Quote of the Day: “Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself.” – André Gide
Photo by: Glodi Miessi
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?
Taking advantage of the huge output of solar energy in places neighboring the Sahara Desert, a massive undersea power cable is coming to Europe from Egypt.
Bringing 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy, the GREGY interconnection will run from northern Egypt to Attica, Greece.
Expected to be in operation for around 8 years, one-third of the cable’s supply will power Greek heavier industry, another third will be exported via shared grids to other European countries Bulgaria and Italy.
The final third will go to the production of green hydrogen.
“By bringing 3 gigawatts of clean energy to Europe, via Greece, we are helping Europe wean itself off Russia’s fossil fuels and natural gas. Also, the green energy we will transport will be much cheaper than today’s energy prices. You understand that this will help both Greek and European consumers,” said Ioannis Karydas, CEO of Renewables, Copelouzos Group.
RELATED: Buy Some Wind Power With Your Furniture? IKEA is Now Selling Renewable Energy
This massive effort to decarbonize has been done once before through the XLinks Moroccan-UK Power Project that sees a similar undersea cable run from Morocco all the way to Devon, UK, running a total of 2,300 miles, and bringing 10 gigawatts.
Egypt’s solar fields benefit from connections with the other North African countries of Libya and Sudan, with aspirations to become the largest exporters of renewable energy to southeast Europe.
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Keanu Reeves made his comic book writing debut recently with BRZRKR, an exceptionally-violent graphic novel about an immortal warrior’s blood-fueled quest about the truth to his existence.
Launched in 2021 with acclaimed illustrator Ron Garney, and co-written with New York Times bestseller Matt Kindt, it was the highest selling comic book launch in 30 years, and volume two hit shelves two weeks ago.
“I love telling stories,” Reeves said recently on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, adding that he had always read comic books as a kid, and gradually selected those most appropriate for his age group.
He said he enjoyed the classics: Superman, Batman, Spiderman at 12-14 years of age, but switched to Frank Miller’s more violent work, such as The Wolverine, after that.
Noticing that the main character, an immortal 80,000-year-old warrior looked an awful lot like Reeves, Kimmel asks if that was by design, to which Reeves began nodding his head like a 6-year-old who was just asked if he wanted an ice cream cone.
Ron Garney drew all the art for the new volume on paper, rather than digitally on a computer, which Reeves said gave it an authentic feeling.
“It’s cool. There’s some action, some pathos,” Reeves said towards the end of the interview, after Kimmel had tried to push the Canadian Reeves into pursuing American citizenship, even going so far as to pull out the State Dept. forms.
WATCH the interview below for classic Keanu…
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The Hubble Space Telescope is falling, but amid always-tight NASA budgets, SpaceX is volunteering to help see if it’s possible to give it a push back into space.
Hubble has been in orbit around the Earth for a very long time, and it experiences a constant slow-motion re-entry of the atmosphere. It has already been pushed back up in orbit once before.
Sure we have the shiny new James Webb Space Telescope to enjoy, but Hubble has been dazzling Earthlings for decades, and can still contribute valuable science while its new big brother is busy.
NASA is firm that any efforts to “reboost” Hubble back up to its orbit of 600 kilometers (370 miles) above the Earth will not be deducted from its existing budgetary commitments, and that the study co-conducted with Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is looking only at commercial possibilities.
“It’s wholly appropriate for us to look at this because of the tremendous value this research asset has for us, as well as others,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at a press conference last week.
Teams expect the study to take up to six months, collecting technical data from both Hubble and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. This data will help determine whether it would be possible to safely rendezvous, dock, and move the telescope into a more stable orbit.
After NASA shut down the space shuttle program, all missions into craft orbiting around the Earth required hitching a ride with the Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft from the Russian Federation.
RELATED: Hubble Telescope Spots Most Distant Star Ever Seen on Record, From 12 Billion Light Years Away
Now the SpaceX Dragon Crew spacecraft has entered into service with the agency for crewed missions to the ISS, and the possibility that a flight to dock with Hubble in order to boost it back into orbit, as well as bring along engineers to service Hubble’s systems, is what is currently being discussed.
