James' World 2

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If you live in an area with abundant sunlight—hello, fellow southern Californians—you’ve probably thought about installing solar panels on your roof to save on your electric bill. But with so much information, it can be hard to know where to start.

Look no further—start here

Between the different types of panels, financing, inverters, and other jargon, researching solar energy can feel overwhelming at first. That’s why I recommend starting at a solar quote comparison site like EnergySage, Solar-Estimate, or SolarReviews (the latter two are run by the same people).

Both EnergySage and Solar-Estimate act as educational resources and comparison shopping tools to help you field bids. I’ve been using EnergySage, which is chock-full of articles explaining the technology involved. You can also watch videos, look at their buyer’s guide, or start getting quotes. Their Solar 101 series of articles will help you understand the basics, and when you’re done, scroll through the site’s “Learn About Solar” sidebar to read even more articles that’ll give you a feel for the process.

To understand what your home requires, though, you’ll need to look up how much electricity you use. If your bill tells you the average amount of electricity you use each month, make a note of that, or calculate a quick and dirty average yourself. The more information you have on your usage, the more accurate an estimate you can get from installers.

Your energy usage will determine how many panels you’ll need on your roof. Too few, and you’ll still have to pay the electric company for whatever extra power you use. Too many, and you’ll waste money on panels you don’t need—though the electric company will give you credits for any energy you don’t use, should you one day need electricity from the grid.

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Behold: the power of the sun. Vivint Solar/Unsplash

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If this year’s turkey seems over brined, blame your brain.

The question of when salty becomes too salty is decided by a special set of neurons in the front of the brain, researchers report in the journal Cell.

A separate set of neurons in the back of the brain adjusts your appetite for salt, the researchers showed in a series of experiments on mice.

“Sodium craving and sodium tolerance are controlled by completely different types of neurons,” says Yuki Oka, an author of the study and a professor of biology at Caltech.

The finding could have health implications because salt ingestion is a “major issue” in many countries, including the United States, says Nirupa Chaudhari, a professor of physiology and biology at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

Too much salt can cause high blood pressure and raise the risk for heart disease and stroke, says Chaudhari, who was not involved in the study.

Craving, to a point

The study sought to explain the complicated relationship that people and animals have with salt, also known as sodium chloride.

We are happy to drink sodas, sports drinks, and even tap water that contain a little salt, Oka says. “But if you imagine a very high concentration of sodium like ocean water, you really hate it.”

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About a third of the food produced around the world goes to waste, and much of it ends up in landfills—where it becomes a source of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Eliminating waste is the ultimate solution, but food scraps will always remain. For that, there is a solution that nearly anyone can do: composting.

Composting turns rotting garbage into a valuable soil enhancer that helps plants thrive. Farmers call it “black gold.” 

And now more cities are implementing curbside composting to help them meet their sustainability goals. New York is currently rolling out a mandatory composting program that will soon be effect in Brooklyn and throughout Manhattan by next year. Washington, D.C., and Chicago are piloting curbside composting programs, and Seattle and San Francisco have been successfully composting residents’ food scraps for years. 

But you don’t have to wait for a city-wide program to begin composting in your backyard to taking food scraps to a community bin. 

“Don’t be afraid of it. It’s relatively easy. It’s not without its missteps, but those are easily learned and corrected,” says Bob Rynk, lead author of The Composting Handbook and a professor emeritus at SUNY Cobleskill. 

What happens in a compost pile?

Food turns into compost through the hard work of small microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. 

“When you have a compost pile, you become a microbe farmer. You’re managing microbes,” says Rhonda Sherman, a composting expert at North Carolina State University. “And what do microbes need? They need the same things we do. Which is air, water, food, shelter.”

On a small scale, in your backyard or neighborhood, a compost pile should consist of three things: food scraps, water, and dry, woody material like yard trimmings or raked leaves.

Yard trimmings are frequently referred to as “browns” and are high in carbon. Food scraps are called “greens” and are high in nitrogen. A compost pile should typically have twice as many browns as it does greens.

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Compost is made from a mix of food scraps and yard waste such as raked leaves. When added to soil, it helps plants thrive. Photograph by Severin Wohlleben, laif/Redux

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-to-compost?utm_source=pocket_collection_story

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Check out bioGraphic for a long read of this problem.

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Every spring, as the daylight lengthens and the weather warms, rivers of birds flow north across the Midwest. They fly high and at night, navigating via the stars and their own internal compasses: kinglets and creepers, woodpeckers and warblers, sparrows and shrikes.

