PARIS - A major French hospital group has chosen a cheap copycat version of a top-selling drug for treating its patients with rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and psoriasis in a victory for a new type of medicine known as biosimilars.

12:41pm EDT

(Reuters Health) - Weight screenings in high school were not enough to get overweight and obese kids on track toward a healthier weight, a recent U.S. study found.

2:01pm EDT

(Reuters Health) - Better care and counseling is needed to teach overweight women hoping to become pregnant about the health dangers of their excess weight and the importance of maintaining a healthy diet, a new U.S. study concludes.

2:03pm EDT

(Reuters Health) - On July 4, 1965, with protest signs raised above their heads, 40 marchers outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall showed many people their first glimpse of lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans.

2:24pm EDT

BANGKOK - An Omani man who became Thailand's first case of Middle East Respiratory Sydnrome (MERS) has made a full recovery and will be discharged from hospital on Friday, Thailand's health minister said.

3:40am EDT

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Health & Fitness News | Reuters.com

retirement

Whether just starting to plan for retirement or nearing the age of required minimum distributions, these free retirement calculators are here to help. Choose the appropriate calculator below to compare saving in a 401(k) account vs. a Roth IRA, determine the impact of changing your payroll deductions, estimate your Social Security benefits, and more, as you figure what it takes to save toward a secure retirement.

Nothing will bring clarity to your retirement planning like a retirement calculator. These calculators will help you estimate the level of monthly savings necessary to make it to retirement and can also help you predict how your investments can boost retirement returns.

When it comes to retirement planning, it's hard to meet goals you haven't set. Arriving at a ballpark figure for total retirement savings is easy with a retirement calculator. Some of them can even help you estimate your retirement income needs on a monthly basis.

In order to calculate how much income you'll need in retirement, get a handle on your current spending. While some retirees find their budget shrinks during retirement, others say that they spend more on leisure activities and travel, at least in the early years.

Social Security typically provides part of a retiree's monthly income. Estimating how much income you may have from Social Security can assist in approximating the amount of money you'll need to save in dedicated retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs.

A 401(k) is a retirement plan offered by a private-sector employer. The equivalent for teachers and some non-profit employees is the 403(b). A 457 plan is offered to government workers.

An IRA, or individual retirement account, is a tax-advantaged account that savers open on their own through a bank, credit union or brokerage.

The IRS adjusts the limit savers can contribute to retirement each year, but in general, the contribution limit for an IRA is about a third of what can be contributed to a workplace plan.

In general, contributions to retirement accounts can be made pre-tax, as in a 401(k) or a traditional IRA. Contributions to a traditional IRA qualify for a tax deduction for the year the contribution was made. Contributions to workplace plans typically go in on a pre-tax basis, which means the employer puts it into the account before including it with taxable income. After age 59 , contributions and earnings can be withdrawn without penalty but will be taxed as regular income.

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Retirement Calculator -- Free Calculators for 401K, Roth IRA ...

Experience the full potential of parenthood: a transformative vessel for evolving yourself, your child, and the future. A community learning experience facilitated by Miriam Mason Martineau October 12 December 7, 2015

In the hardest moments of being a new parent, and in the gentle arc of expansion, I found again and again, gems of wisdom that would surface in the perfect moment. This course was priceless! Adrian W. (father of two)

Parenting can be a most powerful vehicle for spiritual growth, compassion-in-action, and evolutionary activism.

Yet people on a personal development path often feel their practice must be put on hold when they take on the full-time job of parenting. How can changing diapers become your new meditation, or playing with legos your most advanced yoga?

And many parents are awestruck by the responsibility of raising a child. They are overwhelmed by vastly different schools of parenting wisdom, struggling to forge a path that honors themselves and nurtures their children. How can we hold the truths of such varied perspectives to raise our children with the most consciousness, love, and creativity we can muster? How can we raise the bar for ourselves as parents while forgiving our very human limitations?

