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11 Acres of Plant-infused Green Roofs Go ‘Blue’–Capturing Rainwater in Flood-Prone Amsterdam

By
Andy Corbley
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Resilio has covered 9,000 sq meters of Amsterdam’s roofs with plants that suck up rainwater - Credit: Resilio
Resilio has covered 9,000 sq meters of Amsterdam’s roofs with plants that suck up rainwater – Credit: Resilio

Amsterdam’s roofs have just been converted into a giant sponge that will make the city more climate resilient.

The Dutch have always been famous for their ability to control water, born out of the necessity of their homeland, much of which is below sea level.

Now, their expert water management skills are transforming the city skyline in the capital city of Amsterdam from one of terracotta tile, concrete, and shingles into green grass and brown earth.

It’s part of a new climate-resiliency trend in architecture and civic planning known as the ‘sponge city concept,’ in which a garden of water-loving plants, mosses, and soil absorbs excess rainwater before feeding it into the building for use in flushing toilets or watering plants on the ground.

If heavy rains are predicted, a smart valve system empties the stored rainwater into the municipal storm drains and sewers in advance of the weather, allowing the roof to soak up water and reduce flooding in the city.

In this way, the rooftops of buildings can be wrung out and filled up just like a sponge.

In Amsterdam, 45,000 square meters, or 11 acres of flat metropolitan rooftops have already been fitted with these systems, and the contracting firms behind the technology say they make sense in dry climates like Spain just as much as in wet climates like Amsterdam.

Blue-green roof functions like a flat rain barrel – Credit: Resilio (Amsterdam)

Rains, some scientists believe, will become heavier and more erratic in their delivery as the climate changes. Flooding costs billions in damages in countries like the UK, Netherlands, and Italy which just last year experienced terrible flooding in the plains of Emiglia Romagna.

OTHER ROOFTOP REVOLUTIONS: European Cities Are Turning Rooftops Into Community and Sustainability Hubs: ‘A revolution in urban planning’

A 4-year project of different firms and organizations called Resilio, the resilient network for smart climate adaptive rooftops, rolled out thousands of square meters of sponge city technology into new buildings. As with many climate technologies, the costs are high upfront but tend to result in savings from several expenditures like water utilities and water damage, over a long-enough time horizon.

Companies like Waternet, MetroPolder Company, Rooftop Revolution, HvA, VU, Stadgenoot, de Alliantie, and De Key all participated in the transformative effort that has left many buildings capped with green bonnets of ferns, mosses, small shrubs, and sedum, a genus that is particularly suited to turf rooftops.

All together, Amsterdam’s sponge capacity is over 120,000 gallons.

“We think the concept is applicable to many urban areas around the world,” Kasper Spaan from Waternet, Amsterdam’s public water management organization, told Wired Magazine. “In the south of Europe–Italy and Spain–where there are really drought-stressed areas, there’s new attention for rainwater catchment.”

Indeed the sponge city concept comes into a different shade when installed in drought-prone regions. Waters absorbed by rooftops during heavy rains can be used for municipal purposes to reduce pressure on underground aquifers or rivers, or be sweated out under the Sun’s rays which cools the interior of the building naturally.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: India Approves Massive $9 Bil. Rooftop Solar Plan with Panels for 10 Million Homes

Additionally, if solar panels were added on top of the rooftop garden, the evaporation would keep the panels cooler, which has been shown in other projects to improve their energy generation.

“Our philosophy in the end is not that on every roof, everything is possible,” says Spaan, “but that on every roof, something is possible.”

Matt Simon, reporting on the Resilio project for Wired, said succinctly that perhaps science fiction authors have missed the mark when it came to envisioning the city of the future, and that rather than being a glittering metropolis of glass, metal, and marble as smooth as a pannacotta, it will look an awful lot more like an enormous sculpture garden.

SHARE This Innovative Concept Of Sponge Cities With Your Friends… 

‘Old age’ Starts Later Than Ever in the Eye of the Beholder and Beholden, Study Reveals

By
Andy Corbley
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Centre for Ageing Better
Centre for Ageing Better

Middle-aged and older adults believe that old age begins later in life than their peers did decades ago according to a new study.

It’s enough to put a bit of spring chicken back into the feet of a silver fox, and the study found that people tended to view being old as occurring later and later as they advanced through life, showing age is even less than a number—it’s just a mindset.

“Life expectancy has increased, which might contribute to a later perceived onset of old age,” said study author Markus Wettstein, PhD, of Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. “Also, some aspects of health have improved over time, so that people of a certain age who were regarded as old in the past may no longer be considered old nowadays.”

However, the study, which was published in the journal Psychology and Aging, also found evidence that the trend of later perceived old age has slowed in the past two decades.

