165 years ago today, the Open Championship, also known as the British Open, was first played in Scotland, at the Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire. The oldest golf tournament in the world, and one of the four prestigious majors, it rotates between a select group of coastal UK golf courses. READ more about its history… (1860)
Well-Exercised Mice Passed Natural Fitness to Their Male Offspring, But Not Through DNA
Reprinted with Permission from World at Large…
What if there were a way that didn’t involve CRISPR to give your offspring a natural talent for athletics?
Well that’s totally possible as it turns out, because scientists just demonstrated it in mice, and it didn’t even involve so-called “good genes”.
It involved a modern and exciting field of genetic biology called epigenetics: a term that refers to adaptations to genetic expression in response to life stressors. Here, the actual nature of the DNA doesn’t change, but adaptations packaged in the similarly important RNA made their way into sperm cells, the embryo, and the offspring.
The story of this fascinating innovation begins in Nanjing University, where lead investigator on the study Xin Yin used to notice during his time as an undergraduate that the children of athletes seemed to possess a natural talent for sports. The reproductive biologist didn’t really see the sense in it; certainly, genes coding for larger lung volume would increase a child’s ability to run, but what could explain having a ‘knack’ for what takes months and years of training to master? There’s no gene that codes for having a knack.
This curiosity led Yin to launch a research project with a fellow reproductive biologist at Nanjing to see whether a male mouse’s mastery of treadmill running could somehow imprint onto his offspring. Together with his co-authors, Yin subjected male mice to treadmill work everyday for 2 weeks before breeding them with female mice who did not exercise.
What they found was remarkable. The mice thusly born possessed more oxidative muscle fibers, could run for longer on treadmills, and were more resistant to weight gain from a high-fat diet, than the offspring of sedentary male and female mice. During the study period, Yin and his team sequenced the microRNA snippets in the sperm cells and the fertilized egg, and after observing the significant athletic adaptations, went back to see what might be causing it.
Exercise boosts the levels of a protein called PGC-1 alpha in muscle cells, where it activates genes that build more mitochondria, the organelles responsible for cellular energy and metabolism. PGC-1A is suppressed by another protein called NCoR1. In the exercised mice, sperm-bound microRNAs which proliferate under conditions of exercise target, once inside the mouse embryo, NCoR1. In effect, these RNAs released a natural, cellular brake on the development of metabolic power and muscle function.
A true breakthrough
To triple check whether or not classic genetic transfer was behind this adaptation for countering NCoR1, the researchers looked through 10 of the microRNAs that seemed most likely confer the exercise benefits, selected one in particular, and injected it into embryos fertilized by untrained fathers. Just that action alone, a single, non-DNA molecule, was enough to reproduce the endurance benefits seen in trained fathers.
Biologists commenting on the study to Science Magazine said they were “surprised” that a single RNA could have such an impact.
With that in mind, and to investigate whether similar effects were at work in humans, the team collected sperm from 8 men who trained regularly and 24 others who didn’t. An examination revealed that the equivalents of 7 of the 10 miRNAs seen in the mouse model were elevated in the sperm of trained men.
It’s the first study to show that RNA can pass down the benefits of exercise, commented Colin Conine, an epigeneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the work but who called it “really a novel paradigm”. It probably suggests that the lifestyle choices of fathers need to be looked at with more scrutiny than in the past, he said.
Caveats included that the endurance/exercise benefit was only seen in male offspring, suggesting the sperm microRNAs only make it through the paternal germline. Grandchildren never received the benefit their parents did.
Yin’s study couldn’t go so far as to investigate the mechanism behind the transfer: why and how did exercise affect sperm? How did the microRNAs pass through the blood-testes barrier? How did they reach the epididymis, the tubes where sperm cells mature? They had time and data to present two hypotheses: that exercise codes for the creation of small-extracellular vesicles which themselves have the capacity to bring microRNA through the testes-blood barrier, or that within the blanket hormonal response of exercise, steroids and thyroid hormones may alter microRNA expression in sperm directly, without relying on the blood stream.
The authors are now extremely curious to know what other effects microRNAs packaged in sperm cells are having on the father’s offspring. WaL
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Everglades Farm Is Reviving Florida’s Oyster Industry, Making the Tables of Michelin-Starred Restaurants
From the restaurant scene in Miami to the fan-powered boats of the Everglades, people are really excited about oysters.
Can you imagine—the bivalve so associated with cold waters in places like Brittany, Sydney, Galway, or California, being grown in the muddy, tropical Everglades?
If your first instinct was to swear never to eat one, maybe you should listen to what Josh Wilkie and Fabio Galarce are saying, as they harvest dozen after dozen for Michelin-starred Miami restaurants.
