This primary care nurse calls himself a ‘Therapeutic Photographer’—and his ‘Southern Lights’ video could calm anyone’s anxiety.
Captured near his home in Pinehouse Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada on February 6, the explosion of dancing light was “the BEST I’ve seen so far!”, exclaimed Dre Erwin.
Erwin didn’t need to use time-lapse to capture the entire sky, north to south, leaping in green magnetic waves.
“It’s these moments we all need to focus on—the beauty in life,” writes Erwin online, whose pics can be found at @DreErwinPhotography.
Sit back and listen to the crunching of snow, and be sure to play it past the 1:00 mark—when it really starts getting incredible.
'Being friend' by @fdilekuyar - The little calf and the little girl have a one-of-a-kind friendship. In Anatolia, children always find a best friend in their animals. Location: Kayseri, Turkey. See SWNS copy SWCAfriends: This heartwarming set of photos show 50 of the world's best images showing friendships from around the world. More than 16,000 photographers conveyed what friendship meant to them through their camera lens by capturing amazing shots. The photos were entered into Agora's competition called The World's Best Photos of #Friends2020 in a bid to bag the $1,000 prize money.
While media outlets talk about the “Age of Extinction” for species, they never seem to include the multitude of good news—and there was a lot from 2021 to be thrilled about.
Wildlife of all kinds have been recovering for decades in great numbers. Some are even ‘coming back’ from the dead and gone. Nations are taking on conservation as a matter of national pride, and poaching is plummeting.
Best of all, humans are have amazing encounters in the natural world that we all get to share online. Here are our top picks for most enticing animal moments…
On that most famous of archipelagos, 2021 saw the return of a presumed extinct tortoise after the world waited with bated breath for months to see the results of a DNA test, one that would solve “one of the greatest mysteries of the Galapagos.” (Read more)
Two hikers in the Cairngorms in Scotland rescued what they thought was a tabby kitten freezing to death in the snow, but after a specialist vet confirmed that it was a Scottish wildcat, one of the rarest mammals in Europe, and the only felid native to the British Isles. They started a fundraiser to support their conservation having formed a bond with the little guy. (Read more)
Everyone calls the citizens of Australia’s island neighbor “Kiwis,” after their national bird which actually was seriously at risk for many years. Over the last 60 months, annual audio surveys of kiwi calls have revealed that the haunting sound can now be heard over vast stretches of the island where before they were absent. (Read more)
In the shadows of tigers and elephants, the smallest wild hog in the world held the entire Terai Grasslands ecosystem together. Presumed extinct until 1971, they have been captive-bred back into stable numbers and roam again in the national parks of India. (Read more)
A paddleboarder was out during whale watching season in Patagonia when a young humpback gave her a playful nudge that, a stunning moment that went viral after being captured by drone video. (Read more)
A hiker alone with his camera and his thoughts climbed a mountain in Montana. Just as he reached the summit, a mother mountain goat and her kid provided an extraordinary encounter. (Read more)
Porpoises are famous for their friendliness, and a display of this astonished marine biologists who observed the clear and obvious adoption of an orphaned whale calf by a dolphin mother, a behavior that isn’t well understood. (Read more)
Giving a whole new meaning to the words “from the brink of extinction,” there was one such Swinhoe’s turtle alive in captivity, and ‘He’ was thought to be the only one on Earth, but with the discovery of a healthy adult female, a chance for a reptile version of Adam and Eve can commence with any luck. (Read more)
Years of steady work has turned the Thames into a river that catches on fire into a bustling marine metro, teeming with seahorses, seals, seabirds, and even sharks. (Read more)
The background to an astonishing return in humpback whales over the last 25 years that has seen the beasts come close to pre-whaling industry numbers, record calf counts were made off the coast of Seattle. (Read more)
Elizabeth Ann, at the USFWS National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center
After years of debate, conservationists cloned the black-footed ferret, the first such deployment of this future-tech in the field of conservation sees this species given a clear second chance. (Read more)
turtle hatchlings released stockton university lester block facebook social media
After a shocking cold snap battered Texas in late winter 2021, sea turtles were saved in huge numbers from cold-stunning by volunteers. Thousands of these vulnerable reptiles were saved and returned to the waters of the gulf after rehabilitation with help from an unlikely ally. (Read more)
A lucky group of Namibian and African cheetahs will be relocated to the cheetah-vacant plains of India, where they will hopefully restore the populations that once hunted there in the first-ever such carnivore re-wilding project. (Read more)
Rhinoceros species around the world, such as the greater one-horned rhino and Javan rhino, continue their dramatic recovery. Investments of $20 million worldwide into conservation projects are paying off in many countries. (Read more)
The Great Barrier Reef’s annual coral spawn was a huge success, as if the whole underwater ecosystem was shaking like a giant slow globe, promising billions of polyps to rebuild the reef in the future (Read more)
Having registered a barren 2020, the 2021 western monarch butterfly migration was a banner year in which more than 100,000 insects made the journey west of the Rockies to California. (Read more)
Aaaand… Here’s a living curtain call for 2021, courtesy of a graceful deep-sea jelly. Happy New Year!
SHARE the Best Moments for Animals on Social Media to Show Your Thanks to GNN… (Featured Photo credit: @fdilekuyar SWNS license)
Quote of the Day: “Hope smiles from the threshold of the new year to come, whispering, ‘it will be happier’.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Photo: by Mohamed Nohassi
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?
National Human Genome Research Institute - CC license
Whether a deadly disease like cancer and Alzheimer’s or a lifelong affliction like diabetes, eczema, or arthritis, 2021 has been a year of breakthroughs and advancements.
Beyond COVID-19 and the developments of the mRNA vaccines created to halt the pandemic, medical researchers around the world continued to focus on the long-entrenched problems that have plagued our health for centuries.
