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“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

Quote of the Day: “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

Photo: via Fotolia

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Good News in History, April 26

70 years ago, Seven Samurai was released in theaters, the epic cinematic masterpiece co-written, directed, and edited by Akira Kurosawa. A technical and creative marvel, it became Japan’s highest-grossing movie but also was highly influential among Hollywood filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and George Lucas. The story, set in 1586 Japan, centers around a village of farmers that hires seven samurai to combat the bandits who plan to return after the harvest and steal their crops. Each samurai brings a completely different personality to the mission, causing friction in their makeshift team. WATCH the trailer and a review to learn why this black-and-white film is still worth watching today… (1954)

Solar Balconies Are Booming in Germany and You Can Plug in and Install Them Yourself

A solar balcony from Ertex Solar Austria.
A solar balcony from Ertex Solar Austria.

Solar panels are finding their way onto all sorts of surprising surfaces, and now Central Europeans are beginning to line their balcony rails with them; because why not?

To mark the 70th anniversary of the solar cell’s mainstream entry into society, data acquired by Euronews claims that 400,000 German households have already connected their verandas and balconies to solar panels.

New data shows at least 50,000 of the PV devices were added in the first quarter of 2024 alone.

Easy to install—such that many do it themselves, the technology makes every bit of sense as rooftop PV solar panels. In the Northern Hemisphere, during the winter months especially, the sun comes at such a shallow angle that panels on a balcony may even exceed the power generation of those mounted on a roof.

They won’t generate more power, because they’re plugged into smaller sockets, but they present less of a hazard than rooftop solar, and may not even require installation fees. They can also be installed where people may not have the requisite sunlight, the property access, or the structural strength to install rooftop panels.

Jan Osenberg, a policy advisor at the SolarPower Europe association, told Euronews that 200 megawatts is a rough estimate of how much electricity is generated by solar balconies, compared to 22 gigawatts from all of Germany’s rooftop solar panels.

The technology has been a boom in Germany’s strong solar culture. More power is generated by solar in Germany than any other country in Europe.

A solar balcony from Ertex Solar Austria.

“Rooftop solar really has this empowering momentum that people who start to have a solar system, they start to track their electricity consumption, they start to feel themselves as being someone who is a frontrunner in the energy transition, someone who supports the energy transition and is already a part of it,” says Osenberg.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Undersea Cable to Funnel 3 Gigawatts of Solar Energy From Egypt to Power Millions of European Households

Some German states offer subsidies for a solar balcony kit, which pays for itself in electricity savings after around 3-5 years of its 20-year lifespan. However, at 24 kilograms—over 50 pounds—installation needs to be taken deadly seriously, as a panel falling three or four stories onto someone might be lights out.

Europe has been getting progressively more inventive with the placement of its solar panels. GNN has reported on solar power installations above a cemetery in France, between railway tracks in Switzerland, inside terracotta roof tiles in Italy, and on the roof of an SUV in the Netherlands.

SHARE This Energy And Planet Saving At Home DIY Project On Social Media…

Did You Know Pluto Has a Heart? Scientists Solve Mystery as to Why

Plutos heart-shaped region as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft - SWNS
Plutos heart-shaped region as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft – SWNS

Most people know only that Pluto is a planet that wasn’t a planet that is extremely cold and far away, but it has a softer side as well.

Researchers believe the huge heart-shaped feature on the planetesimal’s surface was likely caused by a “giant and slow oblique-angle impact”.

A team of scientists from the University of Bern, including several members of the NCCR PlanetS and the University of Arizona, have used numerical simulations to investigate the origins of Sputnik Planitia, the western teardrop-shaped part of Pluto’s “heart” surface feature.

“Ever since the cameras of NASA’s New Horizons mission discovered a large heart-shaped structure on the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, this ‘heart’ has puzzled scientists because of its unique shape, geological composition, and elevation,” the team writes in a release.

According to the research, Pluto’s early history was marked by a cataclysmic event that formed this sweet, stellar, rocky emoji: a collision with a planetary body about 360 miles (700km) in diameter, roughly twice the size of Switzerland from east to west.

“The elongated shape of Sputnik Planitia strongly suggests that the impact was not a direct head-on collision but rather an oblique one,” points out Dr. Martin Jutzi of the University of Bern, who initiated the study.

