Quote of the Day: “America’s greatest contribution is its concept of democracy and freedom… freedom of action, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought.” – Benazir Bhutto (first woman to head a Muslim country)
Who Ms. Bhutto became the Prime Minister of Pakistan 30 years ago today, on December 2, 1988.
Photo: The top of the U.S. Capitol
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The Galapagos Islands features some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Scuba divers visit from all over the world to view the greatest show on Earth, a smorgasbord of marine animals from hammerhead sharks to the giant eagle rays.
Capable hunters of small fish and crustaceans, spotted eagle rays have evolved an ability to detect the electrical impulses of their prey through thousands of nerve cells located in their wings and around their heads.
They can also sense minute changes in water temperature and pressure.
Commonly seen alone, these rays are unique in appearance with their spotted back and flat snouts similar to a duck’s bill.
Their whip tails are longer than those of other rays, and they have 2-6 venomous, barbed stingers containing powerful venom that is capable of inflicting serious, even fatal wounds on large predators. (Look for them at the base of the tail in the video.)
With such defenses, they are avoided by most animals except large sharks—yet humans accidentally can run into them. They freely leap out of the water at times, and, at least twice have landed in boats with dire consequences for at least one woman.
RELATED: Curious Giant Whale Nudges Paddle Boarder in Stunning Video (WATCH)
The scuba diver in this video was hanging onto a rock in the strong current off Darwin Island when an eagle ray appeared and swam near him, almost within arm’s reach. It fought the current, making slow progress creating a prolonged and memorable experience for the lucky diver. WATCH below…
LOOK: Hiker Reaches Top of Summit and Has the Most Beautiful Encounter With Mountain Goats
GLIDE THIS Over to Friends on Social Media, And Lower Their Blood Pressure…
Filtering microplastics from polluted water using acoustic waves is the new solution to cleaning up our oceans, according to new research.
Microplastics are released into the environment as cosmetics, clothing, industrial processes, and plastic products like packaging, break down naturally.
The plastic pollutants then make their way into rivers and oceans, endangering marine life.
Filtering and removing these particles from water is a difficult and timely task, but using acoustic waves may provide a solution to this impenetrable task.
Dr Dhany Arifianto from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember in Surabaya, Indonesia, created a filtration prototype using acoustic waves and presented his method and its data at the Meeting of the 181st Acoustical Society of America in Seattle, designed to showcase the latest research about the science of sound.
Dr Arifianto and his team used two speakers to create the acoustic waves and the force produced was able to separate the microplastics from the water by creating pressure on a tube of inflowing water.
MORE: 20,000 Pounds of Trash Removed From Pacific Garbage Patch: ‘Holy mother of god. It worked!’
As the tube split into three channels, the microplastic particles are pressed towards the center as the clean water flows towards the two outer channels on either side.
The prototyped device cleaned a staggering 150 litres of polluted water per hour and was tested filtering three different microplastics.
Each plastic was filtered with different efficiency, but all were above 56 percent efficient in pure water and a further 59 percent efficient in seawater.
The team measured different variables against their efficiency and found that acoustic frequency, speaker-to-pipe distance, and water density all affected the amount of force generated.
RELATED: Plant Opens to Change the Recycling Game by Breaking Down Plastic Bottles With Enzyme From Leaves
The group is now studying how acoustic waves may impact marine life if the wave frequency is in the audible range.
HELP Innovative News Resonate and Share It Far and Wide…
A varsity football team in California is impressing the state’s athletic world, as the limited 23-player roster has gone undefeated 12-0 though all 23 players and their coach are deaf.
They don’t play in a hard of hearing league, they are beating hearing teams, sometimes by huge margins, all the while using American Sign Language to communicate on the field.
The Cubs varsity team from Riverside California have no pedigree of success. They’ve lost every single game for the previous seven seasons. Now their incredible transformation, which has landed the school in the championship game for the first time in its history, has drawn an endless stream of well-wishes and messages, including from NFL franchises.
Like all the most successful teams in any sport, the players explain they are taking their incredible season “one game at a time, one practice at a time,” ABC, speaking to the players using an ASL translator, reports.
“Now we’re just destroying every game. We’re showing the world we can play. We’re not losing anymore,” Wide Receiver Jory Valencia said.
MORE: An Entire School Started Learning Sign Language to Welcome Their First Ever Deaf Student
“We can do anything. Deaf people can do anything, we’re not this stereotype that’s out there,” said running back Enos Zornoza. “We’re breaking news that we can do it right. And not just our school here but other schools for the deaf can do it as well.”
The Cinderella story was not to have the most storybook of endings, as the Cubs fell short in the final against Faith Baptist, who had made the final 18 times in the last 37 years.
RELATED: Blind Hockey Goalie Invited to Play on Sighted Team: ‘An Incredible Experience!’
“It feels overwhelming,” Cubs head coach Keith Adams told NBC LA. “It’s been nonstop, getting messages, you know, congratulations and well-wishes. My email is blowing up. I’ve had some NFL head coaches—the Tennessee Titans have sent me congratulations. It’s just been amazing.”
(WATCH the CBS video for this story below… EDITOR’S NOTE: Viewers outside the US can view this video on the CBS website, here.)
THROW This Inspiring Story Over to Your Besties…
The simple of act of staring at a deep-red or near infrared light source for about three minutes was found to be enough to improve color vision in those suffering from failing eyesight.
