising 3d three dimensional concept animatic independent film from David Weinstein

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National Vegetarian Week is New Ice Age

Yvonne Bishop-Weston says GET YOUR FIVE-A-DAY WITH FROZEN for National Vegetarian Week

Celebrate National Vegetarian Week this year with frozen fruit and vegetables, picked in season at their peak of quality – and frozen for your benefit and convenience.

Frozen is an easy way of including more fruit and vegetables into your daily meal plan, with little hassle and waste. Available year round, frozen vegetables are bought already peeled and chopped – no preparation necessary – and can be steamed, stir-fried, or microwaved to be ready in minutes!

Freezing is a natural process that does not involve the use of preservatives and takes place just hours after harvest, locking in freshness and nutrients. The popular frozen pea, for instance, has higher levels of vitamin C than its fresh counterpart, which lose nutritional value during transportation.* So not only is frozen as nutritious as ambient produce; buying frozen means that you can buy in bulk, sweetened with the knowledge that the products will not wither away before you have the chance to eat them.

The New Ice Age Harley Street Nutritionist, vegetarian and mom, Yvonne Bishop-Weston says, “Frozen fruit and vegetables are a great way for your family to get their five-a-day. Frozen foods are an essential component to any busy household kitchen, as they offer you year-round access to quality, good value food with an extended shelf life.”

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to get your five-a-day, blend yourself a cool and refreshing frozen smoothie made from fruits pulled from the freezer (recipe attached). Visit www.theNewIceAge.com for recipes and further information.

*Frozen peas contain 20.2mg/100g of vitamin C compared to 14.1 in fresh peas (after two days).

Healthy

o Freezing food locks in vitamins and nutrients often lost in ‘fresh foods’ when left on the supermarket shelf

o Frozen food encourages a balanced diet (i.e. packaged for portion control)

o Freezing in a natural process not requiring preservatives

Tasty

o Food frozen within hours of harvest has a superior taste and texture

Economical / Environmental

o Frozen food reduces waste: important when average cost of food has increased by around 7% in the past year. Frozen food is good value.

o Freezing food enables people to enjoy all types of food throughout the year, regardless of season (reducing costs and carbon output caused by importation)

o It is typically less expensive to purchase a frozen ‘ready meal’ than all the ingredients required to produce the same product

Convenient

o There is a growing consumer demand for products that east the effects of their increasingly busy lifestyles and the consequent constraints on food preparation and shopping time.

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Crashes and Blue Screens are Normal and a Processor Fan has a Lifetime of 1 year -- Everyday Support Hotline Fun and the Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology

"What do you expect with only 1 GB memory in Vista?" a random second stage Dell support guy just asked me after I told him that the system crashes with a Kernel_Inpage_Error bluescreen. "It's just not sufficient for Video Processing."

Well my experience has been that mencoder, whether running on Linux, or Windows is so resource friendly that there really isn't a problem usually. And my understanding is also that if any problems should occur, they should be a slow and unresponsive system due to massive swapping -- and not a bluescreen. But of course that's only my lowly knowledge of about 10 years of computer support and 8 years of Linux fun.

Well after I responded shocked and directly asked him whether he was implying that blue screens would be normal and acceptable we withdrew his statement and agreed to have someone look at the device. I'm still not certain, though, if they will stick to their position that because my girlfriend ordered a system from their Vostro business laptop series and their database has her name marked as a company name, that she won't get the 2 years mandatory warranty, but only 1 year as a business would get.

Though actually that shouldn't make a difference with an error that couldn't possibly appear through mishandling of the system but must've been there from the beginning: The system crashes after some time with heavy load (longer times around 50 % may be enough, though). For a while the hard disk, whose SMART data reports a critical heat, stopped working and simply wasn't detected at boot time.

But the Dell guys didn't really understand that either. They said that it could just be a natural phenomena that a fan only has a life time of about a year and hence the system was perfectly fine at the time it was turned over to my girlfriend.

But I don't want to bore you any further with a story that probably happens everywhere to everyone and all the time in the daily Windows world... While hardware problems occur in Linux just as well, at least the people you talk to about them don't treat you like an idiot but really know their stuff.

In the end the error seems to have been the intel dynamic acceleration technology. After I "upgraded" the BIOS to the same version it already had been I looked through the BIOS and thought I'd try disabling it. Now the fan is slightly less loud and more importantly: the computer no longer seems to crash as it did before.

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Concept ships by Edmund Keefe

Cool ship and future concept cars posts by Edmund Keefe.









Keywords: 3d three dimensional concept spaceship and future vehicle cars transportation renders drafting by edmund keefe uk united kingdom artist

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Broccoli May Help Battle Breast Cancer

Broccoli May Help Battle Breast Cancer:

"It appears if you repeat a truth often enough it becomes a fact" says expert London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston following a new study published on the benefits of broccoli

May 2010 ( Clinical Cancer Research)

A compound derived from broccoli appears to be able to kill breast cancer stem cells, which help tumors grow, according to a new study. But it's too soon to know if the compound would work in people. And the amount tested is larger than the amount people could consume in their diet.