Miriam Mason Martineau has spent 20 years asking such questions: as a researcher, integral practitioner, and mother. She has found the practice of parenting undergoes a radical shift when placed in a new context: an integral, evolutionary perspective. Parent, child, and the relationship between them are all invited to stretch the limits of their human potential all while honoring the ever-present, already-whole perfection of the spiritual realm.

Join us for this transformative, 8-week online course! Together we will explore this new frontier in the parenting adventure. From meta-perspectives to daily practices, well discover just how powerful this integral-evolutionary context can be in creating the fullest, richest, most loving parenting practice. Raise the bar for how you show up as a parent, and provide your child with the very best foundation for being a loving, creative, conscious being while discovering an unshakeable ease amidst the inevitable ups, downs, and doubts of parenting.

Experience the full range of yourself and your child in the vessel of parenthood: immanent and transcendent, becoming and simply being, fundamentally connected and undeniably individual.

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Integral Parenting :: Parenting as a Spiritual Practice

Once upon a time, if you were born as a peasant farmer, odds were that you stayed a peasant farmer for the rest of your life. If you were a tradesman, you stayed a tradesman. And if you were a woman well, you didnt even get to choose a trade. In other words, our choices were incredibly limited.

Today, on the other hand, we have the opportunity to reinvent ourselves as many times as we want. We can radically change our profession, we can dramatically increase our income, we can start businesses, we can get married, get divorced, or not even bother with the traditional conventions of relationships and family. In other words, the choices available to us are practically limitless.

The evolution of much of todays society towards an abundance of choice is mirrored by our evolution towards higher consciousness. The two go hand in hand.

As society has shifted dramatically to allow for incredible new availability of choice, so has our ability to access information about our creative process through choice and consequence. Which came first the societal shift or the accessing of higher consciousness? Most likely, new consciousness triggered social change, which triggered new shifts in consciousness, which triggered more social change, and so on.

So here we are. In much of the Western world, we can do pretty much ANYTHING we want with our lives. Thanks to the Internet, we can study anything, develop any skills we want, generate income from our couch, and find people all over the world who share our perspectives. For women even more than men, the availability of choice has changed dramatically.

BUT many of us who are dedicated to our spiritual path and personal evolution have never been in this much struggle. In spite of all this availability of choice and consciousness, I get emails every day from highly awakened and gifted Souls who are struggling financially, and feeling stuck in their third-dimensional lives.

Heres why:

Were trying to walk two very different and ultimately opposing spiritual paths.

Imagine you are a spiritual teacher, hundreds of years ago, trying to serve as many people as possible in making their lives better and happier.

What would you tell the peasant farmer, the tradesman, the scholar? Their professions, relationships, and economic circumstances were not going to change much. Major life transformations were just not available to most people.

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Money And The Evolution Of The Spiritual Path | Empowered Soul

Jun. 13, 2015

Whole Foods Market's new program Responsibly Grown is drawing heat from grocery chain's longtime organic suppliers, who complain program can give conventional growers higher rankings than their own organic produce; company's stock fell 14 percent in May and its gross profit margin fell below 36 percent, signalling possible damage from competition with mainstream grocery chains. MORE

Estimated 5,000 independent natural products retailers are headed by former activists and health food pioneers now reaching retirement age and facing decision on whether to close, sell to strangers, or turn business over to their children; familial business transitions can be difficult and complicated, and experts say taking the time to get outside advice in planning the turnover can be critical to to ensuring stable second-generation ownership. MORE

Group of consumer and environmental advocates, grocers and seed growers files lawsuit against Agriculture Dept, challenging change to rules for granting approval for nonorganic substances used in organic farming. MORE

Textile company Coyuchi offers completely organic, watercolor bedding. MORE

Animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere releases troubling video of laying hens at Northern California farm that supplies eggs to Whole Foods and Organic Valley; owners of Petaluma Farms claim group is distorting conditions under which its eggs are raised; incident raises questions over whether such video footage can be misleading. MORE

