Expected to see 10 to 18 inches of sea level rise over the next 25 years, the city of Boston and the US Army Corps of Engineers have released a feasibility study for 20 separate infrastructure projects to protect the historic city’s coastline.
The study estimates that if nothing is done, costs to the city’s historic buildings, neighborhoods, but particularly to the transportation systems from flooding could reach as much as $54 billion by 2090.
The study therefore outlines a fifth of that estimated cost in investments towards infrastructure projects that will prevent the increased impacts of flooding in the decades leading up to that date. The projects will come in stages, just as the worsening impacts of predicted sea level rise are expected to.
“The reality is that doing nothing is not a viable option. Without action, the costs to public safety and economic vitality from coastal flooding will only be compounded,” said Lt. Col. David MacPhail, deputy commander of the Corps New England District, in a statement.
The planning strategies, according to the feasibility study summary, focused on finding different ways to manage storm risks both today and in the future under several different sea level change scenarios, and according to each neighborhood’s needs and capacities—a substantial challenge with even more substantial uncertainties.
The USACE estimates, however, that virtually the entirety of Boston will experience inundation during a 100-year storm event over the next 64 years.
A map of Boston, with purple indicating flooding under intermediate sea level rises, and light blue under extreme rises – credit, US Army Corps of Engineers
“The Army Corps project is a generational opportunity to receive federal funding to invest in our coastline, but Boston needs a strategy that is viable and implementable to meet the match,” Rebecca Herst, Green Ribbon Commission associate director and director of climate resilience, told Engineering News Record.
The projects would span some 16 miles of urban coastline, from above Powder Hill in the north to Columbine Cliffs in the south.
Though the executive summary mentioned seawalls as a potential measure, no concrete ideas are yet proposed since the monumental investment costs are so variable.
Nonetheless, consultations over engineering effectiveness, economic opportunities, and environmental impacts of any ideas either proposed by the Commission’s coastal resilience task force, or by other “resource agencies and stakeholders,” were held, during which time federal government interest was also confirmed.
“The future of our city depends on the steps we take now to build resilient communities,” popular first-term Boston City Mayor Michelle Wu said in a statement. “With more frequent flooding in vulnerable areas during extreme weather events, the Coastal Storm Risk Management Feasibility Study is critical to understanding how to protect inland neighborhoods most at risk and unlocking resources to take action.”
The task force plans to finalize its financial blueprint by next summer, coinciding with the Corps’ final feasibility study. The agency will accept public comment on the analysis through September 18th.
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Police in Belgium recently made a most remarkable discovery while digging under the foundations of an old brewery.
While using a jackhammer on the property in the city of Dendermonde, about 19 miles outside of Brussels, construction workers noticed coins beginning to appear in the hole they were making.
Kobe Phillips, a student working a part-time, said that he thought at first they were 1 euro coins, and asked a colleague to help him dig them out. Then they saw that they weren’t—and that there was a gold bar stuck to the end of their jackhammer.
You can see the proof of it in the photo above on the bar third from left in the top row.
40 gold bars and over 4,000 gold sovereign coins were eventually recovered, estimated to be worth some $10 million at current market prices.
“I thought they were one-euro coins, neatly lined up in a row. We dug them out, and then we saw a small bar of gold lying there, already attached to our digging hammer. There was actually a bit more than we’d thought,” Phillips told Belgium broadcaster VTM, according to CNN.
Police department Dendermonde via Facebook
After the scope of the discovery had been made clear, the workers called the property owner, who called the police.
The East Flanders Public Prosecutor’s Office told CNN authorities had recovered the gold and taken it to a secure and secret place where it would be held pending an investigation into provenance and ownership.
They also said that several people have already contacted them with proof of ownership documentation.
Most of the bars date to the 1960s, while the coins feature a variety of dates and bear a variety of origins.
Gold has been much in the news over the last 12 months as its value has nearly doubled since summer of 2025. In January, the yellow metal reached an all-time-record high of $5,600 per troy ounce, before a sell off brought it down to $4,000.
At publishing time Asian markets traded the metal at around $4,460 per ounce.
A fair amount more than half of all the gold in the Earth’s surface has already been mined according to scientific and industry estimations. Recovering large troves like this, apart from the incredible fortune it bestows upon its rightful owners, helps to ensure as much of that supply as possible remains available to the markets for jewelry, electronics, dentistry, aerospace, and personal wealth protection.
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The whitethroat, injured with his foot casts - credit, Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital via SWNS
The whitethroat, injured with his foot casts – credit, Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital via SWNS
A bird that was hit by a car is undergoing a rather curious rehabilitation procedure.
The animal hospital it was taken do designed a pair of specially-built casts made of cardboard and tape.
It’s a bit makeshift, but the bird is said to be making good progress and will be released back into the wild once he has fully recovered.
