Raw juicing, behavioral approaches, organic food, spring water and CBD may help cancer. Look for alternatives, often complementing traditional therapies.
When you are diagnosed with something as serious as cancer, it can be difficult to think ahead and take practical steps to move forward. However, this is something that you have to do when it comes to things such as your treatment. There are various treatment options you can consider for cancer, but some of these might not have received FDA approval, which means that you might not be able to access them in the United States.
For those who are prepared to travel for their cancer treatment, it is well worth exploringalternative cancer treatment in Mexico. A lot of people these days want to open up as many doors for themselves as possible when it comes to treatment, and this is why they consider options such as this. There are many reasons why people who have received a cancer diagnoses decide to do this, and we will look at some of these reasons within this article.
Some Reasons This Is Worth Considering
There are various reasons why this is something that is well worth considering, and more and more people these days are exploring the alternatives. Some of the reasons you might want to do this are:
A New Opportunity for Treatment
One of the things to remember is that if you decide to have your treatment within the United States rather than traveling, you might be limiting your treatment options and opportunities. This is because certain treatment might not have yet been approved by theFood & Drugs Administration, and this then means that you cannot get that treatment within the USA. By traveling outside the US, you can open up new doors and more opportunities when it comes to getting treatment for the cancer.
Excellent Facilities
Another reason why you might want to consider getting alternative cancer treatment in Mexico is that it enables you to access state-of-the-art facilities at leading cancer centers. When you go for local treatment options close to where you live, you are also limiting the facilities you can access as well as the treatments you can consider. If you want to boost your chances of finding the ideal facility where you can accesscancer treatment, it is a good idea to explore the options available to you outside the United States.
Innovative Treatment Alternatives
A key reason why people decide to explore alternative treatments in Mexico is that it enables them to access innovative treatments that they cannot yet access within their home country. Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape involved in the approval of treatments, and this could make the difference between being able to get a treatment that could help you or having to settle for whatever is offered. If you are prepared to travel, you have a better chance of accessing innovative treatment alternatives for cancer.
These are some of the key reasons why people decide to look at options and alternatives when it comes to cancer treatment.
Green Prophet does not endorse medical treatments. Please see your physician, Chinese doctor, or trusted herbalist before making any decisions about your health.
You want to invest in renewable energy or a better future. But whether it’s wind, sun or geothermal, you still need to play the same rules in the market if you are trading from home.
According to many, making unconventional trade moves (atypical for the general public) gives traders the superior edge needed to avoid the pitfalls of simple buy-and-hold investing. Options contracts are something that most casual investors often overlook when they start putting their money to work. Yet, these contracts that allow people to speculate on the future direction of individual securities or the overall stock market combine specificity with flexibility and act as an attractivehedging tool even when you are investing in impact companies focused on sustainability.
For the uninformed, options get classified as financial derivatives that supply buyers the possibility, but not the obligation, to sell or buy an underlying security by a specific date at an agreed-upon price. As mentioned, they give investors risk-reduction strategies, get utilized as a hedging device, offer low-cost approaches for speculators to go short or long in the market with limited downside risk, and deliver spread and combinations tactics to traders that can be super limber.
Options have been around for more than four decades but are now turning heads regarding newbies to the investment sphere. That is so because of the belief they are too sophisticated for newcomers. Plus, the labels dangerous and risky have gotten unjustifiably attached to them by media outlets, making them seem like a problematic financial instrument when that does not have to be so. Below, we get intooption portfolio management and how everyone can take advantage of these contracts en route to attaining sizeable monetary gains.
How Options Can Generate Income
Anyone can now access trading software and options to buy shares with an investors account at the bank. But don’t make rookie mistakes.
There are multiple ways that options can generate income. Before that gets explained, it must get outlined that two types of options exist. They are calls and puts. The first gives traders the right to buy securities within a specified period, while the latter gives them the right to sell. Also, three categories of positions are in play in options trading, much like in other types. These are shorting, predicting that a stock’s value will fall.A long investing position estimates that its price will grow, and neutral means that the prediction is that it shall remain consistent.
Some more established widely used options strategies are covered calls, married puts, the protective collar, and the strangle and straddle option approaches.
With a covered call, investors purchase shares in a stock. Then they select to offload a call options contract to get the shares for a premium. Regardless of what occurs, they keep the premium from the sale, which offsets any losses in the case of the price dropping.
Also called a protective put, a married one is a similar maneuver to a covered call. Though, here, traders own shares in a stock. Plus, they have a put option to sell them. In a protective collar, traders own stock and vend a covered call while purchasing a protective put. That functions well with a neutral position that aims to hedge against the stock’s price dropping, coming with little risk. Note that the premium paid for buying the put option can get offset via offloading the call option.
A strangle strategy begins by getting a call and put options on securities with the same expiration date. It is a game plan utilized with multiple options contracts when one is confident that they know the direction that the underlying asset will move in the short and long term. The risk here is the cost of the premiums paid for the options contracts.
In a straddle option, investors get a put and call for the same asset and expiration date. The approach differs from the strangle in that traders purchase the put and call for the identical strike price, and they are unsure of the direction it will go. Again, the primary hazard here is the premiums paid on the contract. If the asset plummets, investors end in the black, and if it goes past the call strike price substantially, then there is little limiting profitability. Thus, the security mustbe volatile enough to offset the costs of the contracts.
Trading Volatility: Taking Advantage of Price Movements
Without question, options can supply leverage, meaning traders can pay small premiums, relatively minor ones, for market exposure in regard to the contract value. So, they can notch decent gains from noted dramatic favorable movements in the underlying product. Though, if the underlying stock does not drop or jump in the anticipated timeframe of the option, then the leverage could dramatically augment the investment’s percentage loss. Those are its downside implications.
Prices are continuously adjusting in financial markets. That is a positive because traders would not make money if they did not change. However, sometimes, these shifts happen more quickly than others. As volatility increases, so does the potential to make money quicker. That said, higher volatility also means greater risk. Once one gets a fair-value price, they can utilize appropriate options tactics based on their acceptable risk. It is vital to never trade anything on emotions. To have a plan and stick to it, modifyingfair-value estimates for positions, particularly regarding the longer-term options where conditions will likely change. Never panic when things go negative for a week or even a month. Be confident in the conducted research and the projected price expectations. When a trader spreads risk, several misfired positions will not significantly affect the long-term overall performance of his portfolio.
Renowned strategies traders use to capitalize on securities that exhibit high volatility are buying puts, writing calls, shorting straddles or strangles, ratio writing, and performing iron condors. The latter two did not get discussed, and in an iron condor, the investor, on the same expiration date, combines a bear call spread with a bull put one, attempting to capitalize on a volatility retreat that shall result in the stock trading in a narrow range during the options’ lifespan. In this strategy, the maximum gain usually equals the net premium received. Ratio writing means nothing more than writing more options than purchased. And, in its most rudimentary form, it utilizes a two-to-one ratio with two options, written or sold, for every bought. The logic in play here is to capitalize on a substantial fall in implied volatility before the deadline of the option expires.
