From the Basque region of Spain comes a flourishing new business model that emphasizes cooperation as a key to innovation.

Georgia Kelly(left) is the founder of the Sonoma-based Praxis Peace Institute. The Praxis website has details about the seminar they hosted at Mondragon in September, as well as a schedule of upcoming events, including their annual lunch, Dec. 6 with featured guests Swami Beyondanada and actress/activist Mimi Kennedy.

Cooperative governance also leads to unorthodox responses to typical business problems. In the audio clip below, Kelly describes how the leadership and workforce at one of the Mondragon companies dealt with a unanticipated slowdown.

The workforce at the Mondragon Cooperative's technology center.

Physicists know that anti-matter is the electrical opposite of the elements we know and use; but they don't know why there is more matter than anti-matter.

 

Dr. Helen Quinn is a researcher and professor of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where her studies have focused in particle interations and the behaviors of quarks.

 

Even though we may tend to think of the universe as being mostly vast expanses of empty space, Quinn says that's not really true, so there's no place any extra antimatter could be hiding.

 

Looping eruptions on the Sun, like this one (right)  on July 24, 1999, create antimatter. Earth is shown for size comparison.

 

Science fiction has long speculated about the possibility of using some kind of matter-antimatter reactor as a means of propulsion for spacecraft. Quinn says for that to become a reality, there is one huge problem that would have to be overcome first.

Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center developed the sketch (below) of a hypothetical antimatter rocket of the future. 

 

Profanity on the airwaves is outlawed, and subject to steep fines, at least some of the time. But why do these forbidden words carry such an emotional charge?

  

Steven Pinker is author of seven books, including The Blank Slate. He is a professor at Harvard University. His new book, The Stuff of Thought, tackles the wide world of semantics, and how they can reveal the truth about human nature.

 

Pinker says he wrote his latest book to explore and explain the links between the ways we speak and the thoughts and feelings that shape that speech.

No matter what language or culture one examines, says Pinker, the same general types of linguistic taboos can be found.

 

The antidote to urban sprawl, says Greenbelt Alliance, is taller buildings and higher population densities within established urban core areas.

Greenbelt Alliance's recently published Smart Infill: A practical guide to creating vibrant places throughout the Bay Area  was written to inform decision makers about the benefits of these policies, and cite examples where they have been successfully employed. One of them, says Daisy Pistey-Lyhne, is the Town of Windsor.

 

Sonoma County has been a leader in adopting community separators or Urban Growth Boundaries for its cities. Those are a key first step in redirecting growth away from sprawl patterns back into urban infill.

 

 

For more information about the Sonoma County branch of Greenbelt Alliance, click here .

Greenbelt Alliance also regularly hosts hikes throughout the BayArea. You'll find a list of upcoming events here.

 

 

Fungi are the oldest living things on land, and with an estimated two million varieties, they may hold many yet-to-be-discovered medicinal and other benefits.

Paul Stamets, founder and president of Fungi Perfecti , has written six books on mushroom cultivation including Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and The Mushroom Cultivator. He will be speaking at the Bioneers Conference at the Marin Center in San Rafael, on October 17^th. To find out more about the event schedule and how to register, click here .

Stamets offers a short history of fungi:

Paul Stamets has been a dedicated mycologist for more than 30 years, during which he has discovered or identified four new species of mushroom. Here, he talks about how it feels to make such a discovery.

Among the many fungal processes that hold great promise for addressing human needs, Stamets points to one that could herald important changes in ethanol production.