Eco Hvar

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Health

Health

 

 

ECO HVAR'S AIMS: 

To initiate, organize, promote and encourage projects to improve health in all age groups.

HOW? 

- through projects of health education for all age groups, especially the young, with special focus on promoting good balance in diet, exercise, activities, rest, relaxation and healthy lifestyle habits.

- through projects for health tourism, especially promoting activity and sporting holidays, including nature walks, bicycling, sailing, rock climbing, rowing and other water sports.

- through co-operation with organizations having similar aims in Croatia and abroad

Health and Healthcare in Our Times

Published in Health

Some of the concepts underlying ECO HVAR for health.

Health and Healthcare in Our Times
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Water, The Most Vital Human Resource

Published in Health

Hvar is blessed in having a very good water supply. That said, piped water is not yet available across the whole island. The eastern villages between Jelsa and Sućuraj still rely on wells and cisterns filled by rainwater, although projects to connect them to the mains supply by stages are in hand, and have been since about 2010.

Water, The Most Vital Human Resource
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Books to Lighten the Heart

Published in Health

In the age before tablets, mobile phones, computers and televisions, many people used to read, and reading was a social asset. Yes, it is so. We who are old enough remember that there was a time, not so long ago, when these wonders of modern living did not exist. Children brought up in this age of instant communication across continents often wonder what we did with our time. One thing was reading. Books, newspapers, journals, magazines and comics were the main sources of passing the time pleasurably and/or educationally.

Books to Lighten the Heart
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GM, Pesticides and Hvar's Future Health

Published in Health

The 'Mediterranean diet' is considered to be extremely healthy, especially in protecting against heart disease. The first commercial genetically modified (GM) crops were planted in the United States in 1994 and have aroused heated controversy ever since. When GM meets the Mediterranean diet, are the two compatible? Or will GM swallow up the concept of the 'Mediterranean diet' and spit it out, unrecognizable and indigestible?

GMOs good for butterflies and wild plants?
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Tobacco, cigarettes: kick their butt?

Published in Health

A major scientific study published in November 2016 confirmed the horrific damage cigarette smoking can cause to human health.  Cigarette smoking is associated with 17 different types of cancer and is estimated to claim more than 6 million lives each year.

Tobacco, cigarettes: kick their butt?
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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Antarctic penguins have radically shifted their breeding season – seemingly in response to climate change

    Changing temperatures may be behind change in behaviour, which experts fear threatens three species’ survival

    Penguins in Antarctica have radically shifted their breeding season, apparently as a response to climate change, research has found.

    Dramatic shifts in behaviour were revealed by a decade-long study led by Penguin Watch at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, with some penguins’ breeding period moving forward by more than three weeks.

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  • Water firms could be let off pollution fines as part of government overhaul

    Exclusive: Campaigners claim changes will let companies ‘off the hook’, as government prepares to unveil new white paper for water industry

    Water companies could be let off fines for polluting the environment under changes announced in the government’s new white paper.

    The environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, hailed the changes as “once-in-a-generation reforms” featuring “tough oversight, real accountability and no more excuses”.

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  • Is your body really full of microplastics? – podcast

    Studies detecting microplastics throughout human bodies have made for alarming reading in recent years. But last week, the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, reported on major doubts among a group of scientists about how some of this research has been conducted.

    Damian tells Ian Sample how he first heard about the concerns, why the scientists think the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives, and where it leaves the field. He also reflects on how we should now think about our exposure to microplastics

    Clips: Vox, Detroit Local 4

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  • Country diary: Is the willow Britain’s finest tree? In one sense, it is | Mark Cocker

    Buxton, Derbyshire: Others are taller, wider, older, but our varied stock of willows have a generosity that sets them apart

    Usually in this country when we think about important trees, we focus on height, girth, age, visual impact – in short, their material properties. Few therefore would probably name willow as a number one British species.

    Willows often have no central trunk as in our archetypal tree model, and few specimens are more than 7 metres tall. Yet there is a sphere in which willows are pre‑eminent: more invertebrates live on them (452 species) than any other trees, including oaks, their closest contenders (423). In his glorious guide Trees of Britain and Ireland, Jon Stokes points out that 160 lichens thrive on willows too.

    Continue reading...

  • Bill Gates charity trust’s holdings in fossil fuel firms rise despite divestment claims

    Trust had $254m invested in companies such as Chevron, BP and Shell in 2024, a nine-year record, analysis shows

    The Gates Foundation Trust holds hundreds of millions of dollars in fossil fuel extractors despite Bill Gates’ claims of divestment made in 2019.

    End-of-year filings reveal that in 2024 the trust invested $254m in companies that extract fossil fuels such as Chevron, BP and Shell. This was a nine-year record and up 21% from 2016, Guardian analysis found. Adjusting for inflation, it was the highest amount since 2019.

    Continue reading...

  • Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide

    Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution

    Scientists have warned of a potential “regime shift” in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants.

    Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008, according to researchers at the University of South Florida.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘We thought they would ignore us’: how humans are changing the way raptors behave

    Experts call for tighter regulation as GPS tracking reveals how people’s behaviour affects the lives of some of the world’s largest birds

    Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet’s largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too.

    Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest, and how they die.

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  • 15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant

    A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain

    The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama.

    When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.

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  • Australia’s koala paradox: why is the beloved marsupial endangered in parts but overabundant in others?

    There are so many koalas in some places that food is the issue – while elsewhere populations are threatened by habitat loss. And there are no easy fixes

    On French Island in Victoria’s Western Port Bay, koalas are dropping from trees. Eucalypts have been eaten bare by the marsupials, with local reports of some found starving and dead. Multiple koalas – usually solitary animals – can often be seen on a single gum.

    Koalas were first introduced to French Island from the mainland in the 1880s, a move that protected the species from extinction in the decades they were extensively hunted for their pelts. In the absence of predators and diseases such as chlamydia, the population thrived.

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  • Dublin Bay’s oyster graveyard rises from dead in effort to restore rich ecosystem

    Pioneering scheme hopes species that thrived for thousands of years in Irish waters can do so again

    The dinghy slowed to a stop at a long line of black bobbing baskets and David Lawlor reached out to inspect the first one.

    Inside lay 60 oysters, all with their shells closed, shielding the life within. “They look great,” beamed Lawlor. So did their neighbours in the next basket and the ones after that, all down the line of 300 baskets, totalling 18,000 oysters.

    Continue reading...

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