A 40-year-old inventor in the Philippines has apparently set a world record for longest flight by a hoverboard.
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Kyxz Mendiola launched his personal aircraft, called the Koncepto Milenya, from a beach and flew for seven minutes and 22 seconds—a distance of 1.79 miles / 2.89km.
Footage shot in Zambales province on July 10 shows the Filipino, who is a drone and flying car enthusiast, gliding 30-feet above the ground, over water and fishing boats, while the water rippled below.
The flight reportedly surpassed the Guinness World record set in 2016 by Frenchman Franky Zapata who flew a jet-powered hoverboard across a distance of 2.25km.
“Our flight data indicated that we actually achieved 2.89km. I could not believe it,” said the delighted inventor and professional hip-hop dancer. “It was more than what we were expecting.”
Quote of the Day: “Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.” – Joss Whedon
Photo: by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist
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The universe offers a myriad of opportunities for random acts of kindness. When such a chance falls in our path, some choose to ignore it and keep on walking, while others rise to the occasion with grace and kindness.
Case in point: When Nova Scotia native Matthew Van De Riet unexpectedly found himself at the scene of an auto wreck on a lonely patch of highway, without hesitation, he stepped in to help.
Van De Riet was first alerted to the situation when he noticed a very distressed-looking dog standing by the side of the road. Kipper, a 10-year-old Basset Hound, and her canine companion Merlin, a 2-year-old shepherd, had been thrown from their owners’ vehicle by the impact of the crash.
After quickly securing the dogs, Van De Riet turned his attentions to the human passengers in the badly damaged vehicle. Though the car was flipped on its roof, both the driver and his girlfriend survived the accident.
As Van De Riet tended to them with his first-aid kit, he reached out to another passerby to call for emergency intervention. The medical personnel who arrived soon after determined the female passenger’s injuries, though not life-threatening, warranted her being airlifted to a nearby hospital for care.
Rather than leaving the driver and the dogs stranded, Van De Riet transferred the couple’s belongings and all their dog gear into his truck and drove the young man to the Halifax hospital where his girlfriend was being treated.
But for Van De Riet, the day’s random acts of kindness were far from finished.
With their owners new to the area and having no family close by, Van De Riet was left with the logistical problem of what to do with Kipper and Merlin. Again, without hesitation, he offered to keep the dogs until the couple was able to pick them up.
“I figured the least I could do was take those dogs home with me,” told CBC News. “I knew the pups were shaken up—and I know if somebody was in an accident and their loved one is hurt, the last thing they need to worry about is their dogs.”
Although both pooches appeared to be mostly okay, just to be on the safe side, Van De Riet brought them to a local animal hospital for evaluation. Following a checkup (donated free of charge due to the circumstances), the doggy duo was cleared to go and given pain medication to deal with any lingering effects of the accident.
After the vet visit, Van De Riet brought Merlin and Kipper home and let them get acquainted with his two miniature Doberman housemates. A long day filled with unforeseen events and random acts of kindness was followed by a quiet night of trust, safety, and security—and all thanks to the unsolicited help of a truly humble local hero.
Any arguments to the contrary aside, Van De Riet sees nothing particularly out of the ordinary about his willingness not only to aid a pair of total strangers in distress, but to go the extra mile to ensure their furry friends were safe as well.
“It was the least I could do. I would expect anyone in this province to do the same thing if they were in my shoes,” Van De Riet told CBC. “It just happened to be that I was the one that was there first, I guess. [I’m no] Good Samaritan… It’s just the Nova Scotia way.”
While we can only hope everyone in Nova Scotia shares this unselfish outlook on life, we’d certainly like to send out a sincere thank you to Mr. Van De Riet’s parents for raising such a truly thoughtful and compassionate son.
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These touching pictures show a man taking his dying pet dog up his favourite mountain on one last walk—in a wheelbarrow.
Ten-year-old Monty enjoyed exploring hills and walks all over Wales with his owner Carlos Fresco.
