A man using a $500 Starlink satellite dish to connect to the internet was surprised to find five cats curled up inside of it on a snowy day.
Attracted to the dish for its self-heating feature that melts off snow to prevent interference with the connection, the cats would pile in all day, until night when they would return to their heated cat house.
Aaron Taylor suspects that the wide metal bowl of the satellite dish absorbs and reflects heat from the sun, while the self-heating feature warms from below, creating a kind of sleeping bag effect which the kitties found irresistible.
He confirmed in a tweet that five cats “slows everything down,” while another Starlink user reported a similar occurrence when a raptor was photographed enjoying the heat on its talons.
With an aim of giving internet access to all corners of the world, the Starlink service is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company–it currently has 1,600 satellites flying around in space, with U.S. permission to launch far more, so that even those in rural places far from any grid can get online.
Associate professor Evandro F. Fang. Photo- Thomas Olafsen, University of Oslo released
Associate professor Evandro F. Fang. Photo- Thomas Olafsen, University of Oslo
Researchers in Oslo have developed an artificial intelligence method to help them identify potential new medicines for Alzheimer’s. The new medicine seems to be more precise. No side effects were documented during tests with worms and mice.
One of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease is the degeneration and loss of nerve cells in the brain as we age. A cell is like a finely tuned machinery. The cell needs energy to perform its tasks. The energy comes from energy factories called mitochondria.
In young, healthy cells, old or damaged mitochondria are removed from the cell in a process called mitophagy. The research group found that when we get older, we have more broken mitochondria, and the cells will not be able to remove all of them anymore. An accumulation of broken mitochondria clogs the cell’s ordinary processes and eventually, the cell will die.
Cells need the energy generated by the mitochondria to clear this “garbage.” Just like a machine will stop working if it is not maintained, says associate professor Evandro F. Fang, the leader of the research group.
A new method for treating Alzheimer’s disease
A new potential method for treating the disease is described by Fang’s group in a new study. “We may be able to reduce or stop the progress of the disease with the patient. We can do this by increasing the cell’s ability to self-clean,” Fang says.
Because the clogging of the machinery is a part of the problem, the researchers had to find a way to boost the cleaning process. They looked into the use of so-called mitophagy inducers. The idea was to find a way to increase the level of waste management in the patient’s brain cells.
“We can compare this to hiring extra personnel to clear a cleaning backlog in a factory,” Fang explains.
The green colours show healthy mitochondria while the red ones are damaged mitochondria undergoing ‘clearance’ by mitophagy. Photo- Xu-xu Zhuang.
The reboot of mitophagy gives the patient several advantages: It will increase the clearance of brain cell garbage and the cleaning process will be more effective in itself. It may also increase the cleaning in other other organs, not only the brain.
“By turning up mitophagy, we may also be able to increase the quality of other organs, like their heart and muscles. A stronger body is important to reduce the effects of the disease,” Fang notes.
AI used to find possible candidates for a new medication
It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a new drug, and it is a very expensive process.
The researchers wanted to find substances that may induce the cleaning process. They used AI to search for substances similar to known mitophagy inducers.
The computer program browsed through a large catalog of substances and identified two candidates, Rhapontigenin and Kaempferol. They used mice and nematodes, a type of worms, to document whether use of these substances on their nerve cells inhibited memory loss.
Fang and his colleagues have filed a patent on Rhapontigenin for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. They are now working on describing both how Rhapontigenin and Kaempferol may help us delay the progression of memory loss, and how it may help us reduce disease progression when it has occured.
In addition, they are also going to describe the in-depth molecular mechanisms that help Kaempferol and Rhapontigenin to induce mitophagy.
The compounds have not been tested in humans yet, so much still remains to be done.
“We are now using AI to propose small, structural modifications to these candidate compounds. We want to make them safer and more efficient for treating Alzheimer’s disease,” Fang says.
dog in study headphones-released study-Enikő Kubinyi Eötvös Loránd University
Enikő Kubinyi, Eötvös Loránd University
Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to familiar and unfamiliar languages, according to a new brain imaging study. This is the first demonstration that a non-human brain can differentiate two languages.
“Some years ago, I moved from Mexico to Hungary to join the Neuroethology of Communication Lab at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University for my postdoctoral research. My dog, Kun-kun, came with me.
