Quote of the Day: “No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.” – Samuel Johnson
(It’s a poetic way of advising, ‘live in the present rather than clinging to the past’.)
Photo by: Joseph Gonzalez
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?
Why do we need fiber? it feeds the bacteria in our gut, which in turn produces something that could prevent food allergies and irritations such as those triggered by peanuts, a study this year showed.
A short-chain fatty acid called butyrate is produced by Clostridium bacteria in our stomach as they ferment fiber that reinforces the walls of the GI tract and protects against colon cancer, among other things.
In a mouse model, researchers at the University of Chicago used an oral solution of butyrate to stymie a life-threatening anaphylactic response in the allergic animals when they were exposed to peanuts.
Without enough fiber in the diet, humans can experience die-offs of these beneficial, butyrate-producing gut microbes. Too much eating of simple sugars and carbs instead makes room for harmful species, resulting in a condition known as “gut dysbiosis.”
Without butyrate, the gut lining can become permeable, and bits of food leak out of the GI tract and into circulation, triggering an anaphylactic response in one pattern of allergic reactions.
One of the ways to rapidly treat this has been a microbiome transplant, also known unpleasantly as a fecal biota transplant. But this has had mixed results in the lab, said Dr. Jeffery Hubbell, Ph.D., one of the project’s principal investigators.
“So we thought, why don’t we just deliver the metabolites like butyrate that a healthy microbiome produces?” he said in a news release.
Hubbell and his colleagues at the University of Chicago did just that in a mouse model in early 2023, but the solution is vile to taste and smell, so a new configuration of polymers that cloak the butyrate has been developed by him and his team.
The researchers administered these “polymer micelles” to the digestive systems of mice lacking either healthy gut bacteria or a properly functioning gut lining.
MORE NEWS LIKE THIS: 16% Drop in Peanut Allergies Among Children As Parents Follow Guidelines And Introduce Peanuts Earlier
The treatment restored the gut’s protective barrier and microbiome, in part by increasing the production of peptides that kill off harmful bacteria, which made room for butyrate-producing bacteria.
“We were delighted to see that our drug both replenished the levels of butyrate present in the gut and helped the population of butyrate-producing bacteria to expand,” said Cathryn Nagler, Ph.D., a senior author of the study.
MORE WORK ON ALLERGIES: Researchers Find the Key to Fixing Human Allergies to Dogs
“That will likely have implications not only for food allergy and inflammatory bowel disease, but also for the whole set of non-communicable chronic diseases that have been rising over the last 30 years, in response to lifestyle changes and overuse of antibiotics in our society.”
Nagler and Hubbell co-founded a company called ClostraBio to further develop the butyrate micelles into a commercially available treatment for peanut allergies, reports Univ. of Chicago press. They are working with the FDA on an investigational new drug application and hope to begin clinical trials in patients with moderate ulcerative colitis within the next 18 months.
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After 146 days of picketing, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached a tentative agreement to end the strike that has paralyzed Hollywood TV.
Along with raising base pay, the agreement, released as a 7-page document from the WGA negotiating team, includes a system of bonuses based on the success or failure of the streaming numbers of the shows a writer works on.
Some protections against artificial intelligence of also been agreed on, as well as minimum staff requirements for writing rooms.
LA Times reports that in the age of streaming, writers’ rooms have shrunk, freezing out writers who are just launching their careers and making it hard to gain experience.
“This contract—won with the power of member solidarity and our union siblings over a 148-day strike—incorporates meaningful gains and protections for writers in every segment of the membership,” the union said in the document.
RELATED STORIES: 12-Year-Old Saves Man Who Passed Out Underwater, Credits CPR Learned from ‘Stranger Things’
For TV viewers, many entertainment shows that had been halted could be back in production as soon as next week, as many are made mere hours in advance of recording time.
This includes NBC’s The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
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While Australia’s saltwater crocodiles are famous for sporting an evolutionary design that hasn’t changed in tens of millions of years, a newly discovered species of extinct crocodilian is teaching scientists Down Under just how ferocious they once were.
Baru iylwenpeny is a newly discovered species of “cleaver-headed” crocodile from Australia’s Northern Territory that roamed the now-arid landscape around 8 million years ago.
Found in 2009 at the Alcoota fossil bed, an exquisitely preserved skull of this animal was recently examined by biologists at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and found to be the third new species in this extinct genus of reptile.