Boris Akimov, Russian founder of organic farm cooperative LavkaLavka, hopes ban on food imports from the West will boost Russia's fledgling farm-to-table movement; Akimov found himself flooded with requests from grocery chains after Pres Vladimir Putin imposed ban in retaliation for Western sanctions. MORE

Agriculture Dept plans to announce that it will spend $52 million to support local and regional food systems like farmers' markets and food hub and to spur research on organic farming. MORE

Small fast food chains are making a splash in the restaurant industry by offering enticements like grass-fed beef, organic produce, sustainable seafood and menus that change with the season; all are thriving, despite higher costs and prices, and are planning national expansions. MORE

Comprehensive review of earlier studies to be published in British Journal of Nutrition finds substantially higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticides in organic fruits, vegetables and grains compared with conventionally grown produce; findings stop short of claiming that eating organic produce will lead to better health. MORE

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organic food news - Times Topics - The New York Times

Organic certification is a certification process for producers of organic food and other organic agricultural products. In general, any business directly involved in food production can be certified, including seed suppliers, farmers, food processors, retailers and restaurants.

Requirements vary from country to country, and generally involve a set of production standards for growing, storage, processing, packaging and shipping that include:

In some countries, certification is overseen by the government, and commercial use of the term organic is legally restricted. Certified organic producers are also subject to the same agricultural, food safety and other government regulations that apply to non-certified producers.

Certified organic foods are not necessarily pesticide-free, certain pesticides are allowed.[2]

Organic certification addresses a growing worldwide demand for organic food. It is intended to assure quality and prevent fraud, and to promote commerce. While such certification was not necessary in the early days of the organic movement, when small farmers would sell their produce directly at farmers' markets, as organics have grown in popularity, more and more consumers are purchasing organic food through traditional channels, such as supermarkets. As such, consumers must rely on third-party regulatory certification.

For organic producers, certification identifies suppliers of products approved for use in certified operations. For consumers, "certified organic" serves as a product assurance, similar to "low fat", "100% whole wheat", or "no artificial preservatives".

Certification is essentially aimed at regulating and facilitating the sale of organic products to consumers. Individual certification bodies have their own service marks, which can act as branding to consumersa certifier may promote the high consumer recognition value of its logo as a marketing advantage to producers.

To certify a farm, the farmer is typically required to engage in a number of new activities, in addition to normal farming operations:

In addition, short-notice or surprise inspections can be made, and specific tests (e.g. soil, water, plant tissue) may be requested.

For first-time farm certification, the soil must meet basic requirements of being free from use of prohibited substances (synthetic chemicals, etc.) for a number of years. A conventional farm must adhere to organic standards for this period, often two to three years. This is known as being in transition. Transitional crops are not considered fully organic.

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Organic certification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welcome to the Relaxing Music of Jack Lim

Listen to Jack's Sampler CD tracks by clicking on the following titles:

View a sample of the Inner Peace Relaxation Imagery DVD online

View part 1 of The Great Stork Qigong Instructional DVD online

View the entire Cancer You Can Beat It! video online for free

NEW: Download the entire Stop Smoking soundtrack for free

View the entire Cancer You Can Beat It! video online for free

Download the book The Spiritual Significance of Music - Book 2 for free. Jack's contribution to this book appears of page 105.

Qi Energy Music is Jack Lim's unique creation. This is beautiful self help music composed and played by this leading international Qi Energy healer and teacher. The harmonious vibrations in his music and his positive thought for healing, inner peace and harmony and change have empowered thousands.

Qigong is the ancient Art of Longevity, developed over 7,000 years ago in China. Qi (chi) is the life force or energy of the body which travels the network of meridians within the body and joins with the energy of the universe. Qigong is the second and deeper wave of Chinese culture to the west after Taichi.

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Jack Lim's Beautiful Relaxation Music

Peter June 19, 2015 1503 Views

What is the science behind the movie Self/Less starring Ryan Reynolds and Sir Ben Kingsley?