“Before, I had only talked to him in Spanish. So I was wondering whether Kun-kun noticed that people in Budapest spoke a different language, Hungarian,” says Laura V. Cuaya, first author of the study. “We know that people, even preverbal human infants, notice the difference. But maybe dogs do not bother. After all, we never draw our dogs’ attention to how a specific language sounds. We designed a brain imaging study to find this out.
“Kun-kun and 17 other dogs were trained to lay motionless in a brain scanner, where we played them speech excerpts of The Little Prince in Spanish and Hungarian. All dogs had heard only one of the two languages from their owners, so this way, we could compare a highly familiar language to a completely unfamiliar one. We also played dogs scrambled versions of these excerpts, which sound completely unnatural, to test whether they detect the difference between speech and non-speech at all.”
When comparing brain responses to speech and non-speech, researchers found distinct activity patterns in dogs’ primary auditory cortex. This distinction was there independently from whether the stimuli originated from the familiar or the unfamiliar language. There was, however, no evidence that dog brains would have a neural preference for speech over non-speech.
“Dog brains, like human brains, can distinguish between speech and non-speech. But the mechanism underlying this speech detection ability may be different from speech sensitivity in humans: whereas human brains are specially tuned to speech, dog brains may simply detect the naturalness of the sound,” explains Raúl Hernández-Pérez, coauthor of the study.
In addition to speech detection, dog brains could also distinguish between Spanish and Hungarian.
These language-specific activity patterns were found in another brain region, the secondary auditory cortex. Interestingly, the older the dog was, the better their brain distinguished between the familiar and the unfamiliar language. “Each language is characterized by a variety of auditory regularities. Our findings suggest that during their lives with humans, dogs pick up on the auditory regularities of the language they are exposed to,” says Hernández-Pérez.
“This study showed for the first time that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages. It is exciting, because it reveals that the capacity to learn about the regularities of a language is not uniquely human. Still, we do not know whether this capacity is dogs’ specialty, or general among non-human species. Indeed, it is possible that the brain changes from the tens of thousand years that dogs have been living with humans have made them better language listeners, but this is not necessarily the case. Future studies will have to find this out,” say Attila Andics, senior author of the study.
“And if you wonder how Kun-kun is doing after moving to Budapest: He lives just as happily as he lived in Mexico City—he saw snow for the first time and he loves swimming in the Danube. We hope that he and his friends will continue to help us uncover the evolution of speech perception,” says Cuaya.
Quote of the Day: “There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.” – G.K. Chesterton
Photo: by Jonathan Cutrer, CC license on Flickr
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?
Courtesy of Bethel Park HS football coach / YouTube
Courtesy of Bethel Park HS football coach
Students in Western Pennsylvania had a snow day on Monday, but instead of staying home or meeting for an indoor workout, these teens on a high school football team were instructed by their coach to get outside and help their neighbors.
Coach Brian DeLallo at Bethel Park High School near Pittsburgh, took to Twitter to announce that Monday’s weightlifting session in the gymnasium was cancelled—but he had an alternative assignment for the young men.
“Due to the expected severe weather, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been cancelled. Find an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel their driveway… that’s our Monday workout.”
He also told the boys not to accept any money.
By mid-morning more than 27 of the athletes were texting photos to the coach, with some saying they were on their 6th driveway.
One of the students even reported that his elderly neighbors were not accepting their non-payment requirement, insisting on a donation.
Due to expected severe weather, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been cancelled. Find an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel their driveway. Don’t accept any money - that’s our Monday workout.
“What better workout than shoveling driveways,” said Braedon Del Duca, a junior on the team who went from house to house offering their services with teammate Colton Pfeuffer.
“It’s just nice getting out here, helping out the community, just helping out others that need help,” Pfeuffer told WTAE-TV News in Pittsburgh.
“We’d love to do it for everybody that we can,” echoed Del Duca.
WATCH the video from WTAE…
RESTORE Some Faith in Our Youth By Sharing This on Social Media…
Diego Rivera murals at the Palacio Nacional by Kgv88 - CC license
Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli
Diego Rivera created many masterpieces, but he envisioned a magnum opus that never came to be in his lifetime—a city of art, where Mexican practitioners of all ages and disciplines could come to study, showcase, and celebrate the art of their diverse cultural heritage.
