A Nigerian mom found out the hard way that jaundice is still a dangerous disease in Africa—but now she’s putting an end to the infant disease with her new tech startup, making solar-powered cribs.
After her traumatic experience with jaundice as a new mother, Virtue Oboro pivoted 180° in her professional life, in an effort to help prevent the terrifying situation from befalling other moms.
Oboro’s son, Tombra, was just 48 hours old when he had to be rushed to the NICU, suffering from a build-up of bilirubin, which causes yellow skin and can lead to permanent damage or even death.
The treatment is fairly simple and widespread in developing countries: blue-light phototherapy.
Virtue’s hospital had no phototherapy devices, so Tombra had to receive a risky emergency blood transfusion. Her son would make a full recovery, but Virtue was changed by the experience.
“I felt like some of the things I experienced could have been avoided,” the visual designer told CNN. “I thought, is there something I could do to make the pain less for the babies and the mothers?”
What could a visual designer do? She designed the Crib A’Glow and named her new company Tiny Hearts.
The portable, deployable phototherapy unit is powered by the African sun, and costs one-sixth the price of a normal phototherapy crib—and manufactured in her homeland of Nigeria.
Virtue’s husband had some experience working with solar panels before, so he lent a hand to the visual designer, who was busy navigating the unknown waters of a new profession. She worked with a pediatrician through the design process to ensure all the details would benefit the tiny babies.
Two years ago, Crib A’Glow picked up a $50,000 grant from Johnson & Johnson through the Africa Innovation Challenge, and the Crib A’Glow can now be found in 500 hospitals across Nigeria and neighboring Ghana. Already it has been used on 300,000 babies.
Virtue, who has also become a 2022 awardee for The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, says a further 200,000 babies were saved from jaundice by deploying the cribs to rural areas—no hospitals or electricity needed.
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Scientists have uncovered a new approach for treating severe asthma. They have high hopes their discovery may pave the way for effective new treatments, especially in children.
The research comes from the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) in Ireland, which has one of the highest rates of asthma in the world.
Luke O’Neill, lead investigator and Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity, said, “We have found that a molecule made by our own bodies, called Itaconate, can suppress key events that promote asthma by targeting an important immune protein called JAK1. By shutting off JAK1 we have shown remarkable efficacy in lab-based models of asthma.”
The protein JAK1 is important in driving the immune response but in some cases it causes an over-the top reaction, leading to excessive stimulation of macrophages, which cruise around the body looking for intruders. This excessive stimulation causes inflammation and is problematic in a suite of conditions, such as asthma.
Dr Marah Runtsch, lead author of the research article just published in Cell Metabolism, said, “We have high hopes that new medicines based on Itaconate could well have potential as a wholly new therapeutic approach for treating severe asthma, where there is a pressing need for new treatments.
“We tested a molecule called 4-OI, which is based on itaconate, and it was able to suppress severe asthma in a model of the disease which doesn’t respond to anti-inflammatory steroids.”
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School field trips have been part of the educational experience for children for decades. While many school administrators believe there’s intrinsic value in letting students develop socially with out-of-classroom experiences, quantifying the impact and the value of field trips has been difficult. And justifying out-of-class time can be burdensome for teachers tasked with providing a good education amid the pandemic.
As such, many art venues, science museums, and zoos have reported declines in field trip attendance. Teachers and students have also reported decreasing amounts of school-sponsored trips, particularly for minority students in academically low-performing schools.
But thanks to new research from BYU, Johns Hopkins University and the Heritage Foundation, the value of field trips is finally being understood and measured.
The study found that students who participate in multiple field trips during the school year have higher test scores, perform better in class and have increased cultural conscientiousness over time.
“Contrary to practice where schools, facing accountability pressures, trade extracurriculars for increased seat time, we found that there’s no harm to academics by taking time out of the classroom,” said Heidi Holmes Erickson, assistant professor of educational leadership at BYU and lead author of the study. “It’s possible to expose students to a broader world and have culturally enriching curriculum without sacrificing academic outcomes, and it may actually improve academic outcomes.”
The study, published in The Journal of Human Resources., used an experimental design and randomly assigned fourth- and fifth-grade students from fifteen elementary schools in the Atlanta, Georgia, area to participate in three culturally enriching field trips during a school year. The field trips included a trip to an art museum, a live theater performance and a symphony concert.
Students who attended three different field trips in fourth or fifth grade scored higher on end-of-grade exams, received higher course grades, were absent less often and had fewer behavioral infractions. These benefits were strongest when students entered middle school.