“Missions such as servicing Hubble would help us expand space capabilities to ultimately help all of us achieve our goals of becoming a space-faring, multiplanetary civilization,” said Jessica Jensen, vice president of Customer Operations & Integration at SpaceX.
LOOK at some of Hubble’s good work over the years…
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Welcome back to Good Gardening! In our Week 10 discussion, we wanted to know how our Good Gardeners tidy up after a busy harvest season or prepare for the next spring. As always we took the conversation to social media to see what the response was like…
Verna Korkie from Alberta takes the cake this year, and her first hand account is all that’s necessary.
Living in an area with many types of flower lovers/eaters – elk, dear, rabbits – we install 4 motion activated water deterrents in the spring which work beautifully and allow us to have lovely flowers throughout the growing season. When fall comes, we remove the water deterrents. Within a day or so, the critters “know” and they come calling. They are rewarded for their patience and they clean up the “the last roses of summer”, so to speak. It is beautiful to watch. Once they have completed their mission in a day, they do not return to the yard. Symbiosis at its best.
It’s something eh?
Maxine Bergh wrote “Encouraged this morning! So little in my garden has produced—sorry/glad to hear others in the same boat. Cucumbers that have come are amazing, though. Fall cleanup here is loose. I don’t pull up much ’till spring because birds like my dried up zinnias.”
Monica Richards the certified permaculturalist from California is a busy bee in fall, fertilizing trees before the first frost warning.
Question 2: Do you tend to clear your garden of annuals at the end of the year?
It depends on the annual. I pull the plants and leaves of squashes, cucumbers and anything else our tortoise can eat. The tomatoes will get composted, and if anything is diseased, out it goes. Some plants such as basil, I’ll just cut and mulch over.
Question 3: What kind of preparations do you make for next year starting in fall?
Once the garden is ready, I seed cover crop, such as clover, hairy vetch, radishes, triticale, etc, cover a bit of soil and mulch and see what happens in the Spring!
The Sharing Gardens spend every fall on the scarlet runner bean harvest, an obviously massive effort, but which provides serious comfort-calories (and fiber) for the winter months. They wrote in their blog about scarlet runner beans, and here are some of their volunteers taking part.
Question 1: What is it?
Question 2: Do you have more than one?
Tell Us Here in The Comments… or, send your questions, tips, and photos to [email protected]. Join our Facebook Good Gardens thread every Friday on the GNN Facebook Page…
INVITE Friends to our Gardening Discussion on Social Media–And Share Your Photos and Tips!
In a stunning piece of accounting, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power supply was found to have met 100% of new power installations globally during the first half of the 2022.
This prevented a 4% increase in fossil-fuel generation, avoided $40 billion in fuel costs and 230 million tons of CO2 in emissions.
This was compiled in a report by a London energy think tank called Ember.
Across 75 countries representing 90% of global electricity demand, the report found that the renewable sources wind, solar, and hydro increased by 416 terawatt hours (TWh), slightly exceeding the rise in electricity demand itself at 389 TWh.
Essentially what the report showed is that anytime utility companies in 75 countries needed more electricity generation, they installed a renewable source. This didn’t push out existing fossil fuel sources, but as GNN has reported before, the increase in renewable energy across richer nations has enabled some of them, particularly Germany and Australia, to meet 100% of the electricity demand without ever needing to burn a cubic meter of gas.
SIMILAR: Wind And Solar Generated a Record 10% of the World’s Power in 2021 – Victory for Paris Agreement
This is because electricity demand varies throughout the day, and provided it doesn’t exceed a certain limit, the input from renewables to the grid can sometimes be enough altogether.
Fossil fuel demand remained largely unchanged between the first six months of 2022 and the first six months of 2021, although they’re likely to increase going into winter with the energy scarcity in Europe.
“The growth in wind and solar prevented a 4% rise in fossil fuel electricity generation worldwide,” the report says in its executive summary. “In China, the growth in wind and solar enabled fossil fuel power to fall by 3%.”
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Quote of the Day: “To oppose something is to maintain it… You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
Photo by: Jason Briscoe
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?
