Eco-Detergents: Nuts about Soap Nuts! Belinda Kersten Eco Detergent: Nuts About Soap Nuts Following on a short story of these little wonders of nature, ( In the HOMEMAKERSonline February Newsletter), I was inspired to investigate further and see where I can get my hands on some. There aren't many suppliers of soap nuts in South Africa, but I discovered one site that sells them, reasonably inexpensively. Visit www.naturesoap.co.za On this site you can discover the various uses of Soap Nuts as well as order them for R85 per 500g. Here are some of the uses of soap nuts that I’ve found have made them a staple in MY home: LAUNDRY The easiest way to use them for laundry, is to simply pop 3 to 6 soapnuts in the small muslin bag (supplied with soap nuts from www.naturesoap.co.za), tie it closed, and throw it into the drum of your washing machine along with your articles of clothing that need washing. You can reuse one batch for 4 or 5 loads of laundry. Soapnuts are highly-effective and gentle at the same time. They will leave your laundry fresh and clean, colours bright and no need for fabric softener. When the Saponin has been used up the shells will look dark and feel mushy, at this point you can safely throw them on your compost heap or put them aside for making soap nut liquid (Instructions on making soap nut liquid on the site) Soapnuts are both Ecological and Economical when compared to  other forms of detergents. 1 kg of soapnuts can be used for up to 150 loads of  laundry. WASHING DISHES Use soapnut liquid for washing your dishes. Don’t be deceived by the lack of  bubbles, since there are no artificial foaming agents so there will be very few  if any lasting bubbles. This in no way impacts on the ability of the liquid to  clean your dishes. If you are using a dish washer, just pop 3 shells in the bottom  of the cutlery holder and some vinegar in the rinse aid dispenser and your dishes  will come out sparkling clean. SHAMPOO Simply use soapnut liquid instead of regular shampoo, it is not as thick as  standard shampoos, and does not create as much artificial lather, so beware that  you do not use too much, as a little goes a long way. Soapnut shampoo will leave  your hair clean, naturally. STEAM CLEANING SPOT TREATMENT Add 45ml to 4L hot water and use in a portable steam cleaner. Great for getting out  urine smells and stains. A table spoon of bicarbonate of soda added to this is  specially good for removing cat smells. SOAPNUTS: • Are imported from India (shipped, as this is more enviro-friendly than flying them in). • Have been growing in the wild for centuries in the area they are sourced them from. • Are harvested in a sustainable manner. Be sure to visit www.naturesoap.co.za and discover many more uses for these wonder-nuts, as well as order some for YOUR home! Also available on the site are ‘Enchantrix’ products, which are also Ethical & Eco Friendly’. Their range includes Body Care, Kids & Household products, all at a price to suit your economically-stunted-but-eco-conscious-budget :-)

Eco-Detergents: Nuts about Soap Nuts!

Eco Detergent: Nuts About Soap Nuts

Following on a short story of these little wonders of nature, ( In theHOMEMAKERSonline February Newsletter), I was inspired to investigate further and see where I can get my hands on some.
There aren't many suppliers of soap nuts in South Africa, but I discovered one site that sells them, reasonably inexpensively. Visitwww.naturesoap.co.za On this site you can discover the various uses of Soap Nuts as well as order them for R85 per 500g. Here are some of the uses of soap nuts that I’ve found have made them a staple in MY home:

LAUNDRY
The easiest way to use them for laundry, is to simply pop 3 to 6 soapnuts in the small muslin bag (supplied with soap nuts fromwww.naturesoap.co.za), tie it closed, and throw it into the drum of your washing machine along with your articles of clothing that need washing. You can reuse one batch for 4 or 5 loads of laundry. Soapnuts are highly-effective and gentle at the same time. They will leave your laundry fresh and clean, colours bright and no need for fabric softener.
When the Saponin has been used up the shells will look dark and feel mushy, at this point you can safely throw them on your compost heap or put them aside for making soap nut liquid (Instructions on making soap nut liquid on the site) Soapnuts are both Ecological and Economical when compared to  other forms of detergents. 1 kg of soapnuts can be used for up to 150 loads of  laundry.

