By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 5 Jan 22
How Our Second Brain Affects Mood, Immune Function, and CognitionYour gut is home to trillions of bacteria and other microbes that communicate with your brain. This communication occurs in large part via the vagus nerve and is part of the gut-brain axis. These findings and more have earned our gut microbiome the nickname “the second brain.”Today, Naveen Jain, Founder of Viome, is here to help us understand how our second brain affects mood, immune function, and cognition.An Overview of The Gut MicrobiomeCan you give us a high-level overview of the gut microbiome?The microbiota is the entire collection of microbes living in
How Our Second Brain Affects Mood, Immune Function, and CognitionYour gut is home to trillions of bacteria and other microbes that communicate with your brain. This communication occurs in large part via the vagus nerve and is part of the gut-brain axis. These findings and more have earned our gut microbiome the nickname “the second brain.”Today, Naveen Jain, Founder of Viome,
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 16 Nov 21
What Is Glutamate?Glutamate is the most abundant neurotransmitter in our brain and central nervous system (CNS). It is involved in virtually every major excitatory brain function. While excitatory has a very specific meaning in neuroscience, in general terms, an excitatory neurotransmitter increases the likelihood that the neuron it acts upon will have an action potential (also called a nerve impulse).[1]When an action potential occurs, the nerve is said to fire, with fire, in this case, being somewhat akin to the completion of an electric circuit that occurs when a light switch is turned on. The result of neurons firing is
What Is Glutamate?Glutamate is the most abundant neurotransmitter in our brain and central nervous system (CNS). It is involved in virtually every major excitatory brain function. While excitatory has a very specific meaning in neuroscience, in general terms, an excitatory neurotransmitter increases the likelihood that the neuron it acts upon will have an action potential (also called a nerve impulse).[1]When
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 1 Sep 21
The skies of the Bay Area turned orange in September 02020, as the smoke from the complex of wildfires throughout the Bay overwhelmed the sky. Image courtesy of Long Now Speaker and photographer Christopher Michel. Here at Long Now’s offices in San Francisco, we are in the midst of California’s fire season. The fire season is an ever-expanding span of time typically judged to peak between August and October, though the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has warned for years of the dawn of a nearly year-round season. The Dixie Fire, now almost half contained, spread over 700,000
The skies of the Bay Area turned orange in September 02020, as the smoke from the complex of wildfires throughout the Bay overwhelmed the sky. Image courtesy of Long Now Speaker and photographer Christopher Michel. Here at Long Now’s offices in San Francisco, we are in the midst of California’s fire season. The fire season is an ever-expanding span of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 1 Sep 21
The skies of the Bay Area turned orange in September 02020, as the smoke from the complex of wildfires throughout the Bay overwhelmed the sky. Image courtesy of Long Now Speaker and photographer Christopher Michel. Here at Long Now’s offices in San Francisco, we are in the midst of California’s fire season. The fire season is an ever-expanding span of time typically judged to peak between August and October, though the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has warned for years of the dawn of a nearly year-round season. The Dixie Fire, now almost half contained, spread over 700,000
The skies of the Bay Area turned orange in September 02020, as the smoke from the complex of wildfires throughout the Bay overwhelmed the sky. Image courtesy of Long Now Speaker and photographer Christopher Michel. Here at Long Now’s offices in San Francisco, we are in the midst of California’s fire season. The fire season is an ever-expanding span of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 22 Mar 21
With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer. On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. What’s an Ignite talk? It’s a story format created by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis that’s exactly 5 minutes long, told by a speaker who’s working with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds (ready or not). These 12 Ignite talks ranged from geeky, fanciful, poignant,
With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer. On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. What’s an Ignite talk? It’s a
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 22 Mar 21
With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer. On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. What’s an Ignite talk? It’s a story format created by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis that’s exactly 5 minutes long, told by a speaker who’s working with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds (ready or not). These 12 Ignite talks ranged from geeky, fanciful, poignant,
With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer. On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. What’s an Ignite talk? It’s a
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 20 Mar 21
Integral scholar and Exostudies pioneer Sean Esbjörn-Hargens joins Terry to explore an integral approach to conspiracy theories and “exo realities” — including the anomalous phenomena that challenge our current models of reality. Sean begins by sharing an illuminating series of wise guidelines for navigating our post-truth conspiracy-theory-filled culture. Then, he and Terry build upon our […]
Integral scholar and Exostudies pioneer Sean Esbjörn-Hargens joins Terry to explore an integral approach to conspiracy theories and “exo realities” — including the anomalous phenomena that challenge our current models of reality. Sean begins by sharing an illuminating series of wise guidelines for navigating our post-truth conspiracy-theory-filled culture. Then, he and Terry build upon our […]
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 3 Nov 20
Even now, even in shallow waters, the sea continues to surprise us with new wonders (many of them rich in “living fossils” like the chambered nautilus and various sharks). Reefs are themselves fabulous living examples of multitudinous pace layers, not unlike the structural layers of a house Stewart Brand details in How Buildings Learn—only these buildings literally do learn, as scaffolded colonial organisms with their own inarguable (and manifold) agencies: Explorers of the Great Barrier Reef have discovered a giant pinnacle of coral taller than the Empire State Building. Mariners long ago charted seven pinnacle reefs off the cape that,
Even now, even in shallow waters, the sea continues to surprise us with new wonders (many of them rich in “living fossils” like the chambered nautilus and various sharks). Reefs are themselves fabulous living examples of multitudinous pace layers, not unlike the structural layers of a house Stewart Brand details in How Buildings Learn—only these buildings literally do learn, as
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Oct 20
Once again on the theme of how the technological/cultural pace layer’s accelerating decoupling from the ecological pace layer in which we evolved poses serious risks to the integrity of both the human body and biosphere: When daycare workers in Finland rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth such as dwarf heather and blueberries, and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time.Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement,
Once again on the theme of how the technological/cultural pace layer’s accelerating decoupling from the ecological pace layer in which we evolved poses serious risks to the integrity of both the human body and biosphere: When daycare workers in Finland rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth such as dwarf heather and blueberries, and allowed children to care for crops
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 26 Oct 20
An interview with Vincent Ialenti, author of Deep Time ReckoningInside Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear waste repository, 1,500 feet underground. Photo Credit: Peter GuenzelWith half-lives ranging from 30 to 24,000, or even 16 million years, the radioactive elements in nuclear waste defy our typical operating time frames. The questions around nuclear waste storage — how to keep it safe from those who might wish to weaponize it, where to store it, by what methods, for how long, and with what markings, if any, to warn humans who might stumble upon it thousands of years in the future — require long-term thinking.These questions brought the anthropologist Vincent Ialenti
An interview with Vincent Ialenti, author of Deep Time ReckoningInside Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear waste repository, 1,500 feet underground. Photo Credit: Peter GuenzelWith half-lives ranging from 30 to 24,000, or even 16 million years, the radioactive elements in nuclear waste defy our typical operating time frames. The questions around nuclear waste storage — how to keep it safe from those who might wish to