• UK: Queen to participate in annual swan count
• Technology uses brain waves move to move wheelchair
• US President Obama scores major victory on climate - analysis

• Raja John Hagelin conducts extensive training seminar at University of Athens
• Leading brain researcher explains how Transcendental Meditation supports success in life
• Outstanding success of Dr Fred Travis's tour in Great Britain on Transcendental Meditation and brain development

• World 'sleepwalking' into disasters: UN aid chief
• Researchers uncover how nanoparticles may damage lungs
• Forest carbon market already shows cracks

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Positive Trends
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

UK: Queen to participate in annual swan count
2 July 2009 - Buckingham Palace has announced that the annual Swan Upping, a tradition dating back to the 12th century which involves a census of the swan population on the River Thames, will be conducted by the Queen's official Swan Marker from 20-24 July. The Queen has decided to join her team of Swan Uppers for part of the census. She will follow them up the river and visit a local school project on the whole subject of swans, cygnets (young swans), and the Thames. 'Education and conservation are essential to the role of Swan Upping and the involvement of school children is always a rewarding experience,' Buckingham Palace said. (more)

Technology uses brain waves move to move wheelchair
29 June 2009 - Toyota Motor Corp says it has developed a way of steering a wheelchair by just detecting brain waves, without the person having to move a muscle or shout a command. Toyota's system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday. The new system allows the person on the wheelchair to turn left or right and go forward, almost instantly, according to researchers. (more)

US President Obama scores major victory on climate - analysis
29 June 2009 - Facing a rare defeat, President Barack Obama put a big dose of political capital on the line and scored a major victory just when he needed one. Obama leaned heavily on House of Representatives Democratic holdouts to support the first energy legislation ever designed to curb emissions. The measure ended up passing in dramatic fashion. To a certain extent, the victory validated Obama's governing style -- and that could bode well for his other top domestic priority, health care. (more)

Switzerland: First solar plane to take around the world flight
27 June 2009 - Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled Friday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources. The prototype, HB-SIA, has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs only as much as an average family car. The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving surplus energy from its 24,000 solar cells in high-performance batteries. (more)

Ship of plastic bottles to send eco-message
26 June 2009 - A ship made of plastic bottles called the Plastiki will sail the Pacific on an 11,000-mile voyage from California to Australia highlighting the dangers of environmental pollution. The boat is named in honour of the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific. On Friday, the Plastiki team plans to announce a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, which is providing technology for the voyage as well as the Plastiki Mission Control Centre. (more)

The good news from Canada, 22 - 24 June
26 June 2009 - A small Ontario battery maker, Electrovaya Inc, and ExxonMobil have launched low-speed electric cars that will be rented out to the public in the US city of Baltimore, Maryland. The new car-share programme called AltCar launched 23 June. There has been a remarkable 30 per cent plunge in deaths from cardiovascular ailments over a 10-year period. The drop is attributed to anti-smoking efforts. Favourable economic trends were reported. And The Nature Conservancy of Canada has acquired almost 60 hectares of land along the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick as a way to protect local habitat. For further details on these and other stories, please see: (more)

Sahara solar plans good for Europe, Mediterranean
24 June 2009 - A 400-billion euro ($554 billion) project linking solar power produced in the Sahara to energy users in Europe and North Africa is a 'win-win' for both continents and could also promote integration around the Mediterranean, a German minister said. Guenter Gloser, deputy foreign minister, told Reuters 20 gigawatts of concentrated solar power (CSP) -- the equivalent of 20 large conventional power plants -- could be harvested each year by 2020 if the project called Desertec got off the ground. The Desertec Foundation has noted in six hours the world's deserts receive more energy than mankind consumes in a year. It would take CSP from the Sahara (in Africa) and deliver to markets locally and in Europe. (more)

Study: A few extra pounds can add years to your life
24 June 2009 - Carrying a little extra weight may actually be good for you, according to a Canadian study that showed a few pounds appear to protect people from an early death. Researchers found that while underweight and extremely obese people die earlier than people of a normal weight, people who are slightly overweight actually live longer than those of a normal weight. An earlier study, conducted in the United States and published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed similar results. (more)

US and Chile Presidents meet, announce science partnership
24 June 2009 - US President Barack Obama has announced a science partnership with Chile that will include clean energy research, collaboration on the spread of flu, and a cancer research centre. President Obama met on Tuesday in the Oval Office with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. He says the science-based initiatives in Chile will help the United States confront its problems. (more)

National parks in US aiming to become greener
23 June 2009 - Officials at parks across the United States are trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by cleaning up their own operations, with the help of federal stimulus dollars. The National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency have started the Climate Friendly Parks network programme to help parks address emissions. Plans at various parks include energy-efficient windows, wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen-powered shuttles, and mostly organic locally grown food. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