“He was found last Saturday by some people who then called us and brought him in. We have used this technique before with other baby birds—but its usually when they have nutritional deficiencies,” said Amy Blower, at the Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital.
The whitethroat was found by a couple lying stunned in the road following a collision last Saturday.
His was taken to Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital where it was found his feet were curled up and unable to grip due to nerve or ligament damage.
The whitethroat, injured with his foot casts – credit, Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital via SWNS
Staff then decided to make him some tiny casts of cardboard, cotton wool, and micropore tape to hold his feet steady and allow him to stand while they heal.
“We put a little bit of cotton wool between the feet and the cardboard to add a bit of cushioning and then use micropore tape to secure them,” said Blower. “It seems to be doing the trick and he is making a good recovery.”
“Other than the issue with his feet he was uninjured so we’ll release him hopefully in a few days when he is better. It’s unusual for us to get whitethroats as they are only around in the summer and migrate from Africa.”
The whitethroat is listed as an amber species of conservation concern in the UK, requiring monitoring and potential intervention but not the urgent action.
This one will be grateful the action was, however, urgent—and clever to boot.
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Zhu Rongji, on the right, standing alongside his counterparts in Japan (center) and South Korea - credit, Korea Open Government License Type 1
Zhu Rongji, on the right, standing alongside his counterparts in Japan (center) and South Korea – credit, Korea Open Government License Type 1
Former Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Zhu Rongji, passed away on last week at the age of 97, with the country raising its flags to half-mast in commemoration of one of its wisest custodians.
His term as the head of state was not a long one—merely 5 years from 1998 to 2003—but his work was paramount to transform the country from the example that American mothers used to convince their children to eat all their dinner, to the economic powerhouse it is today.
This work began in earnest during his role as Vice Premier, a position of much greater power than an American Vice President. Under Premier Deng Xiaoping, Zhu executed critical market reforms in areas of banking, taxation, and government employment.
This included allowing thousands of government-owned businesses to fail, trusting a new private sector to support employment as the state sought to get tens of millions of workers off of the so-called “iron rice bowl” of cradle-to-grave welfare. As VP, Zhu also saw a reduction in the inflation rate from 24.3% in 1994, to -0.8% in 1998, in part through centralizing the wildly decentralized tax system by using an American tax model.
These large successes set Zhu up for election to the Premiership in 1998, which he kicked off with a program of privatization that lasted throughout his period in office, during which the PRC’s private sector experienced rapid growth. This was matched with a halving, roughly, in the bureaucracy between 1998 and 2003, part of an emergency response to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
A 2002 article about Zhu stepping down from the Premiership bears at-the-time witness to the achievements of these market reforms. In 2000, worldwide foreign direct investment had fallen by half, yet it had increased 10% in the PRC. Two years later, global trade had fallen by 1%, but Chinese gross trade had increased by 22%.
“He’s someone who is well respected by Chinese citizens,” Angie Eagan, manager of the US marketing firm Burson-Marsteller’s Shanghai office, told the BBC at the time. “Having somebody who can hold the respect of multiple generations is quite something.”
In 2001, Zhu took the lead in negotiating China’s assent to the World Trade Organization, to domestic and international acclaim, an achievement that required close coordination with the United States and something he managed without kowtowing.
A lasting legacy, rooted in dissent
There was every chance that Zhu Rongji would have become a Mao-era casualty, never to enter the history books.
He was a member of good standing of the Communist Party during his youth, but repeated defiance of Mao Zedong’s cult of personality and catastrophic policies saw him exiled twice.
The first, in 1957, saw him expelled from the party and labeled a radical. Surviving this incident both physically and politically, a pardon led to his return to political life in 1962. He was purged again during the Cultural Revolution, and again survived, though sent to a special farm for disgraced government workers where he performed years of hard agricultural labor.
His arrival within the inner circle of Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, was meritocratic, as the years in political exile left him with few connections among Beijing’s elite. He excelled in the country’s post-Mao academy, and in 1984 was named the founding dean of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, a position that allowed him to meet western academics, and even leaders, for the first time.
“He was a very impressive individual from the very beginning…a man of enormous curiosity,” Dr. Nick Lardy, a China specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who first met Mr. Zhu in the mid-1980s when he was the mayor of Shanghai, said in the BBC piece.
It was as mayor of Shanghai that he instituted that city’s first special economic zone, leading it to becoming a global financial center today.
As Premier Zhu earned a reputation as a strong, strict administrator, intolerant of corruption, nepotism, or incompetence. His shift toward meritocratic values in the bureaucracy was vigorous, opening government offices to private-sector advisors and experts, trying to cut connection-based promotion, and in what was quietly the most impressive accomplishment of all this disciplinariansm, got the military to relinquish its involvement in the business sector.
His nickname as Mayor and Party Secretary of Shanghai was “One Chop Zhu,” a refrain regarding his nature as something like a Western-style corporate axeman. It was this chopping that uncovered and dismantled the largest corruption ring in modern Chinese history—a massive smuggling operation inside the government of Fujian in the south.
