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Solar-Powered Mars Plane Set to Cruise Red Planet Looking for Water

By
Andy Corbley
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Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE) aircraft flying over Mars – Artist rendering by NASA via SWNS
Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE) aircraft flying over Mars – Artist rendering by NASA via SWNS

A bold design for an vertical take-off aeroplane has received advanced grant funding from NASA with the aim of having it ready to fly on Mars in the next 6 years.

MAGGIE (Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer) is a compact fixed-wing electric aircraft powered by solar energy to fly in the Martian atmosphere—picture the wings of the Wright Flyer but made of solar panels.

The aircraft will have vertical take-off/landing capability and will be able to travel over 100 miles per hour at an altitude of 3,300 feet.

Already funded, MAGGIE is going to benefit immensely from flight data gathered by the little Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a small helo-drone that was brought to Mars onboard Perseverance, the latest rover NASA landed on the planet.

Ingenuity conducted over 30 flights in Martian airspace, gathering critical data on wind resistance, air speed, and other avionic metrics crucial for building aircraft that will fly on Mars.

The Martian atmosphere is 160x thinner than Earth’s, so MAGGIE has a cruise lift coefficient nearly an order of magnitude higher than conventional subsonic aircraft to overcome the low density.

“The representative mission for MAGGIE presented would… include a study of the origin and timing of the Martian core dynamo from the weak magnetic fields found in the large impact basins, a regional investigation of the source of methane signals detected by the Tunable Laser Spectrometer on the Mars Science Laboratory in Gale crater, and mapping of subsurface water ice at high resolution in the mid-latitudes where it has been observed from orbit,” explained Ge-Cheng Zha of the Florida-based developers Coflow Jet, LLC.

Funded by a NASA grant program called NIAC, or NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, MAGGIE is in early stages of development but it could revolutionize the ability to explore almost the entirety of the Martian surface.

CURRENT MARTIAN UNDERSTANDING: NASA Summarizes What New Mars Rover has Found as it Finishes it’s Mission at Just Over 1,000 Days

NIAC has funded a variety of daring enterprises, including asteroid mining technologies and fungal house kits for Martian habitation.

“The daring missions NASA undertakes for the benefit of humanity all begin as just an idea, and NIAC is responsible for inspiring many of those ideas,” said NASA Associate Administrator, Jim Free.

OTHER MARS NEWS: Mars Rover Discovers Liquid Salt Water on the Red Planet For the First Time

“The Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars and instruments on the MarCO deep space CubeSats can trace their lineage back to NIAC, proving there is a path from creative idea to mission success. And, while not all these concepts will fly, NASA and our partners worldwide can learn from fresh approaches and may eventually use technologies advanced by NIAC.”

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Handwriting Strengthens Brain Connections and Boosts Learning More Than Tapping on a Keyboard

By
Andy Corbley
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Photo by lilartsy
Photo by lilartsy

In an ever more digital world, pen and paper are increasingly getting replaced with screens and keyboards in classrooms. Now, a new study has investigated neural networks in the brain during hand and typewriting and showed that connectivity between different brain regions is more elaborate when letters are formed by hand.

This improved brain connectivity, which is crucial to memory building and information encoding, may indicate that writing by hand supports learning.

As digital devices progressively replace pen and paper, taking notes by hand is becoming increasingly uncommon in schools and universities. Using a keyboard is recommended because it’s often faster than writing by hand. However, the latter has been found to improve spelling accuracy and memory recall, if for no other reason than that pen and paper is cut off from the security of autocorrect features.

To find out if the process of forming letters by hand resulted in greater brain connectivity, researchers in Norway investigated the underlying neural networks involved in both modes of writing.

“We show that when writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns are far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard,” said Prof Audrey van der Meer, a brain researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and co-author of the study published in Frontiers in Psychology.

“Such widespread brain connectivity is known to be crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, is beneficial for learning.”

One of the trial participants – credit, Norwegian University of Science and Technology – via SWNS

The researchers collected EEG data from 36 university students who were repeatedly prompted to either write or type a word that appeared on a screen. When writing, they used a digital pen to write in cursive directly on a touchscreen.

When typing they used a single finger to press keys on a keyboard. High-density EEGs, which measure electrical activity in the brain using 256 small sensors sewn in a net and placed over the head, were recorded for five seconds for every prompt.

Connectivity of different brain regions increased when participants wrote by hand, but not when they typed.

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“Our findings suggest that visual and movement information obtained through precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning,” van der Meer said.

Observant readers might have felt a red flag go up at the mention of a digital pen and touchscreen, since the objective was to discover the neural networks underlying pen and paper writing, but the researchers are confident that the actions are the same as far as the brain is concerned.

“We have shown that the differences in brain activity are related to the careful forming of the letters when writing by hand while making more use of the senses,” van der Meer explained. Since it is the movement of the fingers carried out when forming letters that promotes brain connectivity, writing in print is also expected to have the same effect.

On the contrary, the simple movement of hitting a key with the same finger repeatedly is less stimulating for the brain.

MORE DISCOVERIES LIKE THIS: Anxiety Can Be a Habit – Which Means We Can Stop it, If We Know How

“This also explains why children who have learned to write and read on a tablet, can have difficulty differentiating between letters that are mirror images of each other, such as ‘b’ and ‘d’. They literally haven’t felt with their bodies what it feels like to produce those letters,” van der Meer said.

