Support Groups for Foster Children

In the modern post industrialised world, their are many children who are not living with both their parents. They may be in foster families (which have not got the best record), living with one parent, either through divorce or lack of marriage/co-habitation or prison or death, or living partly with one parent and then the other parent. They may live with other family members. All of these compromised situations leave the child vulnerable to the unethical or damaged. Their carers maybe depressed, or resentful of their position and what the child represents to them in that situation. To pretend a sense of duty is enough to provide for the child is dangerous. If people were as nurturing as is needed, half of the laws of the world would not be necessary.
What this suggestion is about is a support group at every school for these students, similar to the support group for immigrant children I previously suggested. The same long term productivity and economic savings are the incentives for governments putting the relatively low cost program in place.
Setting up a support group for these children of unfortunate circumstances, including foster children, single parent families, children living with other relatives, divorced parents children, and anyone who looks angry or downtrodden would give them the chance to feel as though the "authorities" care and so do their peers, which may reduce "antisocial" behaviours, and feel if they participate in healthier activities they benefit. This will save the community a fortune in rehab, prisons, policing, and general mayhem and tragedy. Also, combining children whose lack of a full parenting background and the various solutions may put their own situation in perspective.
The school counsellor could run it like a youth group (a lot of church groups don't quite know what to do with "strays" of unusual background). It could have aspects like a self help group. Activities like trust games, anger management, discussion time, body language reading, self esteem raising tasks, life skills such as basic cooking, form filling, art creation and appreciation, etc could make it fun as well as useful. A regular talk on their rights, and what an adult can and cannot do to them is, of course, essential. There could be guest speakers as well as fun outings. The speech and drama teacher could run the body language talk, the sports teacher could take a self esteem raising game, a community member who had a tough time as a child could give a talk on how they overcame the odds and created their own destiny. Trips to the beach or park, as well as "cool" stuff in the local area, such as the movies or arcade or art gallery could give it an air every now and then, and act as an economical reward for tasks completed.
Also, during the discussion group on their problems and possible solutions, it must be made clear to the children that there are counsellors, male and female, available, as well as legal backing if needed. If they are being beaten, psychologically abused, or sexually interfered with, they may need to feel like they can trust the people available to help them. Their trust has been messed with, and a general group is a way for them to know their rights, build confidence and trust enough to ask for individual attention. This with help the general community economically and emotionally in the long term, in productivity and healthiness.

Vitamin B5

Vitamin B5 is a water soluble vitamin that is also known as pantothenic acid or pantothenate. It creates lipids (fats), steroid hormones (including cortisone), hemoglobin (blood), and neurotransmitters. It helps with health skin, nerves and muscles. There is twice as much vitamin B5 in human muscle then other meats. It reduces allergies and supports the adrenal glands. It is used in the metabolism of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates.
A deficiency has the symptoms of apathy, fatigue, nausea, headaches, depression, tingling in hands, cardiac instability and personality changes. Other symptoms are fertility problems, acne, decreased serum potassium, lowered blood cholesterol, and insulin sensitivity. Other symptoms possibly are frequent infections, abdominal pains, sleep disturbances, neurological disturbances such as paresthesia like "burning feet", numbness, muscle weakness, and cramps.
Although there is no toxicity, an excess can lead to a sensitivity in the teeth, diarrhea, digestive abnormalities and water retention. It is lost in cooking, particularly roasting and milling (often found in the hulls of grains), exposure to acids (like vinegar) and alkaline (such as bi carb). It is destroyed by the canning process (high heating).
It is found in a lot of foods (in Greek it's scientific name means "from everywhere"). Eggs, fresh vegetables, broccoli, alfalfa, avocados, legumes, mushrooms, nuts, molasses, whole rye flour, whole wheat, whole grain cereal, royal jelly, torula yeast, brewer's yeast, salt water fish, cold water fish ovaries, pork, kidneys, and beef all contain it in good amounts.