WASHING DISHES
Use soapnut liquid for washing your dishes. Don’t be deceived by the lack of  bubbles, since there are no artificial foaming agents so there will be very few  if any lasting bubbles. This in no way impacts on the ability of the liquid to  clean your dishes. If you are using a dish washer, just pop 3 shells in the bottom  of the cutlery holder and some vinegar in the rinse aid dispenser and your dishes  will come out sparkling clean.

SHAMPOO
Simply use soapnut liquid instead of regular shampoo, it is not as thick as  standard shampoos, and does not create as much artificial lather, so beware that  you do not use too much, as a little goes a long way. Soapnut shampoo will leave  your hair clean, naturally.

STEAM CLEANING SPOT TREATMENT
Add 45ml to 4L hot water and use in a portable steam cleaner. Great for getting out  urine smells and stains. A table spoon of bicarbonate of soda added to this is  specially good for removing cat smells.

SOAPNUTS:
• Are imported from India (shipped, as this is more enviro-friendly than flying them in).
• Have been growing in the wild for centuries in the area they are sourced them from.
• Are harvested in a sustainable manner.

Be sure to visit www.naturesoap.co.za and discover many more uses for these wonder-nuts, as well as order some for YOUR home! Also available on the site are ‘Enchantrix’ products, which are also Ethical & Eco Friendly’. Their range includesBody Care, Kids & Household products, all at a price to suit your economically-stunted-but-eco-conscious-budget :-)

Belinda Kersten

Eco Detergent: Nuts About Soap Nuts

Most Unusual And Dangerous Skin Diseases

BLASCHKO'S LINES: STRANGE STRIPES ALL OVER THE BODY

An extremely rare and unexplained phenomenon of human anatomy, Blaschko's lines were first presented in 1901 by German dermatologist Alfred Blaschko. Neither a specific diseasenor a predictable symptom of a disease, Blaschko's lines are an invisible pattern built into human DNA. Many inherited and acquired diseases of the skin or mucosa manifest themselves according to these patterns, creating the visual appearance of stripes. The cause of the stripes is thought to result from mosaicism; they do not correspond to nervous, muscular, or lymphatic systems. What makes them more remarkable is that they correspond quite closely from patient to patient, usually forming a "V" shape over the spine and "S" shapes over the chest, stomach, and sides.

ARGYRIA: BLUE SKIN, A REAL-LIFE SMURF

A condition caused by the ingestion of silver, the Argyria's most dramatic symptom is that the skin becomes blue or bluish-grey colored. On 2008, ABC reporters interviewed Paul Karason, 40 year-old who's skin turned blue after he used colloidal silver to ease his ailments. It started a decade ago, when he saw an ad in a new-age magazine promising health and rejuvenation through colloidal silver. Karason sent away for a kit for making colloidal silver -- a home brewof microscopic silver particles suspended in water. For a while, he was drinking at least 10 ounces a day as a cure for arthritis. "I had arthritis in my shoulders so bad I couldn't pull a T-shirt off. And the next thing I knew, it was just gone." he explained the media, but these claims have no basis in science and after a couple of months, his whole skin turned blue. "I kind of hoped it would fade off!" But it didn't fade off. Argyria is permanent.

DERMATOGRAPHIA: OVERLY SENSITIVE SKIN

Dermatographia is a rare condition where the skin is overly sensitive to minor injuries; even light scratches will cause it to become red and raised. The person's immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. In 2008, Neatorama featured artist Ariana Page Russell, who decided to use her medical condition as the basis for art, with some amazing results.

HUMAN PAPPILOMA VIRUS: MEET THE TREE MAN

After a severe Human Pappiloma Virus (HPV) infection, Dede Koswara, a 35-year-old Indonesian fisherman, was dubbed the "tree man" because of the gnarled warts all over his body. He first noticed the warts on his body after cutting his knee as a teenager. Over time, Dede was sacked from his job, deserted by his wife and shunned by neighbours as the horn-like extensions covered much of his body and stopped him working. He has two children. After his case received widespread publicity, donations from the public and government help allowed him to get treatment, and in 2008, six kilos of warts were surgically removed from his body.