Leveraging Options to Increase Your Returns
In options trading, investors can boost their buying power byusing leverage. Therefore, with less capital, they can still effectively control more prominent positions, and when a trade goes their way, the returns can be more than decent. In the eyes of many, leverage is the best advantage that options have over other financial tools, and why they are a preferred instrument for those who do not have sizeable capital to invest. That is so because options customarily cost far less than stocks. Hence, if an investor has $5,000 in their account, they can buy options contracts on a specific security that permits control, let us say, of $50,000 in value. They can earn more from the same price gains from the traded underlying stock. And that can get also get leveraged to protect profits and make them.
Green investing means choosing companies that think about the future of our planet and beyond.
Know that, as an unwritten rule, a limit of the fifty-to-one leverage ratio in stock trading gets enforced. Therefore, when someone buys a stock for $50, investors can only offload it short for $2.50. Nevertheless, options contracts have no leverage cap built-in, meaning it is possible to utilize the leverage of five hundred to one. Call ones allow a leverage one-to-one hundred. So, for instance, purchasing a call option contract on a stock trading at $50 should cost $500. Yet, if the stock jumps by $60, the call option will go to $5,000. $5,000 – $500 = $4,500. Ergo, the trader will snag a profit of $4,500, getting an effective 500% ROI.
Combining Options with Technical Analysis
Technical analysis is a tool that uses patterns in market data to spot trends and make predictions. Hundreds of technical indicators exist that traders can use to try and make valid estimations on how things will develop depending on the type of security and investment style utilized. When it comes to options trading, the implementation of technical analysis is somewhat of a controversial topic that stems from evidence showing that multiple hedge funds have proven in the past that timing the market accurately is extremely hard to do, as no magic indicators can get found that consistently give ideal sell and buy signals. Still, technical analysis provides everyone a context to what is occurring on the market and should not get neglected by anyone.
The best approach is to keep things simple and use a 200-day moving average. Other indicators to look into are volume profiles, the relative strength index, the intraday momentum one, andBollinger bonds as a way to measure volatility.
Managing Risk When Trading Options
Without question, figuring out how to properly manage risk for stock options is likely the most crucial step in working towards maximizing profits using this investment tool. Most experts suggest focusing on trades that provide consistent 5-10% returns instead of trying to hit home runs. Also, they recommend placing orders to sell or buy specific stocks once they hit a certain price. That gets called a stop-loss, and it has gotten created to restrict an investor’s loss on a security position. Another handy risk mediating time is sizing positions within a portfolio using a distinct dollar amount an investor is willing to trade. Diversifying trades and paying for quality forecasting software is also a must to lower the odds of facing option trading losses.
The Bottom Line
It is paramount that everyone considering to trade options has a clear plan on how they will go about this endeavor and stick to their predefined objectives, not moving the goalposts as they go. Options carry no guarantees and remember that as the holder, you risk the entire sum of the premium you pay, and as the writer, you accumulate much higher risk. Those serious about this practice should buy reputable forecasting/market monitoring software and place stop-loss orders.
Climate change is heating our seas so less oxygen can be absorbed. What does this mean for reef health? Chinese and Israeli researchers give data for policy makers.
Our life depends on oxygen. Water in rivers and the seas pick it up and dissolve it, and in this way, water is the blood for our earth. Water carries oxygen to the roots of trees and plants in the soil and also to plants, coral, algae and tiny creatures in our seas and oceans. Like fungi living in symbiosis with plants and trees helping them gather nutrients, algae in the sea work alongside coral.
Now with climate change happening and a rising of temperatures in the sea, coral reefs are having a harder time than ever as the globe gets warmer. You can see the effects in famous dive spots in Sinai, Egypt, where reef after reef is just dead and dusty. Marine researchers from Israel and China, working together, are sounding an alarm.
Corals can’t cope
Corals face an ongoing reduction of oxygen in the sea water: They can survive but they pay a heavy physiological price that endangers the survival of the corals’ next generations: an impaired ability to capture prey and a growing reliance on energy provided by their symbiotic algae, with a decline in the reproductive processes, the researchers report.
These findings emerge from a recent study conducted at the University of Haifa: “Although corals survive, they pay a penalty. We are concerned that any further environmental changes, especially those affecting the corals’ interaction with their symbiotic algae, will seriously compromise their ability to cope with the declining oxygen levels,” notes Hagit Kvitt of the University of Haifa, who led the study.
Coral reefs are essential for healthy marine ecosystems and human ecology. They provide a habitat for around 25% of all marine organisms and contribute to the biodiversity of the marine system. In addition, coral reefs function as the “rainforests” of the sea: the coral lives in symbiosis with algae that are contained inside its cells and provide about 90% of its energy through the process of photosynthesis.
Global warming is affecting marine life in many ways, one of which is the decrease in seawater oxygen levels. Rising temperatures cause on the one hand a decline in the amount of oxygen dissolved in the ocean and on the other an increase in the metabolism of marine animals, including their need for oxygen.
“Consequently, the need for oxygen increases while oxygen levels decrease, which poses a greater threat to the animals than the rise in temperature itself,” the researchers explain. “Previous studies have found that some past mass extinction events were likely caused by a similar combination of rising temperatures and decreasing oxygen levels.”
The current study is published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science and incuded researchers from the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute in Eilat, in cooperation with researchers from China.
How researchers measured oxygen in reefs
The team sought to monitor the impact of the ongoing decrease in oxygen levels on the physiology and gene expression of a reef-building coral. Previous studies examined the changes in gene expression upon a decrease of oxygen over 12 hours, a relatively short period compared to conditions expected in nature. Studies examining the impact of 11 days of oxygen depletion focused solely on the physiological response and did not examine changes in gene expression.
The unique feature of the current study is that it examined both the physiological changes and the changes in gene expression over a longer period – 14 days – when the corals were kept at an oxygen level 90% below the normal level of their natural habitat (a drop from 6 mg/l O2 to 0.3-0.6 mg/l O2).
The results of the study show that within the first 12 hours the coral activated processes that helped it cope with the oxygen depletion: it increased its energy production by means that are not dependent on oxygen, it increased the number of mitochondria to improve its utilization of cellular oxygen, and began to increase its nutrient acquisition from the symbiotic algae.
After a longer period – between one and two weeks – a decline was seen in processes related to reproduction, in particular those of sperm production, as well as a decline in the production of the stinging mechanism, that functions in prey capture and self defense.
According to the researchers, the study is very significant in terms of our understanding of the heavy price we will pay for climate change in the future: “This in turn will help us formulate policies for coping with the climate change we are bringing on ourselves,” the researchers conclude.
Jews bake hamantaschen on Purim, a holiday when kids dress up and eat the symbolic ears of Haman, a man from the Persian court who tried to use his influence to eliminate the Jews.
It isn’t often you can bite into a cookie with a load of ancient history behind it. Call them Hamentaschen or Oznei Haman, or Haman’s Ears but make sure to bake up a batch of these buttery, traditional Purim cookies.
Filled cookies and pastries echo one of Purim’s “hidden” threads. See our previous post about the Purim story and the goodies basket here. As Queen Esther concealed her Jewish origins until the time was right, Jews created delicacies that conceal a sweet surprise inside their pastry shells. Hamentaschen is the Yiddish name for a cookie that translated into Oznei Haman in Israel, where Jews of every ethnic origin enjoy them on Purim.
This year, why not walk right past the boxes of bakery cookies full of artificial colors and too much sugar? Try baking your own, where you control the ingredients. You’ll present these home-made Hamentaschen with pride.
