Consumers Will Soon Have Devices In Their Hands To Detect GMO and Toxic Foods

In the not too distant future, consumers will be able to run on-the-spot tests for environmental toxins, GMOs, pesticides, food safety and more with their smartphones and other hand-held devices.

Every human being on every developed nation on Earth, whether living in a rural or isolated area, in the middle of a large city, or near an industrialized area, now contains at least 700 contaminants in their body including pesticides, pthalates, benzenes, parabens, xylenes and many other carcinogenic and endrocrine disrupting chemicals.

We are being bombarded on a daily basis by an astronomical level of toxicity, all controlled by chemical terrorists on behalf of the food industry. Morever, many of these toxins affect our fertility and those of successive generations.

It's time for people to know exactly what they are putting in their bodies and technology is coming to the rescue. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app that uses a phone’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.

“We’re interested in biodetection that needs to be performed outside of the laboratory,” said team leader Brian Cunningham, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering at Illinois. “Smartphones are making a big impact on our society -- the way we get our information, the way we communicate. And they have really powerful computing capability and imaging. A lot of medical conditions might be monitored very inexpensively and non-invasively using mobile platforms like phones. They can detect molecular things, like pathogens, disease biomarkers or DNA, things that are currently only done in big diagnostic labs with lots of expense and large volumes of blood.”

"Modern biological research is also allowing an extension of laboratory devices on to small computer chips to detect biological information within DNA sequences," said biotech specialist Dr. Marek Banaszewski. "Bioinformatic algorithms within programs will aid the identification of transgenes, promoters, and other functional elements of DNA, making detection of genetically modified foods on-the-spot and real-time without transportation to a laboratory."

The wedge-shaped cradle created by Cunningham's team contains a series of optical components -- lenses and filters -- found in much larger and more expensive laboratory devices. The cradle holds the phone’s camera in alignment with the optical components.

At the heart of the biosensor is a photonic crystal. A photonic crystal is like a mirror that only reflects one wavelength of light while the rest of the spectrum passes through. When anything biological attaches to the photonic crystal -- such as protein, cells, pathogens or DNA -- the reflected color will shift from a shorter wavelength to a longer wavelength.

The entire test takes only a few minutes; the app walks the user through the process step by step. Although the cradle holds only about $200 of optical components, it performs as accurately as a large $50,000 spectrophotometer in the laboratory. So now, the device is not only portable, but also affordable for fieldwork in developing nations.

In a paper published in the journal Lab on a Chip, the team demonstrated sensing of an immune system protein, but the slide could be primed for any type of biological molecule or cell type. The researchers are working to improve the manufacturing process for the iPhone cradle and are working on a cradle for Android phones as well. They hope to begin making the cradles available next year.

In addition, Cunningham’s team is working on biosensing tests that could be performed in the field to detect toxins in harvested corn and soybeans, and to detect pathogens in food and water.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Modular Solid State Technologies EMFT in Regensburg have also engineered an ingenius solution to detecting toxins - a glove that recognizes if toxic substances are present in the surrounding air.

The protective glove is equipped with custom-made sensor materials and indicates the presence of toxic substances by changing colors. In this regard, the scientists adapted the materials to the corresponding analytes, and thus, the application. The color change -- from colorless (no toxic substance) to blue (toxic substance detected). The researchers also envision other potential applications for the glove in the food industry.

Other handheld devices currently in development are portable chemiluminescence detectors, but based on enzyme-catalyzed reactions emitting light. The detection devices for nucleic acids, biotin associated with the target DNA provides the handle for the chemiluminescent detection. The non-radioactive DNA detection chemistry will be able to readily identify single-copy genes in transgenic plants making them suitable for GMO detection.

Earth Is Not Orbiting The Sun in the way we were taught

Here we find an understanding of Why the Earth & our solar system do not actually orbit the Sun as taught, "Rather", We follow or better still, are dragged by the Sun in a Spiral Pattern through the universe & time.