A truly astonishing story of war-time goodwill to mend a 10-year-old’s broken heart will bring a tear to almost anyone’s eyes.
Nearly a dozen people, most of whom never met little Agnessa, all took turns helping to get her cat Arsenii travel-ready, out of Ukraine, across Europe, across the Atlantic Ocean, and all the way to the San Francisco Bay Area so the two could be reunited.
It all started on that fateful late February morning as Russian forces poured over the border into their southern neighbor. The Bezhenar family decided to flee Odessa, but just didn’t have the means to take an animal along.
After arriving in a refugee camp in Romania, the family was linked via a refugee program to a man in the Bay Area who had opened the doors of a second house he had to the Bezhenars for 2 years.
No doubt blessings were counted, but it was after the family were settling in that German stewardess Dee Harnish, who had kept in touch with them, discovered that the Bezhenars had left a family member behind.
“She [Agnessa] missed sleeping with her cat and she missed hugging him, she missed everything about the cat because she had grown up with him,” Mrs. Maria Bezhenar told Harnish.
SIMILAR: Ukrainian Refugees Move Into Medieval Irish Castle Owned by Good Samaritan
Harnish then telephoned another flight attendant, Viola, who rescues animals, who from her home in Hawai’i telephoned an animal rescuer in Houston, Angelica, who laid the groundwork for the rescue. The next person on the call sheet was Maria’s brother-in-law, who was taking care of Arsenii. The man not only vaccinated and microchipped the cat, but got him a passport as well—before driving him on his motorcycle across the border to Moldova.
From there, another man drove him to Bucharest, where another family of refugees took Arsenii in, after which Mimi Kate, an animal rescuer on holiday in Greece volunteered to cut her vacation short to pick up Arsenii in Romania, but all of the cat’s documents had to be checked there, rather than in the U.S., since he came from a non-EU country.
MORE UKRAINE NEWS: Ukrainian Refugees Find Comfort in Italy From Unlikely Source – A Bunch of Lawyers
A tuk-tuk driver, as if the story couldn’t find room for more characters, helped out, and drove Arsenii and Kate from Bucharest back to make her flight in Athens. Via Montreal and Seattle, Aresnii put 7,000 miles under his paws.
This saga was reported by Kron4 News, San Francisco, who followed it all the way to SFO, where it had the happiest of endings.
WATCH the video and keep a tissue handy…
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Joining the United States and a number of other countries, Australian officials have committed to preserve 30% of the continent’s landmass in a natural state for conservation.
The news was announced Tuesday from Environment Minster Tanya Plibersek, as part of a program called the Threatened Species Action Plan: Towards Zero Extinctions.
By prioritizing 110 species and 20 places, the plan will drive action where it is needed most and will deliver knock-on benefits to other threatened plants and animals in the same habitats.
The plan is the Australian counterpart to the “30×30” initiative that is trending among countries, and which arose out of the COP26 commitments to preserve 30% of lands and waters by 2030.
One of the most biologically diverse countries on Earth, so many of Australia’s animals, particularly her mammals, are found nowhere else on our planet.
“The Threatened Species Action Plan strengthens our commitment to stopping the extinction of Australia’s plants and animals,” said Plibersek. “Based on input from researchers and experts from the community, this plan identifies 20 priority places and 110 priority species and will guide recovery actions that will benefit a broad range of threatened species and their habitats.”
The plan was announced alongside 20 listings of species and 3 of ecosystems on the nation’s threatened list, and AUD$224 million – USD$146 million in total funding to protect them.
RELATED: Bigger than Texas: Huge New Marine Park Will Protect ‘Australia’s Galapagos’
In total around 50 million hectares are expected to be provided for under the plan, which also mandates a 5-year review.
Recently, Australian conservationists have had big success with certain goals, particularly the protection or restoration of island ecosystems like Macquarie Island on which nearly 300,000 rabbits were eradicated to restore the natural ecosystem, and Lord Howe Island which had a similar story but with rats. Both of which are UNESCO Natural Heritage Sites.
In the far northern area of Queensland, environmentally sensitive areas are continuously returned to indigenous hands to be managed as national parks. So far these kinds of transfers have amounted to nearly 4.7 million hectares.
