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THE YEAR 1968

Various surveys can be found ranking the ten worst years for Humanity.   Here is one from The Top Tens. #1    1939:  Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. Few remember that Hitler declared war on Poland with the Soviet Union  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans first formed in 1922. How this year so high is a mystery to me. #2    1350:  The Black Death ravaged Europe, killing perhaps 50% the population.  99% of the world was in extreme poverty. #3    1941:  Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Nazi Germany invaded ally Soviet Union.  Genocide of Jews and peak of World War II. #4    1914:  Beginning of World War 1.   #5    2016:  Terrorist attacks in Europe and the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. #6  2020:  Australia was on fired, Donald Trump was elected president of the USA and the Coronavirus Pandemic struck. #7  2001:  Terr...
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CAN YOU TAKE TOO MUCH VITAMIN B12?

Let me at the top indicate that medical science mostly says you  can't  really take too much Vitamin B-12.  For example, the Food and Nutrition Board has not established a Tolerable Upper Intake Level because it feels this is not necessary.  And sorry about this lengthy posting, but I thought you should see the entire  Quora  presentation. Keep in mind that the human body does not naturally produce its own vitamin B12: We obtain B12 from meat, fish, dairy, eggs and supplements. Bacteria in the large intestine can produce a small amount of B12, but the colon cannot absorb it. The recommended daily amount needed by the body is around 2.4 micrograms (mcg) per day. Note that those supplements you take are in the 500 mcg to 2500 mcg size tablets, which is taken daily is because your body is very inefficient in utilizing this vitamin.  What is not used passes through your digestive system. The older you get, B12 from the food you eat becomes insufficient, an...

EARTH AT RISK

The University of Hawaii Foundation now has an annual luncheon to honor its donors, and I happened to sit next to  Chip Fletcher,  dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). Welcome by President Wendy Hensel. Chip has effectively been dean of SOEST for now around a decade.  We talked about things in general, but in particular, he thought that I would find interest in a paper he published with others.  On 2April2024 he was lead author of an epic paper published in  PNAS Nexus : Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future   Their  PNAS Nexus  article is a gold open access ( meaning freely available to the general public ) contribution published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, in partnership with Oxford University Press.  I of course read the paper, but as I am a colleague of his, asked an independent Google AI to tell me what it could about this publica...