An artistic rendering of the 3D-printed bridge - credit, Singapore LTA
An artistic rendering of the 3D-printed bridge – credit, Singapore LTA
Singapore’s transportation officials are set to debut the use of 3D-printed concrete in the form of a new pedestrian bridge that will stretch 30 feet across a waterway.
Brought onboard a larger project to improve transit options in the Jurong River and Temah areas of the city state, it’s the country’s first use of 3D printing for this kind of infrastructure.
The project, managed by the Land Transit Authority (LTA) has just completed a testing phase where segments of printed concrete, made up of cement, sand, and water, were subjected to stress tests under the weight of large water tanks weighing 1 metric ton each.
The first printed segments formed a scale model of what will be the eventual bridge. 10 segments in total took about 40 hours to finish compared to two weeks that might have been expected with manual concrete laying.
It cost a mere $1.4 million to develop and supply the specialized 3D-printing mixture, and the whole project was carried out by Singapore Center for 3D Printing at Nanyang Technological University, with help from the engineering consultancy Witteveen+Bos and 3D concrete printing construction firm CES_Innovfab.
The real thing is slated for completion in 2028, when each of the 10 segments will be threaded together on robust steel cables until it measures 30 feet long and 15 feet wide.
The bridge is striking to look at, with sculpted conical feet that gives it a shape a little like that of a caterpillar.
In Singapore, it’s very much early days for the technology, and the load-bearing tests carried out on the scale model will inform any future applications of the technology. It’s hoped they will be successful, as labor shortages are affecting LTA’s ability to conduct similar projects at scale.
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3D-printed homes present as a much easier engineering challenge since the structure is built from the ground up. Printing each bridge segment—set for a life of foundationless suspension, required a precise mixture of ingredients, printing flow rate, and printing speed to ensure each layer fell, filled, and dried in a perfectly even pattern to ensure no cracks would develop as the mixture hardened.
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A nano-scale pinch of gold dust may be enough to transform a previously-ineffective battery technology into a new industry standard.
As the demand for more reliable power systems grows in the renewable energy sector, the race is on to develop batteries that cost less but have a longer lifespan.
Precious metals are a key part of this effort, with silver and gold being among the most conductive elements on the periodic table. Silver is being used in new solid-state batteries, while gold has been used by Canadian researchers to solve a major issue with zinc batteries.
While zinc-based batteries are safer and more cost-effective than industry-standard lithium-ion batteries, a major obstacle to their use in large-scale, grid storage is their shorter lifespan. They fail sooner because they develop tiny, tree-shaped metal structures on the anode called dendrites, which cause the battery to short circuit.
Now, researchers from Concordia University have found a way to slow dendrite formation.
Using the ultrabright X-ray devices of the Canadian Light Source at the national laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan, the Concordia team found that “sprinkling” a small amount of gold nanoparticles on a battery’s inner surface can cut dendrite growth by up to 50 times compared to regular zinc batteries.
Their gold-treated batteries went on to work for more than 6,000 hours in lab settings, a 50-fold increase compared to uncoated zinc.
“Coating the electrode is known to improve battery performance, but the small quantity of particles needed for our technique and how they are arranged on the battery surface is a very new, exciting finding,” says Seungil Lee, a PhD student at Concordia and lead author of the team’s paper, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Although gold is expensive, the technique the researchers developed—which sparsely distributes particles on less than 10% of the battery surface—could be relatively cheap to implement for large-scale battery applications.
“Because of the way that we make it, which doesn’t require any special lab conditions and only small amounts of gold, it just becomes dead cheap to put gold particles on the surface, it’s 1/100th of the price of regular gold coatings,” says Ayse Turak, Associate Professor, Physics, and Lee’s supervisor.
“It was a revelation for us. There’s so little material on the surface that it’s almost impossible to characterize by any other means. But X-rays at the Canadian Light Source provide a very strong signal, so we can see it and we can confirm it’s there, and where it sits on the surface,” added Turak.
Now the team is studying how the particle-coating technology could perform with copper electrodes for next-generation anode-free batteries. They’re also investigating whether sparse nanoparticles could be used beyond batteries, in other technologies such as sensors, photovoltaics, and lighting.
Silver and gold are recognized in the investment community mostly as non-interest bearing reserve assets—safe havens from monetary debasement. Studies like these remind us that just because gold and silver have been used as money for 5,000 years at least, they have numerous current and future industrial applications.