The potential treatment allows the mitochondria in the human retina to produce more ATP, the principal energy currency of all cells, and offers a chance of keeping good color vision long into our golden years.
Just a single short trial run in 24 people was enough to improve their color vision for multiple days up to a week, and was most effective when performed in the morning. This is because the wavelength of light that was found to be effective is only present in our Earth sky at that time of day, and it’s also the time when the retinal-mitochondria produce the most ATP.
Making cells more energy-efficient can help with many different issues, says Glen Jeffery at University College London, who led the research focused on the retina—a patch of light-sensitive tissues at the back of the eye that have more mitochondrial density than any other cell. Inside, the retina turns light into pictures with two pieces of equipment, rods and cones.
Rods are very sensitive cells responsible for perceiving black and white, while cones are built for richly-lit environments and are responsible for the perception of color. Tests were made after the short light exposure by asking trialists to identify colored letters of a similar color to the background paper.
MORE: CRISPR Gene-Editing Experiment Partly Restores Vision In Legally Blind Patients
Their results have doctors, but also businesses, very excited at a potential at-home treatment for reduced sensitivity to color in old age.
“We demonstrate that we can significantly improve cone mediated color contrast thresholds for a week using a single 3 minute light exposure by an average of 17% and in some older subjects by > 20%,” the authors write in their corresponding paper, published in Nature journal.
“This simple and highly economic intervention applied at the population level will significantly impact on the quality of life in the elderly and likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision.”
RELATED: A Single Injection Reverses Blindness in Patient with Rare Genetic Disorder – Another RNA Success
New Scientist reports that other researchers believe the treatment could be applied to a much wider spectrum of ailments, as boosting the productivity of mitochondria is a relevant treatment for all kinds of age-related problems.
Mitochondria “turn on all the systems in the cell that make the cell work better,” says Janice Eells, who is currently advising a firm called LumiThera that’s attempting to bring light therapy products known as “photobiomodulators” to market.
Light therapy of different colors has been curiously shown to have benefits in other ways. Dr. Mohab Ibrahim at Tucson University Medical Center is using green light exposure in dark rooms to treat migraines. And flashing lights set to 40 hertz have been shown to clear away tau protein “plaque” that cause Alzheimer’s Disease by mimicking the brain wave oscillations of deep, slow-wave sleep.
GIVE an Eyeful of This Hopeful Research to Friends; Share This Piece…
Quote of the Day: “I didn’t belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I’d known that one day my differentness would be an asset.” – Bette Midler (born 76 years ago)
Photo: by Omid Armin
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?
This article is written by Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright and has been reprinted with permission from Mongabay.
The jaguar population in Mexico increased by about 800 animals from 2010 to 2018, according to the first two censuses of the elusive carnivores ever conducted in the country. The news confirms that Mexico’s national strategy to protect jaguars is working, researchers reported recently in the journal PLOS One.
“It was incredible to see jaguars in so many places where there weren’t any before,” said ecologist Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, founder of Mexico’s National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation and lead author of the paper.
The jaguar (Panthera onca), listed by the IUCN as Near Threatened, ranges from northern Mexico through Central America, the Amazon Basin, and into northern Argentina. Ecologists had never properly counted jaguars in Mexico before, making it difficult to design a conservation program in the iconic cat’s northernmost ranges. The alliance created by Ceballos and his colleagues used the results of the first Mexican jaguar census in 2010 to create a national strategy endorsed by government policy and scientists alike.
“This is very important,” said jaguar researcher Ronaldo Gonçalves Morato, head of the National Predator Center at the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade in Brazil, who was not involved in the study. “They are connecting science with conservation plans. It can be a good model for researchers—not only working with jaguars, but all the other big cats or other species that are critically endangered.”
Ceballos and a team of 20 ecologists spanning the country gathered data from photo capture traps to determine where jaguars lived and how many roamed in each of the country’s protected conservation regions. Then, they created a plan to tackle the most critical issues affecting Mexico’s jaguars: preserving wildlife corridors and sanctuaries; advocating for helpful laws and public policy; and avoiding or resolving conflicts with livestock owners.
For example, the government paid people living near protected areas to not deforest sanctuaries, compensated them for cattle losses from jaguar predation, and provided electric fences to prevent jaguars from killing livestock. The on-the-ground efforts paid off.
CHECK OUT: A 15 Million-Acre Protected Superhighway Near Galapagos Was Just Created to Preserve Marine Life
“Local people have been critical,” Ceballos told Mongabay. “When they have the funding and incentives to protect the forest, they become the most important ally.”
Ceballos expected jaguar populations to stay the same or decrease between 2010 and 2018. Instead, estimated numbers rose by 20%, from roughly 4,000 to 4,800 animals. Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula hosts about 2,000 jaguars, with others spread throughout coastal and inland habitats across the nation. Brazil hosts the largest continuous jaguar habitat today, with an estimated population of more than 10,000 individuals
Moving forward, the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation will focus on key threats, especially conflicts with humans and habitat loss.
Morato notes that other wildlife and ecosystems will benefit from these efforts.
“The jaguar is an umbrella species,” Morato told Mongabay. “They need a large amount of area, so if we need to protect a viable population of jaguars with at least 50 individuals, we are going to have many other species protected [within that area].”
