Quote of the Day: “If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.” – Aristotle
Photo by: Arnaska – CC license
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
130 years ago, the architect, visionary, and writer Buckminster Fuller was born. Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome structural shape, which he most famously used to design the Montreal Biosphere. Soaking with honors, awards, and appointments, Fuller published 30 books in his life, invented numerous words, and held 28 US patents. READ some details about the great inventor and watch a video… (1895)
Lights were out in the mountain village of Siyathi, northern India, but one resident clearly wasn’t interested in going to sleep.
Well past midnight on June 26th, Rocky the dog sat on the ground floor of a home in Himachal Pradesh state barking and howling loudly.
June being Monsoon season in India, rain was teeming down, but Rocky’s owner Lalit Kumar could hear the dog through his sleep and the weather.
“I was woken by my dog’s strange barking, as if he was trying to warn me,” Lalit said. “When I reached him, I saw a huge crack in the wall and water pouring in.”
An awful thing to find so late at night, but when Lalit went downstairs to wake the rest of his family, that’s when he saw it: a wall of onrushing water and earth coming down the mountain towards the town.
Grabbing the dog and his family, he ran along the streets waking neighbors until 22 families had assembled and fled to high ground. Moments later, the landslide arrived and wrecked 12 out of 17 homes in the village in a wave of mud and debris.
MORE INDIAN HEROES: Hero Air India Pilot ‘Saved Dozens of Lives’ with Last-Second Decision Before Crash
67 people lived there, each and every one owing their lives to Rocky the dog, whom Kumar had gotten from his brother just 3 months before.
WATCH a local news report in English (first) and Hindi (second)…
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Wind turbines altered to function underwater have set industry records after generating non-stop power for over 6 years without maintenance.
Located in the Pentland Firth off the coast of Scotland, the MayGen marine energy project is one of the largest of its kind in the world, and its continued operation in a harsh environment is encouraging investors to bet on tidal energy.
Considered the largest untapped renewable energy market in the world, “marine energy,” that is, energy that harnesses the power of the tides, waves, or currents, has a key advantage over other renewable sources in that the resource being harvested is constant and guaranteed.
However, also like other renewable sources, it has disadvantages, and so far that has been a lack of investment over durability concerns. The sea is a harsh mistress, and her force is a harrowing thing to endure for man or machine.
That’s why the 6 megawatt-hour MayGen project, owned by BAE Renewables and built in concert with Swedish firm SKF, is winning plaudits. Their turbines have lasted a long time without ever having to be removed for repairs.
Rémi Gruet, CEO of a trade association Ocean Energy Europe called it a “very significant milestone” that bodes well for the future of tidal energy and the 7,000 homes which MayGen powers annually.
Many tidal energy projects that GNN has reported on have been quite small. These include generators deployed autonomously in the ocean like this very small seaweed-inspired device to the Minesto “Sea Dragons“—large, undersea, kite-shaped objects that could generate 1.2 megawatts from undersea currents.
Landbound stations seem more promising. In 2022, GNN reported that Turkey was to be the stage for Swedish firm Eco Wave Power’s prototype tidal power plant that uses the tides to power large, pier-mounted hydraulic pistons. A full-size operation would generate 77 megawatts—a mammoth amount of renewable energy for a single facility of any kind, anywhere.
Even this would pale in comparison to Mersey Tidal Power: a public-private partnership to build a tidal power station that harnesses the 30-foot-tall tide in the Bay of Liverpool to power practically the entire city.
GNN reported on the Mersey Tidal project in 2024, when precious little had been released about it.
A large dam would be a barrier between the Irish Sea and a tidal basin. Underneath the dam would be large turbines and sluice gates which would open as the tide comes in, pulling water onto the turbines to generate energy.
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The gates would close as the 10-meter-high tide finishes, and as the gravity of the moon begins to pull on the water four hours later, the gates would open, causing it to rush past the turbines a second time, generating more clean energy.
The city estimates this would be enough to power 1 million homes.
If one or more of these methods can match MayGen’s track record then these projects will suddenly seem far more attractive to an investor who is expecting to see functional ROIs for the next 30 years.
MORE RENEWABLE MILESTONES: Coastal Winds Not Only Ripen Grapes, They Power Vineyard’s Winemaking Sustainably
Back in Scotland, Maygen plans to add another 20 submarine turbines by 2030. The Pentland Firth site could hold around 130 such turbines, which in addition could be larger and more powerful than the currently-utilized set.