WATCH a Reuters video from Australia… (*Note: GNN is not affiliated with any ads.)
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A British woman of Indian heritage thought a bit of ancient instruction might help her son tackle a modern problem.
Growing up in India, a young Dr. Rashmi Mantri used an abacus to help her visually comprehend mathematics. After noticing her son Dhruv was struggling with math, she started employing that same ancient tool to help him after school.
In just six days he started to show progress with the abacus and would go on to become a regular whizz kid with numbers, with even his classmates’ parents reaching out for help.
Dhruv has now landed an apprenticeship at international beverage firm Diageo and said he reckons his teachers would be shocked by the career choice considering his difficulties with math.
“Dhruv was in [fifth-grade] when I started to notice he was struggling with simple [arithmetic,]” said Dhruv’s mom Dr. Mantri. “I would ask him something like 35 – 13 and he couldn’t do it.”
“I never thought I would teach him using an abacus, but it was something I used as a child in India and it was always helpful. Within six days I started to notice a difference and see results.”
So dramatic was the turnaround, that school staff asked him to perform with the abacus at an assembly, where some parents even came to ask for advice on using it for their kids.
RELATED: For the First Time Ever, a Woman is Awarded the Most Prestigious Mathematics Award in the World
In 2016 Dr. Mantri launched the British Youth International College (BYITC) and is now using her abacus tutoring to teach to thousands of kids around the world.
IT specialist Dr. Mantri said the humble abacus can be used for calculations into the trillions and kids enjoy learning on it because it’s like a game.
“I decided to change the way he looked at numbers,” she said. “An abacus is a tried and tested method, the Egyptians used them for building the pyramids.”
“They become a playing tool for younger children, it feels like a game. I think the success comes because children can touch and feel an abacus and visualize them.”
By the age of 12, Dhruv was giving online cyber security seminars and is now pursuing a career in data science and analytics. During the four-year apprenticeship, he will spend one day a week studying Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Glasgow Caledonian University.
GOOD LEARNING NEWS: Majority of Teachers and Parents Want More of This to Increase Student Engagement in Classrooms
“He is so confident now and I am so proud,” she said, with Dhruv adding “I don’t think my teachers would have guessed that I would be following a career in data science at that time.”
Hard to argue with the results, not least of which the Pyramids.
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Every autumn in Oregon, motorists traveling down the route 18 receive a “beaming” smile from the hills above the roadway.
That’s because years ago, Hampton Lumber company logged the trees on that hill, and decided to replant early-changing larch in the shape of a smiley face.
Surrounded by evergreens, it stands out like an emoji on the road between Grand Ronde and Willamina in Polk County.
Autumn is a stunning time in the Pacific Northwest, enough to bring a smile to your face and to the very hills themselves.
“After every harvest, our foresters start planning the reforestation process,” Kristin Rasmussen, a spokesperson for Hampton, told Oregon Live. “They typically plant a variety of native species depending on the elevation and soil conditions, including Douglas fir, western hemlock, noble fir and western red cedar.”
MORE LAUGHS: Woman Pairs a British Village Named ‘Dull’ with Oregon Town Called ‘Boring’–Making Both More Exciting
“Larch is a conifer with needles that turn yellow and drop off in the fall, which is why the smiley face is best visible this time of year.”
The company explains that it will take another 30-50 years before that stand of trees is ready for logging again, at which time they say they will attempt a different emoji.
WATCH the hills have smiles
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Quote of the Day: “Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome.” – E.A. Bucchianeri
Photo by: Julia Caesar
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?
In the heart of Amsterdam’s business district, a lush green valley emerges from the rocky canyon walls of a new office building.
The dramatic, geology-inspired, plant-covered “Valley” stands out in Amsterdam’s Zuidas neighborhood with its three towers of 219, 265, add 328 feet tall (67, 81, and 100 meters), and its spectacular cantilevered apartments.
Named the best new skyscraper in the world in the 2021 Emporis Skyscraper Awards, the building distinguishes itself in several ways: firstly, it combines offices, shops, catering, cultural facilities, and apartments in one building; secondly, unlike the closed-off buildings elsewhere in the Zuidas, the green valley that winds between the towers on the fourth and fifth floors is accessible to everyone via two external stone staircases.