Adam Winger
“We anticipated that field trips wouldn’t harm test scores. However, we started seeing academic improvements and realized that students who participated in these field trips were doing better in class,” said Erickson. “One potential reason for this is that field trips expand students’ world concept and expose them to new ideas. Similarly, students might be more engaged in school thanks to field trips. Students find school more exciting and want to try harder in class.”
In addition to the academic improvements, students who participated in multiple field trips were 12% of a standard deviation more likely to express a desire to consume arts in the future and nearly 14% of a standard deviation more likely to agree with the statement, “I believe people can have different opinions about the same thing.”
Researchers say this is more evidence that field trips are beneficial not only for academic success but for individual character development as well.
“Parents are very interested in the academic quality of their child’s school, but they’re also interested in the social skills and social engagement habits they develop. Cultural field trips are easy ways to help facilitate both.”
Erickson says she’s hopeful this study will be a resource for policymakers and school principals who are interested in improving children’s growth during the children’s school experience. When considered in the context of the pandemic, she says this research should be a caution to administrators who are considering eliminating out-of-class opportunities.
“Field trips have been non-existent for the last two years, and many cultural institutions like museums and science centers were closed. Schools want to make up learning loss from the pandemic and might feel pressure to sacrifice a well-rounded education for increased seat-time,” says Erickson. “Field trips might be the first thing to go. Addressing student learning loss is crucial, but schools should be thoughtful in their approach.”
Planet forming gas, dust, and ice 444 light years away contains a complex organic molecule that could lead to life, according to new research.
The chemical, known as dimethyl ether, is a key building block of life—turning into prebiotics such as amino acids and sugars..
Co-author Dr. Nienke van der Marel, of Leiden Observatory, said, “Dimethyl ether is the largest molecule ever detected in a planet-forming disc.
“It has been seen before in the cold clouds in which stars are forming, but not yet in an environment where planets are forming.
“This means that such molecules may end up on the planets directly as they form.
“The molecule is particularly important as it is a ‘complex organic molecule’, which is the starting point of large molecules that are the building blocks of life through further chemical reactions.”
It was found around the young star IRS 48, located in the southern sky in the constellation Ophiuchus.
It has been the focus of numerous studies because the disc contains an asymmetric, cashew-nut-shaped “dust trap.”
Large numbers of millimeter-sized icy particles clump together and grow into comets, asteroids, and even planets.
They form within the extremely cold environments before the stars themselves are born.
Atoms and simple molecules like carbon monoxide undergo chemical reactions to produce more complex molecules.
The beginnings of life
Lead author Nashanty Brunken, a master’s student, said, “From these results, we can learn more about the origin of life on our planet and therefore get a better idea of the potential for life in other planetary systems.
“It is very exciting to see how these findings fit into the bigger picture.”
Dimethyl has been commonly detected in star-forming clouds, but never before in a proto-planetary disc.
Fledgling worlds can arise out of the rotating balls that develop around a newborn sun.
With nine atoms, the chemical is the largest complex organic molecule (COM) identified in such a disc to date.
It sheds fresh light in how they are incorporated into planets, including our own.
The Dutch team used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) in Chile, which is the largest radio telescope in the world.
Co-author Dr Alice Booth said, “It is really exciting to finally detect these larger molecules in discs. For a while, we thought it might not be possible to observe them.”
They only become detectable when heating from IRS 48 causes the ice to turn from a solid to a gas, freeing them.
Explained Dr Booth, “What makes this even more exciting is that we now know these larger complex molecules are available to feed forming planets in the disc.
“This was not known before as in most systems these molecules are hidden in the ice.”
Added Dr van der Marel, “We are incredibly pleased that we can now start to follow the entire journey of these complex molecules from the clouds that form stars, to planet-forming discs, and to comets.
“Hopefully with more observations we can get a step closer to understanding the origin of prebiotic molecules in our own solar system.”
It improves the chances life has evolved elsewhere, and could be widespread.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day, can analyze atmospheres of planets floating around the galaxy in unprecedented detail.
It has been hailed as a game-changer in the search for extra-terrestrials. The most promising, known as K2-18b, is 110 light years away.
Quote of the Day: The sacred is in the ordinary… It is to be found in one’s daily life… in one’s back yard. – Abraham Maslow
Photo by: Marina-Lakotka
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“Don’t worry, be happy,” is more than just a song lyric. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging.
