The world’s oldest person as acknowledged by the Guinness World Records turned 117 last Friday
Ethel Caterham was born in the United Kingdom on August 21st, 1909, when the great-great grandfather of the current king was sitting on the nation’s throne.
Meeting King Charles III in September 2025 – Courtesy of Ethel Caterham Family
She was the 7th of 8 children, and told ABC News in an emailed statement that she attributes her longevity to a “nonconfrontational” attitude in life; never arguing, while rarely compromising.
“Thank you for all of the kind birthday wishes,” said told the American network. “Even at 117, I’ve had many firsts this year, from stroking a llama to holding hands with the King! I’ve had a lovely day celebrating with my family and friends, and I look forward to seeing what next year brings!”
She has outlived her husband by 50 years, as well as her two daughters, and today enjoys the care and company of 3 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.
In her youth she loved travel, and worked as a nanny for a British family living in India. The work allowed her 3 years to explore the subcontinent where she met her husband Norman, a major in the British Army.
She becomes the oldest person alive after a Brazilian nun, Inah Canabarro Lucas, passed away at 116.
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An American bullfrog, which is the largest frog species in North America Carl D. Howe via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.5
An American bullfrog, which is the largest frog species in North America Carl D. Howe via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.5
He’s no poison-arrow frog, but that doesn’t mean the American bullfrog doesn’t understand poison—far from it, according to scientists.
Hidden within the humble bullfrog’s genetics is the equipment to produce an antidote to a deadly shellfish toxin that afflicts thousands of people every year.
It’s sometimes thought that a phenomenon of blooming marine microorganisms known as “red tide” is why shellfish is not kosher. These algal blooms produce saxitoxin, or STX, which accumulates in shellfish and causes paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) when consumed.
STX is considered a chemical weapon under international law, was stockpiled by the US during the Cold War, and featured in the famous case of American Air Force pilot Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy aircraft was shot down over the Soviet Unio. The CIA had issued Powers a suicide pin containing STX to use should he face capture.
Powers declined to take the suicide route, which interestingly enough is believed to have won him sympathizers among the judges at his trial for espionage in Moscow as it underlined, as they saw it, the cruelty of their opponents—that they would instruct their patriotic sons to commit suicide; at least according to Jan Morris’ coverage of the trial for the Manchester Guardian. That’s enough history for now though.
Paralytic shellfish poisoning affects some 2,000 people worldwide officially, although the vast majority of cases go unreported, according to experts.
There is no antidote for STX, but a new UC San Francisco study is likely to change that.
In research published July 16th in Nature Communications, a team led by Daniel Minor, PhD, and professor in UCSF’s Cardiovascular Research Institute, found that a protein called saxiphilin can neutralize saxitoxin in mice, preventing and even reversing otherwise lethal poisoning.
The protein, which occurs naturally in bullfrogs and other frogs around the world, acts like a molecular sponge. It binds tightly to saxitoxin in the bloodstream before the toxin can reach the nerve and muscle cells it normally attacks.
Earlier efforts to find an antidote against the toxin focused on interrupting the complex biological processes it uses to disable nerve cells—or trying to trigger immune responses against it. Those approaches were largely unsuccessful.
“It turns out that one naturally occurring protein is all that’s required to take this toxin out of commission,” Minor said.
The discovery could have important public health implications, helping to protect recreational harvesters worldwide, as well as coastal indigenous communities in the US and Canada who face the highest exposure to red tide through traditional subsistence harvesting, often far from emergency medical care.
The current study builds on 2021 research in which Minor and colleagues showed that saxiphilin binds strongly to saxitoxin, essentially soaking it up like a sponge and blocking its toxic properties. But whether that interaction would work inside a living organism remained uncertain.
To find out, Minor and postdoctoral PhD scholars Samantha Nixon and Sandra Zakrzewska tested saxiphilin in mice exposed to lethal doses of STX. When saxiphilin was given before or along with STX, the protein prevented poisoning. It also cured nearly all mice who got the protein after they were exposed to STX, a scenario that most closely resembles what would occur when someone unknowingly eats poisoned shellfish.
Minor said this latter scenario was particularly encouraging, given the size of the antidote molecule, which the researchers thought might slow down its action.