Baru crocodiles were the original crocodilian species in Australia, and they evolved there starting around 25 million years ago. The saltwater crocodiles wrastled by the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, which became a symbol of Australia during the years of his smash hit TV show, actually evolved in Africa and arrived on the Australian continent much more recently.
By contrast, the Baru crocs lived in a much lusher and wetter environment and evolved to take prey differently.
Today’s saltwater crocs are fast ambush predators that eat a lot of small fish, or take terrestrial animals that stray close to the water, drowning them.
DISCOVERIES FROM PALEO-AUSTRALIA: Newly Discovered Rock Art Panels Depict How Ancient Ancestors Envisioned Creation and Adapted to Change
The Baru crocs evolved extremely robust skeletal structures, broader mouths, and denser skulls. With dorsally oriented nostrils and eyes, a poor range of head movement, and fossils found in riverine conditions, it’s believed they hunted mostly megafauna as semi-aquatic ambush predators.
“The main difference between [Baru iylwenpeny] and the other older Barus is that it has bigger back teeth,” said earth science curator at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Dr. Adam Yates. “All of these adaptations are pretty much giving it a bigger, stronger bite,” he said.
MORE WICKED FOSSILS: One of the Largest ‘Sea Dragon’ Fossils Ever Found in Britain Unearthed As a Complete Ichthyosaur
The wider mouth also meant that this species had room for another one of its extra large teeth, and Yates believes it would have pretty much eaten “whatever it wanted.”
As Australia heated up, and riverine environments shrank, the animal as well as all its forbearer species went extinct during the middle of the Miocene Epoch—around 25 million to 5 million years ago.
WATCH a great examination and explanation by Dr. Yates…
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After a frantic four hours of search and rescue, a two-year-old toddler from Michigan was found sleeping in the woods amid sweet dreams, fairy dust, and the two family dogs whom she had “wrapped around her finger.”
Thea Chase was playing barefoot in the yard of her home in rural Faithorn, Michigan, when her uncle instructed her to go inside and put some shoes on.
Her Mother Brooke said she had the instinct to go and check on her and their two dogs, a Rottweiler named Buddy, and an English Springer named Hartley.
It soon became terrifyingly clear that Thea was no longer in the yard, after which Brooke and Thea’s uncle began to shout for her. They searched the woods near at hand to the house for about a quarter of an hour before calling the police and Chase’s husband.
“When we get a call like that, everything else stops,” Michigan State Police Lt. Mark Giannunzio told CNN.
In the rural area, the police put out a call for drones, canine teams, and search and rescue personnel to comb the county, while members of Brooke’s close-knit community in town formed their own search party.
MORE RESCUE STORIES: 12-year-old Uses Boy Scout Know-How to Rescue Lost Couple and Injured Dog on a Hike
Eventually, around midnight, a family friend who was still out looking for Thea on ATV discovered Buddy by the side of a trail. He reported that as he approached the dog started barking.
The still-shoeless 2-year-old was located a short way from the trail, sleeping as soundly as a wood nymph, her head atop Hartley’s body. When the ATV driver tried to wake her up, Hartley informed the man with a not-so-polite growl that it was rude to wake a sleeping angel.
“She has those dogs wrapped around her finger,” said Brooke, who according to CNN was “in a fog” for the whole four hours it took to rescue the girl on a 60°F night, who had wandered off 3 miles into the woods.
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Quote of the Day: “The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Photo by: Hermes Rivera
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There’s a man in New Jersey who wants to mow your lawn. Don’t believe him? Ask the patent office—he trademarked the phrase.
Brian Schwartz from Wayne, New Jersey, has pull-started a nationwide movement to automate and scale kindness after losing his job during the pandemic and feeling like he wanted to make a positive impact in the world.
Soon after, he started a volunteer lawn care organization to help seniors, the disabled, and veterans mow their lawns, trim their hedges, and cut back their trees. And he does it all for free.
“When we help someone like Edna, a dedicated teacher juggling personal battles, or Peter a D-Day Veteran who stormed the Beaches of Normandy, it’s incredibly fulfilling,” Schwartz told GNN. “Every lawn mowed is not just grass cut; it’s relief provided, a burden eased, and a community strengthened.”
While sprouting grassroots in New Jersey, the movement spread internationally, and I Want To Mow Your Lawn was born. Brian now oversees over 500 volunteers in 46 states, with similar orgs springing up in Australia, the UK, and Canada.
