WELLNESS FOR PEACE: LISTEN TO YOUR HEART ~ Mike Rowland, Film by Ruedi & Priska Abbühl

NEPAL QUAKE, ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER UNFOLDS: Expect more to happen bec it is Most Seismically Hazardous Regions on Earth

Nepal sits right where the Indo-Australian Plate is pushing itself beneath the Eurasian Plate, a collision that gave rise to the Himalayan Mountains. As the plates push, pressure builds, eventually resulting in a quake to relieve that pressure. And according to Nature, the Indo-Australian Plate is still pushing itself under the Eurasian Plate at a rate of nearly 2 inches per year. “Geologically speaking, that’s very fast," Lung S. Chan, a geophysicist at the University of Hong Kong, told the Wall Street Journal. “Earthquakes dissipate energy, like lifting the lid off a pot of boiling water... But it builds back up after you put the lid back on.” That immense and constant pressure has led to an unusually regular pattern of major quakes, making it "one of the most seismically hazardous regions on Earth," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Major earthquakes in the region are so regular that they occur roughly every 75-80 years. With the last one hitting just east of Kathmandu 81 years ago in 1934, most seismologists believed the area was due for another. “We knew it was going to happen. We saw it in ’34,” USGS geologist Susan Hough told the Washington Post. “The earthquakes we expect to happen do happen.” One team of researchers not only expected this earthquake to happen, but even pinpointed the location. Laurent Bollinger of the CEA research agency in France told the BBC that his team had been digging trenches along the fault. Using carbon dating on charcoal samples found in the trenches, they discovered one segment that hadn't moved in nearly 700 years. The last time it did was in 1344, and it came 89 years after a segment of the fault east of Kathmandu moved -- the same segment of the fault that moved 81 years ago in 1934. As it's common for strain to transfer from one part of a fault to another, Bollinger's team warned at a Nepal Geological Society meeting in early April that the same pattern could occur again. And now that it has, Bollinger is warning that Saturday's quake may not have been enough to relieve all the pressure. "Early calculations suggest that Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake is probably not big enough to rupture all the way to the surface, so there is still likely to be more strain stored, and we should probably expect another big earthquake to the west and south of this one in the coming decades," Bollinger told the BBC.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/nepal-earthquake-science_n_7149692.html

WELLNESS FOR PEACE: Dr. Robert Graham teaches medical residents how to cook nutritious vegetarian dishes for themselves and their patients

Dr. Robert Graham, director of resident research at Lenox Hill and the new director of integrative health and wellness for the hospital’s parent organization, North Shore-LIJ Health System, is one of a growing number of doctors and healthcare workers throughout the country emphasizing a diet of whole, plant-based foods to help prevent and treat chronic diseases. As a director at one of New York’s largest health care systems and a frequent speaker at health and food conferences, Graham is helping to shape the nationwide conversation around his favorite theme: food as medicine. “This whole ‘pill for an ill’ won’t work for these chronic illness,” Graham said, as he walked along the dozens of planters filled with herbs and micro greens that will eventually make their way into the roast chicken, pizza, salads, and side dishes the New York City hospital serves to its employees and patients. “Instead we have to address them through lifestyle choices. That really starts with food. You start with food and you can change everything.” https://www.yahoo.com/food/how-this-doctor-is-changing-patients-lives-one-117544490441.html