“We had this really big protein that needed to catch up with a tiny toxin molecule that has a running start on it,” Minor said. “We really weren’t sure this was going to work.”
The protein not only improved survival but also reduced symptoms associated with severe poisoning, with no harmful side effects.
The team also discovered that saxiphilin spread throughout the body, reaching the brain, heart, and muscles, allowing it to intercept the toxin wherever it traveled.
STX is not a single toxin but a family of over 50 variants with closely related structures. In two studies, published in 2025 and 2026, Minor showed that saxiphilin can bind a wide range of these variants, making it a good candidate for an antidote.
His next goal is to determine whether smaller, engineered versions of saxiphilin could provide the same, or maybe even better, protection against an array of STX variants. More broadly, he believes the work offers a blueprint for finding antidotes to many other natural toxins that currently have none.
“Nature has had to solve this problem multiple times,” he said. “So, there is resilience to toxins all over the biological world.”
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An Arab entrepreneur has turned her country’s national crop into creative new ice cream recipes.
It needed several years of experimentation, and she broke several ice cream machines before perfecting her soft-serve blends, but the result is a truly one-of-a-kind ice cream parlor.
Amira Al Dosari is the founder and pioneer behind date-based soft serve ice cream. For this native of Abu Dhabi, the date is an icon of her nation’s economy, history, agriculture, and culture of hospitality.
Though heavy in sugars, dates also contain fiber such that dates have been found to lower circulating blood sugar levels. This is because the fruit’s fibrous matrix slows the release and absorption of sugar contained within.
Al Dosari never imagined using dates to make ice cream, but at age 53 she took an ice cream making class and was disturbed by quantity of ice cream made with pre-prepared mixes, artificial colorants, and refined sugar.
“I was thinking about what the future could be for (children) who eat a lot of sugar when they are that young. How would that affect their body?” she told CNN’s Youmna Sukkar in a brilliant featured story.
Date connoisseurs will know that there are many date varieties with varying textures and flavors. Al Dosari thought to take one of the softest and sweetest varieties known as a kholas date, and see if it were possible to make ice cream without any added sugar.
She told Sukkar that sugar in soft-serve ice cream doesn’t only make it sweet, but also consistently soft and creamy. It took a long time, and was a big challenge to find a way to render the kholas dates down into a product that could give soft serve ice cream these properties. But that’s exactly what she did.
Now she’s working on her 448th flavor of date ice cream from her shop called Ice Station near Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port. The date is the star of the show there, as it not only contributes to the sugar in the ice cream but to multiple flavors.
The pits are roasted and ground into a coffee-like substance that’s poured over ice cream to mimic the Italian affogato, while the date palm fronds contribute the bitterness, antioxidant content, and vivid green of the “matcha” flavor.
“We know that the entire plant is quite safe for consumption, so it was just more about how we could present this in a way that is enjoyable for everyone?” said Al Dosari’s daughter, Ghalia Al Mazrouei, who works as a sustainability consultant and helped her mother find new ways to utilize the date palm.
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Landlords get a bad rap, often unfairly, but now from Melbourne comes the story of one who gave a long-term tenant the home she was renting.
The magnanimous gesture is typical, 9 News reports, of the late self-made millionaire, who fancied himself a philanthropist in the waning years of his life.
It was 23 years ago that Jane Sayner went house hunting in Melbourne and found a 2 bedroom unit with a garden in St. Albans—a northwest suburb of the city.
She liked the garden the most, but she liked the area too—and also the landlord.
John Perrett, she described, was the definition of generosity. Having amassed a multi-million dollar fortune by himself, he was also a pharmacist, community man, soccer lover, and a property investor.
“I got a phone call from him one day and he said, ‘I want you to talk to my solicitor, he is here at the moment and can you give him your full name because I’m leaving you the unit,'” Sayner told 9 News, remembering that fateful phone call.
She said she pinches herself to this day, more than 6 years later.
Mr. Perrett died in 2020 in his mid-eighties due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. The house he gave to Sayner, while his fortune he donated to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, at which he received a kidney transplant that lasted him 30 years.
“We are extremely grateful as a department of the hospital at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for such a bequest. It’s just amazing,” said Professor Nigel Toussiant from the hospital, who added that it would support patients and operations for decades to come.