I Want To Mow Your Lawn and its volunteers have spruced up over 2,000 lawns, but all this helping others springs from a strong foundation at home.
“Every day I’m reminded of my late father (who passed away January 2021 after a two-year battle from brain cancer), who believed in my vision enough to contribute to its foundation via our GoFundMe to become a 501c3,” Brian said.
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“The notion of him looking down with pride, knowing that we’re making a tangible difference, is a powerful driving force. Watching my young son, Dylan, absorb and internalize the work we do is deeply rewarding. Every time we help someone, I see it as not just aiding our immediate community but also shaping the next generation’s values and principles,” he adds.
Once it became clear that there were plenty of people willing to do the work for free, and plenty of people who needed a helping hand, Brian began looking for other ways to help, and began introducing people to more sustainable garden planning, such as installing rock gardens, native gardens, or switching to battery-operated equipment.
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Brian can outfit some of his volunteers thanks to collaborations with major equipment makers like STIHL MilwaukeeTool and Ryobi, while ironically, I Want To Mow Your Lawn’s “No Mow May” petition has gathered 700 signatures from clients looking to ensure their lawns remain vital food producing stopovers for bees and other pollinators during key spring months.
The overwhelming support and recognition from individuals, volunteers, and partners like Project Evergreen and Raising Men Lawn Care Service have been heartwarming,” Schwartz told GNN.
A look their the organization’s YouTube channel reveals it’s not all about lawns, but snow and ice, as well as piles of leaves. If there’s a lawn with a problem, Brian and his team are happy to help.
WATCH an explainer video below…
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A tear-jerking moment, captured on film, shows a toddler being reunited with her teenage brother after he saved her from drowning.
The 18-year-old in shot, Eric Johnson, saved his little sister by performing CPR after he found her floating in the family’s swimming pool.
Little Rose was only 2 at the time and was at home with her brother and mom Nina who said that their habit is to always have one person in the room with Rose.
Alert and aware, Eric came into the living room and noticed that the door was open, and neither Nina nor Rose was around. Checking the swimming pool, the big brother found his little sister unconscious in the pool.
He pulled her out immediately and performed CPR. By the time their mom was called 911, Rose was already regaining consciousness.
First responders arrived shortly after and rushed the two-year-old to hospital and put on a ventilator for two days.
“We normally have one person in the room with her but we both went to the restroom. It was only a few minutes,” Nina explained. “Every time I look at him I think about it. I don’t think he realizes that he didn’t just save her life, he saved my life as well, he saved our family’s life.”
The rescue happened two years ago but Nina has decided to share it now for the first time.
According to Nina, the incident has brought the two siblings together, who are now 20 and 4. The two have always been close, but are now closer than ever.
CPR IN ACTION: For 3 Hours Doctors Continued CPR on Toddler with No Pulse–Until Life Returned
She said: “Their relationship is wonderful. They are so close. They cuddle together. They watch TV together. She shouts at him when he annoys her. It’s beautiful.”
She hopes that the video will inspire others to learn CPR, which has helped her family escape unscathed from the terrifying incident.
MORE LIFE-SAVING STORIES: 12-Year-Old Saves Man Who Passed Out Underwater, Credits CPR Learned from ‘Stranger Things’
“Even if it’s just one person from each family it could make such a difference,” said Nina. “I don’t know where I would be now if Eric hadn’t known how.”
CPR, also known as chest compression, is routinely offered in courses at fire departments and schools, normally for free. It can restart the heart of people who have no pulse or breath, even hours after chest compression is started.
WATCH the reunion below…
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In huge spacefaring news, NASA has its hands on a capsule containing about half a pound of material taken from a large asteroid called Bennu.
The first extraterrestrial soil sample brought back by Americans since the Apollo Missions was accomplished as part of the years-long OSIRIS-REx Mission, the first-ever asteroid sample-and-return mission NASA has undertaken.
Touching down in a DoD Test Range in Utah at 10:52 a.m. EDT on Sunday, the OSIRIS-REx capsule represents the culmination of 7 years of hard work that started when a small spacecraft was launched in 2016, remotely directed to the asteroid Bennu where it arrived and sought a safe landing area in 2019, collected a sample in October of 2020, and then headed for home in 2021.
The Bennu sample—an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams—was transported in its unopened canister by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday.
Curation scientists there will disassemble the canister, extract and weigh the sample, create an inventory of the rocks and dust, and, over time, distribute pieces of Bennu to scientists worldwide.