Here are some of the top Health stories from 2021:
Alzheimer’s
Routinely polled as one of the most-feared diseases, Alzheimer’s researchers have hailed several achievements this year.
One fascinating focus has been on prevention, or what contributes to the disease.
A neuroscientist who authored a book called The First Survivors of Alzheimer’s is not so much focused on drugs as he is focused on brain prevention and is achieving results never before seen in the history of Alzheimer’s treatment. (Read more)
The findings of a drug that seemed to restore normal cognition in a variety of cases ranging from traumatic brain injury, to noise-related hearing loss, to neurodegenerative disease seem to suggest, its creators write, that age-related cognitive loss may be down to a physiological “blockage” rather than permanent damage. (Read More)
As seen many times before, sometimes the best new cure is an old drug. Four drugs—two non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, along with two anti-hypertensives, proved effective at reversing Alzheimer’s disease and neutralizing symptoms in mice suffering from various stages of the illness. (Read More)
Cancer
National Cancer Institute
As long as there’s lifeforms, there will be cancer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn how to treat it, strike at the root cause, and hopefully turn at least some forms of it from one of the major killers to a minor inconvenience.
With 12,000 Britons diagnosed with head and neck cancer every year, the results of a phase III trial that saw complete eradication in some patients, and side-effect-free life extension in others, has the country excited. (Read More)
Discovering an RNA molecule that regulates a key driver in the growth of prostate cancer cells is noteworthy because prostate cancer is one of the most common in men around the world, and because most drugs work for a short period of time before the cancer becomes resistant to it. (Read More)
Diabetes
Despite the gradual awareness of the harmful effects of sugar and bread on the body, chronic diabetes and juvenile diabetes continues to be a major problem in our society.
It turns out that all it takes for this potential cure to rid a patient of a debilitating autoimmune disease is a small piece of adult skin no larger than a housefly. With FDA trials underway, hundreds of thousands of Type-1 diabetics have a chance at a potential cure. (Read More)
Nearly 500 million diabetics around the world need to mildly stab themselves in order to ensure they are in no danger of going into shock. An Australian med-tech company has a new solution. (Read More)
Arthritis
Afflicting a quarter of all Americans, and the leading cause of workplace disability resulting in $303 billion in lost productivity, arthritis took a step towards a cure in 2021.
An alternative to highly addictive painkillers is offering those who undergo knee replacements a large measure of safe relief. Many arthritis patients have knees and hips replaced in the hope of regaining some measure of mobility later in life, but the resulting pain and stiffness can sometimes only be treated with opioids. (Read More)
Osteoarthritis is the most common form, and it affects 8.5 million people. Nasal cells come from a special class of adaptive tissues produced in the brain and spinal cord that can be used to relieve chronic inflammation in the knee and lay the groundwork for a therapeutic treatment that spares patients of surgery and prosthesis. (Read More)
COVID
It would seem silly to write a list such as this without addressing the elephant in the room, but as the pandemic petered on through 2021, breakthroughs continued to be made.
One of America’s most favorite medicines was found, unsurprisingly to some doctors, to have as strong an effect as vaccines in some cases at mitigating the severe symptoms of COVID-19. (Read More)
Along with an Israeli nasal spray that prevented infection in 99% of patients, another was found in trials at the University of Oxford which killed 99% of the virus in the nasal passage. (Read More)
New Organs
Some demonstrations of prosthetic internal organs have shocked the world in 2021, providing a glimpse of a sci-fi future for human anatomy.
A bio-tech implant that allowed a 78-year old blind man to see his family again actually binds with the inside of the eye-socket in a way that had never been done before. (Read More)
The world’s first legit prototype for an artificial kidney was successfully tested when the blood filter and bio reactor components were demonstrated to work together, offering hope to free kidney disease patients from dialysis machines and transplant lists. (Read More)
Ticks, as awful as they are, have their place in the Web of Life. Researchers have identified a soil microbe that eliminates Lyme Disease but essentially nothing else, not even the ticks, opening the door to “ecosystem wide” treatment against Lyme Disease. (Read More)
Stem cells prepared with the patients own bone marrow were used to repair damaged spinal cords and restore mobility and motor functions in more than half of a Yale scientist’s trial. (Read More)
An incurable autoimmune disorder that results in progressive motor function loss and neurodegeneration, an MS breakthrough was achieved using the same mRNA vaccines that worked so well originally to stop the COVID pandemic. (Read More)
A monoclonal antibody that reduces the amount of inflammatory molecules that cause a hormonal dysregulation leading to eczema was a treatment generated by this totally surprise finding. (Read More)
Habitual Coughing
Dr. Miles Weinberger and Bethany – Courtesy habitcough.com
“Habit Cough” the name for a “cough without a cause” has been cured through a YouTube video relying mostly on the power of suggestion. While this may seem a little sketchy, many people with habit cough have no underlying respiratory condition of any kind, and therefore an ounce of suggestion may beat a cure. (Read More)
SHARE the Inspiring Healing News From 2021 on Social Media…
2021 was, among other things good and bad, the year in which the global marine shipping industry took concrete steps towards reducing its global emissions footprint.
Accounting for 90% of the world’s international trade, and 3% of human emissions, marine shipping is among the largest greenhouse gas emitters, and one which could in theory, go green the easiest.
It started in April, when a fledgling Biden Administration pushed the International Maritime Organization to improve on its stated push to neutralize emissions by 2070, towards a complete absence of emissions by 2050, but it didn’t end there.
In October, nine companies committed to zeroing out emissions from shipping their products by 2040, including retailer giants like Amazon, IKEA, Unilever, and Patagonia.