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The pair have visited the Brecon Beacons many times over the years, and have even summited the three peaks.
But after becoming aware the labradoodle wasn’t very well, Carlos decided to return to the beacons, staying with friends in Brecon, so they could share one last journey together.
Carlos and Monty travelled up to the peak of Pen y Fan—where many walkers stopped to say hello and meet Monty, who was helped to the top with the aid of a wheelbarrow.
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Monty passed away on June 21 after an 18-month battle with leukaemia.
Carlos said: “I knew Monty was dying as his cancer had returned. He was diagnosed 18 months ago and responded very well to chemotherapy.
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“But unfortunately his leukaemia returned eight weeks ago and he declined very rapidly. He loved hill walks and we improvised and took him on trips around your wonderful beacons. Although he was weak he enjoyed all the fuss and attention received by so many well wishers.
“In fact total strangers asked if they could share in pushing Monty on his last journey—and many total strangers shed a tear as we all love dearly our little four-legged friends.
“That little guy touched so many lives. Made everyone he came into contact with smile and just take a moment to reflect how sometimes life’s not that bad.
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“Our little companions are never judgemental, are always there waiting for you and offer comfort when things haven’t gone well.
The Lesson: Human society is filled with value, and we can place value on almost any object or opportunity. Viewing the financial system through the lens of permaculture, Ethan Rolland identifies Eight Forms of Capital which, when contemplated as a whole, gives us a clearer understanding of our net worth—not just in dollars. We can all learn to utilize our eight forms of capital, our unique currencies: financial, material, living, social, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, and cultural.
Notable Excerpt: Using the analogy of an ecosystem, Ethan says, “Your capital isn’t necessarily a currency. Capital is the root, and currency is the derivative we use to exchange… By exercising capital, you extract a currency that then complexes to a real thing or effect in the world… So with social capital, the currency is connections. It complexes to influence and relationships.”
The Host: A well-known expert in permaculture, homesteading, and general self-reliance, Jack Spirko works to provide every possible resource for those looking to increase their self-reliance, whether that’s building a homemade aquaculture pond in your backyard, learning how to link up with local farmers and artisans, or how to become an expert at foraging for wild plants and mushrooms.
The Podcast: Nearing episode 3,000, The Survival Podcast features guests, essays, and other content regarding the bottomless well of information in the space of homesteading and permaculture. Roundtable discussions with other permaculture experts, and “Miyagi Mornings” can also be found, where Spirko discusses a variety of concepts and ideas with experts.
(LISTEN to the podcast episode below… *Warning: Language includes light cursing – Featured photos: Ethan Rolland and Maksim Romashkin)
Whether it’s seeing a kid need only a few seconds to learn Mary had a Little Lamb on the piano, experiencing getting wiped out by a much better player in a pickup basketball game, or witnessing someone’s encyclopedic memory while they rattle off statistics about geography, humans exhibit natural talents every day.
Now, a study seeking the origin of “natural talent” in dogs has been published in Nature. It found that just as in humans, some particular pooches display more innate talent than others.
This story has a lot to do with border collies, a dog species which the authors of the study note was bred for herding sheep and therefore had to be extra-cognizant of their owners’ calls, instructions, and whistles.
The American Kennel Club reported last year on a border collie named Chaser, who had 1,022 toys and knew the individual names of every one, while Science reported on one named Rico who knew the names of 200 toys and could very quickly retrieve those for which he had no name by using exclusion learning and inference at about the level of a 3-year-old human.
Locating 34 dog owners across the globe using social media, Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University wanted to see if they could attach specific names to all the toys they played with, and be able to recognize and respond to those names immediately.
Of those 34 dogs, only one border collie succeeded, a young female named Olivia, who couldn’t entirely complete the trial due to health complications.
“[W]e decided to set up a study in which both puppies and adult naïve dogs are systematically and intensively trained for learning at least two object names over a 3-month period, and we used a strictly controlled testing method to assess the dogs’ learning outcome every month from the start of the training,” wrote Fugazza in her paper.