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Moving as fast as possible to get the canister under a “nitrogen purge,” as scientists call it, was one of the OSIRIS-REx team’s most critical tasks yesterday.
Nitrogen is a gas that doesn’t interact with most other chemicals, and a continuous flow of it into the sample container inside the capsule will keep out earthly contaminants to leave the sample pure for scientific analyses.
“For us, this was the World Series, ninth inning, bases-loaded moment, and this team knocked it out of the park,” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The whole team had butterflies today, but that’s the focused anticipation of a critical event by a well-prepared team.”
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The returned samples collected from Bennu will help scientists worldwide make discoveries to better understand planet formation and the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth, as well as benefit all of humanity by learning more about potentially hazardous asteroids.
WATCH a NASA explainer video below… (Note: GNN has no affiliation with any ads displayed)
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On the arctic island of Svalbard, the Norwegian government has just completed the largest re-wilding project in its history.
Polar bears, reindeer, Arctic fox, and many sea birds are now moving back into the Sveagruva mining town, where the depths of the island were plumbed for coal for 100 years.
Sveagruva was an industrial community nestled in a remote fjord, which before its closure had its own power station, wharf, water supply, and everything else that was necessary to house up to 300 workers and run mining operations on a large scale.
The Storting, or Norwegian parliament, decided in 2017 to wind down operations and clear the area to return it to its natural state. All traces of human activity since mining began in 1910 were to be removed, with the exception of cultural monuments and buildings from before 1946.
It’s now so empty and pristine that no passing polar bear could ever have imagined humans had ever been there apart from three red houses spared by their monument designation.
“This is Norway’s largest nature restoration ever, and an expression of a long-term and consistent Norwegian policy to preserve wilderness nature on Svalbard,” said Climate and Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide.
“There is less and less untouched nature in the world, and the restoration of nature and ecosystems is therefore one of the most important goals in the new global nature agreement. The clean-up in Sveagruva is an important contribution to this.”
MORE ISLAND CONSERVATION: Invading Rats Were Finally Eradicated on 2 Galapagos Islands Thanks to Drone Partnership
Before the re-wilding began 12 people from NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research) spent six weeks scanning and photographing the entire town of Sveagruva. Around 170,000 images and 6,000 scans, in total more than 18 terabits of raw data, have become a huge digital 3D model that can be experienced at a nearby tourist outpost.
“In many ways, the clean-up of Svea and Lunckefjell has been a project that has involved the entire population of Svalbard,” said Lars Fause, the head of civil affairs in Svalbard. “I am impressed by how the various companies and units have worked together. This has been one of the success factors for the project being carried out so efficiently and cost-effectively.”
ANOTHER STORY LIKE THIS: Norway Closes Down Its Last Arctic Coal Mine and Transforms Land into Giant National Park
While 2.5 billion Norwegian Krone, or around $230 million was budgeted for the project, the project came in at merely $83 million.
7 national parks and 23 nature reserves cover the island of Svalbard, making it by percentile one of the most well-conserved island ecosystems in the Arctic at around 66%.
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Quote of the Day: “A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.” – Stendhal
Photo by: public domain
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In early September, a video surfaced at Monterey Bay Whale Watch’s Evan Brodsky’s Instagram of a dolphin “mega pod”—where thousands of these marine mammals school together in one massive pod that stretches from one end of Brodsky’s video camera lens to the other.
Dolphin pod size varies wildly between place and individual species, but in general they range from between several dozen to a hundred, with membership being a fluid affair and inter-pod migration common.
In places with a high abundance of food, pods can merge temporarily, forming a superpod; such groupings may exceed 1,000 dolphins.
“On this day we saw thousands and thousands of long-beaked common dolphins spread out for miles! Literally every splash you see is a dolphin,” Brodsky said, filming the march with his drone.
WATCH the mega pod go below…
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At last weekend’s Malvern Autumn Festival in the UK, growers from across the Isles showed off the truly frightening proportions that vegetables can grow to, headlined by massive pumpkins brought in on a forklift.
4th place winner Tim Saint transported his whopping 667 lbs. pumpkin in a trailer to display at the event held over the weekend in England’s Worcestershire.
Even though he needed a pallet, trailer, and industrial strapping to move the thing, his was a small fry compared to Curtis Leach’s 1st prize-winning pumpkin that arrived at weights usually reserved for cars.