In 2022, the Mexican government and the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation plan to expand the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in the southern Yucatan Peninsula from 723,185 hectares to more than 1.3 million hectares of land, making Calakmul the largest protected tropical forest north of the Orinoco River—all motivated by jaguar conservation.
“It’s very unusual that scientists can do all these things: research, outreach, conservation, and public policy,” said Ceballos. “And in Mexico we have been able to do that.”
(WATCH a jaguar and her cub in Mexico captured on camera.)
HELP Good News Roar—Share This Story…
For recreation league athletes, there’s nothing worse than when one of your teammates drops out at the last minute. When a rec league ice hockey team in Edmonton needed a goaltender, they got a save from an unlikely hero.
Nelson Rego is 100% blind: and by filling in as goalie for an acquaintance’s team, he became the first ever blind player to play in a sighted team in the province’s history.
Rego plays blind ice hockey for the Edmonton “SeeHawks” and met another goaltender, John Hunter, inquiring online about gear modifications and a chest protector. Later Hunter got injured, and trying to help his team find a goalie for a league game, he reached out on the Edmonton Goalies Facebook page.
“This is low level stuff so beginners to pro welcome!!! DM me if you’re interested and we’ll get you set up,” wrote Hunter.
“Nelson calls me, and he kind of starts out with, ‘Hey, how’s the chest protector going?” Hunter later told Edmonton news about the remarkable story. “By the way, I’m not sure if this is a good idea or not but I saw your post for a goalie sub for your league game tonight. What do you think about me playing?’”
RELATED: Mother of NHL Hockey Star Donates Kidney to Ice Rink Manager Who Kept Her Kids Out of Trouble
The team was “all in” and so Nelson strapped on his kit and got ready for his first-ever sighted league match.
According to the players, they didn’t tell the referee until the puck drop that their goalie was blind—information with which he didn’t really what to do. In an interview with CTV Edmonton, Rego, who has also driven motorcycles and racecars since going blind, explains he keeps himself centered in the goal by measuring the distance between the posts with his stick and his glove.
After he uses sound to key into where the puck is and if it’s being challenged, all the while following audio instructions from his loving wife Emelinda, in the stands relaying the action.
The game was by no means a washout, and even though Rego’s team lost 9-8, he hung in there and earned the respect and admiration of the team.
“They made no accommodations for me,” Rego said. “It was just like being one of the guys on the team and that whole comradery thing that you get with a team that’s the thing that I really love the most.”
MORE: One Man’s Crazy Idea For Michigan Town Lands Them As Finalist in ‘Nicest Places in America’ Contest
Hunter would later post on Facebook that “These are the nights where legends are born.”
“Good for him, he’s something; bragging rights,” said one spectator.
This remarkable night, “a childhood dream” as he would call it on Facebook, is just one step in his hockey career, as Rego also plays in the International Blind Ice Hockey Federation, and is sponsored by the Edmonton equipment outfitter Hockey Shop of Horrors.
“I’d say just go for it,” Rego says. “If it’s something you want to do, just do it. It’s amazing watching hockey, but it’s even better playing it.”
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
MELT Those Cold Feeds With Good News—Share This Story…
Ranchers in Australia are gradually allowing the “back end” of their animals to take care of their own back end when it comes to electricity costs by converting pig and cow excrement into fuel for biogas power plants.
“Piggeries” as they’re called in Australia, don’t have a reputation for clean or for green, but are now greener than vegetables as far as climate change is concerned, after concerted effort and investment from industry organizations and individual ranchers have turned pork into the second-lowest GHG producing agricultural source in the country.
Jock Charles operates Berrybank Piggery, and it was 27 years ago he started investing into waste-to-energy systems on his property where he rears 20,000 pigs at any given time. Traditionally, waste from pigs is collected and dumped into “effluent ponds,” where it’s treated with anaerobic bacteria to break it down.
Now Charles, who built a bio-digester, simply pumps it into a machine that operates in parallel to a pig’s stomach. There, bacteria breaks waste down into harmless manure, producing methane in the process. This methane is converted by a turbine into heat, which generates 90% of Berrybank’s electricity needs.
“We are producing about the same as we use, but during the day when we’re running the feed mill and a few other things, we are pulling some power in from the grid, and then in the evening, we export power,” Charles told ABC Australia.
Charles said it reduced energy costs by 90%, but that it also makes the piggery a much more pleasant place to work, as it provides a quicker disposal option for the 80,000 liters of liquid waste per day.
MORE: Batteries of the Future Set to be Cheaper and Better – Thanks to Sugar
“Seventy per cent of odor from piggeries comes out of lagoons or ponds [that are used to store manure], so if you can eliminate the ponds, which we’ve been able to do, then you’re only dealing with 30 per cent [of the smell].”
Biogas energy is transforming the Australian pork industry, with a study from the Grattin Institute showing that now only 2% of all ag-related emissions come from pork, which is less even than vegetable production. Furthermore, Australian Pork Limited, an industry research firm, says that 80% of all farm emissions can be reduced by using biogas, and that 16% of all piggeries in the country are now operating bio-digesters for manure management and for green energy generation.
But it’s not just piggeries that are benefiting from this manure-powered movement, and Mr. Charles actually helped a nearby dairy farm at Bungaree install their own bio-digester for the same reasons.