A new study has found that being more optimistic appears to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations, like arguments, or effecting the way they interpret such stress.
“This study tests one possible explanation, assessing if more optimistic people handle daily stress more constructively and therefore enjoy better emotional well-being,” said corresponding author Lewina Lee, PhD, clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
The researchers surveyed for over a decade the same 233 older men who had completed an optimism questionnaire. 14 years later, they reported daily stressors, along with positive and negative moods, on eight consecutive evenings three times over an 8-year span.
The researchers found more optimistic men reported not only lower negative mood, but also more positive mood (beyond simply not feeling negative).
They also reported having fewer stressors—which was unrelated to their higher positive mood but it explained their lower levels of negative mood, according to the findings published in the Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences.
Studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity.
An 11-year study completed in 2016 measured the optimism and pessimism of 2,267 men and women over 52 as they aged and found that those who died from coronary heart disease were more pessimistic than average.
Another researcher that examined links between optimism and heart health in 5,100 adults reported in 2015, “Individuals with the highest levels of optimism have twice the odds of being in ideal cardiovascular health compared to their more pessimistic counterparts.”
A Harvard study looking at nearly 7,000 older adults counted the most optimistic people as having a 73% reduced risk of heart failure over the follow-up period.
What causes these associations between optimism and health? Lee said we know very little about the underlying mechanisms.
“Stress, on the other hand, is known to have a negative impact on our health. So, by looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to knowledge about how optimism may promote good health,” says Lee.
…Especially as people age.
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Though there are hundreds of species of fish found off the coast of the Maldives, a mesmerizing new addition is the first-ever to be formally described by a Maldivian researcher—and it’s named after the country’s national flower.
The new-to-science Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) is one of the first species to have its name derived from the local Dhivehi language, ‘finifenmaa’ (meaning ‘rose’), a nod to both its pink hues and the island nation flower.
Scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, the University of Sydney, the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI), and the Field Museum collaborated on the discovery as part of the Academy’s Hope for Reefs initiative aimed at better understanding and protecting coral reefs around the world.
“It has always been foreign scientists who have described species found in the Maldives without much involvement from local scientists, even those that are endemic to the Maldives,” says study co-author and Maldives Marine Research Institute biologist Ahmed Najeeb in the paper published in ZooKeys. “This time it is different and getting to be part of something for the first time has been really exciting, especially having the opportunity to work alongside top ichthyologists on such an elegant and beautiful species.”
First collected by researchers in the 1990s, C. finifenmaa was originally thought to be the adult version of a different species, Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis, which had been described based on a single juvenile specimen from the Chagos Archipelago, an island chain 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) south of the Maldives.
In this new study, however, the researchers took a more detailed look at both adults and juveniles of the multicolored marvel, measuring and counting various features, such as the color of adult males, the height of each spine supporting the fin on the fish’s back and the number of scales found on various body regions. These data, along with genetic analyses, were then compared to the C. rubrisquamis specimen to confirm that C. finifenmaa is indeed a unique species.
“What we previously thought was one widespread species of fish, is actually two different species, each with a potentially much more restricted distribution,” says lead author and University of Sydney doctoral student Yi-Kai Tea. “This exemplifies why describing new species, and taxonomy in general, is important for conservation and biodiversity management.”
“The species is quite abundant… It speaks to how much biodiversity there is still left to be described from coral reef ecosystems,” says senior author and Academy Curator of Ichthyology Luiz Rocha, PhD, who co-directs the Hope for Reefs initiative.
Last month, Hope for Reefs researchers continued their collaboration with the MMRI by conducting the first surveys of the Maldives’ ‘twilight zone’ reefs—the virtually unexplored coral ecosystems found between 50-150 meters (160-500-feet) beneath the ocean’s surface—where they found new records of C. finifenmaa along with at least eight potentially new-to-science species yet to be described.
For the researchers, this kind of international partnership is pivotal to best understand and ensure a regenerative future for the Maldives’ coral reefs.
“Nobody knows these waters better than the Maldivian people,” Rocha told the California Academy of Sciences. “Our research is stronger when it’s done in collaboration with local researchers and divers. I’m excited to continue our relationship with MMRI and the Ministry of Fisheries to learn about and protect the island nation’s reefs together.”
“Collaborating with organizations such as the Academy helps us build our local capacity to expand knowledge in this field. This is just the start and we are already working together on future projects,” Najeeb says. “Our partnership will help us better understand the unexplored depths of our marine ecosystems and their inhabitants. The more we understand and the more compelling scientific evidence we can gather, the better we can protect them.”