“We have to focus on educating and combating this stigma or as we like to call it, prejudice,” Galarce told the Miami Herald. “We’re finding that the oysters love it here. People think of the Everglades as just a muddy swamp, but it’s actually a beautiful tropical paradise.”
Galarce and Wilkie are the co-founders of Everglades Oysters, a company that provides artisanal oyster supplies to restaurants around Florida from a 74-acre nursery sandwiched between 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge and one of the Gulf of Mexico’s most productive bull shark nurseries.
In this “tropical paradise,” lined with mangroves and teeming with wildlife, 200,000 oysters are raised in baskets connected to a floating flip-farm system. Strung out in a long black line that appears almost like a gangplank, the swaying of the baskets below help cultivate the prized cup-like shape of a good restaurant oyster.
The animals are filter feeders, and rather than filtering the sea, as is the case with so many oysters one will eat at restaurants, these bivalves get their flavor from the drainage of Lake Okeechobee running through the glades.
Why, you might ask, would anyone want to eat a filter feeder who filters a swampy freshwater lake? Easy answer, as it turns out: they’re delicious.
Just ask five-time Michelin-starred chef Michael White, whose restaurant Mirabella in Miami Beach said that Everglades Oysters harvest at the moment of order, and ship them in a jiffy—fresher than any oyster they could ever hope to get from colder waters.
Jeremy Ford, another Michelin-starred chef, this time at Miami’s Stubborn Seed restaurant, used to import oysters from as far away as the Pacific Northwest. But always on the lookout for Florida produce, Ford said Galarce and Wilkie’s oysters “ticked all the boxes.”
OTHER SIMILAR TOPICS: Restaurants Find Companies to Take Their Spent Oyster Shells to Restore Oyster Reefs
The Herald did outline that eating oysters from warm climates comes with a risk of vibrio, a nasty bacterial pathogen that can cause severe illness and even death. Restaurants that serve oysters in Florida have to alert their customers as to this very risk, and Everglades Oysters will harvest in response to orders, not in anticipation of them, in order to reduce this as much as possible.
Galarce and Wilkie are looking to do so much more than run a profitable business, or even create a culture of southern oysters. Florida’s historic oyster reef coverage has been decimated by oil spills, storms, coastal development, water pollution, and erosion.
Oyster reefs provide significant benefits to people and wildlife. When large enough, they help to dampen storm surges, and each little oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day, making them ideal for keeping water quality along the coast in top condition. To help build these reefs back up, Everglades Oysters and other small oyster farmers collect spent shells from restaurants and pile them back into the water to give oyster larvae something to glom onto.
MORE OYSTER STORIES: World’s Largest Oyster Restoration Is Big Success – Fulfilling Virginia’s Promise to Chesapeake Bay Rivers
Ancient Native Americans actually built islands from oyster shells, and it’s that kind of tradition and harmony with nature that Everglades Oysters is all about.
“If we grow more oysters, we clean more water. If you sell more local oysters, you help the local farmers. You consume more oysters, people are getting sustainable protein,” Galarce told Miami Herald. “You return it to the water, we build more reefs.”
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Female Archaeologists Uncover Lost Land Bridge That May Rewrite European History
Stretches of land, now hidden beneath the sea, may have given early humans a way to move between what is today Turkey and Europe, according to groundbreaking new research in this little-studied region.
The recently published study reveals the first evidence of Paleolithic activity in Ayvalık, and may reshape how scientists understand our species’ journey into Europe.
The prehistoric peopling of Europe has long been documented as occurring in waves from the western edge of Eurasia. For decades, experts believed that Homo sapiens reached Europe mainly by traveling through the Balkans and the Levant, moving from Africa into the Middle East.
However, the discovery of 138 stone tools spread across 10 sites within a 200 km² area suggests a different possibility.
According to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, long before Ayvalık became known for its olive groves and seaside scenery, this part of the northeastern Aegean coast (now in Turkey) may have served as another key passageway for ancient humans exploring a shifting prehistoric world.
“It was a truly unforgettable moment for us, holding the first tools in our hands was both emotional and inspiring,” explains Dr. Göknur Karahan, from the Department of Archaeology-Prehistory, at Hacettepe University, in Turkey, who was part of a fully female team of expert archaeologists from the country.
“And each find from there on was a moment of excitement for the whole team. Our archaeological discovery has unveiled that this now-idyllic region once potentially offered a vital land bridge for human movement during the Pleistocene era—when sea levels dropped and the now-submerged landscape was briefly exposed.”
“We are very excited and delighted with this discovery. These findings mark Ayvalık as a potential new frontier in the story of human evolution, placing it firmly on the map of human prehistory—opening up a new possibility for how early humans may have entered Europe,” Karahan added. “It feels like we are adding an entirely new page to the story of human dispersal.”