In July, an announcement from Wartsila, a marine technology firm, detailed that two load-bearing tests of engines powered by green hydrogen and an ammonia blend performed as needed to carry the world’s goods across the oceans.
Also, in the summer, Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, announced that a new fleet of eight ships built to run on sustainable methanol would replace eight older vessels totaling 1 million tons of CO2 savings per year.
Then in November, the COP rolled around, and world leaders arrived in droves to try and hold their nations accountable for the security of the world’s health. Here, 13 world leaders followed Denmark’s lead in committing to a zero-emissions shipping industry through the use of green fuels like hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol.
Meanwhile in the private sector, November also saw the maiden voyage of the Yara Birkeland, a self-driving ammonia-powered shipping vessel that in a single year will eliminate the need for 40,000 diesel-driven truckloads of fertilizer to be moved around the Oslo Fjord.
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Once an executive at Microsoft, he turned into a cookbook super-author with his Modernist Cuisine series. Now, Nathan Myhrvold is making a name in photography, shooting the highest resolution pictures of snowflakes ever made.
Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
The images capture the ever-unique molecular structure in stunning color and depth. To make them required all manner of specialized equipment assembled together during lockdown as part of a garage project.
Most snowflakes are less than half of an inch wide, and will dissolve quite fast if not in contact with equally frozen material. The melting issue would be one of the biggest challenges for Myhrvold and it ended up requiring a lot of interesting tech.
As a man possessing a Ph.D. in theoretical mathematics and physics from Princeton University, and serving as Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft for 14 years, Myhrvold had no trouble solving the problem.
He got to work building a machine that was part-microscope and part-camera. It ended up standing five-feet tall on a table and weighing 50 pounds. A thermoelectric cooling system, carbon fiber framing, and cool LED lights ensured there was no heat emanating onto the snow flake in focus.
“Light could melt the snowflake, so I found a company in Japan that makes LED lights for industrial purposes,” Myhrvold told Smithsonian. “My camera’s flash is one-millionth of a second and a thousand times faster than that of a typical camera flash.”
There was also a challenge involving how to capture the physical snowflake, one that was solved using, of all things, sapphire crystal, instead of glass because it doesn’t capture and radiate heat as much as glass does.
University of Manitoba researcher and mathematician Ranganathan Padmanabhan explained why a snow crystal is always depicted with six sides and six branches.
“Nature is the Mother of all symmetries. In fact, symmetry happens to be a central organizing principle in Nature’s design,” he said, noting bee honeycomb before explaining that on a molecular level, a hexagon allows for the tightest packing of things into space, meaning that Nature is a thrifty sort.
As the snow crystal falls through the clouds and the sky, it collects water—liquid, vapor, and solid, which upon exposure to differing levels of humidity and temperature, begins to build up as it spins downward in a theoretically unending variation of trajectories and conditions, eventually forming the branches or arms of the snow crystal that essentially prohibit identicality among fallen flakes.
Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
As Myrhvold was capturing them at the end of their journey, the crystal formations had become truly breathtaking, with the arms forming long spikes, spruce-like shapes, and even small squares.
“Snowflakes are a great example of hidden beauty,” he writes on his website. “Water, which is an incredibly familiar thing to all of us, is quite unfamiliar when you see it in this different view.”
Who knows how many snowflakes he had to subject to this photography before finding the specimens that ended up for sale on his website, but as he revealed to Smithsonian:
“You have to take many photos in order to get a high enough resolution, because many photos put together allows you to have enough depth of field to see an entire snowflake very sharply.”
For snowflake enthusiasts, these pieces of artwork are available for $850 on Myhrvold’s gallery website, where he also sells his famous images of modern cuisine.
SHARE This Intimate Look at Winter With Friends On Social Media….
A 72 to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilized dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behavior of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study.
The embryo, dubbed ‘Baby Yingliang’, was discovered in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Ganzhou, southern China and belongs to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur. Among the most complete dinosaur embryos ever found, the fossil suggests that these dinosaurs developed bird-like postures close to hatching.
Scientists found the posture of ‘Baby Yingliang’ unique among known dinosaur embryos — its head lies below the body, with the feet on either side and the back curled along the blunt end of the egg. Previously unrecognized in dinosaurs, this posture is similar to that of modern bird embryos.
In modern birds, such postures are related to ‘tucking’—a behaviour controlled by the central nervous system and critical for hatching success. After studying egg and embryo, researchers believe that such pre-hatching behaviour, previously considered unique to birds, may have originated among non-avian theropods.
The embryo is articulated in its life position without much disruption from fossilisation. Estimated to be 27 cm long from head to tail, the creature lies inside a 17-cm-long elongatoolithid egg. The specimen is housed in Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.
Fion Waisum Ma, joint first author and PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, said: “Dinosaur embryos are some of the rarest fossils and most of them are incomplete with the bones dislocated. We are very excited about the discovery of ‘Baby Yingliang’—it is preserved in a great condition and helps us answer a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it.
“It is interesting to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo pose in a similar way inside the egg, which possibly indicates similar prehatching behaviours.”
‘Baby Yingliang’ was identified as an oviraptorosaur based on its deep, toothless skull. Oviraptorosaurs are a group of feathered theropod dinosaurs, closely related to modern-day birds, known from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Their variable beak shapes and body sizes are likely to have allowed them to adopt a wide range of diets, including herbivory, omnivory and carnivory.
Birds are known to develop a series of tucking postures, in which they bend their body and bring their head under their wing, soon before hatching. Embryos that fail to attain such postures have a higher chance of death due to unsuccessful hatching.
By comparing ‘Baby Yingliang’ with the embryos of other theropods, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs, and birds, the team proposed that tucking behaviour, which was considered unique to birds, first evolved in theropod dinosaurs many tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Additional discoveries of embryo fossils would be invaluable to further test this hypothesis.