The future of marine energy, it may finally be safe to say, is waxing.
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A team of scientists who could only be described as ‘intrepid’ sailed several hundred miles across the East China Sea in an ancient replica canoe.
The peopling of the Pacific islands has long been one of the great mysteries of anthropology, and the Japanese researchers wanted to do their own small part in unraveling it by answering a question: how did Paleolithic people get from Taiwan to Japan’s southernmost island of Yonaguni.
While the distance of 140 miles isn’t mighty when compared to some of the voyages the Polynesians are known to have made, it crosses an area plied by one of the strongest currents in the world called the Kuroshio.
In two new papers, researchers from Japan and Taiwan led by Professor Yousuke Kaifu from the University of Tokyo simulated methods ancient peoples would have needed to accomplish this journey, and they used period-accurate tools to create the canoes to make the journey themselves.
Of the two newly published papers, one used numerical simulations. The simulation showed that a boat made using tools of the time, and the right know-how, could have navigated the Kuroshio. The other paper detailed the construction and testing of a real boat which the team successfully used to paddle between islands.
“We initiated this project with simple questions: How did Paleolithic people arrive at such remote islands as Okinawa? How difficult was their journey? And what tools and strategies did they use?” said Kaifu in a press release from the University of Tokyo.
“Archaeological evidence such as remains and artifacts can’t paint a full picture as the nature of the sea is that it washes such things away. So, we turned to the idea of experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to the Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl.”
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a fantastic exercise in getting out of the library, as Indiana Jones said. Seeking to confirm his theory that prehistoric humans may have sailed across the Pacific, Heyerdahl recruited an international team of sailors, craftsmen, explorers, and scientists, and built a raft of primitive materials called Kon-Tiki, which they used to sail from South America to the Tuamotus, across more than 3,000 miles of open ocean.
In 2019, the Taiwanese-Japanese team constructed a 23-foot-long dugout canoe called Sugime, built from a single Japanese cedar trunk, using replicas of 30,000-year-old stone tools. They paddled it 140 miles from eastern Taiwan to Yonaguni Island in the Ryukyu group, which includes Okinawa, navigating only by the sun, stars, swells and their instincts.
They paddled for over 45 hours across the open sea, mostly without any visibility of the island they were targeting. Several years later, the team is still unpicking some of the data they created during the experiment, and using what they find to inform or test models about various aspects of sea crossings in that region so long ago.
Kaifu monologued about the team’s findings and revelations, a full 6 years after their expedition.
“A dugout canoe was our last candidate among the possible Paleolithic seagoing crafts for the region. We first hypothesized that Paleolithic people used rafts, but after a series of experiments, we learned that these rafts are too slow to cross the Kuroshio and are not durable enough.”
PREHISTORIC JAPAN: Precocious Child Identifies Japanese Wolf Specimen Amid Museum Collection, Encouraged to Publish Scientific Paper
“We now know that these canoes are fast and durable enough to make the crossing, but that’s only half the story. Those male and female pioneers must have all been experienced paddlers with effective strategies and a strong will to explore the unknown.”
“Like us today, they had to undertake strategic challenges to advance. For example, the ancient Polynesian people had no maps, but they could travel almost the entire Pacific. There are a variety of signs on the ocean to know the right direction, such as visible land masses, heavenly bodies, swells, and winds. We learned parts of such techniques ourselves along the way.”
One interesting note was that the team felt any return journey would have been much more difficult, if not altogether impossible, in part because the Kurushio current is varied, and facing it in reverse would have been even tougher.
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According to the teams’ data, on a vessel launched off the eastern coast of Taiwan as theirs’ was, the Kuroshio runs hard northward along the coastline. Throughout their paddling, they had to compensate for a headwind, and the current seeking to pull them back north.
Their GPS trail shows that they missed several zones of deep water where the Kuroshio changes and begins to tug eastward, as well as an area where the current forms something like an ocean gyrate that could have sent them in multiple directions.
MORE EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY: This Bronze Age Ship Replica, Made from Reeds and Goat Hair, Just Sailed 50 Nautical Miles
They navigated the hazardous current brilliantly, but to do so in reverse would have been extremely difficult. They would have been moving against the current in all periods, and from the start it would be trying to pull them out to open ocean.
