Quote of the Day: “Our goals are the same as those of the UN’s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail… where conflict would give way to freedom from violence.” – Ronald Reagan (Excerpt from an address by President Reagan to the United Nations General Assembly)
Photo by: Colin Lloyd
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By splitting a single laser beam into different wavelengths of light, engineers have been able to transmit data at a rate of almost twice the combined internet traffic of the world per second.
This head-scratching achievement was made with just a laser and single optical chip.
Engineers from Chalmers University of Technology and the Technical Univ. of Denmark fired an infrared laser through a splitter called a “frequency comb” which divided the light into many different colors.
Each of the colors, or frequencies, can carry data by modulating their amplitude, phase, and polarization. The total amount of data that can be encoded is 1.8 petabits per second, or 1.8 million gigabytes; 800,000 more than the average global bandwidth of the whole internet.
A single optical chip designed by Chalmers was easily able to carry 1.8 Pbit/s, which—with contemporary state-of-the-art commercial equipment—would otherwise require more than 1,000 lasers.
The work of Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe et al. showed also that the technology is scalable.
“Our calculations show that—with the single chip and a single laser—we will be able to transmit up to 100 Pbit/s.”
“The reason for this is that our solution is scalable—both in terms of creating many frequencies and in terms of splitting the frequency comb into many spatial copies and then optically amplifying them, and using them as parallel sources with which we can transmit data,” said Professor Oxenløwe, who added it bodes well for emissions targets, of all things.
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“In other words, our solution provides a potential for replacing hundreds of thousands of the lasers located at Internet hubs and data centers, all of which guzzle power and generate heat. We have an opportunity to contribute to achieving an Internet that leaves a smaller climate footprint.”
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In May this year, New Atlas reports that a 1.04 Pbits/s transmission record was made in Japan with different technologies. Oxenløwe noted that there are people all over the world working to make these kinds of internet capacities a reality.
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Data collected by mobile phones could be used to assess the structural integrity of bridges, suggests a new study, informing potential maintenance requirements and keeping them in action for 30% longer.
Using the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco as an example, researchers showed that smartphones can capture the same kind of information about bridge vibrations picked up by stationary sensors
The findings suggest that crowdsourced monitoring could be a cheap and convenient way to monitor the structural integrity of transportation infrastructure worldwide, and could potentially increase the lifespan of bridges by up to 30%.
There is a global need for infrastructure monitoring to improve the resilience and longevity of bridges, buildings, and other structures—it’s pretty much a guaranteed applause-grabber in political debates in America, because the need is so great.
The structural health of bridges is usually visually assessed by engineers on-site, which is often time consuming and infrequent, or measured using static sensors incorporated into the bridge, which are expensive.
Measuring the vibrational frequencies of bridges has previously been used to identify bridge damage and deterioration, but the data to support this approach have been limited.
Publishing their work in the journal Nature Communications Engineering, a team at MIT developed an Android-based app that collects data while travelling across a bridge which they compared with traditional bridge-based sensors.
“As data from multiple trips over a bridge are recorded, noise generated by engine, suspension and traffic vibrations, [and] asphalt, tend to cancel out, while the underlying dominant frequencies emerge,” said Dr. Paulo Santi.
In the case of the Golden Gate Bridge, the researchers drove over it 102 times with their devices running and they used 72 trips by Uber drivers with activated phones as well.
They then compared the resulting data to what had been collected by 240 sensors that had been placed on the Golden Gate Bridge for three months.
Results showed that data from the phones converged with that from the bridge sensors. For 10 particular types of low-frequency vibrations the engineers measured, there was a close match, and in five cases there was no discrepancy between the methods at all.
However, because most bridges are not suspension bridges the researchers decided to test their method on smaller and more common concrete span bridges.
To do so, they studied a bridge in Ciampino, Italy, comparing 280 vehicle trips over the bridge to six sensors that had been placed on the bridge for seven months.
Here there was a 2.8% divergence between what was recorded with the stationary sensors and the smartphone data, while shorter trip numbers created more divergence, suggesting more trips would create less.
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Architecture Professor at MIT Carlo Ratti said there are ways to refine and expand the research, for example by accounting for the effects of the smartphone mount in the vehicle and the influence of the vehicle type on the data.
“We still have work to do, but we believe that our approach could be scaled up easily — all the way to the level of an entire country,” said Ratti.
“It might not reach the accuracy that one can get using fixed sensors installed on a bridge, but it could become a very interesting early-warning system. Small anomalies could then suggest when to carry out further analyses.”
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A bizarre cross between a bird and a dinosaur had blue, brown and grey feathers, a long tail, and small teeth.
What’s more, their brain morphology is perfectly transitional between bird and reptile, with a brain likely built to smell like reptiles, but also to see well in daylight like birds.