Samsung’s new, all-solid-state battery, to be debuted first (it’s believed) in EVs will provide almost twice as much range as lithium-ion battery packs and charge within 10 minutes. The advent of silver as a key coating in the battery was one of several developments that saw silver prices rise parabolically between November and February from around $50 per ounce to $150.
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Honey undergoing treatment - credit, Española Humane
Honey undergoing treatment – credit, Española Humane
A rural New Mexico family was left in a state resembling heartbroken wonderment when they discovered their 12-year-old dog who’s afraid of the vacuum cleaner fought off a bear encroaching on their property.
Honey the dog was recorded in security camera audio having it out with the bear, newly emerged from hibernation and famished; with an eye and a nose on the 60 or so chickens that Denise Martinez houses in a coup on her property.
At risk might also have been the horses, or the other dogs, but Honey was having none of it.
She’s far from her prime years, and half-blind from an encounter with a porcupine, but still managed miraculously to ward off the ursine intruder despite suffering grievous injuries.
“She is our little savior—she’s always been protective that way,” Martinez told the Guardian in a brief phone call on Monday. “She risked her life to save not just the coop, but her family, from that bear.”
Martinez’s daughter, Leanna was the one who found Honey after she fell under the bear’s attacks, suffering deep punctures, bruising, and partial flaying around the head and neck.
The wounds were everything the chilling security camera audio of the battle sounded like they’d be, and the family didn’t imagine she’d pull through as they raced her to a local treatment center, Española Humane.
credit – Española Humane
Once there, she underwent a battery of life-saving interventions, including surgery, medication, and frequent bandage changing. Flaying, or the removal of skin, is a common occurrence in bear attacks. The animal’s tongue is strong enough to take off the skin organ in its totality as easy was we might remove the point of an ice cream dollop.
In spite of it all, Honey the “Bearslayer” pulled through.
“And because of her family’s love, a community who cares, and a little bit of … badassery, this half-blind sassy senior is still here,” Española Humane wrote in a Facebook post celebrating the fact that she pulled through.
Now at home, Honey can rest easy knowing she carried out the ultimate responsibility of any ranch dog, without paying the ultimate price, a testament both to her own inner strength, and that of all her race.
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NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin window - credit, NASA
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin window – credit, NASA
Americans and Canadians been delighted with images of the Moon and Earth taken from onboard the Orion capsule as it took 4 astronauts into Lunar orbit for the first time since the Apollo program.
Artemis II lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1st, 2026, reached the Moon on the 5th, and transited the Moon’s far side on the 6th.
On Monday, the mission marked the farthest point humans have ever traveled from the surface of Earth—about the width of the Lower 48—plus a quarter-million miles—from home.
A view of the Moon from the Orion capsule – credit, NASA
On the way, the crew have kept their countrymen updated with all the sights from Lunar sphere of influence, where the gravity of our satellite affects the capsule more than does the gravity of Earth.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to visit Lunar space, was captured in a particularly striking photo gazing out a cabin window at our planet while her hair dangled in microgravity.
A view of Earth taken from the Orion spacecraft with the aurora in the Northern Hemisphere – credit, Chris WisemanA view of the Moon from the Artemis II mission – credit, NASA
Mission Commander Chris Wiseman captured the Earth illuminated by the Sun, with the polar aurora spreading out along the Northern Hemisphere.
A striking image of the Moon’s near side (the side we see from Earth) was taken from the capsule that shows a major crater and former lava flow, while the bottom-third of the photo captures the far side, totally pockmarked with impact sites.
Artemis II is the mission that would return humans to Lunar space to build up performance data and know-how for an eventual return to the Moon’s surface with Artemis III.
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Quote of the Day: “Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but wise.” – H.G. Wells
Photo by: Abdulla Faiz (CC license)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
25 years ago today, NASA launched the “2001 Odyssey” probe to Mars. Named after Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film, its mission was to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet’s geology and radiation environment.
That mission was a success over a period that elapsed 32 months after it arrived in orbit around the Red Planet, and has continued on for 24 years and 5 months, still transmitting valuable data as the oldest craft on or around Mars, and the second oldest serving spacecraft in the solar system. READ more about what it’s found… (2021)
Before and after screenshots – Videos by @thebettaboys on Instagram
Before and after screenshots – Videos by @thebettaboys on Instagram
A woman who’s spent 15 years raising beautiful betta fish shared a heartwarming story about her latest family member: Stevie, who she found as a dull and depressed white color in a pet shop cup of water.