“Scientists try to reconstruct the processes of past human migrations, but it is often difficult to examine how challenging they really were. One important message from the whole project was that our Paleolithic ancestors were real challengers.”
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While traveling on an Alaska railroad, familiar noises assailed Portia Duke’s ear: the squeaking, stressed brakes, the whistle sounding off, and the doors opening and closing.
But having stopped in Willow on the way from Denali to Whittier, a totally unexpected tune perked the passenger up—a cat, mewling outside the window.
Looking down, Duke saw there was a miniscule kitten scrambling around the rocks between the tracks, seemingly too small to climb over the concrete and onto the platform.
She tried to get off the train to help the animal, but realized if she did she would miss the train.
As the soundtrack of the train resumed, it drowned out the lost kitten’s cries, but not the voice in Duke’s heart telling her she simply must return to look for it.
Speaking with KTUU/Gray News, Duke said she dreamed about the kitten all night and returned the next day, just as she promised, with her boyfriend in tow to look for it.
“‘We have to go and either find her or we don’t,'” Duke said in an interview, explaining her reasoning. “Then we can tell ourselves that maybe her mom came back, but at least we’ll have an answer.”
KITTENS IN THE DARNDEST PLACES:
“There was really just no thought in our heads that she would actually still be there. But there she was, still meowing.”
The kitten was taken to the veterinarian, who said she was one-month old and dehydrated, but otherwise healthy.
Duke reckons that 5 trains would have passed over those tracks in the time she was trapped within, a harrowing image.
Though the couple haven’t decided whether to keep her or not, they named her Willow after the station, and added that some of the train staff offered to help find a home for her.
WATCH the story below from KTUU…
MEOW About This Responsible Commuter’s Rescue Of Willow At Willow…
Quote of the Day: “When you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.” – Lee Iacocca
Photo by: Helena Lopes
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
50 years ago today Fleetwood Mac released their ‘White Album’, a hugely successful LP featuring a new couple who had just joined the band—the singer-songwriting duo Lindsey Buckingham (on guitar) and Stevie Nicks. The album reached No.1 on the Billboard chart and spent 37 weeks within the top 10, thanks to its three hit singles, Over My Head, Rhiannon, and Say That You Love Me. The cover image features two of the band’s co-founders Mick Fleetwood and John (Mac) McVie. READ more about this classic rock staple… (1975)
The beleaguered city of Baltimore, once a posterchild for crime infested American cities, has seen substantial year on year reductions in homicides, with the current 2025 rate on track for a historic low.
Through June, Baltimore has had 68 recorded homicides, which is the fewest in 50 years, said city mayor Brandon Scott.
Through June of last year by contrast, 88 had been recorded, making this year not only a drop in the short term, but a drop in the long term when looking at statistics from 2023, or even a decade before.
“Our continued progress is the direct result of the comprehensive, evidence-based public safety strategy that we have implemented in partnership with residents,” said Mayor Scott, via a press release.
There’s also been a 20% reduction in non-fatal shootings, suggesting the numbers are more than anomalies or data-driven mirages that might occur when, for example, citizens begin to change their behavior in response to crime.
“But our work is far from over. 68 lives lost to violence is 68 too many. While we acknowledge the historic lows we are experiencing, we must simultaneously acknowledge that there is much more work to do and our success makes me commit even further to doing it.”
OTHER FALLS IN THE HOMICIDE RATE: In 30 Years East Palo Alto Went From ‘Murder Capital’ to Zero Homicides in 2023: A Complete Turnaround
In 2022, when a sustained downtrend in population bottomed out around 570,000, the homicide rate was 57.9 per 100,000 people, amounting to 330 by year’s end.
The most recent census reports a city-wide population of about the same as in 2022, meaning if the homicide rate continues at current trajectory, 2025 would end with 24.2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
The last year lower than that was 1977, but 2025 would still mark a safer Baltimore than the decade before ’77 as well.
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As green as the Chardonnay grapes they grow, a winery along the base of California’s coastal Santa Lucia Mountains run entirely on wind power.
The mountains’ unique geography keeps the area windy, which powers not only a large private wind turbine, but a delayed and elongated growing season that complicates and matures the flavor in the grapes to award-winning levels.
Owned by Scheid Family Wines, Isabelle’s is one of several that benefit from this mixture of perfect soil, cooling fog, warm sun, and constant wind—as well as the Scheid family’s focus on sustainability.