They come from as far as Central America, bound for Minnesotan wetlands, Canadian boreal forests, and Arctic tundra. They migrate over towns and prairies and cornfields; they soar over the black tongue of Lake Michigan in such dense aggregations that they register on radar. Upon crossing the water, many encounter Chicago, where they alight in whatever greenery they can find—office parks and rooftop shrubs and scraggly street trees and the sparse landscaping outside apartment-complex lobbies.

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Matt Dutile / GalleryStock

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Washing dishes is awful. It’s the kind of chore that never ends—pretty much every time you eat or drink, you make something dirty. Thankfully, a woman named Josephine Cochrane, who was really concerned about her fancy china getting chipped while being hand-washed, stepped up and invented the first dishwasher.

More than 100 years have passed since Cochrane revolutionized kitchen cleanup and got people hand-cranking their dishes clean. Now, other than the brainpower and Tetris skill you need to load the machine, you’ve only got to put some detergent in the soap compartment and press “start.”

Sure, Cochrane’s invention saves you time, but you still have to buy detergent. Make your own dishwasher tablets, though, and you’ll save some money. It’s easy, makes cleaning up a bit more exciting, and will leave your most likely not-so-fancy china shiny and smelling of fresh lemon… or whatever you want.

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Say goodbye to smelly dishwashers. Photo by alexraths via Deposit Photos

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After the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, in a haze of horror and smoke, clinicians at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in Manhattan offered to check anyone who’d been in the area for exposure to toxins. Among those who came in for evaluation were 187 pregnant women. Many were in shock, and a colleague asked if I could help diagnose and monitor them. They were at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD—experiencing flashbacks, nightmares, emotional numbness, or other psychiatric symptoms for years afterward. And were the fetuses at risk?

My trauma research team quickly trained health professionals to evaluate and, if needed, treat the women. We monitored them through their pregnancies and beyond. When the babies were born, they were smaller than usual—the first sign that the trauma of the World Trade Center attack had reached the womb. Nine months later, we examined 38 women and their infants when they came in for a wellness visit. Psychological evaluations revealed that many of the mothers had developed PTSD. And those with PTSD had unusually low levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol, a feature that researchers were coming to associate with the disorder.

Surprisingly and disturbingly, the saliva of the nine-month-old babies of the women with PTSD also showed low cortisol. The effect was most prominent in babies whose mothers had been in their third trimester on that fateful day. Just a year earlier, a team I led had reported low cortisol levels in adult children of Holocaust survivors, but we’d assumed that it had something to do with being raised by parents who were suffering from the long-term emotional consequences of severe trauma. Now it looked like trauma could leave a trace in offspring even before they are born.

In the decades since, research by my group and others has confirmed that adverse experiences may influence the next generation through multiple pathways. The most apparent route runs through parental behavior, but influences during gestation and even changes in eggs and sperm may also play a role. And all these channels seem to involve epigenetics: alterations in the way that genes function. Epigenetics potentially explains why effects of trauma may endure long after the immediate threat is gone, and it is also implicated in the diverse pathways by which trauma is transmitted to future generations.

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My apartment is essentially a graveyard for things that should have been thrown in the trash. Ombre paint chip strips have found a home on my gallery wall. Dead flowers (sorry, dried flowers) have taken the place of any living blooms, much to my roommate’s chagrin. And when it comes to the vessels I have adorning every available surface, they’re largely trash. Well, technically, they’re upcycled trash: I have a thing for hoarding empty candle jars.

The root of my obsession with repurposing every glass and ceramic jar stems—as most things in my life are wont to do—from a borderline insane fear I have of accidentally tossing something I’ll one day have a use for. This fear is the reason I still own low-rise jeans. Except, in this case, repurposing old candle jars has proved incredibly fruitful; not to mention, more sustainable and budget-friendly.

Candles tend to run fairly expensive, and it seems a shame to waste them after they’re burnt out. Especially when they come in such pretty containers. Whether repurposed for organizational or ornamental functions, there are so many uses for old candle jars. The main problem is figuring out how to get them clean.

This is the method I have found to be most effective:

1. Remove any stickers.
2. Pop your finished candles in the freezer for a minimum of 24 hours.
3. Using a sharp knife, carefully jab at the wax to break it into pieces; once these fall out (usually taking the wick with them), your candle should be wax-free.
4. Soak in a sink of warm, soapy water for an hour or so. Scrub with an old sponge or toothbrush to get rid of residue and soot. In more dire cases, you can also use Goo Gone.
5. To really sanitize, run the now-empty jars through the dishwasher.  

Convinced yet? Here are a few ways to reuse candle jars in every room of your home.

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Photo by Cody Guilfoyle.

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