Sayner retired at 74 and still lives in the home her late landlord gave her, thanking the man under her breath every few days.
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Quote of the Day: “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill
Photo by: Marc Groth
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?
118 years ago today, Roger Tory Peterson, the inventor of the modern field guide, was born. The American naturalist, ornithologist, artist, and educator published his groundbreaking Guide to the Birds in 1934, at age 25, and its first printing sold out in one week. The Peterson Field Guide series eventually included topics ranging from rocks and seashells to reptiles and edible or medicinal plants. He won numerous awards, like the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, after igniting in our hearts a curiosity and love for the natural world. READ a bit more about Peterson and his books… (1908)
Citizens across the nation have reported strange figures on city sidewalks. They’re white, short, and inhuman.
But this unidentified rolling object comes in peace. His name is Dax, and he’s here to help.
This summer saw the curbside debut of the Daxbot in cities around the US, developed by an Oregon-based robotics firm for the purpose of improving city sidewalks.
Moving at walking pace, they continuously perform surveys of the sidewalk level, measuring gradients, width, and vertical changes—the kinds of things that would be done by a surveyor crew. The data is packaged up and forwarded to city planners for the purpose of more easily triaging which sidewalks are more urgently in need of repair.
So far, ‘Dax’ is on the ground in Bangor, Maine; Hoboken, New Jersey; Hollister, California; Tyler, Texas; and Hilton Head, South Carolina.
It might seem like a niche job, but as a report on the Daxbot’s work in Tyler published in Straight Arrow News outlines, conditions on a black asphalt roadway under a July sun in Texas are harsh and unforgiving. Finding surveyors to work under these conditions is difficult.
In cities like Hoboken and Tyler, authorities are setting goals of zero pedestrian traffic deaths, and well-maintained level sidewalks are considered an important part of achieving them. For strollers, bikes, kick scooters, or skateboards, the old tree root that uplifts the sidewalk isn’t just an impediment, but a gentle, subconscious suggestion to move off the sidewalk and onto the road.
Though hardly a death sentence, being that much closer to moving cars is that much closer to danger. Indeed, 9 in 10 pedestrian traffic deaths will occur on the road surface, not the sidewalk. As if city planners needed anymore data to convince them using Daxbots is a good idea, one unit in Tyler was hit on a crosswalk by a truck making a right turn.
“Hoboken has become a national model for street safety because we’ve consistently invested in making our streets work better for everyone,” the city’s Mayor Emily Jabbour said.
“By combining innovative technology like Daxbot with feedback from residents and guidance from accessibility advocates, we’ll better understand where improvements are needed…”
Bangor plans to use 6 of the robots, which stand 35 inches tall and will wear hi-visibility jackets. They will cover about 6 miles of sidewalks a day.
Straight Arrow News heard from a Daxbot company spokesperson who explained that the robot, reminiscent of Pixar’s WALL-E, was first tested by delivering pizzas. It was a city planner who called one day, asking if it could survey sidewalks, that set Daxbot on the path it’s on today.
More children, seeing the robots almost inevitably offers a moment of joy and wonderment, and several cities encourage residents to take selfies or photos of the robot and post them on social media, tagging official accounts.
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It takes a village to raise a child they say. Well a story comes to us now from Alert Bay in British Columbia, where it took a village to save one.
It was a retired logger and fisherman named Gordon Mellish who first rescued three baby otters, having been told by a neighbor on the marina that the trio were tangled in a fishing net.
A small crowd gathered around the man as he cut them free. The first 2 seemed unharmed, while a 3rd wasn’t moving. CTV News’ Adam Sawatsky spoke to the man about what happened next.
“Gave the heart a little pump and nothing was going on, so I grabbed it and picked it up, I wrapped my mouth around its mouth and nose and gave it a breath of life.”
Mellish has given mouth-to-mouth CPR on 10 humans across his years on the water, but never to an otter.
Coming out of the crowd was Robin Quirk, a local whose motherly instinct drove her to care for the revived baby, building a shelter from the Sun and birds of prey, and placing down a bed for it to lie on while expert advice was consulted.
A wild animal rescue center was a long drive and a ferry ride away, so Quirk cared for the otter in her car overnight before making the trip out the next day.
“You know how if you can’t get your baby to sleep, you take it for a drive?” Robin told Sawatsky. “Well, the otter slept the whole way.”
