This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who studies humans and environments, but it’s nice that it’s getting some “official” research attention. I can just hear the calls of suburban population now: “What do we want? Dirt! When do we want it? Now!” 🙂
Category: Uncategorized
I am always interested in “green” practices as I believe they help make our environments healthier and more enriching, and us happier. This post is a great conversation about what makes urban environments “green.” Is it the street itself? The landscaping? The materials used? The amount of materials?
Interested in creating a little micro-environmental enrichment? Here’s a quick, easy way to do so; with a DIY terrarium.
Urban rooftop farm expanding
A feel-good story from Inhabitat about communities getting together and creating something healthy and happiness-inducing:
As the world’s largest rooftop farm, Brooklyn Grange has been super busy for the last three years providing the local community with delicious fresh vegetables. While their 40,000 square foot space atop a warehouse in Long Island City has been enough to grow more than 40 different types of vegetables each year, Brooklyn Grange is in the process of expanding to a rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The new food-producing plot is largerthan their current farm, and it is expected to be up and running by this summer.
…the Brooklyn Grange has added more photos of the new rooftop to their Facebook page, giving us a much better look at the space. The new rooftop is more than 45,000 square feet, which means that the world’s largest rooftop farm is more than doubling in size!
No doubt, the new location will let the Grange become highly involved in the immediate local neighborhoods, a characteristic of most organizations in the Navy Yard. The Grange farmers have mastered the art of urban rooftop agriculture, growing their organic produce in 7.5” deep beds with Rooflite soil, and we can’t wait until this massive rooftop is lush with produce!
Related articles
- New Farm! (brooklyngrangefarm.com)
- Farm the Rooftops (dirt.asla.org)
- Brooklyn Navy Yard Retail Construction Moves Forward (newyork.cbslocal.com)
Why nature is healthy for you
Chris Kresser, an L.Ac who usually writes about food and healthy babies, has a great blog post today about the importance of getting out into nature:
You may not have considered the possibility of fostering a “relationship” with nature – after all, how can you have a relationship with a non-human entity?
From an anecdotal perspective, how many of us have taken a long walk in the woods, and felt soothed by the sound of the wind in the trees and the crisp smell of leaves? Or have been moved by the beauty of a snow-capped mountain range? Who wouldn’t enjoy an evening watching the sunset at the beach, sand between the toes, with the rhythmic ocean waves lapping at the shore?
Experiencing these profound moments of peace, happiness, or wellness in the context of nature is a universal event, and demonstrates that contact with nature is an integral part of our well-being as humans. In a public health context, exposure to nature has been used as therapy for short-term recovery from stress or mental fatigue, faster physical recovery from illness, and long-term overall improvement on people’s health and well being (1).
Research supports the theory that our relationship with nature is a fundamental component of maintaining good health. This “biophilia hypothesis” suggests that there is an innate affiliation of human beings to other living organisms, both flora and fauna, and perhaps even an innate bond with nature more generally.
The biophilia theory is supported by both common sense and clinical evidence. Many controlled trials and observational studies have demonstrated the positive therapeutic value of both the physical and visual exposure to nature, with benefits shown for a diverse range of diagnoses spanning from schizophrenia to obesity.
Read the entire blog post: Go outside! (Why contact with nature is crucial for health.)
TSA improving the airport experience through music
The airport can be a stressful and harried space, and usually isn’t helped by security. However, at LAX that same security crew is hoping to make the airport more, well, jolly:
Travel isn’t usually a highlight of the holidays, but at Los Angeles International Airport some of the Transportation Security Administration workers enjoy the season so much they sing.
True to its duties, the LAX TSA Chorus isn’t joking. Its singers are actually TSA employees who don Santa hats during the holiday season and perform in the middle of the airport.
Ray Matute, the director of the chorus, tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish that the quizzical looks the singers get from hassled travelers soon turn to smiles.
“It really puts the good face — and the human face — of TSA on the map,” he says. Matute’s passion for music led him to found the chorus a few years back. “It gives all of us creative people here within the organization an outlet.”
During its 45-minute show, the chorus sings the usual Christmas carols — Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Silver Bells — but also slips in some of the singers’ own favorites, like What a Wonderful World and You Are So Beautiful.
There’s video of the chorus performing during last year’s holiday season here, with a report from USA Today.
more at NPR: At LAX, TSA Workers Sing Cheer Into Holiday Travel
Related articles
- TSA Workers Sing Cheer Into Holiday Travel (npr.org)
- TSA employees sing holiday songs (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Kinect Helping With Senior Health
From a Microsoft press release, but still really interesting: a researcher is looking at using Kinect to track a senior citizen’s walking more regularly than the usual once or twice a year to make sure they’ve still got that pep in their step:
What if technology could help prevent falls, and in some cases even prolong lives?
Marilyn Rantz and her colleagues at the University of Missouri are researching just that, using Microsoft’s Kinect to measure and monitor subtle changes in the gait and movement of older people. Using technology to measure the way people walk more completely and daily, rather than at bi-yearly doctor’s appointments, can give healthcare professionals a chance to intervene sooner.