Their findings demonstrate the need to give students the opportunity to use pens, rather than having them type during class, the researchers said. Guidelines to ensure that students receive at least a minimum of handwriting instruction could be an adequate step.

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11-Year-Old Moroccan Boy Hears for the First Time Thanks to Experimental Gene Therapy in Philadelphia

By
Andy Corbley
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11-year-old Aissam, pictured here in the middle - credit, DIVISION OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY, CHOP - released to the press.
11-year-old Aissam, pictured here in the middle – credit, Division of Otolaryngology, CHOP – released to the press.

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), an 11-year-old boy from Morocco is hearing the world for the very first time thanks to a revolutionary new genetic therapy that has cured his deafness.

While the gene involved is quite rare, the milestone represents a breakthrough in the treatment of patients around the world with hearing loss caused by dozens of different genetic mutations and marks another innovative move for gene and cell therapy in a new area of medicine.

Born into a poor community in Morocco, Aissam Dam experienced a silent world, having inherited a form of hereditary deafness called otoferlin deafness. The gene otoferlin is found mutated in 200,000 people worldwide, and the mutation destroys a protein in the inner ear’s hair cells necessary to transmit sound to the brain.

The New York Times reports that of the several kinds of hereditary deafness, an otoferlin mutation has been the easiest target since the hairs in the inner ear can live on for decades, while other genetic mutations cause the death of the hairs during infancy or even in the womb.

“Gene therapy for hearing loss is something that we physicians and scientists in the world of hearing loss have been working toward for over 20 years, and it is finally here,” said John A. Germiller PhD, an attending surgeon and Director of Clinical Research in the Division of Otolaryngology at CHOP.

Just because it was something like a low-hanging fruit, reversing or curing otoferlin was no picnic. The inner ear and the cochlea are complex, closed-off environments, and several challenges requiring years of study and testing had to be overcome.

But as for the result, young mister Aissam had some convincing words for The Times.

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“There’s no sound I don’t like,” Aissam said with the help of interpreters. “They’re all good.”

When asked his favorite, he signed back “people.”

The experimental trial took place on October 4, 2023, when Aissam underwent a surgical procedure at CHOP where an endoscope that allows the eardrum to be partially lifted allowed for an investigational medical device to be transiently inserted into the “round window,” a tiny entry point into the cochlea.

A single, small dose of a gene therapy (AK-OTOF), developed by a subsidiary of the pharma giant Eli Lilly called Akouos, and containing copies of the normal OTOF gene, was then delivered directly to the inner ear.

END OF CONGENITAL DEAFNESS: Deaf Children Are First Humans to Have Hearing Pathway Restored in Dramatic Demonstration of New Gene Therapy

Now, almost four months since receiving the investigational gene therapy in one ear, he is literally hearing sound for the first time in his life. He can hear his father’s voice, the sound of a car passing by, and even the scissors clipping his hair. Under healthy conditions, his hearing would be considered mildly impaired.

“As more patients at different ages are treated with this gene therapy, researchers will learn more about the degree to which hearing is improved and whether that level of hearing can be sustained over many years,” Germiller said. “What we have learned from following this patient’s progress will help direct our efforts toward helping as many patients as we can.”

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Dozens of Strange 12-Sided Objects from Roman Times Have Been Found—No One Knows What They’re For

By
Andy Corbley
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The dodecahedron - credit, Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group
The dodecahedron – credit, Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group

Across Europe, but particularly in Britain where residents love a weekend out with a metal detector, dozens of ‘dodecahedrons’ from the Roman Empire have been found, and no one knows what they’re for.

One was found in northern Belgium in February of last year, but another was found just this month in the English town of Norton Disney. There are around 130 examples of this strange item that have been found across the Roman world, and 33 in Britain alone.

Dodeca signifies twelve, so it’s a twelve-sided object—hollow, and with round openings on each pentagonal face. Each point is embellished with a sphere, and the dodecahedrons are typically made of bronze, copper, or a mixture of metals and alloys.

That’s about all science knows for sure, and beyond that, hypotheses that they were ritual devices, weapons, personal ornaments, religious objects, and even a kind of precision tool have all been put forward.

Being that they range in size and weight wildly, the idea of a weapon, such as the ball of a medieval morningstar, seems unlikely. Personal ornamentation also seems beyond the pale, since some are quite heavy, and if strung around the neck would be terribly uncomfortable.

A suggestion that they might have been precision measuring instruments could also be rationally ruled out, a press release from Belgian antiquities authorities stated last year, since how could you measure things accurately with a tool that’s always a different size, and couldn’t be placed fast against something on account of the metal spheres.

OTHER NEWS LIKE THIS: This Lost Roman Era ‘Miracle Plant’ May Have Been Rediscovered

But the find in Belgium was just a mere fragment, and over the weekend in Britain, a volunteer team of metal detectives and hobby archaeologists found an intact dodecahedron, which, according to their analysis, was purposely buried around 1,700 years ago.

They found it in an area of Lincolnshire where Roman artifacts had previously been discovered, and claim it’s as large as a grapefruit.

Richard, Alice, and Lorena from the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group

“A huge amount of time, energy, and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes, especially when alternative materials are available that would achieve the same purpose,” write the fine folks at The Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group. “The most likely use we think is for ritual and religious purposes.”

Today, dodecahedrons serve essentially only one common purpose in our society—as dice— for playing Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop miniature games.