Arriving at the rescue center, the otter spent a week in rehabilitation, before returning to Alert Bay where both Mellish and Quirk were invited to watch as the baby otter returned to the water.
Mr. Mellish relished the moment when, upon leaping into the water, the animal looked back and as he waved, nodding its head before swimming away. Subsequent sightings have confirmed that it has rejoined its siblings and mom, and it seems even to recognize Quirk—provided she whistles the lullaby she had made up in the car ride to the shelter.
Mammals have to stick together.
“A life’s a life no matter what it is,” Gordon said. “Try to do your best to save it.”
WATCH the story below…
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Pakistan has created a wildlife sanctuary along 123 miles of the Indus River where it’s estimated 440 of these extraordinary freshwater cetaceans live.
The endangered Indus River Dolphin has seen large declines in the amount of river it’s able to access as Pakistan’s economic growth drove river infrastructure projects like dams and irrigation canals.
Some 2,000 are believed to remain, with pockets of the population divided across 3 stretches of the Indus River totaling around 430 miles.
With the Punjab government’s creation of the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary, it not only safeguards the heart of the dolphin’s habitat in Punjab, but connects it with an existing protected area in neighboring Sindh Province, creating roughly 249 miles—about the length of New York State—of connected habitat under legal protection, according to WWF-Pakistan.
The WWF chapter will work closely with the governments in Islamabad and Punjab to development a management plan for the sanctuary to ensure the dolphins therein can thrive, not merely survive.
The organization has been working since the 1990s in the conservation of the dolphin, and points out that as an apex predator in the waterway, its flourishing requires a whole-of-ecosystem flourishing. If the nation can but protect its dolphins, it may very well protect the whole riverine environment at the same time.
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The University of British Columbia has taken low value timber waste and turned it into “wood foam” to replace plastic in packaging.
With one of the largest timber industries in the world, the innovation clears two hurdles in one leap: cutting back on polluting, long-lived plastics, and utilizing a waste product from an already existing industry.
Already, a pilot plant in East Vancouver is producing around 400 pounds of the so-called wood foam every day.
Among plastics, polystyrene foam is arguably the most environmentally problematic. Anyone who’s pulled a TV or coffee machine from a box filled up with the stuff will know how readily it shreds into microplastics, but what they usually don’t know is that scientists estimate it requires twice as long to breakdown as other commonly used plastics—remaining in the environment for around 1,000 years.
Speaking of remaining in the environment, at every stage of the logging supply chain, wood material is wasted. In the forest, sawdust, chips, and pulp accumulates on the forest floor and can like as a quick-burning accelerant for forest fires. On the sawmill floor, meanwhile, this residue has to constantly be gathered up and disposed of.
Substituting one for the other was obvious for the UBC team which developed the wood foam, led by Professor Feng Jiang, and the company which spun it out into a business called DicinFoam, led by CEO Richard Chen and CTO Zhu Yale.
The homogenized feedstock for the wood foam – supplied by Clare Kiernan via UBC
“We’ve made it from low-value pulp, wood fibers, and forestry residues,” Zhu told CBC News. “What we’re trying to do is we want to extract the majority of the value out of it and make it into our day-to-day packaging needs.”
The mixed-media material is homogenized before being fed into a special machine that forms the foam panels and heat presses them. The company has plans to scale up to a 1,000 tons-per-year operation on the shores of Burns Lake on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation who own the company.
“Every tree that gets harvested, 30% of the tree doesn’t get utilized,” CEO Chen said. “If we can even get a fraction of that and replace everyday existing products that are made of plastics … I feel that’s a big deal—especially when we have materials just sitting in the forest.”
If the 1,000-ton plant is a success, DicinFoam imagines a 15,000 ton-per-year plant on Vancouver Island. At this scale, the team says, the end product will be cost-competitive with the polystyrene foam they hope to replace.
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Quote of the Day: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity… and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein
Photo by: Jannes Jacobs (cropped)
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?
