A group of students at Atlanta’s Ron Clark Academy thought they’d just be performing their song ‘Dear Obama’ at a news conference on Wednesday.
But after finishing the song, the kids got a big surprise.
See the song in the video below; the surprise comes at the end.
Charlotte dentist Robert Pappert prized the hockey stick he bought New Year’s Day after a special NHL game in Chicago.
That is, until he learned it was stolen from a 14-year-old Detroit Red Wings fan who was given the souvenir after the game by a star Wings player.
Horrified, Pappert overnight-mailed the stick back to the young fan on Monday – an act that has made him a hero of sorts for what some in hockey circles are calling the “Miracle of Nice.” (Chicago Tribune.com)
A potentially effective new antibiotic has been discovered in the secretions of maggots. The serum, called Seraticin, is undergoing testing in Wales but has been so far effective against up to 12 different strains of the superbug Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), as well as the food poisoning bacterium Escherichia coli and Clostridium difficile, which have collectively caused 22,000 deaths in England and Wales from 2002-2006. (Full story from ITN in the UK)
Even after daytime users drive home, parking lots and garages light up the night. Evening users are few, but for safety reasons, the lights stay on.
Yesterday, the California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis debuted an innovative, highly efficient, greener way to park cars that additionally provides more safety for students and motorists using parking garages.
Michael Siminovitch, director of the school’s lighting-center and a professor in the Design Program, saw all that wasted light and knew there had to be a better way.
The innovative result, unveiled in a UC Davis parking garage after two years of development and field testing, is a highly efficient greener way to park cars.
The system uses about 20 percent of the energy of conventional parking lighting systems, yet provides better safety, reduces light pollution and makes less toxic waste.
This bi-level lighting, part of UC Davis’ Smart Lighting Initiative, is already serving six UC Davis sites (three parking areas, one pathway network and two building exteriors), as well as Sacramento State University and Arcade Creek Park in Sacramento.
The safety feature uses motion detectors to alert people of nearby movement. The lights in the garage switch from low brightness to high signaling to people using the garage that there is another car or person moving nearby — and transmits that information to security personnel, as well. (Photo: LED fixture created by lighting design student)
Impressed with the economy and safety of the greener garage, other Universities are adopting the design, including UC Santa Barbara; Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; Tianjin Polytechnic University in China; University of Notre Dame; North Carolina State University; and University of Arkansas.
The new system includes LED fixtures and motion sensors:
“Switching to LED lights and adding bi-level activity-sensing technology yields energy savings for the project of 50 percent when the lights are at full power and 80 percent when they are in low mode. As for maintenance savings, we project they will be 42 percent of what we spent on the fixtures that were replaced,” Siminovitch said. “Even at half power, the LED fixtures are delivering plenty of light to the space. We may be able to cut levels further, saving even more electricity and lengthening fixture lifetimes.”
The Smart Lighting Initiative is a collaboration with California energy regulators and providers, and a handful of key firms in the lighting industry:
– PG&E offered incentives as part of a University of California systemwide energy initiative and supplied partial funding based on demonstrated energy savings.
– Ruud Lighting/BetaLED of Sturtevant, Wisc. supplied the LED light fixtures; and
– Watt Stopper/Legrand of Santa Clara, Calif. supplied the occupancy sensors.
The California Lighting Technology Center is part of the Design Program at UC Davis. The center is a research and education facility that focuses on the application of energy-efficient lighting and daylighting technologies through research, development, demonstration, outreach, and education in partnership with utilities, manufacturers, end users, builders, designers and governmental agencies. The center was established through a collaborative effort of the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program and UC Davis, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
The call that awakened Dr. Todd Mitchell recently gave him chills. A woman and her twin 11-year-old grandsons had eaten soup made from deadly mushrooms they picked in the woods. What followed was a day-long search for a way to procure a new antidote from Germany, a non-FDA approved treatment used in Europe, called Legalon-Sil. They needed the serum fast, but the drug companies were closed for the holidays. Death cap mushrooms, one of the most poisonous of all known toadstools, will cause rapid liver and kidney failure, especially in children, if left untreated. Read the suspenseful tale of this quick-thinking Santa Cruz doctor published in the San Jose Mercury News.
(Thanks to Jeanine for sending the link!)
Two clerics have joined Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, fasting in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, who face a collapsing economy and political order amid reports of a possible military coup.
Tutu called for support of the fast on South Africa’s Radio 702 on Sunday. “If we would [only] have more people saying ‘I will fast’, maybe one day a week – just to identify with our sisters and brothers in Zimbabwe,” said Tutu in his interview. Tutu said he was now fasting once a week.
In the new 111th Congress, the Democratic Senate with its slim majority, in its first order of business this year advanced legislation Sunday that would protect more than 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states, the largest expansion of wilderness protection in 25 years. (Details at Bloomberg.com)
An American pilot from the first all-black flying unit, the Tuskegee Airmen from World War II, will attend Barack Obama’s inauguration as an honored guest.
that served in Europe during World War II. He was one of only fifteen pilots to shoot down the advanced German Me-262 jet fighter.
All 330 surviving members of the the Tuskegee Airmen have been invited to the Inauguration Day swearing-in ceremony.
It’s every kid’s dream, but one such kid grew up an inventor and made his dream a reality. Gilo Cardozo created the world’s first bio-fueled flying car, a machine that can drive like a car and fly like an airplane.