The team used Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation software to digitally recreate such impacts, varying both the composition of Pluto and its impactor, as well as the velocity and angle of the impactor.

These simulations confirmed the scientists’ suspicions about the oblique angle of impact and determined the composition of the impactor.

The team’s findings, which were recently published in Nature Astronomy, also suggest that the inner structure of Pluto is different from what was previously assumed, indicating that there is no subsurface ocean.

The heart captured the public’s attention immediately upon its discovery. But it also immediately caught the interest of scientists because it is covered in a material that reflects more light than its surroundings, creating its whiter color.

However, the “heart” is not composed of a single element. The western part, Sputnik Planitia, covers an area of 720 by 1,200 miles (1200 by 2000 kilometers). This region is three to four kilometers lower in elevation than most of Pluto’s surface.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Webb Telescope Detects Water Vapor Just Hanging Out in Space Inside Fascinating Goldilocks Zone

“The bright appearance of Sputnik Planitia is due to it being predominantly filled with white nitrogen ice that moves and convects to constantly smooth out the surface. This nitrogen most likely accumulated quickly after the impact due to the lower altitude,” explains Dr. Harry Ballantyne from the University of Bern, lead author of the study.

The eastern part of the heart is also covered by a similar but much thinner layer of nitrogen ice, the origin of which is still unclear to scientists, but is probably related to Sputnik Planitia.

MORE SOLAR SYSTEM DISCOVERIES: Locked in a 4 Billion-Year-old Dance, Six New Exoplanets Demonstrate the Cosmic Beauty of ‘Resonant Orbits’

“In our simulations, all of Pluto’s primordial mantle is excavated by the impact, and as the impactor’s core material splats onto Pluto’s core, it creates a local mass excess that can explain the migration toward the equator without a subsurface ocean, or at most a very thin one,” explains Jutzi.

Other icy worlds like Pluto are believed to have hosted subsurface oceans, including Neptune, Saturn’s very large moon Enceladus, and its very small moon, Mimas.

SHARE This Heart-Shaped Scar In This Distant, Little Known World… 

Two Big Cats from Infamous Tiger King Captivity Thriving in San Diego After Sanctuary Helps Save 69 Tigers

Jem and Zoe, rescued from Tiger King Park - credit: Lions, Tigers, and Bears Animal Sanctuary
Jem and Zoe, rescued from Tiger King Park – credit: Lions, Tigers, and Bears Animal Sanctuary

A San Diego wildlife sanctuary is proud to report that two of the 69 tigers rescued from the infamous collection of the ‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic are thriving at their Alpine, CA location.

Participating in the rescue of the cats, it took Lions, Tigers, and Bears Animal Sanctuary 3 years to help the pair of Bengal tigers, Jem and Zoe, to put on normal weight and get back to their wild ways, but that perseverance has paid off.

Netflix broke the world of the US tiger trade to the world with a landmark docu-series Tiger King in 2021, which centered around the private menagerie collection of Joe Exotic, and his difficulties with a woman named Carole Baskin, the owner of Big Cat Rescue.

Exotic is now in prison serving 21 years for conspiracy to commit murder after attempting to hire two hitmen to take Baskin out. Tiger King Park in Oklahoma was closed for ongoing violations of the Endangered Species Act.

An organized effort to relocate his 69 captive tigers to sanctuaries around the country saw Lions, Tigers, and Bears (LTB) take in two adults Jem and Zoe.

“Their condition was dire, marked by severe malnutrition, emaciation, dull skin, and other issues,” LTB told Fox News 5 San Diego. “The trauma from long-term abuse led to the development of uncharacteristic behavior, such as not eating for days at a time.”

However, LTB’s efforts succeeded, and after three years the pair are “living their best lives in their forever home.”

NEWS ON THIS BEAT: Breeding Big Cats for Pets or the Petting-Trade Will Soon Be Illegal as US Senate Passes Law

People can visit Zoe and Jem at the LTD Sanctuary by reservation only, but the sanctuary relies on visitors as well as contributions to perform life-saving rescues like those from Tiger King Park.

YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: World Wildlife Fund Gets Ex-Poachers To Protect and Save the Big Cats They Once Hunted

As their name implies, there are more than just tigers there, and visitors can see lions, bobcats, and leopards, along with other large animals beyond the Panthera genus.

