Pesticides cause harm to honeybees

Mainz researchers discover new mechanism associated with the worldwide decline of bee populations

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

One possible cause of the alarming bee mortality we are witnessing is the use of the very active systemic insecticides called neonicotinoids. 

A previously unknown and harmful effect of neonicotinoids has been identified by researchers at the Mainz University Medical Center and Goethe University Frankfurt. They discovered that neonicotinoids in low and field-relevant concentrations reduce the concentration of acetylcholine in the royal jelly/larval food secreted by nurse bees. 

This signaling molecule is relevant for the development of the honeybee larvae. At higher doses, neonicotinoids also damage the so-called microchannels of the royal jelly gland in which acetylcholine is produced. The results of this research have been recently published in the eminent scientific journal PloS ONE.

"As early as 2013, the European Food Safety Authority published a report concluding that the neonicotinoid class of insecticides represented a risk to bees," said Professor Ignatz Wessler of the Institute of Pathology at the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). 

Campaign shakedown

Trump’s $45 Million Loan Is The Latest Way He’s Fleecing His Campaign For Money

By Rika Christensen ·

Donald Trump’s campaign might be close to broke, and he might be doing highly illegal things to try and keep it afloat, but evidence has also been mounting that he’s using this election as a means of profit.

The $45 million worth of debt the campaign has is apparently personal loans he made, and he can convert them to donations, effectively wiping out the campaign’s debt.

He’d have to file paperwork with the FEC, though, and so far, that hasn’t happened. 

NBC wasn’t able to get much out of his campaign about this, with spokesperson Hope Hicks saying they’re going to file it with the next scheduled FEC report.

She had originally said that they were going to file it last week.

Fossil fuels’ two-way assault on children’s health needs to stop

We need a kids-first revamp of energy policies

By Brian Bienkowski for Environmental Health News 

Fossil fuels represent a two-pronged attack on the health of children, a leading health scientist has warned. To foster health and well-being in future generations, society needs to dramatically decrease dependence on dirty energy.

In a commentary summarizing the key science around fossil fuels and children’s health, Frederica Perera, a professor and researcher at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, argues the science clearly shows that both toxic air emission and climate change as a result of fossil fuel emissions pose grave dangers to children.

The benefits to children’s health and future economy from a reduction in fossil fuel use are enormous—$230 billion per year, according to researchers—and must factor into any policy arguments.

VIDEO: cats watching fireworks

To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU8iY_5ikyQ

Long overdue decision for Viet vets

VA Officials Pledge New Studies Into Effects of Agent Orange

By Charles Ornstein and Terry Parris Jr. for ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh, The Virginian-Pilot, 

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is expanding its efforts to determine how Vietnam veterans and their children have been affected by exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange.

The VA will conduct its first nationwide survey of Vietnam veterans in more than three decades and request an outside panel of experts to continue its work studying the health effects of Agent Orange on veterans, their children and their grandchildren. 

Should voting rights be tied to owning property?

Philadelphia’s Forgotten Spirit of 1776

By Sam Pizzigati for the Campaign for America's Future Blog

There was a time when the right to vote belonged only to white,
property-owning men. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: In Charlestown, the controlling Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) and its now defunct parent, the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition, long held that owning property should give you the right to vote whether you call Charlestown your home or not. 

Echoing the writers of the US Constitution, they call it “taxation without representation” to deny non-residents the right to vote. But is that what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Read on. - W. Collette

Later this summer, just a few weeks after this year’s Fourth of July celebrations, Democrats will be gathering in Philadelphia to make some presidential nomination history.

Democrats — small-d variety — gathered in Philadelphia soon after the original Fourth of July, too. Those democrats, all Pennsylvanians, also had some history to make. In September 1776, they would go on to adopt their new nation’s most egalitarian state constitution.

Before the Revolution, only men of property in Pennsylvania could vote and hold office. The new state constitution, notes historian Clement Fatovic in his recently published “America’s Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality,” totally removed property qualifications for voting and office-holding.

In the new and free Pennsylvania, declared teacher and mathematician James Cannon, “overgrown rich Men will be improper to be trusted.”

Many citizens of the new Pennsylvanian “commonwealth” wanted this sort of egalitarian sensibility expressly written into their new constitution.

VIDEO: His Words Exploded Like Fireworks.

Frederick Douglass Spoke At A July 4 event In 1852.