Taking him home and nursing him back to health, he rewarded her by flushing an incredible electric blue.
Credit: @thebettaboys via Instagram
Adriana recently ceased her Instagram activity; she had been posting for many years about the care and activity of raising half-a-dozen betta fish on a channel called @thebettaboys.
Before announcing the end to her channel’s activity, she shared one more viral video: the life story of Stevie, whose white coloration and frail fins indicated how poorly he was living inside what Adriana described as a “cup.”
“There is some kind of myth that a fish is the easiest pet to get a child. I actually got my first betta when I was 11, and I always feel some guilt for that because he didn’t thrive,” she says in a video narration from the Dodo.
Stevie, whom Adriana described as looking “a little goth” with black lips and rings around his eyes, was kept in a cup with no filtration or heating. After some weeks in a proper tank with new vegetation, objects, and good nutrition, the bone-colored Stevie began to get these orange spots, which were quickly overtaken by blue ones.
Like a Pokémon evolving, his long lace-like fins doubled in length and size, and the blue spots eventually expanded to cover his whole body.
“Even though he’s changed blue, he still has his signature moustache,” she said.
Betta fish are native to Southeast Asia and are prized aquarium species for their long fins and varied colors.
The Betta Boys, who Adriana raised with love and care for 15 years, were black, red, shades of blue, orange, and white, with no two looking even remotely the same.
She says the fish a really smart, and enjoy so much when she changed the vegetation or objects in their aquariums.
WATCH the video below…
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In one of the stranger manifestations of species decline in Australia, the Critically-Endangered regent honeyeater is having to re-learn its natural love song.
With 300 or fewer of these beautiful birds left in the wild, young solitary males have been observed mimicking the calls of other honeyeaters, and even other birds.
The songs are part of the regent honeyeater’s mating tradition, and if lost, the birds at risk of vanishing won’t even know how to find a lover.
But scientists at the Australian National University weren’t about to let this happen, and so set up ‘music lessons’ for captive males in a breeding program.
Beginning in 2021, scientists overseeing the program tried playing for their birds the “Blue Mountains Typical,” an aria sung by the regent honeyeater in their native highland habitat in the state of New South Wales.
A “clipped” or piecemeal version of the Blue Mountains Typical has been recorded by these birds in the wild, likely a result of having little to no contact with other adults who know it by heart.
After some initial success playing recordings of the song, ANU behavioral ecologist and conservationist at the Taronga Conservation Society, Joy Tripovich, said that the team behind the long-established captive breeding program for regent honeyeaters began to bring wild males into the aviary to teach young males the song.
“The simplest way that we’ve actually cracked this code is by just mimicking what happens in nature, by having a tutor, a wild bird, next to the youngsters, so they had direct interactions,” Dr. Tripovich said.
“It’s pretty remarkable … the first time it happened the smiles on people’s faces were just amazing because you knew you’d just managed to capture this wild song.”
As the years marched on towards present day, the team at Taronga refined the music lessons; eventually knowing exactly how many ‘students’ could manage to learn from a single ‘teacher;’ between 4 and 5.
“We are releasing the birds that can actually sing into the wild, with the hope that wild calls can be re-established,” Dr. Tripovich said.
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Waste Light Concrete (WLC) being poured - credit, Makropa
Waste Light Concrete (WLC) being poured – credit, Makropa
A Hungarian firm is adding shredded, hard-to-recycle waste into a light concrete mixture for use in paving roads, building houses, and insulating structures.
The firm based in Budapest, called Makropa, utilizes many unrecyclable waste streams that would otherwise be destined for landfills or the incinerator.
It says it can entrap between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of trash per kilometer of road.
Makropa’s (WLC) Waste Light Concrete has been available since 2021. The WLC is a blend of proprietary binding additive, shredded waste, and standard concrete mixing ingredients.
WLC can contain a variety of materials, including polystyrene foam, mixed-ester plastics that are hard to recycle, rigid plastics, but also non-plastic waste like furnace ash, sawdust, and cigarette butts. The shredded components take the form of the stones that would normally be used in standard concrete.
Károly Bus, the founder of Makropa and patent holder of WLC, says the worst thing that can happen is for these materials to be buried or incinerated.