MORE HISTORICAL MYSTERIES: Mythical City of Underground Labyrinths Found Beneath Altar of 15th Century Church in Mexico

Whether the Romans were fond of a bit of D&D is another debate, and while no mention of a dodecahedron has ever been read in extant Roman literature, the pre-Christian Roman religious world was a very superstitious one, and so, for now, a religious or ritual artifact seems most likely.

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“Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.” – John Updike

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.” – John Updike

Photo by: Jonas Morgner

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A 16th c. Scottish Plaid was Found in a Bog–Now Becomes Oldest Historical Tartan Available to Wear Today

By
Andy Corbley
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James Wylie, Assistant Curator, V&A Dundee Peter MacDonald, Head of Research & Collections, The Scottish Tartans Authority Nick Statt, Sales Director, House of Edgar John McLeish, Chair, The Scottish Tartans Authority Emma Wilkinson, Designer, House of Edgar
The Glen Affric Tartan and the gentlepeople responsible for bringing it back to life. Licensed for use by Spey

A textile manufacturer in Scotland has recreated the oldest-known piece of Scottish tartan ever found, which was buried for centuries.

Discovered approximately forty years ago in a peat bog, the Glen Affric Tartan underwent testing organized by The Scottish Tartans Authority last year to confirm it was the oldest surviving piece of tartan, dating back to between 1500-1600 CE.

Although earlier cloths have been discovered in Scotland, this is the first to show a distinctive tartan pattern with multiple crossing lines of different dyed yarns, which in the United States have come to be known as plaid or flannel.

The House of Edgar, Scotland’s specialist manufacturer and distributor of tartan fabrics and
highlandwear accessories, and home to some of the finest and most respected craftspeople in the industry, worked under the guidance of Peter Macdonald, a tartan historian and Head of Research & Collections at the not-for-profit Scottish Tartans Authority to recreate the Glen Affric tartan for people to wear as it could have been when it was first dyed then woven.

It features the original thread count, as well as the colors that dye analysis of the original tartan had confirmed—this included the use of green, yellow, and red, which would have come from woad or indigo to create the green along with other natural dyes.

Woad was the name of a plant from the cabbage family and mustard genus called Isatis tinctoria, and was cultivated for centuries as a natural blue dye, including in England, but would eventually be replaced by Indigofera tinctoria.

Emma Wilkinson, a designer at House Of Edger, and Peter MacDonald, Head of Research & Collections, The Scottish Tartans Authority, who is modeling the tartan – Licensed for use by Spey.

“I create new tartans every day but this project is truly special—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to recreate a piece of history,” said Emma Wilkinson, the Designer for House of Edgar who worked on the project.

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“Tartan is such an iconic piece of Scotland’s identity and it has been a true pleasure to see this fabric come back to life to be enjoyed for generations to come.”

The reconstructed tartan is included along with 28 contrastingly new tartans in The House of Edgar’s new collection entitled Seventeen Eighty-Three, the year in which the company first started textile production.

OTHER TARTAN TALES: Send In Your Favorite Tartan For Year-Long Scottish Exhibition Honoring the Iconic Fabric

The new Glen Affric tartan is available for businesses to purchase from The House Of Edgar and the public can request it from any highlandwear supplier, with a percentage of all sales going to The Scottish Tartans Authority to support its work preserving the fabric of the nation.

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Teen Who Was Told He’d Never Walk with Cerebral Palsy Just Took 1st Place in Bodybuilding Competition

By
Andy Corbley
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Instagram - @hunter_moore_123
Instagram – @hunter_moore_123

Hunter Moore is just like any other teen athlete. He loves to play sports, made the varsity team, and doesn’t mind throwing up a few gym selfies on his Instagram.

“It’s all genetics, bro,” he says laughingly while pumping his nearly 20-inch bicep. The genetics, in Moore’s case, is Dystonic Cerebral Palsy from a stroke he suffered as an infant that left him partially paralyzed on his left side.

In this case, the genetics are the obstacle to overcome, not the immutable advantage some athletes enjoy. Yet Moore was born into a military family, and so received an upbringing full of dictates to never give up, to prove them all wrong, and it drove Hunter to spend most of his childhood building a body that was capable of the rigors of athletics.

For 7 years he always made his schools’ soccer teams, and now plays as the long snapper for his junior varsity football team, while regularly posting pretty impressive weightlifting numbers that even a non-paralyzed person could feel safe bragging about.

Even though he can’t use his left arm for isolated lifts, he still tries to incorporate it as often as possible for the sake of symmetry—one of bodybuilding’s most important judging criteria. He’ll lock his left arm around a bar, and pry it away from where it usually sits tucked up into his armpit. Like this, he can do a squat or a deadlift.

By the time he competed last summer in the Professional Natural Bodybuilding Association, he was pressing 120 lbs. with one arm, and deadlifting 405. He took first place in his category in Dallas, Texas, and competed again in November in Las Vegas to win first place in the professional class for Men’s Disabled Standing.

In an interview, Moore described posing on stage as “one of the scariest things that I have ever attempted,” but the whistles and cheers he received were a tangible reward for an amount of hard work that the majority of people, disabled or not, cannot manage.

MORE INSPIRING AND UNLIKELY LIFTERS: 78-Year-old Iron Woman Is Powerlifting Champion Who Does 400 Squats and Holds 19 World Records

“I will define myself and not let cerebral palsy or anyone else define me,” he told Joker Magazine, adding that he plans to go to university to study marine biology and hopes to also pursue motivational speaking.

