NEC Supplies LX Supercomputer to Czech Hydrometeorological Institute – HPCwire (blog)

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DUSSELDORF and TOKYO, June 14, 2017NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) today announced that the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI) in the Czech Republic selected NEC Deutschland GmbH to provide the next generation supercomputer system utilizing NECs scale-out LX series compute servers for their weather forecasts.

NECs scale-out LX series HPC cluster will enable the Czech Hydrometeorological Service to increase the accuracy of numerical weather forecasting and related applications, namely warning systems. Weather prediction models are increasingly complex, including rainfall, temperature, wind and related variables that have to be calculated as precisely as possible several days in advance. At the same time, regional peculiarities such as orography and terrain physiography need to be considered. In addition, the public must be made aware quickly of predictions of high impact weather events affecting daily life, including environmental risks linked to air pollution. High-performance computing (HPC) is therefore needed for running and completing weather and climate simulation jobs in time.

NEC will deliver the computational power of more than 300 nodes, connected through a high-speed Mellanox EDR InfiniBand network and containing the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 product family dual socket compute nodes, with a total of over 3,500 computational cores.

The Supercomputer is configured for high availability, including redundant storage and power supplies, as operation is required 247.

Moreover, the computational peak performance of this HPC cluster will be more than 80 times faster than the currently used system.

This HPC solution also consists of a high-performance storage solution based on the NEC LXFS-z parallel file-system appliance, with more than 1 Petabyte of storage capacity and a bandwidth performance of more than 30 Gigabytes per second (GB/s), which are required to meet the production needs of the CHMI. This scalable ZFS-based Lustre solution also provides advanced data integrity features paired with a high density and high reliability design.

The new system is scheduled to be put into operation in early 2018.

Reliable HPC technology by NEC shall be important both for forecast production and innovation; after Mto-France, CHMI is the second largest contributor to the development of the ALADIN Numerical Weather Prediction System, currently used by 26 countries. Moreover, in this project, we have a specific goal to improve air quality trend forecasts in relation to meteorological conditions and the performance of air quality warning systems, said Dr. Radmila Brokov, head of the Numerical Weather Prediction Department, CHMI.

We are very happy that CHMI has selected NEC to deliver an HPC solution for their weather and climate simulations, as NEC has a very special expertise in meteorological applications. For years, we have been successfully collaborating with meteorological institutes, and we look forward to cultivating these partnerships further, said Andreas Gttlicher, Senior Sales Manager, NEC Deutschland.

NEC has a long-term track record in climate research and weather forecasting and holds a leading position in the supercomputer market.

About the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute

The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute is the Czech Republics central government institution for the fields of air quality, hydrology, water quality, climatology and meteorology, performing this function as an objective specialised service. It was established in 1919 as National Meteorological Institute. The present-day organization of the Institute covers hydrology and air quality as well. The Institute is run under the authority of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic and its main task is to establish and operate national monitoring and observation networks, create and maintain data bases of data on the condition and quality of the air and on sources of air pollution, on the condition and development of the atmosphere, and on the quantity and quality of water, and provide both climate and operating information about the condition of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, and forecasts and warnings alerting to dangerous hydrometeorological phenomena.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the companys experience and global resources, NECs advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.

Source: NEC

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NEC Supplies LX Supercomputer to Czech Hydrometeorological Institute - HPCwire (blog)

Premier League 2017/18: Super Computer predicts table after five games of new season – talkSPORT.com

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The Premier League fixtures for 2017/18 have been announced and fans cannot wait to get the season started.

Kick-off may still be around two months away, but it does not stop supporters fromdreaming.

READ MORE: Premier League 2017-18 fixtures in full: Every team, every game

The first gameyou look for is usually the season opener, followed by the final match, as well as the derby clashes home and away, plusmeetings with the newly-promoted sides.

Another thing is the first month or so of fixtures - how your side's start could determine the way the whole season pans out, whether it could see them pushing for the title, a battle for places in the middle or scraping for points and playing catch up near the bottom.

Well, no fear - talkSPORT has done the hard work for you.

We have fed the data into the super computer, assessing the opening five rounds of Premier League fixtures, with predicted rankings.

Bear in mind plenty can change between now and the start of the season, as the transfer window opens and managers sort out squads.

The standings above have been collated just for fun it's interesting to speculate, but as we all know, football has a funny way of turning expectations on their head.

Click the right arrow, above, to see how the Premier League table might look after five games and comment with your predictions below...

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Premier League 2017/18: Super Computer predicts table after five games of new season - talkSPORT.com

Los Alamos lets users customize the supercomputer software stack – GCN.com

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Los Alamos lets users customize the supercomputer software stack

For all their power, supercomputers require specialized software and applications, which makes it difficult for users running big data analyses which comes with its own set of frameworks and dependencies -- to take advantage of the hardware.

To make it easier for researchers working with big data to use supercomputers, developers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have created a program called Charliecloud that uses a container approach to lets users package their own software stacks. Those tailored stacks then run in isolation from the host operating system, according to Reid Priedhorsky, lead developer with the High Performance Computing Division at Los Alamos.

Charliecloud lets users easily run crazy new things on our supercomputers, he said.

Researchers install the open-source Docker product on their own system and customize the software stack as they wish. They then import the image to the designated supercomputer and execute their application with Charliecloud, which is independent of Docker. This maintains a convenience bubble of administrative freedom while protecting the security of the larger system, Los Alamos officials said.

This is the easiest container solution for both system administrators and users to deal with, said Tim Randles, co-developer of Charliecloud, also of the High Performance Computing Division. Its not rocket science; its a matter of putting the pieces together in the right way. Once we did that, a simple and straightforward solution fell right out.

Charliecloud is very small, only 800 lines of code, and is currently being used on two Los Alamos supercomputers, Woodchuck and Darwin.

Not only is Charliecloud efficient in compute time, its efficient in human time, Priedhorsky said. What costs the most money is people thinking and doing. So we developed simple yet functional software thats easy to understand and costs less to maintain.

More information on Charliecloud is available here.

About the Author

Susan Miller is executive editor at GCN.

Over a career spent in tech media, Miller has worked in editorial, print production and online, starting on the copy desk at IDGs ComputerWorld, moving to print production for Federal Computer Week and later helping launch websites and email newsletter delivery for FCW. After a turn at Virginias Center for Innovative Technology, where she worked to promote technology-based economic development, she rejoined what was to become 1105 Media in 2004, eventually managing content and production for all the company's government-focused websites. Miller shifted back to editorial in 2012, when she began working with GCN.

Miller has a BA from West Chester University and an MA in English from the University of Delaware.

Connect with Susan at smiller@gcn.com or @sjaymiller.

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Los Alamos lets users customize the supercomputer software stack - GCN.com

RIKEN Posts Extensive Study of Global Supercomputer Plans in Time for ISC 2017 – HPCwire (blog)

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On the eve of ISC 2017 and the next release of the Top500 list, Japans RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science has posted an extensive study by IDC that compares and contrasts international efforts on pre-exascale and early exascale plans. The study Analysis of the Characteristics and Development Trends of the Next-Generation of Supercomputers in Foreign Countries was contracted by RIKEN, completed last December, and posted last week on the RIKEN web site.

