A Japanese-American interment camp from the Second World War in Colorado, preserved for years by local students, has been folded into the care of the National Park Service.
As a new National Historic Site, the Amache Internment Camp is now part of the Service’s commitment to tell the entire story of American history, good and bad.
But the real story lies in the work of the Amache Preservation Society (APS), a group of volunteer students from the local school district of Granada RE1, in southeast Colorado, led for 30 years by John Hopper.
A social studies teacher in 1993, Hopper, who doesn’t have Japanese ancestry, was teaching some “really bright students” who turned a one-time class project speaking with a survivor of the camp, whom Hopper’s family knew, into an-always operational preservation society, and focused on giving class presentations, operating a museum, and maintaining the site—a large collection of government-issue barracks where thousands of innocent Japanese Americans were detained.
“It is a heavy, heavy topic, especially when you talk about civil liberties,” Hopper told Christian Science Monitor. “But that’s part of my job I enjoy talking about—needs to be talked about.”
The APS works on presentations to other schools; in recent years it also began organizing trips to Japan to stay with host families and do their presentations in Japanese high schools.
“I can’t think of any group that does more for Amache,” Calvin Taro Hada, an Amache descendant and Japanese community leader, told CS Monitor.
In 2006, Amache was designated a historic landmark, and last month, President Biden designated the camp a National Historic Site—announcing the intention to transfer responsibility and ownership of the town of Granada to the National Park Service.
Though Hopper is now Dean of Students and not in the classroom, students from the same school still run tours of the site, mow the lawns, and even pursue occasional excavations under the supervision of the University of Denver.
“It is our solemn responsibility as caretakers of America’s national treasures to tell the whole story of our nation’s heritage for the benefit of present and future generations,” said National Park Service Director Chuck Sams. “The National Park Service will continue working closely with key stakeholders dedicated to the preservation of Amache, [including the APS…] to preserve and interpret this significant historic site to the public.”
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Before and after images for participants who received 36 weeks of treatment for alopecia areata with baricitinib yalenews released
Before and after images for participants who received 36 weeks of treatment for alopecia areata with baricitinib/ Yalenews
A new Yale study shows that one in three patients with a severe skin disease were able to regrow hair after being treated with a common arthritis drug.
The study is based on Phase 3 clinical trials using baricitinib, a Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor, to treat alopecia areata, an often disfiguring skin disease characterized by rapid loss of scalp hair, and sometimes eyebrows and eyelashes.
Phase 3 clinical trials are the final testing hurdle before a new treatment can be considered for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
“This is so exciting, because the data clearly show how effective baricitinib is,” said Dr. Brett King, an associate professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the new study “These large, controlled trials tell us that we can alleviate some of the suffering from this awful disease.”
Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks hair follicles. More than 200,000 new cases emerge each year in the United States. Although alopecia areata can develop in patients of any age, it typically occurs in people under the age of 40.
There is currently no FDA-approved treatment for the disease.
For the new study, King and his colleagues conducted two large, randomized trials involving a total of 1,200 people. The participants were adults with severe alopecia areata, who had lost at least half of their scalp hair; many had lost all of their scalp hair.
For 36 weeks, participants were given a daily dose of either 4 milligrams of baricitinib, 2 milligrams of baricitinib, or a placebo. One-third of the patients who received the larger dose grew hair back.
The researchers said baricitinib thwarts the disease by disrupting the communication of immune cells involved in harming hair follicles. Baricitinib and other JAK inhibitors are routinely used to treat autoimmune forms of joint disease.
“Alopecia areata is a crazy journey, marked by chaos, confusion, and profound sadness for many who suffer from it,” King said. “It will be incredible to have a medicine to help people emerge on the other side, normalcy restored, recognizable again to themselves and those around them.”
Co-authors of the study included researchers from the Kyorin University Faculty of Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Stanford University, the University of California-Irvine, the University of Minnesota, Eli Lilly and Company, and Sinclair Dermatology.
The results of the study were made public during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. For the past decade, King has developed methods for using JAK inhibitors to treat a variety of skin diseases—including eczema, vitiligo, granuloma annulare, sarcoidosis, and erosive lichen planus.
King noted that the clinical trials involving baricitinib are ongoing, which will enable researchers to assess the long-term effectiveness and safety of the treatment.
For people wanting their minds blown, the kingdom of fungi is a never-ending box of tricks.
Mycologists studying the underground filaments of fungi are observing electrical signals similar to a nervous system: a normal phenomenon, except that they found the signals were remarkably similar to human language.
When filaments called ‘hyphae’ of a wood-digesting fungal species discover a bit of wood to munch on underground, the hyphae begin to light up with “spikes” of electrical signals that reach out to the hyphae of other individuals, and even trees.
“Spikes of electrical potential are typically considered to be key attributes of neurons, and neuronal spiking activity is interpreted as a language of a nervous system,” wrote Professor Andrew Adamatzky from the University of the West of England, in a paper he published on the investigations. “However, almost all creatures without nervous system produce spikes of electrical potential.”
To see what characteristics these electrical impulse spikes share with nervous system language of other lifeforms, Adamatzky put tiny electrodes into pieces of material, feeding on which were four species: enoki, split gill, ghost, and caterpillar fungi.