Frida Kahlo’s husband and mentor, Rivera is famous for his use of Cubism in large public murals like The History of Mexico, The Allegory of California, and the Man at the Crossroads, commissioned by the Rockefellers—but it was after a long and storied career that he bought land in a suburb of Mexico City to built his utopian City of Art.
Diego Rivera murals at the Palacio Nacional by Kgv88, CC license
Now 65 years after his death, River’s Ciudad de las Artes has finally come to life.
A 64,000 square-foot complex south of the capital, the City of Arts centers around an Aztec temple-inspired museum built of volcanic rock from Xitle Volcano which erupted in 400 B.C.—in which Rivera’s personal collection of more than 50,000 pre-Hispanic artifacts are housed.
In 1941, back from a trip to San Francisco, Rivera undertook the construction of the Anahuacalli Museum, which sought to generate continuity between modern art and pre-Columbian aesthetics.
Opened in 1964 as the centerpiece of his imagined City of Arts, it is now finally surrounded by 13 additional structures which were built over six years at a cost of more than a million dollars, completing Rivera’s original scheme.
The spaces include galleries, performance spaces, workshops ,and new offices, all built by one of Mexico City’s most-renowned architecture firms, Taller de Arquitectura, “to bring together the artist of the school and the academy with the potter, with the weaver, with the basket maker, with the stonemason, with everything that is a pure expression of the people of Mexico”, according to the Rivera’s own words.
“The idea is that, as in pre-Columbian cities, the buildings gradually connect and allow the relationship between the parts. The buildings are built of volcanic stone walls… [and] lattices; light atmospheres that already existed in Diego’s main building,” Mauricio Rocha, the chief architect behind the project, told El País. “In addition, with the new technologies that we use, it seems that the buildings sail in a kind of sea of lava.”
The openings of the new areas, including the experimental space The Piedra, took place in October last year to coincide with the Day of the Dead festival, and hosted an earth festival that focused on pottery, and other outdoor installations and concerts.
PASS on the Culture—Share This Story From Mexico City…
purple coating mars perseverence released NASA, JPL-CALTECH, MSSS
NASA; JPL-CALTECH, MSSS
A presentation on data gathered from the Perseverance rover is trying to explain the ubiquitous coatings of unknown, dark grey, almost purple material on Martian rocks.
Having been observed everywhere the rover has trundled, more details on the coating’s composition could come with clues about Mars’ past, including whether it hosted microbial life.
On Earth, rock coatings, called varnishes, tend to be excellent places to find unusual microbes like cyanobacteria. The nooks and crannies of the surface of a stone are havens if you’re a microbe, and often offer moisture and shelter. Some species have even been known to metabolize minerals like manganese on the surface of rocks in order to create a coating to protect themselves from UV-rich sunlight.
A study in South Tryol, Italy, found 55 species of bacteria living under rock varnishes in five sample locations, all of which were rich in iron and manganese.
On Mars, the Perseverance rover’s science kit has researchers believing the near-purple coating found everywhere in Jezero Crater is rich in iron.
The rover’s laser-breakdown-induced spectroscopy tool blasts rock with laser beams until bits of it explode, and then measures the elemental composition of the gas created.
Purple coating in the top right of the frame/NASA; JPL-CALTECH,
Microphones can also measure the “clack” sound of the rocks when they break, with softer sounds indicating softer rock.
While this tool didn’t detect any manganese in the Jezero samples, other samples taken in Gale Crater with a similar tool aboard the Curiosity rover, did; findings which were also published as an investigation into “rock coatings.”
The samples which Perseverance took auditorily pointed to the coating being separate from the rocks below, and the spectroscopy found iron-oxides and hydrogen; in other words, rust.
The presence of hydrogen would suggest that water played a role in the coating’s creation, but the rover is currently investigating old solidified magma and isn’t really anywhere near the lake sediments of Jezero.
It’s a mystery that requires more investigation, and maybe before the end of the mission Perseverance will come across varnishes with both iron and manganese like the Italian ones.