By Brandon Weber 

To see this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb_sqh577Zw

10 years before the Civil War, during a time when the United States had more people enslaved than ever, the city of Rochester, N.Y., asked for a speech from Frederick Douglass, a former slave, to accompany its July 4, 1852 festivities. (The speech was actually given on July 5, during the multi-day event.)

If you recall, he was a freed slave who educated himself and became a celebrated writer, orator, and social reformer.

He accepted, but rather than join in the “celebration,” Douglass took it in a very unexpected direction. In this, he lit a virtual fire with his words to the white audience, undoubtedly making some of them very uncomfortable.

In the video, actor and activist Danny Glover performs a brilliant retelling of that speech. It was uploaded by Voices Of A People’s History.

Here’s a taste:

VIDEO: The Five Principles of Patriotism

Caring about “We, the People”

By Robert Reich

To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRnwLuPgsRQ

We talk a lot about Patriotism, especially around July 4th, but we need also to take to heart its five basic principles.

First: True patriotism isn’t simply about waving the American flag. And it’s not mostly about securing our borders, putting up walls and keeping others out.

It’s about coming together for the common good.

VIDEO: Yeah, give him the launch codes

To watch this horrifying video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugi-Jcbc55s

One thing Rhode Island is good at....

One of the best for internet connection speed
That's according to a new survey released by Akamai

Next we'll have a chain of Trump Prep Schools

Billionaires Create PAC to Influence Legislature on Charter Schools

By Diane Ravitch

The billionaire boys club has opened a new branch in Connecticut, where they have a charter-loving governor, Dannell Malloy.

Connecticut experienced a gigantic charter scandal involving the governor’s favorite charter chain Jumoke Academy. It turned out that the leader of Jumoke had padded his resume and had hired people with criminal records, and engaged in other improprieties. 

But the governor learned nothing and continues to press for deregulated, unsupervised charter schools. (See here and here.) 

Constant Cravings

Cravings for high-calorie foods may be switched off in the brain by new supplement

Imperial College London

Eating a type of powdered food supplement, based on a molecule produced by bacteria in the gut, reduces cravings for high-calorie foods such as chocolate, cake and pizza, a new study suggests.

Scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow asked 20 volunteers to consume a milkshake that either contained an ingredient called inulin-propionate ester, or a type of fibre called inulin.

Previous studies have shown bacteria in the gut release a compound called propionate when they digest the fibre inulin, which can signal to the brain to reduce appetite. However the inulin-propionate ester supplement releases much more propionate in the intestines than inulin alone.

After drinking the milkshakes, the participants in the current study underwent an MRI scan, where they were shown pictures of various low or high calorie foods such as salad, fish and vegetables or chocolate, cake and pizza.

Pope Francis says the Church must make amends for what it has done to gays and other marginalized groups

Pope Francis again says “who are we to judge?”

By Ryan Denson ·

As the United States celebrates gay pride, marriage equality enters its first year, and the world partakes in solidarity for those lost in the Orlando shooting, Pope Francis is issuing his own personal decree to fellow Christians: apologize for marginalizing LGBT citizens.

After a holy trip to Armenia, Pope Francis bluntly stated that the Catholic Church, as well as other Christians, needed to apologize to gays and lesbians for “not having comported itself well many times, many times” and called all Christians “sinners” for ostracizing them for so many years:

What kind of patriots do we want to be?

The Choice of Patriotism

By Robert Reich

From the US Holocaust Museum Collection

We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016 we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together.

The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others out.

Through most of our history we’ve understood patriotism the first way. We’ve celebrated the values and ideals we share in common: democracy, equal opportunity, freedom, tolerance and generosity.

We’ve recognized these as aspirations to which we recommit ourselves on the Fourth of July.

This inclusive patriotism prides itself on giving hope and refuge to those around the world who are most desperate — as memorialized in Emma Lazarus’ famous lines engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

By contrast, we’re now hearing a strident, exclusive patriotism. It asserts a unique and superior “Americanism” that’s determined to exclude others beyond our borders.

Donald Trump famously wants to ban all Muslims from coming to America, and to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out Mexicans.

Exclusive patriotism tells us to fear foreign terrorists in our midst — even though almost every terrorist attack since 9/11 has been perpetrated by American citizens or holders of green cards living here for a decade or more.

The old and the new

From Fake Science