Every month a scientist would visit the dog’s house and test to see if they could retrieve an object based on the names they’d been practicing. If they succeeded, another name would be added.
Perhaps the surprising thing is that of the 34 dogs, 19 were border collies, and 18 of them failed to learn a single name.
The hypothesis was that some dogs with certain neurological plasticity owing to either early-life training or breed-activity would have better abilities.
However, the dogs learned the names of toys “irrespectively of the age of the subjects and despite intensive training,” the researchers wrote, concluding by saying that “while a few rare individuals can rapidly master multiple object names, we suggest that the capacity to learn object-names in dogs shows analogies with exceptional performance (talent) in humans.”
It seems that it’s just as hard to find out why Mozart was Mozart as it is to find out why Chaser the border collie was Chaser the border collie.
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Cameras attached to stop lights and other posts on bridges in Seoul aren’t there to tell if you’re speeding; they’re doing a much more important job—a lifesaving job.
Using artificial intelligence, programmers at the Seoul Institute of Technology are building a system of recognizing body movements and other cues to help identify whether someone is contemplating ending their own life. If the system thinks there’s a risk, it will immediately alert local rescue teams.
Suicide is a major problem in South Korea, and the rates there are higher than in other well-developed countries. Furthermore, it can be extremely difficult for even trained surveillance teams to deduce whether a person is simply being pensive while enjoying the view from one of Seoul’s 27 bridges.
“We believe the new CCTV will enable our crews to detect the cases a bit faster and help us head to a call more promptly,” Kim Hyeong-gil, who is in charge of the Yeouido Water Rescue Brigade, told Reuters.
Critically important is that the system learns by itself from experience, analyzing in every detail what an at-risk person is doing, and then cataloguing the actions depending on whether it was confirmed to be an attempted suicide or not.
The programmers are looking to pilot the system with the Seoul Fire and Rescue this October.
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Quote of the Day: “How important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong… to measure yourself at least once.” – Jon Krakauer
Photo: by Hudson Hintze
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
When a pet goes missing, owners frantically search every Lost & Found website, bombard social media with pleas for help, and post rewards in hopes their fur baby will find its way home. Stories with happy endings are always the best ones—but this tale has a twist.
Brayden Morton’s Shar-Pei Darla didn’t just disappear, she was dognapped outside his home in Cranston, British Colombia. Her abductors loaded her into a pickup truck and drove off.
Morton immediately posted word of the incident to social media. It was shared more than 30,000 times. A $5,000 reward offer followed.
Lots of tips poured in but when Morton got a call from a woman who sounded clearly distraught—he could hear her crying in the background—he knew he’d found the dognapper.
Instead of lashing out, he comforted and reassured the woman instead. They arranged to meet at the parking lot of a local mall. The woman, still in tears, gave Darla back to Morton and apologized. She hadn’t acted alone, but she was truly remorseful for her role in the crime.
Looking at her, Morton had an epiphany. He realized she was a drug user—she admitted the whole plot was a means to get money to buy drugs—and the reason Morton knew was that he’d once been an addict himself.
Clean and sober since May of 2015, Morton’s personal journey back from addiction began at the Top of the World Ranch Treatment Center. After successfully completing the program there, Morton took a volunteer staff position.
Eventually, he went on to become an intervention counselor working in the field. (These days, he runs Find the Right Rehab, a company whose goal is to pair addicts with facilities that will afford them the best possible treatment outcomes.)
Morton had the reward money with him when he went to collect Darla, but rather than hand it over to the woman, Morton gave her what might turn out to be a life-changing choice instead: If she was willing to go into rehab treatment, he’d pay for it.
They’ve been talking it over since that day, and he’s waiting to hear back on what she’s decided. Even knowing from his own experience that an addict will quit only when he or she is truly ready, Morton remains hopeful she’ll take him up on the offer.