Asylum Seekers of the World Solution

As the global population expands and shifts demographically, there is an increasing number of skirmishes over resources, political upheaval, man made and natural disasters that make populations need to relocate. Regularly (mostly stable) countries all around the world have displaced members of our global community knocking on the door in various states of desperation asking for assistance in the form of residency. Every country's leaders are aware that this is becoming a more and more regular occurrence, with every likelihood of increasing with time. Some more hardline approaches is a zero tolerance policy on these unfortunates, treating the asylum seekers like criminals in the hope they will stop attempting to enter their domain. Besides being very unhumanitarian and an active neglect of their human rights, it only works in the short term as "desperate is what desperate does", and often the door will be knocked harder in the future, as in a battering ram. More humanitarian approaches is to be softer on the refugees, which is great for the human touch and feels good, but also leads to every stray in the global neighbourhood seeing it as the opportunity to get somewhere easily. Here is a solution that is good for all involved.
If the asylum seekers are recruited for 2 or 3 years in the service of the United Nations, that can be their opportunity to show their genuine helpfulness and skill to the global community. A metaphor could be that every time a tooth is knocked out in a fight, that tooth goes to serve the U.N., giving it more teeth. It is a lot better then sitting in a refugee camp, with nothing to do but feel hard done by, instead utilising their time and skills, or increasing their skills.

There could be various areas to work in such as:
1. Human rights advocacy
2. Humanitarian aide
3. Child protection
4. Education
5. Peace corps
6. Environmental disaster relief
7. Environmental work
8. Staff member aides
9. Counselling
10. Interpretation

While they do voluntary, possibly payed, work for the U.N., it gives the U.N. staff time and opportunity to get to know the asylum seekers, their personalities, skills and inclinations which puts them in a better position to knowledgeably place them in appropriate areas of the global community. It will also show their problem solving capabilities, cosmopolitan communication skills, integration likelihood, adaptability, and willingness to participate in team work with others who are different to themselves.
For the U.N. it turns what would be an administrative headache into a workforce, and the more number of refugees there are (let's say there are severe floods and several small wars in a glut), the more workers they will have to help resolve the situation. Also, if any of the refugees really shine, they get first pick!
Of course, some education and skills teaching would be needed, but a lot of refugees already have a lot of skills (bi-lingual, carpentry, legal knowledge etc) which are just waiting to be resourced. Also, if you teach a skill to one refugee, such as how to write a legal letter, they can teach the next, and so on. Also, as many are likely to spend time in a cosmopolitan metropolis, it helps to increase awareness, tolerance and understanding of other types of people. And after a preliminary 2 or 3 years, they can be allocated to a part of the global community that needs their skills and they are best suited to, reducing the likelihood of a repeat of the previous turmoil. Everyone involved, the U.N., the refugee, the adoptive country, even at times the old country, will come away feeling like they have been beneficial and benefited and feeling good.

Dolphin Healing

This is an idea for a diagnostic tool. Dolphins have sonar that lets them see the flesh, organs and bones of each other and other animals. They are very intelligent animals with a natural inclination to helpfulness and co-operation. Both the military and the entertainment industry have tapped into their innate nature much to both industry's benefit. Dogs are used for medical reasons, the classic being guide dogs, but also for cancer detection or blood glucose alarms for diabetics.
If you trained a dolphin (or more) for diagnostic purposes it could help with mystery conditions. You could put the patient in the water with the dolphin and let the animals swim around them scanning the patient. They could tap the patient gently where the problem is "seen". If it is not a localised problem, there could be coloured boards to tap that indicate different aspects, such as "blood", "hot/cold", etc. It would be a cheaper and less dangerous system then x-rays, blood tests, or cat scans. Alternative therapies would be interested, and some medical doctors who are open minded yet have a patient with a chronic complaint that has no easily found answer could very well benefit.