A treat enough as it was—a dinner of fresh seafood over the ocean side, the evening’s real treat came after a New Jersey man bit down into his usual meal.
Michael and Maria Spressler arrived in Cape May 34 years ago to the day that Michael found a pearl worth thousands of dollars in his usual dozen fresh clams on the half shell.
“I thought one of my molars cracked,” Michael Spressler told NJ.com.
At 8.8 millimeters, it’s a whopper, and the first one in as long as anyone at The Lobster House can remember being found. In its 100th year on the peer above the Cape, the restaurant staff were giddy at the news that their loyal customers had perhaps found a small fortune in one of their clams.
One employee who was in her tenth year working there said she’d never heard of any such thing being found in one of their clams or oysters, but admits that now, despite the fact she never cared for the taste of raw bivalves, she’ll probably have to give it a shot.
The creamy white pearl was a special find, on a special day, at a special place, and wife Maria, despite telling local news that pearls of equal size, shape, and color are worth thousands of dollars, the couple decided to keep it as a celebration.
“I would like to have it set into a nice piece of jewelry, maybe a mermaid or something nautical,” Maria Spressler said. “It’s a beautiful remembrance of that day and what we have is so special.”
A young man on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue is brewing coffee the old way. In fact, the Yafa Café pour-over, which goes for $7.00, may just be the oldest way.
One of the generally-recognized birthplaces of coffee is the poorest country in the Middle East—Yemen—and Hakim Sulaimani is attempting to bring about a Yemeni renaissance at his Sunset Park coffee shop.
According to British historians, the story goes that long ago, a shepherd noticed his goats would display simply boundless energy and restlessness after eating a particular red berry. The shepherd found also that consuming it allowed him to pray all night without ever feeling tired.
Fast forward to modern times, and very little good news of any sort comes out of Yemen. The Saudi war in the country has been the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for half a decade. Beyond that, Yemen is such an unknown part of the world for so many, that even Hakim, the son of a Yemeni immigrant from the tribal highlands of Yafa in the south, didn’t know his country’s long history with coffee.
It wasn’t until watching PBS at age 7 that he learned that Yemeni society was the world’s first coffee culture—and it awoke a feeling of pride.
“I remember being a kid and feeling super-hyped because I’d never heard of Yemen in any other context before, in the mainstream,” he told Food and Wine.
He dreamed that a coffee career connecting Yemeni coffee growers with the world market would be a viable business model.
“I want to do for Yemeni coffee what Starbucks has done for the Indonesian coffee economy,” said Sulaimani, who, along with some of his family members, opened a café showcasing the cultural roots to their Yemeni homeland.
In 1995, his father left the steamy highlands of South Yemen—then in the midst of a civil war of unification, behind. Bringing an “inherent understanding of trade and hustle,” Sulaimani opened up “Yafa Deli,” a bustling bodega that has served the residents of Sunset Park for 25 years.
In 2019, Hakim opened up his café to honor his roots, pairing Yemeni coffee beans with the most typical of recipes for breakfast treats and light bites.
‘Born in Yemen, roasted in Brooklyn’ reads Sulaimani’s website, where several single-origin beans are out of stock. “For over 300 years, legacy farmers in this region have cultivated a keen understanding for the crop they hold so dear, and even through Yemen’s trying times, Yafa is proud to be able to share this coffee with you.”
Like a good entrepreneur, he is keenly aware of market forces that are driving Yemeni coffee to the highest prices seen in the industry. The birthplace of the bean can sometimes demand $16 per cup, no doubt inflated by the difficulties negotiating the American/Saudi blockade of the country.
Sulaimani works with an 11th-generation coffee grower to source the beans for his café, as well as other companies that try to ethically source beans from the country and support the farmers there.
Food and Wine reports that the business is booming, even though Hakim’s father, who runs the Yafa Deli just down the road where coffee goes for $1.00, isn’t convinced he can succeed.
But his son hopes to turn his brand from a line of cafés into a complete Yemeni wholesaler.
Growing black cohosh, by Priya Jaishanker – CC license, Forest Farming
Quote of the Day: “Maybe I should have said, ‘Follow your blisters,’” because anything worth doing takes work. – Joseph Campbell (popularized the phrase ‘Follow your bliss’)
Photo by: Priya Jaishanker – CC license, Forest Farming
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Growing black cohosh, by Priya Jaishanker – CC license, Forest Farming
This pop-up event in Saudi Arabia used molten lava to cook food for diners.