SHARE This Happy Ending For These Traumatized Tigers With Your Friends… 

11-Year-old Uncovers Giant Ichthyosaur Fossil – The Largest Marine Reptile Ever Found

Dean Lomax, Ruby Reynolds, Justin Reynolds and Paul de la Salle with ichthyosaur fossil – Courtesy of Dean Lomax
Dean Lomax, Ruby Reynolds, Justin Reynolds, and Paul de la Salle with ichthyosaur fossil – Courtesy of Dean Lomax

While these fossils may not look like much, they are part of the jawbone of what is now believed to be the largest marine reptile ever to swim in the seas.

The beast could have measured 82 feet long—as big as a humpback whale—but with a long narrow mouth bristling with teeth used to hunt prey much larger than krill.

Discovered in a bed of rocks near the River Severn in England, they were found in 2020 by an 11-year-old fossil-hunting enthusiast named Ruby Reynolds who frequented the area with her father, Justin.

After finding bone fragments embedded in the rock, one of which was around 8 inches long, they contacted a fossil hunter they knew named Paul de la Salle and paleontologist Dean Lomax at the University of Bristol.

As the three returned to the area in 2022, they found additional fragments that allowed them to piece together the animal’s jawbone. When they were finished, they knew it belonged to an ichthyosaur, but the jawbone itself was seven feet long.

ANOTHER GIANT SEA LIZARD: One of the Largest ‘Sea Dragon’ Fossils Ever Found in Britain Unearthed As a Complete Ichthyosaur

While singular in terms of its size, this ichthyosaur is similar to one found in a UK town called Lilstock, and being that both share a unique morphology from the late Triassic period, de la Salle and Lomax argue in a paper published on their discovery that this warrants the establishment of a new genus, which the authors, including Ruby Reynolds, now 15, named Ichthyotitan severnensis, or giant fish lizard of the Severn.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Teen Finds Whale Skull from 34 Million Years Ago While Fossil Hunting in Alabama

Evidence of crisscrossed collagen fibers inside the bones not only confirmed it was an ichthyosaur but also that it was still growing when it died at 82 feet (25 meters). Modern large-bodied reptiles like crocodiles and pythons tend to grow slowly and without end until they die.

Over 100 species of ichthyosaur have been identified, many of which were first found in England including the first by, coincidentally, a young girl named Mary Anning.

SHARE This Young Woman’s Incredible Contribution To The Scientific Record… 

“We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.” – Albert Pike

Dollar Gill

Quote of the Day: “We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.” – Albert Pike

Photo by: Dollar Gill

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, April 25

GAF Energy

70 years ago today, Bell Labs finished the first functional solar cell, allowing for a panel of metal and glass to refract light and heat from the sun into it and generate a current of electricity. The inventors were Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin, and Gerald Pearson, and their intention was to power a satellite in space where it could not have its batteries changed. Today, the photovoltaic cell is revolutionizing energy provision for humanity, with a large chunk of scientists and industrialists believing they are a key part of trying to maintain the Earth’s climate as we experience it today. READ more… (1954)

‘Hello, Voyager!’ Celebrated Spacecraft Is Once Again Transmitting After Nasa Repair from 15 Billion Miles Away

NASA/JPL – Caltech (cropped)
NASA/JPL – Caltech (cropped)

Last November, one of NASA’s most famous craft, Voyager 1, stopped transmitting messages to the great anxiety of those responsible for receiving them.

It wasn’t all stress though, because mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally.

Now however, the most distant object from the Earth made by humans is again sending data on the health and status of its onboard engineering systems as it drifts through interstellar space.

It’s been 46 years and 7 months since Voyager 1 left Earth, and 11 years and 8 months since it bade Pluto farewell and left our solar system.

In March 2024, mission control for Voyager 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Technical Institute, managed to hone in on the issue that was preventing two-way communication with the probe.

The team at JPL discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the flight data subsystem (FDS) memory—including some of the FDS computer’s software code—wasn’t, and still isn’t, working anymore.

The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: NASA to Send ‘Message in a Bottle’ Into Space Designed to Communicate With Extraterrestrials

Once they had everything sorted out, they sent the modified code to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18th. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth.