On Wednesday, Cardozo and adventurer Neil Laughton will set off in the flying car from London. They will make an amazing 42-day expedition that will take them through the Sahara to Tombouctou. A convoy of support vehicles will accompany the team every step of the way. The journey will cover a total of 6,400 kilometres.
The flying car, better known as the Skycar has been developed and built with the help of sponsors for about £250,000. On the road, the Skycar takes barely three minutes to convert into an aircraft. Cardozo, who already invented a parajet engine that could carry him up to the heights of the Mount Everest in 2007, plans to sell the Skycar commercially to the public at £50,000 per vehicle. (Feature story at BBC News)
(Photo of Skycar is a mock up)
On the opening day of the Detroit auto show, US-based automakers touted new products with a focus on fuel efficiency that they say will help return them to financial health. For instance, a plug-in hybrid version of the Jeep Patriot compact utility vehicle, pictured at right, was unveiled by Chrysler. (More cars in vdeo below)
Also, read, “Detroit Three Change Gears to Go Green”, at Toronto Globe and Mail.
As Washington DC gets ready for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black President, some older Americans are moved to tears by the changes in racial equality over the years. (Video below from the AP)
The agreement on the transit of Russian gas to the European Union without any conditions has finally been signed by the Ukraine. The cut in Russian gas supplies had left hundreds of thousands of people in Central and Eastern Europe without heating, struggling to keep warm during one of the harshest winters in years.
Peru’s booming economy is expected to post its fastest annual growth rate since 1994 for 2008 — 9.1 percent, up from 8.9 percent in 2007, the central bank said on Friday. Peru has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. (Full report from Reuters.com)
Intel Chairman Craig Barrett announced the launch on Friday of the Small Things Challenge, a one-year charity program that will cost his company a nickel every time someone clicks a button that says, “We’ll Donate 5 Cents for You.” The Intel donation this year, up to $400,000, and citizen action generated during the campaign will benefit two charities, Kiva.org and Save the Children.
The Small Things Challenge is a campaign based on the premise that every small action can make a big difference in the world. The website, smallthingschallenge.com, urges people to click, send an e-mail to their friends, and donate a small amount of money themselves, to become part of the solution to global poverty.
If an antibiotic is just what the doctor orders for your infection this winter, you can get a free prescription at either Giant food store or Wegmans pharmacies. Both east coast grocery chains have decided to offer free generic antibiotics to customers, without a limit, during the next three months.
As competition for consumer dollars increases, Wal-Mart, with it’s $4.00 generic prescriptions, will lose some ground, here, in the race for pharmacy customers. Drug sales typically make up about 10 percent of revenue at grocery stores.
“We understand the economic pressures families are facing, including the rising cost of health care, which is something I’m especially concerned about,” says CEO Danny Wegman. “We hope this program will help families better cope with those expenses.”
This is the first time Giant has offered a totally free program. In the past they have provided generic prescriptions for $3.99. “Times are tough,” said Robin Michel, executive vice president for Giant Food, which is based in Landover, Maryland. “We wanted to provide something to help customers – something they may need more of during the colder months.”
Publix, a Florida-based grocery chain, debuted a no-cost antibiotics plan for its 684 pharmacies in 2007. It filled its one-millionth free antibiotic a year ago.
Wal-Mart’s $4 plan, launched in 2006, is still extremely valuable to consumers because it includes drugs, unlike antibiotics, that are prescribed for many years on end.
Other stores that have lowered drug prices include Schnucks and Martin’s supermarkets.
Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. is a 72-store family-owned supermarket chain with stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland. Giant has 184 supermarkets –164 with pharmacies — in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and D.C.
Last week, the prospect that a 140-year-old lobster confined to a tank inside a New York seafood restaurant would ever see his ocean home again were bleak at best. Now, George, the 20-pound crustacean, will get a second shot at life after the good folks at City Crab and Seafood agreed to ship the lucky lobster to Maine, and release him back into the wild.
As long as George remains in Maine, he won’t have to worry about ending his life in a pot of boiling water. Fishermen are barred from keeping lobsters that exceed the state’s legal size limit. View related photos and Full AP story at MSNBC.com.
The Venezuelan government reversed course Wednesday, announcing that its US oil subsidiary would continue to provide free home heating oil to poor Americans two days after the government announced that the program had been suspended. Venezuela reinstated the program, which saved some 180,000 US households around $260 apiece in 2008. That covered about one month’s heating bill. (Christian Science Monitor)
A pair of red-vented cockatoos, amoung the rarest birds in the world, were discovered in the Southmead area after being stolen from Bristol Zoo in England. The Parrots, native to the Philippines, will again be properly cared for and resume their critical role in a breeding program to ensure the continued survival of the species. (Read the full story at BBC)
Green energy and proponents were elated on Thursday by President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus speech, which asked Congress “to act without delay” to pass legislation that included doubling alternative energy production in the next three years and building a new electricity “smart grid.”
He said he also planned to modernize 75 percent of federal buildings, which would save billions of dollars in the long term, and improve energy efficiency in 2 million homes to save consumers billions on their own energy bills. (From Reuters News)
In times of financial hardship, it helps to have a role model like the father who was named by a UK TV show ‘The Tightest Man In Britain’.
He has worn the same shoes since 1987, does not visit the cinema or pub, and insists, “A lot of people can learn from me.” He did pay cash recently (£540) for a new HD TV after his 14-year-old model broke.
If you want to read about how tight someone can be, the full story is on BBC.