Jeholornis lived 120 million years ago, and recently scientists have digitally-reconstructed its skull for the first time at the Field Museum in Chicago.
“If you look at the skulls of dinosaurs, what you see is a spot for a very reptile-like brain,” said co-author Professor Matteo Fabbri at the museum, “meaning they have very large olfactory bulbs, and the optic lobes in the midbrain are reduced.”
“They probably had a very good sense of smell and not great sight, which is very reptilian. And on the other hand, if you look at modern birds, they do the reverse. They have small olfactory bulbs, and very large optic lobes. Jeholornis falls in the middle.”
Raven-sized Jeholornis is the earliest known animal to eat fruit. The international team selected the best specimen unearthed from prehistoric graveyards in China.
It was finely preserved and intact but a little flattened by layers of sediment deposited across the ages.
“It is very difficult to find the right skull among around 100 fossils, since we won’t know if one skull will provide us the information we want before the scanning,” said co-author Han Hu, from Oxford University, who added high-quality screening costs were also quite high.
“However, I chose one [that] at least from the exposed surface, it is relatively complete. What is also important is this skull is isolated from other parts of its body. [An] isolated skull will reduce the size of the scanning area, which will increase the scanning quality a lot.
“Luckily, the specimen we chose here for this project is nearly a perfect one – it provided us so much unknown information after the digital reconstruction.”
The study, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society provides the first accurate depiction of Jeholornis—showing it was among the earliest examples of dinosaurs evolving into birds.
“Jeholornis is my favorite Cretaceous bird,” said co-author Prof Jingmai O’Connor candidly, also from the Field Museum. “This study is the first time we are really getting at what this bird’s skull looked like, what its brain must have been like, which is really exciting.”
Knowing the shape and dimensions of a fossil bird’s skull tells us a lot about its brain—like how a glove gives a decent approximation of a hand.
What’s more, brain structures are conserved across species over time. Olfactory bulbs and the cerebellum are in the same general spots in a frog, a human or a fossil bird.
Jeholornis had bigger olfactory bulbs than most modern birds with a few exceptions such as vultures, meaning it probably relied more on smell.
READ ALSO: Canada Schoolteacher Finds Fossil that May Be 300 Million Years Old and Could Re-Write Fossil Record
“As fruits ripen, they release lots of chemicals. Having a better sense of smell might have helped Jeholornis find fruit,” said Professor O’Connor.
Birds have bones called scleral rings that help determine how much light goes into their eyes. In this area also, Jeholornis is an in-betweener.
Nocturnal species like owls have wider openings relative to their eye sockets. Birds active during the day have narrower ones, like Jeholornis.
RELATED: Scientists Unearth Africa’s Oldest Known Dinosaur, Filling a Critical Gap in the Fossil Record
Dr. Fabbri said the story of Jeholornis is “not just different from dinosaurs and modern birds, it is different from other early birds too. It is not a straightforward evolutionary story.”
“Its special position as one of the most primitive birds during the dinosaur-bird transition determines completing its story will reveal the true scenery of that critical evolutionary period, and also, tell us why and how the modern birds—the only living dinosaurs—evolved to be what we see now.”
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A unique patient who has survived a dozen different types of cancer tumors over a lifetime could provide the key for researchers to develop new early detection and immunotherapy treatments, say scientists.
A cancer diagnosis can change someone’s life, but 12 is nothing that any of us could probably comprehend.
The course of this individual’s life has been nothing short of extraordinary. They first developed a tumor when almost still a baby, followed by others every few years. In less than forty years of life, the patient has developed twelve tumors, at least five of them malignant, each in a different part of the body.
Despite this death sentence as most would see it, the patient’s immune system seems to be supercharged, and capable of producing anti-inflammatory responses strong enough to fight off all these various cancers.
When the patient first came to Spain’s National Center for Investigative Oncology (CNIO), a blood sample was taken to sequence the genes most frequently involved in hereditary cancer, but no alteration was detected in them. The researchers then analyzed the individual’s entire genome and found mutations in a gene called MAD1L1.
This gene is essential in the process of cell division and proliferation. CNIO researchers analyzed the effect of the mutations detected, and concluded that they cause alterations in the number of chromosomes in the cells—all cells in the human body have 23 pairs of chromosomes.
In animal models, it has been observed that when there are mutations in both copies of this gene—each coming from one parent—the embryo dies. To the astonishment of the researchers, the person in this case has mutations in both copies but has survived—something that has simply never been seen before.
“Academically we cannot speak of a new syndrome because it is the description of a single case, but biologically it is,” said co-author of the study, Miguel Urioste from CNIO.