Wettstein, along with colleagues at Stanford University, the Univ. of Luxembourg, and the Univ. of Greifswald, examined data from 14,056 participants in the German Ageing Survey, a longitudinal study that includes people living in Germany born between 1911 and 1974.

Participants responded to survey questions up to eight times over 25 years (1996–2021), when they were between 40 and 100 years old. Additional participants (40 to 85 years old) were recruited throughout the study period as later generations entered midlife and old age. Among the many questions survey participants answered was, “At what age would you describe someone as old?”

The researchers found that compared with the earliest-born participants, later-born participants perceived a later onset of old age. For example, when participants born in 1911 were 65 years old, they set the beginning of old age at age 71. In contrast, participants born in 1956 said old age begins at age 74, on average, when they were 65.

However, the researchers also found that the trend toward a later perceived onset of old age has slowed in recent years.

“The trend toward postponing old age is not linear and might not necessarily continue in the future,” Wettstein said.

The researchers also looked at how individual participants’ perceptions of old age changed as they got older. They found that as individuals aged, their perception of the onset of old age was pushed further out.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Humans Are Living Longer All Across the World and the Male-Female Longevity Gap is Closing

At age 64, the average participant said old age started at 74.7. At age 74, they said old age started at 76.8. On average, the perceived onset of old age increased by about one year for every four to five years of actual aging.

Finally, the researchers examined how individual characteristics such as gender and health status contributed to the answers to the questions. They found that women, on average, said that old age started two years later than men—and that the difference between men and women had increased over time.

The results may have implications for when and how people prepare for their own aging, as well as how people think about older adults in general, Wettstein said.

AGING SCIENCE: Eight Habits to Take Up by Age 40 if You Want to Live Decades Longer

“It is unclear to what extent the trend towards postponing old age reflects a trend towards more positive views on older people and aging, or rather the opposite—perhaps the onset of old age is postponed because people consider being old to be an undesirable state,” Wettstein said.

Future research should examine whether the trend toward a “postponement” of old age continues and investigate more diverse populations in other countries, including non-Western countries, to understand how perceptions of aging vary by country and culture, according to the researchers.

SHARE This Positive Psychological Discovery From Germany With Your Friends…

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” – Vincent Van Gogh

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” – Vincent Van Gogh

Photo by: stuart anthony

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, May 15

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Good News Network
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Sejong the Great on the 10,000 won banknote

627 years ago today, one of the most august figures in East Asian history was born—Sejong the Great—scientist, reformer, and engineer of the Korean alphabet, Hangul. The historic record indicates he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and was extremely effective at translating that knowledge into real-world improvements in the welfare of his people, both rich and poor. Among the inventions and products he either commissioned or himself made a reality, there was a new calendar specifically for Korea, a new printing press, medical and agriculture textbooks to be distributed to average people, one of the world’s first rain gauges, hundreds of musical arrangements, some of which are still performed as repertoire today, 100 days’ maternity leave for mothers and 30 days for fathers, and sophisticated gunpowder weaponry. READ about his crowning achievement… (1397)

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Light Show in the Night Sky May Not be Over as Jaw-Dropping Aurora Borealis Gets New Blast

By
Andy Corbley
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Night Sky Aurora Borealis by Jonatan Pie
Night Sky Aurora Borealis by Jonatan Pie

This week, the Northern Lights were seen as far south as Florida, giving millions of people a glimpse at a phenomenon usually seen only in the coldest of climes.

Now, Sunspot AR3664 has had a final blast, promising perhaps another night or two of lights.

This active region of the Sun generated an even more massive solar flare on May 13th, releasing intense bursts of energy and radiation into space.

However, this latest coronal mass ejection of X-rays, despite being at magnitude 8.7 (very high indeed) isn’t likely to cause other sets of auroras, only interfere with radio communications on the sunlit side of Earth, say the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Space blog EarthSky was more positive, saying that while the Sun’s fresh output won’t have such a dramatic effect on Earth as the weekend’s activity, but “at least G3 (moderate) geomagnetic storming is in the forecast”, which has the potential to produce significant auroral displays under the right conditions.

DETAILS ON THE AURORA: NOAA Predicts Potential Aurora as Far South as Alabama After Severe Solar Storm Witnessed

AR3664 started ejecting and caused a geomagnetic storm on Friday, May 10th. Over the weekend it dazzled GNN readers in South Florida, the Bay Area in California, northern Arizona, and Charlotte NC.

The Sun’s activity was observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. Its mission is to study the Sun’s dynamics to “increase understanding of the nature and sources of solar variability”.