During the Ice Age, sea levels dropped more than 300 feet, revealing vast coastal plains that are now underwater. At that time, the modern islands and peninsulas of Ayvalık would have formed a single stretch of land, creating a natural bridge that linked Anatolia to Europe.
The artifacts found in the new study were discovered along the present-day coastline, providing evidence that people once lived and traveled across these now-submerged landscapes.
Until now, environmental conditions and deep sediment layers had made it difficult to detect or preserve traces of early human activity in the region.
“In all these periods, the present-day islands and peninsulas of Ayvalık would have formed interior zones within an expansive terrestrial environment,” explains co-author Professor Kadriye Özçelik, from Ankara University.
The region’s shifting geology and active coastlines in the North Aegean made preservation difficult and the number of items uncovered “limited,” however this research team managed to uncover Levallois-style stone cutting technologies from various Paleolithic periods, as well as handaxes and cleavers.
Among the most significant finds include Levallois-style flake tools, sophisticated implements often associated with Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens.
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“These large cutting tools are among the most iconic artifacts of the Paleolithic and are instantly recognizable even today, so are a very important find,” explains Dr. Karahan.
“The presence of these objects in Ayvalık is particularly significant, as they provide direct evidence that the region was part of wider technological traditions shared across Africa, Asia, and Europe.”
“Holding these objects—after walking across landscapes where no one had ever documented Paleolithic remains before—was unforgettable.”
MORE PALEOARCHAEOLOGY: Scientists Use Stones to Build Canoe Like Their Ancestors and Sailed it 140 Miles Across Dangerous Waters
The authors collectively recommended further research in the area that would integrate absolute dating, stratigraphic excavation, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction to better clarify the the time periods when the tools were used.
“Multidisciplinary approaches will help illuminate the region’s role not as a peripheral landscape, but as an active corridor of Paleolithic interaction and innovation.”
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Library is Rescuing Historical Treasures Trapped on Old Floppy Disks from the ‘Digital Dark Ages’
Cambridge University archivists are leading an important project to extract and conserve valuable information from floppy disks before they become unusable.
The initiative began when the archive received a box of 5.25-inch floppy disks from a DOS-formatted computer that belonged to none other than physicist Steven Hawking, who was able to use early computers despite his disability from ALS.
The challenges a group of archivists encountered when they attempted to read the disks helped them realize how vulnerable this funny, briefly adopted technology which predate compact disks is to the ravages of time, and how a clock was ticking to get important information off them before they became unusable.
It spawned a project, aptly named in our current pop-culture environment: “Future Nostalgia.”
Before the term was chased from the historical lexicon with torches and pitchforks, “the Dark Ages” were used to describe the period in European history when primary source writings are particularly scant—between the fall of Rome and the Middle Ages.
The Future Nostalgia project presents the case that the late 20th century may form a sort of dark ages when historians in the future look back on our time and see a big hole in early computer writings. Certainly books and magazines and newspapers are available a-plenty, but if floppy disks and other early technologies aren’t kept in good order, early computer writings may seem sparce to future historians.
Floppy disks present numerous challenges to archivists, among which were the multiple formats they were built and coded for.
“There wasn’t one system that dominated the market,” explains Leontien Talboom, a member of the Cambridge University Library’s digital preservation team who is leading the project.
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That means that as many as a dozen different early computing systems are needed to read the full spectrum of floppy disk formats, and it’s not always straight forward finding these machines.
Nor is it straightforward that the disks themselves are readable. They may be moldy, if stowed away in an attic for example. Iron oxide on the surface of the plastic may corrode material away. It can also lose its magnetism, preventing it being from read entirely.
OTHER TREASURES FROM CAMBRIDGE: Ancient Grammatical Puzzle That Has Baffled Scientists for 2,500 Years Solved by Cambridge University Student
That is why Talboom and her team are urgently trying to acquire collections of noteworthy writers or authors—like Hawking—and further digitize them from their early floppy disk format. So far, in addition to Hawking, they’ve uncovered abstract lists by the poet Nicholas Moore, articles from a society of the paranormal, and more.
“Most of the donations we get are from people who are either retiring or passing away,” Talboom told the BBC. “That means we’re seeing more and more things from the era of personal computing.”
Not only are donations coming from those retired or passed, but so is a lot of information on how to use different formats. An example comes from the archivists’ work with a set of floppy disks that contained speeches and letters with constituents of Neil Kinnock, a UK labor party leader in the 1980s.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Volunteer for the National Archives to Translate Cursive Handwriting for Modern Newbies
“They were written on the Diamond Word processor,” explained Chris Knowles, a participant in the Future Nostalgia project.” There’s not much information about that system out there. There are lots of fan communities around any system that had games, and archivists often borrow their tools. But where that doesn’t exist, it’s more awkward.”