The unbelievable scene was produced by experimental creatives at London-based Bompas & Parr studio, utilizing research from a leading expert in molten rock, Professor Robert Wysocki of Syracuse University in the U.S.
Guests were seated in The Shlal Canyon at AlUla and served dishes of local produce, seared using the intense 2,462°F (1,350°C) heat of lava channeled from a volcano.
For 700 SAR ($186) per person, the menu featured whole salt-baked celeriac, charred fillets of beef finished across molten lava, and pit-roasted saddles of goat grilled across fire pits.
Bompas & Parr studio
As an ode to the setting, dessert included a chocolate lava cake “oozing in the middle,” while drinks included smoked, flamed, and charred mocktails.
Coffee and tea, heated table-side by the lava, were also available.
Bompas & Parr studio – via SWNS
“Drawing on the raw power of nature, the Forces of Nature set menus, prepared by our expert pit-masters, were inspired by the origins of cooking on open flames,” said a rep.
Lava tech (right) and chef (left) by Bompas & Parr studio – via SWNS
Bompas & Parr is known worldwide for its expertise in multi-sensory experience design and extreme science cooking.
Bompas & Parr studio
Their previous projects have included a glow-in-the-dark, alcoholic jello made for Mark Ronson’s 33rd birthday party and a Willy Wonka-style chewing gum that changed flavor as it was chewed.
Their next groundbreaking dining experience will be a “cutting-edge, 360-immersive digital dining room” named Incense Road.
The project is set to give viewers a multi-sensory insight into the ancient trade routes that connected much of ancient Africa, the Middle East, India, the Mediterranean, and beyond around 2,000 years ago.
The team has collaborated with curators and historical researchers to transport visitors to the time when the regions were bustling with merchants trading frankincense, spices, precious, stones, fine textiles, and other luxuries—with a menu involving Memphis-style cardamom-spiced chicken and cinnamon-infused chocolate Trajan coins. Sign us up.
Airbnb.org has announced it will offer free, short-term housing to up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine.
Airbnb’s co-founders have already sent letters to leaders across Europe, starting with those in Poland, Germany, Hungary, and Romania—offering support in welcoming refugees within their borders, and promising to work closely with governments to best support the specific needs in each country, including by providing longer-term stays.
This announcement is part of a larger movement by the company to support refugees and other displaced people around the world. Last month, the organization announced that it has provided housing to 21,300 Afghan refugees, and it has set a new goal of providing free, temporary housing to another 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and other regions.
Over the past five years, Airbnb and Airbnb.org have connected more than 54,000 refugees and asylees—including from Syria, Venezuela, and Afghanistan—to temporary housing through Airbnb.org partners.
Last year, Airbnb.org also announced the creation of its Refugee Fund and has galvanized more than 4,000 donors to further support its work with refugees and asylum seekers worldwide.
“We know that Hosts and guests on Airbnb around the world are eager to stand up and assist this massive effort to help those fleeing Ukraine,” the company has stated.
Anyone who is interested in supporting this initiative, including by offering free or discounted stays, can go to airbnb.org/help-ukraine to get involved.
These stays will be funded by the company, donors to the Airbnb.org Refugee Fund, and the generosity of Hosts through Airbnb.org.
A Berlin food truck is opening people’s minds and mouths by feeding them a menu of invasive species with the slogan, “If you can’t beat them, eat them!”
Serving up Louisiana crawfish, baked nutria, Chinese crab, carp sandwiches, Nile geese, raccoon steak, and more, Holycrab! is helping control invasive populations and teaching folks that not every dinner has to consist of farm animals.
While humans have largely narrowed consumed animal proteins to less than ten species, invasive populations around the world cause trillions of dollars in damages, and perhaps a third of all extinctions.
Holycrab! started out when business consultants Lukas and Juliane Bosch learned that Louisiana crawfish were invasive in the city of Berlin. With crawfish being a local delicacy in the U.S. for its lobster-like taste, they soon joined forces with Berlin gourmet chef Andreas Michelus to devise a crawfish-based menu for a food truck, and started buying from a licensed fisherman.
Now the menu has grown to include raccoon, which are hunted to control the population. Nile goose with green sauce was added when farmers complained that the invasive geese were eating their watercress and sorrel crops (the chief ingredients of green sauce).