Much of the material is familiar to exascale race watchers but gathering it all in one place is fascinating and useful. RIKEN has made the report freely available and downloadable as a PDF from its website. Its worth noting the reports authors were formerly the core team of IDCs HPC research group and now are members of Hyperion Research which was spun out of IDC this year. Despite the studys length (70-plus pages) it is a quick read and the tables are well-worth scanning. Much of the focus is on the next round of leadership class computing supercomputers (pre-exascale machines) about which more is known but there is also considerable discussion exascale technology.

For supercomputer junkies, theres a table for nearly every aspect. Below are two sample: 1) systems covered in this report and their current/planned performance and 2) memory systems either in use or planned.

There are many more tables covering topics such as architecture and node design, MTBF, interconnect, compilers and middleware, etc. A complete list of the 30 tables is at the end of the article and is a good surrogate for the reports scope.

Heres the top line summary in an excerpt from the report:Looking at the strengths and weaknesses in exascale plans and capabilities of different countries:

As noted earlier, while the report breaks little new ground its comprehensive view of these leading 15 supercomputer systems and side-by-side comparison is a useful resource. The list of tables is below along with a link to the report.

Link to report: http://www.aics.riken.jp/aicssite/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Analysis-of-the-Characteristics-and-Development-Trends.pdf

List of Tables

Table 1 The Supercomputers Evaluated in This Study

Table 2 System Attributes: Planned Performance

Table 3 System Attributes: Architecture and Node Design

Table 4 System Attributes: Power

Table 5 System Attributes: MTBF Rates

Table 6 System Attributes: KPIs (key performance indicators)

Table 7 Comparison of System Prices

Table 8 Comparison of System Prices: Whos Paying for It?

Table 9 Ease-of-Use: Planned New Features

Table 10 Ease-of-Use: Porting/Running of New Codes on a New Computer

Table 11 Ease-of-Use: Missing Items that Reduce Ease-of-Use

Table 12 Ease-of-Use: Overall Ability to Run Leadership Class Problems

Table 13 Hardware Attributes: Processors

Table 14 Hardware Attributes: Memory Systems

Table 15 Hardware Attributes: Interconnects

Table 16 Hardware Attributes: Storage

Table 17 Hardware Attributes: Cooling

Table 18 Hardware Attributes: Special Hardware

Table 19 Hardware Attributes: Estimated System Utilization

Table 20 Software Attributes: OS and Special Software

Table 21 Software Attributes: File Systems

Table 22 Software Attributes: Compilers and Middleware

Table 23 Software Attributes: Other Software

Table 24 R&D Plans

Table 25 R&D Plans: Partnerships

Table 27 Additional Comments & Observations

Table 28 IDC Assessment of the Major Exascale Providers: USA

Table 29 IDC Assessment of the Major Exascale Providers: Europe/EMEA

Table 30 Assessment of Exascale Providers: China 59

* No table 26

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RIKEN Posts Extensive Study of Global Supercomputer Plans in Time for ISC 2017 - HPCwire (blog)

Make a Simulated Universe with Only a Supercomputer and 2 … – Edgy Labs (blog)

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Using a supercomputer and three years of work, Swiss astrophysicists from the University of Zurich were able to virtually model the formation of the Universe.

The idea that we already live inside a simulation or a holographic projection is the subject of a serious scientific debate. Figures as noteworthy as Elon Musk put stock in the idea of us living inside a computer simulation.

A panel of astrophysicists, theoretical physicists, and philosophers reflected on the issue at last years Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the moderator of the debate, estimates that the chances of human existence being a program on a hard disk are one in two.

Until we come to a definitive conclusion on whether we live in a simulation built for whatever purpose or not, scientists from Switzerland have contributed to the other end of the argument: they created a simulated universe with a supercomputer.

A group of astrophysicists from the University of Zurich spent three years working on designing the largest computer simulated universe. This simulation gathers a huge catalog of 25 billion galaxies made of 2 trillion digital particles.

To generate this whopping number of digital particles and arrange them into galaxies, the team developed a special code, named PKDGRAV3, to describe very precisely the dynamics of dark matter as well as the formation of large-scale structures in the Universe.

To run the code, designed to optimally use memory and modern supercomputer architectures, researchers used Piz Daint, a supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, requiring over 4,000 Nvidia Tesla P100 GPUs to run for 80 hours.

Researchers published their results in the journal Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology.

The simulation will be used during the Euclid mission to calibrate the experiments onboard the Euclid Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2020 by the European Space Agency (ESA).

TheEuclid mission will tackle the dark side of the Universe, i.e., dark matter and dark energy, which is one of the most enduring enigmas of modern science.

In the space of only a few decades, humanity has passed from an elementary knowledge of the Universe to simulate a big part of it.

With supercomputers getting exponentially more powerful, how much time would it take before being able to recreate the entire Universe, and life within, in a simulation? If we are indeed close to that achievement, what does this mean for our own reality?

We take reality for granted.

We consider as self-evident what we perceive as real which is the reflection of an objective and physical reality. But perhaps our universe, from the atoms and molecules that make up our body to the largest galaxies, is nothing but a sophisticated simulation running on a supercomputer, and where we, the Sims, are building our own simulations.

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Make a Simulated Universe with Only a Supercomputer and 2 ... - Edgy Labs (blog)

‘Advances made in stem cell therapy in Asia far more than those made in US’ – The Hindu

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'Advances made in stem cell therapy in Asia far more than those made in US'
The Hindu
Indigenously developed therapeutic modules for neuro development disorders like autism have demonstrated a higher rate of recovery and improvement among sufferers, Nandini Gokulchandran, a Mumbai-based researcher in the field of stem cell therapy ...

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'Advances made in stem cell therapy in Asia far more than those made in US' - The Hindu

Stem Cell Therapy Offers Hope for Multiple Sclerosis Remission – Healthline

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By combining an experimental stem cell treatment with a nanoparticle delivery system, researchers may eventually stop MS and other autoimmune diseases.

An innovative stem cell therapy could change how we treat multiple sclerosis (MS), but are we any closer to a cure?

The work of Dr. Su Metcalfe, founder and chief scientific officer of the biotech company LIFNano, appears to be breathing new life into that hope.

Metcalfe and her team developed a way to fight MS by using the bodys own natural mechanisms but it hasnt been tested in humans yet.

MS is an inflammatory and neurodegenerative autoimmune disease that can result in an array of neurological symptoms including fatigue, muscle spasms, speech problems, and numbness. It is caused by the immune system attacking myelin, the insulating coating that runs along the outside of nerve cells. The result is damage to the brain and central nervous system.

The disease currently affects roughly 2.5 million people worldwide. About 200 new cases are diagnosed each week in the United States.

LIFNano uses a new treatment based on LIF a stem cell protein that forms naturally in the body to signal and regulate the immune systems response to myelin.

LIF, in addition to regulating and protecting us against attack, also plays a major role in keeping the brain and spinal cord healthy, Metcalfe recently told Cambridge News.

In fact it plays a major role in tissue repair generally, turning on stem cells that are naturally occurring in the body, making it a natural regenerative medicine, but also plays a big part in repairing the brain when its been damaged, she said.

Metcalfe has spent years studying LIF, but only recently realized its potential for treatment likening it to an on/off switch for the immune system.

However, once she discovered its potential, there were almost immediate problems in its application. One of the earliest was how quickly LIF breaks down once it is administered into the body.

If you try just to inject it into a patient, it dissipates or disappears in about 20 minutes, Olivier Jarry, CEO of LIFNano, told Healthline.