Voyager spacecraft – NASA

When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20th, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they were able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

MORE SENTIMENTAL STORIES ABOUT ROBOTS: The Mars InSight Lander Signs Off on Social Media With Encouragement for Humanity – LOOK

Of the remaining scientific instruments on board, Voyager can still study the nature of cosmic rays and magnetic fields in interstellar space, but in as little as one year or perhaps just a little longer, even these will have to be powered off. By 2036, the probe will depart the Deep Space Network and be beyond all communications.

SHARE This Great News From An Old Interstellar Friend… 

Dramatic Video Shows Strangers Desperately Fight to Remove Man from Car Engulfed in Flames–And Succeed

Courtesy of Kadir Tolla
Courtesy of Kadir Tolla

On I-94 in Minnesota, a team of good samaritans and highway rescue personnel bandied together to save a stranger trapped unconscious inside a burning car.

Simply incredible dash camera footage shows 5 or 6 people pulling over and leaping out of their cars after an SUV runs off the highway and bursts into flames.

They fail in their team effort to open the doors as the flames rise, but a member of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Freeway Incident Response Safety Team—formerly called the Highway Helper—arrived in time to smash the window glass and pull the man out to safety.

It all started when 71-year-old Sam Orbovich, lost consciousness behind the wheel of his Honda. When color and motion returned to his vision, the Highway Helper had smashed the glass.

“I am alive today because several good Samaritans and professional first responders saved my life,” Orbovich said of the Thursday night incident.

“It is incredibly heroic when people driving down the highway choose to put themselves at risk by running toward the flames to extract a stranger from a burning car that could explode at any moment.”

The doors were unlocked, but blocked from opening by the highway guardrail. Team efforts to bend the rail out far enough away from the doors failed, as did one man’s effort to put out the fire with an extinguisher, and another’s attempt to break the window.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Cop Saves Unconscious Driver From Burning Truck, ‘I’m either going to die here with him or get him out’ –WATCH

Orbovich suffered minor injuries, and the footage has gone viral.

“The State Patrol is grateful that the driver is OK due to the heroic actions of the individuals who stopped to help,” Lt. Jill Frankfurth told the Star Tribune. “The actions of those who pulled this motorist from the burning car demonstrates the importance and willingness of people throughout Minnesota looking out for each other. We are thankful everyone remained safe.”

WATCH the most exciting dash cam footage you’ve ever seen… 

SHARE This Minnesota Kindness Toward A Neighbor In Need On Social Media…

Mountain Chickadees have Remarkable Memories–with Ability to Recall Locations of 10,000 Hidden Snacks

Mountain chickadee - Eugene Beckes, CC 4.0.
Mountain chickadee – Eugene Beckes, CC 4.0.

Lost your keys? Can’t remember where you parked the car? If only you had the memory of a mountain chickadee.

These half-ounce birds, with brains slightly larger than a pea, stash tens of thousands of food items like seeds in tree bark, under dead leaves, and inside pinecones across the mountains and can remember their locations with pinpoint accuracy.

When winter arrives, they can recall the exact locations of their caches, a skill that helps them survive the bitter cold and deep snow of their mountain homes in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

In a new study published April 17 in the journal Current Biology, researchers at CU Boulder and the University of Nevada, Reno identify nearly a hundred genes associated with the birds’ spatial memory, or ability to recall the locations of objects.

The paper also suggests a potential trade-off may exist between having a solid long-term memory and being able to quickly ditch old memories to form new ones. One clue was how many of these genes result in disorders in other animals.

“Chickadees are impressive birds,” said Scott Taylor, the director of CU Boulder’s Mountain Research Station and associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Their spatial memory is much more developed than many other birds that don’t have to have this strategy to survive cold winters.”

To evaluate the spatial memory of wild mountain chickadees, Taylor’s collaborators at the University of Nevada, Reno, led by biologist Vladimir Pravosudov, designed a clever test. They hung multiple feeder arrays, each with eight bird feeders with seeds in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

MORE BIRD INTELLIGENCE: Birds Have Self Control Just Like Humans–And Some Have a Lot of It

Each feeder has a gate with a radio frequency reader that can detect a tag researchers put on chickadees. The team then programmed each gate to only open to certain birds, so that the chickadees had to remember the location of the feeders that would open to them.