At 638 kilograms, or 1,373 lbs, the gargantuan gourd was 40 kilograms more than the second-place entry, but half as heavy as the current Guinness World Record for heaviest pumpkin, which was 2,700 pounds.
“I grew a 667 lbs. pumpkin this year which I’m delighted at,” said Mr. Saint. “I’ve been growing pumpkins for 20 years and that’s the biggest I’ve ever done It’s got to be over 3ft tall at least, I’m 6ft tall myself and it’s big.”
“The secret is just plenty of water and manure, plenty of cow manure especially,” added Mr. Saint, who did take 1st prize for largest beetroot. “It takes a lot of water, I normally give it five watering cans of water a day.”
One of the largest harvest festivals in the UK, there are 35 categories for giant or long vegetables, and this year 8 new world records were set, including for Largest Runner Bean Leaf, Heaviest Runner Bean, Tallest Tomatillo Plant, Longest Luffa, Heaviest Bell Pepper, Heaviest Cucumber, Heaviest Broad Bean, and Longest Broad Bean.
Ian Stott brought along a 49-pound cabbage which secured him second spot on the winner’s podium this year.
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“It’s 22kg and about four-and-a-half feet wide,” he said proudly, adding that “it’s not been a good year for cabbages, it was so hot at the beginning of the season.”
MORE GIANT VEGETABLES: Monster Pumpkin Weighing 2,350 Pounds is Crowned Largest Grown in North America
“You’ve got to have the right seed and Mother Nature needs to be on your side… They weren’t that big this year. I’ve had them 6ft across and it’s a bit hard to not break leaves off him,” said Mr. Stott, who lost out on 1st prize to Annette Stone, who managed to break 54 pounds with her cabbage.
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Along with routinely launching robots across the final frontier, NASA is also involved in sustainable aviation research, and this division may have cracked the code to creating a lighter, safer battery back with multiple times more discharge power than lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries, the current industry standard for electric vehicles, contain liquids that make them vulnerable to overheating, fire, and loss of charge over time. By contrast, NASA’s SABERS (Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety) project is developing experimental solid-state battery packs that do not suffer from these drawbacks.
SABERS receives funding from NASA’s Convergent Aeronautics Solutions project, which is designed to investigate certain technologies to solve aviation’s biggest challenges: in this case, battery-powered flight.
Carbon from air travel equates to around 2% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Batteries are hypothesized as a potential ameliorating solution to emissions-heavy jet fuel.
During the past year, SABERS’ solid-state batteries have been honed to produce a discharge rate much higher than any other example on the market by a factor of 10—and then again by a factor of 5.
Inside the battery, sulfur and selenium cells stacked directly on top of one another without casings allow for greater weight savings. Along with the cells themselves, multiple batteries can be stacked without any separation between them.
“Not only does this design eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the battery’s weight, it also allows us to double or even triple the energy it can store, far exceeding the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries that are considered to be the state of the art,” said Rocco Viggiano, principal investigator for SABERS at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
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It has so far allowed the SABERS team to power objects at 500 watt-hours per kilogram–double that of an electric car.
This year, the main objective for SABERS was to show the battery’s properties meet its energy and safety targets while also demonstrating it can safely operate under realistic conditions and at maximum power, NASA writes.
Partnering with Georgia Tech, SABERS has been able to use different methodologies in their work which has so far benefitted the batteries.
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“Georgia Tech has a big focus on micromechanics of how the cell changes during operation. That helped us look at the pressures inside the battery, which then helped us improve the battery even more,” said Viggiano.
“It also led us to understand from a practical standpoint how to manufacture a cell like this, and it led us to some other improved design configurations,” said Viggiano.
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In a true paradigm shift, persevered timbers show that early man, and potentially older species than Homo sapiens, were building wooden structures 476,000 years ago.
Wikipedia lists the earliest carpentry assemblage ever found previously as a water well cover carved from oak boards from 5,600 BCE. The oldest wooden tool ever found was a carved spear from about 416,000 years ago.
These 5-foot-long logs had clear signs of woodworking with stone tools, with the end of one set atop another at a right angle. There are notches cut into the ends to allow them to fit into one another, a technique that makes them seem a little like Lincoln Logs.
Nothing of the sort has ever been found from this period and is rarely found from the Neolithic period.
Professor Larry Barham at the University of Liverpool led the excavations on a river bank near Kalambo Falls in the southern African country of Zambia, and said that it changed how he views our early ancestors.