Wishing Well

I wish I had a tail
To help me scale this wall
I wish I had some wings
To catch me if I fall

Oh wishing well Who can tell?
Do a wishing spell and go wishing well

I wish I was God's daughter
So I might walk on water
I wish I had some scales
So I might sing with whales

I wish I wasn't blind
So I could read your mind
I wish I had good night sight
So I could see the light

1994 (appox.)

Renewable Energy

The world has it's ups and downs, and at this time, there is change, change a long time coming, in the air. We are realising that, without the help of volcanoes, we have had the insidious greenhouse gases equivalent to many volcanoes, of thousands of chimney stacks and millions of exhaust pipes slowly poisoning the air. With the joyless toil (and bad backs and deaths) of the lower socio-ecomonic classes, we have been eating up the coal and oil, created by the lives and deaths of mostly microscopic creatures in ages past, and spewing forth the carbon and other elements, they stored there for millennia loose into the atmosphere. The filthy air has been making children sick, acidifying our oceans, which is easy to ignore for some, but it is slowly blanketing our thin atmosphere in gases that have ultimately a greenhouse effect (letting the heat in, but not out). Soot from Asia (we ALL have this dirt on our hands) is covering the Arctic, exacerbating the melting of the ice there. These are effects that are at first invisible to the eye, especially if you live in an urban environment, which most do. The child down the road has asthma, the summer is unusually hot, the spring rains came late, the evenings cloud formations change their path and shape, the farmers complain about the floods, or drought. Politicians bicker about water supply. And then fire or water consumes your neighbourhood.

We all know that change is coming, but what kind of change? It could be a disaster of blithering, as the pressure cooker slowly spoils the food, or we could plan for the long term, longer then a term in a political office, because we are all sharing the future, or our children will be, or we could re-incarnate in the mess we made this time round, if that is your view. If not, God loves what They created, and helps those who help themselves, and I won't want to explain why everything They made is dead or dying. Something about birds of the field and lillies of the valley. Anyway, who wants to live in sooty air, dirty oceans and rivers, with a bunch of sick farm animals and cold concrete and pipes for comfort? Plastic fantastic (credit cards) can't help you there, and is the cause of the current financial problems of the world. Band-aid solutions are wearing thin.

Or the change could be great, in a better way. If the population is willing, and the vast majority really are, we could mosh in together and save ourselves from, well, ourselves. Carbon trading is a buzz word when it comes to greenhouse gases, and although there are other fairly dire pollution problems, it is a great way to bring back life to our party exhausted planet (the "it" crowd of previous periods has had it's fun). There are risks in this change, but the Chinese define risk as "a dangerous opportunity". In the huge changes, healthy ones, that this entails, upheavals will happen. Upheavals will happen anyway, they already are, but they have been coming in distressing forms. In establishing new healthier ways to do our business, jobs will be lost, but many more will be created. Jobs you can love and be proud of for the right reasons. Also, with all that is coming, it will be all hands on deck. Many countries will be hard up for manpower! If you doubt this, or are looking for work (since the debt based global financial crisis), plug "Renewable Energy Jobs" into the Internet. Plenty of work there, and it is only the beginning! Anyway, enough preaching, let's look at one of the areas of solution, Renewable Energy. Coal is out (unless they can eventually get a satisfactory pollution-free method working), and nuclear is a dangerous joke. There is plenty of energy everywhere in the world (and cosmos), in a raw and active form, not just as a potential (as in matter). The ocean roars with it, the sun powers life into it, the air and water shapes entire continents with it, cosmic rays (gamma for instance) penetrate right through planets, dark matter changes the paths of galaxies. There is so much power, even in thought. It is very easy to tap into without trying too hard, or changing anything much. You just have to go with what it is doing, and could not stop doing, anyway. I have rated them out of five for potential I my humble (ha!) opinion.