SHARE This Update With Anyone You Know Who Saw An Aurora…

Mom Designs Stunning Dress Made of 210 Fresh Flowers Combining Her Love of Art and Gardening

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Good News Network
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Dress made of 200 dahlia flowers – by Anita Lee-Archer / SWNS
Dress made of 200 dahlia flowers – by Anita Lee-Archer / SWNS

A mom created a fairytale dress made of more than 200 fresh flowers she grew herself, as part of her university studies in art and design.

Anita Lee-Archer created the dress on her daughter, Bella, spending around two hours arranging multi-colored dahlias, hand-picked from her garden in Australia.

The mother-of-five is pursuing a fine arts degree at the University of Tasmania at age 48. She decided to go back to college four years ago to pursue her dreams of a career in art.

Now she’s combining another passion—her love of gardening—to create impressive art installations.

To attach the flowers to the dress, she wrapped bird netting tightly around her daughter, Bella, who wore a black slip underneath (see the video at the bottom). She threaded the flowers through the holes, choosing colors from seven buckets of pre-cut blooms.

“It turned out how I wanted it,” said Anita, from Launceston, Tasmania. “It was really fun.”

Anita says she was discouraged from choosing a career in art as a teenager, so instead worked as a nurse and midwife.

“I have always been a creative. But, people always said, ‘you won’t earn any money doing art’.”

But Anita never forgot her love and when they moved to Tasmania she asked her husband, a neurologist, if she could enroll in university. She eagerly started classes in 2020 to finally fulfill her dreams.

“I really want to paint flowers. I breed different varieties and have always been a gardener.

Dahlia flower dress by Anita Lee-Archer / SWNS

LOOK: Man Who Built Adorable Mouse Village to Cope With Depression Adds a Pub, Book Shop, and Hobbit Homes–LOOK

“It’s nice to combine my loves. One lecturer told me ‘it’s your work, you need to do what you love’.”

She admitted the dress turned out to be “really heavy” and it was hard to walk in it.

“Initially it was going to be a strapless dress, but I had to fashion straps.”

Anita graduates from her course at the end of this year and wants to continue creating flower-themed art.

“My garden has been my solace.”

DELICIOUS DESIGN: Sculptor Carves Life-sized Willy Wonka Using 220 Lbs of Chocolate in London’s Trafalgar Square

Here’s a video her daughter shared while modeling the stunning dress of dahlias…

SHARE THE IDEA With Fashion Designers and Gardening Friends on Social Media…

Grad Student Trades Piano Performances for Housing at Senior Facility–Melting the Age Divide and Making Friends

By
Andy Corbley
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Beth Christensen playing piano at Claridge Court
Beth Christensen playing piano at Claridge Court

A university concert pianist has made an unlikely nest for herself while she continues her studies: an old age home.

While Beth Christensen studies piano at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, she doesn’t have a dorm on campus, and instead lodges at Claridge Court, a senior living facility in the nearby town of Prairie Village.

Placed there in July 2023 as a student-in-residence by a partnership between the home and the Conservatory, Christensen says that the experience has been special, and that many of the residents are more than just friendly faces she sees while plunking out a bit of jazz or classical music, they’ve become true friends.

“It’s really fun to have a relationship with your audience as a performer,” Christensen told the university press. “In the beginning, I wouldn’t do anything too out of the ordinary—I would bring a vocalist sometimes, or I would play classical music.”

“As I got more comfortable, I would try new things and play more recent music. Sometimes people wouldn’t like it, and they let me know. Others love to see where the future of music is going. It’s fun to be able to ask what kind of music people want to hear and work it into my repertoire.”

In exchange for her stay at the home, she is encouraged to immerse herself in the community as much as possible in addition to the routine performances, for which she may also bring in other musicians from the Conservatory.

Christensen’s free time is filled with games of ‘chair volleyball’ or doing a puzzle and talking about education with her friend Pat, a former teacher.

INTERGENERATIONAL CONNECTION: More Young Adults are Renting Next Door to Retired Folks – With Intergenerational Benefits

The partnership is supported by Claridge Court residents Charlie and Mary Kay Horner, who were involved in the Conservatory for decades, and the director of Claridge said that her presence has been enriching.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Beth has become such an integral part of our community,” Mary Kay Horner said. “Witnessing the connections she’s made with the residents is incredibly gratifying.”

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: When College Senior Couldn’t Find Someone to Watch His Baby Daughter, Professor Lends a Hand

“Music is such a connecting force,” Christensen adds.

“It bridges the divisions that exist between people. Having the opportunity to make connections with a community that’s several generations older than me has been so special. These connections don’t make our differences go away, but it helps us really appreciate each other. It’s been such a beautiful experience.”