But there’s more to the story. While Morton was searching for Darla, a tipster had given him information on another possible suspect. Morton was able to track the man down but learned he wasn’t involved in the dognapping. He was, however, down on his luck and had no place to live.
As an act of kindness, Morton paid for a week’s stay at a hotel. From there, thanks to social media, the good deed snowballed. Once they learned of his generosity, not only did Morton’s Facebook cronies pick up the tab for another week’s rent, they found the man a job.
For a tale that started out so badly, this one continues to unfold in unexpected and heartening directions. For Morton, being reunited with his beloved dog is truly a blessing, but it’s not the only one he’s taken away from the experience.
The road to recovery is long and hard, and without a safety net, homelessness can happen to almost anyone, sober or not. Having the ability to connect with people who are still struggling as he once did and being able to make a difference in their lives has given Morton a unique perspective that’s made him truly thankful.
“I would say honestly, more than anything… it was exactly what I needed in my life at that point in time. Those people helped me immensely. [They] really warmed my heart and humbled me,” Morton told the Cranbrook Daily Townsman. “I’m just as grateful for those two relationships that I made in this whole ordeal and I’m happy that I was able to meet [them].”
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Nearly six in 10 American kids admit to stealing one of their parent’s old outfits to wear to school, according to a new poll.
A survey of 1,000 kids ages 5-18, and their parents, reveals that nostalgia for the fashion of their parents’ era is strong—with three in four kids saying they think their parents’ sense of style as a teenager was actually “cool.”
Kids aren’t just longing for styles of the past, but implementing them into their own wardrobes, with 63% of kids saying that they love retro fashion and find inspiration from the past for their daily school outfits.
And 67% said they would take “mom jeans” over skinny jeans any day.
Parents have noticed this “retro and reimagined” phenomenon, too. Four in five parents polled say they often see their kids wearing an outfit similar to one they would have worn when they were in school.
This back-to-school season, retro styles, DIY self-expression, and personalization are emerging as key trends, and 99% of parents say it’s at least somewhat important to involve their kids in purchasing decisions when it comes to back to school shopping.
More than half (51%) also think their child’s generation actually has a better fashion sense than their own.
Yet, the survey, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Zulily, found that it’s not just retro styles that are trending this back-to-school season.
A second phenomenon revealed by the poll shows that kids see style as a way to express their confidence.
Ninety percent think being able to express their personal style helps them feel more productive at school, and nearly half of kids (48%) think a cool or fashionable outfit is essential to their success at school.
More importantly, wearing new clothes brings joy to most kids (79%) and helps 57% feel more confident.
Additionally, ninety percent of kids said it is important for them to define their unique personal style to set them apart from their peers.
Another nine in ten feel that how they dress is an expression of their personal brand, sparking the “glue guns and glitter bombs” trend toward customization and personalization.
Seventy percent (70%) of kids say they add personal touches to articles of clothing to make them feel more distinctively special.
And outfits make an impression; 41% of kids polled said they’re likely to notice other kids’ outfits at school.
A world-first, pain-free diabetes test could soon be in the hands of consumers following $6.3 million in funding to establish the first manufacturing facility for the device.
Funded by the Australian Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative, the world-class facility will help transition two decades of lab research to retail shelves to benefit more than 460 million people living with diabetes globally.
University of Newcastle physicist and research leader, Professor Paul Dastoor said the first devices are due to roll off the production line by 2023.
For patients afflicted with diabetes, who have up till now had to finger prick multiple times a day in order to monitor their glucose levels, this grant could not have come at a more appropriate time.
Saliva glucose biosensor: How it works
The saliva test makes painful finger-prick testing for type 1 and type 2 diabetes obsolete, representing the first major innovation since the blood glucose test was developed in the 1960s.
Professor Dastoor attributes this, in part, to inspiration from his wife, who as a primary school teacher helped young children in her care to monitor their blood glucose levels.