Compared to humans
The authors set the electrical spikes against a series of human linguistic phenomena that were used to successfully decode part of the carved language of the Picts, the Bronze Age people of Scotland. The average length of a human-expressed vowel is between 300 and 70 milliseconds, and so they assumed that if there was a 0 millisecond break between spikes, that was part of the same “word.”
C. militaris fungi had trains of electrical spikes of an almost identical length to English words, while split gill fungi spikes were even more closely identical to the average word length in the Greek language. Around fifty ‘words’ could be identified based on repetition.
“Assuming that spikes of electrical activity are used by fungi to communicate and process information in mycelium networks, we group spikes into words and provide a linguistic and information complexity analysis of the fungal spiking activity,” writes Adamatzky. “We demonstrate that distributions of fungal word lengths match that of human languages.”
The split gill fungus formed the most complex “sentence structures,” and Professor Adamatzky suggested that the most likely purpose for this electrical dialogue is to keep integrity between the parts of the mycelium. Mycelia makes up more than 90% of the total biomass of fungi, and the filaments can stretch for hundreds of feet, connecting trees, other plants, and other fungi, so keeping the mycelia integrated, Adamatzky said, could be similar to the way wolves howl to keep all members of the pack integrated.
Some scientists are skeptical that the research was done looking for ‘language’, suggesting that this puts a shroud of exaggeration and overexcitement about the findings.
To his credit, Adamatzky explained to the Guardian that it could be simply that the electrically-charged tips of hyphae were just creating electromagnetic reactions as they explore the forest underground.
It’s not the first piece of science that suggests life outside Animalia communicate with language. Tree scientist Peter Wohlleben believes trees produce scents instead of words, and that soon a computer will be able to detect and attach purposes to the scents, and translate them into words.
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Quote of the Day: “Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.” – Alan Alda
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Janice Saunders with 3F Waste Recovery compost; 3F Waste Recovery
Janice Saunders with 3F Waste Recovery compost; 3F Waste Recovery
Among sparsely populated communities in Newfoundland, a landfill for the future—where every molecule is accounted for and reused—is steadily growing its portfolio of circularly produced goods that utilize waste from the island’s forests, farms, and fisheries.
For clients, it’s just like any other landfill. They can go and dump whatever amount of biological waste that they have from their operations, and then drive off without ever needing to think about it again.
But for investors, for consumers, and for the world, 3F Waste Recovery is anything but ordinary.
“3F is founded on the principle that every molecule that comes through our door, we want to have an application for it,” Founder Ben Wiper explains to Hakai Magazine. “My vision is the landfill of the future—where producers can take anything they haven’t processed, to break it down into a form that has a function.”
Science has moved us into an increasingly molecularized world. It’s common to hear businesses accounting for things like protein or CO2, as if they’re counting assets, expenditures, or cash flow.
When a company has the technology to turn practically all kinds of biological waste into valuable consumer products, this accounting method becomes even more extreme. Every unit of lignin not burnt from a tree means one more unit of lignin needed from a tree that hasn’t been felled. Every unit of cod skin placed in a landfill is one more unit of cod skin needed from a living cod.
Guts to gold
3F Waste Recovery
With the island’s natural refuse, 3F makes cod skin marine collagen supplements, processed cod pet treats, nitrogen-rich fish compost, processed cod cosmetic compounds, raw tallow from moose, cow, and sheep for candle and soap making, sheep wool insulation, sheep wool stuffing for duvets and beds, sheep wool/cardboard slug repellent for gardens, moose tallow soaps, smoked moose pet treats, moose and cow bone pet treats, and lanolin wool wax water repellent and lubricant.
From the island’s forestry sector come wood pellets for grills, and wood briquettes for charcoal grills. The pellets are a blend of sawdust and cardboard, and began the island’s first cardboard recycling program.
In 2021 alone the company debuted six new product lines.
Ever keen on expanding the list of products and materials produced from byproducts, 3F enjoys the support of dozens of scientists and other collaborators across the academic and private sectors.
In a special feature on 3F in Hakai, founder Ben Wiper explains he was pushed by investors into trying to focus on a few products first.
Wiper declined the advice, saying that unless he could act as landfill, suppliers wouldn’t utilize his services. Instead he flipped the script, encouraging investors to back aspects of the operation they were interested in, whether that be pet treats, wool products, pharmaceuticals, or anything else he’s producing.
In a collaborative report led by Smart Prosperity Institute, a thinktank embedded in the University of Ottawa, 3F was identified among 200 circular economy startups as one of the most promising, and the company is looking to close a multi-million dollar deal for its line of various pet treats, which will add 40 more rural full-time jobs in Newfoundland, and maybe allow Wiper and the other higher-ups in the company to finally stop having to go and collect the cod heads, sheep wool, sawdust, and composted animals themselves.
Regular insulin and a syringe from ampoules and vials of medicines
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Build Back Better Act, which includes the most sweeping nationwide measure to date to limit out-of-pocket co-pays for insulin.
The national co-pay cap, which ADA has aggressively promoted, would apply to Medicare beneficiaries, individuals on commercial insurance, and those covered by other group health plans.
The House-passed legislation creates an out-of-pocket co-pay limit of $35 per month for insulin.