“We deliberately started with the food truck to try out new recipes and get the opportunity to talk to people.” Lukas Bosch told Michaela Haas, at Reasons to be Cheerful. “For instance, the Chinese mitten crab came from China to Germany about a 100 years ago on cargo ships. It’s grotesque how big they grow and thrive here. The Chinese pay gourmet prices for them because water pollution has made them a rarity in China.”
The couple was inspired by the “invasivore” movement led by University of Vermont conservationist Joe Roman, who maintains the Eat the Invaders website. There, one can find recipes for nutria, garlic mustard, Japanese knot weed, Asian shore crab, lion fish, and more.
Even in one of the most competitive food markets in Europe, Holycrab! picked up the 2020 Eat! Berlin Award. They cater events, too—teaching more people that they can eat to protect their ecosystems.
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The Good News: A New GNN Podcast has launched today, called Livin’ Good Currency!
The Lesson: All of us are moving along a similar timeline towards the same end. Dying is an inevitable part of life, which gives every day an urgency. How we spend each hour—and whether its expenditure actually supported our ultimate goals—is constantly being altered based on our short-term wants and fears. In the same way that ‘money well-spent’ is its own reward, time well-spent (by doing good things in the world), is the ultimate reward—because time is what we all want more of.
Notable Excerpt: “If we on this show were able to give you $10 or $10 million, which one would you choose? Now what if I said that that $10 was attached to 60 years to live, and the $10 million was attached to 60 days to live? If you change the way you look at things, the way things look will change. The vast majority of us will pick the $10. So that means time is actually want we want more of.”
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.
Livin’ Good Currency cohosts Tony Samadani and Tobias Tubbs
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.
The world’s largest floating PV plant is under construction at the Hapcheon Dam in South Korea. Republic of Korea Blue House YouTube
South Korea’s total land surface is not large. Instead of clearing what little real estate there is for renewable energy projects, 92,000 solar panels in the shape of plum blossoms now float on the gently bobbing surface of a southern reservoir.
The solar project on the 17-mile-long reservoir in Hapcheon is able to generate 41.5 megawatts, enough to provide power for 60,000 people—more than the total population of the county.
Floating solar photovoltaic (PV) is becoming a go-to method of renewable energy production in Asia, and a recent speech by President Moon Jae-in outlined floating solar as an important part of a total-renewables plan for the generation of 9.4 gigawatts of electricity in South Korea, or about the same as nine nuclear reactors.
“The three peaks of Hwangmaesan Mountain reflected on Hapcheon Lake form the shape of a plum blossom. Sprawled on the surface of this lake are photovoltaic panels that also resemble plum blossoms from an ink-and-wash painting,” said President Moon.
Hanwa, the company in charge of constructing the blossom panel arrays, suggests that demand for floating PV is expected to rise in the coming years—not only in Asia. Thailand has already built the world’s largest floating PV solar panel plant, which is about the size of 70 soccer pitches.
Giant floating flowers made from solar panels will power 20,000 homes https://t.co/Y02SWHPwPw
Pairing PV solar panels to water sources like canals, ground-level humidity, or reservoirs increases their efficiency by as much as 10%, as the surrounding water helps them remain naturally cooler. Bloomberg reports that they also help decrease hostile algae blooms.
$1.4 million, or around 4% of the total financing for the project, was fronted by Hapcheon locals. They were the first to be offered the chance at joining a 20-year, 10% annual return investment scheme, which should help generate useful income for elderly residents in an area where the average age is nearly 60.
(Featured photo by Republic of Korea Blue House / YouTube)
Quote of the Day: “Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm.” – Tatah Mentan
Photo: Gaelle Marcel
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?
The traditional 9-to-5 work week has been replaced in many cases by hybrid hours that fit your needs—but at what cost, if you do too much work?
But working a nontraditional schedule, and checking in during all hours of the day, night, and weekends, is not necessarily beneficial for the modern workforce, according to new Cornell research.
“Even if you’re still working 40 hours a week, you’re working during time that you’ve mentally encoded as time off, or as time that should be for a vacation—and that can make you feel suddenly that your work is less enjoyable,” said Kaitlin Woolley, Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business.
“We had this feeling that sometimes the ability to work when we want to could also impact how we feel about our work,” Woolley said.
So, she and Laura Giurge, assistant professor of behavioral science at London School of Economic, started examining the effects that off-hours working (or studying) has on job satisfaction and motivation.
In one study, the researchers approached Cornell students studying in a campus library on President’s Day. They reminded half the participants that they were studying during a federal holiday; the other half did not receive this reminder. They then measured students’ intrinsic motivation for their schoolwork—asking them how enjoyable, engaging, interesting and fun they found their materials to be. Students who were reminded the day was a federal holiday reported that their work was 15% less enjoyable.