“It’s a heartbreaking scenario when the lunch bell rings and everyone runs to the playground, bar an unfortunate few who stay back to surrender their finger for blood testing at every meal time,” Professor Dastoor said.
“Our vision was to create a world where no one needs to bleed in order to eat.”
With saliva glucose concentrations 100 times lower than in blood, this was easier said than done.
“One of our key challenges was the sheer unavailability of glucose in saliva. It exists in minute concentrations, so you need to develop an incredibly powerful platform to detect it. Saliva also contains a plethora of other substances, so you’ve then got to tune out a lot of ‘noise’ to ensure results are accurate,” Professor Dastoor said.
Professor Dastoor said the sensor, similar in size to a stick of chewing gum and considerably thinner, was incredibly powerful, detecting substances that exist in saliva in minute concentrations.
“With this highly sensitive platform, we can now detect glucose at the levels found in saliva, for the first time,” he explained.
Coated with a natural enzyme—Glucose Oxidase—the biosensor interacts with saliva, producing a reaction that generates an electrical current. This current can be detected and measured to reveal highly accurate glucose levels which could be delivered via a smartphone app and the data stored in the cloud.
Other applications
Professor Dastoor said the sensor could be developed for application across 130 indications including tumour markers, hormones, and allergens.
“The biosensor is a ‘platform technology’, which means it will be widely applicable to detect a variety of substances that identify a range of diseases. We’re already looking for the substances that identify cancer, hormones and allergies,” he explained.
The sensor could also help with new diagnostic tests urgently needed to help eradicate COVID-19. (His team are partnering with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University to help develop the sensor platform as a non-invasive COVID test.)
“The Wyss Institute have developed a clever antifouling coating that can be incorporated into the biosensor platform, offering a new diagnostic tool for COVID-19 that can be printed onto plastic strips at massive scale.”
“To see the biosensor on shelves, changing lives will be immensely satisfying, it’s why we do the work we do,” Professor Dastoor said of this next step for his team’s breakthrough technology.
(WATCH the University of Newcastle video for this story below.)
A kid moved away from his friends and the familiarity of New Jersey to California, then immediately grabbed a local problem by the scruff of the neck with a brilliant invention.
Along with potentially winning himself a career in advertisement television with an excellent reveal video and excitable timbre, an 11th grade San Francisco student has invented a fire-activated extinguisher to protect the property of those he loves now that he lives in a state that has a wildfire “season.”
A single device is capable of protecting fire-risk areas in one’s house, while multiple can form a defensive perimeter around one’s entire property against low to moderate intensity fires.
“Over the past three years, there have been almost 7,500,000 acres of wildfire in California alone, destroying nearly 50,000 structures,” describes Arul Mathur, inventor of the Fire-Activated-Canister-Extinguisher, or F.A.C.E.
When a sensor on the device heats up to a certain temperature, a glycerin element bursts within, releasing an eco-friendly fire-retardant spray 5-6 feet in all directions with the aid of a sprinkler. The retardant can be re-filled quite easily, and the only other human-controlled aspect is the initial introduction of air-pressure into the canister which can be done manually through a valve at the top.
Mathur planned to introduce the device via Kickstarter, which saw his goal of $10,000 reached in less than a day, and came with an offer of $99 for F.A.C.E, that will now go up on retail for $120 when production begins.
F.A.C.E; Kickstarter
The only existing market alternative for F.A.C.E is a manual extinguisher, or an automatic sprinkler system, which unless it can be installed during construction of the house, will normally cost between $1 to $3 dollars per square foot, amounting to many thousands for a family home.
Mathur wrote in his Kickstarter that every penny of profit will go to providing F.A.C.E. donations to fire risk areas. Indeed 5-6 feet of spray isn’t enough to stop large fires, but if enough are placed in strategic areas, neighborhoods or rural communities can work together to prevent brush fires from becoming wildfires, or living room fires from becoming house fires.
Infrared shows the effectiveness of the new material (R) compared to regular cotton (L); S. Zheng et. al, Science 2021
It’s pretty easy to make clothing designed to keep you warm, either with natural inspirations or synthetic designs, but making something designed to keep you cool is much harder.