After retiring, Zhu invested much of his time and energy into public philanthropy. In 2013 and 2014 alone, he donated 40 million RMB (around $6.5 million US) to charity.
There are many methods for measuring the success or failure of a country’s leadership. However, given the reality of political re-election pressure, even from within the ranks of a one-party system, an especially useful metric is to see whether or not policies left unfinished by one leader are carried out without alternation by the next.
In this sense, Zhu’s influence was profound on the following set of PRC leadership. His successor Wen Jiabao attempted to continue many of the reforms that Zhu had conceived and designed, creating and increasing the powers of independent regulatory commissions and restructuring the bureaucracy on the basis of merit.
Some of these were achieved, others were reversed under Wen’s successor, but with China’s place as the 2nd largest economy, his overall vision was no doubt achieved.
Wang Dan, China director at Eurasia Group, told the South China Morning Post that Zhu was “the true founder of China’s socialist market economy.”
“Subsequent reforms of similar depth have been absent from China; subsequent policies have essentially been reinforcements of the reforms he spearheaded in the 1990s,” he added, joining a chorus of economy-sector voices praising the man and his tenure to the paper.
Zhu Rongji is survived by his wife of over 50 years, Lao An, and their son, a business executive.
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Quote of the Day: “You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma… This approach has never let me down, and made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs
Photo by: Jesus Fodulla
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The Thousand Islands Bridge - CC 4.0. King of Hearts
88 years ago today, the Thousand Islands Bridge connecting the US with Canada over the Saint Lawrence Seaway was dedicated by F.D. Roosevelt. The complex contains 5 bridges spanning 8.5 miles, with each bridge section anchored on a separate island in the middle of the waterway. This remarkable feat of engineering took just 16 months to build. One span is a suspension bridge, while another section is a truss bridge, and the two are divided by a stretch supported solely by arches. READ more from this day in history… (1938)
The production of cement ranks as one of the world’s largest industrial sources of CO2, but now a new study shows how in the future it could be used to remove, rather than produce the greenhouse gas.
Every year, around 4 billion metric tons of CO2 are produced through an energy-intensive process, and particularly during the thermal decomposition of limestone, the most important natural raw material for cement.
In a new study, researchers at ETH Zurich, one of the top engineering schools worldwide, have shown that these emissions could be significantly reduced if cement production were combined with a technology known as Direct Air Capture (DAC).
For the study, the researchers collaborated with the US company Heirloom Carbon Technologies which utilizes a DAC method called calcium looping.
Calcium looping and cement production are both very similar, as they rely on the heating of limestone to separate CO2 and quicklime, a process known as calcination. ETH Zurich’s research team, led by PhD student Vittoria Bolognaro, determined that 78% of a cement kiln’s carbon emissions could be cancelled out if the kiln ran electrically rather than on fossil fuels.
Once water has been added to quicklime, the slaked lime absorbs further CO2 from the atmosphere and is converted back into limestone, which can then be reused as a raw material for cement production. Burning oil, coal, or gas to power a cement kiln, however, combines deleterious and heavier elements into the emissions that prevent them from being absorbed back into the limestone.
The more often the calcium undergoes this cycle of contact with the air before being processed into cement, the more CO2 the plant removes from the atmosphere. The CO2 captured from the atmosphere is not bound in the cement. Instead, it is compressed and transported to underground storage sites.
“From a climate perspective, the combination of DAC and cement production is very promising,” stated Bolongaro, the lead author of the publication.
“Heirloom was an ideal partner for us because the company is already operating the first calcium looping DAC systems on a commercial scale,” she added.
In California, the company has been operating a plant since 2023 with an annual nominal capacity of 1,000 tons of CO2. The current study is the first prospective life-cycle analysis for DAC using calcium looping on an industrial scale.
Initially, Bolongaro and her team wanted to find out whether larger, commercial plants remove more CO2 over their entire life cycle than they produce. In a second step, the researchers examined whether the reduction in CO2 emissions comes at the expense of other environmental factors, such as water or land use.
Their findings showed that by far the largest share of the environmental footprint is attributable to the energy required for the process, as the capture of CO2 from the air is very energy-intensive.
This also applies to other DAC processes. As part of the study, various energy scenarios were therefore tested: operating the plant using the current US electricity mix, drawing on a heavily decarbonized electricity mix comprising wind and solar energy, and employing a fully autonomous system with photovoltaics and battery storage.
“We were able to show that the technology has a net-negative carbon footprint; in other words, commercial calcium looping DAC plants with CO2 storage remove more CO2 than they generate over their entire lifecycle,” says Bolongaro. “Depending on the energy mix used in our projections, the efficiency of CO2 removal by 2050 ranges between 85 and 96%.”
Caveats abound. Key calculations for the study are based on future scenarios up to the year 2050 and assume significant progress in the decarbonization of the electricity supply, which may not come to pass for any number of reasons.