Wind Power is already being established in many countries, proving to be an efficient provider of power. I personally think it should be put on everything mechanical that moves at high sped for increased efficiency, as well as being land bound. I think they look very futuristic and inspiring, like beacons of hope. It is greatly favoured, because it is very clean, and is easy to meter. I wonder if there is a way to get the blades to turn into the wind from whatever direction it blows, turning itself naturally, like pressure that lifts an aeroplane wing. A suggestion for research. *****

Water Power is presented in several forms, old and new. Firstly, ocean technology let's explore ocean technology.

Wave Power is one path being experimented with, which is currently using floating devices being pushed and pulled to and from the other by the waves. I think it has a way to go, and maybe thinking inside the box may help, or simply turning it inside out! *** (extra star for originality)

Osmotic Power, which uses the flow of salt from a high salt solutions (ocean) to low salt solutions (river mouths) in an estuary type situation as a method of creating power. I think desalination plants may be more interested in developing this technology. There is another "out there" (love them!) field of research called vortex power which I didn't understand. ***

Tidal Power is being researched that uses the ebb and flow of tides, channelled, for generating power in the usual hydroelectric way. Maybe they can use technology from the wave power research. ****

Ocean Thermal Power uses the flow of warm water flowing into cold water and visa versa to harness power. I think it would have be fairly mobile and be capable of catering to seasonal and el Nino etc cyclic change, but I may have not understood clearly enough. ****

Marine Current Power is where the currents of the ocean are harnessed for power. This would work well around the Cape of Good Hope of South Africa, the Bass Straight of Australia or any other channelled consistent areas of current. ****

Then there is the more traditional river hydroelectric power.

Damless Hydroelectric power consists of simply harnessing the power of fast flowing rivers, like a water mill used to. A great method, that works with what nature is doing anyway, without interfering too much. *****

Micro Hydroelectrics are used in small amounts all over the world already. All together they produce quite a bit of power. *****

Large Dam Hydroelectric Power is an old traditional that needs little explanation. However, regular flushing and byways for spawning fish to travel is a lesson we have learnt and need to accommodate. Fish such as salmon that go from ocean to river take nutrients back into the land by being eaten or otherwise dying, returning the minerals and proteins back to the land. Damless systems are preferable, because it goes with the flow better. **

Splitting Water Molecules for burning is where they are researching splitting the hydrogen element from the oxygen (in H2O, splitting the H2 from the O), both which are combustible (you can burn hydrogen and oxygen). Then, when you have burnt them for energy, they can be recombined as water. It is a tricky thing to want to do, as well as ironic (burning water), and it would have to be clean. Apparently there are already vehicles that run on water, of methods unknown to me (one case is rumoured to be in California), but the inventors have been quieted for now because of the difficulty in metering the fuel for profit. Or so the gist goes. ***

Solar Power is being used and experimented with in various forms as well. I might add that you could use combinations of things, not necessarily "solar" separately from "water" or "air". These factors all effect each other in nature, so combining their effects in energy tapping is an area that could be explored more. Using them together but separately is fine as well (let's say wind and solar farms), but there is greater scope (what about solar winds?!)!

Solar Cells are well known and being established in a lot of different forms. They are in deserts, on roofs, and even on vehicles. A new battery has been designed that charges very fast, so storage of energy could be a problem solved. ****

Concentrating Solar Power, like a magnifying glass or satellite disk is being used to. That way the energy is condensed and amplified. Maybe it can be used in conjunction with other methods. ***

Solar Updraft Towers uses the flow of heat from the sun and the way it rises (like when you see heat rising off the ground on a hot day) to create energy.*****

Hydrogen Generation uses solar panels and rust (very cheap, stable and accessible) to split water molecules to utilise to hydrogen. Other methods like electrolysis are more difficult and expensive. Other methods split it out of gas, which create greenhouse gases. If it has safe bi-products this will be great. ***

Solar Thermal Panels heat panels and then send the heat up through a chamber thus creating power. It is sort of like a mini solar updraft tower. ****

Passive solar building design uses architecture to make the building cool in the heat and warm in the cold. Termite nests have inspired east/west placement and air flow for temperature maintenance. Using vines and trees to shade in the summer and let the sun in in the winter (by dropping their leaves) is another technique. Insulation is another. *****