The architecture firm MVRDV, who specialize in dream-inspired projects, describe the design and construction of Valley as “utterly bespoke,” requiring the sustained commitment of hundreds of designers, engineers, builders, consultants and the client.
The enormously complex shape required a special commitment to fine detailing that further enhances the design concept. MVRDV’s technology experts created a series of custom digital tools to perfect the building, from a tool that ensured every apartment had adequate light and views, to a program that made possible the apparently random pattern of over 40,000 stone tiles of varying sizes that adorn the building’s façades.
Each of the 198 apartments has a unique floorplan, made possible by the interior designs by Heyligers Architects. And the outlandish cantilevers of the towers are possible thanks to innovative engineering, including eleven steel “specials” bolted to the concrete building that take the overall appearance to the next level.
A huge green element is present in the structure, not least of which is a watercourse right down the middle.
Landscape architect Piet Oudolf hand picked which species are to be located where. Trees are largely found on the lower floors, while the uppermost levels mainly support small plants. In total, more than 271 young trees and shrubs and approximately 13,500 smaller plants occupy the natural stone planters, representing 220 different plant species.
“When choosing Valley as their winner, the jury was particularly impressed by the skyscraper’s extraordinary and innovative architectural design,” explained Emporis.
“The building’s three peaks seamlessly switch between a sheer glass facade and protruding stone-clad windows and balconies resembling a rocky mountain surface, while the center holds a publicly accessible terraced valley, from which the building owes its name.”
GOOD ARCHITECTURE NEWS: One of the Most Beautiful Green Buildings in the World is a Winery
In the coming years, the building will mature into the lush appearance of the design team’s vision as the greenery continues to grow. The biodiversity of this landscape is further supported by bird and bat boxes as well as various bee and insect hotels. Maintained using an automatic irrigation system and by “façade gardeners,” the trees and plants on the terraces will positively affect the well-being of people living and working in Valley.
This isn’t the first valley that MVRDV have created. La Vallée Verte serves as a 144-space residential complex in Bordeaux built to look more like an old, greened-over volcanic caldera rather than a rocky canyon.
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The smiling face in the middle on the right side of the raft in this picture belongs to a woman who has managed to find two ancient Native American canoes in the same lake, within 12 months of each other.
In November of 2021 Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archeologist and member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, discovered a canoe of the bottom of Lake Mendota, near Madison, that was 1,200 years old.
Thomsen probably couldn’t believe her luck when during a recreational dive this May, she spied another canoe in the depths of the water.
In September the Wisconsin Historical Society alongside native nations recovered the canoe, and radiocarbon dating places it to 1000 BCE, making it the oldest ever discovered in the Great Lakes region by roughly 1,000 years.
The 3,000-year-old dugout canoe is carved from a single piece of white oak and measures approximately 14.5 feet in length.
As it was found in the same area the first canoe was discovered, it suggests that the location of Lake Mendota’s shoreline may have changed over time and could have once been much lower, according to Dr. James Skibo, Wisconsin Historical Society state archeologist.
“Finding an additional historically significant canoe in Lake Mendota is truly incredible and unlocks invaluable research and educational opportunities to explore the technological, cultural, and stylistic changes that occurred in dugout canoe design over 3,000 years,” said Skibo.
“Since it was located within 100 yards of where the first canoe was found at the bottom of a drop-off in the lakebed, the find has prompted us to research fluctuating water levels and ancient shorelines to explore the possibility that the canoes were near what is now submerged village sites.”
MORE ARCHEOLOGY NEWS: 300 Epic Ancient Murals ‘Unique in the World’ Depict Creation Myths on Texas Rock: ‘Oldest Books in North America’
Although it is likely that water transportation dates back to the arrival of Native peoples in this region, this discovery provides the earliest direct evidence, and helps to tell a more complete story of the continuum of Native life in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region. Members from the Ho-Chunk Nation and Bad River Tribe were present at the canoe recovery.