In the days before the House vote, nearly 15,000 American Diabetes Association advocates contacted their representatives through the ADA’s Engagement Platform to urge support for co-pay caps and for allowing the government to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers.
Until now, the diabetes community has felt the impact of the steep rise in the average cost of insulin, the price of which nearly tripled between 2002 and 2013. As a result of high costs, one in four insulin-dependent Americans reports needing to ration their insulin. “This vote is a victory for millions of Americans facing unaffordable insulin and hope for lowering other drug costs. House leaders have taken a bold and urgent step this week,” said Lisa Murdock, Chief Advocacy Officer for the ADA.
New hope
In the run-up to House consideration of the insulin co-pay cap, the ADA led efforts around the country to advocate for co-pay caps that have been enacted in 20 states and the District of Columbia. “These states paved the way for this week’s historic action in the House,” said Murdock. “We thank those members of the House of Representatives who supported a national insulin co-pay cap, building on the efforts of state leaders before them. Together, these leaders are working to ensure that millions of people with diabetes will be able to afford their insulin and will not have to skip doses or ration because they don’t have enough money to pay for this life-saving drug.”
The bill provides other key benefits for people with diabetes. These include extending increased health insurance premium tax credits—which were created through the Affordable Care Act and increased through more recent COVID-19 relief legislation— as well as increased funding for states to offset the cost of running Medicaid programs.
ACA plans and Medicaid have become especially important to people with diabetes who have been disproportionately affected, economically and through adverse health impacts, by the COVID-19 pandemic. These gap coverage measures are critical for the diabetes community, who relies on these plans to afford their insulin, devices and supplies.
“We now urge the Senate, as it considers the Build Back Better legislation, to move forward with a measure that also adopts these critical provisions that can make insulin more affordable, and health coverage more accessible, to 34 million people living with diabetes today,” Murdock said.
The proposal is expected to be on the floor soon after Easter. According to ABC, “Republicans have largely opposed the measure and refer to the bill as ‘government priced fixing’ that could lead to higher premiums for customers and exorbitant costs for insurers.” However, the Senate is made up of a majority of Democrats, which could pass the Bill.
darwin notebook released cambridge university library
On two leather and copper-bound field notebooks, Charles Darwin jotted down a variety of musings that formed his theory of evolution. Held at Cambridge University Library for decades, in the year 2000 they were stolen.
22 years later, as mysteriously as they disappeared, they were returned—bound in saran wrap in exactly the same condition as they left, and in the same archive box, though this time it was placed inside a pink gift bag and left outside the librarian’s office.
Inside, the box was wrapped in parcel paper with a note from the individual, uncaught by CCTV cameras. It read, “Librarian / Happy Easter / X.”
Cambridge University Library
“My sense of relief at the notebooks’ safe return is profound and almost impossible to adequately express,” said Librarian Dr. Jessica Gardner, who found them outside her offices on the 4th floor landing of the university library building. “Along with so many others all across the world, I was heartbroken to learn of their loss and my joy at their return is immense.”
A Cambridgeshire Police spokesman said, “We share the university’s delight that these priceless notebooks are now back where they belong. Our investigation remains open and we are following up some lines of inquiry. We also renew our appeal for anyone with information about the case to contact us.”
Whodunit
An intriguing, and now slightly less-tragic heist, the notebooks were lifted after an internal request to remove them from the Library’s strongroom for photographs. Two months later during routine inspections, they were found to be missing, and after combing through the 10 million unit-archive, the police concluded they had probably been stolen.
The books essentially contain the thoughts and observations Darwin was making as he worked out his theory of evolution. One page includes the “Tree of life,” a spindly sketch of a tree with each branch marking different lineages of animals and plants that helped him visualize the concept he was formulating.
Cambridge University Library
About 15 months ago, Gardner wrote an impassioned plea, widely shared on social media, for the notebooks to be returned. The short space of time between then and their recovery, she admits, could be related.
When they did arrive, Gardner was forced to wait an agonizing five days to remove them from the plastic wrap, during which police inspected them. After they were opened a team from the Library set out to verify their authenticity.
“Darwin uses different types of ink in the notebooks,” explains Prof. Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, and one of the on-hand academics with experience of the notebooks. “For example, on the famous tree of life page, there is both a brown ink and also a grey ink. Those kind of changes are quite difficult to forge convincingly.”
“You can see the tiny bits of copper that are coming off where the hinges are located,” he told the BBC. The paper type is the right sort of paper.”
Cambridge University Library
They will be returned to the strongroom, hopefully with changed locks, and kept there until July 9th when they will be displayed as part of an exhibit called “Darwin in Conservation.”
Free time is sometimes idealized, but research shows free time can sometimes be unhealthy by increasing loneliness. A new Penn State study demonstrated that engaging in meaningful, challenging activities during free time can reduce people’s loneliness and increase their positive feelings.
An international team of researchers including John Dattilo—professor of recreation, park, and tourism management at Penn State—has been studying how to increase leisure and reduce loneliness during the pandemic among both international college students and older adults.
Across two different studies, the researchers found that people who had meaningful, challenging experiences were less lonely—even when higher levels of social contact and support were not available.