SHARE This Intergenerational Connection Through Music With Your Friends… 

NASA Visualizes What it Would Be Like to Plunge into a Black Hole – WATCH

By
Andy Corbley
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Visual simulation of entering a black hole – by Jeremy Schnittman, astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center / NASA
Visual simulation of entering a black hole – by Jeremy Schnittman, astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center / NASA

Relying on a supercomputer and the people with talent enough to use it, NASA scientists have produced a video illustration of what it would be like to float into a black hole if you were somehow invincible.

Being that within the event horizon of a black hole, the laws of general relativity break down, it’s extremely difficult to say or to predict what would happen to an object, but we do know from recent observations what can happen with light.

Several versions of the same simulation are explained in a 4-minute video released by NASA that offers visual aids to some extremely complex physics.

“People often ask about [what it would be like to fall into a black hole] and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the visualizations.

“So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera—a stand-in for a daring astronaut—just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”

The video is more than just fluff, every feature of it corresponds with precise calculations that would have once been a published paper released to great acclaim. The simulation set the target as a supermassive black hole like the one at the center of our galaxy. The camera was set 400 million miles from the 25 million mile-wide black hole, and as it approaches, the hot disk of dust and gas that swirls around a black hole, called an accretion disk, begins to elongate and brighten.

READ MORE ABOUT A BLACK HOLE: Scientists Reveal Incredible Image of Magnetic Fields Spiraling from Supermassive Black Hole

This is the same effect as when the sound of an approaching racecar is amplified based on its speed.

Then, the supercomputer takes over, and the markers of light, namely the stars, the accretion disk, and a band of photon rings, which are thinner and made up of light orbiting inside the event horizon, begin to warp.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Eerie Echo Detected Coming From Milky Way’s Black Hole 200 Years Ago (Listen)

The project generated about 10 terabytes of data—equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress—and took about 5 days what would have taken a normal computer a decade.

WATCH the video and enjoy…

SHARE This Amazing Video Project With Your Friends Who Dabble In Astrophysics…

‘Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.’ – W. H. Auden

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: ‘Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.’ – W. H. Auden

Photo by: Conscious Design

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, May 14

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Good News Network
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Skylab in orbit

51 years ago today, Skylab was launched into orbit, the first and only space station to be entirely built and funded by the US. Occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974, it was operated by three separate three-astronaut crews: Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. Major operations included an orbital workshop, a solar observatory, Earth observation, and hundreds of experiments. READ more… (1973)

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Town Saves the Threatened Bum-Breathing Punk Turtle–a 9lb Wonder Found Only in the Mary River

By
Andy Corbley
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The Mary River turtle - credit Marilyn Connell, the Mary River Turtle Project/Tiaro Land Care
The Mary River turtle – credit Marilyn Connell, the Mary River Turtle Project/Tiaro Land Care

Australia is filled with wild and wonderful critters, but few surpass the novelty of the Mary River turtle—which was once one of the continent’s most endangered.

Now however, the dedication of 800 residents in the town of Tiaro is seeing the turtle repopulate the river from which it draws its name, a point of pride for the locals, and the nation as they both celebrate a conservation win.

The Mary River turtle, (Elusor macrusus) is also known fondly as the “Bum-breathing punk” for its peculiar evolutionary capacity to breathe through its cloaca which allows it to stay underwater for three days without surfacing.

One of Australia’s largest turtle species, the MR turtle can weigh in at close to 20 pounds and grow 20 inches nose to tail. Also sometimes called the green-haired turtle, it collects algae on its head and shell over time, making it seem like it’s sporting a dyed-green mohawk, hence the name ‘punk.’

Also unique to the MR turtle is the tail. It has haemal arches, an osseo feature typically used to identify sauropod dinosaurs but which has been lost in all other modern turtles. In short, the MR turtle is unique in modern evolution.

This species, which lives entirely in the Mary River and five tributaries in southeast Queensland, was incidentally brought to the brink of extinction by turtle egg hunters looking to sell baby turtles at various venues.

They were called ‘penny turtles,’ and the marketing effort was all done without realizing the species that the eggs were coming from was so unique and sensitive.

Starting in 2001, the town of Tiaro launched a program to protect the turtle’s nests and eggs in situ. During nesting season, volunteers are up early to locate new nesting sites and fence them off, protecting them against livestock and invasive egg filchers like foxes.

The Mary River turtle – credit Marilyn Connell, the Mary River Turtle Project/Tiaro Land Care

Recently, a scientific analysis has shown that not only did the program bear fruit in terms of the number of turtles present on the Mary and what the survival rate of hatchlings is, but also in terms of the quantity of scientific data gathered by the locals.