Hi-tech sensors distribute water to each individual vine as needed, and not a drop more. Insulating jackets on the wine-processing equipment reduces energy consumption for temperature regulation. Large skylights and adaptive facility lighting mean that the winery’s interior is maximally lit by natural light.
Dozens of owl boxes welcome natural rodent control teams to populate the vineyards. Even the glass bottles are specifically made thinner in certain spots to reduce the energy consumption during thermal glass recycling.
Yet the crown jewel in all this focus of sustainability is the 400-foot-tall wind turbine that generates all—yes, all—of the electricity for the winemaking operations. The abundance of wind is such that the winery actually only uses half of the electricity it generates. The rest is fed back into the grid.
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“Sustainability has been one of our core values since our family founded this business in 1972,” Heidi Scheid, executive vice president of Scheid Family Wines, and the second-generation owner, told CBS News in the Bay Area. “The winds are very dependable. They can sometimes blow 24 hours a day.”
OTHER STORIES LIKE THIS: Making Wine the Way the Romans Did: These Wineries are Cutting The Additives
The windy vineyards span 2,500 acres, and bear 36 different grape varietals, which it turns into several award-winning wines, sold as dozens of private labels in grocery stores across 10 global brands—all totaling 900,000 cases a year.
Yet not one of which generates an ounce of carbon emissions.
“Scheid is believed to be the largest winery in the world that’s powered by renewable energy,” said Ms. Scheid.
We’ll drink to that.
WATCH the story below from CBS News…
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Quote of the Day: “You are not the product of your past. You are the product of your assumptions.” – Neville Goddard
Photo by: Olia Nayda
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A trial investigating the potential for a gene therapy to correct congenital deafness in children and young adults saw all 10 participants gain auditory ability, and allowed them to hear the sound of falling rain or their mother’s voice for the first time ever.
The younger patients, especially those between the ages of five and eight, responded best to the treatment. One of the participants, a seven-year-old girl, quickly recovered almost all her hearing and was able to hold daily conversations with her mother four months afterwards.
Roughly 200,000 people worldwide are deaf due to a mutation in a gene called OTOF, which was the target of the therapy. These mutations cause a deficiency of the protein otoferlin, which plays a critical part in transmitting auditory signals from the ear to the brain.
The gene therapy involved using a synthetic adeno-associated virus to deliver a functional version of the OTOF gene to the inner ear via a single injection through a membrane at the base of the cochlea called the round window.
Hearing improved in all 10 patients, aged between 1 and 24, and the treatment was well-tolerated. The study was conducted in collaboration with hospitals and universities in China and is published in the journal Nature Medicine.
“This is a huge step forward in the genetic treatment of deafness, one that can be life-changing for children and adults,” says Maoli Duan, consultant and docent at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and one of the study’s corresponding authors.
The effect of the gene therapy was rapid and the majority of the patients recovered some hearing after just one month. A six-month follow-up showed considerable hearing improvement in all participants, the average volume of perceptible sound improving from 106 decibels to 52.
“Smaller studies in China have previously shown positive results in children, but this is the first time that the method has been tested in teenagers and adults, too,” says Dr. Duan. “Hearing was greatly improved in many of the participants, which can have a profound effect on their life quality. We will now be following these patients to see how lasting the effect is.”
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One 7-year-old girl who received a traditional cochlear implant in one ear and the gene therapy in another, went from being functionally deaf to having near-perfect hearing.
Speaking with Gizmodo, Dr. Duan recounts a day when the girl departed his office with her mother after a storm had rolled over the city during their appointment. Walking outside, the girl heard the sound of falling rain for the first time.
MORE TRIALS LIKE THIS: Deaf Children Are First Humans to Have Hearing Pathway Restored in Dramatic Demonstration of New Gene Therapy
The next part of the trial will be a 5-10 year follow-up to see how long the OTOF gene therapy lasts.
“OTOF is just the beginning,” Dr. Duan said in a statement. “We and other researchers are expanding our work to other, more common genes that cause deafness, such as GJB2 and TMC1. These are more complicated to treat, but animal studies have so far returned promising results. We are confident that patients with different kinds of genetic deafness will one day be able to receive treatment.”
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Astronomers have confirmed for just the third time ever that the solar system has been visited by an interstellar comet.
Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, it is blazing through our cosmic cul-de-sac at truly awe-inspiring speeds between the main asteroid belt and Jupiter, and will soon be gone forever.