Pravosudov and his team then counted how many times each chickadee landed on the wrong feeders before they recalled the right one. The theory is that birds with better spatial memory would have a lower error rate.

Using blood samples, the team at CU Boulder also sequenced the entire genome of 162 tagged chickadees, creating the largest dataset ever collected for evaluating the genetic basis of chickadee cognitive ability. By comparing the birds’ genomes with their performance on the feeder test, the team identified 97 genes associated with chickadees’ spatial learning and memory. Birds with specific variants of these genes made fewer wrong attempts before landing on their designated feeders.

A large proportion of these variants are associated with neuron formation in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s responsible for learning and memory, according to paper co-author Sara Padula, a doctoral student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

MORE ETHNOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES: Migrating Birds Learn from Experience to Shorten Their Epic Journeys as They Get Older

“We found in previous literature that many of these genetic variants in chickadees are associated with behavioral disorders in other animals. So this finding can help us better understand animal behaviors in general,” Semenov said.

Chickadees that have exceptional spatial memory can live up to nine years, which is a long time for a small bird. But the study suggests that having good long-term memory may come at a price.

After running the initial task for a few days, Pravosudov’s team assigned new feeders to the birds.

To the team’s surprise, chickadees that performed better in the initial test tended to struggle with switching to the new feeder. They seemed to have a harder time abandoning their initial memories and creating new ones.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Don’t Worry, Birds Won’t Become Dependent on You Feeding Them, Says Study

“In a more variable environment, what our collaborators found suggests that chickadees with good long-term memory may have a disadvantage. For example, if there is an unexpected snowstorm, these birds may keep trying to visit caches that have been buried in the snow, rather than forgetting them and looking for other caches,” Padula said.

For the last one million years, the mountain chickadees in the Rocky Mountains have evolved independently from those in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The team hopes to investigate whether the two groups of birds have evolved spatial memory in the same way across different geographic regions.

The team is also interested in learning if black-capped chickadees, which coexist with mountain chickadees in the Rocky Mountains, exhibit different spatial memory skills. They’ll continue the feeder experiment at the Mountain Research Station during the upcoming winters to collect more data.

WATCH the experiment in action below…

SHARE This Story With Any Bird Brained Friends Of Yours… 

At Just 19, Runner with Down’s Syndrome Makes History as the Youngest Impaired Person to Finish the London Marathon

Mom Ceri and her son Lloyd at the opening of the race - released to the press by family
Mom Ceri and her son Lloyd at the opening of the race – released to the press by family

19-year-old Lloyd Martin has become the youngest person ever to finish the London Marathon with Down Syndrome.

Receiving a Guinness World Records plaque at the finishing line, Martin says it’s a dream come true, and celebrated the 26.4 miles with some pretty fly dance moves for someone with impaired motor function.

He ran continuously for the first 14 miles—a personal best—before switching to bouts of walking and jogging.

“In Lloyd’s words, it’s achieving his dream,” said his mom, Ceri Hooper. “Really anything is possible if you put your mind to it. With a bit of work, you can achieve it.”

Hooper represented Wales internationally in track and field competitions, and ensured that her son Lloyd had all the training and motivation he needed when he set his mind on the task of a marathon.

He had developed his strength and stamina mainly through 5k races.

MORE INSPIRING IMPAIRED ATHLETES: Teen Who Was Told He’d Never Walk with Cerebral Palsy Just Took 1st Place in Bodybuilding Competition

She herself has run six marathons in her life: 4x in London, the Boston Marathon, and the Chicago edition.

The Special Olympics organization for Great Britain helped Lloyd get everything prepared for the race, where he became the youngest person ever to finish in the intellectual impairment category.