Work continues, and Talboom is more and more eager to have the public’s involvement with the project. She sees it as a win-win partnership: owners of floppy disks get to see what kind of materials their old colleagues or family members wrote onto them, and Future Nostalgia gets more material, but also more knowledge and practice about how to access and preserve floppy disk formats and the material they contain.
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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Quote of the Day: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” – Rainer Maria Rilke, poet
Photo by: Darius Bashar (cropped)
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?
Good News in History, October 16
56 years ago today, New York’s underdog baseball crew ‘The Miracle Mets’ won the World Series in just 5 games, a romantic triumph over a heavily-favored Orioles team. In the seven previous seasons, the Mets had never finished higher than ninth place and consistently lost one hundred games. Yet, starting in May, the Mets delivered an astonishing record of 82–39. They won 38 of their last 49 games, finishing eight games ahead of the Cubs—one of the largest turnarounds in MLB history. WATCH a tribute… (1969)
Female-Led Arab Team Turn Coffee and Plastic Waste into Activated Carbon, Capturing CO2 in the Atmosphere
A new technology utilizing coffee and plastic waste is designed to capture carbon dioxide from industrial processes before it’s released into the atmosphere, and has been patented by scientists.
The highly novel and detailed method with promising potential to reduce environmental pollution utilizes a blend of spent coffee grounds, polyethylene terephthalate, (PET) and potassium hydroxide, a strong alkaline chemical.
The components together form an effective material for CO₂ adsorption, say the research team based in the United Arab Emirates.
Globally, an estimated eight million tons of spent coffee grounds are discarded annually, mostly ending up in landfills where they emit methane and other greenhouse gases. PET is a member of the polyester family and widely used in consumer packaging.
Potassium hydroxide serves as a powerful activating agent in the process, enhancing the material’s ability to trap carbon, and the researchers at the University of Sharjah combine the three to create activated carbon—a common component in many consumer and industrial products, which when used would trap the carbon.
“What begins with a Starbucks coffee cup and a discarded plastic water bottle can become a powerful tool in the fight against climate change through the production of activated carbon,” boasted study leader Dr. Haif Aljomard.
She says the process operates at an activation temperature of 600 °C, much lower than conventional thermal recycling methods for plastic, and emphasized that the patent presents “significant” findings in the synthesis of activated carbon from waste materials, and the waste-to-resource approach that underpins the technology.
SIMILAR STORIES TO THIS: Concrete Made 30% Stronger by Adding Waste Coffee Grounds–Cutting Emissions and Mining in the Process
“This invention repurposes two abundant waste streams—coffee and plastic—into a high-performance adsorbent,” Dr. Aljomard added. “The resulting activated carbon shows strong potential for capturing CO₂ from fossil fuel-based energy systems, contributing to the reduction of air pollution.”
Activated carbon is utilized in a broad spectrum of industrial and consumer product, including gas purification and drinking water filtration, as well as swimming pool, aquarium, wastewater, and sewage treatment systems.
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Mushroom-Powered Outhouse in University Garden Composts Waste with No Smell
Scientists have used the root system of mushrooms to create a composting toilet that is odor absorbing, while creating over 2,000 liters of fertilizer and soil a year.
Separating solids from from liquids and processing each in different ways using fungal mycelia, the toilet can currently be found in the University of BC botanic gardens.
Called the MycoToilet, it was developed by Steven Hallam, a professor of microbiology at UBC, and Joseph Dahmen, the project’s lead and an associate professor at the university’s School of Architecture.
Together, they hope to rethink a product and system that many people take for granted, starting with their students, most of whom were unable to answer the question: what happens to human waste after the toilet is flushed, said Dahmen.
“We wanted to turn a daily routine everyone knows into a pleasant experience that reminds us of our connection to ecological cycles.”
The waterless toilet separates liquid from solid human waste, with the solids ending up an a mycelia-lined compartment where laboratory tests say 90% of the odor-causing compounds are eliminated. The feces are then converted, slowly but surely, into soil, 600 liters of which can be generated in a year of use, with the liquid waste creating some 2,000 liters of liquid fertilizer.
Not all wastewater treatment plants in the US or the world can produce fertilizer from the waste they collect. In many instances, it’s merely sanitized within the regulatory limits, and dumped into the sea or rivers in the form of one of the least-pleasant words in the English language: ‘effluent.’
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“Waste is a function of our values, and if we can rethink what we value in this context, there’s lots of useful material in these effluents, and we can recover that, then we’re adding value back and creating a more circular model for the economy and our lives,” Hallam told CBC.
MUSHROOM STORIES: Packet of Fungi Inside New Diapers Breaks Them Down in Landfill Turning it to Mycelium
Hallam and Dahmen will be evaluating the performance of the various species of fungus they’ve used in the compartments to see which is able to compost or odor-eat the best during the 6-month trial run in the campus botanical garden where it looks right at home amid the woods with its ceder panels.