Raja John Hagelin conducts extensive training seminar at University of Athens
20 June 2009 - Recently at the University of Athens, Greece, Raja John Hagelin, Raja of Invincible America and renowned quantum physicist, along with Dr Robert Schneider, Dean of the Maharishi College for Perfect Health at Maharishi University of Management, USA, were invited to deliver a special training session to graduate medical students and professionals. (more)

Leading brain researcher explains how Transcendental Meditation supports success in life
17 May 2009 - 'Whatever you want to do and be you can do and be.' This was the message of Dr Fred Travis, one of the world's leading researchers into the connection of brain functioning and higher states of consciousness, when he spoke to top educators and business people during his recent highly successful tour of Great Britain. Every experience influences brain functioning, and the experience of restful alertness during the practice of Transcendental Meditation develops more holistic functioning of the brain, leading to increased creativity, intelligence, success, and inner stability in any situation. (more)

Outstanding success of Dr Fred Travis's tour in Great Britain on Transcendental Meditation and brain development
15 May 2009 - Dr Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, USA recently undertook a tour of Great Britain presenting research on the benefits of Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme in terms of brain development and brainwave coherence. Dr Travis gave presentations at some of the great business and educational institutions in the nation. (more)

Recent EEG research increases understanding of long-term benefits of Transcendental Meditation: Increased orderliness and integration in brain functioning
27 February 2009 - Research studies over the past thirty years have consistently shown that the silent state of Transcendental Consciousness experienced during the Transcendental Meditation Programme is increasingly stabilized in the functioning of the mind--indicated by increased stabilization of EEG coherence. Recent research shows that this happens even when the mind is actively functioning, creating a more orderly, efficient, quiet state of the mind. (more)

UK: Conference on 'Consciousness, Creativity, Leadership, and the Human Brain' to feature research on Transcendental Meditation
25 February 2009 - A conference on 'Consciousness, Creativity, Leadership, and the Human Brain' will be held in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, on 25-26 April. Featured speakers include Dr Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management and Dr Harald Harung, Associate Professor of Management, Oslo University College, Norway. Conference highlights include research showing that the Transcendental Meditation Technique develops 'peak performance'. (more)

Research on Transcendental Meditation and college stress to be published in leading journal
23 February 2009 - Research on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation Programme on student brain development and the ability of college students to resist the negative effects of stress, conducted at American University in Washington, DC, USA, will be published in a leading international scientific journal in the next week. (more)

Connecting Maharishi's programmes with a global audience through advanced telecommunications technology
8 February 2009 - In a recent interview with a Dutch magazine, Dr Benjamin Feldman, Minister of Finance and Planning for the Global Country of World Peace, explained that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was very interested in advanced communications technology and inspired its expansion so that a teleconference could simultaneously be broadcast to all parts of the world. (more)

More than US$21 million spent conducting research on the beneficial effects of the Transcendental Meditation for heart disease
2 January 2009 - The Transcendental Meditation technique is the most thoroughly researched programme in the field of human development. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US has spent more than US$21 million conducting research on the beneficial effects of the Transcendental Meditation Programme on heart disease alone. (more)

Israel: US expert's university lecture tour reveals how Transcendental Meditation enhances functioning of 'the brain's CEO'
31 December 2008 - In a recent tour through Israel, Dr Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.), Fairfield, Iowa, USA, delivered presentations at universities throughout the nation. His main lecture series, geared toward students and professors unfamiliar with neuroscience, addressed factors critical to brain function and how the 'restfully alert' state during Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme beneficially influences the brain. (more)

Visit of Dr Ashley Deans and Dr Fred Travis to Israel generates wide interest in Maharishi's programmes
9 December 2008 - Dr Alex Kutai, National Director of Invincible Israel for the Global Country of World Peace, recently reported on the visits to Israel of Dr Ashley Deans, Ambassador of the Global Country of World Peace for Consciousness-Based Education and Executive Director of Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment; and Dr Fred Travis, renowned researcher on Transcendental Meditation and the brain, and Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. (more)

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Flops
10 Short Summaries of Top Stories

World 'sleepwalking' into disasters: UN aid chief
16 June 2009 - The world is 'sleepwalking' toward preventable natural disasters whose effects could be cut significantly with a modest increase in spending on risk reduction, the United Nations aid chief said on Tuesday. 'The trends in disasters, particularly from climate change, are of enormous concern,' said John Holmes, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs. About 90 per cent of disasters are climate-related, said Mr Holmes, who noted cyclones in Brazil in 2004 and Oman in 2007 had been of an intensity never before seen in those regions. (more)