CELEBRATE This Young Man’s Dedication To Overcoming The Odds… 

A New Drinking Game Is Sweeping Britain: Sending Pints to Strangers Across the Nation

By
Andy Corbley
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Rick Barrett - Unsplash
Rick Barrett – Unsplash

A new drinking game is sweeping the British nation—it involves losing money and no drinking.

If that sounds farfetched, it’s because the game consists of ordering pints and other drinks to people you’ll never meet out of the goodness of your heart—like Italy’s caffe sospesa, but with alcohol and in English.

Called “Wetherspoons: The Game” the activity has attracted international media attention, and the story goes like this. One day, Chris Illman from Portsmouth was out drowning his sorrows after a bad breakup and a cancer diagnosis at the local JD Wetherspoons, the largest UK pub chain which has over 800 locations.

Illman discovered a sort of loophole in the Wetherspoons app where one can select their location manually rather than activating their phone’s automatic location services. This would allow them to enter a table number and order drinks anywhere in the nation. After the discovery, Illman created a closed Facebook group for him and his buddies to buy each other drinks this way.

Then one day, the group became open, and in a few days there were 500,000 members.

The way that the Wetherspoons Game works is that people post a photograph of themselves, their ID card, and their location and table number along with an explanation of why someone should buy them a drink.

A group of dedicated volunteer moderators then check the ID, and approve only the polite and good-natured posts to the wall, where anyone can check the feed and decide to send them a drink.

“Hi, we’re 3 overworked and underpaid ICU nurses playing for the first time after a hard day’s work. Any contributions are extremely welcomed,” wrote a group of friends last night.

“One bottle of fizz on route from a tired 2nd yr student nurse 😜🤣 enjoy xx and thanks for your patience with us students,” a generous commenter replied.

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“We are out tonight to cheer ourselves up after an emotional day, my hamster of 3 years sadly died today and having to bury her in the garden whilst it was snowing was quite the challenge!!! my hands were numb and so was my heart,” wrote a woman from East London, who was sent, among other things, a strawberry daiquiri.

In Italy since the time of the Second World War, under-caffeinated patrons coming into a bar might leave a tip in a jar marked “caffe sospesa” or “suspended coffee.” The tip was to pay forward a coffee for the next person to come into the bar—as if you were buying a coffee for the whole world, the Italians say.

OTHER INTERESTING TRENDS: Everyone in England is Planting Wildflower Meadows After Prince Charles Replants 60 of Them to Honor Queen

However, il caffe sospesa takes place in the bar, and not online. As a result, it can’t go viral—but the Wetherspoons game can, and sometimes recipients are doused in so much booze they end up having to pass the drinks all around the pub just to avoid having to take a taxi home.

“It’s really hard to explain,” Illman told the Wall Street Journal. “People, it turns out, love sitting on their sofas during nights in ordering drinks for people enjoying a night out, he says. Very few of them give to receive.”

SHARE This Awesome English Invention With Your Friends In The Country…

Fascinating Species of 200 Million-Year-old Flying Reptile Discovered in Britain

By
Andy Corbley
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Kuehneosaurus latus (right) and Kuehneosuchus latissimus (left) - two animals found in Britain from the late Triassic. CC 3.0. BY Nobu Tamura
Kuehneosaurus latus (right) and Kuehneosuchus latissimus (left) – two animals found in Britain from the late Triassic. CC 3.0. BY Nobu Tamura

In fantasy fiction, the dragon is one of the most common mythical beasts, but these giant flying lizards defy the reality that flying lizards have actually been found on Earth through many once upon a times—they were just really small.

Case in point, this small fry from 200 million years ago, a Kuehneosaur, a flying reptile that used a membrane of skin that stretched out along a set of fantastically elongated rib bones that allowed them to glide from tree to tree.

The discovery was made by University of Bristol masters student Mike Cawthorne, and the university press reports that he has been researching numerous reptile fossils from limestone quarries which formed Mendip Palaeo-island—the biggest sub-tropical island at a time when Great Britain was an archipelago.

Mendip Palaeo Island would have stretched 18 miles across and was home to many small reptiles that roamed the Triassic-Jurassic boundary eon eating plants and insects.

“All the beasts were small,” said Mike. “I had hoped to find some dinosaur bones, or even their isolated teeth, but in fact I found everything else but dinosaurs.”

The Kuehneosaurus discovered by Cawthorne is actually not a true lizard, and is more closely related to crocodiles, which for those interested in such things means it’s classified as an Archosaur, rather than a Lepidosaur.

MORE REPTILIAN HISTORY: Exquisite New Fossil Shows Scientists How Much More Ferocious Australia’s Crocs Once Were

“It took a lot of work identifying the fossil bones, most of which were separate and not in a skeleton,” explained Professor Mike Benton, from Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, who was a co-author on Cawthorne’s paper describing the various animals.

Along with the glider, Cawthorne found the teeth of a Trilophosaurus, called Variodens inopinatus, which was a stocky-headed plant-eater that grew as long as a large monitor lizard does today, and an aquatic lizard called Pachystropheus which swam and ate shrimp.

MORE FOSSILS FROM PREHISTORIC BRITAIN: One of the Largest ‘Sea Dragon’ Fossils Ever Found in Britain Unearthed As a Complete Ichthyosaur

“Mike Cawthorne was able to compare the isolated jaws and other bones with more complete specimens from the other sites around Bristol,” said Benton. “He didn’t find any dinosaur bones, but it’s likely that they were there because we have found dinosaur bones in other locations of the same geological age around Bristol.”