“This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors, they made something new, and large, from wood,” Professor Barham told the BBC. “They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.”
While unlikely to have been a hut or a cabin, the researchers believe it could have been part of a platform that hosted other structures on top of it, or, because of its proximity to the river, a kind of jetty to go fishing from.
MORE OF OUR EARLY HISTORY: Prehistoric Human Footprints Unearthed in Spain are Nearly 300,000 Years Old and Unique in All of Europe
While ancient wooden digging sticks were found during the excavations, no bones of any hominid have been unearthed. Homo sapiens fossils begin to appear around 315,000 years ago, leading to the possibility that we either haven’t dug in the right place for Homo sapiens, or a previous species of our genus was intelligent enough to use stone tools to perform basic carpentry techniques.
“But it could be a different species—[perhaps] Homo erectus or Homo naledi—there were a number of hominid species around at that time in southern Africa,” said Geoff Duller, professor of geography at the University of Aberystwyth, and co-author on the study.
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Quote of the Day: “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare
Photo by: Sherise Van Dyk
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Animal lover Dave Brooker goes everywhere with his beloved pet turkey that has followed him everywhere from the pub to the dentist since she was born two years ago on his farm in England.
He named the chick Trouble Version Two—or, T2 for short.
The unlikely duo’s story began when the turkey’s mother was sitting on a dozen eggs and the weather turned foul (no pun intended). The first two that hatched died, so he set up a heated brooder to get the turkeys strong enough to go back under their mum.
“T2 was the first one out, and I fed her for 10 or 11 hours. She was on her own, with me checking on her, and must have thought I was her parent.
The others all went back under the mother quite easily, but not T2.
“Ever since, she literally goes everywhere with me.”
Locals in Maidstone, Kent are often baffled as they see the 56-year-old sitting alongside T2 in his car when they stop at traffic lights, or when he feeds her a favorite snack—the sausage meat from a scotch egg—in the middle of a parking lot.
She can often be seen casually sitting in the White Horse pub with a packet of chips and very well-behaved.
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“At the pub, she sits on her blanket and stays there. Unlike most dogs who would run around, you sit her down with a pack of cheese & onion crisps and she’s happy.
Although some people find their undeniable bond a little unorthodox, the pair are inseparable and even sleep in the same room together at their home.
“She’s like my child,” Brooker admitted. “She’s good company and entertaining—sometimes I even think she’s part human.”
“I’ve got a video of her walking on the bar as a little chick,” said Brooker, who also owns three horses.
The only time the pair are separated is when Brooker goes to work as an online order picker for Tesco.
“I was at the dentist recently and I asked the receptionist if she could turkey-sit for me. She thought it was a joke, but then I brought T2 in. They all loved it.
He now finds himself talking to people he wouldn’t normally be having conversation with—and she’s had a lovely effect on her owner.
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A Somalian man recently noticed T2 in the pub and said she reminded him of his childhood days when he kept turkeys on his family’s farm.
“She draws quite a fair bit of attention from people,” he admitted. “But, she’s very tame, very sociable and she lets people pet her.
“Quite often I’ll be feeding her in Tesco car park and kids will come over. It just helps people think about turkeys in a different way, because most people actually haven’t seen a live turkey.”
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“Turkeys are interesting birds and they look prehistoric. T2’s my little velociraptor.”
“I went through a bad spell of anxiety and depression back in 2014, and it’s helpful to have a bond like this with an animal.
Mr Brooker’s companion has made such an impression on him in their short two years together that he now chooses to abstain from eating turkey at Christmas, and refers euphemistically to December as the month when all the turkeys ‘go on holiday’.
Watch the SWNS video below…
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Engineers in Australia have found a way of making stronger concrete by utilizing coffee grounds, giving the roast a “double shot” at life and reducing waste going to landfills.
The RMIT University team developed the technique that makes concrete 30% stronger by adding waste coffee grounds after it is turned into biochar using their “low-energy process”.
Globally, 11 million tons of spent coffee is generated annually. Disposing of organic waste poses an environmental challenge because it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which is 21 times worse than CO2 for the climate.
Furthermore, concrete used in construction projects around the world requires 50 billion tons of natural sand mined every year. Coffee biochar can replace a portion of that sand, which is a finite resource, explained research team leader Professor Jie Li.
“The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world–typically taken from river beds and banks–to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment.”
“With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand,” said Li.