While objects like cars and buildings can be coated in ultra-white paint or mirrors that reflect the sun’s rays, a pair of Chinese scientists have figured out how to make a normal t-shirt keep your skin temperature 5°C cooler.
The scientists say it can be mass produced at only a fractional increase in cost, promising a generation of outdoor workers or beachgoers a way to ease the effects of unmitigated climate change.
Within the rays of the sun, near-infrared electromagnetic radiation (NIR) is one component that heats up whatever the sun sets its gaze on. They also cool when they are emitted, but if water vapor is in the air, the NIR are absorbed within and keep the surrounding air temperature hot.
Human skin naturally emits a different electromagnetic radiation, called mid-infrared, which instead of being trapped in water particles, goes directly out of our atmosphere.
Ma Yaoguang of Zhejiang University and Tao Guangming of Huazhong University of Science and Technology created a synthetic fiber blend that contains particles of titanium dioxide to reflect the NIR, and that also contains polylactic acid which absorbs body heat and ejects it through the shirt as MIR to cool the wearer.
When a trialist donned a vest, half of which was white cotton and the other half the cooling fabric, thermal imaging showed the part of his body underneath the artificial fabric remained 5°C (9°F) cooler after he sat in a lawn chair under the sun for an hour.
Infrared shows the effectiveness of the new material (R) compared to regular cotton (L); S. Zheng et. al, Science 2021, 10.1126
There’s some doubt, reports Science, of whether the motion of fabric will diminish the effect, as MIR-emitting material of any kind has only ever been tested when it remains flat and motionless towards the sun. A billowing t-shirt curved to the shoulders and arms of a human being may result in different outcomes over a vertical midday sun.
But the scientists also noted that material and production costs are only about a tenth higher than cotton, so anything that gets us closer to protective clothing for hot periods is hopeful indeed.
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Quote of the Day: “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” – Vincent Van Gogh
Photo: by Thomas Lipke
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
This is the heartwarming moment villagers showed great teamwork to retrieve a crashed pickup truck from a steep hill.
The vehicle was traveling along the slope when the driver lost control and skidded off the dirt road in Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand.
More than fifty locals volunteered to pull the old vehicle that rolled over the hills and was stuck on the edge of a cabbage field terrace.
They helped the driver out of the truck before trying thick ropes around the truck to pull it. After almost an hour, the vehicle was successfully towed back to the road.
Resident Malinee Laowang, a niece of the driver, said: “I saw the pickup truck toppled down the hill and flipped multiple times.”
“I remember running towards the car and smashing the windows open with a rock to let my relative out. More villagers came to help us even without asking.”
Malinee’s uncle narrowly survived the crash and only suffered minor cuts and bruises and the car was dragged back to the driver’s home.
Malinee added: ‘My uncle was not seriously hurt and his car would be repaired. I would like to thank the villagers for helping us out.’
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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Setting goals and achieving them is the path that’s transformed one Olympic contender from a 17-year-old with a gig under the “golden arches” to a world-class athlete taking her shot at bringing home a gold medal at the Tokyo games.
Quanesha Burks was raised by her grandparents. As a teen, she worked long hours at McDonald’s, earning what she could to help support her family. Even so, she says she happily went to work each day because she saw her labors as an investment in a bigger game plan that included attending college.
From early on, Burks excelled at sports. In high school, she realized her athletic prowess might be the ticket to a college scholarship. Initially, her choice of sport was a toss-up between basketball and track, but once she’d taken third at the 2012 USATF National Junior Olympics, her course was set.
After researching the requirements for a full ride, Burks set her goals down on paper and stuck to them. By the time she graduated from Hartselle High School, she’d earned 11 state track titles and a scholarship to the University of Alabama.
With an impressive NCAA indoor long jump title in 2015 followed by an outdoor win in 2016, Burks racked up All-America Honors, but even with her many achievements, her road to the Olympics has had its own share of hurdles.