Under the cloak of winter temps at between 9° and 3°C, or between 40° and 49°F, with clouds and scattered showers, the residents of Great Britain might find it strange to think that their island was once sitting in a subtropical sea of islets where dozens of lizards climbed trees in steamy forests.

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“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” – Rousseau

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Photo by: Muhammed Nishal

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?

Ghanaian Woman Entrepreneur is Revolutionizing Transportation–Building Electric Bikes to Improve Air Quality

By
Andy Corbley
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Delivery drivers on their Wahu! bikes - courtesy of Valerie Labi-Wahu Mobility
Delivery drivers on their Wahu! bikes – courtesy of Valerie Labi-Wahu Mobility

A Ghanaian-English entrepreneur has designed an electric bike from the ground up that’s transforming short-range transportation in her home country, proving that problem-solving in Africa can be done in Africa, by Africans.

Her company, Wahu!, assembles each bike by hand, and they can travel up to 80 miles on a single charge. This means that a delivery rider for Glovo or Bolt can comfortably cover a whole day’s work without refueling.

Anyone who’s visited Accra, Ghana, in the dry season will remember the incredibly poor air quality. Poor roads mean that cars are stuck in second and third gears, and old cars traveling in second and third gears mean plenty of extra car exhaust.

Poor roads also mean exposed dirt, and exposed dirt means fine-grained dust. Combined with a lack of rain, the smog, dust, and car exhaust make the air in parts of the capital unfit for human health.

Wahu! bikes help alleviate all three of these problems, and despite her English nativity and education, the bikes were designed and manufactured in Spintex, Accra.

“By introducing electric bikes into Ghana’s transportation ecosystem, we’re not only providing a greener alternative but also offering speed and convenience,” Labi told The Mirror. “Our bikes are a testament to how service delivery can be seamlessly merged with environmental conservation.”

MORE SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS: Virgin Atlantic Flight from London Makes History as First Transatlantic Jet Using 100% Sustainable Fuel

Valerie Labi is a true inspiration, and besides her transportation company, she got her start in the Ghanaian economy in sanitation. She holds a chieftaincy title as Gundugu Sabtanaa, given to her by the previous Chief of the Dagbon traditional area in the Northern Region of Ghana. She has three children, holds a double major in Economics and Sustainability from two separate universities, and has visited 59 countries.

Valerie Labi, her three children, and the ebike – courtesy of Valerie Labi-Wahu Mobility

Getting her start in Northern Ghana, she founded the social enterprise Sama Sama, a mobile toilet and sanitation company that now boasts 300,000 clients.

During her travels around the small, densely populated country, she also recognized that transportation was not only a problem, but offered real potential for eco-friendly solutions.

“It took us two years to effectively design a bike that we thought was fit for the African road, then we connected with Jumia and other delivery companies to get started,” she told The Mirror. “Currently, I have over 100 bikes in circulation and we give the bikes on a ‘work and pay’ basis directly to delivery riders.”

A SIMILAR VENTURE IN KENYA:  Kenyan Physics Teacher Powers E-Motorbikes With Old Laptop Batteries

According to Labi, each driver pays about 300 Ghana cedis, or about $24.00, per week to use the bike, which can travel 24 miles per hour, and hold over 300 pounds of weight. The fat tires are supported by double-crown front/double-spring rear suspension.

The bikes are also guaranteed by the company’s proprietary anti-theft system of trackers. Only a single bike has been stolen, and it was quickly located and returned to the owner.

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Five Top Headlines that Showcase the World’s Progress in the Climate Fight

By
Andy Corbley
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Before the sensation of New Year’s completely wears off, it pays to look back on what was a no-nonsense year in humanity’s attempt to prevent the planet from warming 1.5°C.

A lot of the big players stepped up with major adoption of climate technologies, and past efforts to mitigate or reduce emissions are now shown to be working.

It doesn’t seem to be all token gestures either, as the International Energy Agency said that the progress made this year may actually help achieve the 2030 goals agreed to in the Paris climate agreement.

Let’s take a look back before a great leap forward.

1) Solar investment shines

Nowhere were these sunny headlines more true than in China, which led the world in the installation of new solar farms. The PRC was already the world’s largest market for solar panels and solar power, and it’s estimated that the government has overseen the installation of between 90 and 120 gigawatts of solar power—a truly remarkable figure.

It represents a 30% rise year-over-year in the installation of new solar energy, with 87.1 gigawatts brought online in 2022.

2) Renewables might beat out global warming

China led the way in renewable energy installation, but only in the way that one bicycle sits at the top of a peloton. At COP last year, 200 countries signed an agreement to triple the global renewable energy capacity to 11,000 gigawatts by 2023.

A subsequent report from the IEA found that such an increase is around where humanity needs to be to prevent 1.5°C of warming by 2030.

The key to this goal, some have speculated, is the complete buy-in from the world’s superpowers.

Dan Christian Padure – Unsplash

3) USA coal use plummets

Insulated from the global energy crisis that followed in the wake of the Ukraine War, the US continued to phase out coal even while demand for the fuel rose or remained steady in other parts of the world during 2022.

The IEA expects that now that the EU in particular, but the world more broadly, has settled into the new energy market conditions, coal use worldwide will have fallen another 20% in 2023 when the true numbers finally come in; offset by a rise in China of about 5%.

By 2026, however, the predictions are that China too will begin to phase out coal.