Mushrooms have been theorized as a way to break down virtually anything in our society, from nuclear waste to our own bodies, as the organisms work symbiotically with the whole soil microenvironment to disassemble even the most complex of molecules.
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Scientists ‘Cultivate’ Metal Instead of 3D Printing it–and it’s 20x Stronger
Swiss researchers have pioneered a method of cultivating metal out of water-based gel, an innovation that promises valuable applications in energy technology.
The concept aims to power the production of unique sensors, biomedical devices, or energy conversion and storage components.
Scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, have created dense, high-strength structures by injecting hydrogel with metal salts of various minerals like iron and copper. Early results show materials 20-times stronger with much less shrinkage than earlier methods.
As novel a concept as “cultivating metal” sounds like, it’s actually been done before, but challenges presented themselves which could not be overcome in these previous experiments.
They involved vat photopolymerization—a type of 3D printing that sees pouring a light-reactive liquid resin into a container and then solidifying specific areas with a laser or ultraviolet light to create a shape. However, because this method only works with light-sensitive polymers, its practical uses are limited.
Daryl Yee, who leads the Laboratory for the Chemistry of Materials and Manufacturing at EPFL’s School of Engineering, said these earlier approaches have major flaws.
“These materials tend to be porous, which significantly reduces their strength, and the parts suffer from excessive shrinkage, which causes warping,” he told his university press.
To address these issues, Yee and his team have introduced a new approach described in their paper published in Advanced Materials. Instead of hardening a resin already mixed with metal compounds, the researchers first 3D print a framework using a simple water-based gel known as a hydrogel. They then soak this “blank” structure in metal salts, which are chemically converted into tiny metal-containing nanoparticles that spread throughout the gel. Repeating this process multiple times allows them to create composites with very high metal content.
After 5–10 of these “growth cycles,” the remaining hydrogel is removed through heating, leaving behind a dense metal or ceramic object that precisely matches the shape of the original printed gel. Because the metal salts are added only after printing, the same hydrogel template can be used to make a variety of different metals, ceramics, or composite materials.
“Our work not only enables the fabrication of high-quality metals and ceramics with an accessible, low-cost 3D printing process; it also highlights a new paradigm in additive manufacturing where material selection occurs after 3D printing, rather than before,” Yee summarizes.
For their study, the team fabricated intricate mathematical lattice shapes called gyroids out of iron, silver, and copper, demonstrating their technique’s ability to produce strong yet complex structures. To test the strength of their materials, they used a device called a universal testing machine to apply increasing pressure to the gyroids.
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“Our materials could withstand 20 times more pressure compared to those produced with previous methods, while exhibiting only 20% shrinkage versus 60-90%,” says PhD student and first author Yiming Ji.
The scientists say their technique is especially interesting for the fabrication of advanced three-dimensional forms that must be simultaneously strong, lightweight, and complex. For example, metal catalysts are essential for enabling reactions that convert chemical energy into electricity. Other applications could include high-surface area metals with advanced cooling properties for energy technologies.
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Looking ahead, the team is working on improving their process by further increasing the density of their materials. Another goal is speed: the repeated infusion steps, while essential for producing stronger materials, make the method more time-consuming compared to other 3D printing techniques for converting polymers to metals.
“We are already working on bringing the total processing time down by using a robot to automate these steps,” Yee says.
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4 Dams Set for Removal in Maine Will Open Hundreds of Miles of River for Salmon, Herring and Sturgeon
In Maine, ownership of 4 large dams has been transferred to The Nature Conservancy in a sale it hopes will return the river they operate on into prime habitat for salmon for the first time in a century.
Operated by Brookfield Renewables, the dams along the lower Kennebec River prevent ocean going, freshwater fish like salmon from accessing ancestral spawning grounds upriver.
On September 15th, 2025, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Brookfield signed a purchase and sale agreement for the four dams totaling $138 million.
The Kennebec River is fed by Sandy River in the heart of Maine before running down to the Gulf of Maine past the towns of Skowhegan and Waterville. The Weston, Shawmut, Hydro-Kennebec, and Lockwood dams are located in intervals along this stretch, called the lower Kennebec.
The federal regulatory process for decommissioning a dam, as seen in the recent parallel in California, where four dams were removed to make way for salmon, needed more than 5 years from start to finish. As a result, TNC will look to gather another $30 million in funding to create a nonprofit that will manage and oversee the decommissioning process, during which the dams could continue to generate power for 5 to 10 years.
That would include working with Sappi North America, whose Somerset Mill, located between the town of Skowhegan and the Shawmut dam, to find a solution to the company’s long-term water needs, which are currently met by this dam.