“Other genes whose mutations alter the number of chromosomes in cells are known, but this case is different because of the aggressiveness, the percentage of aberrations it produces and the extreme susceptibility to a large number of different tumors.”
It is the hypothesis of the reporting authors that the constant production of these double-mutated copies has created a chronic immune system defense to these types of cells, which helps tumors disappear more quickly.
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The discovery that the immune system is capable of unleashing a defensive response against cells with the wrong number of chromosomes is, according to the authors, “one of the most important aspects of this study, which may open up new therapeutic options in the future.” Seventy percent of human tumors have cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes.
Furthermore, this literally one-of-a-kind person could pave the way for better diagnoses.
An individual cell by cell analysis of the patient and some relatives who have single mutations of the MAD1L1 gene revealed, among other anomalies, that the blood cells contained several hundred chromosomally identical lymphocytes, thus coming from a single, rapidly proliferating cell.
Lymphocytes are defensive cells that attack specific invaders; sometimes, however, a lymphocyte proliferates too much and spreads to form a tumor. That is the process which in this work the single-cell analysis would be capturing: the earliest stages of a cancer.
Based on this finding, the researchers propose in their paper that single-cell analysis can be used to identify cells with tumor potential long before the appearance of clinical symptoms or markers observable in analytical tests.
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Quote of the Day: “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.” – Thomas Paine
Photo by: J W @bakutroo
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During recent renovations to a clinic and office space in the second largest teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School, construction crews uncovered remnants of a historical operating room—the OR believed to have hosted the world’s first successful human organ transplant.
While removing walls, workers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital were surprised to find what appeared to be an old operating room with an adjacent balcony for watching surgical cases.
Brigham faculty members had heard over the years that an old OR from the predecessor institution (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital) was in the vicinity of this location, but they thought it was one floor below.
But, when photos of the abandoned space were compared to historical images in the hospital’s archives, the architectural features of the room suggest it was likely the OR where Dr. Joseph Murray transplanted a kidney from one identical twin to another 68 years ago.
After the procedure in 1954, Murray would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking work—and the subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs.
A painting by Joel Babb, The First Successful Kidney Transplantation depicted a wide view of what Murray’s operating room looked like, before undergoing many renovations over the years which prepared the space for other uses.
While the artist took some artistic liberties in recreating the scene on canvas, there are striking similarities between details in the painting and rediscovered room, such as the upper arches in the balcony, explained Catherine Pate, hospital archivist.
“The most requested picture of all the many thousands in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Archives is the one we have of the kidney transplant between brothers Ronald and Richard Herrick on Dec. 23, 1954, in a Brigham operating room. From the evidence, it is likely this room,” Pate told the Brigham Bulletin.
“The achievement of the first-ever successful human organ transplant was comparable in the field of medicine to the first moon landing in the field of aerospace. The bravery of this step into the unknown, especially by the first donor, Ronald Herrick, and the physician/scientists of the Peter Bent Brigham transplantation team, takes your breath away when you stop to think about it.”
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“It happened here. What a legacy!”
The room itself was part of the original Peter Bent Brigham building in Boston at 15 Francis St., dating back to 1912. And while features of the room such as the balcony were retained in later reconfigurations, the original fixtures and furnishings were updated over the years and, subsequently, have been lost to history, explained Sonal Gandhi, vice president of Real Estate, Planning and Development.
“Although no original parts of the original operating room were found during this latest renovation, plans are underway to ensure this discovery is acknowledged and commemorated,” Gandhi said.
The historic OR also appears to be the operating room favored by legendary American surgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing—the father of neurosurgery.
From 1912 to 1932, the Harvard Medical School professor and founding surgeon-in-chief at the hospital was a pioneer in surgical technique, including electrocautery, and developed basic techniques and procedures still used in neurosurgery.
The same OR was also used by Dwight Harken, MD, the chief of Thoracic Surgery from 1948 to 1970. He demonstrated early cardiac surgery and is often considered one of the founding fathers of heart surgery and credited as the creator of intensive care units for critically ill patients.
(Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Brigham Bulletin)
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A retired police officer who was heartbroken when thieves stole his Exemplary Service Medal last year was stunned when kind strangers tracked him down after they pulled it from a river in a “one-in-a-million” catch.
82-year-old was devastated when burglars entered his home to steal valuables—and took the treasured medal that he’d been awarded when he retired 28 years ago.
He believed the medal, given for 32 years of service with the Northamptonshire Police, was lost forever.
But the grandfather was overjoyed when he received a call last week saying the medal had been found in a river, still in its metal box.
Dave Jordan who uses a large magnet to fish junk out of rivers had organized another litter clean-up and was joined by a teenage fan of his YouTube channel, who brought along his dad to trawl for treasures in the River Nene.