TUNGIASIS: FLEAS BURROW INTO THE SKIN AND LAY EGGS

Tungiasis is a skin infestation of the Tunga penetrans flea, found in the tropical parts of Africa, Caribbean, Central and South America, and India. This fleas burrow into the skin and lay eggs, creating a disease which is actually endemic in Nigeria and Trinidad and Tobago, where in the 1980s the prevalence of tungiasis among children approached 40%.

VITILIGO: WHITE PATCHED SKIN

Vitiligo is a skin condition where the cells that make the pigment in your skin, the melanocytes, get destroyed. This causes white patches to appear on your skin, and this disease may affect any area of skin. These patches also show up on your mucous membranes and the retina of your eyes. Symptoms include white or gray hair on the patches, as well as the white patches on your skin, mucous membranes, and eyes. The precise cause of vitiligo is complex and not fully understood. There is some evidence suggesting it is caused by a combination of auto-immune, genetic, and environmental factors. The population incidence worldwide is considered to be between 1% and 2%.

HYPERTRICHOSIS: THE HUMAN WEREWOLF SYNDROME

Hypertrichosis is a medical condition that causes excessive growth of hair in areas where hair does not normally grow. It may be present over the entire body, or you could have it in only one or more areas. Some individuals will be born with the condition and others will develop it later on in life. Congenital Hypertrichosis is very rare. In fact, it is so rare that there have been only 50 verified cases since the Middle Ages. On 2008, the press interviewed Pruthviraj Patil, an 11-year-old indian boy who's face and body are covered with hair. He rarely leaves his home village in India because of the cruelty of strangers. Pruthviraj’s family has tried homeopathy, traditional Indian Ayurvedic remedies even laser surgery without success, and he's now appealing to doctors to help him find a permanent cure since even after laser treatment the hair grows back.

Furry sock shoes designed for walking, running and sports

Swiss Protection Socks from Swiss Barefoot put a whole new spin on the barefoot movement. These are essentially big, burly socks that are designed to be worn not inside shoes, but instead of them. The manufacturer claims that the socks are hefty enough to protect your feet from the pain and dangers of walking completely barefoot.

Here we thought that current barefoot offerings like the Vibram Five Fingers and were strange-looking. The Swiss Barefoot socks look like they belong below a barren stare and hospital gown in a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

These five-toed sock-shoes are for real, though. The company that makes them describes them as the "first firm socks for the ultimate barefoot feeling without the risk of injury from sharp objects." They supposedly give you a more natural stride thanks to the elimination of the sole, while protecting your feet from rocks and other sharp objects with their thick bottoms. They basically split the difference between the average barefoot shoe and grippy slipper socks designed to be worn around the house.

The socks get their claims of toughness from a blend of 50 percent Kevlar (that's the stuff they make bulletproof jackets out of), 32 percent polyester, 10 percent cotton and 8 percent Spandex. The soles are laminated with naps of PVC that Swiss Barefoot says makes them cut-resistant.

Interestingly, Swiss Barefoot doesn't just see these as useful for walking around your garden or getting the paper in the morning. In its video and photos, the company depicts all types of activities, including running, rock climbing and water sports.

The socks sell for 55 euro (US$73) for the short version and 59 euro ($78) for the longs. Take a look at the video below for a little more information, and footage of people using their Protection Socks.

South Africa - Floods

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In South Africa December 2010 more than 6,000 people have been displaced and 70 known to have been killed due to the floods. This number is expected to rise as police continue to search for an unknown number of missing persons.Eight of the country's nine provinces have been declared disaster areas, allowing for national funds to be distributed. Preliminary estimates placed crop damage at R1 billion ($145 million USD). Property damage was also estimated at $52 million.An estimated 20,000 hectares (49,200 acres) of agricultural land has been affected by the floods.

Vereeniging

Barnyard Teathre

The South African Air Force was brought in to aid in evacuating residents through air lifts by January 15. In a statement Co-operative Government Minister Sicelo Shiceka, displaced residents were told not to return to their homes.