Mark Trigg runs a robotic dairy farm there, which produces tens of thousands of liters of manure which the bio-digester turns into enough electricity to cover half of the dairy’s demand.
RELATED: Malawi Inventor Lights Up His Whole Village Basically for Free–Starting With a Bicycle and a River
Furthermore, Trigg and his parent company, Gekko Systems, which runs a gold mine of all things, are able to take the solids leftover from the process and turn them into fertilizer. Charles has been making fertilizer for years, and his bio-digester at Berrybank produces 20 different varieties currently sold on the market.
Gekko Systems, whose owner Sandy Gray loves farming and “ended up in mining by mistake,” believes the technology could be used on mining operations in remote locations. He’s looking at creating a shipping-container-sized model of the bio-digester and biogas engine for that purpose.
“We’ve got interest from a mining company in human waste, they’ve got communities they’ve got to deal with in remote areas,” he told ABC Australia.
It goes back to that old chestnut about one man’s trash, except in this case it’s one man’s waste is another man’s want.
NO Need to Waste the Good News—Share This Piece With Friends…
An innocent man who served 43 years in prison for a triple murder he did not commit was finally released from a Missouri penitentiary.
Missouri law states that only DNA evidence can lead to someone wrongfully imprisoned receiving $50 per day of post-conviction confinement. Kevin Strickland was not freed that way. So, to help him on his way, a GoFundMe campaign was launched—and it has raised $1.65 million from caring strangers.
Strickland was sent to prison in 1979, but has maintained his innocence for four decades. He was charged for the murder of three people, and an eyewitness, Cynthia Douglas, was pressured by police to pick Strickland out of a lineup, after he was arrested merely on a hunch.
RELATED: Convict Learns Law, Wins Own Release, Now Works in Court of Appeals
He said he was watching television at the time, and no physical evidence ever linked him to the crime scene.
Ms. Douglas would later approach the Missouri Innocents Project with the desire to recant her testimony, but died before she was able to. Her children stated it was her will to see Strickland be freed, which prompted a re-examination of his case leading to his release.
MORE: Watch Exonerated Man Reunite With Puppy He Had Raised in Prison
Among the fundraiser’s contributors were moving messages of support.
Douglas Newel donated $25, saying, “Realizing how many people have contributed to this cause and reading through some of the messages has made my heart feel at least a little bit better. I hope it does the same for Kevin.”
“Look forward,” wrote William Elliot alongside his $100 donation. “Don’t allow yourself to be a prisoner of the past. You are now in charge of your life. Live boldly!”
‘Blackstone’s Ratio,’ written in 1760, says “the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
U.S. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin took that principle further, turning 10 into 100—and in that spirit the fundraiser has seen 29,000 people step in to do their part, hoping to make up for the flaws in their society.
(WATCH the ABC video for this story below.)
BE GENEROUS With the Good News—Share This Story…
Quote of the Day: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill (born 147 years ago today)
Photo: by Nghia Le
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?
Growing up in Sierra Leone, a young man who saw a problem and was determined to fix it has been awarded international prizes for excellence in innovation.
Jeremiah Thoronka invented a machine that delivers electricity to homes through absorbing kinetic energy from vehicles passing over roadways. The device powers 150 small homes, doesn’t rely on changing weather patterns, and needs no battery or external power infrastructure.
Out of 3,500 contestants, Thoronka picked up the $100,000 reward for his work at the Chegg.org Global Student Prize 2021. He also won the regional top student award from Commonwealth.org, and another £3,000 ($4,000) to go with it.
Hollywood mega from Down Under, Hugh Jackman, presented the award virtually, saying, “You’ve made an enormous difference to your community and far beyond. I’m sure that you will now use this incredible platform to make an even bigger impact.”
“It’s amazing, it’s wonderful. Words can’t express how I feel about this,” Thoronka was quoted as saying.
Sierra Leone has some of the least-established and least-reliable power grids on Earth, with only 26% of people having access to electricity. As a pupil, Thoronka describes seeing students fall behind who did not have adequate access to lighting in their homes for studying after dark.
MORE: Winner of 2021 Dyson Award Goes to First Ever Device to Monitor Glaucoma Symptoms From Home
At 17 he launched his startup, Optim Energy, to power homes via kinetic energy transfer. Once buried under a road it converts heat, pressure, and movement into electric currents without anyone being aware of it.
“I wanted to develop a more sustainable energy system, educate people about energy efficiency and stop their overuse of natural resources,” he told the BBC in a feature piece. “The Sun is not always shining, water is drying up, fossil fuels are not always going to be used, but people are always moving.”
RELATED: Tiny Wind Turbine That Generates Power From Your Apartment Balcony Wins Award
At a pilot program in Thoronka’s hometown of Makawo, Optim Energy successfully deployed two devices which powered 150 nearby homes and 15 schools, totaling services to more than 10,000 people, 9,000 of whom were students. He is currently looking to expand into the healthcare sector, presumably utilizing the busy roads and walkways near hospitals to generate required power for vaccine refrigeration.
“The device will mean more time for children to study and be digitally included in what is happening in the world, as well as the support of other economic activities which are desperately needed to move the country forward,” said Winnie Muchina from the African Leadership University in Rwanda.
(WATCH Thoronka receive his award below. )
(LEARN more about Thoronka’s innovation in this video.)