Trailblazing Israeli electric car company to close

JERUSALEM — It was an audacious idea that came to symbolize Israel's self-described status as "Start-Up Nation," a company that believed it could replace most gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles and reduce the world's reliance on oil — and all within a few years.

But it all came crashing down.

The company, Better Place, started out as a source of pride and a symbol of Israel's status as a global high-tech power, but it suffered from a local brand of hubris and overreach. On Sunday, it announced plans to liquidate after burning through almost a billion dollars and failing to sell its silent fleet of French-made sedans to a skeptical public.

"This is a very sad day for all of us. We stand by the original vision as formulated by Shai Agassi of creating a green alternative that would lessen our dependence on highly polluting transportation technologies," the company said. "Unfortunately, the path to realizing that vision was difficult, complex and littered with obstacles, not all of which we were able to overcome."

It capped a stunning fall from grace for Better Place and its founder Agassi, a former high-tech whiz kid who sought to change the world by building a revolutionary network of battery-swapping stations.

Agassi, 45, believed that in an era of global warming and rising oil prices, environmentally friendly electric cars could be the wave of the future, if only a way could be found to overcome the limited range of their batteries.

Better Place offered an elegant solution. The vast majority of travelers who commute short distances could plug in their cars at home or work each day to keep their batteries recharged. For longer distances, customers could stop at the swapping stations, remove their used battery and replace it with a fully charged one in a matter of minutes.

Agassi's native Israel was chosen as the company's main laboratory, and a network of several dozen stations was installed, offering travelers nationwide coverage.

Israel was a particularly ideal testing ground, thanks to high fuel prices, a supportive government, its relatively small size and dense population centers. The cars were expected to appeal to Israel's tech-savvy population, and the ability to weaken the political clout of its oil-rich enemies was an added plus.

The project won the support of President Shimon Peres, received generous financial incentives from the Israeli government and an endorsement from former President Bill Clinton.

Agassi, a former top executive at software maker SAP, became a celebrity CEO. He was a central character in "Start-Up Nation," a best-selling book about Israel's high-tech industry, he was named to Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in 2009 and became a fixture at international conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In roughly five years, Better Place raised some $850 million from investors like General Electric Co., HSBC Holdings PLC and the European Investment Bank. Israel Corp., controlled by billionaire Idan Ofer, was the largest shareholder. Agassi persuaded French car maker Renault to make a customized electric version of its Fluence sedan.

Agassi promised to 5,000 of his cars on Israel's roads by the end of 2011 and predicted that a majority of cars sold in Israel would be electric by 2016.

"The end of the oil era will not come because we ran out of oil — it will come become we don't want to use oil any more to drive," Agassi told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview. "I can guarantee you that we will finish the need for oil as an energy source for cars before we run out of oil in the ground."

The numbers never panned out. Only about 1,000 Better Place cars are on the roads, and the company ran into trouble with investors. Last October, Agassi was forced to step down, and the company never gained its footing. Reached by the AP on Sunday, Agassi declined comment.

Better Place claimed to be the first nationwide network of battery-swapping stations. Other countries, such as Germany, have public networks of charging stations, while in other places, travelers typically recharge their vehicles at home.

For the most part, electric cars have not enjoyed their expected success anywhere. The battery alone in an electric car costs as much as a new gasoline-powered car, and electric vehicles are not selling nearly as fast as once projected. General Motors expected to sell 60,000 Chevy Volts globally last year, but sold just half that many. Sales of Nissan's all-electric Leaf grew 22 percent around the world last year to 26,000, short of Nissan's projected 50 percent growth.

One exception has been American electric car maker Tesla Motors, which recently posted its first profitable quarter.

Among Better Place's mistakes, the company misjudged consumers' willingness to embrace the new technology. There was the issue of "range anxiety," the fear of some that the batteries, with ranges of about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, would conk out in inconvenient places.