In 2018, Burks finished a disappointing fourth at the World Athletics Indoor Championships. The following year, her beloved grandfather passed away one week prior to the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Understandably, her performance suffered.
By the time 2020 rolled around, Burks was back in a winning groove. Then the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most sporting events, leaving her and other hopeful athletes in limbo. She continued to train until a bone injury sidelined her for nearly three months.
“It felt like all the odds were against me,” Burks told Sports Illustrated. “At one point, my coach told me, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to physically be able to go to the trials.’ The doctors didn’t know if I would be back in time… I was facing so much, but I kept going back to when I worked at McDonald’s. I had my goals set and I knew I could do it.”
Although forced to refrain from her usual rigorous activities, Burks remained determined to achieve her Olympic dreams. To keep her spirits up, she recorded a series of positive affirmations and posted them to her TikTok page.
During the trials for the Tokyo Olympics, her tenacity paid off. At age 25, with a long-jump personal best of 6.96 meters, Burks took an overall third, securing her spot on the Team USA roster.
“It’s a blessing to be like one from my hometown in a small community, really just representing myself, but Hartselle, the University of Alabama and the state of Alabama,” Burks told CBS News-19. “Knowing that I’m representing us in Tokyo is just a blessing, it’s an honor and I’m so proud of the other Olympians.”
While Quanesha Burks is well aware she might not be a high-profile as some of her teammates, she reasons it’s because she’s taken a different path to get where she is—and that’s fine with her.
“I didn’t have everything laid out for me. I didn’t have all the eyes on me. I feel like still to this day I get overlooked. That’s okay,” she told Sports Illustrated. “I just know it all starts with your confidence within. Everything I’ve become is because of my mindset and my determination… It’s been a journey and it all started with a little girl working at McDonald’s and here I am.”
Although scoring the cover of a Wheaties box would be nice, even if she doesn’t medal at Tokyo, Burks hopes it’s her legacy of hard work and determination that will ultimately serve as an inspiration for other up-and-coming Olympians working a day job until they can live the dream.
And who needs “special sauce” when you’ve got that?
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The venom of one Australian caterpillar shows promise for use in medicines and pest control, researchers say.
The Doratifera vulnerans is common to large parts of Queensland’s south-east and is routinely found in Toohey Forest Park on Brisbane’s southside.
Dr Andrew Walker at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience has been researching the striking looking caterpillar since 2017.
Venomous caterpillar has strange biology
“We found one while collecting assassin bugs near Toowoomba and its strange biology and pain-causing venom fascinated me,” Dr Walker said.
Unlike The Very Hungry Caterpillar that charmed generations of children around the world, this caterpillar is far from harmless.
“Its binomial name means ‘bearer of gifts of wounds’,” Dr Walker said.
Caterpillar venom similar to spiders
Dr Walker’s research found the caterpillar has venom toxins with a molecular structure similar to those produced by spiders, wasps, bees, and ants.
The research also unlocked a source of bioactive peptides that may have uses in medicine, biotechnology or as scientific tools.
“Many caterpillars produce pain-inducing venoms and have evolved biological defences such as irritative hairs, toxins that render them poisonous to eat, spots that mimic snake eyes or spines that inject liquid venoms,” Dr Walker said.
“Previously researchers had no idea what was in the venom or how they induce pain.”
Venom with stunning complexity
“We found that the venom is mostly peptides and shows stunning complexity, containing 151 different protein-based toxins from 59 different families.”
The researcher team synthesized 13 of the peptide toxins and used them to show the unique evolutionary trajectory the caterpillar followed to produce pain-inducing venom.
“We now know the amino acid sequences, or the blueprints, of each protein-based toxin,” Dr Walker said.
“This will enable us to make the toxins and test them in diverse ways.”