The 45-year-old Jordan said they had been pulling things out of the river in Northampton for just 30 minutes when Ryan Davenport fished out a small blue metal box.
“We would have never of found the medal if we hadn’t tackled all the rubbish in the river first,” said Jordan. “At first, we found old bits of shopping carts and other metal items but about 30 minutes into our fish, Ryan pulled out the box, and it’s got ‘police long service medal’ written on it.”
“It really was like finding a needle in a haystack,” exclaimed Jordan who is followed by hundreds of fans who subscribe to his magnet fishing channel on YouTube.
The medal was engraved with Geoffrey’s name and badge number, which they used to track the senior’s phone number online.
“When I told Geoffrey’s wife Maureen we had found the medal over the phone, she was over the moon, because they never thought it would be found.
“This was truly the best reward for cleaning up that rubbish… It’s amazing.”
He and Ryan, 17, then planned a visit to reunite the medal with Geoffrey, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
It is believed the thieves dumped the box in the river after realizing the medal would be difficult to sell.
Maureen said, “We were heartbroken when we came home and found our house burgled.
“They had stolen jewelry, cash and our passports, but the most sentimental thing we lost was Geoffrey’s police service medal.
“When I told Geoffrey about the medal being found, his little eyes sparkled.
LOOK: While Fishing, 11-yo Boy Reels in a Purse Lost 25 Years Ago… and Returns it to Owner
“My husband has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember everything—but that medal to say he served for 32 years, he does remember.
“His face lit up when I told him we got it and it was going to be presented to him by the young man who found it.
Jordan summed up the experience, saying, “Finding the medal after doing the good deed we did, that’s the message here.”
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A new species of owl has joined the tree of life after having been documented as unique this year—and its Latin name was christened after a local wildlife caretaker who used to sell parrots to the pet trade.
Researchers believe the Principe scops owl is found exclusively on Príncipe, a tropical island off the west coast of Africa, in the Gulf of Guinea.
Suspicions of its occurrence gained traction back in 1998, but scientists first began researching it there in 2016.
It is called Otus bikegila and “bikegila” was chosen to honor Ceciliano do Bom Jesus (nicknamed Bikegila)—a former harvester of gray parrots on Príncipe Island who became a guide, and eventually a ranger for the natural park, after the pet-trade practice had been outlawed.
“The discovery of the Principe scops owl was only possible thanks to the local knowledge shared by Bikegila and by his unflinching efforts to solve this long-time mystery,” according to the researchers.
He was one of the first people to spot the owl while searching for parrot chicks in the early 1990s, but, since then, National Geographic reports that Bikegila turned his expansive knowledge of the landscape toward a positive purpose.
“For nearly a quarter century, he’s assisted scientists on every expedition undertaken to find the owl, including the trip that led to the first-ever photographic evidence of the species, in 2016,” says Nat Geo.
The researchers also chose the name as “an acknowledgment to all locally-based field assistants who are crucial in advancing the knowledge on the biodiversity of the world.”
Otus is the generic name given to a group of small owls known as scops owls that share a common history. Two of those are found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa—the Eurasian scops owl (Otus scops) and the African scops owl (Otus senegalensis).
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“The discovery of a new bird species is always an occasion to celebrate,” said Martim Melo, a biologist at the University of Porto and lead author of the study published in the journal ZooKeys.
Its unique call, a short “tuu” note repeated at around one note per second, was one of the main clues that heralds its uniqueness.
The entire island of Principe was extensively surveyed by the scientific team to work out how many of the owls there are and where they can be found. It turned out they can only be found in one single rainforest in the south of the island, with the birds preferring to stay in the lower parts of trees.
Its habitat has a radius of less than six square miles (15 sq-km), but despite its size being only 4x the size of New York City’s Central Park, between 1,000 and 1,5000 Principe scops owls are packed into it.
WATCH: Owl Immediately Adopts Two Rescue Chicks the Moment She Meets Them – After Her Own Eggs Failed
Because they live in such a small area, the researchers say they should be classified as critically endangered, especially because their habitat is reportedly “near” a small hydroelectric dam which is being built.
Monitoring the forest will be essential to get more precise estimates of its population and follow any trends.
Even though the island measures only around 54 square miles (139 sq-km), the species is the eighth type of bird commonly found there to be discovered as unique.
“Although it may seem odd for a bird species to remain undiscovered by science for so long on such a small island, this is by no means an isolated case when it comes to owls.
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For example, the Anjouan scops owl was rediscovered in 1992, 106 years after its last observation on Anjouan Island in the Comoro Archipelago, and the Flores scops owl was rediscovered in 1994—98 years after the previous report.
“On a positive note, the area of occurrence of the Principe scops owl is fully included within the Príncipe Obô Natural Park, which will hopefully help secure its protection.