Happy 87th Birthday to Osage-American travel writer William Least Heat-Moon. His debut novel, Blue Highways, (1982) is a chronicle of a three-month-long road trip that Least Heat-Moon took throughout the United States in 1978 after he had lost his teaching job and been separated from his first wife. He tells how he traveled 13,000 miles, as much as possible on secondary roads, and tried to avoid cities. His second work was River-Horse during which he traveled across the US entirely on waterways. READ more about what he encountered… (1939)
Rosella spider orchids take years to flower for first time - Supplied by Andie Dittman / Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
Rosella spider orchids take years to flower for first time – Supplied by Andie Dittman / Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
There are many orchids at risk of extinction in Australia alone, few more than this rosella spider orchid.
Thanks to a dedicated team of volunteers however, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Victoria actually possess a nursery with twice as many orchids as were estimated to exist in the wild when they started, providing a stable foundation for the flower to reestablish itself.
“The orchid conservation team at the Botanic Gardens [in Victoria] have something like 500 species in propagation,” Alex McLachlan, a research scientist at the gardens, told ABC News AU.
“There’s about 8 threatened species, including non-orchid species, that are going back out into the wild this year.”
McLachlan and his colleagues describe Australia’s orchids as a “cryptic” bunch. They keep a “low profile,” often appearing as just a single green leaf like a blade of grass, if appearing above ground at all. When they flower, they’re often relying on several different cues, and they may be designed entirely to attract a single species of wasp, bee, fly, or beetle.
Each one offers a riddle that has to be solved before the plant can be saved.
The rosella spider orchid is just like this, emerging with a single purple flower between August and September, hoping to attract a single species of native bee called Leioproctus platycephalus.
Despite being native to New South Wales and Victoria states, there are only 4 locations known to contain this spider orchid, and together they add up to something not much larger than a suburb of Melbourne.
In 2000, just 120 wild rosella spider orchids were recorded. Thankfully, in 2023, that number had increased 5-fold, but not enough so that one good wildfire wouldn’t end the species’ existence.
McLachlan has over 500 plants in his nursery once waiting to be transplanted to a secret site where the bees are known to live. Getting to this point required years of hard work, as the orchids require a specific fungal species to germinate. They have symbiotic relationship with this microscopic fungus, and cannot be started from seed without it.
Not knowing the romance of the soil, the fungi, and the seeds, McLachlan and his team had to do it by hand, introducing seeds and fungal spores in a petri dish.
“The seedlings will form, and then they’re kept in our growth room back at Cranbourne,” he told ABC. “And they’ll stay in their little plates for about 3 months until they’re big enough to then go up into flasks.”
It will be another year until they’re ready to be put into soil. Recently, in July, volunteers and scientists were able to do just this, after 3 years of careful laboratory horticulture.
ABC News described the orchids of Australia as enjoying “cult” like followings, which meant that McLachlan and his colleagues had no shortage of offers for help as they trucked the young orchids out to privately-managed land and begin to stick them into the ground with cages over top to protect them.
It’s “the fun bit” but also bittersweet, as the team knows how many plants need this kind of helping hand. The good news, however, is that there are many hands ready to help with this special little flower and others like it.
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Pleopeltis polypodioides, or the 'resurrection fern' is a plant that inspired the fridge free vaccines - credit, a.dombrowski CC BY-SA 2.0
Pleopeltis polypodioides, or the ‘resurrection fern’ is a plant that inspired the fridge free vaccines – credit, a.dombrowski CC BY-SA 2.0
A new ‘fridge free’ production method for vaccines could create far more reliable immunizations for low and middle income countries, as well as cut back on waste.
Currently, it’s estimated that a large percentage of all vaccine doses are thrown out because the “cold chain,” a strict process of temperature controlled storage from the moment of production to the end-use case, is interrupted.
It’s a drawback to the medicines in high income countries, but in the Global South, where temperatures are often much higher year-round and where immunization can be the difference between life and death for millions, it’s an even bigger challenge due to modest rural medical infrastructure, and reduced refrigeration and power availability.
Seeking a better solution for vaccine transportation and storage, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is testing a powder-based vaccine product inspired by “resurrection plants,” which can appear lifeless for months before springing back to life when it rains.
The powder was shown in tests to remain stable and viable for a year, before the addition of water allowed it to be injected long after most other vaccines would have had to be thrown away. Additionally, it not only remained viable in room temperature, but after temperature cycling of -4°F to 104°, such as might be experienced by the shift from an aircraft cargo bay to the back of a truck on a rural African road.