That makes it unusable in a clinic. You would have to have some kind of pump and inject it continually.

A breakthrough came for Metcalfe when she took findings from her studies of LIF and applied them to nanotechnology. The treatment she is now developing relies on nanospheres derived from a well-established medical polymer known as PLGA, which is already used in materials like stitches. And because it is biodegradable, it can be left to dissolve inside the body.

Storing LIF inside these PLGA nanospheres before administering them into the bloodstream allows for a sustained dose over the course of several days.

The process differs significantly from the current drugs used to treat MS. These treatments most often fall under the category of drugs known as immunosuppressors, which inhibit the bodys overall immune system response.

LIF is theoretically much more precise than immunosuppressors, and should keep the immune system functioning against harmful infections and disease.

Were not using any drugs, said Metcalfe. Were simply switching on the bodys own systems of self-tolerance and repair. There arent any side effects because all were doing is tipping the balance. Autoimmunity happens when that balance has gone awry slightly, and we simply reset that.

The team cautions that LIF therapy is still several years away.

While some outlets have run wild with Metcalfes research, announcing that a cure for MS is right around the corner, those headlines are speculative.

Some MS advocacy groups have even made public statements calling coverage of her work premature and irresponsible.

Jarry told Healthline that LIFNano is expecting to enter FDA phase I trials in 2020. This would be the first time that it is used in human subjects. But even if the treatment proves to be safe and effective, the soonest it could be on the market is 2023, he estimated.

The main focus of LIF therapy is now on MS. But it has potential for treating other autoimmune diseases including psoriasis and lupus.

We are optimistic in the sense that we may provide a long-term remission for patients with MS, said Jarry.

Is it a cure? Wed love at some point to use the term cure, but we are very cautious.

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Stem Cell Therapy Offers Hope for Multiple Sclerosis Remission - Healthline

Hong Kong biotech start-up claims world first in stem cell treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases – South China Morning Post

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Oper Technology, a Hong Kong biotechnology start-up, has pioneered what it claims is a world first in stem cell treatment that it says could potentially help millions of patients suffering from Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases.

The business was co-founded by Hong Kong Baptist Universitys Professor Ken Yung, who specialises in neurobiology and neurological diseases in the universitys biology department.

He and his team has now developed a method of harvesting neural stem cells from the brains of live subjects using specially developed nanoparticles.

The exploration of using stem cells to repair damaged neural cells is not a new concept. Scientists in the US and elsewhere have experimented using stem cells from fat and skin, developing them into neural cells.

But Yung claims his team is the first to successfully harvest stem cells directly from the brain and re-inject the developed neural cells back into a live subject, thereby artificially regenerating any cells which have died off, due to neurological diseases from neural stem cells themselves.

Stem cells have the potential to develop into different types of cells with specialised functions.

The nanoparticles which are made of a type of iron oxide work like magnets to attract the stem cells within the brain.

Yung said these can then be developed into more specific neural cells and re-injected into the brain to replace damaged cells caused by diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons, where neurons in the patients brains progressively die off with time.

He suggests the treatment could benefit almost 100 million patients around the world, who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, including strokes.

China alone has the largest population of people with dementia, with an estimated 23.3 million now projected to suffer from the condition by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation.

Yung co-founded Oper Technology and serves as its chairman.

The company is being developed under Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Incu-Bio programme, which provides select biotechnology start-ups with laboratory and support services, and ultimately it aims to commercialise its medical technology.

If you put the [developed] cells in a different environment from where the [stem cells are harvested], there might be [misdirected] growth in an uncontrolled environment, said Yung.

We want to use neural cells to repair neural cells, and since the stem cells and re-injected neural cells are from the same micro-environment, there will not be uncontrollable growth.

The method has proven to be very successful when tested on rats, especially in cases of Parkinsons, according to Yung, who suggested the method could eventually become an ultimate treatment for the disease.

Furthermore, the risks of this treatment are similar to what is currently on the market today, he added.

The treatment could also help to treat early-stage Alzheimers patients, slowing down or even halting the degeneration process, although Yung acknowledged that its effectiveness in treating terminal stage patients may be limited since it would be difficult to regenerate enough neural cells when patients brains have shrunk due to the condition.

While animals subjected to the treatment displayed an improvement in neural function following the re-injection, the team has yet to start on clinical trials as such cell therapy is still nascent and largely unregulated in Hong Kong.

Oper Technology is currently seeking investment and often sets up booths at conferences such as last weeks EmTech Hong Kong conference, which focuses on innovation and emerging technologies.

Yung hopes to raise enough funds to begin clinical trials in Australia in the near future, where autologous cell therapies are legal and thus provides an ideal environment for clinical trials.

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Hong Kong biotech start-up claims world first in stem cell treatment of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases - South China Morning Post

Governor Signs Law to Allow Chronic, Terminally Ill in Texas to Get Stem Cell Treatments – Spectrum News

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AUSTIN, Texas -- Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a new law that allows terminally ill or those which chronic diseases receive stem cell treatments in Texas.

Stem cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition, and is often patient's last hope for improvement.

Bone marrow transplant is the most widely used stem-cell therapy, and can often help those with multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

House Bill 810, which was introduced by Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, passed in both the Texas House and Senate.

"It is easy to fall into the trap of viewing legislation as just words on a piece of paper," said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, the bill's sponsor in the Senate. "But for the many people who are ill with multiple sclerosis and other diseases that stem cell therapy has the hope of solving in our lifetime, I look at this bill, I look at the possibility of what can happen in the 21st Century, with Texas taking the lead on adult stem cell treatments and this bill has the potential to extend lives and make a difference for these patients."

The Texas Medical Board will be responsible for writing the rules for the treatment.

"Everyone has a zest for life. This adult stem cell treatment possibility gets government out of the way to let these new therapies flourish and give these patients hope for a future good quality of life," Bettencourt added.

The legislation takes effect Sept. 1.

-- Value of Stem Cell Therapy --

According to the National Institues of Health, stem cellshave the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth.

In addition, in many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive.

When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

Doctors say stem cells are important for living organisms for many reasons.

In the 3- to 5-day-old embryo, called ablastocyst, the inner cells give rise to the entire body of the organism, including all of the many specialized cell types and organs such as the heart, lungs, skin, sperm, eggs and other tissues.

In some adult tissues, such as bone marrow, muscle, and brain, discrete populations of adult stem cells generate replacements for cells that are lost through normal wear and tear, injury, or disease.

---

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Governor Signs Law to Allow Chronic, Terminally Ill in Texas to Get Stem Cell Treatments - Spectrum News

Stem Cell Therapy Becomes Law in Texas – PR Newswire (press release)

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"At StemGenex, we are committed to helping people achieve optimum health and better quality of life through the healing benefits of their own stem cells," said Alexander. "Specifically, we use adipose-derived adult stem cell therapy for patients battling conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, COPD, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis. We are also committed to the science of stem cell therapy and sponsor five clinical outcome studiesregistered with theNational Institute of Health (NIH) for these diseases."

"What I personally witnessed before the start of StemGenex were patients who had exhausted conventional medical treatments but wanted to try alternative therapies. I was one of them, suffering from severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. Ihad only three options; I could seek a clinical trial, travel to outside of the U.S. to try alternative therapies such as stem cell treatment or petition the FDA for access to drugs under the agency's "expanded access," or "compassionate use" program. Now, new state laws like the one just passed in Texas, built on model legislation from the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, will allow doctors and patients to make their own informed decisions on treatments that have cleared the safety phase of FDA testing."