But for now the rover has been caching samples in tubes for its future return to Earth. Scientists are hoping the purple coatings can survive the journey intact enough to be studied in a proper laboratory.
Sailors and scientists aboard four krill fishing boats and a research vessel were treated to the majestic sight of 1,000 fin whales congregating near Antarctica to feed.
Second only in size to the blue whale, fin whales were once one of the chief targets of whaling vessels—and were driven to near extinction by the practice; they haven’t been seen in these numbers for over a century.
It may be, estimates researcher Conor Ryan, the largest congregation of fin whales ever recorded, and the sea was so dense that day with the 81-foot (27-meter) long slender baleens, their breaching created what Phillip Hoare described as a “misty forest of spouts, as tall as pine trees.”
Ryan, a zoologist aboard the National Geographic Endurance, filmed the whales going about their business as the boat passed around 375 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula, near the South Orkney Islands.
Hoare, a whale expert reporting for the Guardian, states that science has discovered fin whales can live 140 years, meaning they could only just now be recovering from the whaling industry of the 1800s, and that gatherings such as these could become a lot more commonplace.
The winter months of Europe and North America are the summer months down in the Southern Ocean, which means as the sea ice recedes, the waters become flush with food for many species of whale.
It’s already known that humpbacks and blue whales also gather in the summer near Antarctica as part of their long global migrations.
The fin whale is currently classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, but also their populations worldwide are increasing, and could have passed 100,000 individuals.
Quote of the Day: “Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play.” – Og Mandino
Photo: by Michael Kroul
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 71-year-old Swedish man “can’t put into words” how thankful he is for the new technology that quickly flew him into the small category of only ten percent of people who survive sudden cardiac arrest.
The man has now made a speedy recovery, after the speedy delivery of a defibrillator—via autonomous drone.
The company behind the drone pilot project says it’s the first time in medical history, a drone has played a crucial part in saving a life during a cardiac arrest.
He was in his driveway shoveling snow in the Swedish city of Trollhättan in December, when the attack occurred.
Normally, you have about ten minutes to get help in such a situation and ambulance response times are often too long to save the life of the patient.
Luckily, a telephone call was immediately placed requesting emergency services and he lived in a region that had partnered with Everdrone’s innovative life-saving program called EMADE (Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery service).
EMADE drones deliver an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the scene—and the amount of time from the alarm until the AED was safely delivered at the doorstep of the incident address was just over three minutes.
Even more fortuitous, a doctor happened to be driving by and stopped to see if he could help.
“I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I looked out the car window and saw a man collapsed in his driveway and I immediately rushed to help”, says Dr. Mustafa Ali. “The man had no pulse, so I started doing CPR while asking another bystander to call 112 (the Swedish emergency number). Just minutes later, I saw something flying above my head. It was a drone with a defibrillator!”
After the initial treatment on site, the ambulance arrived, the patient was rushed to the hospital.
“This is a truly revolutionary technology that needs to be implemented all over,” said the patient who now has made a full recovery and returned home. “If it wasn’t for the drone I probably wouldn’t be here.”
The drone carries an ultralight Schiller FRED easyport defibrillator, which can be used by any bystander.
The drone delivery system in Region Västra Götaland was developed and is operated by Everdrone, a world-leading company in autonomous drone solutions, in close collaboration with Center for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet and SOS Alarm.
“This is an excellent real-world example of how Everdrone’s cutting-edge drone technology, fully integrated with emergency dispatch, can minimize the time for access to life-saving AED equipment”, says Mats Sällström, CEO of Everdrone.
275,000 patients in Europe and 350,000 in the US, suffer from OHCA annually. Approximately 70% of OHCAs occur in private homes without AEDs on site. The company says the chance of survival decreases by 7–10% with each minute following the collapse—and consequently, the current survival rate among OHCA patients is merely 10%.
14 years ago in Taiwan, an 84-year old military veteran painted an entire government village to prevent it from being torn down. Now aged 98, the painter is still there, as is the village—and it’s since become a famous travel stop.
A series of small one-story homes, Rainbow Village is now a city park where painted animals and human figures sit happily in every color imaginable upon a grid of rainbow boulevards.
When Huang Yung Fu started painting the occasional wall in the exceedingly drab Caihong Military Dependents’ Village in Taichung City, it was originally to relieve boredom.