The technology came from the resurrection plants’ own adaptations to their dry climates in Africa and South America. One is the production of a sugar called trehalose, which stabilizes the plant’s cells during drought.
The NIHR used nothing less than this very sugar to stabilize a previously-liquid tetanus-diphtheria vaccine in powder form.
Administered to 60 people as part of a trial run by the fridge-free vaccine’s co-developers Stablepharma, it was found to be safe and well-tolerated, while also producing comparable immune responses to currently utilized temperature controlled vaccines.
“This obviously has potential to remove cold chain dependence, reduce wastage and improve access,” said Professor Saul Faust, the director of the NIHR Clinical Research Facility in Southampton.
A larger trial of 160 people is scheduled to begin in the coming months. The vaccine in question is already approved for human use, so only a few steps remain towards a potential commercialization.
BBC reports that novel mRNA vaccines would not be candidates for this trehalose powder storage form, but that more traditionally-formulated vaccines would, as well as some medicines—such as monoclonal antibodies—which need to be kept in a fridge.
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Dolly Parton passed away yesterday at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer.
She leaves behind a legacy captured in many GNN stories; one of championing childhood literacy, uplifting Americans of every gender, color, and creed, and of several enduring musical hits in the country genre.
Multiple reports from family detail that she passed peacefully amid a battle with cancer surrounded by loved ones at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Born the 4th youngest of 12 in a one-room cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee, Parton would go on to become one of the most decorated figures in Showbiz, collecting 11 Grammy awards, 3 Emmys, and receiving nominations for 2 Academy awards, 6 Golden Globes, and a Tony.
Her career was built off of apostolic talent for country music, a genre she dominated with 25 #1 singles across 47 albums that cracked the top 10 for sales. She managed to write “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” in the same day no less.
It wasn’t until age 8 that she first got her fingers around a proper guitar, having shown a penchant for music even earlier. By age 12 she had already appeared in performance in church and on the radio. After graduating high school in 1964 she moved to Nashville where she was almost immediately signed to a record label with an attempt at making her a pop star. That didn’t pan out, but it was nothing less than a path which she would later be quoted as saying she always saw for herself.
“I’ve always believed things would go well, and I dreamed that they would even before I was in high school. I always wanted to be a star. It just seemed natural to me.”
She married her husband Carl Dean, 2 years out of high school, and remained in wedded bliss until 2025 when he passed away.
Too many words would be required to enumerate the accomplishments and entertainment staples, one after the other, which she would produce over the next 5 decades, but to name a few are a catalogue of 3,000 songs, stellar performances in 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Steel Magnolias, and multiple successful business ventures including into a film and television production company that produced an Academy award-winning documentary, and, among other things, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Our team, our local program partners, and every operational partner who helps make this program possible each month are heartbroken at the loss of our founder, Dolly Parton. (cont.) pic.twitter.com/xXys7ejAKQ
GNN remembers Parton as a true philanthropist. In 2018, GNN reported that Parton’s “Imagination Library” had given away its 100-millionth book to support child literacy, a milestone her nonprofit would surpass by 200% before her death.
In 1988, Parton founded the non-profit Dollywood Foundation, under which the Imagination Library would be nested, but which also ran a variety of other programs, including one which reduced the high school dropout rate in her home county of Tennessee from 35% to just 6%.
Tonight, the Empire State Building tower lights will turn to a pink sparkle at 9:25 to honor the late Dolly Parton.
Dolly was a global cultural icon whose seven-decade career reached generations of fans. Beyond entertainment, Dolly leaves a significant philanthropic legacy… pic.twitter.com/Pu5rtdfe0r
— Empire State Building Observation Deck (@EmpireStateBldg) August 25, 2026
Parton was a generous donor to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and also made “generational and transformational” donations of undisclosed amounts to the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, which was later renamed in her honor.
In 2022, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos announced that Parton’s nonprofit would be receiving the Amazon Foundation’s Courage and Civility Award, which comes with a $100 million donation to charities of the winner’s choice.
“(She) embodies these ideals so thoroughly,” said Bezos at the time. “She gives with her heart. What she’s done for kids and literacy, and so many other things, is just incredible.”