Furthermore, some of the plant components, most notably the electric calcining kilns, are not yet in large-scale industrial use. It therefore remains to be seen whether the system can be operated economically; a detailed cost analysis was not part of the study to date.
Consequently, for Bolongaro, the results represent an important starting point that highlights the climate potential of the approach.
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(left) toilet paper, Santeri Viinamäki CC 4.0. BY-SA (right) a member of the Hesperaloe genus CC 4.0. BY-SA Skarz
(left) toilet paper, Santeri Viinamäki CC 4.0. BY-SA (right) a member of the Hesperaloe genus CC 4.0. BY-SA Skarz
From the Wall Street Journal comes the story of a goldilocks discovery: a potential replacement for wood fiber that goes into making tissues, toilet paper, and paper towels.
It’s called hesperaloe, and like the namesake of its last 4 letters, presents as a long-leaved succulent that grows in arid environments.
Kimberly-Clark, the American firm which made the R&D breakthrough, produces brand names like Scott paper towels, Huggies diapers, and Cottonelle toilet paper—all of which use wood fiber from trees.
Speaking to the Journal, Craig Slavtcheff, the company’s top research-and-development officer described it as a “Goldilocks discovery” and alternatively as a “moonshot,” but had also to warn that commercial-scale testing was still underway.
The potential benefits are manifold, including reduced reliance on deforestation and logging for paper products, lower costs, and maintenance of arboreal environments.
Additional downstream effects could come from hesperaloe cultivation in arid environments, including less water consumption in a warming climate, and a way to economically counter desertification. At the same time, fewer acres logged could very well mean hundreds of thousands of additional tons of CO2 removed from the atmosphere every year in major foresting countries like Canada and Sweden.
The scale of the discovery, which the company has so far invested $250 million and 20 years of field and lab work to make, is truly monumental.
Many alternatives to wood fibers have been tested by commercial producers of wood and paper-based products. Hemp and bamboo stand out, but Jeff Melucci, Kimberly-Clark’s top executive for strategy, said that he and his team have tried many more.
“We tried to pulp everything from wood straw to bamboo,” he told the Journal, explaining that of 70 different substances, it was the hesperaloe, growing on an abandoned state test crop facility in Arizona, that caught his team’s eyes.
Slavtcheff told the outlet that they so far have no estimate as to the potential costs of a commercially-viable crop-to-pulp supply chain, but early tests suggest competitiveness with wood.
One of the greatest challenges in replacing long-standing feedstocks like wood or plastic in production is the trying to match the decades of efficiency improvements made in getting these materials to market on vast scales. New technologies lack years of distributed market knowledge and incremental improvements.
Indeed Kimberly-Clark has been eagerly seeking a replacement for wood fiber for 20 years, hoping one day to remove logging from its supply chains altogether for the sake of the planet.
The very next step for Melucci and Slavtcheff is to await the results of a pilot facility in Yuma for the cultivation and pulping of hesperaloe in Yuma, Arizona.
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The Motu Nui islet near Easter Island - credit, Kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Motu Nui islet near Easter Island – credit, Kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0.
As one of the most isolated landmasses on Earth, residents of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, rely on the bounty of the ocean more than most.
It’s as good a place as any to institute marine environment protections, and indeed the island’s famous stone heads, or moai, now gaze out upon one of the largest marine protected areas (MPAs) on Earth at more than a quarter-million square miles.
Moreover, the indigenous people of the island will maintain a voting majority on a “sea council” established to govern the massive area, holding 6 seats compared to 5 held by elected officials from Chile, the sovereign of Rap Nui.
It will be one of the largest indigenous-managed reserves on land or sea anywhere in the world, and reflects the rich Polynesian heritage that saw this seafaring race make an unprecedented trip across the open ocean to settle the island.
“This partnership is about ensuring that Rapa Nui’s marine protected areas are not only designated, but also effectively managed and sustained for generations to come,” said Jose Luis Cabello, Senior Latin America Director, for Island Conservation, a nonprofit which helped structure and organize the MPA.
“By supporting Indigenous leadership and strengthening long-term stewardship, we are helping translate protection on paper into real outcomes for people, biodiversity, and ocean heals,” he added.
The management framework will cover ranger patrols and regulation enforcement, scientific monitoring, and community outreach to combine traditional knowledge with scientific methods, with funding from the Packard Foundation.
The framework recently received a 2026 Blue Park Award, an international recognition for rigorous ocean conservation standards.
The reserve will be called Te Moana Tapu a Hotu Matuʻa, and scientific research has previously proposed that, in areas under the new protections, unidentified breeding colonies of several important whale species, including blue, fin, and humpbacks, may be present.
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After winning a million euros, a woman mistakenly tossed the lucky lottery ticket into a trash bin.
But the local sanitation company in southern Italy launched an hours-long search through an entire truck of trash.