“The recovery of this canoe built by our ancestors gives further physical proof that Native people have occupied Teejop (Four Lakes) for millennia, that our ancestral lands are here and we had a developed society of transportation, trade and commerce,” said Ho-Chunk President Marlon WhiteEagle in a statement.
“Every person that harvested and constructed this caašgegu (white oak) into a canoe put a piece of themselves into it. By preserving this canoe, we are honoring those that came before us.”
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers also commented on the discovery, saying he looked forward to learning more about the pair of canoes.
RELATED: Viking Age Shipyard Uncovered at Birka is Like Nothing Ever Found Before
“This incredible finding provides an opportunity for us to work in concert with Tribal Nations to not only study but celebrate the history of the Indigenous people who’ve called this land home since long before Wisconsin became a state,” he said.
The canoe was hand-excavated in preparation for today’s recovery mission and then securely transported to the State Archive Preservation Facility in Madison for preservation and storage.
It will be cleaned and cared for by Tribal members and Society staff before being hand-lowered into a large preservation vat also containing the 1,200-year-old canoe discovered in 2021. Together the canoes will undergo a two-year preservation process that will conclude with freeze-drying to remove any remaining water.
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An adopted man discovered his biological family after 20 years when his brother tracked him down on Instagram thanks to his unusual first name.
Iverson Poff, 20, was adopted from birth and raised by his adoptive parents—but always wondered who his biological family were.
Iverson, who grew up in Portland, Oregon had a few baby pictures provided by the adoption agency. However it was a closed adoption where adoptive family and the biological family have no contact, and the adoption agency used had long since shut its doors.
It was July 20th however, that he got an Instagram message from a man called Jalen Vickers; he said he was his older brother.
“I have that date tattooed on my arm, because it was so important to me,” said Poff. “I opened the message instantly and I knew straight away who it was. I just knew.”
Vickers explained that thanks to Iverson’s unique first name which his mom had remembered, it was easy for him to be found.
16 hours after he got the message, Iverson was on a flight to Salt Lake City where his mother and three biological siblings were waiting to meet him.
He described it as the “most euphoric moment” after meeting the family he thought he’d never know—and now he’s planning to move to Utah to be closer to them.
“When I first met my family it was like seeing angels. It was crazy—I can’t even explain it,” he remembered. “I was actually in the process of doing DNA tests to try and find them on Ancestry, but they found me before I had chance to finish.”
Poff knew he had two biological siblings, but the third was born post-adoption agency pictures. It transpired he had not only an older brother, but also two younger sisters aged 18 and 13.
VERY SIMILAR: Son Discovers His Birth Mom Worked at the Same Hospital, After Searching For Years
He described the meeting as “very surreal” and “breath-taking.”
He learned from his mother, Danielle Zimmerman, that she had been unable to support him at the time she got pregnant.
She had flown from her home in Florida at the time all the way to Utah to give birth to Iverson there, so his adoptive family could take him straight in.
“We discussed it and chose not to focus on the past,” Poff said of his personal origin story. “Why do that when I have so much in the present and the future to focus on?”
He ended up staying in Utah for three weeks, during which time he got to do ‘normal family things.’
“When I met them, I felt like the void in my head was filled,” he said. “Like I’d been missing puzzle pieces that I now have. Its awesome. “I have to count my blessings. I’ve been very fortunate.”
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Even as two million Floridians lost power during the recent Hurricane Ian, one unique community survived intact.
Despite being located around 20 miles from Fort Myers, the heart of the devastation, Babcock Ranch’s blend of solar power, native flora, and built-to-code construction has meant that apart from ripped up pool coverings, broken fence posts, and a missing shingle or two, they never even lost power.
Roughly 4,600 residents live in Babcock Ranch, billed as a storm-resilient and 100% solar-powered town.
“They were told that Babcock Ranch was built to stand up to storms—but you never really know for sure until you see how everything performs when a storm comes,” Lisa Hall, a community representative, told CBS news. “Ian put it to an extreme test.”
Built around 25-feet higher on average than surrounding communities, Babcock Ranch is beyond the reach of storm waters, and with buildings specified for Cat 4 hurricane winds of 145 mph, Babcock passed the test and how.