Their twin goals in the decommissioning project are to return free-flowing conditions to the lower Kennebec River to support regionally-endangered North Atlantic salmon, while doing so in collaboration with existing stakeholders in the dams’ activities, Sappi included.
“TNC and its partners are 100% committed to developing a solution with Sappi that fully addresses the Somerset Mill’s long-term water system needs,” the organization wrote in a statement. “We understand the vital role of the Somerset Mill for the forest products industry and the state’s economy.”
Atlantic salmon are considered near-threatened worldwide, but certain stocks in the North Atlantic have almost completely disappeared. Access to Sandy River via the lower Kennebec would open up hundreds of miles of prime habitat for spawning and coming of age.
Brookfield maintains dams higher up the river, but these areas are considered to be of poor habitat quality. Those dams also happen to produce substantially more electricity than the dams along the lower stretch of the river—those set to be removed.
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The Maine Monitor reports that fishing advocacy groups have argued for the dam’s removal for “decades.” River herring, the federally-protected Atlantic sturgeon, and American eel, all rely on Maine’s freshwater rivers to either spawn or feed before swimming out to sea.
The current predicament finds around one-twelfth of the historic spawning population of Atlantic salmon returning to the Kennebec via the gulf, where they’re captured at Lockwood Dam and actually trucked up the roads past the next three dams to spawn. During the reverse journey many do not survive the journey to the gulf past the industrial infrastructure.
MORE SALMON CELEBRATIONS: Before and After Photos of World’s Largest Dam Removal in Calif. Will Have You Cheering for Team Salmon (LOOK)
The removal of the Klamath River dams this time last year produced incredible results immediately, with fish finding their way back upstream far past the farthest dam to spawn within a single season, proving that ancestral instincts can remain intact despite generations of fish not being able to act on them.
But examples also lie closer to home, with dams removed years past along another Maine river, the Penobscot, resulting in long-term economic and environmental improvements.
WATCH a video report below from TNC…
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“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” – Henry David Thoreau
Quote of the Day: “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” – Henry David Thoreau
Photo by: Misty Ladd
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?
Good News in History, October 15
28 years ago today, NASA and ESA’s Cassini Mission, meant to gather data on Saturn and its moons, was launched from Cape Canaveral. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA’s Cassini space probe and ESA’s Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Cassini was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. READ about what it found… (1997)
New Airship-style Wind Turbine Can Find Gusts at Higher Altitudes for Constant, Cheaper Power
A new form of wind energy is under development that promises more consistent power and lower deployment costs by adapting the design of a dirigible, or zeppelin.
Suspended 1,000 feet up where the wind is always blowing, it presents as an ideal energy source for rural communities, disaster areas, or places where wind turbines aren’t feasible to build.
The design has grown through multilateral innovation by dozens of engineers and scientists, but an MIT startup called Altaeros, and Beijing-based start-up Sawes Energy Technology have taken it to market. Both have already produced prototypes that boast some serious performance.
In 2014, Altaeros’ Buoyant Air Turbine (or BAT) was ready for commercial deployment in rural Alaska, where diesel generators are still heavily relied on for power. Its 35-foot-long inflatable shell, made of the same materials as modern blimps, provided 30 kilowatts of wind energy.
As a power provider, though, Altaeros could never get off the ground, and now has adopted much of its technology to the provision of wireless telecommunication services for civil and commercial contracting.
Heir to Altaeros’ throne, Sawes has managed to greatly exceed the former’s power generation, and now hopes to achieve nothing less than contributing a Chinese solution to the world’s energy transition.
During a mid-September test, Sawes’ airship-like S1500, as long and wide as a basketball court and as tall as a 13-storey building, generated 1 megawatt of power which it delivered through its tether cable down to a generator below.
Conducted in the windy, western desert province of Xinjiang, the S1500 surpassed the capabilities of its predecessor turbine by 10-times, which achieved 100 kilowatts in October of last year.
Dun Tianrui, the company’s CEO and chief designer, called the megawatt-mark “a critical step towards putting the product into real-world use” which would happen next year when the company expects to begin mass production.
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At the same time, the Sawes R&D team is looking into advances in materials sciences and optimization of manufacturing that will ensure the cost of supplying that megawatt to rural grids will be around $0.01 per kilowatt-hour—literally 100-times cheaper than what was theorized as the cost for Altaeros’ model from 10 years ago.
One of the major positives of the BAT is that by floating 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the ground, they render irrelevant the main gripe and failing of wind energy—that some days the wind doesn’t blow. A conventional turbine reaches only between 100 and 300 feet up, putting birds at risk as well as not collecting all the air that’s blowing over the landscape.
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Sawes’ unit is about 40% cheaper to build and deploy than a normal turbine, presenting the opportunity for a 30% lower cost for buying the wind energy.