How to make homemade hamantaschen
Yield: about 24 Hamentaschen cookies
Ingredients for dough:
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour (can be whole wheat or the flour you love for cooking)
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or shortening
1 egg, beaten
2 to 3 tablespoons water
Grated rind of 1 orange
Cookie Filling:
Any firm jam. Try also Nutella, chocolate, or poppy seeds.
Putting the cookies together
Sift sugar, flour, baking powder and salt into mixing bowl.
Add butter or shortening and mix in till you have fine crumbs.
Stir in the egg and water. If using whole wheat flour, you will need the larger amount of water.
Add the grated rind and stir well.
Knead lightly for a few seconds to obtain a smooth dough.
Wrap the dough in a clean, re-used plastic bag and put in the refrigerator to chill 1 hour. You can also make them at night and bake in the morning. Or freeze the dough and though before you want to bake it. Like oily Hanukah treats Purim cookies are best fresh.
Dust your working surface with flour and roll the dough out on it. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter or a large glass. If the dough is difficult to work with, sprinkle more flour on it and on the working surface.
Place 1 teaspoon filling in the center of each round and bring the edges up to make a triangle that reveals the filling. Pinch the edges shut.
Bake at 350°F or 190°C for 10 minutes. The cookies should be a golden brown. If still pale, bake another 2 minutes. Set on a wire rack to cook and become crisp. Store in a jar or put them in the traditional Purim Mishloach manot or shalech mones (and also called a Purim basket) –– gifts of food or drink that are sent to family, friends and others on Purim day.
Enjoy!
Other delicious pastries to include in your Purim basket this year:
Emmer wheat is an ancient wheat from the Middle East
Some people believe that CRISPR, a low-cost tool used in gene editing, is the devil. The concerns aren’t unfounded. What if a newly “edited” grain or plant or animal escapes from its cage and changes the face of the wild genome in question?
Should we, for instance, edit out disease in human populations? Or ADHD? What if we do, and those edits bring a cascade of other problems we couldn’t have predicted. A Chinese doctor He Jiankui went to jail in 2019 for editing a human gene that creates HIV-immunity in embryos and then implanted them in women who did not know this fact.
But what about gene editing for food as climate change puts a strain on water? GMOs or gene-edited plants do exist. And while naturalists don’t want to eat them, science can use gene editing tools, like CRISPR to reverse engineer and discover information they need while selecting beneficial traits from a wild population. That’s what is happening now in a study between American and Israeli researchers. They are using gene editing tools to pinpoint climate resistant genes in wheat.
When it comes to agriculture to grow climate-tolerant plants, current regulation in most Western countries does not permit genetic enhancement through artificial intervention designed to change the gene expression. A new study from UC Davis and the University of Haifa, attempts to use gene editing in a responsible manner to help pinpoint resilient genes in ancient cultivars of wild wheat.
In a recent study the group used gene editing and hydroponics to pinpoint which genes are responsible for long roots. Long-rooted wheat can search for water and minerals better in the wild and is a more ideal gene trait if seed bank researchers want to produce seeds from wild varieties that are climate resilient.
“This is the first time that a gene associated with drought tolerance has been discovered and its function is validated in wheat,” said Gilad Gabay, the first author of an article published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. “Given the importance of wheat for global nutrition, on the one hand, and the fact that global warming is leading to an expansion of arid areas and impairing agricultural crops, on the other, this discovery is highly significant and will allow wheat to be grown in a wider range of climatic conditions,” he added.
The roots of ancient farming
There is an established theory that farming started with the emmer wheat in the area around Israel, Jordan and Lebanon fifteen thousand years ago. As seed banks start to proliferate around the Middle East, and younger generations turn to farming, new ideas are formulating. Consider the bread maker Haguy Ben Yehuda north of Tel Aviv who discovered an emmer wheat variety he is now baking into bread.
One of the largest wild wheat seed banks in the world is at the University of Haifa has been looking at how they can select the best cultivars from ancient grains. Tamar Krugman says: “Our gene bank includes thousands of strains of wild wheat from Israel and around the world.”
She and her colleagues at UC Davis applied gene editing technologies to help them identify a cluster of genes that make long-rooted wheat in the hope that they can replicate those seeds and use them in the future to grow hearty wheat in drought conditions. Climate change is expected to make some parts of the Middle East uninhabitable. See climate exodus, Middle East.
Details about the wheat study
In the first stage of the study, the researchers identified wheat cultivars in which significant difference were found in the field in yield production (over 2,000 kg per hectare) and in the plant biomass. However, what caught their attention was the fact that these differences were larger in arid conditions. In the second stage, tests in wheat fields and by using hydroponic methods found that these gaps in yield were due to differences in the root lengths.
In the third stage, the researchers used advanced genomics and bioinformatics tools to identify the genomic region that may include genes associated with the root architecture in wheat plants. This identification is considered extremely complex, since bread wheat has an enormous genome – over five times the human genome – that includes three distinct sub-genomes that include six copies of very chromosome.
In the final stage, the researchers managed to validate the function of the genes in the development of roots through the use of pioneering genome editing and genetic engineering techniques in wheat research developed recently at the laboratory of Dr. Jorge Dubcovsky.
Amsterdam is dealing with wild peeing by installing public urinals that are made from hemp
Travelling to any city, even your own city for a day, at some point you’ll need to ask, where can I go? Cities haven’t yet solved clean, sustainable ways for us to pee when out in public, so when you go to cities like Tel Aviv you will see “wild peeing” men urinating all over the place. Moms and dads hold their children’s bottoms, often in plain view, in the air beside a tree. And you know what happened to the Italian in Bread and Chocolate who desperately wanted to be Swiss but was found peeing in public?
Peeing in public is humiliating for the person who needs to go, and it’s not good for our cities and parks that shouldn’t become a public toilet.
If companies from Israel like Waze have solved traffic, some startup somewhere must be able to solve the problem of the clean, sustainable public toilet which remains hard to find and when we do, an unpleasant experience.
How can we make public toilets more sustainable and accessible? How can public washrooms in cities make us feel safe, clean and honored? Can we add urinals to trees? Use compost toilets? We have a traditional answer from NYC: just make it elevated and clean; and some interesting solutions from Holland. We asked and Green Prophet readers replied.
John Goodman from John Goodman PR, who represents the PR office of Bryant Park, NYC tells Green Prophet that “one of the finest examples of a public urinal/bathroom in the country is the public rest room at Bryant Park in NYC. Conceived by Dan Biederman, Executive Director of the park, the public restrooms in this city park mirror those found in a five-star hotel. They are safe and continually cleaned and maintained,” he points out.
Bryant Park Bathrooms, credit: Noa Ben Hamou
Funded by private donors the Bryant Park toilets contain two stalls for men and three for women who enjoy fresh flowers, paintings of the park made by artists-in-residence, and waiting bathroom attendants, with classical music in the background.
Bryant Park Restrooms: The fanciest public restroom in New York City boasts fresh flowers, art, and a classical music soundtrack.
“What an important and perplexing problem. It is one that I have wrestling with for decades,” says environmental artist Pablo Solomon. “Sadly, we are poisoning our water supplies with drugs, hormones, chemicals from our urine. Most water treatment plants just cannot filter out all of the complex compounds which our bodies remove through urination.
“Living on a ranch, we have a septic system. Since our house is on a hill, we have developed a vertical filtering system for the fluids. This consists of about 20 vertical feet of alternating sand, gravel and clays using gravity. While not perfect, this works better than most alternatives.