Tuesday saw flags raised to half mast on the order of the President, and the Empire State Building announced it would shine pink at the hour of 9-2-5 p.m. in honor of the star.
WATCH PBS’ tribute compilation to the great Dolly Parton…
A family of Asiatic Lions in Gir National Forest - CC 3.0. Mayankvagadiya
A family of Asiatic Lions in Gir National Forest – CC 3.0. Mayankvagadiya
The Asiatic lion populations living in western India have increased 70% over the last decade, while their rangeland has also increased 15%.
In a large protected area called the Greater Gir Landscape in Gujurat state, the animals now number 891, up from 523 lions in 2015.
Though almost entirely pictured as an African animal, subspecies of the lion ranged right the way across the Old World, from South Africa to Morocco, and from Morocco to India. All of Africa’s big cats, in fact, had such extended ranges, with cheetahs still living wild in Iran today, and leopards in Azerbaijan.
The Asiatic lion is smaller than its African brethren, and exists today only in India. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav presented the findings of the 16th Asiatic Lion Population Estimation, conducted in May 2025, in time for World Lion Day on August 10th.
The results were a growth in the population of 32% in 6 years, and 70% in 10 years.
Nearing 1,000 individuals, it’s a far cry from the 60-80 that existed in Gir in the 1980s. Since then, Yadav wrote in a column, extensive conservation efforts across the whole landscape, with a particular emphasis on rebuilding prey populations of nilgai, sambar and spotted deer, and wild pigs, has helped to rapidly multiply the big cat population.
The lions’ range has also expanded from about 30,000 square kilometers in 2020 to nearly 35,000 across 11 districts. In 1990, their range was a mere 20% of that figure.
Another crowning achievement in India’s efforts to keep the lion alive was the natural recolonization of Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, where the cats had disappeared from in the 19th century. Arriving anew in 2023, there are now 17 lions living there year-round.
It sits high on the admittedly-long list of conservation triumphs the modern Indian state has engineered, among such diverse fauna as the one-horned rhinoceros, tiger, and a suite of vulture species.
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235 years ago today, John Fitch was granted a US patent for a boat propelled by steam power which used mechanical paddles to propel it atop lakes and rivers—an invention that revolutionized commercial transportation of both passengers and freight. The American inventor, clockmaker, silversmith, surveyor, entrepreneur, and engineer, also provided beer, rum, and other supplies in 1778 to General Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. READ more about the first steam ship and its inventor… (1791)
Elena with her dog Joe, and Professor Michele Reibaldi - credit, Ospedale Molinette, supplied
Elena with her dog Joe, and Professor Michele Reibaldi – credit, Ospedale Molinette, supplied
From Turin comes a surgical world-first: the simultaneous transplant of a complete human macula, along with the cornea, sclera, and connective tissue, from one of the patient’s eyes to the other.
It allowed a woman blind for several years to immediately gain enough vision to recognize both her son and her faithful canine companion, Joe.
La Stampa, a Turn-based national newspaper, reported that the intervention was lead by the “intuition” of ocular surgeon Professor Michele Reibaldi, who himself described the process as a “complicated marathon,” lasting 6 hours and requiring careful coordination by surgeons, anesthetists, and orderlies.
The patient was 67-year-old Elena, who lost her eyesight in a road incident which completely severed the optic nerve in her left eye. Responsible for transmitting light absorbed and delineated through the eye to the brain, the irreversible damage was not shared by the rest of eye tissues, which remained largely intact.
In an interesting coincidence, the reverse was true for her right eye. While the optic nerve was undamaged, the trauma of the crash destroyed other parts of her eye including the retina, the cornea, and the portion of the eye containing ocular stem cells, rendering any hope of a normal corneal transplant impossible.
In short, there was enough undamaged components between her two eyes to create one that could function. The only problem was that it would require a surgery never done in the history of medicine, a macular transplant. The macula is a small, light-sensitive region at the back of the retina, itself located in the middle of the eyeball, responsible for high-definition sight. The common cause of blindness, macular degeneration, refers to this small tissue.
Elena also needed a new cornea, and the sclera—the white of the eyeball. Professor Reibaldi resolved to salvage those from the left eye and transplant them all to the right eye, in which the ocular nerve was preserved through the crash.