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“The inspiration for our work was to find an innovative way of using the large amounts of coffee waste in construction projects rather than sending it to landfills,” said Dr. Rajeev Roychand, lead author of the research paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
He said the study is the first to prove that waste coffee grounds can be used to improve concrete—and several local governments battling with the disposal of organic waste have shown interest in their work.
“They have already engaged us for their upcoming infrastructure projects incorporating pyrolysed forms of different organic wastes.”
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Pyrolysis involves heating organic waste in the absence of oxygen at 350 degrees Celsius.
“Our research team has gained extensive experience in developing highly optimized biochars from different organic wastes, including wood biochar, food-waste biochar, agricultural waste biochar, and municipal solid-waste biochar, for concrete applications,” said co-researcher Dr. Mohammad Saberian, who is working with his team next on field trials.
These exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill—and the construction industry could play a role in transforming it into a valuable resource to ensure sustainability. . . Watch their video below.
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Nearly three-quarters of gamers are certain that video games have improved their lives.
A recent survey of 2,000 American gamers revealed how video games are more than just hobbies—72% of respondents attested to the positive impact of the pastime on various aspects of daily life.
Sixty-eight percent credit games for enhancing relaxation, and 67% say they improve problem-solving skills. More than six in ten believe they also sharpen critical thinking and enhance better hand-eye coordination.
38% of respondents said gaming helps them with the ‘soft skill’ of cooperating with others.
More than two-thirds (68%) could feel their moods change when playing video games—with 51% feeling more relaxed, 27% feeling happier and 19% feeling sharper.
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The random double-opt-in survey commissioned by the mobile game Solitaire Grand Harvest (by Playtika) was conducted by OnePoll.
“Research reinforces video games are far more than entertainment; they’re a powerful force for personal growth and positive change,” said Amir Coifman, general manager of Solitaire Grand Harvest.
“Our goal is to meticulously craft immersive experiences to offer relaxation, challenge problem-solving skills and foster community, allowing players to become better versions of themselves.”
10 THINGS THAT GAMING MAY HELP WITH
– Relaxing – 68%
– Problem-solving – 67%
– Critical thinking skills – 62%
– Hand-eye coordination – 61%
– Cooperating with others – 38%
– Playing sports – 19%
– Driving – 17%
– Cooking – 16%
– Physics – 14%
– Surviving the apocalypse – 14%
A new study shows that bats evolved to avoid cancer and the data may uncover how humans can treat or prevent viruses as well as cancer.
A rapid evolution in bats, the only winged mammal, may account for their “extraordinary” ability to both host and survive infections and even to avoid cancer—and that success is in their genes.
Bats are exceptional among mammals for not only their ability to fly but also their long lives, low cancer rates, and robust immune systems.
The ability of bats to tolerate viral infections may stem from unusual features of their innate immune response—and these characteristics may have implications for human health.
For example, by better understanding the mechanisms of the bat immune system that allow bats to tolerate viral infections, researchers may be better able to prevent disease outbreaks from animals to people.
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Comparative genomic analyses of bats and cancer-susceptible mammals may eventually provide new information on the causes of cancer and the links between cancer and immunity. Studies of bats and other organisms complement studies based on mouse models; mice are more amenable than bats to experimental manipulation but exhibit fewer characteristics with implications for human disease.
In a paper published in Genome Biology and Evolution by Oxford University Press
this week, researchers used the Oxford Nanopore Technologies long-read platform, and bat samples collected with help from the American Museum of Natural History in Belize, to sequence the genomes of two bat species—the Jamaican fruit bat and the Mesoamerican mustached bat.
The researchers at of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York carried out a comprehensive comparative genomic analysis with a diverse collection of bats and other mammals.
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They found genetic adaptations in six DNA repair-related proteins and 46 proteins in bats that were cancer-related, meaning that researchers have previously found such proteins suppress cancer.
Notably, the study found these altered cancer-related genes were enriched more than two-fold in the bat group compared to other mammals.
“By generating these new bat genomes and comparing them to other mammals we continue to find extraordinary new adaptations in antiviral and anticancer genes,” said the paper’s lead author, Armin Scheben.
“These investigations are the first step towards translating research on the unique biology of bats into insights relevant to understanding and treating aging and diseases, such as cancer, in humans.”
Founded in 1890 and home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the not-for-profit Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory furthers biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Additional funding came from National Institutes of Health and Simons Center for Quantitative Biology.
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