Last year, in a move that was seen by some as a response to "Right to Try" laws, the 21st Century Cures Act, a landmark piece of legislation focused on medical innovation and medical research, was signed into law by President Obama. This Act provides the FDA with the flexibility to accelerate how it evaluates regenerative medicine treatments, such as stem cell therapies, while maintaining its high standards of safety and efficacy.

"We're on the cusp of a major change on how patients can access stem cell therapy," saidAlexander. "Today, new treatments and advances in research are giving new hope to people affected by a wide range of autoimmune and degenerative illnesses," said Alexander. "StemGenex Medical Group is proud to offer the highest quality of care and to potentially help those with unmet clinical needs improve their quality of life."

ABOUT StemGenex Medical Group

StemGenex Medical Group is committed to helping people achieve optimum health and better quality of life through the healing benefits of their own stem cells. StemGenex provides stem cell therapy options for individuals suffering with inflammatory and degenerative illnesses. Committed to the science and innovation of stem cell treatment,StemGenex sponsors five clinical outcome studiesregistered with theNational Institutes of Health (NIH) for Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Osteoarthritis. These have been established to formally document and evaluate the quality of life changes in individuals following adipose-derived stem cell treatment.

Contact: Jamie Schubert, Director of Media & Community Relations jschubert@StemGenex.com, (858) 242-4243

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stem-cell-therapy-becomes-law-in-texas-300472809.html

SOURCE StemGenex Medical Group

http://www.stemgenex.com

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Stem Cell Therapy Becomes Law in Texas - PR Newswire (press release)

Finding Spirituality On 2 Wheels – Wisconsin Public Radio News

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Wisconsin Public Radio News
Finding Spirituality On 2 Wheels
Wisconsin Public Radio News
Spirituality is different for all people. Some people find solace in a house of worship or scripture. Others may find deeper meaning in meditation and in nature. And some people may keep a distance from spirituality altogether but find joy and purpose ...

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Finding Spirituality On 2 Wheels - Wisconsin Public Radio News

Top Right Menu – America Magazine

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In December 2016, when thousands of Native Americans, environmental activists and their supporters were camped on the high plains of North Dakota hoping to stymie an oil pipeline mapped beneath the drinking water source of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a Lakota spiritual leader, addressed a massive interfaith prayer service. People from Native American nations across the United States had traveled to camp at Standing Rock and on nearby land, the most comprehensive gathering of native people since before the Indian wars of the 1870s. Indigenous people from Hawaii, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Honduras arrived at the camps and hoisted their flags beside those of 300 American tribes.

Brayton Shanley, a Catholic peace and environmental activist who lives in an intentional community in rural Massachusetts, has a shock of white hair and the robust energy of someone who spends a great deal of time outdoors. At the end of November, he drove to North Dakota in a truck filled with straw bales, offered as insulation on the windswept, winter prairie. Joe Fortier, S.J., a former entomology professor at St. Louis University, who for the past 15 years has lived and ministered on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State, arrived the day before, changing out of his usual clothes and into a clerical collar, so people would know a Catholic priest was supporting the protest. Father Fortier, a self-effacing man whose gentleness belies the depth of his convictions, felt compelled to align himself with the people gathered at Standing Rock.

The camps had become a place to take a stand for the right to clean water and against its privatization, contamination and degradation. But they were also a site of pilgrimage, a place of profound prayer where Lakota women walked to the Cannonball River each morning to enact a water ceremony and where chants in the Lakota language, called to the rhythm of round drums, rose from the camp at dawn and Lakota elders tended a sacred fire all day and night. Water is life, they said. Defend the sacred.

On this biting cold December day, when fingers went numb if exposed to the air for more than a few minutes, more than 1,000 people gathered for a three-hour prayer service in which a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, various Protestant clergy and Father Fortier each offered prayers before the fire that Lakota elders had been tending throughout the protest. They spoke of their faiths common commitment to caring for the earth and their common belief in the sacredness of the physical world. Looking Horse spoke of the threat to clean water at Standing Rock as only one of millions of attacks on the integrity of the earths elements. Fighting back would take a particular kind of power, he said. We will be victorious through tireless, prayer-filled and fearless nonviolent struggle. Standing Rock is everywhere.

A few months into the Trump administration, oil is flowing through the pipeline and the historic encampment has been dispersed. The oil industry won. But Looking Horse may yet have been correct. The explicitly religious and imagination-grabbing protest at Standing Rock has inspired similar encampments and other forms of protest in defense of clean water across the country. From Pennsylvania to Texas, Florida to New Jersey and in South Dakota, Ohio, Massachusetts and Canada, newly emboldened water protectors have taken to the land in hopes of disrupting oil and natural gas pipelines they consider dangerous. For many of these protectors, defending access to clean water is a project rich in religious and spiritual meaning. They draw inspiration from Laudato Si as well as indigenous religious practice.

The tribal leadership of the Lakota Sioux is pursuing lawsuits against Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. Some of the Lakota and other indigenous people who were part of the Standing Rock protests have reconvened at a prayer camp on the Cheyenne River Reservation downriver in South Dakota.

A coordinated campaign

On May 9, the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, a coalition of 121 indigenous groups from the United States and Canada, launched a coordinated divestment campaign against the banks funding the Dakota Access pipeline and crude oil pipelines snaking from Canada to Mexico. Religious congregations organized under the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are engaged in shareholder activism, urging major banks to withdraw from financing the Dakota Access pipeline and demanding that corporations from Coca-Cola to Campbell Soup adopt specific policies respecting water and the rights of local communities to consultation. The Sisters of Charity of Halifax presented a shareholder resolution at the May 11 general shareholder meeting of Enbridge, an energy transportation company with a 27.5 percent share in the Dakota Access pipeline. The resolution called for the company to address social and environmental risks in its acquisition deals, particularly those involving indigenous people. The resolution was rejected by shareholders, but the company committed to broader disclosure in the sustainability report it produces each year. The Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility has been working with large agribusiness companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange to convince them to adopt sustainable water management practices and join the United Nations CEOWater Mandate, an initiative to engage businesses in water stewardship and sustainable development goals.

Cities, counties, public employee pension funds and individuals have withdrawn $5 billion from companies invested in the Dakota Access pipeline in an echo of the the divestment movement against South African apartheid in the 1980s. Major investment banks in Norway, the Netherlands and France have sold their shares of loans to Energy Transfer Partners. The Jesuits, women religious, Catholic Workers and others have joined or deepened their involvement in water protection efforts. They draw links between the environmental battles of indigenous people in the United States and those elsewherenotably in Honduras and in the Amazon region, where several environmentalists have been killed by corporate security forces and assassins linked to the national military forces.

We are here

In Conestoga, Pa., a farm field along the route of a natural gas pipeline has been transformed into a quiet protest site. On weekends, area residents gather to sing, pray and make art. They have been pushing for three years for their municipal governments to ban the proposed pipeline, citing instances of natural gas explosions and tainted drinking water. They attempted legal maneuvers to escape eminent domain to no avail, explained Mark Clatterbuck, a Conestoga resident and professor of religion at Montclair State University. He and his wife, Melinda, a Mennonite pastor, have been central actors in the pipeline opposition. Out of options, in February, Lancaster Against Pipelines, an association of local citizens, launched the Lancaster Stand in this placid corner of the county famous for its gently undulating farmland and its Amish community. If were not careful we could lose the countryside and then what would we have? Thats whats at risk, said Tim Spiese, the Lancaster Against Pipelines board president, as he stood in the unplanted corn field before a large whitewashed barn with the words Welcome to the Stand painted in block letters on its side.