“This procedure represents a new frontier in ocular surgery,” Reibaldi, who practices at the Molinette Hospital in Turn’s City of Health and Science, said according to a translation. “Before today, such a contemporaneous transplant of the anterior eye tissue had occurred just once before, while the central retina has never been possible.”
“Now we will wait and see how well the transplanted retina functions, though early signs are encouraging.”
Follow-ups have confirmed that the tissues have reattached correctly, and that Elena is regaining sight in her right eye.
Reibaldi praised the extraordinary collaboration within the team which carried out the procedure, before adding that the biggest prize for them was “the incredible moment in which Elena, opening her eyes, could finally recognize her son and faithful companion in life, Joe the dog.”
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A Japanese pharma company has developed a drug that treats the root cause of a leading form of narcolepsy, and is celebrating as it becomes the first of its kind to receive American FDA approval.
Narcolepsy type-1 afflicts 120,000 people in the US, and is characterized by sudden bouts of intense daytime drowsiness, disrupted nighttime sleep, and cataplexy, or sudden muscle weakness while awake
Traditionally treated by simulants to stay awake, or nervous system depressants to dampen cataplexy, this new drug mimics the body’s production of orexin, a compound that helps regulate wakefulness that is disrupted in patients with narcolepsy.
Called Orzeyful, it’s been developed by Takeda, and Tiffany Farchione, MD, Director of the FDA’s Division of Psychiatry, celebrated its approval in an August 5th statement.
“For too long, people with narcolepsy type 1 have had to manage a complex, lifelong neuropsychiatric condition with treatments that only address pieces of it,” said Farchione. “This new drug is the first medicine that impacts the underlying biology of the disease, treating narcolepsy type 1 as a whole.”
Its developers likewise celebrated the milestone.
“The FDA approval of Orzeyful marks a new chapter for the narcolepsy type 1 community, as we introduce an entirely new class of medicine that will potentially redefine how this disease is managed and how people feel on treatment,” says Takeda president and CEO Julie Kim in a separate statement.
The final stage trials that paved the way for approval demonstrated safety and efficacy in 273 patients. Compared to placebo, those who took the twice-daily pill for 12 weeks were able to stay awake longer during the day and rest better at night.
“It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me,” Tyler Chapman, who participated in one of the clinical trials, told Nature’s in-house press publication. “My quality of life is so much better.”
There were side effects, including of a severity that saw some participants removed from the trial. The most common serious side effects were increased frequency and urgency to urinate, and—ironically—insomnia. Nevertheless the side effect occurrence was considered low.
Orexin, the chemical signaling molecule produced by brain cells which die in narcolepsy type-1, has been linked to other neurological conditions like ADHD, and even Parkinson’s, and with Orzeyful’s FDA approval comes the potential for future research into its utility as a neuro-modulator.
“Orzeyful is just the beginning. With orexin emerging as a powerful therapeutic pathway, Takeda is unlocking the potential of this new class of medicine for patients across a range of disorders,” says Andy Plump, the company’s president of research and development, in also the statement.
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- credit, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, released to GNN
– credit, San Diego Zoo Alliance, released to GNN
American amphibian lovers will be jumping for joy at the news of 3,000 frogs and tadpoles from an endangered species bred and released into their former mountain homes.
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been breeding and reintroducing the endangered mountain yellow-legged frog for decades into the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains.
A mountain yellow legged frog – credit, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, released to GNN
Leaving their small carrying crates to take their first hops into the wild world, zoo conservationists smiled as they watched some 3,000 native amphibians disappear into the waters of Bluff Lake in the Big Bear area, one of several sites where reintroductions have taken place this year.
Once historically abundant, the species has declined by more than 98%. The species faces a number of threats, including disease, introduced predators, wildfire and drought. Conservation teams continue to monitor reintroduced frogs to track their health, survival and success in their native mountain habitats.
The frogs were bred at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Beckman Center for Conservation Research as part of a 20-year conservation breeding and reintroduction program. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and its partners, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, have been working to conserve the species since 2006.
What began as a rescue effort has grown into a comprehensive conservation program focused on breeding, genetic diversity, disease management, reproductive research, and reintroduction.
To date, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has reintroduced over 10,000 mountain yellow-legged frogs and tadpoles into high-elevation mountain habitats and continues to work with partners to restore this species in the wild.
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