“There is a well-known saying: ‘Time flies when you are having fun,'” said Dattilo. “The unspoken corollary is that time drags when you are bored. Our research shows that both of these ideas are true. By engaging in meaningful activities during free time that demand focus, people can reduce loneliness and increase momentary happiness.”
Loneliness and the pandemic
Despite—or perhaps in part because of—technology that can connect people anywhere at any time, previous research has shown that loneliness has increased over recent decades.
Loneliness touches people of all ages, from children to young adults to older adults. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused many people to alter their social behavior to prevent the spread of disease, exacerbated the problem of loneliness around the world.
“Loneliness is very connected to our health,” Dattilo explained. “Psychological, emotional, and cognitive health are all challenged when people are lonely. Loneliness is associated with depression and other mental health challenges.”
“Troublingly,” continued Dattilo, “there is a loneliness epidemic. And while the COVID-19 pandemic has increased loneliness for many people, the silver lining is that the pandemic has also exposed the scope of the loneliness problem. Anything we can do as a society to reduce loneliness should improve health and happiness for people everywhere.”
In a new article that appears in Leisure Sciences, the researchers explored loneliness among international university students in Taiwan. The same research team also published an article about reducing loneliness among nursing home residents late in 2021.
Prior research has shown that loneliness among international university students is common around the world. International students are removed from their social networks and live in a different culture, often one that speaks a different language. Typically, international students can prevent loneliness by participating in social activities to receive ‘social support,’ the sense that they are cared for by the people with whom they socialize. During the pandemic, however, many group-based activities and social gatherings have been cancelled or prohibited.
Additionally, the researchers identified that the online social opportunities that became available in the pandemic may be less accessible to international students because of language and cultural differences.
Flow reduces loneliness
According to the researchers, reduced loneliness is associated with engaging in enjoyable activities that require both concentration and skill.
“When people become engrossed in what they are doing, they enter a state that is called ‘flow,'” Dattilo explained. “Flow can be achieved by engaging in mental or physical activities that we value and that require us to concentrate fully to use our skills.”
For people to achieve a state of flow, an activity must require a good deal of their skill but not be so difficult that it seems impossible. Additionally, it must demand concentration to execute and be meaningful to the participant. Artistic endeavors like playing the piano or painting can induce flow. So can physical activities like skiing or chopping wood, along with mental tasks like writing or storytelling. What induces flow differs from person to person based on individual skills and values.
“When we enter a state of flow, we become absorbed and focused, and we experience momentary enjoyment,” Dattilo continued. “When we leave a state of flow, we are often surprised by how much time has passed.”
People with extensive free time—like college students who are locked down during a pandemic, or people who live in a nursing home—can achieve flow when they engage in activities they find to be meaningful. In this way, time passes quickly for them, their life has meaning, and their experience of loneliness is reduced, according to the researchers.
Social support from friends and acquaintances is a primary way that people reduce loneliness. For many people, however, obtaining adequate social support can be challenging. Though the researchers found that students with high levels of social support were less lonely, they found that flow was even more important to reducing loneliness. Helping people achieve flow can reduce loneliness in situations where social support is insufficient. More importantly, it can reduce loneliness for people in any situation.
Encouraging flow for everyone
Some activities never induce flow, while other activities may or may not, depending on the individual. According to Dattilo, there is nothing wrong with watching television, but, typically, it does not help people enter a state of flow because they are unlikely to experience any challenges. Additionally, different people find different activities meaningful and enjoyable. Nursing home residents are unlikely to enjoy playing bingo if they did not enjoy similar games when they were younger, said Dattilo.
“Learning which activities might enable someone to enter a state of flow requires asking questions and listening,” said Dattilo. “People tend to thrive on healthy engagement and challenge. My collaborators and I hope that this research will help people live fuller, happier, healthier lives.”
The Lesson: The stereotype of the Hollywood producer is one of self-involvement, packed schedules, and rudeness. By definition however, producers know how to make things happen, and in the case of Peter Samuelson, that’s involved 25 films, but also 5 separate charities that work in children’s hospitals and foster care organizations providing psycho-neuro-immunology, dream-making, and improving education outcomes.
Notable Excerpt: “He (Steven Spielberg) said, ‘well if we’re going to raise money, maybe I should give some money,’ and I said, ‘I think that’d be very good, you’re the chairman so I think that’d be excellent thank you for suggesting that.’ He said, ‘what do you think I should give?’ I said ‘I have no idea. Furthermore if I had an idea ,there’s no way that I’m telling Steven Spielberg what he should give to charity.’ He said ‘You can’t leave until you give me a number,’ so it was like a face off.”
The Guest: Holding an MA from Cambridge, Peter Samuelson is a public speaker, lecturer film producer of 25 movies including The Libertine, and Arlington Road, and make-things-happen-man behind five major charities, Starlight, Starbright World, First Star, AspireLabs, and Edar.
The Podcast: Livin’ Good Currency explores the relationship of time to our lives. It gives a simple, straight-forward formula that anyone can use to be present in the moment—and features a co-host who knows better than anyone the value of time (see below). How do you want to spend your life? This hour can inspire you, along with upcoming guests, to be sure you are ‘Livin’ Good Currency’ and never get caught running out of time.