On a Saturday in early April, two dozen people, most in their 50s and 60s, are gathered inside a large army tent. Seated on low benches made from cement blocks and long 2-by-8 boards, they are shaking painted maracas and beating rhythm sticks as two women with guitars lead the group: We are here standing strong in a ripe old place/ Solid as a tree/ silent as a rock/ We are here in a ripe old place. The back wall of the tent is rolled up, open to the breeze, framing the Lancaster County hills in spring: budding trees and green fields. More than 300 people have completed training in nonviolent protest at the camp. Committees meet to plan civil disobedience, to sort food donations and devise a rainwater collection system.

In May, Regina Braveheart, a Lakota woman who survived the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1973 and was part of the prayer at Standing Rock, visited the Lancaster Stand to urge the activists on and share stories. For Kathleen Meade, a case manager in a brain trauma rehabilitation center, who like many of her neighbors relies on well water, participating in the Lancaster Stand has meant forming deep friendships and standing up for what she values. We just so pride ourselves on the land here. Its horse people and dairy farmers, outdoors people and Amish. Whats unique is that Lancaster County is Republican, and this unites a lot of us, the idea that the government cant just come and take your land, she said as she stood in the afternoon sun in the breezy field, gazing across the round hills. Its just amazing how the existing structure is set up for the corporations, not the people.... We realize that were up a creek and if we dont do something soon, were out of luck.

Mr. Clatterbuck and other Lancaster people visited the camps at Standing Rock in the fall and were struck by the prayerful attitude, the deeply spiritual stance of the Lakota leaders. They noticed how it affected other activists. The language thats used is the language of the sacred, said Mr. Clatterbuck, who edited a volume on Native American and Christian interaction this year called Crow Jesus: Personal Stories of Native Religious Belonging, published by University of Oklahoma Press. All of these kinds of religious streams are feeding in together. The way religious language is fueling the resistance right now, religion becomes relevant again.

So many people in conservative and bucolic Lancaster County, hardly a hotbed of protest, have been drawn to the Stand because it represents something deeper than the defense of property values or landowner rights (important as those might be), Mr. Clatterbuck said. Instead, they see a moral imperative to protect the place they call home, to care for the their corner of creation.

Pope Francis instructed the same embrace of the integrity of creation in Laudato Si, writing that access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right and that humans need to live in concert with the earth.

Saving a fragile system

Cherri Foytlin is not Catholic, but she takes Pope Francis words to heart. I couldnt understand how people can pray to God, praising his creation, and then not do everything they can to care for it. Its like saying Picasso is a great artist and then ripping up his paintings, she said. The oil that moves through the Dakota Access pipeline will eventually finish its journey in Louisiana, where Ms. Foytlin lives. A former newspaper writer, she has been working for environmental justice in the Louisiana wetlands since BPs Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. While reporting on the spill, she saw that many bayou crawfishermen, who have made their living in the swamps of Louisiana since their ancestors were expelled from French Acadia, had their livelihoods destroyed, and she saw how the oil company lied about and covered up the extent of the damage. The miasmic grandeur of the sleepy bayou, with its ancient cypress trees, which began growing when Christ walked beside the Jordan, and its drooping moss, in whose humid tangle migrating birds seek rest, were under grave threat, she realized.

These systems are quite fragile, really. I think how quickly we can lose that, she said. Pipelines have criss-crossed the bayou country for a generation, ferrying oil and natural gas to refineries on the coast, a significant component of Louisianas economy. But Ms. Foytlin believes this latest one, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, is too dangerous. And it only anticipates 12 permanent jobs. The proposed pipeline channels through bayous already damaged by previous infrastructure, which has chewed away at the swampland and degraded its ability to absorb storms. The loss of Louisiana wetlands was one of the reasons Hurricane Katrina and more recent flooding elsewhere in the state have been so devastating. The company constructing the Bayou Bridge Pipeline was fined in early May by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for spilling several million gallons of thick chemical-laced mud into Ohio wetlands, during drilling for a separate pipeline there. The slurry, which is used to make underground space for laying pipes, suffocated plants and aquatic life in the wetland that helps filter water for nearby farmland. Ohios environmental protection agency expects it will take years to restore the wetland.

With Bold Louisiana, a community organizing group she directs, and a network of environmental, homeowner, crawfishermen and indigenous groups, Ms. Foytlin is trying to inform Louisianans of the threat to their water and their wetlands. The groups are leafleting at New Orleans Jazzfest and protesting at the state capital. They are sending postcards to their elected officials and raising money through bake sales. Ms. Foytlin, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation and originally from Oklahoma, visited Standing Rock to show her support and be part of the historic gathering of indigenous people. More recently she traveled to the Two Rivers camp near Marfa, Tex., where protesters were trying to stop a pipeline that would flow under the Rio Grande, carrying U.S. natural gas for export. That camp was broken up in April and that arm of the pipeline, another Energy Transfer Partners project, was completed.

I wanted to let them know that what they were doing was important, Ms. Foytlin said, adding that the power of the Standing Rock prayer camps continues to reverberate. People felt activated and connected spiritually in the water and the land, she said. Standing Rock continues. People are eager to put it to bed, but its not over. These little people are still together and that has power. An amalgam of groups, Ms. Foytlins among them, plans to launch a protest camp deep in the bayous in late June, when they expect the state to give Energy Transfer Partners final approval permits for the pipeline. On rafts built from repurposed plastic bottles and water barrels, with art and music and a deep love for their unique southern Louisiana waterways, theyll make a watery stand. The camp is called Leau Est La Vie, or Water Is Life.

Our common home

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, people are still digesting the experience of Standing Rockand carrying on the work, said Peter Klink, S.J., the vice president of mission and ministry and former president of the Jesuit Red Cloud Indian School on Pine Ridge. At the height of the protests, the girls basketball team at Red Cloud wore Water Is Life slogans on their jerseys. Lakota people from Pine Ridge joined the encampment and some took central roles in promoting the divestment campaign. What we need to continue to nurture is: How are we going to care for our common home, Mother Earth? Im not sure we can close our eyes to what we are doing on a daily basis, Father Klink said. A consumerist, acquisitive culture is ultimately driving the environmental crisis, he believes. If we dont check that machine, that sense that what we have is never enough, that becomes the motor of destruction of our common home.

During the Standing Rock encampment, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States issued a statement in support of the Lakota peoples right to sovereignty and clean water. Tashina Rama, who is executive director of development at the Red Cloud Indian School and daughter of Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, testified on the Dakota Access pipeline threats to water at a February briefing for members of Congress organized by the Jesuit conference. Rama walked to a microphone in the briefing room and placed a few printed pages on the podium, then addressed the crowd in the Lakota language, identifying herself by way of her lineage and her ancestors. She named her parents, her grandmothers, her grandfathers. Switching to English, she spoke of the central need for access to clean water, invoking the sentiment found in Laudato Si that indigenous people must be consulted on projects that affect them, and she mourned the destruction of the Standing Rock camps, including one she stayed in with the female members of her family.