HERE YOU’LL LIKE: Endangered Manning River Turtles Released into Wild After Egg Rescue During ‘Black Summer’

But the success didn’t happen overnight. The town raised money to fund scholarships for students to study the turtles at university and buy research equipment by selling homemade chocolate turtles as a fundraiser.

MORE TURTLE SUCCESS STORIES: First Recorded Birth of Critically-Endangered Burmese Peacock Turtle Hatchlings (WATCH)

In 2006, photographer Chris Van Wyk captured iconic imagery of the turtle’s green ‘hair’ which went as viral as they could have done back then, also helping to raise awareness of the reptile.

The turtle remains endangered, but not only have the turtle’s numbers rebounded, but the research efforts of the citizens of Tiaro have created protocols for local water resource planning and strategic development to always take into account the watershed and habitat of the turtle when making any decisions.

SHARE This Conservation Success Story For This Legendary Turtle… 

Teen Boy Translating Ancient Texts Turned a 4,000-Year-old Scribe From Egypt into Advice for Modern Age

By
Andy Corbley
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Be a Scribe, Callaway Children's Classics.
Be a Scribe, Callaway Children’s Classics.

Michael Hoffen is a new author, and like him, the protagonist of his book is a teenager. But there’s quite an age gap between them—about 4,000 years.

That’s because Hoffen brought to life the story of a young Egyptian from ancient times named Pepi, whose father, Kheti, is intent on getting his son a job in the royal court.

Hoffen, who has been translating ancient texts since middle school, became fascinated by a 4,000-year-old or so piece of literature from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as The Instruction of Khety, or The Satire of the Trades.

The Instruction/Satire was written on papyrus, one of the earliest writing materials, that was typically made from reeds. Papyruses have yielded vast amounts of information about ancient societies from the Judean tribes, Egypt, Greece, and Classical Rome.

Under the guidance and collaboration of his two co-authors, Egyptologists Christian Casey and Jen Thum, Hoffen spent three-and-a-half years translating hieroglyphics into modern-day prose and gathering images to tell the story of Kheti and Pepi.

Put together, he published a book called Be A Scribe! Working for a Better Life in Ancient Egypt.

This young author, a scribe himself, shows just how little the human condition has changed in thousands of years.

THE MOST RECENT PAPYRUS DECODED: 2,000-Year-old Scroll Burnt in Pompeii Decoded and Read for First Time by Three Genius Students

Parents still want the best for their children, and teenagers face important decisions as they set out on their career paths—all of which readers can enjoy with sumptuous illustrations and imagery direct from Egyptian antiquities.

OTHER BOOK REVIEWS: You Have a Hidden Potential That Only Travel Can Unlock–And You Hold the Key

Amy Chua, Yale Law professor, called the book a “marvel” and said she “could not put it down.”

“Young people will gobble it up without realizing they are learning. And even adults with advanced degrees will find themselves engrossed, educated, and fascinated by this story of an Egyptian father giving life advice to his teenage son—and astonished at how little parenting has changed across the millennia.”

SHARE This Great Book Idea For Kids, And The Incredible Drive Of This Youth… 

Queensland Declared Drought Free for First Time in Decade: Colors Have Blossomed Out of the Brown

By
Andy Corbley
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The Betts family relaxing after a dry 10 years was ended by recent rains - released Monique Betts
The Betts family relaxing after a dry 10 years was ended by recent rains – released Monique Betts

Incredible rains in Australia’s Queensland have turned the typical red of the outback soil into lush green terrain crisscrossed by swollen rivers, ending a decade-long drought.

At its height, the drought affected 88% of the state. But after Diamantina and Bulloo shires had their drought status changed, it means the number has fallen to zero.

With water holes, creeks, and rivers full, it spells a good 2024 for the cattle and the tourists, two staples of the state’s economy.

“It’s amazing how well the country within this area responds to rain,” Mrs Monqiue Betts, a rancher in the southwest told ABC News Australia. “You’d probably say you’re safe for maybe 18 months, especially water-wise.”

“Our house dam had been dry for quite a while… definitely the majority of last year,” she said, adding that they were on the cusp of having to bring water to the farm in tanks on their pickup.

The cattle have already fattened up, which is a relief since recently some ranchers have had to sell out of their operations to avoid losses that might be too much.

The water disperses across the flat region by slow-moving floodwaters in an area called the Channel Country. After receiving late summer rains of around 150 to 300 millimeters, the waters fanned out across the land, greening it as it went.

MORE REJUVENATION: Utah and California Snowpacks Break All Previous Records–Will Completely Alleviate Droughts

It follows a year in which California was declared drought-free for the first time in three years, with the added bonus of a mild summer that didn’t bring about a new one, which in turn prevented any serious wildfires from breaking out.

82% of all land in Queensland is used for either farming or ranching, but the driest areas are in the ranchland to the south and west.