Professor Lida Xing from China University of Geosciences, joint first author of the study, said, “This dinosaur embryo was acquired by the director of Yingliang Group, Mr Liang Liu, as suspected egg fossils around the 2000. During the construction of Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in 2010s, museum staff sorted through the storage and discovered the specimens.
“These specimens were identified as dinosaur egg fossils. Fossil preparation was conducted and eventually unveiled the embryo hidden inside the egg. This is how ‘Baby Yingliang’ was brought to light.”
Professor Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team who had their findings published iniScience, said, “This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen. This little prenatal dinosaur looks just like a baby bird curled in its egg, which is yet more evidence that many features characteristic of today’s birds first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors.”
A couple bought the real-life cottage from Christmas romcom The Holiday without realizing —and now have tourists turning up taking photos.
57-year-old Jon Bromley and his 51-year-old wife Cressida live in the house which inspired Cameron Diaz’s rural retreat in the 2006 festive flick.
They had no idea it was the quintessential cottage from the movie when they bought it— until they saw news of the sale in a property magazine.
Now they regularly have movie fans turning up to their home in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, to take photos and pose outside.
Researchers visited their home but when they discovered it was too far from the cast and crew in London, they recreated it brick by brick in a studio.
Rosehill Cottage is an identical match for the Bromley’s home—down to the picket fence, wooden gate, country garden, and rural track which Diaz famously slips down.
In the movie, newly-single Amanda Woods leaves Los Angeles to spend a two-week holiday in Rosehill Cottage in rural England.
SWNS
During this mini-break, she meets the landlady’s brother Graham, played by Jude Law, and they fall in love.
Jon said, “It’s one of those getaways where you go and hide yourself somewhere in a little village.
“There’s nothing here but a pub next door, no shops.
“I’m just really proud of it, it’s a very lovely house and we’re very lucky.”
The Bromley’s moved into the £625,000 ($1 million) home in 2019, already happily married and totally unaware of any Hollywood significance.
Sports photographer Jon said, “I came to see it on my own to begin with and just literally fell in love with it straight away.
“Just everything was beautiful—low ceilings, it’s beamed, it’s got a massive inglenook fireplace with a log burner in.
“Then we saw it in Country Life article saying something like ‘the inspiration for The Holiday cottage is back on the market’.
“I thought ‘bloody hell!’
SWNS
The three-bed cottage also boasts an AGA stove, underfloor heating, and the iconic picket fence as seen in ‘The Holiday.
The landscape garden also contains a flagstone laid terrace and views over the surrounding Surrey hills.
He was told the house receives frequent phone calls from America and people asking to take photos of the exterior.
Jon said, “We had a couple of location scouts.
SWNS
“There’s a fair few people that come past looking for the house.
“Then you get the odd one who goes past and stops and says ‘I recognize that, is this the Holiday cottage?’ and ‘do you mind if I take some pictures?'”
Jon watched The Holiday for the first time years before moving in, and has stuck it on the TV at least a couple of times since.
He has played extras in movies for ten years and is a big Cameron Diaz fan.
He said, “She’s brilliant, I just thought the whole film was really nicely done.
“On a couple of occasions people say ‘where do you live’ and I’m showing them pictures.
“People say ‘are you joking?’—no I’m not joking!
SWNS
“It’s just such a beautiful house, its got that The Holiday-feel.”
While neither Jon nor specialist painter Cressida have committed to a home swap, they have had people look after the house while they were away.
But when asked if he believes there was any romance, Jon said “you don’t want to ask!”
Production designer for The Holiday, Jon Hutman said on the DVD commentary he was looking for the “cutest, smallest, most English cottage that we could find” when he stumbled on the real-life home.
The couple can definitely understand why their chocolate box property served as the inspiration for the flick’s remote romantic getaway.
SWNS
“I’d been with O2 for 30 odd years and literally couldn’t get bloody signal, I’ve now got EE and even that’s not fantastic,” dad-of-four Jon said.
“It snowed last year and it just has that warmth to it when you walk through.
Quote of the Day: “I always turn to the sports page first. It records people’s accomplishments; the front page, nothing but man’s failure.” – Earl Warren (former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)
Photo: by Vienna Reyes
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?
Four in 10 Brits claim their 2022 New Year’s resolutions involve being greener, according to a new poll.
Brooke Lark
A survey of 2,000 adults found 27 percent of those with green resolutions plan on using colder washing cycles, while just under a third will try and cut down on their meat intake.
Other changes people are making for the year ahead include always carrying a reusable water bottle (33 percent), taking shorter showers (25 percent), and growing their own veg (24 percent).
And more than half of Brits (56 percent) said simply having a better understanding of how their central heating works would help them to live a greener lifestyle.
As many as 75 percent of those with green resolutions for 2022 admitted that while they ‘never’ normally stick to their resolutions, they want to this year, to help save the planet.
Combating climate change is the most popular reason (44 percent) for adults making plans to live more sustainably next year, with 41 percent hoping to have a positive impact on local wildlife.
While four in 10 are looking to reduce their energy costs by going greener, and 37 percent believe their green resolutions will be good for their health.
Marc Robson, Smart Energy Expert at British Gas, which commissioned the survey, said, “It’s great to see how many people recognise the benefits of living more sustainably—not just for the planet, but in making our everyday lives healthier and more cost-effective.
“There are so many small steps we can take around the home to be greener and save on our energy costs—and being energy-efficient is also getting easier with the help of technology.
“Three in 10 respondents said their resolutions include turning the heating off or down when they go out, but a smart thermostat can take care of that.
“And having a smart meter means you can keep track of your energy usage in real-time, helping you identify opportunities to make savings.”
The poll also found that nine in 10 of those, with green resolutions, believe that although their commitments have been influenced by increasing energy prices, they’d be making an effort to live more sustainably anyway.