Cryonics requires perpetual care. Two failure modes are considered, organizational decline and political attack.

During much of the transhumanist movement, advocates of Christianity have rightly opposed supporters of transhumanism because of ideological differences.

Dr. Max More, President & CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, on Cryonics & the Future of Emergency Medicine.

Deciding whether something is really an enhancement depends on what you measure, when, where, and how you measure it. This is The Measurement Problem of Transhumanism.

Invoking Mary Shelleys myth of Frankenstein is standard fare in arguments over controversial science.

'Chappie' (2015) surprised me with the most pro-transhumanist message I've seen in a major film.

BioViva, is an ambitious biotech startup that aims to cure diseases using gene therapy. It is also perhaps the first company to recognize aging as a disease and tackle it at the genetic level. And in case that wasn't enough to get you interested, BioViva CEO Liz Parrish states that the company also want to make you "smarter, stronger, faster and more visually accurate".

"The Transhumanist Party is a political organization that aims to put technology, health, and science at the forefront of US politics."

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Transhumanism Archives - h+ Mediah+ Media

Yoga Meditation is the art and science of systematically observing, accepting, understanding, and training each of the levels of our being, such that we may coordinate and integrate those aspects of ourselves, and dwell in the direct experience of the center of consciousness. (There is a 16-page description of traditional Yoga Meditation, which explains the process in practical terms, and simple language.)

Yoga Meditation is not actually a separate aspect of Yoga, due to the fact that traditional Yoga virtually is meditation. However, the phrase Yoga Meditation can be used here to discriminate between traditional Yoga Meditation and the now popular belief that Yoga is about physical postures. Yoga or Yoga Meditation is a complete process unto itself, only a small, though useful part of which relates to the physical body. (See the article Modern Yoga versus Traditional Yoga)

3 Stages of Awareness

Yoga, Sankhya, Vedanta, and Tantra view the human as manifesting outward step-by-step, whereby the subtler consciousness projects evermore outward, and then gradually forgets those subtler levels. Genesis also explains this outward movement when seen through the eye of the Yogi or mystic. (Sankhya, Vedanta, Tantra, Adhyasa)

2) In Yoga Each Aspect is Trained

Yoga is complete unto itself. In Yoga, each level of our being is trained independently, while also being trained to flow together. The systematic processes deal one-by-one with our actions in the world, senses, body, breath, and and both the conscious and unconscious aspects of mind.

3) Awareness Recedes to the State of Yoga*

Yoga or "Union" is attained by first training, balancing, and purifying each of the aspects of our being individually, and then systematically receding attention inward through those levels, expanding so as to experience the state of Union, Yoga, Samadhi, or Turiya.

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Yoga Meditation

Photo by Phil King You cant calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass. ~Timber Hawkeye

Have you ever felt so angry you lashed out and said words you regret? Felt so hurt, you couldnt talk past the lump in your throat?

So frustrated, you werent able to form a coherent sentence? Or tried to communicate something important, and it landed like a dead fish?

Ive been there.In my teens, I was a tempestuous young woman. Hormones had me flipping from rage to despair in a heartbeat. I sprayed emotions around me like a machine gun sprays bullets.

I couldnt even talk to my then-boyfriend about anything important without losing control. I frustrated even myself.

So I learned to keep emotions under lock and key. I rarely expressed how I felt, and aimed to just keep the peace and ensure everyone was happy.

Except me.

Several years ago, my good friend and I shared an apartment. We both just started our first real jobs and werent making a ton of money. We took turns cooking dinner, and we came up with a plan to use everything in our fridge before we went grocery shopping.

We didnt waste food and saved serious cash at a time when we needed to most. It also forced us to be ridiculously creative.

Apples and tofu were the only thing in the fridge? Check out the pantry. Weve got some walnuts, honey and a lone red onion. Suddenly we went from scrounging to gourmet cooking.

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Personal Development - Think Simple Now