Others balked at the price. The cars sold for roughly $32,000, comparable to other sedans in Israel. And the pricing plans, roughly $300 to more than $500 a month depending on mileage, did not provide enough savings to overcome the doubters.

Sunday's announcement left many questions unanswered, especially what will happen to its cars and charging stations. Better Place has also installed a network of stations in Denmark and has operations in Australia, the Netherlands, China, Hawaii and Japan.

Several hundred workers in Israel are expected to lose their jobs, and stunned customers said they did not know whether they would be able to continue driving.

Local celebrity Arik Zeevi, a former Olympic judoka, said he was sorry to see the company go.

"I really like the idea of not being dependent on gas. That is something that really speaks to me, and beyond that I really enjoy driving the car. It is an amazing experience," he told Channel 2 TV. "I will be really bummed out if I need to give that up."

In its court motion Sunday, Better Place said it was seeking the appointment of a temporary liquidator. In light of its failure to raise additional funds, the company asked for the court's assistance in protecting the rights of its employees, customers and creditors.

"On a personal level this is one of the hardest moments of my career," CEO Dan Cohen said Sunday. "The feeling this morning is one of loss because we didn't reach the finish line, the finish line is still far away."

Source: Online Athens

Over 2 million people peacefully took to streets around the world to protest the poisoning of the global food supply by the biotech giant, Monsanto.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has been pretty quiet about the event.

After relentless phone calls and emails by protesters, some coverage has finally been achieved, preventing the event from being completely blacked out. The same article was published throughout global media, including Yahoo, CTV, Huffington Post, ABC News, and the UK Guardian. The article downplayed the magnitude of the March and the importance of the cause:

Protesters rallied in dozens of cities Saturday as part of a global protest against seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces, organizers said. 

Organizers said “March Against Monsanto” protests were held in 52 countries and 436 cities, including Los Angeles where demonstrators waved signs that read “Real Food 4 Real People” and “Label GMOs, It’s Our Right to Know.” 

Genetically modified plants are grown from seeds that are engineered to resist insecticides and herbicides, add nutritional benefits or otherwise improve crop yields and increase the global food supply. (Huffington Post)

Discover even published a hit piece, calling the event “cartoonish”:

The only thing that’s truly being poisoned is the biotech debate by such rhetoric. I’m also willing to bet that organizers are being as truthful about the number of marchers as they are about the science on genetically modified foods…Nonetheless, there does seem to be many people who buy the notion that dangerous GMOs are being foisted on the world by Monsanto.

The truth of the matter is, over two million people marched in more than 50 countries around the globe (See RT’s excellent timeline of the global event). Despite the grudging media coverage in the mainstream, a sleeping giant has awakened. Many people will no longer accept that what lines grocery store shelves is safe to eat.

We know that we have been sold out, betrayed by the politicians that were duly elected to represent the wishes of their constituencies. The day before the event, the US Senate shot down a bill that would have allowed individual states to require labeling of GMOs. We are fighting a company with billions of dollars, links to the FDA, the USDA and the Supreme Court, and a whole bunch of sketchy politicians in their back pockets. They have fought a sneaky social media war against us, and will continue to pull out all the stops to marginalize the movement against them.

So…

We have to keep the momentum going that we have achieved with the March Against Monsanto. Don’t let it end on May 25, 2013. The only way to defeat Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry is by spreading information far and wide. We clearly cannot rely on the mainstream media to do this, as evidenced above. So we must use social media, alternative media, and word of mouth.

Print off some labels and put them in the grocery store. Organize your own pickets and hand out flyers in front of the grocery store, letting people know what they’re buying. Go to farmers markets and support your local growers. Sow the seeds of revolution by growing as much of your own food as possible. Most of all, vote with your wallet and don’t buy ANYTHING that puts money into the pockets of companies that support GMOs or that fought against California’s Proposition 37, which would have called for the labeling of GMOs.