4) Electric vehicle use grows

In the US, the adoption, sales, and R&D of electric vehicles continue to increase, with over 1.4 million EVs being sold in the country last year. Servicing the battery needs of this market are nearly 200,000 charging stations across the country.

The trend could continue strongly, since 2023 saw a significant fall in the cost of battery prices, amounting to 40% year-over-year. Goldman Sachs estimates this is driven mainly by a reduction in the cost of raw battery materials like lithium and nickel.

5) Southeast Asia cleaning up its energy sector

Southeast Asian countries are some of the largest per capita investors in new coal projects, but they are also, potentially, on their way toward meeting renewable energy commitments as well.

In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, wind and solar capacity increased by 20% in 2023, bringing the total to more than 28 gigawatts (GW). These are not rich nations, with the exception of Singapore, which in any case has very little land for solar farms of any meaningful size.

The bloc would need just 66% of last year’s total to meet the goal they set for themselves of one-third renewable energy by 2025.

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A Scientific Observation of Love and Loss on the Cellular Level

By
Andy Corbley
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Anastasia Skylar - Unsplash
Anastasia Skylar – Unsplash

Dopamine—the same chemical signal that drives us to seek out everything from water to intimacy to cocaine, leaves a lasting imprint on the brains of monogamous animals, a new study reveals.

While the role of oxytocin, also known as the ‘love hormone’ has been well studied in the context of human and animal pair bonding, it’s the reward hormone, or dopamine, that’s responsible for why we desire to be with some people more than others.

Hormones are endogenous chemical signals that drive behavior and organ function, and dopamine is sent into the brain’s nucleus accumbens region as both the metaphorical carrot on a stick and pat on the back for accomplishing a task, whether that’s climbing Mount Everest, or going into the kitchen to get a snack.

In a study that looked at prairie voles, a small rodent that mates for life, scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder, found that dopamine is also responsible for driving these little animals to want to be with their pair-bonded partners.

“What we have found, essentially, is a biological signature of desire that helps us explain why we want to be with some people more than other people,” said senior author Zoe Donaldson, associate professor of behavioral neuroscience. “This research suggests that certain people leave a unique chemical imprint on our brain that drives us to maintain these bonds over time.”

Only 3 to 5% of mammals mate for life, and these little high-plains furballs share a home, raise offspring together, and experience something akin to grief when they lose their partner.

In the study, a tiny fiber-optic sensor neuroimaged the voles’ nuclei accumbens during a series of tests to see what they would be willing to do in order to physically get back to their pair-bonded partner.

MORE INTERESTING HUMAN SCIENCE: A Certain Kind of Smiling Can Repair Relationships that Have Been Damaged by Mistrust

In one experiment, a vole and her partner were separated by a gate, which the vole could get through if she pulled a level. In another experiment, they were separated by a fence which she decided to scale just to return to her partner’s side.

The imaging fiber “lit up like a rave” when she decided to scale the fence, and it continued “like a glowstick” as she snuggled up to her vole.

When it was a stranger on the other side of the fence, the dopamine image was dim, and the vole didn’t work nearly as hard to reach the stranger.

In another trial, pair-bonded voles were separated for 4 weeks, which while difficult for human lovers, is an eternity in vole-time. The chemical signaling of dopamine after such a timespan had reset to the same profile as when seeing a mere acquaintance, suggesting that vole brains have a mechanism to protect their reproductive potential from endless loss or unrequited love.

MORE NEWS FOR THE HEARTBROKEN: ‘Me-Time’ is More Important Than Date Nights for Healthy Relationships, Says New Survey of Adults

“We think of this as sort of a reset within the brain that allows the animal to now go on and potentially form a new bond,” Donaldson said.

While a vole is no human, the research shows that humans may also have such as reset; meaning that when we tell our friends who are going through a tough separation that time heals all wounds, chemically speaking, it could be true; that eventually the chemical imprint as Donaldson calls it will fade away, and we won’t feel so drawn to be near to a previous love.

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Cicadas Are Coming: Rare ‘Dual Emergence’ Could Awaken a Trillion Bugs of 2 Species – First Time in 221 yrs

By
Andy Corbley
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Cicads from Brood X - Kristin Johnson, CC 2.0. Flickr
Cicadas from Brood X – Kristin Johnson, CC 2.0. Flickr

No one alive today will see it again—the convergence of two cicada broods that will practically shake the Midwest with their chirping.

The appearance of cicadas en mass is one of the most amazing natural phenomena of the insect world, and we Americans are uniquely positioned to witness it. But this spring, the synchronized emergence of Brood 13 and Brood 19 will fill the air from Iowa to Virginia with over a trillion bugs, an event not seen since Thomas Jefferson’s day.

1803 was the last time that this convergence occurred, and it involves the periodic cicadas of the 13-year brood and the 17-year brood,

It’s not true that the cicadas are born this way. They actually live their whole lives underground and then burrow up to the surface as part of a mass breeding and egg-laying frenzy.

Entomologists estimate that the two broods together will number more than 1 trillion bugs, enough to go to the moon and back, head-to-tail, 33 times.

The two broods will overlap in Iowa and Illinois, and the 17-year cicadas, confusingly called Brood 19 (XIX), will extend into Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, with a few also popping up in Louisiana.

The next time that these two will emerge together will be 2245.

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“It’s pretty much this big spectacular macabre Mardi Gras,” Jonathan Larson, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, told NPR. “It’s a lot of singing, lots of paramours pairing up and then lots of dying.”