But when Huang learned that the ghost town he and his wife lived in was to be levelled, he kicked into artistic overdrive, covering every paving stone, gutter, and door in pictures and paint.
Now an internationally-recognized tourist attraction, Huang and his wife are the only residents of the Rainbow Village—where they welcome visitors and live their lives.
“In 2010, professors and students from Ling Tung and Hungkuang Universities chanced upon the paintings and were struck by their cute and expressive nature,” writes the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
“Student Charles Tsai brought together students and faculty to appeal to the Taichung City Government to preserve this unexpected piece of cultural heritage, leading the “Save Rainbow Village” campaign. As the news spread, Huang himself began to be known as ‘Grandpa Rainbow.'”
The campaign was a success, and the area is preserved in Taichung as an art park. Lonely Planet ranked it as one of the “secret marvels of the world,” and Culture Trip put it as the most “Instagrammable spot” in Taiwan.
Because of the cost of maintaining the village, the government created the Rainbow Cultural and Creative Co. which produces the tourist infrastructure and helps supply the paint to expand and repair the murals.
ADD a Splash of Color to Those Social Feeds; Share This Article…
Have you ever wondered how far raindrops travel after they fall upon the heights of Kilimanjaro? On the off chance you’re dying to know, some curious cartographers have created a mapping tool that visualizes the path a raindrop will take to the sea from anywhere on Earth.
River Runner Global is a free, open-source tool for visualizing how interconnected we are, and can be used quickly for rough-draft water management planning, or for educational purposes.
Data analyst Sam Learner built the project using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, along with help from Kyle Onda, a data architect for the water data and management consultancy Internet of Water.
“There’s something really interesting about ending up in little pockets of the country or world that you don’t know about at all, in interesting terrain,” Learner told Fast Company. “What we put in a river or stream ends up in someone else’s water.”
There’s plenty of surprises following the path of a raindrop, for example all the water that feeds Washington D.C. comes from rainfall and upwelling springs on the western-side of the Appalachians, and before any snowmelt on Mount Everest can reach the Ganges, it has to flow eastward across the top of India for more than 300 kilometers to find a point where the Himalayas split.
The mechanism for processing and displaying the data using bulk topographical info didn’t exist, and so Learner had to built it himself.
The tool is still in beta, and so place and river names often won’t appear. It’s subject to lag and occasional bugs as well, but Learner says the same back-end data could be used to create another tool, such as a ‘River Climber’ page that follows a path upriver to show the the source of what needs protecting.
The team have found some pretty famous and interesting waterways so far, which the developers have shared in a Google doc for anyone to quickly take a look at.
A family cat has been reunited with its owners after getting stuck in a reclining armchair that was donated to a thrift store.
The family were having a clear out of old furniture while preparing to move out of their home in Denver, Colorado.
They donated an old recliner to a local charity shop, but little did they know that ginger cat Montequlla had tucked himself away in the mechanism.
Employees from the shop discovered him meowing, and called Denver Animal Shelter to come and pick him up on New Year’s Eve.
Officer Jenna Humphreys scanned four-year-old Montequlla but unfortunately his microchip hadn’t been updated, so remained at the shop hoping his family would return.
Denver Animal Shelter posted the reunion photos on Facebook, and said, “We are so happy for the ending to this story and are thankful to everyone involved in getting this sweet cat home safely.”
Quote of the Day: “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Photo: by Alina Grubnyak (color enhanced)
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 fossil of a giant sea reptile found in England is being called the greatest find in the history of British paleontology.
The ichthyosaur skeleton unearthed in Rutland Water Reserve. Credit Anglian Water.
A complete ichthyosaur skeleton from tooth to tail was discovered in the mud of a lagoon in Rutland Water Nature Reserve. It’s in such pristine condition that it looks as if it could have died recently.
At nearly 30-feet long with a 7-foot skull, it’s the biggest and most complete skeleton of its kind found to date in the UK and is also thought to be the first ichthyosaur of its species (Temnodontosaurus trigonodon) found in the country. The discovery recently made headlines after the broadcast of a BBC 2 special called Digging for Britain.