Only twice before have astronomers seen interstellar objects in our solar system, the first being the “cigar-shaped” (or pancake-shaped) Oumuamua in 2017, and the second was a comet called Borisov in 2019.
3I was discovered on July 1st by the ATLAS Project (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), a coordination effort between four NASA-funded telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, and South Africa which automatically scan the whole sky several times every night looking for moving objects.
It’s one of the flagship programs of the yet-young Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA which aims at equipping humanity with the tools it needs to defend our home from potentially cataclysmic asteroid impacts.
3I is over 150 million miles away, and on an almost entirely straight trajectory out of our solar system. In other words, the interstellar visitor comes in peace.
“If you trace its orbit backward, it seems to be coming from the center of the galaxy, more or less,” Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, told the New York Times. “It definitely came from another solar system. We don’t know which one.”
It’s moving at 137,000 miles per hour, which would allow it to travel from the Earth to Mars in just over 58 days rather than the 2 years that most NASA spacecraft need.
3I seems to be surrounded by a cloud of ejected dust and gas typical of icy comets, which makes it hard to estimate the object’s size. A rough estimate, reports Smithsonian Magazine, puts it about 12 miles across.
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The appearance of an interstellar comet is a timely reminder of the value which the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a brand-new, state-of-the-art, earthbound telescope, will bring to watching our solar system.
The Vera Rubin, which recently debuted its amazing imaging capabilities, will be conducting a mammoth undertaking known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which will see it image the entire night sky from its perch over 8,000 feet atop Cerro Pachón every three to four nights for the next 10 years.
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This will create a colossal dataset of the current positions of galaxies and stars, and will allow researchers to detect minute changes in locales as close as our own solar system, or our nearest galactic neighbors. Any detected changes—a new transient object, a fast radio burst, a new supernova, and an astronomer could be alerted, and new research be conducted in as real time as can be garnered in the discipline that studies in light years.
Professor Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, described to the BBC that this transience is going to be a “transformative” resource for the field.
The fact that 3I/ATLAS is just the third interstellar object ever identified may not be related to the rarity of such an event but merely the limited ability humanity has had to detect them until now, given the ridiculous speeds they travel at.
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7 years ago today, a group of teenage association football players and their teacher were successfully rescued after being stuck for over two weeks in Tham Luang Cave, Thailand. Entering the cave after a practice session, heavy rains later trapped the team inside. Efforts to locate the group were hampered by rising water levels and strong currents, and the team was out of contact with the outside world for more than a week, during which their plight grew into a worldwide media frenzy. READ how they were saved… (2018)
When Sandie Gillard fell from a two-story window, the impact knocked the senior citizen unconscious, a state that may have become permanent if not for the intervention of a very small, very unlikely hero.
Lightly tapping on her head, a bird named Jellybean roused its former caregiver enough that she could call her husband, who arrived in time to telephone emergency services and save her life.
The story makes it clear why the English culture honors magpies.
The fall happened in 2020 in the town of Esperance, in Western Australia’s remote southeastern corner where Gillard, then 68 years old, had cared for sick, wounded, or abandoned animals all her life.
3 years before her accident, a miniscule magpie was brought to her home by someone who found it on the ground unable to fly after it had fallen out of a tree.
Already possessing a rich experience in nursing birds back to health, Gillard took in the nestling and named her Jellybean. For months, she grew up alongside Gillard and her family, a single flock of nest mates.
“She played with my grandson,” Gillard told ABC News AU, explaining that the magpie remained in the neighborhood after learning to fly and find food for herself. “She would sit on the verandah or whatever and knock on the door until I would come out and say hello.”
Gillard said she has no memory of the 2020 fall. Landing on a cement driveway, she cracked her skull and dislocated her right arm violently.
“I woke up to this little sound of purring… and something tapping me on the forehead,” Gillard said.
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Having been saved from a fall by Sandie Gillard, it was time for Jellybean to return the favor.
Paramedics arrived and brought her to a heliport where she was flown to the hospital and stabilized. The doctors later told her that if she had lain in that state much longer, she wouldn’t be here today.
MORE BIRD-BRAINED STORIES: These Cockatoos Learned to Operate Drinking Fountains with Their Feet to Quench Their Thirst – (WATCH)
With the limits on her recovery and the dangers of falling fresh in her mind, Gillard recently made the decision to move from Esperance to a town hundreds of miles away so she could be nearer to her family.