Smithsonian Magazine provides this interesting tidbit that the decibel level of so many cicadas mating can reach the same as a motorcycle or chainsaw passing by your house.

They will emerge this spring, and shuffle off their mortal coils in July, during which time they will not sting, bite, envenom, or pass disease onto any human. Their emergence will aerate the soils of woodland, and their bodies will provide such a smorgasbord for wildlife, that even herbivorous animals like deer will begin to eagerly throw back the tasty morsels.

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“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” – George Washington Carver

By
Good News Network
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By Hannes Flo, CC license
Credit: Hannes Flo, CC license

Quote of the Day: “Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” – George Washington Carver

Photo by: Hannes Flo – CC license

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By Hannes Flo, CC license

Getting On the Dance Floor Will Shred Pounds in Overweight People, Improve Blood Pressure and Mental Health

By
Andy Corbley
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Ardian Lumi - Unsplash
Ardian Lumi – Unsplash

Boogying the night away produces meaningful improvements in one’s body mass and waist circumference in people who are overweight or obese, a new study found.

Dancing was also seen to improve blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, physical fitness, cognitive disorders, hypertension, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, and mental health—in other words, all the root causes of the non-communicable diseases that kill most people in the West.

The researchers believed that dance would be a more ideal form of exercise because it is sustainable—it’s a sociable, entertaining way of exercising that participants will enjoy, rather than a drudgery they have to push themselves through.

“Dance is effective on fat loss in people overweight and obese and has a significant improvement on body composition and morphology,” said Zhang Yaya, a Ph.D. student at Hunan University, China. “As a form of physical activity that integrates exercise, entertainment, and sociality, dance possesses innate advantages in fostering motivation for exercise.”

To get their results, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the team studied data from 646 participants who were overweight and obese across ten different studies.

They found that dance is very effective for improving body composition and showed that more creative dance types had the most pronounced body composition improvement when compared with traditional dance.

Improvements were also found in overweight children and patients with Parkinson’s disease.

MORE DANCING STORIES: Hula Dancing is Proving to Be an Unlikely Source of Reform for Male Prisoners

Although similar fat loss was seen in aerobic exercise, resistance training, and high-intensity interval training, dance had the additional advantage of reducing fat percentage because of the full-body range of motions that are also less fatiguing, the authors wrote.

Best of all, it is much easier to sustain than other forms of exercise.

The team notes that more research is needed on the topic, but they can confidently conclude that dance is super effective for weight loss.

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White House Issues Unprecedented Pardons After FDA Finds Cannabis to Be More Like Tylenol Than Heroin

By
Andy Corbley
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David Gabric
David Gabric

On Friday, January 20th, the federal government waved the white flag in the war on drugs as it regards the cannabis plant.

President Biden issued presidential pardons to any American or lawful permanent resident who has a conviction of cannabis possession on their record.

At the same time, he ordered the Dept. of Health and Human Services to compile a case for the reclassifying of cannabis from a Schedule 1 drug, such as heroin and cocaine, to a Schedule 3 drug, like testosterone and fortified Tylenol.

Decades of advocacy have created a national picture where 38 states have legalized cannabis for medicinal use, and 24 states, two territories, and D.C. have legalized cannabis for recreational use.

The United States FDA Controlled Substance Staff writes in the HHS report that their agency is recommending the rescheduling of cannabis as it meets all three criteria for doing so, namely a lower potential for abuse compared to Schedule 2 substances, an existing and established medical use, and a lower psycho-physical dependency potential.

“The marijuana withdrawal syndrome appears to be relatively mild compared to the withdrawal syndrome associated with alcohol, which can include more serious symptoms such as agitation, paranoia, seizures, and even death,” writes the FDA, which added that while there are many unproven claims about the medicinal use of cannabis, there is “credible” scientific evidence for its use in reducing the side effects of chemotherapy.

Sweeping changes would take place if such a rescheduling would occur, which will ultimately be decided by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The already multi-billion dollar cannabis industry would benefit from a much safer banking and tax environment, hundreds of thousands of people, particularly young adults, wouldn’t be turned into criminals by choosing to use a largely harmless substance for recreation, and people—particularly veterans—who live in states where recreational and medicinal cannabis is not available could obtain it safely.

SIMILAR NEWS: Oregon Pardons 45,000 People of Cannabis Possession Charges While Forgiving $14 million in Fines

Relating to the Presidential Pardon, Biden announced the war on drugs had failed, and that it was time to “right these wrongs”.

Anyone who has a possession charge of cannabis, which may be impeding employment or housing opportunities, can apply for a certificate that shows they have been pardoned, and the conviction is off their record, at Justice.gov here. 

“Criminal records for marijuana use and possession have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs,” Biden said.

MORE GOOD GREEN NEWS: Cannabis Products With High THC Levels Do ‘Cut Chronic Pain’

This does not apply to use imprisoned or convicted of selling cannabis.

A Gallup poll conducted in October 2023 found that 70% of Americans believe cannabis should be completely legalized in all its forms.

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World’s First Magma Observatory Poised to Monitor Volcanoes While Generating Tons of Energy

By
Andy Corbley
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Screengrab- credit Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company of Iceland, YouTube.
Screengrab- credit Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company of Iceland, YouTube.

Reprinted with permission and alterations from World at Large, an independent news outlet covering world news, conflicts, travel stories, conservation, and science news.

Theorized as a potential future center of volcanology on Earth, a “magma well” in remote Iceland is the site of the world’s first magma observatory.