SHARE This Awesome News For A Dry And Dusty Land And Its People…

59-year-old Man Who Had Type 2 Diabetes for 25 Years is Cured by Stem Cells

By
Andy Corbley
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Regular insulin and a syringe from ampoules and vials of medicines
Regular insulin and a syringe from ampoules and vials of medicines

Stem cells are being used more and more widely in treatments across the spectrum of medicine, but a recent breakthrough from Shanghai promises the best may still be yet to come.

A senior who had suffered from type-2 diabetes for 25 years hasn’t taken insulin for 33 months after he received a regenerative islet cell transplantation.

Diabetes, particularly type 2—the form that can develop in one’s life because of poor diet and lifestyle choices—is one of the most prevalent non-communicable diseases on Earth.

China in particular is one of the world’s diabetes hotspots, with 140 million people unable to make their own insulin, and so suffer from kidney problems, blindness, amputation, and cardiovascular problems.

But this new breakthrough, coming after 10 years of research and testing, may change this paradigm of sickness forever.

Yin Hao, a leading researcher on the team and director of Shanghai Changzheng Hospital’s Organ Transplant Center, said they took the patient’s own peripheral blood mononuclear cells and used existing methods to reprogram them back into pluripotent stem cells for injection into the pancreas.

“Our technology has matured and it has pushed boundaries in the field of regenerative medicine for the treatment of diabetes,” Yin, told China Daily whose team conducted the research with scientists from the Center for Molecular Cell Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Existing transplant treatments for type-2 diabetes are hindered by a lack of donor cells, and the complexity of pancreatic islet cell isolation technology.

ALSO CHECK OUT: World’s First ‘Tooth Regrowth’ Medicine Moves Toward Clinical Trials in Japan

Pancreatic islet cells are the major insulin-producing cells in the body, and the patients’ were almost completely inhibited. He relied on multiple insulin injections daily in addition to a kidney transplant.

After receiving the manufactured stem cells in 2021, he was weened off of external insulin over 11 weeks, after which his disease seemed to be largely gone.

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR DIABETES SUFFERERS: Crazy Insulin Prices Now a Thing of the Past in U.S. After Government Initiates Monthly Cost of $35

“Follow-up examinations showed that the patient’s pancreatic islet function was effectively restored, and his renal function was within normal range,” Yin said. “Such results suggested that the treatment can avoid the progression of diabetic complications.”

The paper was published in Cell Discovery on April 30th, and future studies, the authors wrote, should explore the pharmacology of drugs that might provide off-the-shelf equivalents for islet transplantation.

SHARE This Miracle Of Modern Medicine With Someone You Know With Diabetes…

Locals Finally Save ‘the Yosemite of South America’ After Decade Long Battle with Industrialist Who Owned it

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Puelo Patagonia
credit – Puelo Patagonia

A wonderful story comes to us now from Patagonia where a valley of towering granite cliffs and rare species was saved from development by activists.

It’s a story that North America saw many times during the birth of the conservation movement with groups like the Sierra Club in Yosemite, but this story regards Cochamó  Valley, also known as the ‘Yosemite of South America.’

Roberto Hagemann owns 325,000 acres, or roughly 508 square miles, of this valley and its surrounding lands, which sit near the southern tip of South America where the Andes meet the Pacific Ocean.

This Chilean industrialist, who made a fortune in mining and real estate, managed to do what many very rich people had deemed too difficult—buy up all this area from small ranching families. The feat involved over 200 land deed transactions.

Cochamó Valley had never been developed and remained a haven for pumas, the rare Andean deer, and Darwin’s frog. Aside from the ranchers, a plan in the early 2000s to build a road through the area was met with stiff resistance from environmental activists.

Cochamó has many charms in the eye of the environmentalist. Along with being a burgeoning tourist destination for rock climbers hungry to scale the towering granite walls similar to Yosemite Valley in California, it is almost completely surrounded by national parks, allowing animals to roam between them in an unbroken, 4,000-mile area.

MORE NEWS LIKE THIS: Bezos Earth Fund Pledges $1B to Conserve Land and Sea in Critical Areas ‘We can and must reverse this’

Hagemann announced plans to develop the area with a hydroelectric installation, a network of power lines, and 39 miles of roads. The ink on the announcement had hardly dried when activists rose up against it led, as the New York Times reports, by Pablo Condeza, a self-described ‘hippie’ and long-time wilderness guide.

He founded a defense group called Puelo Patagonia dedicated to preserving the land and sued Hagemann for failing to undergo the proper environmental reviews. After years of legal battles, courts scuppered Hagemann’s plans, and the industrialist decided to sell out.