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Girl Scouts of the USA will need to give MacKenzie Scott a badge for philanthropy after her donation last month of $84.5 million—their largest gift ever from one person.
The generous grant will help make up for the absence of funds raised from cookie sales and membership during the pandemic.
The former wife of Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos awarded the donation to the national group and 29 local councils selected by Scott—including $4.2 million to the Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys and $4.9 million to Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles.
“This is a great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to give girls the tools to become the next generation of powerful women leaders,” said the group’s CEO Sofia Chang. “We’re excited to prove how Ms. Scott’s investment in girls will change the world—because when one girl succeeds, we all succeed.”
The group says the grant will also foster an expanded focus on career readiness and mental wellness.
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“Integral to this work is expanding girls’ access to STEM exploration, building upon exciting areas of interest such as hands-on coding, aeronautics, and sustainability.”
The money will also bolster staff and volunteer training and “future-proof its facilities, including the iconic Girl Scout camp properties, including expanding both accessibility and high adventure elements at camp.”
The group’s iconic brown and green sashes and vests can be seen on girls enrolled under 111 regional councils nationwide, with Girl Scouts showing up in every zip code of the US.
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Quote of the Day: “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” – Thomas Paine
Photo by: Diana Spatariu
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A sheep herding dog is still running circles around his favorite animals despite losing a leg this summer.
The border collie named Boss went missing in July while out working, rounding up sheep, and despite an extensive search—even using a drone—the pooch was nowhere to be seen.
Shepherdess Anna MacKinnon was sick with worry until eight days later when her father spotted Boss limping over a hill on their farm outside Perth, in Scotland.
“My dad was like, ‘oh my goodness, that’s Boss’,” Anna told SWNS news. “I couldn’t believe it—I was shaking.”
The four-year-old dog had nerve damage to his front left leg, and after six weeks of vet consultations and waiting to see if it would improve, Anna made the difficult decision to allow vets to amputate.
“It just seemed so drastic, but we knew it was the only thing that was going to be the best for him,” said the 25 year old.
She feared Boss would have to retire as a working sheepdog—but just three weeks after the dog’s stitches were removed at the end of September, Boss was out chasing sheep again.
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“He was keen to get out—and was back out chasing sheep!”
Despite missing a limb, the collie is just as speedy and efficient at rounding up the sheep as he was before the mysterious accident.
“After the anesthetic wore off he just went back to how he was before,” she said.
“He was really, really excited to get back out there.
Ever since he was an eight-week-old pup, his only desire has been to chase sheep and run around after them.
“He’s a once in a lifetime dog and he’s done everything I’ve ever asked of him,” said Anna, who works on her father’s farm.
“I’m so happy and proud to see him bounce back doing what he loves, but also it’s hard to watch him be vulnerable.
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“Going forward I have to just see how things go in his recovery, as much as I’d love to see him back working fully, I’d never risk his safety.”
WATCH Boss romp for joy, back at work…
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At Children’s Health of Orange County, California, you need to be on the look-out for tots getting lab tests—because they’ll be tooting the horn at the wheel of their new electric Honda, which is bringing laughs and comfort to sick children.
Designed by Honda engineers to ease the stress and anxiety of hospitalized children, the car brought tears to their adult eyes when talking about its genesis.
Called the Shogo, it was specifically designed to navigate hospital hallways and transport all the IV drips and monitoring machines a child might require. It allows them to drive themselves down the hallways to their treatments; turning what could be a stressful journey into a fun joy ride.
“To see the joy on the faces of these young patients when they get behind the wheel of Shogo is truly rewarding,” said Hundy Liu, manager of national advertising at American Honda Motor Co.
Randall Smock, a senior exterior designer of vehicles for the company, played a significant role in the design of Shogo and called it a ‘labor of love.’
“As someone who spent time in the hospital as a young child, I really wanted the number one objective of Shogo to be easing the hardship of a hospital stay by providing kids a lasting positive memory about that experience.”
RELATED: 600 More Hospitals Get Free LEGO MRI Scanners – to Reduce Anxiety in Young Patients
One mom said, “I heard Charlie laugh harder than the whole time he’s been in the hospital, so hearing that laugh again makes me want to cry.”
Shogo, based on a Japanese word intended to mean “soaring into the future,” it was built to focus on young patients, ages 4 through 9, who can easily drive with its power controls, manage the go/stop mechanism on the steering wheel. It has an adjustable speed of 1-5 miles per hour, which is controlled by a handler such as a nurse or caregiver.
It includes a toy bucket in the front of the vehicle for items the child would like to bring along with them, cup holders, a center horn with different sound options, and a customizable license plate slot to display the name of each rider.