“A workable alternative,” he says, and which is not going to work in public spaces “is to urinate in a pan or bucket (yes like was done for thousands of years) and then dump the urine in a place that might be relatively okay, in pasture or yard/landscape areas–not a garden where you grow food. To kill the urine smell in the bucket in an environmentally friendly way is to put baking soda and add then add vinegar.”
Trond Nyland, Founder and CEO of Mattress Review tells us, “you’re exploring an important and interesting topic, and since I have ample experience living and traveling internationally, I’ve seen green urinals firsthand.
Nyland says that GreenPee has installed a good number of streetside urinal hemp planters in Amsterdam, and it has significantly reduced unrestrained public urinating and saved tons of water for drinking. Instead of producing more waste, the concept centers on the hemp and urine mixing inside to produce fertilizer for city parks and others.
A sustainable urinal for women
He also recommends the woman version, Lapee which “offers a female urinal option that’s touch-free, ideal in the time of COVID-19. All open-air urinals have much better ventilation, decreasing the risk of transmission of coronavirus. Touchless options will be best in the times of COVID-19, so designers should keep this in mind.”
Lapee is a urinal made for females
But isn’t the idea of green urinals like in Amsterdam, a little bit too much, “out there” for Americans? No says Karen Condor, a writer: “America is a melting pot. US culture has been shaped by many other cultures from around the world, including Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We adopt and adapt to things that seem outrageous at first then become normalized. Just think of tattoos or bento boxes just a few decades ago.
She’s familiar Amsterdam’s GreenPee, “the planter-like, hemp-filled, sustainable urinals as an attempt to offset the city’s ‘wild peeing’ hotspots which will one day be a normal sight in American cities, too. Now that people know how to guard against coronavirus through sanitizing their homes and cars, they have evolved into mobile sanitizing. And it’s easier to sanitize a small area than to worry about an entire public restroom.”
Condor notes that this sustainable “alternative is also easier for a city to operate than full public restrooms. This will help straining city budgets trying to meet population increase and tourist demand for more public restroom facilities. Cities would not have to allocate as much space or as much money for these “green” urinals. And given the growing awareness about the environment, cities pursuing green alternatives will see an increase in this type of idea being welcomed.”
My travelling friend who spent years in India had a novel idea, probably an ancient one, for going pee in public. She’d wear a long skirt and billow it out, and as she sat down could quietly pee in place with no one even noticing. But that’s still putting pee out in the public space. And we don’t want that.
Having to go pee is not going to go away. But having our nature spots, and cities full of public urine makes everything around us feel like a toilet. Unless you are in a toilet in Bryant Park, you really don’t want that.
Tips for peeing in the wild (not on city streets)
It’s important to pee far from water sources (about 200 feet away) and about the same distance from trails and campsites to avoid impacting the natural environment. If you’re on a sloping incline, pee facing downhill so it flows away from you and not back down onto your feet.
Graybeh or ghorabiya are delicate Turkish cookies, an Arab form of shortbread, are easy to make and a perfect for filling Purim baskets or for breaking a Ramadan fast.
If there’s one weakness we confess to, it’s cookies. We’ve written about fruit-stuffed ma’amoul cookies and tehina cookies. Now meet Sephardic ghorabeya cookies, a delicacy with a simple nut flavor coming through in every sweet mouthful.
Ghorabeya turned out to be as meltingly delicious as promised, and easy to make too. Try them – but keep some aside for yourself before they disappear.
How to Make Ghorabeya Cookies
Ghorayeba can be made with ghee. And Safeeda in the UAE shows the Indian influence on Arab cooking at her blog the Big Sweet Tooth
Ingredients for making Arab Shortbread
1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons finely ground almonds or walnuts
1 tablespoon coarsely ground almonds or walnuts
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons orange flower water or
1/2 teaspoon almond extract [optional]
1 tablespoon cocoa powder [optional]
Preheat the oven to 350F
In a medium bowl, blend the dry ingredients.
Add oil to the dry ingredients and mix.
* If using the the cocoa and almond extract, mix them in a small bowl first, adding a little of the oil to make a paste. Then add the rest of the oil and stir. Add to the dry ingredients.
The dough will be thick. Use a tablespoon to measure out 18 or so portions. Roll them tightly into balls. Place them on an ungreased baking sheet, or one lined with baking parchment.
Bake 25-30 minutes. The bottoms should be lightly browned and not dark while the outsides will be a pale tan color.
Allow the cookies to cool thoroughly before moving. They are very delicate and will crumble if moved while still warm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy.
You can travel sustainably near Washington, DC by renting a treehouse in the woods.
Washington, the city in DC, is an ideal place to visit in the United States. The city offers beautiful tourist locations and is home to the three most iconic USA government buildings: the Supreme Court, the White House, and the Capitol Building on Capitol Hill. You will also find amazing artwork and architecture around the city, with happening nightlife you will never forget. Whether you’re planning a family vacation or just a quick weekend getaway, there’s something for everyone in Washington. Yet, before you check on other travel essentials, looking into connectivity in the city is key. Finding a local e-sim card at any hour of the day, yes? You will need it to locate your hotel, find your restaurants. Say no more.
If you are looking for a good internet connection and reliable services during your visit to Washington, Holafly offers some good options: a secure connection through their roaming facility and unlimited data plans for you to travel easily throughout the trip.
Five recommendations to consider when travelling in Washington
Know the weather
Washington is one of the most busiest towns in the United States, but if you want to visit make sure you dress for the weather. May and October are the most pleasant months but crowded. But, if you prefer less crowded and can bear the cold, then January and February are the best months. Choosing the preferred climate will allow you to pack appropriate clothing and gear for your travels.
Know the local transport
One of the best features of Washington is that all tourist destinations are located close by. It makes it easier to roam around on foot. It is safe and allows you to know the city intimately. However, Washington also offers the safest and best metro for getting around. You can also opt for buses or monorails to hop between locations. However, if you wish to book a car rental, familiarise yourself with local traffic laws and parking regulations before you depart. Some areas may require special permits or fees for certain activities, so it’s best to know them before travelling.
Know the currency
The United States Dollar is the official currency of Washington. ATMs are available at reasonable distances allowing you to withdraw any time of the day. However, when travelling from a different country, asking your bank about the exchange rates and any other changes added to your card transactions can be significant. In such cases, carry some cash so you can roam hassle-free and avoid any glitches or heavy pockets later on.
Know where to stay – and make it green
Whether you’re looking for something luxurious, or just an affordable place to crash after long days of sightseeing, Washington has plenty of options. Yet, before booking a hotel or an AirBnB, travellers must consider factors such as location, amenities and price range when researching potential accommodations in Washington. When travelling during peak seasons, expect higher rates and rush. However, to save cost you can book accommodations away from prime locations. Roaming around by foot or bike is comfortable in Washington, and it can help you save money while enjoying the art and architecture.
We selected our best soup recipes for you. Some are familiar, some are truly exotic, and all are delicious. Bonus for soup-eaters: big health benefits. These soup recipes call for plenty of fresh vegetables and grains and are packed with vitamins and minerals you need to stave off winter ailments.
So bundle up to go outdoors, but when you’re home, sit down in front of, lets’ say, a fragrant, creamy, roasted garlic soup.