SHARE This Youth’s Story of Excellence With Others…
A new medical procedure could improve quality of life for millions of people after they undergo knee replacement surgery.
The treatment offers arthritis patients long term pain relief and an alternative to highly addictive painkillers, say scientists.
Arthritis or similar health conditions can make the joints, including knees and hips, extremely painful.
A growing number of patients are getting knee replacement surgery in the hope of regaining some mobility and quality of life. But between 15 and 30 percent of those who go under the knife continue to experience pain and stiffness. While some decide to go through surgery again, there is no guarantee this will solve the problem.
Now, scientists in the United States have tested a new procedure which could offer them long-term relief at last.
Assistant professor Felix Gonzalez at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta said, “A lot of patients don’t achieve any resolution of pain.
“It’s a big problem, and up till now, there weren’t any other options.”
MORE: Sufferers Living With Severe Arthritis Could be Given Lasting Pain Relief Thanks to a New Technique
The procedure, dubbed cooled radio frequency ablation (C-RFA), involves using a large needle to target specific nerve locations around the knee while the patient is under general anaesthetic.
A probe is then guided to the location before emitting a low voltage current—or radio frequency to the deep sensory nerves around the knee.
Dr Gonzalez said, “With a larger propagating heat wave, you can account for the differences in nerve anatomy from patient to patient because of a larger treatment zone.
“Treating a larger zone increases the effectiveness of the procedure.”
The researchers surveyed 21 patients who had complete knee replacement surgery and were suffering from persistent chronic pain.
RELATED: First Ever Study Shows Chair Yoga is Effective Arthritic Treatment
They were asked to fill out clinically validated questionnaires to assess their level of pain and how it affected everyday physical tasks.
Follow-up surveys were collected a year after participants received the C-RFA procedure.
It showed the patients had experienced a “statistically significant improvement” in their quality of life, the researchers found.
Both pain and stiffness scores were improved dramatically and no major complications were reported.
Likewise, they did not require further medical treatments, including surgery or any other kind of intervention.
Dr Gonzalez said, “This procedure can have a huge impact on patients who have gone through major surgery and are still suffering pain that is very debilitating.”
The procedure’s long term relief gives it a “major advantage” over current treatments such as cortisone injections, which usually only work for a few months.
Dr Gonzalez said, “It’s very encouraging that up to a year out these patients have such significant pain relief and a better quality of life.
“The hope is that in that period of time, the patient can become more mobile and increase their activity.
MORE: There’s ‘No Link’ Between Exercise and Developing Arthritis in the Knee
“Even if pain comes back, we predict that it won’t come back with the same intensity as before.”
The new procedure, which the researcher describe as “minimally intrusive,” is also easily replicated if necessary and could reduce patients dependency on highly addictive opioid painkillers.
Dr Gonzalez said, “We hope that this procedure will become a standard of treatment for pain in this setting.”
SHARE This Breakthrough Finding In Your News Feeds…
A Nigerian musician and showman asked for money on Twitter for his birthday to get his Rolls Royce released from a port, but flipped his friends and fans on their heads, donating the full amount of $600,000 to orphanages across the country.
Davido, one of Africa’s most successful musicians, needed only four days to raise $485,000 after writing on Twitter that “If u know I’ve given you a hit song .. send me money,” and posting his bank information.
Fans and other Nigerians were confused that, giving the levels of poverty in the country, such a wealthy individual could just ask for money from people. His original idea was for his friends, i.e. other musicians or industry people, to send him around $50,000, but soon his fans just started contributing.
When the fundraiser had reached $163,000 by Friday, Davido suggested he would just “give it all away,” but also released a new music video, presumably as a way of saying thank you.
Eventually though “it was getting too much” he told CNN. “Its not in my type of character to keep that,” he said, and shortly after the 29-year old musician released a statement of his intended purpose for the money, and announced his own $120,000 contribution.
MORE: Keanu Reeves Gifts His 4 Stuntmen With $20,000 Rolex Watches Engraved With Fun Messages
“In my usual playful manner, I requested a few days ago that my friends and colleagues send money in celebration of my birthday,” Davido wrote in a statement. “The response and outcome exceeded my expectations.”
— Davido (@davido) November 18, 2021
CNN reports that he has appointed a disbursement committee to identify orphanages in need and distribute the money accordingly.
(WATCH the video about this story below.)
GIFT This Generosity Story To Those You Know…
Quote of the Day: “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” – Rumi
Photo: by Dameli Zhantas
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?
There are positive effects of talking with strangers, a new study finds.
People benefit from deep and meaningful conversations that help us forge connections with one another, but we often stick to small talk with strangers because we underestimate how much others are interested in our lives and wrongly believe that deeper conversations will be more awkward and less enjoyable than they actually are, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Connecting with others in meaningful ways tends to make people happier, and yet people also seem reluctant to engage in deeper and more meaningful conversation,” said Nicholas Epley, PhD, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
He is a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “This struck us as an interesting social paradox: If connecting with others in deep and meaningful ways increases well-being, then why aren’t people doing it more often in daily life?”
To answer that question, Epley and his colleagues designed a series of twelve experiments with more than 1,800 total participants. The researchers asked pairs of people – mainly strangers – to discuss either relatively deep or shallow topics. In some experiments, people received shallow or deep questions to discuss.