WATCH: Former Gang Member Turns Into Singing Star After Videos of Him Serenading Hospital Patients Go Viral
Shogo also includes a push bar that offers caregivers the option to manually push the vehicle when needed.
All the fun was captured in a terrific video that won a Silver statue at the 2022 Clio Health Awards because it demonstrates the amazing impact that play and laughter can make in the life of sick kids.
WATCH the heartwarming video below…
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A driver who took a wrong turn was able to save the lives of four people after miraculously driving down their street and seeing their house on fire.
A doorbell camera video captures the moment the young man from Omaha, Nebraska, ran around the house to start banging on windows, and calling 911.
Brendan Birt told KETV News 7 that the fire was getting worse every second, but he wasn’t giving up.
“I just felt like somebody was in there because it was so late at night, you know? I just knew that I had to act quick.”
On the video, three kids are eventually seen running out through the door in the Red Oak, Iowa neighborhood—and finally their 22-year-old brother, who was looking after his younger siblings, emerged.
When he saw the kids come out the door, Birt said, “I just felt like I wanted to break down and cry (and) I don’t even know these people.”
The boy’s mother, Tender Lehman, was in Montana at the time dealing with a family emergency.
Mrs. Lehman described Birt, who is a singer/musician, as “family”, now, and called it a miracle.
“They’re safe—and they’re safe because of him,” she told KETV.
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Because the family’s home was not insured, a Gofundme campaign was set up to collect donations—which has raised $21,000 of its $30,000 goal—or you can Venmo @Tender-Lehman
Watch the incredible video from KETV-NEWS 7… (Featured photo from video screenshot)
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Remember the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’, when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger’s jet flew into a flock of geese and lost both engines, shortly after take-off in New York City?
That was 13 years ago, but now researchers have designed a way to get flocks of birds to disperse using a cleverly-disguised drone.
Besides the safety factors, collisions between birds and airplanes cost the aviation industry more than a billion dollars annually from damaged aircrafts, delays, and flight cancellation worldwide.
A team partnering with the University of Groningen in the Netherlands decided to tackle the problem by developing an artificial raptor, inspired specifically by the fastest bird on earth—the peregrine falcon.
Made from fiberglass and polypropylene, and reinforced with carbon fiber, the fake predator is controlled from the ground and can beam back live pictures of its flight.
Field testing in the Netherlands showed that all flocks were successfully deterred by the RobotFalcon within five minutes after it launched in flight, with half of them resulting in fields being free of birds within 70 seconds.
The fake falcon was also found to be so realistic, that birds were still being scared away after three months.
RELATED: Falcons Soar Off Endangered List With Irony, From Nests in City Skyscrapers
“We developed the RobotFalcon and tested its effectiveness to deter flocks of corvids, gulls, starlings and lapwings,” the group reported in a study published in The Royal Society Interface journal.
“In this field study, we tested the effectiveness of the RobotFalcon to drive away bird flocks by measuring the proportion of flocks it drove away, how fast fields were cleared from flocks, how long it took for them to return, and whether habituation occurred.
The test flights were flown in an agricultural environment around the Dutch city of Workum.
“The behavior of the bird flocks was studied upon exposure to the RobotFalcon, to a normal drone, and in control trials without any disturbance.
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“We further compared the effectiveness of the RobotFalcon with the conventional methods in current use at a military airport such as distress calls and pyrotechnics.
“The RobotFalcon scared away bird flocks from fields immediately, and these fields subsequently remained free of bird flocks for hours.
It outperformed the drone and the best conventional method at the airbase—distress calls. Most importantly, there was no evidence that bird flocks became accustomed to the RobotFalcon over the course of their fieldwork.
The group calls the lifelike device “a practical and ethical solution to drive away bird flocks with all advantages of live predators but without their limitations.”
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The novel method can make a contribution to the problem, but has its limitations. Flights cannot take place during strong wind conditions. Also, the bird was not as effective when it came to deterring large birds, like geese or herons, and a bigger robot resembling a bird such as an eagle may could be developed for that purpose.
No word yet on scaling up manufacturing of the problem-solving peregrine.
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Quote of the Day: “I kept always two books in my pocket; one to read, one to write in.” – Robert Louis Stevenson (Can you name his famous novels? Answer is found below…)
Photo by: Dariusz Sankowski
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Stevenson is is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and a delightful collection of 66 children’s poems called, A Child’s Garden of Verses.
A woman who waited 24 years for a first kiss with her childhood best friend is now engaged to be married to him—after keeping her feelings a secret for over two decades.
Kate MacNeil and Paul Damon were tied at the hip when they met as young teens in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1997.
Despite the 13-year-old girl being ‘mad’ about her best pal, she never plucked up the courage to reveal how she felt.