Waste management company SANB administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano told AFP news agency that the ticket was found “miraculously still in one piece.”
The story begins with a simple misunderstanding. When the woman went to redeem her ticket at the machine inside her local tobacconist, she did so without checking the numbers.
It told her that the ticket was “non-payable.” Funnily (and almost tragically) enough, this can mean one of two things: either there are no winnings on the ticket, or the winnings are too substantial to be redeemed by the small shop.
The woman threw the ticket away thinking it was the former case, but a family member noticed the winning numbers were the ones she always played—associated as they were with a loved one—and called her to ask if she’d bought a ticket.
Realizing her mistake, the pair rushed to the shop only to be told that the trash had already been taken away.
SANB received the woman’s frantic phone call and Toscano began to try and reconstruct the ticket’s journey. Believing they’d identified where it might be hidden, the truck in question was transferred to a special station equipped with safety measures to protect sanitation workers from potentially dangerous material inside the trash.
Searching for a whole day, Toscano’s staff recovered the ticket to the woman’s tearful delight.
German news outlet DW quoted Toscano as telling Corriere della Sera that “professionalism, organization, and a great deal of luck made the moment happen,” and that the added cost to taxpayers of the search would be covered as an offered courtesy of the lucky winner.
It’s a double-stroke of luck, and a reminder never to give up searching for your lost possessions.
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Quote of the Day: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” – Rumi
Photo by: Lauren Lopes
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81 years ago today, Animal Farmwas published by George Orwell. Though most famous for his seminal dystopian fiction work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, this satirical novella carries similar socio-political allegorical heft. Centered around anthropomorphic farm animals rebelling against their human farmer in hopes to create a society where all animals can be equal, free, and happy away from human interventions, things go wrong in a very human way. READ more about this great book… (1945)
Jason Burns surprised his girlfriend Emma Kessler, training for months so she could run with her – Credit (right) @JRBURNZ
Jason Burns surprised his girlfriend Emma Kessler, training for months so she could run with her – Credit (right) @JRBURNZ
As Emma Kessler headed to her first half marathon, her boyfriend’s running shoes were in the trunk, and a surprise was in the works.
Kessler, a 22-year-old, had been anxious for weeks. Running 13 miles is no easy task—especially for a rookie.
Emma kept looking for a running partner as race day approached, someone to help boost her pace and her confidence during the Rockin’ Riverfest Half Marathon in St. Charles, Missouri. She kept badgering her boyfriend, Jason Burns, but in conversations, Jason never wavered in his response.
No, I can’t. Sorry.
Behind the scenes, though, Jason was planning something big. He was a competitive powerlifter and Emma had perfect attendance at his events. This was his chance to return the support.
“Ever since we met, she has been to every one of my competitions and supported me no matter how far away they were, or how much they cost,” Jason told USA Today. “I didn’t really think it’s fair if I sit on the side of the course and only see her for 30 seconds during her two-hour (race), so I decided that it didn’t matter how I felt on the day, if she was going to run, I was going to run with her.”
Making it all happen would take some training and some deception though.
Jason ran in secret for two months leading up to race day. He completed the registration unbeknownst to Emma. And as they hopped in the car on the way to the race, Jason made sure to sneak his running shoes in.
“I knew she’d be relieved knowing she didn’t have to run alone because I watched her anxiety about the race increase every week that we got closer to actual race day,” Jason said.
Now, the only thing left to do was announce the surprise, so Jason told Emma he had something in the trunk.
“What?” Emma said in a video of the moment. “You’re making me nervous. What?”
The suspense was replaced by happy tears when she saw the running shoes in the car.
“No, you’re lying, are you really doing it?” Emma asked about the race.
Jason even had a printed copy of a text message Emma sent a while back, saying “I wish you’d run half marathons w/ me.”
The wish came true, and Jason confessed his secret. “I’ve been running every weekend since the last (race) you ran.”
“I feel so much better,” Emma said. The anxiety was gone.
There’s no reason to carry extra worries to the starting line when you know you’ll have someone by your side the entire time.
The next parts of the video show Emma and Jason running next to each other at mile 4.6, then again, at about 9.75. Finally, there’s video after the race, with Emma and Jason both wearing medals around their necks.
“How do you feel?” Jason asks. “Way better now that we’re done,” Emma jokes.
The couple had crossed the finish line together after 2 hours and 29 minutes on the course.
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Picture this: You find a small fire isolated in your kitchen. If you had the right tool, you might be able to put it out. But before you can, the sprinklers turn on and soak your entire house. An automatic response to an issue has now damaged everything you own.
That’s akin to what happens in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s: amyloid plaques, sticky protein clumps that build up in the brain, are the fire in the kitchen. Microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, are the sprinklers. A mechanism designed to protect the body ends up hurting it.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky have discovered this harmful process for the first time — and figured out how to turn it off.