And the same number think the small steps they’re taking to live more sustainably in 2022 will lead to make bigger changes in years to come.
A quarter of those with green resolutions intend to do less driving, and 37 percent want to buy more food with less packaging—but these are both among the green resolutions considered hardest to keep.
Despite their best intentions, a quarter of those who have green ambitions reckon they will have fallen by the wayside by the second week in January.
Perhaps that’s because a quarter (24 percent) have made green resolutions in the past and failed to stick to them.
But 74 percent of adults polled, via OnePoll, believe they have a role to play in bettering the world.
And more than half (53 percent) went as far as to say they believe 2022 is the last chance the world has to start reversing the effects of climate change.
Marc Robson, from British Gas, added, “We know that most people with green resolutions (70 percent) have been thinking about them for a while. And now is the perfect time to commit to them.
“It’s best to smart small with a resolution you can stick to—and then you can add to or extend it when you’re ready.
“Everyone needs to take responsibility for reaching net zero, and it’s our job to make sure that’s inspiring, not daunting.
“Working together is vital, so that we can all make a positive contribution that’s right for us.”
For energy efficiency and sustainability tips to implement around the home in the New Year, visit the British Gas website.
BRITS’ TOP GREEN RESOLUTIONS FOR 2022:
1. Recycle better
2. Buy food with less packaging
3. Turn off lights in rooms that aren’t being used
4. Take reusable bags shopping
5. Turn off electrical items when not in use e.g., laptops, TV
6. Turn the tap off whilst brushing your teeth
7. Refill water bottles
8. Put on extra layers instead of turning on the heating
9. Eat less meat
10. Turn off/lower the heating when leaving the house
11. Reuse leftover food
12. Use lamps with low energy use
13. Use colder washing cycles
14. Take shorter showers
15. Drive less
16. Shop second-hand e.g., clothes
17. Grow your own vegetables
18. Cycle more
19. Never use takeaway coffee cups
20. Avoid use of paper e.g., printing
21. Plant a tree
22. Upcycle furniture
23. Wash the car by hand instead of using a water hose
24. Fly less
25. Buy organic food
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As winter begins to settle across the Northern Hemisphere, webcams in wild places have been picking up some startling sights.
In a film from Senja Island in Norway, here are two reindeer in a snowy birch forest. The aurora pulses overhead in swirls of iridescent light as they graze. It’s beautiful, a truly relaxing sight.
(WATCH the video from the Aurora Borealis Observatory below.)
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$15 billion of federal money will go into funding a project that finds and replace as many old lead water pipes across the United States as possible—thanks to a newly enacted infrastructure bill from the Biden administration.
While early EPA bans on leaded gasoline and lead paint dramatically reduced the burden of lead poisoning in the nation, old lead water service lines can leach the toxic metal into the water supply, creating a particular danger to young children.
The EPA estimates that 400,000 schools and ten million homes rely on lead service lines for their water delivery.
“The science on lead is settled—there is no safe level of exposure and it is time to remove this risk to support thriving people and vibrant communities,” said EPA administrator Michael Regan in a statement, who hopes to pair the removal project with regulation that will see lead pipes forever beyond the reach of pipelayers and housing manufacturers.
Lead pipes can sometimes be harmless due to a protective coating of built-up minerals inside the pipe which separates its surface from the water running through it, but often buried and unremembered, changes in the chemical composition in the treatment of the water, writes one geochemist from Indiana University, can quickly erode the plaque and expose the drinker once more to the lead inside.
Government-run water delivery programs in Flint, Michigan in 2014 saw state regulators try and save money by cutting out the addition of phosphate to maintain the mineral plaques inside the pipes, a corner-cutting that notoriously ended in disaster.
The CDC, as part of the lead removal project, will be setting up a new childhood lead testing program, and regulators will use water tests to help zero in on the old water lines.
The federal plan is to ultimately replace a hundred percent of the lead service lines across the country, and the EPA is planning to write that figure into the regulations within the next few years.
That’s a hopeful and necessary move towards clean, healthy drinking water across the nation.
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One day last September, Vinod Menon, the head of the physics department at Harlem’s City College of New York campus, had to face the normally unpleasant task of going through almost a year of COVID-lockdown office mail, and was stunned when he opened a 9-month-old package only to find it contained $180,000.
Stacked notes in 50s and 100s wrapped in paper bands, an anonymous letter, and a return address to an alias were all that accompanied the parcel which was addressed to “Head of the Physics Department.”
“I’ve never seen this kind of money in real life in cash form,” Menon told CNN. “I’ve never seen it except in movies, and so, yeah, I was shell shocked and I just did not know how to react.”
The sender evidently had unshakable faith in the U.S. postal system, and desired to send the cash as a donation to cash-strapped students looking to pursue physics and other sciences.
City College of New York is one of the most-productive public university systems in the States, and the physics department has long punched above its weight. Three Nobel laureates in physics received their education there, and in 1921 Albert Einstein gave one of his first lectures at the Harlem campus.
“Assuming that you are a bit curious as to why I am doing this, the reason is straightforward,” the letter read, continuing to explain that its generous writer had, many years ago, taken advantage of the “excellent educational opportunity,” available at City College to study physics, earn a master’s, and pursue a “long, productive, immensely rewarding scientific career.”
The alias return address was to Kyle Paisley, a name absent from the university’s graduation logs, at a house in Pensacola, Florida, whose owners apparently had no idea or knowledge of the donation.
The money was first treated as evidenced, but after a two-month long investigation had revealed nothing that could link it to criminal activity, the Board of Trustees held a vote to see if they would keep the money.
Unsurprisingly, they did, with one chair suggesting the beat up old box be “bronzed” and “put in a display case.”