The hopes are that the observatory, called the Krafla Magma Testbed, can lead to breakthroughs in volcanology and geothermal energy technology, as well as offer seismologists the ability to monitor potential eruptions much more accurately.

While scientists have found many substandard workarounds throughout history, direct observation and recording of magma under the Earth’s crust has never been done before, but the molten rock under the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) is so close to the surface that such observations can be achieved.

Work on the KMT goes all the way back to 2009, when the state-owned geothermal energy company Landsvirkjun was looking to drill down around 5,000 meters to tap the energy from supercritical water reservoirs above magma flows as part of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project.

Their project in the remote Krafla Caldera was brought to an abrupt end when after just 2,100 meters, it was clear they struck something totally unlike what they were boring for.

“We were unable to retrieve the whole thing, but a section of the drill string that was freed was filled with fragments of freshly quenched glass. When that happens it’s clear we have penetrated magma,” said Sveinbjorn Holgeirsson, project manager for Landsvirkjun, in a 2015 video documentary.

Krafla is unique because never before has magma been found so close to the surface of the Earth, giving those in the field essentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Now however, financing from the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, and several million in additional funding from Icelandic and EU government programs has allowed the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) to enter a testing phase to see if a long-term magma observatory is feasible.

“What we know about magma comes from interpreting activity measured at the surface, the geology of fossil magma chambers, and laboratory experiments. The Krafla drilling project will provide direct samples and observations, helping the world to read signs of volcanic unrest better,” said Univ. of Alaska Volcanologist John Eichelberger.

“It will improve civil protection for the 800 million people who live within 100km of an active volcano: be they the millions of Indonesian citizens living under the veil of the archipelago‘s active volcanoes or the millions of tourists visiting America‘s Yellowstone National Park”.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: New Google Geothermal Electricity Project Could Be a Milestone for Clean Energy

Highly corrosive gas and superheated steam of 450°C pose supreme technological challenges, but the rewards are immense, for example 13 megawatts of geothermal energy, or enough to power 60,000 homes from just 2 boreholes over the magma well, compared to 18 boreholes in a similar situation elsewhere on the island.

Such energy potential could only be available when drilling into magma chambers, which are almost always out of reach of drilling equipment.

By drilling through the rock–magma interface and into magma, KMT can establish where and under what conditions magma is stored beneath a volcano, and use fluid injection to measure reactions to test all manner of scientific theories. Further still, operators will eventually place sensors near and even in magma to provide direct measurements of things like a sudden rise in temperature, extent of crystallization in and around the magma, change in gas content, or increases in pressure that could lead to an eruption.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: The Perfect Energy Source Is Already Here – Endless Geothermal Is Poised for Release From Deep in the Earth

Most of us have an image of magma as an underground pit of lava, but in reality they tend to be pockets of liquid snaking between crystallized grains, surrounded by superheated gas.

Currently, KMT’s drilling partners are developing steel that can expand and contract with extreme heat of up to 1,000°C, while others are working on electronics that can endure the conditions, both of which could be used many times over to explore Venus, writes Paul Voolsen for Science.

Recent project updates have set a date for the initial drilling attempt in 2026.

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Woylies Are the Ecosystem Engineers of Australia–Critically Endangered but They’re Making a Comeback

By
Andy Corbley
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A Western quoll, or 'chuditch' - credit Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions
A woylie eating the roots and tubers it loves – credit Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions

A critically endangered Australian marsupial is being seen at the greatest-ever frequency since a government agency started working to conserve them.

Australia is filled with small endangered marsupials that have been overhunted by feral foxes and cats, and the woylie, an herbivore native to the state of Western Australia, is an unhappy example of this invasive predation.

But in a forest landscape 3 hours south of Perth, a conservation program initiated by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions of Western Australia has recorded a record number of woylie sightings this year.

34 woylies have been trapped and tagged with GPS tracking anklets, where just 2 were found in the Batalling State Forest in all of 2019.

“There are a lot of challenges for our native fauna and flora across Western Australia and Australia due to the threats to biodiversity, but these kinds of results are really promising,” program coordinator Ashley Millar told ABC News Australia.

Woylies are one of Australia’s native ecosystem engineers—like bison and beavers in Europe and North America—meaning a species whose behaviors cause cascading changes that alter the entire ecosystem in which they live.

MORE ON AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS: ‘Turning Back the Tide of Extinction’ Australian Mammals Are Coming Back: Bandicoots, Bilbies, Potoroos

Beavers do it by building dams, bison do it by trampling things, and woylies do it by digging for the roots and tubers that they eat.

Their preferred food item is actually the truffle—the same one that bumps up the price of a bowl of pasta by $10, and which some dog species are specially-bred to find.

A Western quoll, or ‘chuditch’ – credit Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions

Part of the conservation program has involved the management of wild foxes and cats; brought to Australia by European settlers and unwittingly caused an ecosystem disruption. The ground-dwelling marsupials never needed to evolve the speed or stealth to escape such successful predators as cats and foxes, and all across Australia these species have to be managed so as not to overhunt the local wildlife.

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR MARSUPIALS: Threatened Western Quolls Return to Western Australia After 100 Year Absence

Also in Batalling were found a growing number of Western quolls, or ‘chuditch’ another of the continent’s endangered marsupials, and despite being no bigger than a raccoon is Western Australia’s largest carnivorous mammal.

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“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.” – Maya Angelou

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.” – Maya Angelou

Photo by: Jackson David

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