In a study published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, a team led by Shannon L. Macauley, Ph.D., an associate professor of physiology in the UK College of Medicine, and first author Nicholas J. Constantino, Ph.D., a recent UK doctoral graduate, revealed that microglia are the primary drivers of sleep loss.
By using a drug to temporarily remove these cells in animal models, the researchers successfully restored over two hours of sleep per day, providing a new target for treating the disease that Macauley described as “paradigm shifting.”
Previously, scientists believed that sleep loss in Alzheimer’s was caused by dying neurons or the physical clutter of amyloid plaques. However, the UK team’s findings suggest the problem is a “whole house response” scenario.
“Basically, we showed that it is not the plaques themselves, or solely dysfunctional neurons, that cause sleep loss but actually microglia,” said Macauley. “Microglia are immune cells that, when they respond to plaques, kick off this elaborate cascade of inflammation, as if the microglia are partying all night, and keeping the brain awake.”
Seeing inside
To isolate the effects of Alzheimer’s from the natural changes of aging, the team compared two groups of mice: those with a genetic predisposition to develop amyloid plaques and “wild-type” mice that aged normally. They studied these mice at six months, when plaques first emerge, and at 18 months, representing late-stage disease.
The researchers employed several sophisticated technologies to track these changes and monitor exactly when the mice were in deep, restorative sleep, dreaming sleep, or awake.
To prove that microglia were the cause of sleep loss, the team used a drug called Pexidartinib (PLX3397). This medication, originally used in cancer research, works by blocking a signal that microglia need to survive. By feeding the mice this drug for 14 days, they were able to temporarily remove 87% of the brain’s immune cells to see if sleep would return.
The team used a mathematical algorithm to separate the brain’s electrical activity into different parts: periodic activity (the rhythmic waves we usually think of as brain waves) and aperiodic activity (the background electrical noise).
To use a car metaphor, they were checking to see if the brain’s engine was revving too high, even during rest.
A new view is ‘mind-blowing’
Macauley described the findings as “mind-blowing and unexpected.” The research revealed that the relationship between plaque buildup and sleep loss is not a simple downward slide.
“I expected that as plaque burden became more severe, sleep disruption would also worsen,” said Constantino. “The disruptions in sleep and cortical EEG activity that occur at six months, when plaques first emerge, did not worsen by 18 months, despite more than double the amount of plaque burden.”
The researchers described this as a ceiling effect: even when plaque levels more than doubled, the sleep deficit remained stable. This suggests that the initial immune storm triggered by early plaques is what causes the damage, regardless of how many plaques follow.
The study also clarified how the brain changes during normal aging compared to disease. Normal aging selectively reduces rapid eye movement (REM) sleep — the stage where we dream and consolidate memories. Amyloid pathology present in Alzheimer’s selectively targets nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep or restorative sleep.
“That restorative sleep is super important for physical repair, learning and memory and washing out the toxins of the day,” Macauley said. “When Alzheimer’s patients lose this stage, they lose their brain’s primary cleaning cycle, creating a feed-forward loop that may drive further damage.”
2 hours of sleep restored per night
The most impactful finding was the result of the microglial depletion. When the immune cells were removed, the mice with Alzheimer’s gained more than two hours of sleep per night. Their restorative NREM sleep bouts became longer, allowing them more opportunities to transition into healthy dreaming sleep important for making new memories.
Crucially, this sleep was restored without changing the amount of amyloid plaques in the brain. This suggests that the body’s inflammatory response is a reversible cause of sleep loss that can be treated independently of the plaques themselves.
Answering the question of whether this vital sleep can be restored for humans, is the ultimate goal of this research—to create affordable, noninvasive tools for people facing Alzheimer’s disease that allow their brains to break the “feed-forward loop”.
This study, which was partly funded by grants from NIH, the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund and The CART Fund, accomplished several things that can be built upon in future research.
The team identified specific electrical signatures in the brain that distinguish Alzheimer’s from normal aging, and they believe EEG could be used as a “readily accessible, affordable and longitudinal biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Portable EEG systems could allow us to monitor people in their home environments and potentially screen for changes associated with an Alzheimer’s disease, without the initial need for expensive or invasive tests,” Macauley said.
This could allow doctors at local clinics across Kentucky to potentially screen those at risk before requiring individuals to travel hours for more specialized tests at major hospitals.
Macauley’s lab is now investigating how to calm down these immune cells without removing them entirely. They are exploring the use of safe, existing medications — such as the diabetes drug Metformin or anti-seizure drug Stiripentol — to reset the way microglia use fuel and change how overactive these cells become. By stopping the immune cells from revving the brain’s engine, they hope to restore sleep and improve quality of life years before memory loss begins.
“If we can target that process, it might help with quality of life, attention, cognition and confusion,” Macauley said.
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A powerful portion of ‘the American dream’ was served by a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to help out one of its own.