Source: Activist Post

Monsanto Wins Fight to Take Away State Food Labeling Rights

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) fought hard to give his state and others the right to label GMO foods, but faced nonsensical opposition from Monsanto-bought Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). Did reason win?

German Government: New XBOX "ONE" is a monitoring device

Microsoft's new game console Germany's top privacy advocates worried. The Xbox one is a "monitor", Peter Schaar, told SPIEGEL. Users could not control what information would be stored on it.

Berlin - The Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar has announced the Microsoft Xbox game console One criticism. "Under the heading, game device 'Microsoft pushes a monitoring device in the market," Schaar told SPIEGEL. "The Xbox continuously records all sorts of personal information about me. Reaction rates, my learning or emotional states. The are then processed on an external server, and possibly even passed on to third parties. Whether they will ever deleted, the person can not influence."

The game console is equipped with a camera system to capture the spatial information and can recognize the faces of users. Microsoft plans for the console a deep integration into the consumer electronics equipment of its users - all devices from the TV receiver to the amplifier should be controlled via voice and gesture control console. The group wants the apparatus further than use market research tool : The Xbox One, says Microsoft executive Phil Spencer, will ensure that "we know what people are busy We can take a vote and feed their voice in the creative process.".

A patent application suggests that Microsoft's console might also want to use in other ways - for example, to calculate using the Kinect camera prices for movie downloads then, how many people sit in front of the TV set . Microsoft has not yet commented on the patent application.

Afraid that Microsoft is listening on conversations about the console's built-in camera microphones, data protection, Peter Schaar has not: "The fact that Microsoft now spying on my living room is merely a twisted nightmare." In some media reports had pointed out that the game console can also be turned on with a voice command. This means that the microphones the console must be turned on in the standby state.

The Xbox was the last one was presented Tuesday in Redmond , they should come to the market for the Christmas season.

Source: Der Spiegel

Millions against Monsanto: Putting Words into Action

Saturday, May 25, 2013, marches protesting GMO food [and the lack of food labeling in the USA] will take place in cities around the globe. There is every good reason to support this ‘mega march’ wherever you live because we are losing our sources of food and nutrition, which are being replaced by biotech industry oligarchs who think they can and must patent the human food supply.

If you don’t think activism counts and works, please check out what U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) did and said May 20, 2013 regarding what’s become known as the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

Senator Mikulski actually apologized for allowing the Monsanto Protection Act to go through and vowed to fight against GMOs and Monsanto. Bravo, Senator Mikulski. Let’s hope other members of Congress see the light about the dangers of GMOs and their not being labeled in the USA. Go, Barbara go!

http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-protection-act-may-soon-be-repealed-thanks-activism-1369061405

GMO food crops are sprayed with inordinate amounts of the chemical herbicide glyphosate. For some—not all—information regarding glyphosate, see what Wikipedia says here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate.

For information about genetically modified corn, a dietary staple in the USA and in many cultures, read what Natural News has to say here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/040210_gm_corn_march_against_monsanto_glyphosate.html

Will corn-on-the-cob become taboo? Who, in their right mind, would want to take a chance on the possibility of Bacillus thurigiensis growing in their gut?

Organically-grown corn ought to be safe, if it’s not been cross-pollinated by GMO pollen.

To find out where the nearest march to your zip code address will take place, please visit:

March Against Monsanto Everywhere

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

Here are some reminders why we should turn out in droves at the Millions against Monsanto marches:

Food Crops that are GMO or GMO contaminated Animal Foods:

• Alfalfa
• Milk (rBST hormone) dairy products
• Canola
• Beef fed GMO feed
• Corn

• Eggs from chickens fed GMO feed
• Cotton (cottonseed cooking oil)
• Chicken raised on GMO feed
• Hawaiian papaya
• Honey from bees in GMO fields
• Plums
• Rice
• GMO Fish
• Soy
• GMO Salmon
• Sugar beet 
• Some tobacco 
• Tomato
• Wheat
• Yellow squash
• Zucchini