RELATED: If Anyone Needs to Stay Positive, Just Validate Their Feelings—Study Says
Shallow questions included typical small-talk topics, such as, “What is the best TV show you’ve seen in the last month? Tell your partner about it” or “What do you think about the weather today?” while deep questions elicited more personal and intimate information, such as, “Can you describe a time you cried in front of another person?” or “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, your future, or anything else, what would you want to know?” In other experiments, people generated their own deep and shallow conversation topics.
Before the conversations, participants predicted how awkward they thought the conversations would be, how connected they thought they would feel to their conversation partner and how much they would enjoy the conversation. Afterward, they rated how awkward the conversations actually were, how connected they actually felt and how much enjoyment they actually experienced.
Overall, the researchers found that both deep and shallow conversations felt less awkward and led to greater feelings of connectedness and enjoyment than the participants had expected. That effect tended to be stronger for deep conversations.
LOOK: Positive Outlook Predicts Less Memory Decline, Says New Research
Participants who discussed the deep questions overestimated how awkward the conversation would be—significantly more than those who discussed shallow questions.
Deep conversations were also more enjoyable and led to a stronger sense of connection. In one experiment, participants who had a deep conversation with one partner and a shallow conversation with another partner initially expected to prefer the shallow conversation but actually preferred the deep conversation after having both of them.
If deep connection is genuinely better and people in these experiments said they wanted to have deep conversations, then why aren’t they actually having more of them? The researchers suspected it might be because people underestimate how interested strangers are in learning about their deeper thoughts and feelings. In some of the experiments, the researchers asked participants to predict how interested their conversation partner would be in the discussion, and then afterward to indicate how interested their partner actually was in the discussion. On average, people consistently underestimated how interested their partners would be in learning about them.
POPULAR: Performing Acts of Kindness Can Boost Both Physical Health and Happiness Levels, Study Finds
“People seemed to imagine that revealing something meaningful or important about themselves in conversation would be met with blank stares and silence, only to find this wasn’t true in the actual conversation,” Epley said. “Human beings are deeply social and tend to reciprocate in conversation. If you share something meaningful and important, you are likely to get something meaningful and important exchanged in return, leading to a considerably better conversation.”
In the final experiments, the researchers examined whether having more accurate expectations about a conversation partner increased people’s interest in having a deeper conversation.
In one experiment, they told the participants to imagine that they would be speaking to a particularly caring and interested person, or to a particularly uncaring and uninterested one. Participants who expected they would be speaking to the caring person chose to discuss deeper questions than participants who expected to speak to an uncaring partner. In another experiment, the researchers simply told people about the results of the previous experiments – letting them know that most people underestimate the degree to which other people are interested in hearing about their personal and deeper thoughts. People given this information later chose to discuss deeper questions with a stranger than people not given the information.
These findings, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, two months ago, have important practical implications, according to Epley.
“Our participants’ expectations about deeper conversations were not woefully misguided, but they were reliably miscalibrated in a way that could keep people from engaging a little more deeply with others in their daily lives,” he said. “As the pandemic wanes and we all get back to talking with each other again, being aware that others also like meaningful conversation might lead you to spend less time in small talk and have more pleasant interactions as a result.”
SHARE This Meaningful Topic With Strangers on Social Media…
Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week beginning November 26, 2021
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Poet Renée Ashley describes what she’s attracted to: “I’m drawn to what flutters nebulously at the edges, at the corner of my eye—just outside my certain sight. I want to share in what I am routinely denied or only suspect exists. I long for a glimpse of what is beginning to occur.” Although I don’t think that’s a suitable perspective for you to cultivate all the time, Sagittarius, I suspect it might be appealing and useful for you in the coming weeks. Fresh possibilities will be coalescing. New storylines will be incubating. Be alert for the oncoming delights of the unknown.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
What could you do to diminish your suffering? Your next assignment is to take two specific steps to begin that process. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’re more likely than usual to see what’s necessary to salve your wounds and fix what’s broken. Take maximum advantage of this opportunity! I proclaim this next chapter of your life to be titled “In Quest of the Maximum Cure.” Have fun with this project, dear Capricorn. Treat it as a mandate to be imaginative and explore interesting possibilities.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
“It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves,” wrote my favorite Aquarian philosopher, Simone Weil. I agree. It’s advice I regularly use myself. If you want to be seen and appreciated for who you really are, you should make it your priority to see and appreciate yourself for who you really are. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to make progress in this noble project. Start this way: Write a list of the five qualities about yourself that you love best.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Nigerian author Ben Okri, born under the sign of Pisces, praises our heroic instinct to rise above the forces of chaos. He writes, “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.” You’ve been doing a lot of that excellent work throughout 2021, dear Pisces. And I expect that you’ll be climaxing this chapter of your life story sometime soon. Thanks for being such a resourceful and resilient champion. You have bravely faced but also risen above the sometimes-messy challenges of plain old everyday life. You have inspired many of us to stay devoted to our heart’s desires.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Aries author Chris Brogan says, “Don’t settle. Don’t finish crappy books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.” That’s the best possible counsel for you to hear, in my astrological opinion. As an Aries, you’re already inclined to live by that philosophy. But now and then, like now, you need a forceful nudge in that direction. So please, Aries, go in pursuit of what you want, not what you partially want. Associate with the very best, most invigorating influences, not the mediocre kind.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Author Kurt Vonnegut wrote wistfully, “I still catch myself feeling sad about things that don’t matter anymore.” If similar things are running wild in your head, dear Taurus, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to banish them. You will have extra power to purge outdated emotions and reclaim at least some of the wild innocence that is your birthright. PS: There’s nothing wrong with feeling sad. In fact, feeling sad can be healthy. But it’s important to feel sad for the right reasons. Getting clear about that is your second assignment.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