Ms. Rama underscored the value of water by invoking the Sun Dance, a Lakota ceremony that spans four days in June, when select members of the community dance all day in the blazing Badlands of South Dakota. There is little relief with no clouds or breeze. Our lips are cracked and our mouths dry because whatever water we had in our bodies was gone by the second day of dancing, she told the congressional staff. Our ancestors prayed in this way and they passed it down to us; we are taught that through this sacrifice the Great Spirit will hear our prayers. For four sacred days we give ourselves to the Sun. Our bodies are dying and we know that with that first drink of water when the Sun Dance is over, that water is life. I was raised to pray in this way, and I find it to be a humbling way to connect with the Great Spirit, our Creator God and to give of myself so my children and my family can be healthy. We owe it to ourselves and our descendants to protect what remaining lands we have, the lands where our ancestors roamed and the sacred sites where they are buried so they can have these ceremonies to pass on to their children and so on.

Forming right relationships

The Canadian and U.S. Jesuits see a link between protecting water and the defense of human and cultural rights. We see common environmental and human rights challenges from extractive industries facing indigenous people around the world, explained Cecilia Calvo, the senior adviser on environmental justice to the Jesuit Conference. And a common thread really is water. Of particular concern is what Ms. Calvo terms the criminalization of environmental and human rights activists who stand up for their rights. In Honduras, 123 environmental activists, most of whom protested against energy or mining companies, have been killed since a U.S.-supported coup in 2009, according to Global Witness. Similarly, environmental activists in the Amazon region face death threats. The worldwide association of Jesuits has taken on the defense of the Amazon region as a congregation-wide priority, calling it the lungs of the planet.

On March 17, Zebelio Kayap Jempekit, a member of the Awajun Wampi indigenous people of Peru, walked into the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., carrying with him the pleas and alarm of thousands of Amazonian people. Part of a team representing a coalition of indigenous and church groups across nine Amazon countries, called Red Eclesial Panamazonia, Mr. Jempeki urged the commission to take action to preserve the rights of indigenous people to protect their ancestral lands and water. The delegation, which included Archbishop Pedro Ricardo Jimeno, S.J., of Huancayo, Peru, was hosted by the Jesuits, the Sisters of Mercy, the Maryknolls and other U.S. Catholic groups, and visited Georgetown University and Catholic University. Jempekit, speaking in Spanish and wearing a traditional headband of deep red and brilliant yellow flowers, told the commission that oil extraction had destroyed the drinking water and fishing in his home and spoke of a mining project that made water undrinkable and killed the fish in the river his people relied on. He has received death threats because of his work.

We see that not only in our own backyard are people facing environmental degradation and struggling for access to clean water, but around the world this is multiplied, said Ms. Calvo, who in early May attended the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum in Peru, which brought together people working on water and other environmental and social issues across the region. The threats to water are a call to examine our own economy, our lifestyle and what path do we want to be on, Ms. Calvo said. Those issues animate the Jesuit Conferences work in the United States as well. In the past few months, they have signed on to letters urging the Trump administration not to weaken elements of the Clean Water Act that regulate surface mining rules, to commit to the Paris climate agreement and to continue the Green Climate Fund, which helps the developing countries most affected by climate change. We recognize that water is a fundamental component of all life and that stewardship of water is part of our call to care for Gods creation, they wrote in a letter opposing an executive order that directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw from an aspect of the Clean Water Act which protects waterways and fish habitats.

Religious work on water moves in many streams, from the Religious Organizations Along the River, a coalition of groups in New Yorks Hudson Valley advocating against fracking and for Hudson River cleanup, to WaterSpirit, a retreat center on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace on the New Jersey shore. There, laypeople, Catholic and not, visit to deepen their connection to the most basic of elements, the water that flows through their bodies, washes the shore, bathes them in baptism and made possible the emergence of their earliest single-celled ancestors. WaterSpirit endeavors to link the spiritual aspect of water with the practical, corporeal concerns of caring for creation. The center has led group study workshops on Laudato Si and brought high school students to the shore to pray and catalog the plastic debris they find on the beach. The message is a mystical one, with its feet planted in the sand: You are part of this water of life.

In Pennsylvania, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order of sisters, have for several years been resisting the efforts of Williams Transco, a natural gas company that plans to drill through their land in West Hempfield Township in Lancaster County. In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave the company final approval to build on private land, including that of the Adorers. The sisters vehemently denounce the decision, said Sister Janet McCann, the U.S. regional councilor for the order. The pipeline would be a violation of the congregations land ethic, explained Sister Sara Dwyer, peace and justice coordinator for the community. The land ethic, a statement of the sisters theological and ecological beliefs adopted several years ago after contemplation of the religious dimensions of environmental crisis, commits them to respect the Earth as a sanctuary where all life is protected and to establish justice and right relationships so all creation might thrive, explained Sister Dwyer. In the land ethic statement, the sisters vow to seek collaborators to help implement land use policies and practices that are in harmony with our bioregions and ecosystems.

It is in fealty to that statement that the Adorers have decided to put their prayers where their feet stand. Their neighbors at Lancaster Against Pipelines, the people praying and building community in Conestoga, asked to erect an open-air chapel on the Adorers field that the gas company covets. It will serve as a place of prayer for people of any faith, a physical mark linking spiritual and physical resistance to industry that threatens water and earth. The chapel will be dedicated at a ceremonyJuly 9, attended by leadership of the Adorers, Lancaster Against Pipelines and supporters. It may not stand for longthe laws favor the energy companys right to take what land it wantsbut for Sister Dwyer and others, tireless, prayer-filled and fearless nonviolent struggle is worth standing for.

Eileen Markey is an independent reporter and the author of A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sr. Maura (Nation Books). She lives in the Bronx.

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Spirituality At Workplace – BW Businessworld

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All around us are the signs of a society under stress. Though to a certain extent, stress in the workplace is desirable but chronic and prolonged stress can affect our mental and physical health. Organisations are forced to be more productive, and profit generating. Long working hours, tight deadlines and unrealistic workload in a highly competitive world can cause mental stress. When stress exceeds our ability to cope, workplace environment affects our personal health and family life. Workplace stress when it's left unchecked can contribute to health problems such as high blood pressure, heart diseases, obesity and diabetes. In fact, the Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA found that nearly 90 per cent of all illnesses and diseases are stress-related. Some of these illnesses are spreading very fast in working class. Across the corporate world, it is increasingly realised that combining stress management with spirituality can be a very effective tool not only to enhance productivity and overall performance in the workplace but also for self-growth and learning for individuals working in the organisations. Spirituality helps us in knowing our true self, discover our deeper identity and bringing awareness to the meaning and purpose of life. More and more people working in public, as well as private entities, find spiritual practices like meditation, breathing exercises, yoga and prayer in the workplace very effective in managing their stress level.

By practising such exercises, we can cultivate inner peace and be more focused and present during troubled times. In a way, spirituality involves us in getting touch with our inner self. It is also nurtured by our relationships with others. A workplace where workers and executives find time to engage themselves in some spiritual practices can easily bring about transformational changes leading to increased productivity and profitability in the organisation. Through spirituality, we can surely create a better, more satisfying and healthy workplace.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house. Unless otherwise noted, the author is writing in his/her personal capacity. They are not intended and should not be thought to represent official ideas, attitudes, or policies of any agency or institution.