Fennel bulbs are in season now – at least, here in the Middle East. Providing you can get some, try this beautiful fennel soup from the Soup For Syria Cookbook by Barbara Abdeni Massaad. The recipe was developed by chef Greg Malouf.
White beans and loads of fresh, seasonal vegetables make a hearty soup to take the chill off winter days. Cook up our cannellini soup. You can either soak dry beans overnight ahead of time, or use canned beans.
Turkish lentil and chickpea soup with bulgur dumplings. Sound good? Sounds mouthwatering to me. It’s a soup that takes dedication, with a longish list of ingredients, and dumplings to shape by hand. A soup for serious cooks and serious soup eaters.
Among your pantry staples there are probably lentils. This rustic soup from Lebanon offers a satisfying bowl of lentils cooked down with vegetables and rice. Good for body and soul. Lebanese lentil soup.
Have you ever considered eggplant a soup ingredient? We have a whole soup based on eggplant. Cooked with mushrooms, swirled with pesto and sour cream, creamy eggplant soup is a surprise and a pleasure.
Chickpea and spinach soup appears on winter menus often, in the Middle East. I have a particular fondness for this Moroccan version of it.
Soup for breakfast? Why not? Moroccan cuisine developed a luscious, sweet wheat soup perfumed with orange flower water and cinnamon. Start your day with a bowlful, and you’ll have steady energy at least until lunchtime, and probably past. Herbel, Sweet Moroccan Wheat Soup.
You know, of course, that Jerusalem artichokes aren’t artichokes and have nothing to do with Jerusalem. Unless you bought some in a Jerusalem greengrocer’s to make this soup. Savory with saffron and thickened with almonds, it’s simple to make. And it satisfies your taste for the mildly exotic. Jerusalem artichoke soup.
What’s vichyssoise doing here? Well, it’s a soup traditionally served cold, but we say it’s no sin to eat vichyssoise hot off the stove. We do it. And like it, a lot.
We showed you bulgur dumplings from Turkey. We showed you soups brimming with chickpeas, croutons, and spinach. But we haven’t shown you the ultimate soup accompaniment: matzah balls. Famous for pairing with chicken soup, you can serve matzah balls in vegetarian broth or clear soup of any kind. So here you are, our traditional matzah ball recipe.
Why do some animals poo pellets, some tubes, and others pies, and how is it similar to cooling lava? Cracking the code for cubed poop.
Walk around a forest in Canada and you can’t miss the precise piles of round animal poop: Deer, moose, and rabbits. But there is one animal in the world (that we know of) that poops in cubes and it’s a wombat. How does the Tasmanian mammal do that? Yes, serious researchers want to know. Biologists get to ask ridiculous questions like this when they grow up, and then try to answer them using tools from science.
A team from the University of Tasmania has determined that a wombat’s surprisingly long and intermittently stretchy intestines compress their poop (or stool) into cubes. The team has now pinpointed another factor to making cube poop, which seems to apply to all animals that produce feces in pellet form: how the poo dries in the animals’ guts.
The research has been supported by the Ig Nobel Prize, the satirical prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research.
In the latest study, researchers built an artificial wombat digestive system and passed corn-starch ‘poop’ through plastic troughs, simulating intestines and added heat lamps to dry them out. Greater drying resulted in more closely spaced cracks — wombat poo, which contains 65% water, cracked into little cubes.
Human poo, made up of 75% water, comes out in longer tubes, and cow pat, containing up to 90% water, just slops right out.
Scott Carver and a wombat, via University of Tasmania
The researchers leading the wombat study is Scott Carver from the University of Tasmania and Georgia Tech’s Professor David Hu. They set out to crack the secret of the unique cubed poo of wombats: “There are many colourful hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, but nobody had ever investigated it. This research has been a fun effort to answer the questions of how and why,” says Carver.
How and why wombats produce cubed faeces has been a fascination to many people for a long time, he added.
And there are applications in human health. Certainly you’ve seen photos or videos of how a healthy human poop should look? The scientists looking at wombat stool agree: “the methods and physical picture shown here may be of use to physicians and veterinarians interested in using feces length as a marker of intestinal health.”
Jokes aside about cubed wombat poop in Tasmania (it’s made so it doesn’t roll away in Tasmanian wind!), nature has the best technology. We study it so we can learn from it to make energy more efficient and medicine more attuned to our bodies. The field is also known as biomimicry. Wombats know why their poop is cubed. Do you?
At one point Reddit users agreed that a 12-story residential building in Bat Yam, Israel is the ugliest building in the world. Don’t worry Bat Yam: Amman nearby in Jordan is the 3rd ugliest city. But still, the rumor circulated around the globe and whether it’s true or not is a matter of opinion. We went over to film the building so you can decide for yourself.
World’s ugliest building, Bat Yam. The Nahum Tower. Via Haaretz
The Bat Yam building is called the Nahum Tower, and it was once a center for local life and creativity in Bat Yam. Why is this important and part of the sustainability discussion? Sustainable architecture is not just a question of use of local, low carbon materials and emissions-free building technology.
Buildings also need to be beautiful if they are to last for a long time, say researchers from Denmark: “If buildings speak to our senses, we look after them better,” they write.
Constructed in the 1970s and resembling a Soviet-era residential block, the Brutalist style building in Bat Yam has become an eyesore – like most other apartment buildings in the area of Tel Aviv – because residents build over their balconies and hang air conditioners and junk such as plastic storage cabinets wherever they please. This contrasts with Moshe Safdie’s 1967 Brutalist building built for the Montreal Expo. I’ve visited it and see how vision and maintenance can preserve the intent of the architect?
Habitat 67, a Brutalist housing project by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie for Expo 67 in Montreal. Karin Kloosterman for Green Prophet
As for the Nahum Tower in Bat Yam, “I’ve seen uglier buildings in Australia. This one is pretty unremarkable,” writes one Reddit reader. “I’ve seen uglier ones in Israel, in almost every city,” writes another. Others comment that it’s ugly compared to the price of a cost of an apartment.
Marion Greenhouse sketch for the Nahum building in Bat Yam
The Bat Yam building today overlooks a large network of shopping centers and clinics, which include disintegrating wedding halls, and a car park.
As you can see above, the original sketch by the architect Marion Greenhouse, was not that bad. Done in a Brutalist style, common in Israel, what the architect didn’t plan for was the Israeli concept of “trisim” or plastic shutters that would cover the open spaces to make room for extra living space. Oftentimes the shutters are broken or malfunctioning, and there is no city bylaw telling residents how their balconies should look.
Sketch of the Nahum Tower by Marion Greenhouse. His family was in the Holocaust
The ugly Nahum building was filmed by a drone and published by a user on Reddit, where it earned the first place in the ranking, scoring higher than a Soviet building in Sofia in Bulgaria, slums in the city of Manila in the Philippines or buildings in Cape Town in South Africa.
In his memoirs, Greenhouse wrote about the project and that it was interrupted in the middle, lending reasons to why the building never looked the way it was intended: “The bankruptcy was due to the fact that they didn’t listen to me … I recommended to the developers that they build it in stages, starting with the commercial areas, and with the money they got from the sale of shops and the cinema they could finance construction of the residential tower. They told me that maybe I understand architecture, but I don’t understand business.”
Today, the cost of housing is astronomical in Israel where the cost of living doesn’t match the salaries, unless you work in hightech or the wedding industry.