“I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.” So says the main character in Gemini author Michelle Hodkin‘s novel The Evolution of Mara Dyer. If that heart-rending statement has resonance with your own personal experience, I have good news: The coming weeks will be a favorable time to transform the situation. I believe you can figure out how to share key stories and feelings that have been hard to reveal before now. Be alert for unexpected opportunities and not-at-all-obvious breakthroughs.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
A study of people in 24 countries concluded that during the pandemic, over 80 percent of the population have taken action to improve their health. Are you in that group? Whether or not you are, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to go further in establishing robust self-care. The astrological omens suggest you’ll find it easier than usual to commit to good new habits. Rather than trying to do too much, I suggest you take no more than three steps. Even starting with just one might be wise. Top three: eating excellent food, having fun while exercising right, and getting all the deep sleep you need.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Leo-born scholar Edith Hamilton loved to study ancient Greek civilization. She wrote, “To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before.” One sign of Greece’s devotion to joie de vivre was its love of play. “The Greeks were the first people in the world to play,” Hamilton exulted, “and they played on a great scale. All over Greece, there were games”—for athletes, dancers, musicians, and other performers. Spirited competition was an essential element of their celebration of play, as was the pursuit of fun for its own sake. In resonance with your astrological omens, Leo, I propose you regard ancient Greece as your spiritual home for the next five weeks.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Virgo singer-songwriter Florence Welch of the band Florence and the Machine told an interviewer why she wrote “Hunger.” She said, “I looked for love in things that were not love.” What were those things? According to her song, they included taking drugs and performing on stage. Earlier in Florence’s life, as a teenager, “love was a kind of emptiness” she experienced through her eating disorder. What about you, Virgo? Have you looked for love in things that weren’t love? Are you doing that right now? The coming weeks will be a good time to get straight with yourself about this issue. I suggest you ask for help from your higher self. Formulate a strong intention that in the future, you will look for love in things that can genuinely offer you love.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
There’s a Grateful Dead song, with lyrics written by John Perry Barlow, that says, “You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.” I propose you make that your featured advice for the next two weeks. I hope you will be inspired by it to figure out what truths you might be trying hard not to know. In so doing, you will make yourself available to learn those truths. As a result, you’ll be led on a healing journey you didn’t know you needed to take. The process might sound uncomfortable, but I suspect it will ultimately be pleasurable.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Scorpio author and philosopher Albert Camus was a good thinker. At age 44, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature—the second-youngest recipient ever. And yet he made this curious statement: “Thoughts are never honest. Emotions are.” He regarded thoughts as “refined and muddy”—the result of people continually tinkering with their inner dialog so as to come up with partially true statements designed to serve their self-image rather than reflect authentic ideas. Emotions, on the other hand, emerge spontaneously and are hard to hide, according to Camus. They come straight from the depths. In accordance with astrological potentials, Scorpio, I urge you to keep these meditations at the forefront of your awareness in the coming weeks. See if you can be more skeptical about your thoughts and more trusting in your emotions.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)
SHARE The Wisdom With Friends Who Are Stars in Your Life on Social Media…
British Columbia’s provincial government has recognized that its old-growth forests are irreplaceable, vital ecosystems, and has spared 10,000 square miles, or 2.6 million hectares of forest from logging.
The pause was issued following B.C.’s recently announced commitment to halt one-third of all old-growth logging, which itself came on the same day as world leaders at COP26 announced their own attempts to end deforestation.
The woods of B.C. gave it the name the “Brazil of the North” in the 1990s, and are filled with Douglas fir, western red cedar, and Roosevelt elk, black bears, wolves, and endangered birds. Some of the forests have remain undisturbed essentially since the last Ice Age, reports Globe and Mail.
“We’ve identified 2.6 million hectares of our largest, rarest and most ancient old-growth forests,” Forests Minister Katrine Conroy told a news conference. “Deferring harvest in an area this large is unprecedented and surpasses the size of 226 cities of Vancouver.”
The only catch is that based on the United Nations Treaty on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the B.C. government must receive the free, prior, and informed consent of 204 First Nations tribes that inhabit the province before making the logging moratoriums concrete.
Essentially, the First Nations could decide to continue to develop timber resources if they so wished.
MORE: Refugees in Cameroon Have Turned a Treeless Desert Camp Into a Thriving Forest – LOOK
The 2.6 million hectares are part of the 7.6 million hectares of ancient or old growth forest which remain in B.C., and represent a uniquely biodiverse and critical stands of trees.
Further plans to reform the governmental timber company and its logging patterns—away from clear-cutting and towards mimicking natural disturbances—are also coming, as the province looks toward a preservation-first attitude to forestry following pressure from community groups and non-profits like the Ancient Forest Alliance to protect local endangered old-growth areas.
“[This] means that we would harvest in a manner more linked to the way nature would change the forest. In some coastal forests, that’s a few trees at a time,” said Gary Merkel, a professional forester who participated in a government-ordered panel review of B.C. timber harvesting two years ago.