The price was $150 million, but after no one came forward with an offer, Puelo Patagonia entered into negotiations with the man with whom they had just spent the better part of half a decade in litigation.

The meetings must have had a strange start. Hagemann wanted at least $100 million, but Puelo Patagonia tried to convince him to sell at a fraction of the price.

OTHER HUGE CONSERVATION PURCHASES: Africa NGO Purchases World’s Largest Captive Rhino Population to Rewild 2,000 Across the Continent

“Due to this meeting, a long process of mutual knowledge and respectful dialogue began, that allowed us to reach mutual understanding and respect beyond our differences,” Mr. Hagemann told the Times.

A deal was concluded for $63 million, and Puelo Patagonia was given 3 years to come up with the cash, $30 million of which has already been raised by the Freyja Foundation and the Wyss Foundation. Several large philanthropic entities had been aware of the valley and its importance but considered the task of buying up all the individual ranch land too complex.

Now that one solitary cheque need be signed, one imagines they’ll jump at the chance.

CHECK OUT THIS PLACE:  Bolivian Town Protects 1 Million Acres of Amazon Rainforest–Building a ‘Conservation Mosaic’ of 90% Forests

“This is an irreplaceable place… the missing puzzle piece,” said Jeff Parrish, a senior executive at the Nature Conservancy, which is advising the nonprofit group leading the purchase. “Had it been developed, it would have bifurcated a bunch of protected areas.”

Many of the most beautiful places in the United States were saved from development because of the actions of one or a few committed people who were at the right place at the right time. Pablo Condeza certainly fulfilled that role for his country, the continent of South America, and the world beyond.

SHARE This Incredible Place To Be Conserved Forever 

“The love of beauty is one of Nature’s greatest healers” – Ellsworth Huntington

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Quote of the Day: “The love of beauty is one of Nature’s greatest healers” – Ellsworth Huntington

Photo by: Martin Sanchez

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, May 13

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Luigi Ganna, the winner of the inaugural Giro d'Italia

115 years ago today, the inaugural Giro d’Italia, was held, with cyclists competing in 21 different stages across over 1,200 miles of the country. The origin of the race was to help increase sales of the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, and was set to start and end in Milano, the city where the paper was headquartered. Since then, it has become one of the three “grand tours” of cycling, and is considered the second-most prestigious behind the Tour de France. READ more… (1909)

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‘Wind Repowering’ Has Rejuvenated Turbines to Boost Gigawatts and Power Millions More Homes

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The new wind farm will likely use this Goldwind wind turbine, the largest in the world - released.
The new wind farm will likely use this Goldwind wind turbine, the largest in the world – released.

Reprinted via EarthTalk®, From the Editors of E – The Environmental Magazine

What is wind repowering and why are environmentalists so bullish on it?

While wind power has been a staple in renewable energy from the beginning, many of the original and old wind turbines have begun to show signs of aging.

Wind repowering is fixing this, by revamping old turbines with more efficient components, or putting in new, state-of-the-art turbines as a whole.

These new components can more efficiently power a turbine, reduce noise, and a deliver a higher overall energy output.

For example, Denmark became an early adopter of wind repowering, with a 1.3 GW gain in capacity and a reduction of 109 wind turbines, enabling substantially increased wind energy production with fewer turbines.

This promising data prompted a surge in wind repowering projects there—and already four years ago, 86 percent of wind energy projects there were classified as “repowered.”

Their signs of success and scalability showed other countries the benefits of wind repowering.

Now, the U.S. has more than 40 active wind repowering sites, with over 2,500 turbines having some type of renovation at any given moment.

CHECK OUT: Company Devises Ingenious Method of Repurposing Old Wind Turbines: ‘The perfect time’

This gale force of advancement, with help from large energy corporations like General Electric, is responsible for four gigawatts of energy, enough to power more than 30 million homes.

Why do eco-advocates support wind repowering so strongly?

Wind repowering has energy, financial, aesthetic and technological benefits. Not only does it make units more efficient, it also removes units that might be aesthetically unpleasing, or in less efficient spots than they could be.

MYTH BUSTER: Not a Single Collision for Seabird Populations in Offshore Wind Farm Says $3M Radar Study

Wind repowering also increases the lifespan of turbines by as much as 20 years, and reduces the need for maintenance. Repowered turbines are also quieter, sleeker, and produce considerably more energy.

So, while there are many types of repowering efforts for other renewable energy sources, none are as comprehensive or successful as wind repowering. Not only is it a comprehensive option for revamping clean energy, but it doesn’t require the entry costs of building new wind farms.

We invite readers to call local officials or urge any nearby wind farms to look into wind repowering—and build on all the success.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at emagazine.com. To donate, visit Earthtalk.org. Send questions to: [email protected].