The Hosts: Good News Network fans will know Tony (Anthony) Samadani as the co-owner of GNN and its Chief of Strategic Partnerships. Co-host Tobias Tubbs was handed a double life sentence without the possibility of parole for a crime he didn’t commit. Behind bars, he used his own version of the Livin’ Good Currency formula to inspire young men in prison to turn their hours into honors. An expert in conflict resolution, spirituality, and philosophy, Tobias is a master gardener who employs ex-felons to grow their Good Currency by planting crops and feeding neighborhoods.
Quote of the Day: “Be like water making its way through cracks… Adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.” – Bruce Lee
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About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage.
Researchers from Stanford University constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, avoiding the need for batteries altogether. The device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space—energy that is on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation.
“You want the thermoelectric to have very good contact with both the cold side, which is the solar cell, and the hot side, which is the ambient environment,” said author Sid Assawaworrarit. “If you don’t have that, you’re not going to get much power out of it.”
At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. This process depends on the thermal design of the system, which includes a hot side and a cold side.
The team demonstrated power generation in their device during the day, when it runs in reverse and contributes additional power to the conventional solar cell, and at night.
The setup is inexpensive and, in principle, could be incorporated within existing solar cells. It is also simple, so construction in remote locations with limited resources is feasible.
“What we managed to do here is build the whole thing from off-the-shelf components, have a very good thermal contact, and the most expensive thing in the whole setup was the thermoelectric itself,” said author Zunaid Omair.
Sid Assawaworrarit
Using electricity at night for lighting requires a few watts of power. The current device generates 50 milliwatts per square meter, which means lighting would require about 20 square meters of photovoltaic area.
“None of these components were specifically engineered for this purpose,” said Shanhui Fan, author of the paper published in Applied Physics Letters. “So, I think there’s room for improvement, in the sense that, if one really engineered each of these components for our purpose, I think the performance could be better.”
The team aims to optimize the thermal insulation and thermoelectric components of the device. They are exploring engineering improvements to the solar cell itself to enhance the radiative cooling performance without influencing its solar energy harvesting capability.
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A group of community workers from the Ejido Santa Ana rest after a day working in the forest. Image courtesy of UCDFI Topia, S.C. released
UCDFI Topia, S.C.
An area famous for cropping narcotics and cannabis has changed its moniker from the Golden Triangle of Opium to the Golden Triangle of Sustainable Forestry.
It’s a shift four decades in the making, as the residents of four communities in the hilly, forested northern part of the state of Durango decided they wanted to secure a more sustainable future for themselves.
Durango state is one of Mexico’s great timber producers, contributing 70 million cubic feet to the national industry. Since the 1970s, the four communities of the Tamazula municipality have used their hills, richly forested with various species of conifers, as a forestry resource—calling themselves The Foresters of Northern Tamazula.
A study by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations highlights Durango as “one of the most important Mexican states with regards forest production and the conservation of natural resources,” and the more these resources can be developed, the greater the incentives become to move away from Tamazula’s narcotrafficker past. At the moment, the foresters of the mountains there make around U.S. minimum wage.
Reporting on this budding industry is Claire Storey at Mongabay, who spoke with a forestry engineer for UCDFI Topia, a community forest management organization, named Carlos Zapata Pérez.
“When we initially began providing them with technical assistance, we saw the situation [the strong presence of crops destined for drug production] and made a real effort to convince them to move away from growing narcotics,” Zapata told Mongabay. “We told them their forest was an important resource because it could offer them many benefits, eco-systemic services, for example.”
Over 40 years, UCDFI Topia has helped the communities of Tamazula to create a community-powered, community-benefited forest management model. Their tree nurseries have produced more than a million conifers, and the economic ends of their labor sustains 10,500 families.
Today, a thousand families still live off this forestry system. They maintain the highest certification in Mexico for sustainable forestry, and this has helped lift the municipality off the state’s poverty list.
While Tamazula remains remote, semi-isolated, and rugged, the residents speak proudly of what they’ve built, and the victories over the ‘Golden Triangle’ stigma which they’ve won.
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EuroMillions_tickets cc license wikimedia commons Magnus D
€200,000,000: That’s how much an anonymous Frenchman won in the Euromillions jackpot lottery last week, and almost the sum total of how much he gave towards the preservation of tropical rainforest in West Africa, and forests in his native country.
The lucky winner established the Anyama Endowment Fund, named after a town in Côte d’Ivoire where it’s understood he spent a lot of time, and to it his winnings will go for “the protection and revitalization of forests, the preservation and regeneration of biodiversity and the support of family caregivers.”
“I only played during large jackpots, for one purpose: to devote most of this sum to the creation of a foundation,” he wrote in an open letter on the Fund’s website.
“During my life, I have witnessed in Côte d’Ivoire the incessant passage of trucks loaded with trees cut in the forests of Burkina Faso,” he told Le Parisien.
“We have never seen an initiative of this size, but there again, we have rarely seen such high winnings,” said an operator of the French National Lottery. “Often, these things go hand-in-hand.”
Indeed it was the second-largest jackpot in the lottery’s history. The winner is only known to be a retiree in the south of France, who wants to spread the message that humans can preserve the natural environment if we want to—and that giving makes people more happy than having.