The pair would talk for hours on the phone everyday after school—even falling asleep together on the phone.
“We were practically in a relationship but we’d never kissed,” Kate said. “I took the plunge to kiss him when we were 18 but he turned his head.
“I ran away embarrassed and broken. Slowly we stopped talking but I never stopped thinking about him.”
They lost touch when Paul joined the navy and Kate moved away to attend college in Alabama.
Kate, now a teacher, and Paul, a master woodworker, both married but they kept an eye on each other’s lives for years online.
In December 2020, after the breakdown of her marriage, the 38-year-old mother-of-two found the courage to reach out to Paul on Facebook.
“I’ve always loved him,” Kate told SWNS news service.
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“I came to a point in my life where I knew I needed to reach out and see if he felt the same way.”
Two weeks later he replied and the pair talked for hours before he agreed to fly out to Kate’s home in Port Charlotte, Florida, in January 2021.
“He messaged me saying, ‘Hey stranger,’ and we just spoke for hours from there,” she said.
Paul, now 38, said when she reached out it was “indescribable”.
“I can’t think of a time I didn’t think of Kate—in all those years we were apart.
“No one measured up to her.”
Having finally told each other about their feelings for one another they went on their first date in Florida, and soon decided Paul would move in with Kate and her children.
“We had our first kiss when he came to Florida and it was magical,” said Kate. “I feel like my life is now complete.”
Paul recalls how the friends have always been able to talk to each other about anything, and he “felt like an idiot” when he freaked out that day when she tried to kiss him.
“It was like nothing had changed. It’s amazing.”
“I picked him up from the airport and kissed him,” Kate said. “It was our first one—24 years later.”
After a magical week together, Paul flew back to Williamsburg. Six weeks later he moved to Florida.
Paul said: “We’re still best friends. We’re perfect for each other.”
The couple are now engaged and due to be married in July 2023.
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“It took 24 years but I wouldn’t change our journey,” Kate gushed. “It’s a dream come true.”
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Astronomers have found a planet with the average density of a marshmallow.
Along with being a big softie, scientists found that the Jupiter-sized exoplanet would also float if it were hypothetically put in a giant cosmic bathtub.
Astronomers using the Kitt Peak National Observatory telescope in Arizona, observed an unusual planet in orbit around a cool red dwarf star (more on that later).
Located approximately 580 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer, this planet, identified as TOI-3757 b, is the lowest-density planet ever detected around a red dwarf star.
TOI-3757 b’s average density was calculated as being 0.27 grams per cubic centimeter (about 17 grams per cubic feet), which would make it less than half the density of Saturn (the lowest-density planet in the Solar System), about one quarter the density of water, or in fact, similar in density to a marshmallow.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite observed the crossing of this planet TOI-3757-b in front of its star, which allowed astronomers to calculate the planet’s diameter to be about 100,000 miles (150,000 kilometers) or about just slightly larger than that of Jupiter.
The planet finishes one complete orbit around its host star in just 3.5 days, 25-times less than the closest planet in our Solar System—Mercury—which takes about 88 days to do so. One might think this would be enough to “roast” our marshmallow planet.
However red dwarf stars can also be cool, or an M dwarf star.
Red dwarf stars are the smallest and dimmest members of so-called main-sequence stars—stars that convert hydrogen into helium in their cores at a steady rate. Though “cool” compared to stars like our Sun, red dwarf stars can be extremely active and erupt with powerful flares capable of stripping a planet of its atmosphere, making this star system a seemingly inhospitable location to form such a gossamer planet.
“Giant planets around red dwarf stars have traditionally been thought to be hard to form,” says Shubham Kanodia, first author on a paper published in The Astronomical Journal.
“So far this has only been looked at with small samples… which typically have found giant planets further away from these red dwarf stars. Until now we have not had a large enough sample of planets to find close-in gas planets in a robust manner.”
There are still unexplained mysteries surrounding TOI-3757 b, the big one being how a gas-giant planet can form around a red dwarf star, and especially such a low-density planet. Kanodia’s team, however, thinks they might have a solution to that mystery.
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They propose that the extra-low density of TOI-3757 b could be the result of two factors. The first relates to the rocky core of the planet; gas giants are thought to begin as massive rocky cores about ten times the mass of Earth, at which point they rapidly pull in large amounts of neighboring gas to form the gas giants we see today.
TOI-3757b’s star has a lower abundance of heavy elements compared to other M-dwarfs with gas giants, and this may have resulted in the rocky core forming more slowly, delaying the onset of gas accretion and therefore affecting the planet’s overall density.
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The second factor may be the planet’s orbit, which is tentatively thought to be slightly elliptical. There are times it gets closer to its star than at other times, resulting in substantial excess heating that can cause the planet’s atmosphere to bloat.