With a general disregard for making apartments attractive, visitors to Tel Aviv will notice how many of the older residential buildings are crumbling apart, and full of junk on balconies and roofs. Beautiful cities aren’t born they are made. Consider that Paris has bylaws for keeping it beautiful: I’ve rented apartments there for a couple months of my life and notes from the owners were very clear: No watering the plants after 7am (so the water doesn’t drip on people below), and no hanging laundry in the windows or off the front balconies. All laundry must air dry on the roof.
Tel Aviv and Israelis in general don’t might hanging out their laundry in public. In fact, it’s encouraged. Where I live in Jaffa, it’s not uncommon to see strings of it hanging from small apartment flat windows on devices that attach to the windows. Even to see laundry hung in public spaces on lines between trees. Hanging laundry to air dry is a good thing. It means less power for electric dryers is used. But one of the problems in Tel Aviv is that it can be dusty. So know when to hang.
But back to the ugly question: what is the balance between respecting the things we own if they are maintained and physically attractive? Could we argue that better looking buildings are more likely to be cared for and protected? Let’s look to a Sicilian window below.
The laundry in Sicilian windows isn’t ugly.
When the clothes go out in towns in Sicily, it looks like a celebration. They use a standard yellow or blue striped drape that gives uniformity, shade and also privacy to your tighty whities. Sicilians also fill their balconies with plants, and use quality ceramic pots and water their plants regularly so they stay alive.
The environmental artist Ran Morin once told me that he does not want to replicate Oranger Suspendu at hotel lobbies around the world, even though he’s been asked. “Do you know how hard it is keeping one tree alive,” he once told me when I ran into him in Jerusalem. Something to think about before we plant on balconies. Last thought so you are more informed here is an article on how to grow an olive tree in a container.
The best way to deal with carbon is not to release it in the first place. Carbon capture is not the ultimate solution.
Sometime in the 1970s when our family outings were usually to places like Yogi Bear Jellystone park or the local drive-in movie, my father drove us to a coal-fired power plant. The local electric company had just installed smokestack scrubbers to comply with the Clean Air Act. The transformation from sooty grey smoke to puffy white clouds of steam seemed like a miracle.
Nixon-era greenwashing
Dad taught Science so he was able to explain how the scrubbers used electricity to attract ash and soot. It was similar to the way a charged balloon attracted our hair or clinged to the wall. These scrubbers were amazing but they were not designed to reduce the lung-rotting sulphur dioxide (SO2 – sox for short), nitrogen oxides (NOx – nox for short) or ozone (O3). They did little to reduce the levels of brain-rotting mercury or lead and did nothing to slow the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into our atmosphere.
Twenty-five years later the company proposed three additional “clean-coal” power plants on the same site to take advantage of the grandfather clause of environmental laws written when the original plants were constructed in the 1950s. The proposal’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) said that new technologies did capture more pollution. Per megawatt-hour, each new plant would produce less SO2, NOx and O3 than the older ones. This factoid was repeated on advertising along with the promise for jobs. But the devil was in the details. In sum total along with the existing plants, regional air quality would decline and barely meet Clean Air Act standards only if the smokestacks were built higher than the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) allowed.
The new “Clean-coal” power plants were expensive to build so they would have to stay online for at least 50 years in order to be cost-effective. Gas turbine power plants produce less CO2 per megawatt and are cheaper to build but they are more expensive to operate. Computer models recommended thousands of megawatts of offshore wind farms as the most cost-effective energy source. But these models were ignored.
Jobs were the ultimate trump card in the power plant debate but environmentalists brought up the probable negative impact of mercury and thermal pollution on the state’s fishing industry and the impact on traffic from the freight trains that would bring more than 6000 tons of coal every day to generate approximately 1100 Megawatts of electricity and release 12,000 tons of Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere.
Despite more than a century of science showing the impact of CO2 on climate and the fact that a CO2 concentration of 4% is fatal, this invisible gas is not considered a pollutant. When anyone brought up the topic of CO2, the word “sequestering” was used as if it was a magic incantation that would cure our carbon-based troubles.
What is Sequestering?
The dictionary gives: Se·ques·ter verb
isolate or hide away.
“Tiberius was sequestered on an island”
In the context of carbon dioxide, sequestering refers to any method which can lock this greenhouse gas safely away from where it can harm us and our environment. Since the O2 component of CO2 is not harmful, the simplest way to sequester CO2 would be to separate the Oxygen from the Carbon, reversing the coal-burning reaction:
C + O2 → CO2 + energy
to:
CO2 + energy → C + O2
Unfortunately unburning coal is almost as difficult as unbaking a cake. A wise college professor named Merlin once taught us the three laws of physics as:
You can’t win
You can’t break even
You shouldn’t even try.
Even if coal was pure carbon and air was pure oxygen, the coal unburning reaction would take more energy than we got from burning the coal. But let’s be optimistic. Maybe there is a way to sneak around that third law of physics, a trick to hide the carbon from mother nature.
Nature
Plants use chlorophyll and energy from sunlight to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. They already know how to sequester carbon. Over time these plants will eventually become coal which is mostly carbon. So it is possible to reverse that chemical reaction! Climate impact’s nature based solutions use plants as part of the carbon offsets which help companies move towards a carbon-neutral balance. According to an article published in the journal Nature, fast growing trees such as Eucalyptus and Acacia can absorb up to 5 tons of carbon per hectare per year. Going back to my neighbourhood coal power plant, in order to store the 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide this 1.1 Gigawatt plant emits every day we would need more than 876,600 hectares of eucalyptus or acacia trees. That’s 8766 square kilometre, a forest more than 11 times the size of Bahrain! Even if this much land is available and not being used for housing or agriculture, trees don’t live forever and forests are typically cut down where their wood eventually decays or burns, releasing its carbon back into the atmosphere. Seaweed, algae and other plants have also been explored for their potential to sequester or capture carbon but it’s helpful to put sequestering into perspective. It took nature more than one hundred million years to sequester carbon into the coal we’ve already burned over the past 350 years. So go ahead and plant a tree. Plant as many as you have land for, but they aren’t the quick and easy solution we were looking for.
Physical Limits of Carbon Capturing
A second method for sequestering carbon is to store it directly. For example, the large caverns created by salt mining could be used as giant carbon dioxide storage tanks. Dry oil wells and abandoned coal mines could also be used for direct storage. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Canada and Norway are already storing more than a million metric tons of carbon dioxide underground every year. Other large scale underground carbon storage projects are underway in the U.S., China, Australia and Europe. But not every hole in the ground would make a good carbon dumpster. High pressure carbon dioxide could cause environmental problems similar to what we’ve already seen with fracking.
The Chemistry of Carbon Capture
One promising form of carbon sequestering involves a chemical trick. If carbon dioxide is pumped into an underground cavern made out of a type of volcanic rock called basalt, a chemical reaction takes place. The basalt is carbonized as it captures carbon dioxide into a mineral form. In an experiment conducted in Iceland where basalt volcanic rocks are common, 90% of the carbon dioxide injected was captured into stone in only two years. Similar natural processes would take thousands of years.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently refined this technique and published in a peer-reviewed journal the current record for the cheapest carbon capture at $39 per metric ton. Previous state-of-the-art carbon sequestering typically cost $57 per metric ton.