Though it was the most difficult decision she’s ever had to make, she rests easy knowing that Jellybean, and many other birds besides, are all on the wing because of her.
It’s something she will never forget—nor, we can imagine, will they.
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Some species of fig trees store calcium carbonate in their trunks—essentially turning themselves (partially) into stone.
This ‘auto-petrification’ may offer a strange new way to reduce human carbon emissions, as the mineral created by the trees has a much longer lifespan than organic carbon absorbed and deposited in its root system.
An international team of scientists found that three species of Ficus that grow in Kenya were able to draw carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it as calcium carbonate ‘rocks’ in the surrounding soil.
The figs are one of the first fruiting trees shown to have this ability, known as the oxalate carbonate pathway. One species in particular, Ficus wakefieldii, was especially prolific.
All trees use photosynthesis to turn CO2 into organic carbon, which forms their trunk, branches, roots and leaves, but certain trees also use CO2 to create calcium oxalate crystals.
When parts of the tree decay, these calcium oxalate crystals are converted by specialized bacteria or fungi into calcium carbonate—the same mineral as limestone or chalk. This increases the soil pH around the tree, while also increasing the availability of certain nutrients.
The inorganic carbon in calcium carbonate typically has a much longer lifetime in the soil than organic carbon, making it a more effective method of CO2 sequestration.
“We’ve known about the oxalate carbonate pathway for some time, but its potential for sequestering carbon hasn’t been fully considered. If we’re planting trees for agroforestry and their ability to store CO2 as organic carbon while producing food, we could choose trees that provide an additional benefit by sequestering inorganic carbon also, in the form of calcium carbonate,” said Dr. Mike Rowley, a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich (UZH) who presented his study on the subject at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague.
Rowley and his team identified how far from the tree the calcium carbonate was being formed and identified the microbial communities involved in the process.
“As the calcium carbonate is formed, the soil around the tree becomes more alkaline,” Dr. Rowley said. “The calcium carbonate is formed both on the surface of the tree and within the wood structures, likely as microorganisms decompose crystals on the surface and also, penetrate deeper into the tree. It shows that inorganic carbon is being sequestered more deeply within the wood than we previously realized.”
They are now planning to assess F. wakefieldii’s suitability for agroforestry by quantifying its water requirements and fruit yields and by doing a more detailed analysis of how much CO2 can be sequestered under different conditions.
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Most of the research into the oxalate-carbonate pathway has been in tropical habitats and focused on trees that do not produce food. The first tree to be identified as having an active oxalate-carbonate pathway was the Iroko (Milicia excelsa). It can sequester one ton of calcium carbonate in the soil over its lifetime.
Calcium oxalate is one of the most abundant biominerals and the crystals are produced by many plants. The microorganisms that convert calcium oxalate to calcium carbonate are also widespread.
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“It’s easier to identify calcium carbonate in drier environments,” explained Dr. Rowley.
“However, even in wetter environments, the carbon can still be sequestered. So far, numerous species of tree have been identified which can form calcium carbonate. But we believe there are many more. This means that the oxalate-carbonate pathway could be a significant, underexplored opportunity to help mitigate CO2 emissions as we plant trees for forestry or fruit.”
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If there were one place in America where you’d decline a glass of tap water it would be Flint, right? Wrong.
A decade after lead-contaminated water was found in the Michigan city’s water system, the legal battle to replace lead water pipes is nearly finished.
Homes serviced by lead water lines which have not been replaced are either vacant, abandoned, or owned by citizens who opted-out of the free change to copper lines mandated in a 2017 court settlement.
The Flint water crisis began in 2014, after lead-contaminated drinking water was found to be leaching out from aging pipes into homes citywide.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with help from other activists and nonprofits, have released statements on the recent progress, celebrating the milestone.
The statements which they chalk up the crisis to “cost-cutting measures and improper water treatment,” that the state “didn’t require treatment to prevent corrosion,” after a “a state-appointed emergency manager” switched the water supply to the Flint River.
There is no safe level of lead exposure; each nanogram causes harm. In addition to long-known risks, such as damage to children’s brains and certain cancers, there is also significant evidence that exposure to lead is linked to numerous cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack.