"Tests on human breast cancer cells in the laboratory resulted in decreases in cancer stem cells" reported study co-author Duxin Sun, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy and Dr. Max S. Wicha, an oncology professor and director of the university's Comprehensive Cancer Center, and a study co-author.

2002

Way back in 2002 a doctor speaking at the American Institute for Cancer Research on diet and nutrition, Paul Talalay, MD, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., said that cauliflower and broccoli contain a compound that increases an enzyme called sulforaphane in the body. This enzyme helps protect cells and prevents their genes from turning into cancer.

2000

"Men who eat plenty of green vegetables, such as cabbage and broccoli, can lower their risk of prostate cancer by 41 percent" said study co-author Jennifer Cohen, PhD, MPH, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Dr. Cohen and her colleagues evaluated the total fruit and vegetable consumption of 1,230 men between the ages of 40 and 64 and found men who ate three or more servings of vegetables a day had a 35 percent lower risk of prostate cancer, compared with men who ate fewer than two servings per day. Of the men studied, half had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and half were randomly selected.

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Concept helicopter ship by Robert Engelmann

Robert's concept design blog.








Keywords: 3d three dimensional helicopter design mixed media automotive car design blog by robert engelmann cologne germany technical illustration design software rendering

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processed meat a real health risk

Study suggests processed meat a real health risk | Reuters:

As National Vegetarian Week kicks off a well timed new study highlights processed meat as the culprit for ill health.

London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston said today "This study was an analysis of other research called a meta-analysis, which, because of the nature of studies trying to prove an argument one way or the other, notoriously come out as you'd expect with average neutral findings. Also the study did not look at high blood pressure or cancer, which are also linked with high meat consumption. So it's interesting that although unprocessed meat escaped condemnation we are still left in no doubt no matter how you cook the books processed meat is bad for health"



"To lower risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should consider which types of meats they are eating," said Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health, the author of the study that appears in the journal 'Circulation'. "Processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats may be the most important to avoid," Micha said in a statement.


Based on her findings, she said people who eat one serving per week or less of processed meats have less of a risk.

She and colleagues did a systematic review of nearly 1,600 studies from around the world looking for evidence of a link between eating processed and unprocessed red meat and the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

They found that on average, each 1.8 oz (50 grams) daily serving of processed meat a day, one to two slices of processed deli meats (such as ham), or one hot dog,was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and a 19 percent higher risk of developing diabetes.

National Vegetarian Week finishes in Bristol with a Meat Free Sunday at the Bank Holiday Weekend festival www.bristol.ecoveggiefayre.co.uk

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Concept spaceship art by Mack Sztaba

A few ship designs by our buddy Mack S. Cool flamebot on robots.







Keywords: concept spaceship vehicle design work by polish born mack sztaba specializes in concept art but continues to work as a freelance illustrator mainly with digital media concept ships exato game studios concept art

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USB Surround Sound in Linux

It's an annoying topic. Not many USB surround sound cards exist anyway, even less of those are good ones. But after an hour of searching the web and reading various articles, I've finally found a USB surround sound card that works well in Linux:

Terratec Aureon 5.1 USB MK-II

Usually the problem is that terratec's drivers are not too good. Luckily, the Linux drivers are often excellent due to the open source community's investments in them. And here the case is similar: Terratec was smart enough to use the standard USB interface, so they need not write drivers for any OS and the Linux USB Audio driver works perfectly - already for a long time.

But German reviews on Amazon suggest that the digital output does not work with surround sound, but only stereo. This means it's just an option if you want analogue sound.

"Enforce USB bandwidth allocation (EXPERIMENTAL)" must be deactivated in the kernel.

If you still need some help with the setup, e.g. for games, try this page.

If you want a really good USB stereo sound card with digital out for Linux (cost "< 20 €"), and you're up for some work, here's a German guide how to build your own.

But according to German Amazon reviews and this website, the

Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 USB

is also supported in Linux - at least for stereo. A German guide is in the Ubuntu forums, but it seems it should work with any current Linux.

Both cards have driver issues. It seems the Creative card doesn't work well in Vista x64 (no/bad subwoofer sound). I think in the end I will decide for the Creative card anyway. It's much newer and probably has better sound than the much older Terratec box.

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Bank Holiday Weekend Event - Bristol Eco Veggie Fayre

Eco Veggie Fayre - Bristol Eco Veggie Fayre:



Bristol Bank Holiday Weekend Event celebrating National Vegetarian Week, live music, family fun, shopping, food, magic, health, environment green fayre, and all the fun from past years with knobs on.

Tim from Yaoh has pulled out all the stops for this year to make it the best ever!

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3D concept spaceship by Pascal Beeckmans

Pascal writes:

Hello,
I'm a Belgian 3D artist living in Montreal.
I'll of course congratulate you for your amazing blog/site about spaceship design and concepts. It's a really great resource, thanks a lot.




Keywords: 3D three dimensional digital concept spaceship model built by pascal belgian artist living in montreal

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Tim Warnock's concept ships

Super pro work by Tim on thenextside.com



















Keywords: concept spaceship matte painting art by tim warnock from canada works worked for double negative intelligent creatures animal logic eye ball nyc invisible pictures

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