Researchers uncover how nanoparticles may damage lungs
12 June 2009 - Researchers in China appear to have uncovered how nanoparticles which are used in medicine for diagnosis and delivering drugs may cause lung damage. Nanotechnology, or the science of the extremely tiny, is an important industry. One nanometer is one-billionth of a metre. Apart from medicine, it is used in products like sporting goods, cosmetics, tires, and electronics and has a projected annual market of around US$1 trillion by 2015. Concerns are growing that it may have toxic effects, particularly to the lungs. (more)

Forest carbon market already shows cracks
4 June 2009 - A plan to pay tropical countries not to chop down trees risks being discredited by opportunists even before it starts. Development and environment groups have long warned that suddenly placing a big value on rainforests could spur friction and even conflict in some developing nations, because of uncertain tenure rights, corruption, and inadequate policing. At a conference on the Indonesian island of Bali last week, Interpol environmental crime official Peter Younger told Reuters he expected fraudulent trading of carbon credits, as organized crime infiltrates the system of companies and countries in the developed world buying rights to the stored carbon. (more)

Gene for glowing passed along to monkey offspring
28 May 2009 - Scientists gave marmosets a gene that made their feet glow green, and one of the animals passed it along to its offspring - the first time that an added gene has been inherited by a monkey. Researchers have added genes to rhesus macaques before by injecting embryos, but the new work is the first documentation that such genes can be passed along to future generations of monkeys. This opens the door to creating colonies of transgenic monkeys by breeding. For the study, the researchers used a gene that makes tissues glow under ultraviolet light, as an easy way to see where the gene is present. They put the gene in a virus that would insert it into the DNA of cells, and then injected the virus into marmoset embryos. From these embryos, five healthy marmosets were born. All showed evidence of having inherited the gene. (more)

Disaster risk increasing, exacerbated by climate change - United Nations report
17 May 2009 - The risk of disasters occurring worldwide is increasing due to the expansion of slums, the increasing vulnerability of rural livelihoods to weather changes and deteriorating ecosystems, a new UN report says. 'Exacerbating this deadly trio is the established and omnipresent threat of climate change, impelled by greenhouse gas emissions generated by affluent societies and individuals, with the resulting burdens falling on developing countries and their poorest citizens,' said the first UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, which was launched in Bahrain on 17 May. 'The most important finding of the report is that even without climate change, disaster risk is still increasing worldwide... If climate change added to these disaster risk patterns, it will be a quite catastrophic picture,' Andrew Maskrey, one of the report's authors, told IRIN. (more)

South Korean experts claim to have cloned glowing dogs
29 April 2009 - South Korean scientists say they have engineered four beagles that glow red using cloning techniques. The four dogs look like typical beagles by daylight. But they glow red under ultraviolet light, and the dogs' nails and abdomens, which have thin skins, look red even to the naked eye. Scientists in the US, Japan and in Europe previously have cloned fluorescent mice and pigs, but this would be the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned. (more)

First cloned camel born in Dubai
15 April 2009 - A scientist says the world's first cloned camel has been produced in the desert emirate of Dubai. Nisar Ahmad Wani, a senior reproductive biologist at the government's Camel Reproduction Center, says the cloned camel is a six-day-old, one-humped female called Achievement or Injaz in Arabic. Injaz was born 8 April after an uncomplicated gestation of 378 days, the center said in a press release Tuesday. The center said she was created from cells harvested from an ovary of an adult female camel. (more)

Italy muzzled scientist who predicted quake
6 April 2009 - An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing more than 100 people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic. The government on Monday insisted the warning, by seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani, had no scientific foundation. Mr Giuliani, who lives in L'Aquila and developed his findings while working at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in the surrounding Abruzzo region, said he was helpless to act on Sunday as it became clear to him the quake was imminent. (more)

Nearly a third of US bird species in trouble: report
19 March 2009 - Nearly one-third of all US bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, with birds in Hawaii facing a 'borderline ecological disaster,' scientists reported on Thursday. Wetland bird populations have soared since 1968, but birds in other habitats -- forests, grasslands, and arid areas -- have declined as much as 40 per cent. Overall, the United States is home to more than 800 species of birds; 67 of those are federally listed as endangered or threatened, with an additional 184 species causing concern because of they are narrowly distributed or have declining populations. (more)

Ozone levels raise respiratory death rate: study
11 March 2009 - People who live in areas with the most ozone pollution are 25 per cent to 30 per cent more likely to die from lung disease than those living in areas with the cleanest air, researchers reported. Doctors have long known that ozone is hazardous. Short-term exposure aggravates asthma symptoms and causes breathing problems. About 7.7 million people worldwide die from respiratory causes every year and the team reported that raising the ozone level by 10 parts per billion raises the likelihood of death from lung problems by 4 per cent. (more)