“Above all, it is the expression of a conviction that I want to share with as many people as possible: giving makes people happy, and constitutes a tremendous lever for transforming indignation into concrete and useful actions,” the man said, according to Euro News.
Featured image: Magnus D, CC license
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Accurate home testing could be used for a wider range of illnesses, as new research shows the capability of smartphone-powered tests for Dengue Fever.
Biomedical technology researchers from the University of Reading used a new diagnostic kit called Cygnus to detect Dengue Fever with significantly improved rates over lateral flow testing kits.
Working with academics and clinicians in Thailand, the team trialed the tests alongside already established alternatives in and found the new tests showed 82% clinical sensitivity, beating lateral flow testing (74% sensitivity) and matching hospital-based lab diagnostics (83% sensitivity). At the same time, these devices make 10 measurements allowing us to identify which of the four different dengue virus types caused the infection.
Dr Sarah Needs, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Microfluidic Antimicrobial Resistance Testing from the University of Reading is lead author of the paper.
Dr Needs said, “The paper shows exciting potential for the use of the microfluidic ‘lab on a strip’ tests that can used in conjunction with a smartphone and are more powerful than LFT testing in this case. As well as being cheap to produce, the lab on a strip technology allows users to test many different targets at once in one single sample, so it could be useful to detect multiple diseases not just one.
Lab on a strip
The new diagnostic test developed for the research uses ‘lab on a strip’ technology, which performs 10 or more tests a very small amount of liquid sample (such as blood, urine or saliva).
The tests developed for the research were specifically developed to detect Dengue Fever, which affects an estimated 400m cases each year. While most cases are mild, dengue infections can lead to significant complications and can be fatal. Dengue can be most severe in children and is a serious health challenge facing half the global population.
Dr Alexander Edwards, Associate Professor in Biomedical Technology at the University of Reading co-created the lab on a strip technology.
Dr Edwards said, “While some people might only recently learned of the trade-offs between home vs lab testing following Covid-19, in many parts of the world rapid lateral flow tests are used for a range of illnesses including dengue.’
“With the Cygnus concept, we are tackling the biggest hurdle for home testing. How do you make something portable that can be cheaply mass produced while still matching laboratory test performance? By designing the microfluidic lab on a strip using mass-production melt-extrusion it is possible to scale up production and produce hundreds of thousands of tests. By recording results with smartphones, which are becoming ubiquitous, we have designed something that could be revolutionary for healthcare.”
Quote of the Day: “Worrying is only praying for stuff you don’t want.” – Mildred Richards
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A homeless dog that brought comfort to U.S. soldiers overseas will now get a chance to live the cozy life in America with one of those soldiers.
The three-year-old mixed breed became like family to Sergeant K. and his Army unit in Kosovo last year, after they found him looking for food around their base.
His daily visits and wagging tail soon became the highlight of their day, delivering comfort to those far from home.
Sgt. Kelsey bonded with the pooch he named Duke and wanted to get him to a better life, out of danger.
The staff at the New York-based charity Paws of War promised to help, so Duke and the sergeant could be together once more.
But, before Duke could find his forever home in the US, disaster struck. He stopped showing up at the base.
Soldiers searched for him for several days, had no luck, and feared the worst. When they finally found him, they discovered he had been shot, was bleeding badly, and was severely dehydrated.
Paws of War sent out an emergency vet team to save Duke’s life.
The nonprofit’s overseas rescue partner, The Alamal Foundation, provided foster care for Duke while he healed. The pup spent six months recovering and eventually rebuilt his muscle strength to the point he was able to walk again.
Recently, Sgt. Kelsey got a message from Dereck Cartright, a veteran and logistics coordinator for Paws of War.
“We are thrilled to be able to tell you that after months of healing and rehabilitation, Duke has made a tremendous recovery. He is ready for the next part of his journey.”
The lucky canine is projected to be reunited with Sgt. Kelsey this month.
“The entire Army unit is so excited that Duke is coming home,” said Sgt. Kelsey. “This is the moment we’ve prayed for.”
Staff at The Alamal Foundation threw Duke a farewell party, attended by everyone who assisted in his rehabilitation.
Paws of War launched a fundraising campaign to help cover the cost of Duke’s flight to the U.S, as well as his lifetime medical care.
“We are happy to help them with this mission and hope that many people in the community will want to support it as well. We can’t do it without their support.”
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Microstructure of human lung alveoli by Wyss Institute at Harvard University
The average person will take more than 600 million breaths over the course of their life. Every breath stretches the lungs’ tissues with each inhale and relaxes them with each exhale. The mere motions of breathing are known to influence vital functions of the lungs, including the maintenance of healthy tissue.
Now, new research from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University has revealed that this constant pattern of stretching and relaxing does even more—it generates immune responses against invading viruses, such as COVID-19.
Using a ‘Human Lung Chip’ that replicates the structures and functions of the lung air sac, or “alveolus,” the research team discovered that by applying mechanical forces that mimic breathing motions, they could suppress influenza virus replication, while activating innate protective immune responses.
“This research demonstrates the importance of breathing motions for human lung function, including immune responses to infection, and shows that our Human Alveolus Chip can be used to model these responses in the deep portions of the lung, where infections are often more severe and lead to hospitalization and death,” said co-first author Haiqing Bai, Ph.D., a Wyss Technology Development Fellow at the Institute. The results were published this week in Nature Communications.