“I don’t know anyone else utilizing it in the way we are. So far, no one else has found a solution at this scale and quantity,” Mr. Bus told Reuters.
Plastic roads, including made of unrecyclable plastic are not a new phenomenon, but they are melted typically into an asphalt mixture. Makropa’s method sees the product maintain its concrete chemistry, making it more durable and longer-lasting, as well as more versatile.
WLC has been used to construct building foundations, and has showed impressive resistance to projectiles and greater soundproofing potential than normal concrete.
WATCH the WLC in action through this Reuters report…
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The Springburn Winter Gardens from the front - credit, Leslie Barrie / Geography UK, CC 2.0.
The Springburn Winter Gardens from the front – credit, Leslie Barrie / Geography UK, CC 2.0.
A historic greenhouse in Glasgow is set to finally be revived after 40 years of dereliction.
$1.5 million will help a trust organized to save the building do just that, while simultaneously opening it up to events and perhaps more.
Located in the northern district of the same name, the Springburn Winter Gardens was Scotland’s largest greenhouse when there was still green in the house. Built in 1892, it played host to classical concertos and exotic flower displays behind the massive glazing held up by attractive British ironworks.
In the post-war years, however, the gardens and park began to decay with the general Springburn neighborhood, and in 1983, the Winter Garden was closed after a huge storm damaged it. It has ever since remained in disrepair and disregard.
Plans to tear it down were rebuffed by locals with long, fond memories of the greenhouse in Springburn Park, and in 2012, the Springburn Winter Garden Trust was formed to preserve the building, whose first charge was to perform emergency stabilization work in 2017.
This very trust just recently received £1.1 million from the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund which aims to renew community sites in disadvantaged areas around Scottish cities.
Sarah Robinson Frood owns a company called Innovate Rural, which is now developing a plan to take the first step towards restoring the greenhouse by turning it into a “living ruin.”
“On a basic level it’s going to make it accessible again and stop it falling down. There has been a lot of technical reporting over the past couple of years and that has shown it is in a precarious state.”
“It’s just about bringing it back into use after stabilizing it. It’s something like a ruined church or a bandstand, where the structure is still there and can be utilized while not being a completed or closed building.”
Ways of utilizing the heritage-listed building could involve making it into a hub for arts and culture, with leasable spaces, a performance venue, and cafe/bar.
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Quote of the Day: “Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.” – Alfred Montapert
Photo by: Jackie Hutchinson
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
130 years ago today, the first Olympic Games of the modern era opened in Athens–1,500 years after the original games were banned by the Roman emperor. Because Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Athens was chosen as the perfect place to stage the first modern Games. Despite obstacles, the Games of the I Olympiad were regarded as a great success, attracting the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. The Panathinaiko Olympic Stadium overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event. READ some of the highlights… (1896)
In cloudy old England, an architect has created his own phone app that displays which pubs are currently in the sunshine.
Mo Dawod was out in London in April last year when he decided that he wanted an iced coffee in the sunshine, but there was no way to know which cafes would be blanketed in shade.
So, later that night, he created his own mobile map using publicly available data, such as a building’s height and footprint, to create a shadow simulation for pubs, restaurants, and cafes.
What started as a simple ‘hack’ for himself quickly turned into the number one app in the UK—called Sunseekr—and Mo has since quit his day job in architecture to pursue it full time.
“I decided to share it with the community to see if anyone was also struggling like me and would be interested,” said the 34-year-old. “People went crazy. It went so viral on Reddit that night.
“I was astonished and shocked. After that I decided to make it as an app.”
“The app went number one in the UK in the lifestyle category four days after it became real. It was so surreal that all this happened from me just wanting to have an iced coffee.”
Mo, who is originally from Egypt, next looked at how to monetize his invention so he could pay his bills while operating the Sunseekr app—now with over 250,000 users.
Sunseekr app screen – SWNS
Last summer, he managed to get a sponsorship from Aperol, who used his map to create their own version showing where people could drink an aperitivo of Aperol Spritz in the sunshine.
With the app becoming less popular in the winter months, the founder decided to use the time to work on leveling-up the experience with new elements.
Venues now have a chance to be more featured, uploading pictures of their venue, mapping the garden, and pushing themselves on the explore page for £350 a year.
It uses a moon emoji if the location is in the shade, and a sun if it’s not. The app can also notify you when your favorite spot is getting sun beamed, displays closing and opening times, and offers the ability to leave comments and reviews.