Built in 2018 specifically for climate resiliency, the town has its own wastewater plant and water system that penetrates deep into an underground aquifer. Drinking water wasn’t contaminated and never shut off.
700,000 solar panels owned by Florida Power & Light provide every home with electricity, and despite covering an area of 900 acres, they remarkably sustained minimal damage. Neither power nor internet ever went out.
The solar panels provided power to a storm shelter that wasn’t even expected to be used because of the late-delivery of a diesel generator. At the last minute the shelter was opened, and remained the only one in the area that still had power.
Unsurprisingly, the town expects its population to grow to 50,000, with 6 million square feet of commercial space.
RELATED: A New Neighborhood is Being Built in Utah That Looks Like a European ‘One-Car Town’
Residents have organized several donation drives to help out communities less-fortunate that them.
“It [is] a constant outpouring of support from Babcock Ranch residents who know how incredibly fortunate they are to have homes and community still intact,” Hall said.
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Quote of the Day: “The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero (Ancient Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher)
Photo by: Allec Gomes
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When learning a language, the more foreign accents a child hears the faster they learn words.
This was observed using some clever science and shows that it wasn’t bilingual children, but children in a language class with multiple accents who learned and remembered new words at an accelerated rate.
Today more and more kids are growing up in multi-ethnic environments, especially in Europe, global cities like Singapore, or for digital working nomads.
“Until now, there was a lack of studies on the influence of regional and foreign accents on children’s learning of new words,” says Dr. Adriana Hanulíková at the German language department at the University of Freiburg.
To fill this gap, the researchers had 88 Freiburg children aged 7 to 11 play a computer game based on the popular card game “Spot It!,” which is known as “Dobble” in Germany. In the game, two identical objects on different playing cards have to be discovered and named as quickly as possible.
For the study, the children played the game on the computer with virtual peers. They spoke either standard German or German with a Swiss or Hebrew accent. The game included six terms that are usually unknown to children of elementary school age.
The study’s game-based design is a particularly suitable tool for this research said Dr. Hanulíková.
“The children learn from other children while playing, not from adults, the latter being the focus of almost all studies to date. In addition, children are required to say and use these words in interaction, not to just passively recognize them. In this way, the experimental design resembles natural learning in everyday life.”
All 88 children who participated in the study were German speakers, some of them bilingual or multilingual. The researchers also asked how often per week each child hears regional and foreign accents.
The evaluation of the experiment showed that the children benefited from long-term experience with different accents: children with this experience found it easier to learn unfamiliar words from other children who spoke unfamiliar accents in this virtual game situation.
This effect occurred especially when children heard both regional and foreign accents in their daily life. Whereas experience with regional accents alone also predicted learning, children who had experience with foreign accents showed, at least in tendency, similar effects. Bilingualism had no corresponding effect.
Further studies are thus needed to investigate in more detail what type of experience in children’s vocabulary acquisition leads to which effects, and how these might differ from the learning of new words by adults, says Dr. Hanulíková.
Having access to a second language improves not only career outcomes, but sets a brain up for better capabilities long-term, from childhood to the golden years. Research has also shown that it doesn’t slow down learning levels during early schooling.
Bilingualism is associated with multiple cognitive advantages, such as increased attentional control, greater working memory capacity, and symbolic representation, in infants, adolescents, and adults.
READ ALSO: Spending Quality Time With Dad ‘Helps Young Children Do Better at School’
With the large demand for bilingual education, especially across the anglophone and Chinese worlds, Dr. Hanulíková’s research is vital for understanding the best and most natural environments for this instruction to thrive in the educational system.
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When Zac Efron signed up to play a still-living person, he knew there would be challenges.
What he didn’t know was underneath the heroism of that real-person, there was a kind man honored to have his story told, which made Efron all the more honored to portray him.
The movie The Greatest Beer Run Ever, streaming on Apple TV, is based on the memoir of the same name by John “Chickie” Donohue, who went from the United States to the jungles of Vietnam in order to give his friend serving there a cold beer and a pat on the back from home.
“It’s one of those unbelievable real-life scenarios that you just can’t believe a guy got himself into,” says Efron. “It’s a beautiful story about human nature, love and a really difficult war and time in history.”