Creating a flu-on-a-chip
As the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic made painfully clear, the lung is a vulnerable organ where inflammation, in response to infection, can generate a “cytokine storm” that can have deadly consequences. However, the lungs are also very complex, and it is difficult to replicate their unique features in the lab. This complexity has hindered science’s understanding of how the lungs function at the cell and tissue levels, in both healthy and diseased states.
The Wyss Institute’s Human Organ Chips were developed to address this problem, and have been shown to faithfully replicate the functions of many different human organs in the lab, including the lung. As part of projects funded by the NIH and DARPA since 2017, Wyss researchers have been working on replicating various diseases in Lung Airway and Alveolus Chips to study how lung tissues react to viruses that have pandemic potential, and test potential treatments.
During his Ph.D. training, Bai studied diseases that affect the tiny air sacs deep inside the lungs where oxygen is rapidly exchanged for carbon dioxide. That foundation prepared him to tackle the challenge of recreating a flu infection in an Alveolus Chip so that the team could study how these deep lung spaces mount immune responses against viral invaders.
Microstructure of human lung alveoli by Wyss Institute at Harvard University
Bai and his team first lined the two parallel microfluidic channels of an Organ Chip with different types of living human cells – alveolar lung cells in the upper channel and lung blood vessel cells in the lower channel – to recreate the interface between human air sacs and their blood-transporting capillaries. To mimic the conditions that alveoli experience in the human lung, the channel lined by alveolar cells was filled with air while the blood vessel channel was perfused with a flowing culture medium containing nutrients that are normally delivered via the blood. The channels were separated by a porous membrane that allowed molecules to flow between them.
Previous studies at the Wyss Institute have established that applying cyclical stretching to Alveolus Chips to imitate breathing motions produces biological responses that mimic those observed in vivo. This is accomplished by applying suction to hollow side chambers adjacent to the cell-lined fluidic channels to rhythmically stretch and relax the lung tissues by 5%, which is what human lungs typically experience with every breath.
When the team infected these “breathing” Alveolus Chips with H3N2 influenza by introducing the virus into the air channel, they observed the development of several known hallmarks of influenza infection, including the breakdown of junctions between cells, a 25% increase in cell death, and the initiation of cellular repair programs. Infection also led to much higher levels of multiple inflammatory cytokines in the blood vessel channel including type III interferon, a natural defense against viral infection that is also activated in in vivo flu infection studies.
In addition, the blood vessel cells of infected chips expressed higher levels of adhesion molecules, which allowed immune cells including B cells, T cells, and monocytes in the perfusion medium to attach to the blood vessel walls to help combat the infection. These results confirmed that the Alveolus Chip was mounting an immune response against H3N2 that recapitulated what happens in the lung of human patients infected with flu virus.
Focus on your breath
The team then carried out the same experiment without mechanical breathing motions. To their surprise, chips exposed to breathing motions had 50% less viral mRNA in their alveolar channels and a significant reduction in inflammatory cytokine levels compared to static chips. Genetic analysis revealed that the mechanical strain had activated molecular pathways related to immune defense and multiple antiviral genes, and these activations were reversed when the cyclical stretching was stopped.
“This was our most unexpected finding – that mechanical stresses alone can generate an innate immune response in the lung,” said co-first author Longlong Si, Ph.D., a former Wyss Technology Development Fellow who is now a Professor at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology in China.
Knowing that sometimes the lungs experience greater than 5% strain, such as in chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) or when patients are put on mechanical ventilators, the scientists increased the strain to 10% to see what would happen. The higher strain caused an increase in innate immune response genes and processes, including several inflammatory cytokines.
“Because the higher strain level resulted in greater cytokine production, it might explain why patients with lung conditions like COPD suffer from chronic inflammation, and why patients who are put on high-volume ventilators sometimes experience ventilator-induced lung injury,” Si explained.
The scientists then went a step further, comparing the RNA molecules present in cells within strained vs. static Alveolus Chips to see if they could pinpoint how the breathing motions were generating an immune response. They identified a calcium-binding protein, called S100A7, that was not detected in static chips but highly expressed in strained chips, suggesting that its production was induced by mechanical stretching. They also found that increased expression of S100A7 upregulated many other genes involved in the innate immune response, including multiple inflammatory cytokines.
Based on this promising result, the team then infected strained Alveolus Chips with the virus H3N2 and administered the drug azeliragon at its therapeutic dose two hours after infection.
This drug significantly blocked the production of inflammatory cytokines – an effect that was further enhanced when they added the antiviral drug molnupiravir (which was recently approved for patients with COVID-19) to the treatment regimen.
However, while azeliragon is a promising anti-inflammatory drug, the scientists warned that more studies are needed to determine a safe and effective treatment regimen in humans.
Meanwhile, robust breathing is something we can all do throughout any season to promote good heath.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Brian Welch of JHU, and Dan Coe of STScI
Credit: NASA, ESA, Brian Welch of JHU, and Dan Coe of STScI
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe’s birth in the big bang – the farthest individual star ever seen to date.