“When I built this app it was more of a hack for the problem I had. Now I am trying to take it to the next level. I have rebuilt the whole app for summer 2026.
“It has been for me such a crazy journey. It was so unexpected. I never thought I would be running such a platform. I am so happy that I managed to put this together.”
A University of Michigan researcher stumbled upon a crucial caveat for every study of microplastics that has been scaring us for years now. Lab gloves may have skewed the data in the research.
She discovered that residue from latex or nitrile gloves may be unintentionally contaminating lab equipment used to measure microplastics in the air and water, thus inflating estimates of the pollution.
The startling discovery began as a “wild goose chase” in the lab, when chemistry grad student Madeline Clough was working on a project to examine microplastics in Michigan’s atmosphere.
The researchers used air samplers which collect particles from the atmosphere and deposit them onto a metal substrate. Using light-based spectroscopy, the researchers are then able to determine the types of particles.
When Clough examined the substrates to estimate how many microplastics she captured, the results were “many thousands of times greater” than what she expected to find.
“It led to a wild goose chase of trying to figure out where this contamination could possibly have come from, because we just knew this number was far too high to be correct,” Clough said in a University press release.
“Was it a plastic squirt bottle, was it particles in the atmosphere of the lab where I was preparing the substrates? We finally traced it down to gloves.”
Wearing gloves is recommended by all the current literature in the microplastics field, so Clough sought new answers.
The salient study
Particles called stearates—a kind of salt or soap—were found to be the culprits. Manufacturers coat disposable gloves with these particles to make them easier to peel from the molds used to form them.
They are “chemically similar” at a structural level to microplastics. They also look nearly identical—which can lead to false positives or inflated numbers of microplastic pollution, like Clough and her colleagues experienced.
File photo by Soren Funk
So the researchers designed a new experiment to figure out how widespread the problem is. They tested seven different kinds of gloves, including nitrile, latex, and cleanroom gloves, as well as the most common techniques microplastic researchers use to identify microplastics.
The experiment tried to mimic every point and variety of contact that would occur in a research environment touching a scientist’s gloved hand. This would include a filter or a microscope slide—any piece of technology that a researcher might use over the course of investigating microplastics.
2,000 false positives per millimeter
They found that, on average, the gloves imparted about 2,000 false positives per millimeter squared area.
“If you are contacting a sample with a gloved hand, you’re likely imparting these stearates that could overestimate your results,” Clough said.
The fewest particles were imparted by cleanroom gloves. They are made without the stearate coating; are low-lint to prevent contamination in the lab; and useful in “ultra-pure” controlled environments like electronics manufacturing and pharmaceutical facilities. Unfortunately, they are 2-5 times more expensive than standard medical or industrial gloves.
The researchers also designed another experiment to determine whether they were able to distinguish what a true microplastic looked like versus one of the stearate salts from the gloves using scanning electron microscopy as well as light-based microscopy.
They found that the stearate was visually impossible to distinguish from polyethylene, the plastic it resembles.
Credit: Madeline Clough / University of Michigan
But the chemistry team was also able to find other methods—in collaboration with grad student Eduardo Ochoa Rivera and U-M professor of statistics Ambuj Tewari—that can differentiate between the false positives coming from the glove and microplastics in the environment. This can help researchers revisit potentially contaminated datasets.
“For microplastics researchers who have these impacted datasets, there’s still hope to recover them and find a true quantity of microplastics,” said Clough, whose work was just published in the journal RSC Analytical Methods.
“This field is very challenging to work in because there’s plastic everywhere,” said chemistry and engineering Professor Anne McNeil, the senior author of the study.
“That’s why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field.”
In the conclusion of their paper, the team extolled researchers to wear cleanroom gloves and take other precautions so as not to skew the data and unknowingly make the microplastics outlook even more alarming.
“We implore microplastic researchers to address glove-based contamination and avoid overestimating microplastic pollution in the environment.”
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Reggae the Atlantic harbor seal with his beloved rubber duckie - Credit: New England Aquarium
Reggae the Atlantic harbor seal with his beloved rubber duckie – Credit: New England Aquarium
You didn’t know how much you wanted to see a video of a harbor seal playing with his rubber duckie—until now.
The New England Aquarium may call it an enrichment activity designed to stimulate its resident Atlantic harbor seals, but we call it adorable fun.
And, soon after posting a video on social media of Reggae, a 33-year-old seal playing with its beloved yellow duck, a new ‘influencer’ was born.