Thalles DeSouza’s story may have started in a treacherous neighborhood near Rio de Janeiro, but his next chapter will be written at one of America’s most prestigious universities.
DeSouza, who’s now 23, grew up in Brazil, living with a mother who had been on the streets at times after she lost both her parents. Death, poverty, and despair were commonplace. As an adolescent, DeSouza was sleeping one night when gunfire erupted. His American dream began right then.
“I was just another statistic unlikely to make it,” DeSouza wrote on an Instagram video that captured the moment he got the good news (translated to English).
“But God had the final word. In 2016, after nearly being killed in a shootout inside my own home, my mother decided to give up everything and come to the United States.”
DeSouza and his family made their way to Massachusetts and he started working at a local Wendy’s while in high school. He became a model employee, getting along well with fellow staff members and making an impression on the owners. He was promoted to shift manager as a high school senior.
And then, his bosses at Wendy’s, Usama El-Sehrawey and the late Ernest Smily, gave him an even better offer—vowing to pay his tuition at community college.
“College to me was something really far from my reach,” DeSouza said in the video interview below. “It changed my whole perspective and it changed the way I saw life.
“I understood that someone was betting on me, so it was now my time to do my part. And that’s what I did.” (Watch the video below, or read more at the bottom…)
The generosity that paved the way for DeSouza’s college journey is a key ingredient at Wendy’s since the company was founded by Dave Thomas.
Thomas was adopted as a child and made adoption a cornerstone of his philanthropy.
“That’s definitely Wendy’s culture,” Terry Smily, Ernest’s son, said about the generous scholarship. “We really live by Dave Thomas’s values. Dave always said, ‘Give something back.’”
The immigrant excelled at Cape Cod Community College and kept pushing himself toward bigger things. After three years there, he applied to more prestigious schools. And this May, he got accepted into Yale, with a full-ride scholarship that will cover his entire tuition.
His path and his life have changed dramatically in four years—and he couldn’t wait to thank the families who gave him a chance.
“At the time, I had no idea how much that opportunity would change my life,” Thalles recalled on Facebook, tagging his bosses and Wendy’s in the 4-year-anniversary post.
“Thank you … for believing in me. Your generosity opened a door that changed my life, and I will always be grateful.
“Sometimes all it takes is one person who believes in you. I’m living proof of that.”
He starts this fall at Yale with a major in political science and a minor in human rights, hoping to become a lawyer. The American dream that once seemed a whole world away, is now within reach.
“Where you come from does not determine where you can go,” he says. “Sometimes, the most impossible journeys take us to places we never imagined reaching.”
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Quote of the Day: “I’ve never heard of anybody who awakens in their comfort zone.” – Eckhart Tolle
Photo by: Ephraim Mayrena
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A stamp issued by the Postal Service at the 60th anniversary of the law.
110 years ago today, the Migratory Bird Treaty was signed by the US and Canada. setting rules to protect birds that fly between both countries. This agreement stopped unregulated hunting and saved many bird species from dying out. It has even been expanded to include Mexico, Japan, and Russia— and protects over 800 species. LEARN MORE below… (1916)
Rescued horse plays guitar – Courtesy of Mikayla Khramov on Instagram
The video starts normal enough, but a surprise is waiting somewhere near the chorus.
Mikayla Khramov is strumming guitar strings on Instagram and singing the lyrics to the famous Dolly Parton song 9-to-5. Then, a moment later, a horse jumps in, lightly chomping on the guitar strings to change the chords.
In Mikayla’s world, it’s all part of the plan. Her vision of music is part therapy, part experimentation, part expression—but all of it in harmony.
“This is what music should be about,” Mikayla told USA Today. “And I don’t want to do anything without my horse now. He makes it more fun.”
Mikayla grew up around horses and decided to get back into riding in 2023. The Los Angeles singer-songwriter started volunteering with a horse rescue group in Moorpark, California, where she gets free riding lessons in exchange for her work.
While there, she met a stubborn, 7-year-old Kentucky-bred horse named Yupia. He wasn’t properly trained and seemed predisposed to biting people.
The horse didn’t seem to trust anyone, yet it wasn’t long before Mikayla fell in love with him.
Many months were required to breed familiarity and build trust in their relationship—but after nine months, a breakthrough occurred.
One day, Mikayla brought her instruments to the barn and started playing her guitar in the pasture. Yupia moved closer and started moving his mouth and snout onto the strings. Before long, Mikayla’s solo act became a duet.
“Music was the tool to help build trust,” Mikayla told The Dodo in a YouTube video.
“I didn’t give him treats or anything. It was kind of a miracle how it happened. He was almost like communicating or understanding me through the music.”
Mikayla also plays the harp, so she started bringing that to the barn too, and Yupia would sidle over and start nuzzling his nose on the strings.
The sound wasn’t always great, but Mikayla felt like Yupia was conversing with each guitar strum, and the collaborations were rekindling Mikayla’s love of music and filling her with inspiration.