RELATED: Jane Goodall Enlists Fans to Help Plant a Trillion Trees Around the World by 2030
The provincial government hopes to complete the consultation with the Nations in a spritely 30 days, at which point it will ask timber operators to voluntarily give up their permits.
In the event they should not, Globe and Mail report, processes to repeal them will be followed, and future permit issuing banned.
LET Good News Grow—Share This With Tree Lovers on Social Media…
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Base in California.
Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART – built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland – will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
DART will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it – a method of deflection called kinetic impact. The test will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered. LICIACube, a CubeSat riding along with DART and provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), will be released prior to DART’s impact to capture images of the impact and the resulting cloud of ejected matter.
“It is an indescribable feeling to see something you’ve been involved with since the ‘words on paper’ stage become real and launched into space,” said Andy Cheng, one of the DART investigation leads at Johns Hopkins APL and the individual who came up with the idea of DART. “The teams have much work to do over the next year preparing for the main event ─ DART’s kinetic impact on Dimorphos. But tonight we celebrate!”
The spacecraft completed the successful unfurling of its two, 28-foot-long, roll-out solar arrays. They will power both the spacecraft and NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial ion engine, one of several technologies being tested on DART for future application on space missions.
DART is making a one-way trip to the Didymos asteroid system, which comprises a pair of asteroids. DART’s target is the moonlet, Dimorphos, which is approximately 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. The moonlet orbits Didymos, which has a diameter of 2,560 feet (780 meters).
Since Dimorphos orbits Didymos at much a slower relative speed than the pair orbits the Sun, the result of DART’s kinetic impact within the binary system can be measured much more easily than a change in the orbit of a single asteroid around the Sun.
The spacecraft will intercept the Didymos system between Sept. 26 and Oct. 1, 2022, intentionally slamming into Dimorphos at roughly 4 miles per second (6 kilometers per second). Scientists estimate the kinetic impact will shorten Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by several minutes—and researchers will precisely measure that change from telescopes on Earth.
POPULAR: The First Amateur Astronomer to Ever Discover a New Moon – And it’s Orbiting Jupiter
Roughly four years after DART’s impact, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both asteroids, with particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise determination of Dimorphos’ mass.
“DART is turning science fiction into science fact and is a testament to NASA’s proactivity and innovation for the benefit of all,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We’re also working to protect that home, and this test will help prove out one viable way to protect our planet from a hazardous asteroid should one ever be discovered that is headed toward Earth.”
No one has yet identified any significant asteroid impact threat to Earth, but the goal of the DART collaboration is to find any possible impact, years to decades in advance, so it can be deflected with a capability like DART, which is possible with the technology we currently have.
LOOK: Astronomers Spot Light From Behind a Black Hole for the First Time – Proving Einstein Right Again
DART’s single instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), will turn on a week from now and provide first images from the spacecraft. DART will continue to travel just outside of Earth’s orbit around the Sun for the next 10 months until Didymos and Dimorphos will be a relatively close 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.
For more information, visit the the DART mission website.
BLAST This Amazing News Over to Your Friends on Social Media…
The 2021 winners of the International James Dyson Award were announced, presented to young engineers whose devices might make the world a brighter place—like his breakthrough vacuum cleaners have.
Inspired by her father’s diagnosis of glaucoma and the multiple uncomfortable hospital visits, this year’s top winner, Kelu Yu, realized there is a global need for a less invasive, accessible home eye care device.
About 80 million people have glaucoma worldwide, and there is no cure but, if diagnosed and treated early, blindness can be prevented.
Kelu, along with Si Li and David Lee, spent 18 months designing a home testing device known as an Intraocular Pressure monitor (IOP) to be a critical, yet convenient, pain-free tool for eye care.
Called HOPES, the self-monitoring device and its app are a safe low-cost solution for any doctor to monitor the disease without requiring patient trips to their office.
HOPES, (which stands for Home eye Pressure E-skin Sensor) is a wearable biomedical device powered by patent-pending sensor technology and artificial intelligence.
After creating a profile in the App, the user wears the HOPES glove with the sensor placed at the fingertip, and pressed against the center of the eyelid. The unique sensor captures dynamic pressure information of the user’s eye with sub-millisecond precision. The captured signals are processed by machine learning algorithms and then transmitted to the Cloud via Bluetooth to be accessed remotely by clinicians.
LOOK: Tiny Wind Turbine That Generates Power From Your Apartment Balcony Wins Dyson Award
“I’ve experienced first-hand how invasive and unpleasant the tests for glaucoma can be, but it is a vital test,” said Sir James Dyson, the Founder and Chief Engineer at Dyson who started the awards.
Commercializing an idea, especially a medical device, is very difficult, he added. “I hope that the awareness this Award drives, as well as the financial support it provides, will give these ideas a springboard to success.”
The inventors, from National University of Singapore, were awarded $40,000 with the Prize, and plan to collaborate with clinicians at the National University Hospital to collect and analyze patients’ eye pressure data to train the device’s machine learning mode.
MORE: A Low Cost Inflatable Incubator for Babies Wins Dyson Award
“We want to improve people’s quality of life and aspire to one day apply our research group’s sensor technology across different health monitoring applications, such as robotics and biomedical devices.”
LET Others See The News– Share on Social Media…