Carbon Sequestering raises the cost of coal
We know coal isn’t good for our environment but we still burn it because it’s cheap. Coal currently costs about $40 per ton. But since burning coal produces twice its weight in CO2and the cost of burning coal and sequestering its carbon is very close to three times the cost of coal: $120 per ton.
There are other chemical tricks involving building materials. One very common building material is lime mortar. Over time the mortar absorbs Carbon Dioxide from the air as it hardens into something resembling limestone in this reaction: Ca(OH)2 + CO2 → CaCO3 + H2O
The Giza pyramids in Cairo are slowly returning to a material like limestone
The lime mortar used in the Great Pyramids at Giza are very slowly reacting with carbon dioxide as the mortar turns into something resembling the limestone from which it came. Self-healing concrete is how the Romans built structures to last thousands of years.
On the surface this reaction happens quickly but even after thousands of years, this reaction is not yet complete for the mortar that holds the great pyramids together. It is possible that new discoveries in chemistry will help us produce buildings that absorb more CO2 than was released during its construction.
What’s next for carbon sequestering?
We have more than a century of solid science telling us that our grand experiment to release millions of years of carbon into our atmosphere over the course of a few hundred years will end in tears. Each generation has kicked this looming environmental disaster down the road and passed it on to the next. The reason coal is still an enormous part of our energy mix is that our global accounting system doesn’t measure its true cost. We pretend coal is cheap but if we could measure the true cost of environmental damage or sequestering, it’s likely it would lose every advantage it has over wind energy, solar power or even nuclear power.
We must continue to explore new ways of sequestering carbon dioxide while reminding each other that the best way to remove carbon from the atmosphere is to not put it there in the first place.
Travel provides us with endless opportunities to explore some of the most incredible wildlife destinations on the planet. However, it is important that we should do so in a responsible manner, in order to safeguard the environment and protect our flora and fauna for future generations to come.
Decades of rampant wildlife tourism has already damaged our fragile national parks and reserves, as a result mature lovers are now seeking places that promote conservation and uplift the local communities for sustainable travel.
As we fast forward 2023-24, a buoyant growth has been forecast for the tourism industry. As such many of the destinations given below are bolstering their responsible offerings by offering tailor-made safari holidaysseeing the increased interest of the tourist to invest in a sustainable wildlife experience.
South Africa
The Noka Camp, Waterberg, Limpopo in South Africa is one of the few resorts on the planet that plough back 100% of their financial gain into the local community, for the benefit of the wildlife.
The camp enjoys a breathtaking location on a hilltop 100′ high, providing astonishing views of the Big 5 Lapalala Game Reserve and the meandering waters of the Palala River.
When it comes to sustainable tourism, the stunning lodge leads by example from generating their own electricity to manufacturing gin from the locally sourced products available in the reserve, apart from financing local animal breeding and relocation initiatives.
Brazil
From love of football to colorful carnivals and dense green forests, Brazil is a country where nature flourishes, especially since it holds almost 50% of the Amazon Rainforest, which is home to 10% of the animal species found worldwide.
Your journey begins in North Pantanal, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage and Biosphere Reserve known to have the best concentration of flora and fauna on the planet, while staying at the sustainable Cristalino Lodge, located in the middle of a private reserve.
The clear and clean waters of the Cristalino River are best explored by boat.The birdlife here is exceptional, while wildlife enthusiasts can spot animals high up in the canopy from the top of the nature towers. You can also explore the forest trails on foot, to engage in a unique wildlife hiking experience.
Kenya
Located in the wild northern part of Kenya, the Saruni Samburu luxury lodge enjoys a prime location in the Samburu National Reserve in a pristine and private wildlife conservancy. Tourism here is used to directly support conservation and give back to the community who in turn protect this valuable environment.
The area around Samburu is practically teeming with wildlife and is considered to be the most exciting in this part of East Africa, simply because of the abundance of rare species.
Moreover, the lodge is perched overlooking a number of waterholes and provides a spectacular view of some of the famous wild animals found in Samburu, which often gather here to quench their thirst.
Tanzania
The Southern Serengeti in Tanzania is characterized by classic grassy plains and acts as the setting of the eco Lemala Ndutu Mobile Tented Camp.This mobile camp is known for providing a truly authentic bush experience in the northern part of the Ngorongoro Crater.
The camp moves from North to South with the season, to ensure that guests get a ringside view during the period of the great wildebeest migration between December and March. Predators and other members of the Big 5 are easily spotted during these months and guests can watch the drama which unfolds at this time of the year from their convenient location on the edge of a marsh.
The camp has been recently renovated to offer guests a comfortable safari experience, especially at the end of a hard day in the bush. Meals are freshly prepared and the camp ensures that a sufficient amount is set aside for the local community whose efforts are vital for conservation of the wildlife of the region.
Puerto Rico
Meet creatures in Puerto Rico
One of the most beautiful islands in the Antilles, Puerto Rico is becoming one of the top destinations for eco-conscious travelers around the globe. Puerto Rico has a wealth of natural beauty, from rugged mountains to tropical reefs and dense forests, densely populated by local wildlife. Puerto Rico is home to a plethora of unique species – from native plants to rare, exotic animals.
According to Laura Juliá of Alandis Travel, an education group travel company to Puerto Rico, “the island would like to focus its tourist profile on ethical tourists that will respect the island and contribute towards its growth by giving back to the island during or after their visit.”
Are you up for the challenge?
Sri Lanka
The Sinharaja Rainforest Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Enselwatte Estate in Sri Lanka. This is a place where time stands still as the eco-friendly lodge has been especially designed to provide the guest an exceptional experience of the surrounding forest in its pristine glory.
The comfortable chalets are designed using recycled shipping containers and come with every amenity one can hope for in the middle of nowhere.The eco-tourism concept is very much visible in the architecture of the chalets, perched upon stilts overlooking a tea patch.
Bamboo panelling adorns the interiors, while the floor and the observation deck are made from discarded railway sleepers. There are numerous nature trails from the lodge which allow the visitor to observe the local wildlife, spot a few of the 147 bird species and experience the unique rainforest ecosystem.
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Tucked away in a corner of a tropical forest in the spectacular Andaman Islands is an ecological collection of thatched tents and cottages which beckon visitors looking for a ‘green’ escape in the Bay of Bengal.
Barefoot at Havelock is probably the best sustainable accommodation option where guests can stay in spacious and tastefully decorated rooms, with attached bathrooms and all modern amenities.
Activities here include diving and snorkelling in the crystal clear waters looking for corals and other interesting marine animals. The key attraction at Barefoot is swimming with the elephants and enjoying a forest walk with these gentle giants along the beach.For those looking for a holistic experience, the in-house spa facilities at Barefoot are top class.
India
The Kanha National Park and Tiger Reserve is located in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and enjoys a reputation as one of the best destinations for spotting tigers in the wild in the entire subcontinent.
Tucked away on the periphery of this famous park is Kipling Camp, the brainchild of Bellinda Wright, the driving force behind the Wildlife Protection Society of India, and one of the first eco-friendly lodges established here in 1982. As many as 15 acres of land has been set aside by the camp to offer minimum disturbance to the wildlife around the camp.
All the rooms have been constructed with the local style of architecture, connected by natural pathways and no fencing between the adjacent jungle and the property.The local community is engaged to keep the area clean and mingle with the guests for an unparalleled cultural and natural experience.The Gond artists and the local Bagia tribes find plenty of financial support from Kipling Camp.