Solar Ovens are wonderful things that use the sun in concentration to cook food. They look like a space aged barbecue, and are popular amongst the futuristic and the developing world alike. It is fun and it uses absolutely no fuel. *****

Solar Air Conditioning uses the energy from hot days to cool air in the air conditioning. The hotter the day, the more energy there is to cool the office/house/school whatever. Very savvy! *****

Solar hot water systems can be installed to create hot water for the home. Also you can use solar water heating on camping trips and other temporary situations.*****

Biofuel is another area of research. This includes ethanol (pure alcohol), biodiesel and bagasse (sugar cane left overs).

Liquid Biofuel includes ethanol. There is research into butanol, which is worrying as it is highly combustible in the explosive sense (it is close to lighter fuel). The other is to use animal fat (lipids) and vegetable oils. I'm not sure it is ethical to use food to travel when others are hungry. Also the biofuel may originally just use offcuts and wastes, but demand may outstrip supply leading to further decimation of living biomass, which we do not need in reducing greenhouse. It's only "asset" is it is easily metered. *

Solid Biomass and Biogas includes wood fuel which produces less sulphur then coal. However, using wood means less trees and more CO2. The other idea is using manure and other organic bio"waste" to create methane as it decomposes for fuel. The remaining byproduct of decomposed organic material can be used as fertilisers, therefore returning the nutrients and energy to the earth. It is an excellent idea that solves several problems at the same time. China has these methane generators established already on farms. *****

Another area being explored is the heat in the earth's core.

Geothermal Power puts a pipe into a thinner layer of the Earth's crust into the warmer rocks underneath. Water is poured down and heated, creating steam for power. *****

There is a Magnetic Power Generator available which uses magnetic attraction/repulsion to spin a turbine, creating free energy absolutely without any fuel.*****

If you are interested in Magnetic Power Generators or any of the other products, look up www.energy.sourceguide.com for information and products.

Maybe turbines can be put in drains? Or on windy building tops? Or use the down draft of cold wind from icy mountain tops (after all, glaciers move tonnes of rock). There is massive energy everywhere in the world, all it needs is creativity, nouse and respect and we can tap into it!

Selenium

Selenium is a trace mineral that, in it's organic form, is stored by the body. When it bonds with some proteins, it forms selenoproteins, which are antioxidant enzymes, and regulate thyroid activity and effect the immune system.
Selenium is best absorbed in it's organic form, which is acquired in plants and animals, but it depends on the selenium levels found in the soil. Selenmethionine is stored in muscles and tissues. It stimulates the immune system, helpful in the fight against cancer and arthritis, reduces aging, reduces cardio-vascular disease, strokes and heart attacks, lowers blood clotting, increases elasticity of skin, is an aphrodisiac, helps fertility, reduces tobacco damage, and when applied topically has antibacterial and antifungul effects so is good for dandruff and age spots as well. These are the claims anyway.
A deficiency can lead to heart disease, weakened immune system, hypothyroidism, cataracts, muscular dystrophy, retarded growth, liver problems, infertility, some forms of cancer, Kashin-Beck disease, Keshan disease, Myxedematous Endemic Cretinism. A deficiency often does not cause disease, it just makes one more susceptible. Severe gastro-intestinal problems (such as Crohn's disease) depletes all nutritional absorption, and being on total parenatal nutrition (TPN), that is being fed only by a drip, can reduce selenium if not properly distributed. High levels of selenium leads to selenosis, which has the symptoms of gastro-intestinal upsets, blotchy white nails, hair loss, "garlic breath", irritability, fatigue, and nerve damage.
It is found in brazil nuts (has a high level), tuna, beef, cod, turkey, chicken, pasta, egg, cottage cheese, oatmeal, rice, wholegrains, walnuts, and cheese. Corn, wheat and soyabeans have selenomethionine.