Rare WWII Pigeon Parachute Used to Carry Messages to French Resistance Ahead of D-Day Found in Old Shoebox

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Rare WWII pigeon parachute used to carry messages to French resistance in Normandy ahead of D-Day – SWNS
Rare WWII pigeon parachute used to carry messages to French resistance in Normandy ahead of D-Day – SWNS

(By SWNS / Talker News)

A rare World War II ‘pigeon parachute’ used to carry messages to the French resistance in Normandy ahead of D-Day has been found in a tattered old shoebox.

It was discovered—along with other D-Day-related documents—in the loft of a woman named Mrs. Ellington, who recently passed away in England.

Her family was left scratching their heads over the artifact—how it came to be there and what it was exactly. They had no idea what the fabric item was used for.

They were astonished to discover that she’d been keeping in her possession a very rare D-day pigeon parachute—and now they’ve donated the surviving piece of history to a museum.

The pigeon parachutes were used over Normandy in the days before the Allied Forces landed in France on June 6th, 1944.

Ahead of the planned attack, the British gathered homing pigeons from the local areas of coastal Normandy and used them to carry messages to the French resistance while the area was occupied and defended by thousands of Nazi troops.

WWII pigeon parachute – SWNS

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The pigeons carried instructions about blowing up communication lines, armories, and transports.

The pigeon would have been dropped by a light plane low over France, and once released the pigeons could struggle free of the parachute and fly off to their home coop.

This method was considered safer than using coded radio messages.

HISTORY HERO: U.S. Honors 98-yo Irish Woman Whose Storm Forecast Fortuitously Delayed D-Day Landings, Changing the Course of WWII

The pigeon parachute is now on display in the D-Day exhibition at House on the Hill Museum in Standsted Mountfitchet, Essex.

FLY THIS WWII ODDITY to History Lovers on Social Media…

English Woman Shocked to Find Monkey in Her Greenhouse–Now He’s in a Sanctuary with a Girlfriend

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South American marmoset monkey named Marcel – Wings and Paws / SWNS
South American marmoset monkey named Marcel – Wings and Paws / SWNS

A woman in the city of Wolverhampton, England, suddenly discovered a South American monkey in her greenhouse, and scrambled to figure out who to call.

The animal charity Wings and Paws said they were contacted by a distressed woman who reported a “strange wild animal with a bushy tail” leaping about her property.

Volunteers who arrived on the scene expected to find a squirrel or a fox but were left shocked to see a monkey casually sitting on the kitchen countertop.

“We’re more used to dealing with domestic pets and farmyard animals like dogs, cats and horses so it was certainly a shock to discover a monkey,” said volunteer Gemma Warner.

It turned out to be a marmoset—5,400 miles away from his native South America—most likely an unwanted pet left to fend for himself in the West Midlands of Great Britain.

“Its lucky we found him because the cold would have killed him if he’d been left on the streets of Wolverhampton.”

They were able to entice ‘Marcel’ into a cage to take back to their rescue centre—and things only got better from there.

South American marmoset monkey named Marcel – Wings and Paws / SWNS

Volunteers spent several weeks nursing him back to full health—and now they’ve found him a suitable home, which had the added bonus of a potential new girlfriend.

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He was offered a place at Monkey World 200 miles away in Wareham, Dorset, and made the journey there on Wednesday.

Once he has settled into his new enclosure, Marcel will be introduced to a female in residence, and it’s hoped the pair will hit it off.

“It was mixed emotions seeing him go because he was such a sweetheart who we had grown really fond of,” said Gemma.

Marcel with Monkey World’s Alison Cronin – SWNS

“But we are obviously ecstatic for him as it’s undoubtedly the best place for him. We were really happy to find him somewhere suitable.”

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It wasn’t an easy task though, Monkey World—like Wings and Paws, and other rescue facilities—was full.

“The owner jiggled some things around and he now has a lovely big enclosure to explore.

“Our volunteers worked relentlessly to make this happen and Monkey World could see he deserved a new start. We’re really grateful.”

“We are sad to see him go but over the moon for him.

Marmosets are mainly found in the tropical rainforests of South America, with a few populations in Central America.

It is currently legal in the UK to keep them as pets, but new rules adopted earlier this year by the government will make it illegal to keep monkeys, lemurs, and other primates without a license beginning in 2026.

6 DEGREES OF BACON: Missing Pig Named Kevin Bacon Reunited with Owners After Help from Kevin Bacon

Sharing the news on social media, Wings and Paws added: “What a fabulous end to our rescue mission – this is what it’s all about! Rescues helping rescues and saving lives!”

SHARE THE MONKEY BUSINESS With Animal Lovers on Social Media…

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