I spotted a link on BFD to Tech Czar Michael DeAloia's fascinating write up on the Medical Mart, so much in our pocketbooks and news every day, in real neo. Well, it seems we have one community leader interested to set the records straight today and from now on, in his world, on his blog, about his world, which is fascinating. I'm glad to see Michael more active than ever, leading the community, since leaving City Hall, and I appreciate the honest facts about the Medical Mart that are missing everywhere else. Read this tidbit below and you'll link through for the rest...

Cosgrove took over the meeting and detailed the Clinic’s expansion plan (which were amazing – what the public is seeing in terms of development and real estate purchases are nothing relative to the massive plans the Clinic has for its University Circle campus), and then offered the possibility of a Medical Mart.

The day Ohioans and others around America failed the world and allowed Bush and his clan 4 more years was the saddest of my life, and I was depressed by life after that until I posted the following...

 

The Cleveland City Council Chamber is a grand room, with wood paneling, curved seating and a colorful mural above President Sweeney’s high backed seat. 

 ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2008) — A new study sheds light on the relationship between women who smoke while pregnant--or are exposed to second-hand smoke--and an increased risk of SIDS to their babies.

Researchers at McMaster University have found a mechanism that explains why an infant's ability to respond to oxygen deprivation after birth--or a hypoxic episode--is dramatically compromised by exposure to nicotine in the womb, even light to moderate amounts.
"While cigarette smoke contains many different compounds, we found there is a direct impact of one component, nicotine, on the ability of certain cells to detect and respond to oxygen deprivation," says Josef Buttigieg, lead author and a PhD graduate student in the department of Biology. "When a baby is lying face down in bed, for example, it should sense a reduction in oxygen and move its head. But this arousal mechanism doesn't work as it should in babies exposed to nicotine during pregnancy."
The research, which was conducted on laboratory rats in collaboration with Dr. Alison Holloway, explains the critical role that catecholamines--a group of hormones released by the adrenal glands--play in a baby's transition to the outside world.
During birth, the baby is exposed to low oxygen, which signals the adrenal glands to release the catecholamines, which contain adrenaline, or the 'fight or flight' hormone, explains Buttigieg.
It is these catecholamines that signal the baby's lungs to reabsorb fluid, to take its first breath, and help the heart to beat more efficiently. And for some months after birth, the adrenal gland still acts as an oxygen sensor, aiding in the baby's arousal and breathing responses during periods of apnea or asphyxia. But the ability to release catecholamines during these moments--a critical event in the adaptation of life outside the womb--is impaired due to nicotine exposure.
"At birth, the nervous control of the adrenal gland is not active and so a baby relies on these direct oxygen sensing mechanisms to release catecholamines," says Colin Nurse, academic advisor on the study and a professor in the department of Biology. "But nicotine causes premature loss of these mechanisms, which would normally occur later in development after nervous control is established. Thus, the infant becomes much more vulnerable to SIDS."
The findings are published online in the journal Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and will appear in the May 2008 print issue.
The study was funded in part by the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Focus on Stroke.
Adapted from materials provided by McMaster University.

One minor question involving subprime vacant houses which I haven't seen asked much is: Where did the occupants go?  And the answer I can tell you  is: UNDERGROUND.

When a foreclosure takes place, and a lender gets a judgment against a homeowner/borrower, that judgment is good in the courts for decades – in some states for 21 years. 

Location

Splashing up such colorful and lusty images has to be therapeutic for the artist.  Right on the edge of an urban dumping ground, full of scrap tires and trash, here's this little fellow sitting comfortably with his leg on the ledge (complete with scrap tire and vines) waving at the buxom gal below.

EMF: Richard Box's Graphic Demonstrations

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.11.08
It is always a controversial subject here. Are EMFs harmful? Are WiFi routers and cellphones frying our brains? While the scientific consensus in North America suggests we need not worry, the art of Richard Box gives us serious pause.

And break.

Then when it warms up like it did over the past two days, the pipes thaw out.

And water floods everything.  

And when the building is filled up, the water pours out under the doors and into the street - just like it is doing at Sweet Daddy's.

 

Covered on Realneo in the past here, and here, today Dana Paterson is front page on the Cleveland Free Times

Cleveland365.com (what persons/names/$ are behind this anyway?) is sponsoring what they call a 10,000 little ideas convo. 

Location

Sunday, February 17th
at 2:00 PM

Location

Everywhere we go, everyone we meet, we look at faces to form an opinion about the feelings behind everyone’s phrenology.   

After posting this morning, I had more thoughts about the nobility of the suicide-prevention fence.   I knew I should go back and visit it more closely because when I saw the bridge before I was with someone who was driving so I couldn’t stop. 

We believe in the power of open innovation, bringing together creative minds to create breakthrough solutions that touch every human life.

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation, with a global network of more than 125,000 of the world's brightest minds on the world's first Open Innovation Marketplace™.

Kenny Ward told me about  how he maintains Toronto skating rinks.

On January 10, 2008 Bill MacDermott addressed an audience of about 30 at Webtego in Cleveland, Ohio.  

Bill is a solar convert - and  a franchise distributor of Unisolar products.

At a recent morning function, a “complimentary breakfast” was offered.