The coalition mobilized the citizenry and filed a lawsuit against Flint and Michigan state officials to secure safe water. The result was a settlement in March 2017, under which a federal court in Detroit ordered Flint to give every resident the opportunity to have their lead pipe replaced at no cost, as well as conduct comprehensive tap water testing, implement a faucet filter distribution and education program, and maintain funding for health programs to help residents deal with the effects of Flint’s tainted water, according to the NRDC.
The coalition then returned to court six times in six years to ensure the city and state kept to the timeline, which was delayed by COVID-19, and other reasons which The Detroit News described as “spotty record-keeping” and “ineffective management.”
MORE CLEAN WATER NEWS: New Tool to Mitigate Algae Blooms Shows Breakthrough Results in Utah, Scientists Say
On July 1st, the State of Michigan submitted a progress report to a federal court confirming that, more than eight years after the settlement, nearly 11,000 lead pipes were replaced and more than 28,000 properties were restored where the maintenance had taken place.
Of the 4,200 buildings where lead pipes are known to still be in service, their owners have either left the properties vacant, abandoned, or have declined the free replacement under the Safe Water Drinking Act. The coalition has said it will continue to monitor city and state progress on these remaining lines.
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“Thanks to the persistence of the people of Flint and our partners, we are finally at the end of the lead pipe replacement project,” said Pastor Allen C. Overton of the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, one of the organizations that sued the city. “While this milestone is not all the justice our community deserves, it is a huge achievement.”
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From the coast of Madagascar springs a story of pirates and sunken treasure, as an American research team believe they have identified a famous shipwreck.
Nossa Senhora do Cabo (Our Lady of the Cape) was a 700-ton Portuguese warship captured by an infamous French pirate while returning to Lisbon in 1721.
In the hold, a massive pile of treasure, destined for the crowns and courts of Portugal, was taken along with 200 slaves from Madagascar, where the shipwreck was found.
Little of the treasure remains, but when cross-referenced with historical documents, the artifacts that were recovered seem to point only to Nossa Senhora, which was one of the largest pirate prizes ever taken and seismic in its notoriety; not least because multiple literate witnesses survived.
Marine archaeological surveys with sonar and dive teams were conducted by the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation in Massachusetts. Their target was a cluster of shipwrecks around an island to the North of Madagascar called Nosy Boraha, known at the time period as Sainte-Marie.
The island was a notorious pirate stronghold during the Golden Age of Piracy, and it appears that the Portuguese ship was taken here after being attacked near the Reunion Islands, a French colonized possession in the Indian Ocean.
It would have been returning from Goa, a Portuguese imperial possession in India, where it had filled the cargo hold with Chinese porcelain, nutmeg, gold coins, silver bars, silks, religious figurines and other carvings in wood and ivory, and a $100 million fortune in today’s money of precious stones. An Goan viceroy, a Portuguese nobleman, the Archbishop of Goa, and 200 slaves were also on board.
Historical documents record the pirates Olivier “The Buzzard” Levasseur and John Taylor were behind the attack on 72-gun Nossa Senhora, which was damaged in a storm and had laid up near the Reunions to repair.
Born in Calais during the Nine Year’s War to a wealthy family, Levasseur was the quintessential pirate. Participating in two of the biggest pirate raids of the time, he buried a massive treasure, left an encrypted message as to its location, and was eventually hanged around the age of 40 while living large along the Equator.
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Between the treasure value and the ransom money, the haul would have been an “eye-watering treasure, even by pirate standards,” according to two authors on a scientific paper describing the surveys of the wreck.
The Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation had conducted studies in the area around Nosy Boraha for 16 years, and describe it as a place where prize ships were commonly taken to be scuttled following their capture. Many other wrecks—all likely dating to the same time period—were identified in the area, and the authors highlight it as a bountiful place for future research.
Interviews and photographs detailing the surveys, excavations, and research on Nossa Senhora were also published in the brilliant Wreckwatch Magazine, the premier source for news about sunken treasure worldwide.
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Quote of the Day: “The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” – Wallace Stevens
Photo by: benjamin lehman
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Happy 50th Birthday to the “coolest, weirdest, and savviest rock stars of our time,” Jack White. Born in Detroit, his run of work with the White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather, and through to his solo work catapulted him to superstardom in the hearts of angsty teens and aging rockers alike. Much the way his fan base spanned generations, White created much of his brilliant music by connecting aspects and flavors of many great American genres from blues and Americana to punk rock. He did it with soul, and without irony; without a hint of throwback Thursday to any of it, and with complete authenticity. READ a bit more… (1975)