The find is a huge leap further back in time from the previous single-star record holder; detected by Hubble in 2018. That star existed when the universe was about 4 billion years old, or 30 percent of its current age.
The newly detected star is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, so we are seeing it as it was when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age. The smallest objects previously seen at such a great distance are clusters of stars, embedded inside early galaxies.
“We almost didn’t believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most-distant, highest redshift star,” said astronomer Brian Welch of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the paper describing the discovery in the journal Nature. Scientists use the word “redshift” because as the universe expands, light from distant objects is stretched or “shifted” to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels toward us.
“Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, with the light from millions of stars blending together,” said Welch. “The galaxy hosting this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that we named the Sunrise Arc.”
After studying the galaxy in detail, Welch determined that one feature is an extremely magnified star that he called Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English. The discovery holds promise for opening up an uncharted era of very early star formation.
“Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the stars around us today,” Welch explained. “Studying Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know.”
“It’s like we’ve been reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter, and now we will have a chance to see how it all got started,” Welch said.
The research team estimates that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of our Sun and millions of times as bright, rivaling the most massive stars known.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Brian Welch (JHU), and Dan Coe (STScI)
But even such a brilliant, very high-mass star would be impossible to see at such a great distance without the aid of natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08, sitting between us and Earendel. The mass of the galaxy cluster warps the fabric of space, creating a powerful natural magnifying glass that distorts and greatly amplifies the light from distant objects behind it.
Thanks to the rare alignment with the magnifying galaxy cluster, the star Earendel appears directly on, or extremely close to, a ripple in the fabric of space. This ripple, which is defined in optics as a “caustic,” provides maximum magnification and brightening. The effect is analogous to the rippled surface of a swimming pool creating patterns of bright light on the bottom of the pool on a sunny day. The ripples on the surface act as lenses and focus sunlight to maximum brightness on the pool floor.
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This caustic causes the star Earendel to pop out from the general glow of its home galaxy. Its brightness is magnified a thousandfold or more. At this point, astronomers are not able to determine if Earendel is a binary star, though most massive stars have at least one smaller companion star.
Confirmation with Webb
Astronomers expect that Earendel will remain highly magnified for years to come. It will be observed by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s high sensitivity to infrared light is needed to learn more about Earendel, because its light is stretched (redshifted) to longer infrared wavelengths due to the universe’s expansion.
“With Webb we expect to confirm Earendel is indeed a star, as well as measure its brightness and temperature,” said co-author Dan Coe at Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute, who made the discovery using the data collected.
These details will narrow down its type and stage in the stellar lifecycle, with scientists expecting it to be a “rare, massive metal-poor star,” Coe said.
Earendel’s composition will be of great interest for astronomers, because it formed before the universe was filled with the heavy elements produced by successive generations of massive stars. If follow-up studies find that Earendel is only made up of primordial hydrogen and helium, it would be the first evidence for the legendary Population III stars, which are hypothesized to be the very first stars born after the big bang. While the probability is small, Welch admits it is enticing all the same.
“With Webb, we may see stars even farther than Earendel, which would be incredibly exciting,” Welch said. “We’ll go as far back as we can. I would love to see Webb break Earendel’s distance record.”
Celebrated on April 11th, National Pet Day celebrates the joy that pets bring to our lives—and, for many, it’s a psychic connection.
In fact, nearly three-quarters of pup parents claim they can read their furry companions’ minds.
The new poll results coincide with the annual calendar day founded in 2006 by animal welfare advocate Colleen Paige, who also wanted to encourage adoptions.
Of the 2,000 dog owners surveyed, 74% are confident they understand what their pet wants at any given time. And, 71% feel their dog understands them, too.
Half of respondents recalled that it took about six months to get to that point, after bonding activities like playing fetch with a ball or taking them on walks.
Communication skills began while teaching some of the easiest commands for dogs: “sit,” “lie down” or “stay.” Other commands involved disciplining their furry friend, and took longer: “down,” “dinnertime” and “no.”
Most dog owners know their pets so well that even 70% consider their canines their mini-me because they have similar personalities.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Ollie, the survey also asked respondents to describe their dog’s funny or quirky characteristics and traits.
SWNS
When it comes to personalities, owners would likely describe them as “The Guardian” (protective, imposing, attached), “The Family Dog” (easy to get along with, great with children, gentle) or “The Class Clown” (goofy, entertaining, clumsy).
84% of parents with Guardian dogs or Dedicated Workers (reliable, obedient, high-energy) believe they have some telepathic skills to know what their dog wants.
Similarly, 72% of all pup parents think they know what their dog will do before they do it. And, 62% of those who have “The Class Clown” insist they know what goofy antics their dog will do next, with two-thirds of those owners saying they are also as comical as their “Class Clown” canines.
66% of those who have “The WatchDog” (vigilant, alert, barks a lot) or “The Independent Thinker” (intelligent, inquisitive, likes to do things on their own) attest to knowing what thoughts run through their furry friend’s head.
Half of those who have “Social Butterfly” pups (high-energy, loves attention, outgoing) see their own personality as matching their pup’s friendliness.
Being in-sync with their dogs comes in handy, too. Knowing what comes next with their furry friends proves helpful for the 78% of pet parents who said their dog knows exactly when they’re doing something they’re not supposed to.