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Spirituality At Workplace - BW Businessworld

Letter: OD crisis needs a dose of spirituality – Kelowna Capital News

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Some youth are deprived of hope because they do not know about the love that God has for them

To the editor:

It is indeed sad, and frightening to read the article about drug overdoses not slowing down in spite of all the efforts to contain the epidemic. Sometimes countries fall into moral decay and need a good dose of spirituality to bring them back to health.We know how secular society has become. It is not cool to talk about God or his commandments. Some youth are deprived of hope because they do not know about the love that God has for them.

Dr. Corneil wants to know how much society will invest in treating this epidemic. A good place to start is in the home with parents who model and passionately live their faith and pass it on to their children.

Rosemary Lalonde, Kelowna

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Letter: OD crisis needs a dose of spirituality - Kelowna Capital News

London: A Taste of Ignatian Spirituality – Independent Catholic News

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DeMazenod House retreat centre by Tower Hill is presenting a day retreat exploring Ignatian inspired contemplation and meditation, followed by creative expression of poetry and a variety of artistic medium. The aim of the day is to explore a different approach to enhancing our relationship with God creatively and intuitively.

St Ignatius stresses the importance of the physical senses and feelings - gifts God has given us - in tapping more deeply into our understanding of God and those deeper realities ourselves. And while Ignatian prayer is best known as the prayer of the interior imagination, of the minds eye, it can also be activated from the exterior visual sense, through art. (IgnatianSpirituality.com)

The day is Saturday 24 June 2017 at DeMazenod House, 62 Chamber St, Tower Hill London E1 8BL. Arrive at 10.30am for an 11am start, finishing at 4pm with Mass celebrated by Fr Oliver Barry OMI. Reconciliation will be available.

The day will be facillitated by JudyAnn Masters, who can be reached at judyannmasters@gmail.com for more information. Bring a packed lunch. Teas, coffees and all art supplies are provided. Contact the retreat centre at 020 7702-3544 or JudyAnn to reserve a place. Suggested donation 12.

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London: A Taste of Ignatian Spirituality - Independent Catholic News

On The Sacrament of Chrismation (Confirmation) Conclusion – Patheos (blog)

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This is the fourth and last post on a series exploring the sacrament of chrismation. Click here for Part One, here for Part Two, and here for Part Three.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov by Violette79 from Brooklyn, NY, USA (Saint Seraphim of Sarov) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Only the Holy Spirit can purify the intellect, for unless a greater power comes and overthrows the despoiler, what he has taken captive will never be set free (cf. Luke 11:21-22). In every way, therefore, and especially through peace of soul, we must make ourselves a dwelling-place for the Holy Spirit. Then we shall have the lamp of spiritual knowledge burning always within us; and when it is shining constantly in the inner shrine of the soul, not only will the intellect perceive all the dark and bitter attacks of the demons, but these attacks will be greatly weakened and exposed for what they are by that glorious and holy light.[1]

In the Apocalypse we can find an example of the internal spiritual warfare going on within us all; until our full reception of the eschaton and the glory of God, we will find ourselves under attack by so-called locusts, powers of evil which seek to destroy us from within ourselves. While Andrew of Caesarea believed the Apocalypse discussed something which would happen in the future, at times he was able to write in a more generalized fashion, and so his statement on these mental locusts which seek to hinder our intellect, is true now as it is for the Christians at the end of time. We who have the seal of the Spirit, those who have been chrismated, will find that through this seal, the Holy Spirit will be working in and through us, protecting us from these powers of chaos, helping to strengthen our intellect so it does not become utterly consumed. Then, with such protection, we can more to enlightenment and share the light of truth to the rest of the world:

And the mental locusts, who sting people like scorpions, show the death which is the harm of the soul hiding at the end of evil deeds, to which those are subjected who had not been sealed with the divine seal on their foreheads and shine round about with the enlightenment of Life-giving Cross through the Holy Spirit, so that according to the saying of the Master, they shine their light before men for the glory of the divine name. [2]

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On The Sacrament of Chrismation (Confirmation) Conclusion - Patheos (blog)

Riding the Hearthnot the hedge – Patheos (blog)

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Riding the Hearthnot the hedge

After reading this you may think either:

Hopefully you will think I am option number 3 but I am happy to come under option number 1 as a back-up. Please dont think of me as option number 2, I promise you The Craft is my life and I would never dishonour it.

Many years ago, whilst working on a progressive magick course run by Gavin Bone & Janet Farrar I discovered the skill of travelling to the other worlds, something often referred to as hedge riding.

I was immediately hooked and have been working with it ever since.

The hedge is the symbolic boundary between the worlds. Hedge riding is the journey your spirit takes into the Otherworld or Underworld realms, sometimes called the upper and lower realms. The middle realm being our everyday world that we live in.

Hedge riding can take our spirit travelling back into the past to connect with our ancestors. We can meet and talk with our past life selves. The upper realm can provide us with connections to our spirit guides and teachers and the Divine. The lower realm takes us on a journey to find animal guides and to meet the souls of those passed over.

Itis not something to be taken lightly, it definitely isnt somewhere to just visit because you are bored. Thisis something to be taken very seriously and journeys should be taken with a particular question or mission in mind. It might be a journey undertaken for the purposes of healing, seeking an answer to a question, for spell work or to find spiritual enlightenment.

Hedge riding is very similar to shamanic journeys and also incorporates the art of Seidh or seer work in that you will communicate with the spirits. During a journey your spirit, your conscious will travel to the Otherworld.

However, I hadbeen struggling. I would sit in front of the gnarled old tree that usually opens up doorways to the different levels of the other world allowing me totrot over the hedge and into a different realm. But I would enterthe tree and fall into a black hole. One that appeared to be never ending and all I did wasfall without ever ending up anywhere.

I was perplexed. Until I realised that it wasnt working because of my personal pathway. My own journey has twisted and turned and veered off in all sorts of directions allowing me to bring back bits and bobs from other pathways and cultures to create my own unique spiritual way.

No matter what direction I drift off to, I always seem to end up back on the path of a Kitchen Witch, obviously it is at my core. The realisation was that the tree didnt quite fit with my Kitchen Witch persona. So I meditated to find another avenue. An apple tree in a vegetable garden was the first image to appear but it was just an apple tree, sadly no gateways.

Then inspiration struck. My vision was of a large high backed wooden chair (not a rocking chair because me and rocking chairs dont mix well) but an old chair with several comfy cushions in. It was sat in an old kitchen with a terracotta stone floor and beamed ceilings hung with herbs. Yep I know it is a bit stereotypical but hey work with me The chair was placed in front of an old cast iron range with a roaring fire in.

As I sat and watched the doorways revealed themselves to me (I promise I hadnt eaten any dodgy mushrooms). The lower realm became open via the tray of ash that sits at the bottom of the oven, all dark and dusty. The middle world revealed itself via the oven with the doors thrown open. And the upper world is accessible through the smoke that comes out of the fire and up through the chimney.

It was a relief to be back and each time I visit the otherworlds now it is by using my hearth riding system.

My advice to anyone working within the Craft, do what works for you!