Dr. Menon, who grew up in India, noted that the gift would provide for two fully-funded scholarships every year for a decade, and that he would try to see it go into the hands of the students who had the fewest means—such as immigrants like himself.
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A one-hour class can save a life; that’s what 15-year old McDonald’s worker Sydney Raley learned when she instinctively deployed the Heimlich maneuver to save a choking customer.
Working at the Eden Prairie McDonalds south of Minneapolis for around seven months, the young woman clocked in on a Saturday shift expecting, as one might imagine, for everything to proceed as normal.
After handing one woman part of her order, Raley departed the drive-thru window, only to return moments later to explain the rest was on its way. That’s when she saw that the customer appeared to be choking.
“She was coughing like crazy, and I noticed she was gagging.” Raley told CNN. “Her daughter was in the passenger seat and she looked so freaked out. I immediately knew ‘Oh, no, she’s choking.'”
Raley straight away instructed her colleague to call 911, then leapt out of the drive-thru window to help the choking customer. Having taken a Red Cross babysitter first aid class, Raley used the Heimlich manuever with the aid of a bystander.
The nugget was dislodged, and the woman, though in shock, was deeply grateful. First responders arrived later only to find the situation was resolved.
“They said, ‘Congratulations you’re a lifesaver; you’re a hero.'” Sydney recounted. And gave her $100 from a fund they use for people who do good work in the community.
The teen’s parents also arrived at the scene, and seeing an ambulance and police cars, immediately became worried that something had happened to their daughter, who had suffered from some social difficulties as a result of an autism spectrum diagnosis at age 11.
“We are incredibly proud of Sydney and her quick, heroic actions over the weekend to help one of our valued customers.” owner-operator Paul Ostergaard said in a written statement. “Sydney truly personifies what it is to be a hero and we are incredibly lucky to have her as a highly-valued crew member at our Eden Prairie restaurant location.”
Green Heron and Blue Jay argue over a perch in Powell Creek Preserve, Southwest Florida - Diana Robinson, CC license
Quote of the Day: “When nothing’s working, it might be a cosmic conspiracy to get you to experiment.” – Caroline Casey
Photo: by Matt Botsford
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?
Everyone can remember a time when their mind would not stay on task.
For example, you might be listening to someone talk in a meeting or in class, and your mind wanders off to your dinner plans.
Well, research suggests that 30% to 50% of our daily thoughts are spent on this kind of mind wandering, and that excessive mind wandering can lead to negative outcomes like poorer performance on standardized tests and poorer recall of information.
“While zoning out for a few minutes during a meeting may not hurt, it can impact you negatively if it goes on for long periods of time,” says Lynley Turkelson, a University of Cincinnati doctoral student and lead author of a new study on mindfulness and mind wandering.
“When distracting thoughts or feelings come up, mindfulness helps us gently set them aside and refocus on what is right in front of us,” says Turkelson.
Methods of practicing mindfulness vary, but common ones include practices such as breath-work and meditation.
For newbies, Turkelson suggests that one can start practice mindfulness by paying attention to the experience of eating a favorite food.
“You may start by noticing the smell of the food before you eat it, what it feels like as you bite into it, how it feels in your mouth, and the taste. Or perhaps you pay attention to the flow of breath in and out of your lungs or on the sensations you experience in various parts of the body.”
For the study, Turkelson, a doctoral student and fellow in UC’s Department of Psychology, and co-author Quintino Mano, PhD, a UC associate professor of psychology, conducted a systematic review of research that looks at the relationship between mindfulness and mind wandering.
What they found is that while mindfulness—the ability to intentionally focus attention on the present moment—can be effective for reducing mind wandering, results do differ depending on the research methodology. For instance, people are sometimes unaware when they are distracted, so asking them to report their own mind wandering is not reliable.
The study results show it’s better to measure mind wandering in other ways, such as using computer-based testing.
“During COVID, people are facing even more distractions than normal, so it is important to find research-based ways to decrease mind wandering and improve attention,” says Turkelson.
Turkelson says that their systematic review, published in theJournal of Cognitive Enhancement, looks at the research on this topic and synthesizes the results so that researchers know how consistent these findings are, as well as what still needs to be studied to improve our understanding of how mindfulness helps with mind wandering.
The Tunnel to Towers Foundation has paid off the mortgages of five families of fallen first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice and laid down their lives in the line of duty for their communities for the Foundation’s third annual Season of Hope.
These mortgage pay-offs are a part of the third annual Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s Season of Hope, which celebrates the holiday season by delivering mortgage-free homes or mortgage-payoffs to the families of America’s heroes who died in the line of duty.
Meet these five heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and learn about the impact this generosity has on their families.
Battalion Chief Edward Louis Karriem – Little Rock Fire Department, AR
Tunnels to Towers Foundation
Battalion Chief Edward Louis Karriem of the Little Rock Fire Department died in the line of duty on February 13, 2021. He was found unresponsive in his command car after responding to a house fire, and was then transported to the hospital where he later passed away. Battalion Chief Karriem was 41 years old at the time of his death, and served with the Division of Fire Services for 17 years. He is survived by his wife Denise and their four children.
Police Officer Myron Anthony Jarrett – Detroit Police Department, MI
Tunnels to Towers Foundation
Police Officer Myron Anthony Jarrett of the Detroit Police Department was killed in the line of duty on October 28, 2018. He was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver while assisting other officers during a traffic stop.
Police Officer Jarrett had served in the Detroit Police Department since Nov. 21, 2008. He is survived by his wife Sacha and their three children.
Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Proxmire – Kalamazoo Sheriff’s Office, MI
Tunnels to Towers Foundation
Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Proxmire of the Kalamazoo Sheriff’s Office died in the line of duty on August 15, 2021 from injuries he sustained from gunshot wounds he received during a high-speed chase.