The post shared to Instagram and Facebook by the aquarium in Boston, tallied 80,000 Likes from viewers melting over the seal kissing and hugging the floaty toy.
Rebekah Miller, the aquarium’s manager overseeing the Atlantic harbor seals and California sea lions, told the Associated Press that the toys serve a purpose.
“It’s a great way to challenge our animals…and really allow them to use those problem-solving skills that they have.”
The facility is home to five seals, all of which were born in captivity, and all of which are curious by nature. So placing unusual items around their habitat, which is built to resemble a rocky New England coast, helps keep them engaged and mentally stimulated.
Recreation of textile co-op at Cabezo Redondo settlement in the Bronze Age Credit: J. A. López Padilla; Reconstruction of a Bronze Age loom by Beate Schneider, on display at the Alcoy Archaeological Museum via University of Alicante / SWNS
Recreation of textile co-op at Cabezo Redondo settlement in the Bronze Age Credit: J. A. López Padilla; Reconstruction of a Bronze Age loom by Beate Schneider, on display at the Alcoy Archaeological Museum via University of Alicante
A wooden loom that survived a devastating fire 3,500 years ago has revealed key aspects of the Bronze Age textile revolution.
Most of the weights as well as components made from wood and plant fibers remained remarkably intact despite the blaze that burned down a settlement near Villena in present day Spain.
Scientists explained that the same inferno that destroyed part of the ancient village of Cabezo Redondo also helped preserve the loom that they say is “incredibly hard” to document in archaeology.
The discovery by a team of Spanish researchers is one of just a few known cases in which both the set of loom weights and components have been preserved.
Describing their research in the journal Antiquity, the team says that Cabezo Redondo was a major Bronze Age settlement between 2100 BC and 1250 BC, which included terraces on the slope of the hill, with workbenches, fireplaces, silos, and storage receptacles.
The economy was based on intensive farming, so the discovery of gold, silver and ivory ornaments, as well as glass and seashell beads, proved that the settlement was part of a large exchange network connected to other areas of the Iberian Peninsula, the Eastern Mediterranean, and even Central Europe.
Study co-author Professor Gabriel García Atiénzar, of the University of Alicante, explained that the fire generated a very specific archaeological situation and the collapse of the ceiling was crucial: “resulting in a sealed space in which the area was suddenly destroyed and immediately buried, enabling its preservation.”
The loom’s components – including charred timbers, clay weights and esparto ropes – were preserved beneath the remains of the collapsed ceiling.
3,500-year-old loom with wooden weights in Cabezo Redondo settlement – University of Alicante / SWNS
The loom was revealed during excavation on the western slope of the settlement, where the researchers found a raised platform with a dense concentration of clay weights. The evidence allowed the team to identify the device with a high degree of certainty.
“Although the loom was recovered from a collapsed area and some pieces were missing, the compact set of 44 cylindrical weights with a central perforation, most of them about 200 grams in weight, is characteristic of a vertical warp-weighted loom,” said Ricardo Basso Rial, a predoctoral researcher at the University of Granada.
“Several pine timbers in a parallel arrangement were discovered alongside the weights.
“Some of the thicker timbers, with a rectangular cross-section, are probably the remains of the upright posts of the loom frame; other narrower pieces, with a rounded cross-section, supposedly constitute the horizontal posts.”
The researchers also identified plaited esparto fibers associated with the structure, and even remains of small cords in the perforations of some weights, probably used to “warp” the threads to each loom weight.
Archeo-botanist Yolanda Carrión, from the University of Valencia, analyzed the wooden pieces.
“The preservation of the organic elements was due to the fire that charred the remains and to the fact that these remains were practically unaltered later,” she said.
“Paradoxically, the fire both destroyed and preserved the site.”
Reconstruction of Bronze Age loom by Beate Schneider, on display at the Alcoy Archaeological Museum via SWNS
A microscopic study of the wood determined it was made from Aleppo pine, widely found in the surrounding area.
“The observation of the growth rings suggests that the timbers came from long-lived trees that provided large-diameter pieces of wood, which indicates that the material was carefully selected,” said Carrión.
The ‘textile revolution’
The loom was part of a wider period known as the “textile revolution” in the European Bronze Age—characterized by technological and economic changes in production, according to the study.