Donohue was on set during pretty much most of the filming, but despite the fact he knew nothing about show business, and nothing about Zac Efron, here was this Hollywood A-lister treating him with deference.
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“Instinctively I said, ‘I like this guy!” Donohue told People. “I had no mission to teach anybody anything. My mission was simply to let the guys over there know that we truly, truly supported them.”
Donohue added he had already seen the movie twice, and feels Efron played him better than he did when he was actually going to deliver beer to soldiers in Vietnam.
The then-26-year-old merchant mariner and New York native boarded a cargo ship bound for the war, and ended up traveling all the way to the front lines.
For Efron, the connection he made to the real-life hero was the biggest reward of all the effort that involved location shooting in terrible weather, and having to maintain a handlebar moustache the whole time, adding he just wanted to turn in a performance “Chickie” could be proud of.
The film was released on Apple TV September 30th.
WATCH Tthe trailer below…
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The James Webb Space Telescope recently made its debut with the “Deep Field” image, but as we are absorbed by the beautiful colors of near-infinity, scientists have used the data behind the shot to identify a very old and fascinating object in space.
Named the “Sparkler,” it’s a “globular cluster” nine billion light years away. The light as it’s reaching us is as it was just 4.5 billion years after the Big Bang, meaning just after it became possible for stars to form.
JWST’s high-resolution snapshot contains thousands of galaxies and dense groups of millions of stars, but for co-lead author Dr. Kartheik Iyer, the most interesting were ancient collections of stars from a galaxy’s infancy that can contain clues about its earliest phases of formation and growth.
“Looking at the first images from JWST and discovering old globular clusters around distant galaxies was an incredible moment, one that wasn’t possible with previous Hubble Space Telescope imaging,” said Iyer.
The Sparkler got its name for the compact objects appearing as small yellow-red dots surrounding it, referred to by the researchers as ‘sparkles,’ and which turned out to be the globular clusters.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on the unveiling of the telescope’s first images, said that the Deep Field contained very little of the galaxy, approximately as much as if one were to hold a grain of sand on the end of their finger, extend their arm and hand and measure the sand grain against the sky itself.
Incredibly though, examination of the globular clusters spotted in this tiny area of space revealed that five of the clusters were among the oldest ever recorded.
“Since we could observe the sparkles across a range of wavelengths, we could model them and better understand their physical properties, like how old they are and how many stars they contain,” said Dr. Iyer.
“We hope the knowledge that globular clusters can be observed at from such great distances with JWST will spur further science and searches for similar objects.”
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The Milky Way galaxy has about 150 globular clusters. The study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters sheds light on how and when these dense clumps of stars formed.
It is known they can be extremely old. But it is incredibly challenging to measure their ages.
Using very distant globular clusters to age-date the first stars in distant galaxies has not been done before and is only possible with JWST.
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“These newly identified clusters were formed close to the first time it was even possible to form stars,” said lead author Dr. Lamiya Mowla, of the University of Toronto in Canada. “We are observing the Sparkler as it was nine billion years ago, when the universe was only four-and-a-half billion years old, looking at something that happened a long time ago.”
“Think of it as guessing a person’s age based on their appearance; it’s easy to tell the difference between a five and ten year old, but hard to tell the difference between a 50 and 55 year old.”
In total there were three images of the Sparkler using different wavelengths including infrared and spectrographic.
The Sparkler’s sparks were confirmed through spectroscopy, or the examination of light, to be old globular clusters because the researchers did not observe oxygen emissions with measurable spectra given off by young clusters that are actively forming stars.
While Hubble could barely see the Sparkler, JWST magnified in by a factor of 100 due to an effect called gravitational lensing whereby a galaxy cluster in the foreground distorts what is behind it, much like a giant magnifying glass.
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The technique helped them produce three separate images of the Sparkler, allowing astronomers to examine it in greater detail.
“Seeing several of the Sparkler’s globular clusters imaged three times made it clear they are orbiting around the Sparkler galaxy rather than being simply in front of it by chance,” noted co-author Professor Marcin Sawicki, of Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia.
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