“Potential future observations of the atmosphere of this planet using NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope could help shed light on its puffy nature,” says Jessica Libby-Roberts the second author on the paper.
“Finding more such systems with giant planets, which were once theorized to be extremely rare around red dwarfs, is part of our goal to understand how planets form,” adds Kanodia.
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A new study shows that a substance found in pomegranates significantly boosts the immune system to fight cancer—triggering a constant supply of endless rejuvenated T cells.
German scientists studying therapies for colorectal cancer discovered that a metabolite in the red fruit, known as urolithin-A, rejuvenates immune T cells to make them better at fighting tumors.
Early diagnosis and treatment for colon cancer has improved in recent years but not all patients respond well to new treatments—so it remains a disease with high mortality rates in advanced stages.
Current research suggests that immune cells that are supposed to fight the tumor are suppressed by the surrounding tissue of the tumor. As a result, T cells, which are the body’s natural immune response agains cancer, are restricted and the tumor is allowed to grow and spread uncontrollably.
A team in Frankfurt led by Professor Florian Greten is now closer to solving the problem. Their discovery shows that urolithin A recycles and renews mitochondria—the so-called power plants inside T cells—through a process known as mitophagy.
When the pomegranate agent is introduced, old and damaged mitochondria in the T cells are removed and replaced by new, functional ones. This changes the genetic make up of the T cells, which are then more capable of fighting the tumor.
“Our findings are particularly exciting because the focus is not on the tumor cell but on the immune system—the natural defense against cancer,” said Dr. Dominic Denk of the Frankfurt University Hospital and first author of the study.
“This is where reliable therapeutic approaches are still lacking in the reality of colorectal cancer patients. By improving the combination therapy with existing immunotherapies, the study opens up meaningful possibilities.”
“We hope to use this to sustainably improve the therapy of colorectal cancer, but also of other cancers.”
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The researchers demonstrated the therapeutic potential of urolithin A in two ways: On the one hand, urolithin A can be ingested using pomegranates directly as a food in the preclinical model, which limits tumor growth and even acts synergistically with existing immunotherapy. On the other hand, the benefits of urolithin A were also observed on human T cells in the laboratory. In vitro treatment with urolithin A “rejuvenates” human T cells, producing T memory stem cells—potent immune stem cells that, due to their ability to divide, constantly supply the immune system with rejuvenated, non-exhausted T cells.
Building on these findings, which were published in the journal Immunity, the researchers plan to apply urolithin A in clinical trials in treatments for people with colon cancer.
“We are very pleased that we can now quickly transfer our results to the clinic and look forward with excitement to the upcoming clinical trials,” concluded Prof. Greten of Georg-Speyer-Haus.
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While on a seed gathering trip atop a Hawai’ian mountain in 2021, conservationists found a tree species believed extinct in the wild since since 1992.
This month, teams from the organizations that found it went up to the same area and planted 30 seedlings born from the fruits of the plants they found, growing hope that this species can recover to repopulate the Hawai’ian Islands.
Delissea argutidentata is just one of two remaining species of the Delissea genus, a Hawai’i native that has lost 14 other species.
Palm-like in its appearance, it belongs to a family known as Hawai’ian lobelioids, and can grow to 35-feet (10.2 meters) with a thick head of long narrow leaves. They used to be found growing under the shade of giant koa trees in volcanic craters.
Three Mountain Alliance, an organization that works to repopulate endangered Hawai’ian plant species, found the individual on a survey on Kamehameha Schools land, and later propagated 30 seedlings at their Volcano Rare Plant Facility.
They fenced off the area until February of 2022, when they returned to harvest the fruit a second time, which they shipped off to cold storage for additional security. They also found two new wild-growing seedlings.
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“Kamehameha Schools has been successful at stewarding native ecosystems as a whole but what’s really exciting is that this is the first step toward a much bigger focus on rare species recovery,” KS Senior Natural Resources Manager Amber Nāmaka Whitehead said.
“We need both—healthy native ecosystems and every one of our rare species. They are critically important to our Hawaiian cultural identity and our health and well-being as a people.”
READ ALSO: Hawaii’s State Bird Soars Back From Brink of Extinction After Only 30 Birds Left on Islands
Maui Now reports that there is no Hawai’ian name for the plant, although given their similarity to another of the Hawai’ian lobelias, the Cyanea, they could also have been called Hāhā.
“Rediscovery of Delissea is such an important message of hope,” TMA Coordinator Colleen Cole said. “In Hawaiʻi, there is often much focus on loss: loss of species, forest, sacred places—and maybe that is human nature but the Delissea reminds us to always nurture and make room for hope and discovery.”
WATCH the story below…
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