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Riding the Hearthnot the hedge - Patheos (blog)

Dr. Steve Tayor, World-Renowned Spirituality and Psychology Expert, Author and Teacher to Join Dr. Paula Joyce on … – Digital Journal

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Voice America Talk Radio Network, Internet broadcasting pioneer, producing and syndicating online audio and video, today announced that world-renowned spirituality and psychology expert, author and teacher will join Dr. Paula Joyce host of Uplift Your Life: Nourishment of the Spirit radio program on the VoiceAmerica Empowerment Channel Thursday, June 15 at 8 AM Pacific Time

This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire

Phoenix, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/14/2017 -- There's a widespread myth that enlightenment takes years of meditation and study, is confined to Eastern religions and is only possible for a handful of highly dedicated spiritual people. Enlightenment is actually much simpler and available to all of us. In fact, many have already attained this state spontaneously or naturally without trying. Enlightenment, or wakefulness, is simply a shift in consciousness, a different way of being in the world, a lighter, easier way of living life. Even Westerners can live with peace of mind and in harmony.

Steve Taylor, PhD, is the author of several books on spirituality and psychology, including The Fall and Waking from Sleep. He has also published two books of poetic spiritual reflections, including The Calm Center. Steve is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom. Since 2011, he has appeared annually in Mind, Body, Spirit magazine's list of "the world's 100 most spiritually influential living people." His new book is The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening with a foreword by Eckhart Tolle. Please visit Steve at http://www.StevenMTaylor.com.

To hear more bestselling authors and world-renowned guests like James Van Praagh, Dr. Bernie Siegel, Dr. Larry Dossey, The Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress, Keni Thomas, Dr. Joan Borysenko, Rabbi David Stern, David Whyte, Will Bowen, Sandra Ingerman, Dr. Susan Weitzman, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Stanley Krippner, Dan Millman, Dr. Matthew Fox and Dr. Gary Chapman be sure to listen to these shows on-demand. "Uplift Your Life: Nourishment of the Spirit" airs live on Thursdays at 8 AM Pacific/10 AM Central/11 AM Eastern on The VoiceAmerica Empowerment Channel.

To access the show, log on at http://www.voiceamericaempowerment.com. All shows will be available in Dr. Paula Joyce's Content Library on The VoiceAmerica Empowerment Channel for on-demand and podcast download, http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2317/uplift-your-life-nourishment-of-the-spirit.

The VoiceAmerica Network offers the latest conversations in a talk radio format, providing education, interaction, and advice on key issues live, on demand as well as through pod cast download. If interested in hosting a talk radio show on VoiceAmerica Network, Contact Executive Producer Winston Price (480-553-5752) also for advertising/sponsorship information or other show details.

About Dr. Paula Joyce Dr. Paula, The Life Doctor, (http://paulajoyce.com/site/) has helped thousands of people improve their health, wealth and relationships through writing, coaching and speaking. Her clients attain success, achieve breakthrough thinking and enhanced productivity with her Ultimate Creative Problem Solving Process, which aligns and integrates information in both sides of the brain. Clients dissolve hidden fears and blocks, solve challenging problems and reach their goals.

Despite being told that she could not write creatively, paint or dance, Dr. Paula is a best-selling author, an internationally shown artist and an accomplished Argentine Tango dancer. She broke the family rules by being a working mother, who did postdoctoral work at Yale and was Director of Leadership Development in a school district where she coached and trained top level executives. She has overcome emotional and psychological abuse and learned to see the positive in every experience and feel the gratitude for all of it.

Dr. Paula is the bestselling author of Nothing But Net, and her column, Ask Dr. Paula, is in Dallas Yoga Magazine, in print and on the web. Her e-book, 33 Tips for Self-Empowerment, is the first in a series of 33 Tips books. Dr. Paula has spoken to organizations such as: American Express Financial Services, Baylor University Medical Center, Unity Church, Jung Society and Voluntary Hospital Association. She was in USA Today, Dallas Morning News and on national radio and television. She was named one of America's Leading Experts and recognized by The National Academy of Best-Selling Authors.

About VoiceAmerica/World Talk Radio, LLC VoiceAmerica is the original digital broadcast company for the production and delivery of Live Internet Talk Radio programming and continues to be the industry leader in digital media, marketing, and distribution. We are the pioneers of digital radio programming and have been since 1999. We create and distribute over 500 unique and innovative radio programs for our millions of engaged listeners worldwide. Our network channels distribute live programs daily that reach a growing domestic and international audience who connect through all devices via our mobile, desktop, and tablet VoiceAmerica destinations.

Learn more at http://www.voiceamerica.com.

Listeners can download the current versions of the VoiceAmerica Talk Radio App at: Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airkast.VA_MASTER&hl=en iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voiceamerica-talk-radio-network/id412135954?mt=8# Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/AirKast-Inc-Voice-America/dp/B00IGH8WPO

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/dr-steve-tayor-world-renowned-spirituality-and-psychology-expert-author-and-teacher-to-join-dr-paula-joyce-on-uplift-your-life-nourishment-of-the-spirit-819489.htm

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Dr. Steve Tayor, World-Renowned Spirituality and Psychology Expert, Author and Teacher to Join Dr. Paula Joyce on ... - Digital Journal

Why terrorism is caused by much more than just religion – Middle East Eye

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Middle East Eye
Why terrorism is caused by much more than just religion
Middle East Eye
Bouhlel and those whose religious education derives primarily from IS propaganda cannot draw on that fund of spiritual enlightenment. And so, in the face of personal crises such as Abedi's academic failure and increasing isolation and Bouhlel's ...
Richard Dawkins: religious education is crucial for British schoolchildrenTelegraph.co.uk

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Russia Launches Robotic Cargo Ship to Space Station – Space.com

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An uncrewed Russian cargo ship launched toward the International Space Station today (June 14), kicking off a two-day trip to deliver tons of fresh food and other supplies.

The automated Progress 67 spacecraft launched into orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket at 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 GMT). The mission lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where the local time was 3:20 p.m., NASA officials said.

The Progress spacecraft is carrying nearly 3 tons of fresh food, fuel and other vital supplies for the space station's Expedition 52 crew. It will arrive at the space station on Friday (June 16) at 7:42 a.m. EDT (1142 GMT), NASA officials said. [The Space Station's Robotic Cargo Ship Fleet (Photo Guide)]

"Less than 10 minutes after launch, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned," NASA officials wrote in a mission update. "The Russian cargo craft will make 34 orbits of Earth during the next two days before docking to the orbiting laboratory at 7:42 a.m. Friday, June 16."

The Progress 67 launch comes on the heels of a two other cargo ship events at the space station. On Sunday (June 11), an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship burned up in Earth's atmosphere to end its own recent resupply mission for NASA. On June 5, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the station two days after launching into orbit. Dragon will stay linked to the orbiting laboratory until July 2, when it will return to Earth to make an ocean splashdown.

An international fleet of robotic cargo ships periodically deliver supplies to the International Space Station. That fleet includes Russia's Progress spacecraft, the U.S. commercial vehicles like SpaceX's Dragon and Orbital ATK's Cygnus, as well as Japan's H-2 Transfer Vehicle.

The European Space Agency also flew five cargo missions to the station using its huge Automated Transfer Vehicles. The last European cargo ship flew in 2015.

Of all these robotic spacecraft, only SpaceX's Dragon is capable of returning cargo to Earth. The rest are disposed of by being intentionally burned up in Earth's atmosphere. Progress 67 will stay docked at the International Space Station until December, when it will depart to meet its fiery end in Earth's atmosphere.

NASA will stream live video of Progress 67's space station arrival on Friday. The webcast will begin at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) ahead of the docking. You can watch the docking live here, courtesy of NASA TV.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalikandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Russia Launches Robotic Cargo Ship to Space Station - Space.com