[Independent Living Center] Tiger Place focuses on monitoring its residents with a network of sensors placed in apartments, a monitoring network that now includes Kinect sensors in many rooms. What’s more, Tiger Place is an “age in place” facility, meaning seniors don’t have to move to different housing as they get older and require more assistance – the new services they need as they age are brought in to them, Rantz said.
Several apartments in Tiger Place have a Kinect mounted near the ceiling in the living room, where day after day the devices gather a mountain of data about the resident’s movement and motion.
Helping seniors is just one of a growing number of healthcare applications for Kinect.
Doctors are also using Kinect to help stroke patients regain movement. Surgeons are using it to access information without leaving the operating room and in the process sacrificing sterility. Healthcare workers are even using it to help with physical therapy and children with developmental disabilities or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Thus, the genesis of the so-called “Kinect Effect” – a term coined in the hallways and conference rooms of Microsoft to describe the device’s increasingly widespread appeal and diversity of uses.
Read the entire release at Kinect Effect Reaches Into Hospitals, Senior Centers.
I’m a huge fan of Kinect hacks, especially when a Kinect is modified to help people move better in their homes and everyday surroundings. It is relatively cheap compared to a lot of other medical equipment, and the hack is often fun to use as well as being practical.
Related articles
- Kinect Keeps an Eye on Grandma Without Invading Her Privacy [Kinect] (kotaku.com)
- Microsoft’s Kinect being used to detect illness & saving senior citizens (examiner.com)
- Kinect helps the blind to get around (ubergizmo.com)
- Next Generation Kinect Will Read Lips (bigthink.com)
- Microsoft’s Kinect: A robot’s low-cost, secret weapon (news.cnet.com)
The Microbial Home
You’ve seen those glass containers sitting on people’s desks that are supposed to be self-sustaining mini ecosystems. What if you could create one in your own apartment, out of your own apartment?
The Microbial Home Probe project consists of a domestic ecosystem that challenges conventional design solutions to energy, cleaning, food preservation, lighting and human waste.
More at: The Microbial Home: A Philips Design Probe
Getting the locals on board is key to conservation
Great post from the Human Directions of Natural Resource Management:
Indigenous peoples are key to preserving the world’s forests, and conservation reserves that exclude them suffer as a result, according to a new study from the World Bank.
Its analysis shows how deforestation plummets to its lowest levels when indigenous peoples continue living in protected areas, and are not forced out.
Across the world millions of tribal people are conservation refugees, but the World Bank says its evidence shows ‘forest conservation need not be at the expense of local livelihoods.’
Using satellite data from forest fires to help indicate deforestation levels, the study showed rates were lower by about 16% in indigenous areas between 2000-2008.
Read more at It’s Official – The Key To Conservation Lies With Indigenous Peoples
This is something Woodland Park Zoo, Izilwane, and many other non-profit organizations have been working on for years, so it’s nice to see the World Bank back them up.
So, the next question is what can be done to support local, indigenous groups to protect and care for their natural surroundings? Most groups want to preserve their environments and keep them handy for the next generation, but it is simply economically not viable, at least not how they see it.
Related articles
- Philanthropists and Indigenous Leaders Talk Solutions to World’s Pressing Problems (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
- Locals ‘helping forests recover’ (bbc.co.uk)
- Clashes Between Tribes and Agribusiness Increase in Malaysia (nytimes.com)
- People Hugging: UNFCCC Forest Policy Needs A Climate Justice Framework (canadianyouthdelegation.wordpress.com)
Benefits of Yoga Behind Bars in Jails, Prisons, and Correctional Institutions
My work has been pretty high-stress lately, and I’ve been trying different things to relax and try to make my off-work hours very enriching and recuperative. I recently read about this non-profit organization, Yoga Behind Bars, that offers free yoga classes to incarcerated youth and adults.
Yoga Behind Bars is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization in Seattle that brings yoga and meditation classes to incarcerated youth and adults in Washington State as well as those at risk of entering the criminal justice system. We are a volunteer-driven organization that teaches 11 classes a week at 7 different facilities. Our mission is to share tools of self-awareness, healing and transformation with our students. (at Yoga Behind Bars).
I think this is a great idea! First, there are multiple benefits of yoga, even for the non-incarcerated:
“There is a growing body of research that supports our belief in the efficacy of yoga and meditation classes to support true individual healing and change. Participation in yoga classes has been shown to reduce depression, anger, and anxiety, often a root cause of antisocial behavior and drug use. Yoga has also been established as an effective adjunctive therapy during treatment for drug addiction, which is a co-factor in many of our students’ incarceration.” (more citations provided in the original article)
more via Benefits of Yoga Behind Bars in Jails, Prisons, and Correctional Institutions.
I can’t believe how stressful and un-enriching it must be to be incarcerated. There are constant political battles that often result in violence, lack of exercise, friends, or contact with the outside world. I am always supportive of programs that try to bring beneficial programs into prisons, like Puppies Behind Bars, theater classes, or raising frogs through the Sustainable Prisons Project.
This is also a great therapy and skill to teach prisoners, because they can take this training and use it outside of the yoga class without an instructor or without a structured setting, either alone in their cell or just practicing breathing when it gets tough.
I’m curious to hear of other programs that are offering enrichment to people living in incarceration, or other environments where they don’t have the same opportunities to go out and enrich their own lives. Please share any you know of in the comments.
Mental Flowers 