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Further evidence that Mars once had oceans emerges

The European Space Agency (ESA) has provided more evidence that suggests the surface of Mars was once home to an ocean. Featuring ground-penetrating radar capabilities, the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) radar aboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has detected sediments like that seen on an ocean floor.
In 1877, with the aid of a 22 cm (8.6 in) telescope, Italian astronomer Giovanni Sciaparelli produced the first detailed map of Mars, which featured what he called canali. Although canali actually means "channels" in English, it was popularly mistranslated as "canals," which, along with books by Percival Lowell, helped foster the popular notion of water and life - including Martians - on the Red Planet's surface. Although these "canals" were later proven to be an optical illusion, these myths weren't dispelled until NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960's.
Yet more recent mapping efforts still point to there being liquid water on the planet's surface at some point in its history. It is within the boundaries of features tentatively identified in images from various spacecraft as shorelines that MARSIS detected sedimentary deposits reminiscent of an ocean floor.
"MARSIS penetrates deep into the ground, revealing the first 60 - 80 meters (197 - 262 ft) of the planet's subsurface," says Wlodek Kofman, leader of the radar team at the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG). "Throughout all of this depth, we see the evidence for sedimentary material and ice."
The sediments detected by MARSIS are areas of low radar reflectivity, which typically indicates low-density granular materials that have been eroded away by water and carried to their final resting place.
"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich. It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here," says Jérémie Mouginot, from IPAG and the University of California, Irvine.
Two oceans at different times in Mars' history have been proposed - one 4 billion years ago when warmer conditions prevailed, and one 3 billion years ago when geothermal activity may have caused subsurface ice to melt and flow into areas of low elevation.

Dr Mouginot estimates that this latter ocean would have lasted only a million years or less, with the water either being frozen in place underground again, or turned into vapor and released into the atmosphere.
"I don't think it could have stayed as an ocean long enough for life to form," he says, suggesting astrobiologists would have to look further back into Mars' history when liquid water existed for much longer periods.
But the ESA says the MARSIS findings provide some of the best evidence yet that large bodies of water once existed on the surface of Mars and that liquid water played a role in martian geological history.
"Previous Mars Express results about water on Mars came from the study of images and mineralogical data, as well as atmospheric measurements. Now we have the view from the subsurface radar," says Olivier Witasse, ESA's Mars Express Project Scientist. "This adds new pieces of information to the puzzle but the question remains: where did all the water go?"

The ESA says the Mars Express spacecraft, which was launched in 2003 and has been granted five mission extensions - the latest until 2014 - will continue its investigations with the hope of providing an answer.

New Earth discovered

An international team of scientists led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours. This remarkable new discovery suggests that habitable planets could exist in a wider variety of environments than previously believed.

Of the 750-odd exoplanets (extrasolar planets) discovered so far only very few can be considered "Super Earths This newly discovered example called GJ667Cc is rocky like Earth and is rich in heavy chemical elements such as iron, carbon and silicon. Positioned at a distance from Earth of 22 light years, corresponding to a bit over 129 trillion miles (209 trillion km), the planet can be considered to be on Earth's doorstep. Furthermore the planet is expected to absorb about the same amount of energy from its star that our Earth absorbs from the Sun. Surface temperatures are therefore expected to be similar to Earth's and the existence of water is quite possible.

"This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," said Anglada-Escudé.

The team made the discovery using public data from the European Southern Observatory, incorporated with new measurements from the Keck Observatory's High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope.

The team is also hopeful that within the triple star system where GJ667Cc resides, there may be the presence of a gas-giant planet and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days. However, further observations are needed to confirm these two possibilities.

"With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds," explained Anglada-Escudé.

Source: Carnegie Institution for Science

Child creates molecule

Ten year-old Clara Lazen, however, has done something a little more noteworthy. The fifth-grader from Kansas City, Missouri, built a model of a molecule that is new to science. If the molecule itself were to actually be created, it could possibly be used for energy storage, or in explosives.

Lazen built the model out of balls representing oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms, as part of a science exercise at Border Star Montessori School. When her creation was spied by her teacher, Kenneth Boehr, he emailed a photo of it to his friend Robert Zoellner, a chemistry professor at California's Humboldt State University. Zoellner in turn checked the Chemical Abstracts online database, and determined that Lazen's model was unique - although a previously-archived molecular modeldid incorporate the same formula as Clara's, its atoms were arranged differently.

Dubbed tetranitratoxycarbon, Clara's molecule contains the same combination of atoms as nitroglycerin, and according to Zoellner, could potentially be used to store energy or create a large explosion.

The Natural Disasters