The verdict
Eco-friendly resorts that combine comfort with greenery and wildlife are today the best launching pads for wildlife safari discoveries and for providing support to the local communities as well.
We can’t live without salt. That’s a known fact. To satisfy the craving for this essential nutrient, people have fought wars to own it, built roads to transport it, suffered extreme labor to extract it from the earth, and paid high taxes for the right to consume it. What we still aren’t sure of is how much salt we need in our diet, and how much is too much.
Medical wisdom has linked excess salt intake to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease since ancient times. In the 1900s, studies funded by manufacturers of salt and processed foods tried to disprove this. Between these two mighty opposing forces, with their financial interests and professional reputations at stake, is the salt-sensitivity theory from the University of Indiana School of Medicine. According to this study, people sensitive to salt may be at increased risk of cardiovascular disease as a direct reaction to salt, not because of high blood pressure caused by salt intake.
Himalayan salt is now preferred since it contains no traces of microplastics, unlike sea salt
The salt shaker’s resident evil genie is sodium chloride, which makes up about 99% of table salt. Western society’s rocketing blood pressure levels are blamed on sodium chloride. The American Heart Association provides a handy guide showing how much of it is in typical amounts of table salt, and advises on salt intake.
Up to 2% of additives to salt are allowed by the American Federal Drug Administration. Salt manufacturers claim to use much less. Common additives to refined table salt are Potassium iodide at levels of 0.006 to 0.010% – this is iodine, included by law in order to prevent iodine deficiency leading to thyroid disease. In addition, dextrose is added at about 0.04%, to stabilize the potassium iodide and prevent it from evaporating. Finally, to keep salt from clumping, there are sodium ferrocyanide, and ferric ferrocyanide. They are added in amounts of 20 to 100 ppm.
Macrobiotics and salt
Then there is the macrobiotic theory, which holds that sea salt and food fermented in it (soy sauce, miso, pickles) is good for you, taken in moderation. It seems that unrefined sea salt has 95% sodium chloride, 4% potassium chloride, and 1% minerals and trace elements essential to health. Refined table salt is missing the crucial minority nutrients, and only iodine is replaced in it.
Healthy use of salt in cooking. The key words are sea salt, and moderation.To get the most of the nutrients and flavor in salt – always sea salt – cook it into your food, don’t shake it your food at the table. Even for salads, make your vinaigrette dressing ahead of time so that the salt can integrate and be “cooked” by the acid element (vinegar, lemon juice).
You don’t need commercial salt substitutes, most of which are overbalanced with potassium and may lead to other health problems. Just decrease your salt intake. Cook with wine or with good-quality soy sauce. Reduce vegetable or chicken stock to almost a syrup, and you’ll have a delicious base for sauces. (The very word “sauce” is derived from “salt.”) Combine toasted sesame seeds and dried nettles or seaweed in a coffee grinder; grind and use the powder to “salt” your food.
And of course, avoiding processed foods is probably the best thing you can do for your health. Processed foods, even those claiming to be “healthy,” are packed with salt, even if you can’t taste it. Check labels and see for yourself. The salt levels in commercial salad dressings, breakfast cereals, and processed meat products go sky-high.
Keep looking – you’ll see the advantage to cooking from fresh raw ingredients like we do in the Middle East. Who can compare the industrial taste of soup shaken out of a package or poured out of a can to home-made soup? Here are 10 winter soups we love. Not to mention the comforting feeling that says “home” as the aroma of food made by hand wafts through the house.
Upcycle refined sea salt
Make your own salt scrubs. This way you can add fresh oils and natural smells and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
So you’ve bought some sea salt, but hate to throw out that refined table salt that suddenly looks so threatening. What can you do with it? Here a few tips:
Make a hand scrub. Mix a tablespoon of salt with a tablespoon of good oil (olive is great) and rub the mixture all over your hands. Rinse off with warm water – no soap. Towel dry, and enjoy your velvety hands.
Keep your kitchen smelling sweet by pouring very salty water down the kitchen sink. This will help dissolve grease built up in the plumbing.
Treat tired, achey feet with a hot, salty footbath. Do the same for the rest of you; soaking for a little while in hot, salty water relaxes and revives you.
We have even heard of a Chassidic tip for increasing the chances of conception in women: buy Dead Sea salts, dissolve them in a tubful of hot water, and soak for 15 minutes. It hasn’t been proved by us, but we heard it from the lips of a well-known Chassidic rabbi.
Finally, keep your goldfish happy and healthy with a salty bath. Add one teaspoon of salt to a quart of fresh water at room temperature. Let your goldfish swim in it for 15 minutes, then put them back in their tank.
Let’s say you run an NGO to save the turtles. There are many kinds of software that can help you with fundraising and outreach.
Many nonprofit organizations need software to succeed. For example, it can be essential for organizing some high-quality volunteer work by coordinating the efforts of the relevant individuals through apps. In this article, we review the key challenges of developing software for nonprofits. In case you’re interested in the creation of some apps for your nonprofit company, we also have a great link here:
Strategies for Developing Software for Nonprofits
Many strategies exist regarding the development of software for nonprofits. Here are the most essential ones:
Responding to the objective needs of the organizations: applications have to solve some specific issues. For example, they have to target the coordination of volunteers who work with the refugees;
Apps have to be user-friendly: most nonprofit apps have volunteer and client audiences in mind. This information means that they should appear with a clear focus on the users;
Maximal security should appear from the onset: many nonprofits have governments or political entities as opponents. This information means that the leak of relevant information can be devastating for the security of involved individuals. In this light, the most crucial aspect is to focus on the choice of secure technology from the beginning.
Common Challenges of Developing Software for Nonprofits
Many challenges touch upon the long-term development of software for nonprofits. Firstly, a major problem is the limited nature of resources. Many nonprofits don’t have many funds to spare. This means that compromise solutions are crucial in this process. Secondly, nonprofits usually don’t have direct access to competent developers. This means they have to rely on outsiders for the majority of their processes. Lastly, the problem of access to technological advancements is also large. Some apps may require an investment into potent servers, for example. Nonprofits need to find solutions that take these problems into consideration.
One effective approach is adopting tools like donor management software and CRM for nonprofits that are specifically designed to be budget-friendly and scalable. These platforms help streamline operations, manage donor relationships, and improve fundraising efficiency without straining limited resources.
Benefits of Developing Software for Nonprofits
Barefoot College helps women learn solar engineering. Building software for non-profits gives good karma to this world.
Despite all the potential problems, the development of software for nonprofits brings about tremendous benefits. What are those? Above all, apps solve many organizational problems for the average organization. Nonprofits can better coordinate their volunteers in this way, for example. Another vital factor is that many people get better access to nonprofit services. A good site or app means that a large number of people can quickly find and access the help of some nonprofit organizations. Cooperation with nonprofits is also of great benefit to developing organizations. It’s a perfect chance to boost their reputation as many nonprofits perform vital work for the well-being of various disadvantaged groups and nations.
Conclusion:
To summarize, nonprofits should pay more attention to web and mobile app development. It offers many benefits that can enhance the visibility of the relevant organizations. If you work for a nonprofit and find app development interesting from the standpoint of your needs, we have some interesting options. KeenEthics is a company that can help you with developing relevant products for volunteers and clients. You can find the company via this link.