In another study, the researchers measured whether a simple calendar reminder on a federal holiday (MLK Day) would alter full-time workers’ perception of work enjoyment. They found that work was 9% less enjoyable on the holiday Monday, compared with a typical Monday, despite engaging in similar work-related activities on both days.
In the third study, participants were surveyed on a Tuesday, with no reminder that it’s a typical work day, then again on a Saturday. Some participants were reminded that it was Saturday, “a weekend day,” while others were given no reminder. Both groups reported lower levels of work satisfaction on the weekend day, although the effect was stronger in the reminder group.
Woolley and Giurge think part of this discrepancy has to do with the idea of “collective time off”—having free time when friends and family are also off.
“The real benefit of time off on the weekend or on holidays is that it’s not just that I have time off, but my family and friends have time off, too,” Woolley told the Cornell Chronicle. “And so, one thing that we suggest for managers is, can you create a ‘weekend shift’ so people feel like they’re in it together with other people?”
The idea of “work-life balance” – setting boundaries between work and “play” times – has been a priority for many employers and employees recently. Woolley said it can be hard for workers who feel pressured to achieve to commit to striking that balance.
“It’s hard sometimes for workers who aren’t in a position of power, whereas I think managers have the responsibility to create that environment for their employees,” she said. “I do think people are becoming more aware of the importance of that, and shaping their jobs and their life choices to allow for it.”
Their results were published as, Working During Non-Standard Work Time Undermines Intrinsic Motivation, on Feb. 26 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
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(Original article by Jessica Colarossi, edited for length)
Hong Kong by Florian Wehde
Boston researchers have found that trees and soils on the outermost edges of forests and city parks may play a greater role in fighting climate change than previously imagined.
They may not have lungs like we do, but the soil and trees are breathing in and out all of the time. Trees take in carbon dioxide (CO2) and also store carbon in their trunks.
Forests actually store more carbon dioxide than they release, which is an incredible service to our planet: about 30 percent of fossil fuel emissions are eliminated when forests absorb them, an effect called the terrestrial carbon sink.
“We’re not feeling the full effects of climate change because of the terrestrial climate sink,” says Boston University biogeochemist and ecologist Lucy Hutyra.
But, what happens to the planet’s “lungs” when large forests are cut down into smaller patches, a process researchers call forest fragmentation.
“We think about forests as big landscapes, but really they are chopped up into all these little segments because of the human world,” says Hutyra, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment. These alterations to forests create more areas called forest edges—literally, the trees at the outermost edge of a forest.
It has long been assumed that these forest edges release and store carbon at similar rates as forest interiors, but Hutyra and researchers in her lab at BU have discovered this isn’t true. In two recent research papers, Hutyra’s team found edge trees grow faster than their country cousins deep in the forest, and that soil in urban areas can hoard more carbon dioxide than previously thought. Their results challenge current ideas about conservation and the value of urban forests as more than places for recreation.
Breathing in CO2
In one of the most detailed looks at temperate forest edges to date, Hutyra and her research team, including collaborators at the Harvard Forest, examined the growth rates of edge trees compared to the rest of the forest.
Using data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program—which monitors tree size, growth, and land use across the country—Hutyra’s team looked at more than 48,000 forest plots in the Northeast United States. They found trees on the edges grow nearly twice as fast as interior trees—those roughly 100 feet away from the edge.
“This is likely because the trees on the edge don’t have competition with interior forest, so they get more light,” says Luca Morreale, a PhD candidate in Hutyra’s lab and lead author of the paper, published in Nature Communications. And the more a tree grows, the more carbon it is taking in.
This is good news, considering over 25 percent of the landscape in the Northeast United States is covered by an edge. But this doesn’t mean that more forest fragmentation is a solution for sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere; carbon storage along the edges of fragmented areas does not come close to offsetting the negative side effects of losing forests—like releasing carbon long stored underground back into the atmosphere.
According to Morreale and Hutyra, their study instead points to the need to better understand and conserve existing forest edges, which are typically seen as more disposable. “We are underestimating how much carbon is being taken up by temperate forest edges,” Hutyra says in Boston University’s news page, The Brink.
In a second related study, Hutyra teamed up with BU biologist Pamela Templer to study soils at the forest edge. Garvey found that not only does forest edge soil release more carbon than interior forest soil, but that the soil is acting dramatically differently in rural and urban forests.