During a routine draining of the lagoon in the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in February 2021, Conservation Manager Joe Davis noticed what appeared like a set of clay pipes while he was walking across the exposed mudflats
“They [the pipes] looked organic. I worked out on the Hebrides, so I’ve found whale and dolphin skeletons before. This appeared similar and I remarked to [Reserve Officer] Paul Trevor that they looked like vertebrae,” Davis recounts in a statement. “We followed what indisputably looked like a spine and Paul discovered something further along that could have been a jawbone. We couldn’t quite believe it.”
“The find has been absolutely fascinating and a real career highlight, it’s great to learn so much from the discovery—and to think that this amazing creature was once swimming in seas above us.” (Watch the video below…)
Ichthyosaurs first appeared around 250 million years ago and went extinct 90 million years ago. They were an extraordinary group of marine reptiles that varied in size from 1 to more than 25 meters in length, and resembled dolphins in general body shape.
Anglian Water, a water management company that owns the Reserve and co-runs it with the Rutland Wildlife Trust, says it wants to secure heritage funding, which would ensure the precious treasure could remain in Rutland where its legacy can be shared with the community and visitors.
Weighing more than a ton
Photo by Anglian Water
National Geographic, reporting on the find, claims that this particular species was the largest marine carnivore on the planet during the early Jurassic period. They could get even bigger than the Rutland ichthyosaur as well, which was found with several ichthyosaur teeth next to a part of its tail that had been pulled at, suggesting a bigger specimen had been scavenging the carcass.
Weighing more than a ton, the fossil had to be wrapped in plastic with wooden splints and then caked in plaster of Paris in order to ensure it survived the hoist onto the truck that took it away to be studied and preserved.
“Despite the many ichthyosaur fossils found in Britain, it is remarkable to think that the Rutland ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in the UK,” said Dr. Dean Lomax, a paleontologist and renowned expert in the species.
“It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history.”
WATCH the fantastic video taken at the site by Anglian Water…
UNEARTH This Remarkable Find on Social Media By Sharing…
The Steller’s sea eagle. It’s ripped, royal, and rare. To see the world’s heaviest eagle, with its eight-foot wingspan, an American would normally have to visit Korea, Japan, or eastern Russia. Never had one of the sea eagles ever been spotted in the lower 48 states—until now.
Five days before Christmas, one of the majestic birds flew into Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and it’s pulling birdwatchers from all over the east coast to see it.
Members of the Massachusetts Audubon Society first spotted the raptor known for its huge golden bill.
NPR reports that the unique tail feather arrangement suggests this is the same bird that was spotted in summer in Canada and Alaska. Straying outside of its native range, it’s known as a “vagrant”.
As of January 16th, the wayward bird was still in Maine, having first been documented as a vagrant in Alaska’s Denali National Park, 4,700 miles away, in August.
The chance to see this eagle would normally involve a plane ride anywhere from 6-12 hours and a passport, so the bird’s appearance in the US is pulling amateur ornithologists from their nests in places like New Jersey for a spontaneous road trip known as “chasing.”
When a rare species, especially a rare vagrant, is spotted, intrepid birders chase reported sightings around the region using apps like eBird, or through various Facebook groups.
John Putrillo recently photographed this celebrity bird of prey. His Instagram, Manbythesea, is now filled with beautiful images showcasing its dark brown feathers and a bill that’s built to tear fish like salmon into bitesize pieces.
The eagle has given Putrillo a new passion: “I want to learn about all bird species now,” he says. “I want to find every bird I can from the smallest to the largest.”
(WATCH Putrillo’s Instagram video below for a taste of the birding action.)
Hundreds of immaculately preserved fossils recently found in Australia offer a view into the continent’s early Miocene period as clearly as in a family photo album.
Set in an iron oxide mineral known as goethite, there are leaves belonging to more than 50 species of plants, fossilized flowers, fish, insects, arachnids, even a fossilized feather.
There are fossils so clear scientists were able to make out nematode worms, parasitic mussels, and the scale of a butterfly wing.
For years, farmer Nigel McGrath struggled to work on a part of his land in Gulgong, New South Wales, that was particularly stony.
Aiming to right the problem for good, McGrath began to work loose the rocks and stones by hand, and in doing so began to notice rusty-red fossils of remarkable clarity.