WATCH Lloyd’s elation upon crossing the finish line… 

SHARE This Inspiring Youth Athlete With Your Friends… 

“Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age“ – Booth Tarkington

Quote of the Day: “Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age“ – Booth Tarkington

Photo by: Surface

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, April 24

Happy 90th Birthday to Shirley MacLaine, the esteemed dancer, actress, writer, and spiritual seeker. A 6-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for A China Memoir, and Best Actress nominations for Some Came Running (Frank Sinatra, 1958), The Apartment and Irma la Douce (with Jack Lemmon 1960-63), and The Turning Point (1977), before winning Best Actress for Terms of Endearment in 1983. She’s also won and Emmy, seven Golden Globe awards, the AFI and Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Awards, and has written 15 best-selling books. Her latest release, “Out on a Leash: How Terry’s Death Gave Me New Life,” focuses on her relationship with one of her beloved rescue dogs. READ more… (1934)

Baltimore’s Mr. Trash Wheel: a Decade of Garbage Gobbling Equates to 5.2 Million Pounds

YouTube/CNET
YouTube/CNET

The Baltimore Harbor’s most beloved resident is celebrating his decennial, and what better way to look back on his years of service than listing a few of his achievements?

Mr. Trash Wheel is a national icon. Since his installment in the Inner Harbor in 2014, his popularity led to the installment of other trash-collecting wheels, like Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West, which have formed his ‘family’ of four.

5.2 million pounds have floated onto their conveyor belt tongues, been carried up into their water wheel gullets, and dropped into the floating dumpsters behind them.

Mr. Trash Wheel boasts an extensive fan club: the Order of the Wheel, which welcomes in anyone willing to pledge a reduced reliance on single-use plastics and an intent to occasionally clean up their community. 3,000 members have joined the Order’s ranks.

OTHER CITIES GETTING ONBOARD: ‘Mr. Trash Wheel’ Gobbles Up 15 Tons of Trash Every Day From Harbors – And More Cities Are Adopting

Approximately 45,000 homes have been powered with electricity generated from the incineration of biological waste captured by Mr. Trash Wheel and his family.

The Trash Wheels clean a total of 123 square miles of water catchment. Gwynnda and Mr. Trash Wheel each clean 60, while Professor Trash Wheel covers 2 square miles and Captain Trash Wheel has 1.

SHARE This Inspiring Update On A Great Project… 

New Mosquito Nets Prevent Millions of Malaria Cases in Insecticide-Resistant Areas

Malaria hospital in Tanzania - credit Olympia Wereko-Brobby, SMS for Life
Malaria hospital in Tanzania – credit Olympia Wereko-Brobby, SMS for Life

For years, aid workers knew that among all the billions being poured into aid foundations for Africa, if a measly few million could be spent on providing insecticide-treated mosquito nets for people to sleep under, it could do the same as a decade of pharmacological research looking for malaria treatments.

It actually did more: with one program that distributed 54 million nets over 3 years having saved 24,600 lives and prevented 13 million cases of malaria across 16 countries, according to estimates.

Called the New Nets Project, funded and implemented by Unitaid, Global Fund, and Innovative Vector Control Consortium, it aimed to rapidly distribute a pair of new mosquito nets, the first treated with chlorfenapyr, and the second pyroproxyfen—two next-generation insecticides that when combined with previous insecticides, proved to be more effective than standard nets.

Like bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, some mosquito genera have developed resistance to insecticides that coat mosquito net thread. The nets still provide a barrier from physical entry, but only for a short time because the tight, lightweight weave tears easily.

According to a statement from Global Fund, between 2019 and 2022, the New Nets Project supported the distribution of 38.4 million mosquito nets across sub-Saharan Africa, while Global Fund’s collaboration with the office of the President of the United States saw the number increased to 56 million nets in Nigeria and 16 other countries.

In countries that reported insecticide resistance, the new nets increased control of the spread of the parasite by 20 to 50%.

The reduction in malaria cases and deaths from using the nets, compared to a standard net, equated to a potential $28.9 million in financial savings to health systems.

SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS: This is How Close We Are to Eliminating Malaria – 7.6 Million Deaths Averted in 20 Years, Thanks to Generous Nations

“We are delighted to see that the dual active ingredient insecticide-treated nets have demonstrated exceptional impact against malaria,” said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund.

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“The success of the New Nets Project is proof that, by fostering collaboration across global health partners, harnessing innovation, and using market-shaping approaches, we can fight insecticide resistance, make our interventions highly cost-effective, and accelerate progress against malaria.”

SHARE This Incredible, Underreported Progress With Your Friends… 

Despite War, Surgeons in Ukraine Perform Brain Surgery to Save 4-Year-old Irish Girl’s Life

Credits St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital’s Facebook
Credits St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital’s Facebook

How far would you go to access the medical care your child needed to live a normal life? Would you enter a warzone? Would you allow your daughter to undergo brain surgery in a city under threat from air strikes?

