For more info please check out the Global Zero Road Tour here:  http://www.globalzero.org/roadtour

Women ONE2ONE is a campaign aimed at saving the lives and increasing the opportunity of women who live in extreme poverty. As mediators, connectors and advocates we believe in the power of women to make this change.  The campaign is a growing voice made up of people who know that maternal health, girls’ education, economic opportunity and women’s empowerment are key to fighting poverty and preventable disease. It’s a campaign that recognizes women as change-makers, community-builders and solution-seekers.

Together, we will harness our power to connect, take action and shape the future. We will raise awareness of how poverty and preventable disease affect women, apply pressure during key political moments, and lay out the remaining challenges and steps needed to accelerate action. We’ll report on what’s working and push for policies central to empowering women worldwide.

Our goal is to recruit more than 1 million women in the fight against poverty and preventable disease. Together we can go beyond and achieve real change.

For more info and to get involved please go here:  http://one.org/women/gobeyond.html

Singing words made it easier for stroke patients to communicate

Teaching stroke patients to sing “rewires” their brains, helping them recover their speech, say scientists.

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech.

If a person’s “speech centre” is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their “singing centre” instead.

Researchers presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

An ongoing clinical trial, they said, has shown how the brain responds to this “melodic intonation therapy”.

Gottfried Schlaug, a neurology professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, led the trial.

The therapy is already established as a medical technique. Researchers first used it when it was discovered that stroke patients with brain damage that left them unable to speak were still able to sing.

Professor Schlaug explained that his was the first study to combine this therapy with brain imaging – “to show what is actually going on in the brain” as patients learn to sing their words.

Making connections

Most of the connections between brain areas that control movement and those that control hearing are on the left side of the brain.

“But there’s a sort of corresponding hole on the right side,” said Professor Schlaug.

Music engages huge swathes of the brain – it’s not just lighting up a spot in the auditory cortex Dr Aniruddh Patel, neuroscientist

“For some reason, it’s not as endowed with these connections, so the left side is used much more in speech.

“If you damage the left side, the right side has trouble [fulfilling that role].”

But as patients learn to put their words to melodies, the crucial connections form on the right side of their brains.

Previous brain imaging studies have shown that this “singing centre” is overdeveloped in the brains of professional singers.

During the therapy sessions, patients are taught to put their words to simple melodies.

Professor Schlaug said that after a single session, a stroke patients who was are not able to form any intelligible words learned to say the phrase “I am thirsty” by combining each syllable with the note of a melody.

The patients are also encouraged to tap out each syllable with their hands. Professor Schlaug said that this seemed to act as an “internal pace-maker” which made the therapy even more effective.

“Music might be an alternative medium to engage parts of the brain that are otherwise not engaged,” he said.

Brain sounds

Dr Aniruddh Patel from the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, said the study was an example of the “explosion in research into music and the brain” over the last decade.

“People sometimes ask where in the brain music is processed and the answer is everywhere above the neck,” said Dr Patel.

“Music engages huge swathes of the brain – it’s not just lighting up a spot in the auditory cortex.”

Dr Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist from Northwestern University in Chicago, also studies the effects of music on the brain.

In her research, she records the brain’s response to music using electrodes on the scalp.

This work has enabled her to “play back” electrical activity from brain cells as they pick up sounds.

“Neurons work with electricity – so if you record the electricity from the brain you can play that back through speakers and hear how the brain deals with sounds,” she explained.

Dr Kraus has also discovered that musical training seems to enhance the ability to perform other tasks, such as reading.

She said that the insights into how the brain responds to music provided evidence that musical training was an important part of children’s education.

Grandmother Agnes Pilgrim Baker

Chairperson of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and the oldest living member of the Takilma Siletz nation of Southern Oregon

Play Audio. TRT: 28:01 Date: 2009-04-06

Grandmother Agnes Pilgrim Baker, the oldest living member of the Takilma Siletz nation of Southern Oregon, is the Chairperson of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. The Grandmothers who are from Brazil, Nepal, Africa, Mexico, Tibet, Japan, the U.S. etc. travel all over the world sharing the knowledge, wisdom and hope gained through a lifetime of experience. Grandmother Aggie speaks on behalf of all Grandparents, and all those who would learn from indigenous, inherited knowledge in these times and will light our way through the uncertain future. She describes the Council, their mission, and some of their many adventures. She speaks passionately to the Elders of every society and to us all; calling us to greater action, appreciation, and gratitude for the world in which we live.

From meeting with the Dalai Lama to agitating in the Vatican City, the Grandmothers stand as a reminder of the knowledge and prayers that we desperately need in our time for the healing of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. Grandmother Aggie asks us to know the history of our lands, and to build a more positive and beautiful history for the generations that are to come. For they, and not us, own the world. The grandmothers will be visiting Grandma Aggie this August, 2009, in Oregon where they will be holding public events.

Grandma Aggie’s book: Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet (Paperback)

Interviewed in February 2009

For more info:   http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com

Brasscheck TV was so concerned they made their own video on the subject:

“We said that Gardasil was a pharmaceutical/government fraud not only based on bad science and bad medicine, but also a serious danger to the girls and young women who were being herded into receiving it.

I would much rather have been proven wrong.

Government officials in many states would still like to make this three series vaccination mandatory for all girls.

By the way, it’s total fraud to say that Gardasil prevents cervical cancer. It does not such thing.

The idiots in the mainstream news media who are complicit helping sell this garbage at least owe it to the public to get the basic facts straight”

Watch the video HERE.