According to a piece in the Beijing Daily, reported on by South China Morning Post, challenges remain before commercial deployment can begin, including what to do during storms, and whether or not it will compete in communities with existing coal-power supply.
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A Nation That’s 90% Rainforest Announces New Protections for Over 25 Million Acres
Huge news broke recently when a country with more intact forests than any other on Earth decided that 90% of all forest cover would be preserved by law.
Made in New York in advance of a UN summit that will see the party members to the Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet for the 30th time, the decision was heralded as a major step in the effort to protect 30% of all natural landscapes on Earth.
The nation in question was Suriname, the former Dutch colony located on the northern coast of South America, bordering Brazil to the south, and Guyana to the west. Famous for containing vast tracts of Amazon Rainforest, Minister of Foreign Affairs Melvin W. J. Bouva made the announcement on behalf of the recently-elected president.
“We understand and accept the immense responsibility of stewarding over 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest… said President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons. “And it is because of this responsibility that we are envisioning an economy that is powered by our rich forests and biodiversity.”
90% of the country is covered in rainforests typical of the Amazon Basin, the world’s largest rainforest and an ecosystem that spans 9 countries. As a result, it’s one of three states that register as carbon sinks, meaning they absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit.
The decision comes at a time when deforestation in Suriname is on the rise, but losses Basin-wide are falling substantially, particularly losses from forest fires.
Re:wild, a conservation organization working actively in the Amazon and other South American landscapes, reports that more than 700 birds, 100 species of amphibians, and many charismatic mammals such as lowland tapirs, jaguars, giant river otters, and 8 different primates range throughout the country.
“I’ve worked in Suriname for 50 years and I am absolutely delighted that President Geerlings-Simons has made this historic and unprecedented commitment to maintain Suriname’s forest cover at this level within her first two months in office,” said Russell Mittermeier, chief conservation officer at Re:wild.
“This sets a new standard for the Amazonian region as a whole, which has suffered from serious deforestation in recent decades.”
The Amazon will be high in the minds of the parties to the UNFCCC when they meet in Belem, Brazil, for the summit known as COP 30.
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Wichita ‘Taco Hero’ Gets Year of Free Tacos for ‘Mind-Blowing’ Kindness After Card Reader Went Down
When the sales and payment software went down at a Wichita taco restaurant, the staff were anxious, and the line for the register, long.
Tensions were high, and when the Shear family finally got through the out-the-door-wrap-around line, they were told that Tacos TJ 664 was only accepting cash.
They were craving the fresh shrimp tacos they had come to adore, but there was a problem—they didn’t have enough money.
Mother Calli Shear thought “oh well,” and went for the door, when a stranger—a man in jeans and a Nick Nolte-like voice, reached out an arm and stopped them.
He handed them a $100 dollar bill, rebuffed the immediate refusal, rebuffed the offer of Venmo, and then told the family that dinner was on him tonight.
“When we gave him the change back, he walked to the line and tipped the staff,” Calli’s son Travis said, with his mother saying that she “couldn’t believe that strangers like that exist anymore.”
After their meal, Calli posted a picture of the stranger on a Facebook foodie group, Wichita Food & Booze with a simple question: does anyone know this guy? Explaining the story, the post vent locally viral, and Jared, the “Taco Hero,” was found.
“There are some incredible people in this world. Seriously,” she wrote.
KWCH managed to get in touch with Jared for an interview to ask why he made the spur-of-the-moment decision to do a good deed.
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“When I was a young man, I grew up poor,” Jerad told the news outlet. “A family took me in when I needed it the most. They ended up finishing raising me until I turned 18 and moved out on my own. If they wouldn’t have ever done that, I never would be in the place I am today, and I, frankly, wouldn’t be able to help somebody out like that. I owe everything to them.”
When Tacos TJ 664 got wind of what had happened, and presented Jared with an honorary certificate as the “Wichita Taco Hero” and awarded him free tacos for the rest of the year.
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“We just wanted to thank him, really, cause I think he deserves it,” Priscila Camacho, the restaurant manager, said. “Even though he probably wasn’t intending for it to have the impact that it did.”
The story is a reminder that not all heroes wear capes—some just buy you tacos.
WATCH the story below from KWCH News…
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First Antidote for Carbon Monoxide Poisoning ‘Cleans’ Blood in Minutes
It’s invisible, it’s lethal, and it’s been with us for decades, but carbon monoxide poisoning can now be fought with the first-ever antidote that rapidly removes the toxic molecule from the bloodstream.
Carbon monoxide or CO, poisoning accounts for 50,000 emergency room visits in the US each year and causes about 1,500 deaths, each one being lamented as a shameful waste and tragic oversight.
Currently, the only treatments for CO poisoning are oxygen-based therapies, which help the body eliminate the toxic gas. However, even with treatment, nearly half of survivors suffer long-term heart and brain damage. This has created an urgent need for faster, more effective interventions.