“The textile revolution was the result of a combination of processes, including the expansion of livestock breeding for wool production, technical innovations in looms and spinning and weaving tools, and social changes that led to more intensive and diversified textile production.”
He says new forms of lighter spindle whorls and various types of loom weights, some of them lightweight enough to allow for the production of finer, more complex fabrics, such as twills, were present at Cabezo Redondo.
Fabrics themselves are rarely preserved in archaeological settings, so deductions need to be based on the study of tools. For that reason, the researchers say the loom recovered from Cabezo Redondo is especially valuable.
It allows scientists to “go from interpreting isolated loom weights to documenting a working loom with extreme detail: the wooden structure, the ropes, the weights and the architectural context.”
Part of a co-op
It was located in an outdoor space shared by several households, which suggests that production was a “cooperative” effort.
“This indicates that different household groups may have collaborated on activities such as spinning, weaving and milling,” said Paula Martín de la Sierra, a predoctoral researcher at the University of Alicante.
“Other artisanal activities in the village, such as metalwork or ivory craftsmanship, seem to have been concentrated in specialized areas.
“In several graves at the site, teeth recovered from female remains have a degree of wear characteristically associated with spinning and weaving, as these women probably used their incisors to hold fibers in place or cut threads.”
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Crowds gathering in Tiananmen Square during the Qingming Festival. The gathering was carried out as an action in memory of Zhou Enlai.
50 years ago today, the April 5th Incident (known as the Tiananmen Square protest) helped pave the way for the end of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, and with it, Maoist communism in the country. Leaders at the time along with eyewitnesses believed there was nothing organized about the incident, and it was in fact a spontaneous coming together of all members and classes in society to mourn the passing of recently-deceased Premier Zhou Enlai, who was seen both as a national hero and victim of internal power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo. READ about this famous and singular protest… (1976)
Mordecai the bunny – or “Morty” for short – doesn’t have any thumbs; but that doesn’t stop him from absolutely dominating at Jenga.
The little rabbit used to spend his days in a backyard hutch, neglected without companionship or attention. In fact, Morty was so ignored at his old home, he developed a botfly infestation: a nasty parasite that preys on furry mammals.
After he was rescued by animal shelter workers, however, he was eventually treated for his condition and transferred to PETA.
A staffer there named Kendall Bryant then adopted Morty as her own—and he has been enjoying a life of luxury ever since.
Morty now enjoys running around his new home, snuggling with Kendall, and “supervising” meal preparation in the kitchen.
But most of all, he enjoys a good game of Jenga. (Watch the video below…)
On March 25, an autistic bowler who recently entered the Professional Bowlers Association achieved something he’s been dreaming about for years—his first-ever 300 game.
For most casual bowlers, a sanctioned perfect game is rare. For Matt Sipes, it represented so much more than just 12 strikes. It was the result of years of dedication, focus, and determination, and although there have been challenges along the way, he never gave up on his goal.
“It’s something I’ve dreamed about my entire life,” the former collegiate bowler told GNN.
“To finally achieve it feels almost surreal. I’m so grateful, and I hope I can inspire other athletes on the spectrum.”
Since playing his first game at age six, he’s loved the sound of the pins crashing into each other—but it was the sense of calmness and the sense of belonging he felt that changed his life.
Bowling was something that clicked right away. The energetic child with ADHD growing up in Wood Dale, Illinois, had “so much fun” that he kept asking his mom to take him back to the lanes.
He bowled competitively in the Junior League and later in high school.
“When I graduated from high school, college was not really on my mind. I thought I would just get a job and keep bowling in leagues,” he wrote in an essay for Bowlers Journal.
But his coach suggested Matt try out for a college team—and he got a scholarship to Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, not far from his home.
“That’s when everything changed.”
He has competed in leagues and tournaments for 15 years, both locally and across the country in Las Vegas, Reno, and Baton Rouge. One of the highlights was playing in the Pro Bowlers Association LBC National Championships and Open Championships.
“Competing at that level makes me feel like my hard work is paying off. And it is so cool to sometimes be bowling alongside the pros.”
For his mother, Christine Sipes, watching him throw that final strike in his perfect game at Wood Dale Bowl was overwhelming.
“It wasn’t just about the score—it was about seeing his hard work, resilience, and love for the sport come together in one unforgettable moment,” she said.
Perfect game score of 300
(Watch the video of that final strike in a video below…)
“Bowling has helped me become the person I am today,” said the 23-year-old.