Venom which can kill bacteria
Some peptides already produced in the laboratory as part of Dr Walker’s research showed very high potency, with potential to efficiently kill nematode parasites that are harmful to livestock, as well as disease-causing pathogens.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and “unlocks a new source of bioactive peptides that may have use in medicine, through an ability to influence biological processes and promote good health,” he said.
“First, we need to work out what the individual toxins do, to inform us about how they might be used.” We’ll keep you updated on this poison that may well be a cure as the research develops.
The little helicopter that the Perseverance rover brought along to Mars has repaid its big brother for the tagalong—snapping aerial images of the Red Planet the rover can then use to help its journey across the Jezero Crater.
Having performed the first ever rotary flight on Mars earlier this year, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter is now on its ninth flight—and on July 5th, it revealed details about the over-and-underlying geography of Mars that will be crucial to completing the rover’s mission.
During its recent two-minutes and forty-six seconds in the air, the helicopter quadrupled its own record for distance covered, and also broke records for cruising speed and time as it moved over an area called Séítah—which will be difficult for a rover like Perseverance to navigate due to the soft sand there.
Rover tracks, NASA/JPL-Caltech
It also snapped amazing images of rippling sand, shadows, rock, and other Utah-like terrain features.
Dunes, NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We’re hoping the color images will provide the closest look yet at ‘Pilot Pinnacle’, a location featuring outcrops that some team members think may record some of the deepest water environments in old Lake Jezero,” wrote Ingenuity team members on the project website.
Indeed this most recent flight, and the photos that took three days to be beamed back and processed, revealed some high-value science targets like the so-called Raised Ridges that NASA scientists believe could be the key to finding remains of ancient life in a lakebed that’s billions of years old.
Raised Ridges, NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Spying the ridges in images from Mars orbiters, scientists have wondered whether water might have flowed through these fractures at some point, dissolving minerals that could help feed ancient microbial colonies,” write NASA.
Bedrock, NASA/JPL-Caltech
Other areas found during Flight 9 include open sand dunes of which Perseverance must avoid at all costs—or risk getting stuck—and images of Martian bedrock, which looks like an interesting feature to be later checked out by the rover.
“Our current plan is to visit Raised Ridges and investigate it close up,” Perseverance Deputy Project Scientist Ken Williford said. “The helicopter’s images are by far better in resolution than the orbital ones we were using. Studying these will allow us to ensure that visiting these ridges is important to the team.” That’s an important detail when the mission’s schedule is tight and power resources are limited.
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Normally limited to listening to your every request for music to play in your living room or assembling things in a factory, a robot paramedic that can perform CPR will soon be joining first responder teams across the south of England.
For the very first time, an automaton has been made that can perform the life-saving chest compression—a vital part of sustaining oxygen flow through the body during cardiac arrest.
Called the LUCAS-3, its performance of CPR will free up paramedic hands for other tasks, which could be essential for ensuring patient survival.
The South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) will be the first one to receive the robot, which costs £12,000 ($17,000), for their servicing of Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire. The SCAS Charity funded the purchasing of 28 for the purpose of equipping their ambulances.
An SCAS spokesman said: “Once paramedics arrive and begin CPR or take over from bystanders who may have initiated it, the transition from manual compressions to LUCAS can be completed within seven seconds, ensuring continuity of compressions.”
LUCAS works through Bluetooth connectivity, and performs CPR according to various inputs such as time between compressions, force of compressions, or according the guidelines of medical institutions.
Dr. John Black, medical director at SCAS, said: “We know that delivering high quality and uninterrupted chest compressions in cardiac arrest is one of the major determinants of survival to hospital discharge but it can be very challenging for a number of reasons.”
“People can become fatigued when performing CPR manually which then affects the rate and quality of compressions, and patients may need to be moved from difficult locations, such as down a narrow flight of stairs, or remote places which impedes the process.”
LUCAS’ big day has finally come, but it’s taken as long is it takes a student to finish medical school before he was ready for the jump to live action—the current iteration is based on a model that was first tested by the University of Warwick back in 2014.
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