Taking Mr. Nigel’s name, the site is now known as McGraths Flats, and is one of the only prehistoric fossil beds in the world that preserves the ecosystem of a Miocene rainforest.
Dr McCurry with ancient fossils found in Australia; Australian Museum
Before Australia was hot, scrubby, and dry, it was covered in rainforests between 13 million and 5.3 million years ago.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations were high, creating the perfect conditions for wet and humid forests and the critters that prefer to dwell within such places. It’s thought the forests gave rise to a richness of species equal to that of modern day Borneo.
Revealed in their full extent in a recent paper, scientists studying McGraths Flats believe them to be the muddy remains of a dried-up oxbow lake, formed when the long horseshoe bend of a waterway was cut off from the main flow.
Among the notable finds is evidence of several animal behavior models we see today. A fly was turned to goethite with 12 particles of pollen attached to his head.
The first ever instance of freshwater mussel parasitism was found in the form of mussel stuck to a fish’s tail fin.
Ancient feather; Michael Frese
Also researchers were able to see the predatory behaviors of the fish inside the lake, as their stomach contents of dragonfly wing and midges were preserved.
As lucky as the studying paleontologists have been, they are hungry for more discoveries, National Geographic reports.
“We know that a feather of a bird preserves really well—but we want the whole bird, and when we do find a bird, we know that it’ll be immaculately preserved,” said study lead author Dr. Matthew McCurry. “We’ve literally got a decade’s worth of work ahead of us.”
SHARE This Deep Dive Story From Down Under With Others…
A new law passed on the first of January provides easier access to birth control in Illinois, with women able to quickly complete screenings from new trained pharmacists and walk out with self-administered contraception the same day.
The law provides for birth control pills, vaginal rings, and skin patches, which were previously available only with a prescription from a physician.
The purpose behind the legislation is to cut back on unplanned pregnancies, which one state newspaper claims is 31% of all pregnancies in the state, but also to give women cheaper methods to prevent a myriad of health complications, of everything from greater-than-normal menstrual pain to osteoporosis and ovarian cancer.
“There are a lot of things that pharmacists are capable of doing that we’re not allowed to do,” Audrey Butler, a pharmacist at Alwan Pharmacy, tells Chicago Magazine. “Pharmacists have specialized training in all drugs, we’re drug experts, but we’re not seen as providers.”
As with reduced presence of proper grocery stores leading to some disadvantaged communities living in food deserts, those far from the necessary physicians can live in contraceptive deserts, whereas pharmacies are much more commonplace.
The new legislation certainly makes Illinois one of the most liberal states in terms of access to birth control, as not only can one now receive a health screening in a private room at a pharmacy, but there’s no age restrictions on its access.
SHARE This Positive New Legislation With Friends on Social…
Quote of the Day: “You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how it is communicated.” – Neale Donald Walsch
Photo: by Terry Vlisidis
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 man who told the Queen he was a solar panel engineer when she asked him ‘what do you do?’ was stunned when she later got in touch—and paid him to install some on Balmoral Castle.
Businessman George Goudsmit met the Queen at an event and had a quick ’20 second’ conversation with her.
She asked the 80-year-old what he did and he replied that he made solar panels.
The Managing Director at AES Solar recalls, “As she walked away she turned around and said, ‘maybe I should have solar panels at Balmoral’.”
He was shocked when he was later commissioned to install panels at Balmoral.
George was attending a function on the Isles of Scilly to celebrate the success of his daughter’s business, Little Island Chocolate.
George, who recently received a lifetime achievement award at the Solar and Storage Awards, then wrote to The Royals as a follow up. They later replied and he was asked to carry out the work.
“This was such big thing for me and our company,” he said.
He and his team soon carried out a survey and put the panels on a large estate house on the property in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, in the heart of the Scottish Highlands.
George, of Forres, Scotland, whose goal is to get as much renewable energy into the world as possible, says there is now even discussions of installing them at Buckingham Palace.
Solar Panels at Balmoral Estate – SWNS
It all came to a halt when the pandemic worsened, he said.
“Hopefully this will be something to discuss in the future now that we have already worked with the Royal Family.”
SHINE Some Inspiration on Royal Lovers Everywhere By Sharing…