Deputy Proxmire was taken to the hospital where he died the next day. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Deputy Proxmire was a nine year veteran with the Kalamazoo Sheriff’s Department. He is survived by his wife Roanna and their four children.
State Trooper Thomas Clardy – Massachusetts State Police, MA
Tunnels to Towers Foundation
Massachusetts State Trooper Thomas Clardy was killed in the line of duty on March 16, 2016 when he was struck by a vehicle while conducting a traffic stop. He was 44 at the time of his death. State Trooper Clardy is survived by his wife Reisa and their six children.
“Knowing our home will be paid off gives my family so much comfort and a sense of security. Being able to keep my children in their home that has been filled with so many beautiful memories is a blessing. The holidays can be a difficult time for my children without their father. Having the mortgage paid off during the Season of Hope helps us to have faith, joy and happiness during the holiday season. It eases the burden and allows us to be together as a family with less worry”, said Reisa.
State Trooper Clardy began his career in Law Enforcement in 2004 and graduated from the Massachusetts State Police academy in 2005. He was last stationed at the Charlton barracks, and before that he was stationed at the Sturbridge and Brookfield barracks. State Trooper Clardy was a member of the Community Action Team (C.A.T.) out of C-Troop. He was also a veteran and served as a member of the U.S. Army for two years before transferring to the U.S. Marine Corp where he served for 11 years.
Firefighter Brett Burkinshaw – Newburyport Fire Department, MA
Tunnels to Towers Foundation
Firefighter Brett Burkinshaw of the Newburyport Fire Department died in the line of duty on July 1, 2021 after a 19-month battle with job-related brain cancer. He was 47 at the time of his death, and he is survived by his wife Cheryl and their daughter.
“A home is where the heart is and where we have so many happy memories with Brett. Knowing that my daughter and I will have the security of our forever home being mortgage free is impossible to put into words,” said Cheryl. “We are truly beyond grateful to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation for making this all possible and are especially honored having this coincide with the 20th anniversaries of 9/11, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation formation and during the Season of Hope where the holidays this year will be the most emotionally difficult. Brett’s passion in life was to help others and that is reflected in the true meaning of this Foundation.”
Firefighter Burkinshaw served with the Newburyport Fire Department for 18 years; he joined the fire department as a call firefighter in May 2003, and became a full-time member of the department in August 2010. He had also been a Reserve Police Officer for the Newburyport Police Department.
In 2021, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation will have paid off over 60 mortgages for the families with young children of our nation’s heroes for the third annual Season of Hope, relieving these families of a grave financial burden following the tragic loss of their loved ones.
Season of Hope gives these families the gift of remaining in the homes where they made precious memories with their fallen heroes. Tunnel to Towers’ third annual Season of Hope began with paying the mortgages in full of Eight California Fallen First Responders families on Thanksgiving Day, with 6 more families having their mortgages paid off on December 3rd. Tunnel to Towers will have paid off 200 mortgages in full before the end of the year.
Intrigued by a photo shared on Instagram, a research team from India discovered a previously unknown species of kukri snake.
Staying at home in Chamba because of the pandemic lockdown, Virendar K. Bhardwaj, a master student in Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, started exploring his backyard, photographing everything he found there and posting the pictures online.
His Instagram account started buzzing with the life of the snakes, lizards, frogs, and insects he encountered.
One of those photos—a picture of a kukri snake—popped up in the feed of Zeeshan A. Mirza at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, and immediately caught his attention. After a chat with his colleague Harshil Patel, he decided to get in touch with Virendar and find out more about the sighting.
The snake, which Virendar encountered along a mud road on a summer evening, belongs to a group commonly known as Kukri snakes, named so because of their curved teeth that resemble the Nepali dagger “Kukri”.
At first sight, the individual that Virendar photographed looked a lot like the Common Kukri snake (Oligodon arnensis). However, a herpetologist could spot some unique features that raised questions about its identity.
Virendar uploaded the photo on 5 June 2020, and by the end of the month, after extensively surveying the area, he found two individuals—enough to proceed with their identification. However, the pandemic slowed down the research work as labs and natural history museums remained closed.
Upon the reopening of labs, the team studied the DNA of the specimens and found out they belonged to a species different from the Common Kukri snake. Then, they compared the snakes’ morphological features with data from literature and museums and used micro computed tomography scans to further investigate their morphology. In the end, the research team was able to confirm the snakes belonged to a species previously unknown to science.
The discovery was published in a research paper in the international peer-reviewed journal Evolutionary Systematics. There, the new species is described as Oligodon churahensis, its name a reference to the Churah Valley in Himachal Pradesh, where it was discovered.
“It is quite interesting to see how an image on Instagram led to the discovery of such a pretty snake that, until very recently, remained hidden to the world,” comments Zeeshan A. Mirza.
“What’s even more interesting is that the exploration of your own backyard may yield still undocumented species. Lately, people have been eager to travel to remote biodiversity hotspots to find new or rare species, but if one looks in their own backyard, they may end up finding a new species right there.”
“Compared to other biodiversity hotspots, the Western Himalayas are still poorly explored, especially in terms of herpetological diversity, but they harbor unique reptile species that we have only started to unravel in the last couple of years,” Mirza adds.
In 2021, green innovation continued at a pace that has typified the yet-young century, and goals and projects long pursued came to fruition.
Maintaining the health of the planet into the future relies on solving many problems, including the carbon emissions equation.
And beyond the headlines, the world really is, like Steven Pinker and others have claimed, getting better all the time. To see how far we’ve come, take a look at ten of GNN’s most popular environmental stories of the year.