The answer to all these questions from the Gribben family of Northern Ireland was yes, since at the St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital in L’viv, Ukraine, 4-year-old Rachel had the chance to be cured of severe epileptic seizures that were causing developmental delays.

Since Russia’s invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine in February of 2022, L’viv, a cosmopolitan city close to the Polish border in the far west of the country, has largely gone unmolested.

Still, attacks on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure have intensified in the last 6 months, and missiles can also go off course.

Renowned American neurosurgeon Dr. Luke Tomich was in L’viv advising the neurosurgeons at St. Nicholas. His expertise in the surgery that young Rachel required meant that for the N. Irish family, a 1,800-mile journey awaited them.

MORE INSPIRING UKRAINE CONNECTIONS: Ukrainian Refugees Move Into Medieval Irish Castle Owned by Good Samaritan

Diagnosed with epilepsy and epileptic spasms when she was 18 months old, Rachel’s neurosurgeon Dr. Mykhailo Lovga and his team removed a small section of brain tissue that was the root of the problem, and which she should be able to function without.

“We carefully opened the skull, found the abnormal tissue, and slowly separated it before removing it completely. Because this tissue was close to the area that controls movement, we worked with neurologists and used very advanced technology during the surgery,” Dr. Lovga told United 24 Media, a Ukrainian news agency.

SHARE This Four-Year-Old’s Incredible Journey With Your Friends… 

Hand Pollination of ‘Sapphire Tower’ Helps Rare Plant Survive–Only Blooming Every 20 Years

Flowers of the Puya alpestris, and Alberto - credit Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
Flowers of the Puya alpestris, and Alberto Trinco – credit Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

At the Birmingham Botanical Gardens (BBG), a plant that most people will never see flower has sprouted its azure blooms for the first time in over 10 years.

This incredibly rare event has turned the plant, a bromeliad called Puya alpestris into a “sapphire tower.”

Native to the Chilean Andes at altitudes above 6,000 feet, P. alpestris is a distant relative of the pineapple. Brought to the Arid Glasshouse at the BBG almost 20 years ago, this is the first time the plant has flowered.

It isn’t an endangered species, but the flowering of the specimen at the BBG is allowing botanists to hand-pollinate other members by gently tapping the stamens with a paintbrush.

In the wild, the plant relies on hummingbirds to pollinate it, who come to feast on the sapphire tower’s nectar-rich flowers.

LIFE FROM THE ANDES: An Animal New to Science is Named After Indiana Jones, ‘Why Did it Have to be Snakes!’ – Tachymenoides Harrisonfordi

“Each flower only lasts a few days, giving us a limited window of time to give nature a helping hand. In the absence of its natural pollinators, we will attempt some hand pollination instead,” says Senior Glasshouse Horticulturist, Alberto Trinco.

“It is very slow-growing, so to witness its spectacular blooms is both exciting and rare,” he adds. “Hopefully, pollinating the flowers with the brush to obtain seeds will allow us to secure the presence of this amazing species in our collection for future generations to come and admire.”

ANOTHER FLOWER JUST LIKE THIS: Pair of Endangered Corpse Flowers Defy Odds to Bloom at Same Time–Now Bearing 700 Seeds

There are many plants that bloom in multi-year intervals. Scientists often don’t know why.

Like a solar eclipse or a comet, visitors to the BBG have the opportunity to see this plant flower now, but may have to wait another decade for another chance.

SHARE This Beautiful Phenomenon Of Nature With Your Friends… 

“A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

2023 Supreme Court Justices – By Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Quote of the Day: “A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne  (The Scarlet Letter)

Photo by: By Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States (2023)

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, April 23

1914 Weegham Park

110 years ago today, the first-ever baseball game was played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Then known as Weeghman Park, its original occupants were the Chicago Whales, then known as the “Chi-Feds.” Wrigley Field is known for its ivy-covered brick outfield wall, the unusual wind patterns off Lake Michigan, the iconic red marquee over the main entrance, the hand-turned scoreboard, its location in a primarily residential neighborhood with no parking lots and views from the rooftops behind the outfield, and for being the last Major League park to have lights installed for night games. READ a bit more… (1914)