In a study published by University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) in PNAS, the research team developed a new engineered protein-based therapy called RcoM-HBD-CCC, which acts like a sponge to soak up carbon monoxide from the blood.
RcoM (short for “regulator of metabolism”) is a natural protein isolated from the bacterium Paraburkholderia xenovorans which uses it to sense minute levels of carbon monoxide in its environment.
The researchers engineered a version that is highly selective, grabbing CO without interfering with oxygen or other important molecules in the bloodstream like nitric oxide, which is vital for the regulation of blood pressure.
In tests on mice, the new therapy worked quickly to remove CO from red blood cells and was safely flushed out of the body through urine.
CO is known commonly as the “silent killer,” because this odorless, invisible gas, typically released from combustion sources, including stovetops, propane heaters, car exhausts, and firewood, poisons in a gradual manner that isn’t immediately obvious to the victim.
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In healthy bodies, oxygen inhaled from the air binds to the protein hemoglobin on the surface of red blood cells, which then ferry the oxygen to all the tissues of the body. CO however, competes with oxygen for hemoglobin. It enters the bloodstream and binds to hemoglobin with a 200 to 400-fold greater affinity than oxygen. That means CO hogs most of the hemoglobin seats, so not enough oxygen molecules can get a ride to the tissues that need them.
Currently, the only available treatments for carbon monoxide poisoning involve giving 100% pure oxygen, sometimes under pressure in a hyperbaric chamber.
All too often, patients are not transported, diagnosed, and treated in time to reverse the effects of CO poisoning, which can cause lasting cardiac and neurological injuries or even death.
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Infused in the bloodstream, scavenger hemoproteins like RcoM-HBD-CCC rapidly bind to carbon monoxide molecules, reducing the time it takes to clear half of the carbon monoxide in the blood to less than a minute, compared to more than hour with pure oxygen therapy and five hours without any treatment.
A potential drawback the researchers were aware of is that so-called “scavengers” like RcoM also have an affinity for oxygen, and so may uptake the nitric oxide mentioned earlier. This can cause wild and potentially unsafe changes in blood pressure, but RcoM-HBD-CCC caused no such side effects.
“Unlike other protein-based treatments, we found the compound caused only minimal changes in blood pressure, which was an exciting finding and raised the potential for this new molecule to have clinical applications,” said study corresponding author Mark T. Gladwin, MD, Dean of UMSOM.
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“This has the potential to become a rapid, intravenous antidote for carbon monoxide that could be given in the emergency department or even in the field by first-responders.”
Future studies will likely include more pre-clinical research to determine the safe and effective dosage range for RcoM-HBD-CCC in treating carbon monoxide poisoning. It could also form the basis for new research in other fields, including as an oxygen delivery therapy or blood substitute. This could include hemorrhagic shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), severe anemias, and the preservation of organs for transplantation.
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“Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply.” – Zane Grey
Quote of the Day: “Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply.” – Zane Grey (writer of American Westerns)
Photo: via Fotolia
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?
Good News in History, October 14
158 years ago today, Masaoka Shiki, considered one of Japan’s four masters of haiku, was born. He wrote more than 20,000 stanzas of this famous Japanese short-form poetry, keeping the traditional ‘season words’ and the 5-7-5 syllable structure, but bringing in a dedication to realism that had seemed in through Western literature. Shiki may be credited with salvaging traditional short-form Japanese poetry and carving out a niche for it in the modern Meiji period. READ some of his verse… (1867)
Escaped Pet Tortoise Wanders onto Train Tracks But is Saved by Railway Staff After Passenger Spots it
A runaway tortoise was saved after it wandered onto a busy railway line in South East England.
The pet named Mr T was spotted clambering onto the train tracks at Bicester North Station in Oxfordshire.
Passengers raised the alarm with the railway staff who rescued the tortoise last Tuesday.
The Chiltern Railway workers then fed it with lettuce and water in the station cafe.
The company posted photos of the reptile on social media looking for the owner.
Hours later, they came forward confirmed that Mr T had escaped from his home nearby before becoming a trespasser on the railway tracks.
Although facing danger, Mr T was left unharmed by his adventure and was returned home.
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Area Manager at Chiltern Railways, Giles Conway, said, “I don’t think anyone could quite believe it when we were alerted by customers at the station that there was a tortoise on the tracks.
“I am grateful to our station staff who located the tortoise and worked with Network Rail to safely retrieve it from the tracks unharmed.”
The man who retrieved the turtle, Steve Gill, a Network Rail mobile operations manager, said, “In my 30 plus years on the railway, this is the first time I’ve ever had to save a tortoise.”
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“I’m glad we managed to get the pet safely away from the tracks and reunited with its owner.”
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