“Soils contain wild amounts of bacteria, fungi, roots, and microorganisms, and just the way we breathe out CO2 when working and being active, they respire CO2, as well,” says Sarah Garvey, a PhD candidate in Hutyra’s lab and lead author of a paper on forest edge soils published in Global Change Biology. “With soil, there is more there than meets the eye.”
Visiting eight field sites every two weeks for a year and a half to measure the levels of carbon being released from the soils. They saw that in rural areas (with fewer people and buildings), warmer temperatures at the edge of the forest caused leaves and organic matter to decompose faster, forcing the soil microorganisms to work harder and release more carbon dioxide than their cooler, more shaded peers in the forest interior.
In urban forests, where the ground was significantly hotter and drier, those soils stopped releasing as much carbon. But the research, funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also shows that urban soils, like those in Franklin Park, the largest public park in Boston, could have a greater capacity to store carbon than previously expected, says Garvey.
“Forests store almost half of their carbon below ground,” Garvey says. “Which is why understanding the relationships between the soil and the plant life is so vital to understanding the bigger picture of how forests store carbon for the long term.”
Cities and countries across the world are making commitments to plant more trees in an effort to curb the impacts of climate change. Factoring in the elevated amounts of carbon stored by forest edges should be taken into account.
Further research should help clarify whether preserving a place like Franklin Park, where there’s tons of foot traffic, is just as valuable to save as a remote forest where no one visits.
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David Attenborough and fish and chips named top British exports – SWNS license
David Attenborough and fish and chips named top British exports – SWNS license
Let’s face it: what would the world be like, without Monty Python and The Beatles?
Britain has produced a wealth of successful exports over the years, from foods and businesses to TV shows and celebrities.
A new survey of 2,000 adults chose the top 50 things to come out of Britain—and the top three are fish and chips, roast dinners, and David Attenborough.
The full English breakfast and Cadbury chocolate also finished high, alongside cheddar cheese and William Shakespeare.
The Worldwide Web, which was invented by a Brit named Tim Berners-Lee, along with The Beatles and Queen round out the top ten.
James Bond slipped in at number 11 and Sherlock Holmes landed at 19.
Several traditional British foods made their way into the top 50, with the sandwich (known as the invention of the Earl of Sandwich), afternoon tea and crumpets, and the KitKat all ranking highly.
Classic British TV shows Top Gear, Downton Abbey, and Doctor Who were popular, as were public figures such as the Royal Family, Sir Stephen Hawking, and David Bowie.
A host of businesses were named as iconic British exports, including Marks & Spencer department stores, Twinings Tea, and Dyson (vacuums), alongside the car brands MINI, Rolls-Royce, and Aston Martin.
Besides being a source of pride, the survey commissioned by Santander UK and carried out via OnePoll found that 85% of Brits believe exports are crucial to the future of the UK economy—and 58 percent of business owners believe the ‘future is bright’ for British businesses operating internationally.
1. Fish and chips
2. Roast dinners
3. Sir David Attenborough
4. Full English breakfast
5. The Worldwide Web
6. Cadbury chocolate
7. Cheddar Cheese
8. William Shakespeare
9. The Beatles
10. Queen
11. James Bond
12. BBC
13. The sandwich (said to be invented by the 18th-Century Earl of Sandwich)
14. Sir Stephen Hawking
15. Afternoon tea
16. The Royal Family
17. Marks & Spencer (M&S)
18. Rolls-Royce cars
19. Sherlock Holmes
20. David Bowie
21. Aston Martin car
22. Digestive biscuits
23. Yorkshire Tea
24. Crumpets
25. Monty Python
26. Kit Kat
27. MINI cars
28. The pasty
29. Dyson vacuum cleaners
30. Sir Elton John
31. Rolling Stones
32. Doctor Who
33. Land Rover cars
34. Marmite (a yeast-based condiment)
35. Bentley cars
36. Ed Sheeran
37. Tetley tea
38. Sir Charlie Chaplin
39. Dr Martens shoes
40. Adele
41. Dame Helen Mirren
42. Downton Abbey
43. George Michael
44. Stan Laurel
45. Triumph Motorcycles Ltd
46. Twinings tea
47. Sir Andy Murray
48. Henry the Vacuum Cleaner
49. Top Gear
50. Spice Girls
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Quote of the Day: “A person is a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” – Carl R. Rogers
Photo: Luke Stackpoole
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