Music has always been in her blood, but all those gigs and all those bands can become a grind amidst a constant pursuit of paydays.
Perhaps she just needed a horse to bring the joy of music back to the forefront.
“(Yupia) has inspired me to love music again and not treat it like a job or just a way to make money,” Mikayla said.
“I go and I write music with him, and being at the barn—it’s a very inspiring place to write—and then he comes over and is participating with me, and it’s fun.”
The joy is pushing Mikayla to create her first album while using some of Yupia’s sounds on the tracks. It’s going to be a broad, genre-bending experiment that blends Portuguese musicians with folk and electronic sounds, songwriting, guitar strums and of course, a horse.
She hopes to have it all finished in September. WATCH the video from Dodo…
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Millie Gilbertson admires stunning sunflower field at Balgone Estate, with Berwick Law in the distance – SWNS
Millie Gilbertson admires stunning sunflower field at Balgone Estate, with Berwick Law in the distance – SWNS
The month of August heralded the return of 14 acres of golden sunflowers topping the landscape in Scotland.
Open to visitors through August 23, the Balgone Estate has once again opened its vibrant Sunflower Trail located an hour-and-a-half outside Glasgow.
Sisters Rose and Isla Mundell at Balgone Estate in East Lothian –SWNS
The event was first introduced in 2023 but has proved so popular it’s returned as an annual event near North Berwick.
Visitors can explore two hours in the sunflower fields, and use the fun props provided to take photos with the Berwick peak in the background.
Drone shot of Balgone Estate sunflowers in Scotland – SWNS
They can also pick their own flowers—priced at a dollar per stem—before enjoying a bite to eat from food trucks. And, 10% of sunflower sales directly support brain tumor research.
Manager Alex Humphreys says Balgone Estate also offers event space available to rent for activities like yoga classes, wine tastings, and art workshops.
After the endless sea of yellow blooms has faded, the estate transitions to autumn—and they hold a title for the largest pumpkin patch in Scotland.
At the salmon monitoring station, Kevin Vandenack holds steelhead, Katherine Stonecypher holds coho salmon, and Bryan Crouch a Chinook salmon – Credit: Katherine Stonecypher for Cal Poly Humboldt
At the salmon monitoring station, Kevin Vandenack holds steelhead, Katherine Stonecypher holds coho salmon, and Bryan Crouch a Chinook salmon – Credit: Katherine Stonecypher for Cal Poly Humboldt
Along California’s redwood coast, conservationists have been working for more than a decade to give a damaged creek something surprisingly simple: room to behave like a creek again.
Prairie Creek is one of the last refuges for three threatened species of salmon: California Coastal Chinook, Northern California steelhead, and coho salmon (whose numbers declined by 90% in the last century).
The major US restoration project, led by NOAA Fisheries and a broad coalition of partners, has transformed a former lumber mill into wetlands and a thriving floodplain ecosystem where young salmon can find food and grow before making the difficult journey to the Pacific Ocean.
Now, they’re recording some remarkable results, after years of monitoring the fish.
Juvenile coho salmon using the restored habitat are growing faster than fish remaining in the main creek channel, and researchers say that in some places the difference has been dramatic.
Growing Twice as Fast
“In certain sites and certain years, the fish using restoration sites grew up to twice as fast,” said Carter Adamson, who studied the fish growth at Prairie Creek.
Adamson, a fish biologist with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, explained how that extra growth could result in consequences far beyond the creek.
Faster-growing young salmon are more likely to survive their migration to the ocean, more likely to survive their years at sea, and return as adults to their home stream to reproduce.
Portions of the creek had been altered by human activity, leaving young fish with fewer of the complex habitats they naturally use to feed and shelter. Two of the ways the team assisted the salmon was by restoring the creek’s plantings and the amount of slow-moving water.
The historical damage was corrected by reconnecting the creek with its floodplain and restoring wetlands, ponds, and side channels.
Prairie Creek restoration – Credit: Cal Poly Humboldt
Researchers from Cal Poly Humboldt have monitored the salmon before, during, and after construction, tagging individual fish with tiny microchips and tracking their growth, movements, and survival.
Early results reveal more than faster growth. NOAA reports that 2.6% of the juvenile coho from the 2023 cohort survived their time in the ocean and returned as adults to spawn, compared with previous survival estimates of about 1%.
Monitoring at Prairie Creek will continue through at least 2028 to account for changing ocean conditions. This extra time will give scientists a clearer picture of whether bigger, faster-growing juveniles ultimately translate into more adult salmon returning home.
So far, the results are what was expected: Give young salmon slow water, abundant food and places to hide, and they don’t merely occupy the restored habitat, they thrive there.
The first salmon to enter the upper Klamath River – Credit Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
Sometimes restoring an endangered species doesn’t require newfangled ideas, only repairing what was damaged to give nature the ingredients to start cooking again.
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