1) Canada Launches Satellite Technology That Identifies ‘Dark Vessels’ Illegally Catching Billions of Fish
Dark Vessel Program-Fisheries and Oceans Canada
The health of the oceans is paramount to the health of the planet, and with satellite technology seeing massive increases in investment, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has partnered with the Department of National Defense to utilize military-grade satellites to scan the oceans for “dark vessels.”
These ships switch off their transponders, allowing them to slip undetected into vulnerable ecosystems for illegal fish harvesting. Once detected, the evidence can be shared with national and international policing and fishery bodies that enforce sustainable catch limits on fish stocks in poorer nations in the Caribbean and Pacific. READ MORE…
2) 20,000 Pounds of Trash Removed From Pacific Garbage Patch: ‘Holy mother of god. It worked!’
The Ocean Cleanup
For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about the problem of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and for all that time it seemed the only person who had a serious idea of how to get rid of it was a young man from the Netherlands.
After all these years, Boyan Slat has proved that if you want something done right, the best thing to do is to do it yourself. His method of using the very currents that made the patch to unmake it, this year, worked like a charm, drawing 20,000 pounds of trash out of the ocean in little time. READ MORE…
3) Largest Farm to Grow Crops Under Solar Panels Proves to Be a Bumper Crop for Agrivoltaic Land Use
Werner Slocum: NREL
2021 revealed that beyond a shadow of a doubt, certain crops will grow better when planted under specially-designed solar panel arrays, and that the presence of the crops increases the energy generation of the panels above.
This marriage has become known as agrivoltaic, and could potentially transform the farming industry into the largest green energy producer on Earth. READ MORE…
4) Huge Supply of Water is Saved From Evaporation When Solar Panels Are Built Over Canals
Rendering, Solar AquaGrid
India has invented ‘flying’ solar panels. They are being suspended above irrigation canals to cut down on the evaporation of precious water droplets by providing shade from the sun’s evaporating heat. It’s also a clever way to cut down on habitat loss, too, by placing panels in already-dedicated man-made spaces.
Now, California is eyeing the benefits of several successful canal installations in India. With the world’s largest irrigation canal network, and 290 days of average sunshine, California is uniquely positioned to ease a severe water shortage, saving 63 billion gallons of water from evaporation annually, with this emerging innovation of canal-covering solar farms. READ MORE…
5) Researchers Pull Carbon Out of the Sky And Convert it to Instant Jet Fuel, Reshaping Aviation For Good
Jordan Sanchez
Here’s some future-tech that seems hard to imagine, and harder not to get excited about. A cheap iron-based catalyst/intake combo onboard a passenger jet could be sucking CO2 out of the air and turning it into the very fuel it needs to operate.
Air travel accounts for a relatively-large portion of global emissions compared to the size of its footprint, and the researchers that discovered this revelation described anthropogenic CO2 emissions as a goldmine of raw materials if we only invented more ways of harvesting it. READ MORE…
6) Island Overrun With Rats Completely Recovers in Only 11 Years After Ecosystem Had Been Decimated
USFW
Joseph Stalin allegedly said that one death is a tragedy, a million, a statistic. Such is sometimes the case in the natural world.
Mainstream media often focuses on how many species are endangered, or how many acres of forest is lost, or how many tons of CO2 went into the atmosphere—they often forget that conservation is usually achieved through many small victories.
This Alaskan Island that used to be wealthy in seabird and mammal life was ignominiously-renamed “Rat Island,” but a total extermination campaign restored a near pristine ecosystem within just 11 years. READ MORE…
7) Hundreds of Solar Farms Built Atop Closed Landfills Are Turning Brownfields into Green Fields
Nexamp
One of the big knocks against solar panels is how much land they take up compared to how much power they generate. But what if there were a readymade source of open land nearby to cities and towns that was guaranteed not to be used for anything else?
As it turns out, landfills are becoming prime real estate for solar farms, and one nonprofit believes the U.S. could increase the nation’s solar energy capacity by 63 gigawatts, or approximately 60%, simply by building solar farms on landfills. READ MORE…
8) Kenyan Woman’s Startup Recycles Plastic Waste into Bricks That Are 5x Stronger Than Concrete
UNEP – YouTube
An absolutely brilliant young woman in Kenya has started a company manufacturing bricks from recycled plastic.
Nzambi Matee says she was “tired of being on the sidelines” while civil servants struggled against plastic waste in the capital city of Nairobi, so the materials engineer created a product that is 5 to 7 times stronger than concrete.
Founder of Gjenge Makers, which transforms plastic waste into durable building materials, Matee also designed the machines that manufacture the bricks in her factory. READ MORE…
9) World’s Biggest Factory to Suck Carbon from the Sky and Store it For Millions of Years Turns on in Iceland
Carbfix
A method to reliably capture carbon may have taken root in Iceland at a geothermal park where the “Orca Factory” will capture 4,000 tons of CO2 from of the atmosphere every year; the equivalent of taking 870 cars off the road.
The company behind it all says their ability to scale up is built into the technology and the business model. They hope to increase capacity by 80-fold by the end of the decade. READ MORE…
10) Spectacular Coral Event This Year Spawns Hope –And Billions of Babies For Great Barrier Reef (LOOK)
Courtesy of Reef Teach
Experts keeping track of the Great Barrier Reef’s breeding events have said this year’s shows that the system is working, and recovering.
The annual show where the billions of polyps that make up the corals synchronize the release of eggs and sperm into the water, “like the shaking of a giant snow globe,” was celebrated and video taped.
It was almost a decade ago that people began to refer to the reef as “dead” – watching the video linked to below, it seems it’s time to rethink that idea. READ MORE…
Brag About The Positive Things From 2021 – Share This On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “If you fuel your journey on the opinions of others, you are going to run out of gas.” – Steve Maraboli
Photo: by Matt Botsford
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?
