Quote of the Day: “Long live the rose that grew from concrete.” – Tupac Shakur
Photo: copyright GWC
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?
Decades ago, a radical idea was born to protect the Maya Forest in Belize. What if NGOs, the government, community leaders, and businesses could form a coalition to conserve one of the world’s last remaining pristine rainforests?
Now that dream is a reality, with more than a dozen organizations coming together to protect 236,000 acres of land that represents an irreplaceable linchpin in the conservation of the largest remaining tropical forests in the Americas, outside the Amazon.
This new protected area is contiguous with and nearly doubles the size of the adjacent Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area previously protected through efforts led by The Nature Conservancy. Combined, it represents 9% of the landmass of Belize and secures a vital wildlife corridor in Central America’s dwindling forests.
Together, these new protections will fill a critical gap in a vast forest network called the Selva Maya—38 million acres of forest that includes 11 million acres of parks and protected areas across Central America.
Since 2011, the Maya Forest Corridor that connects Belize’s Maya Mountain Massif to the Belize Maya Forest has faced deforestation rates almost four times the national average, driven primarily by clearing land for industrial-scale agriculture. That was the fate that seemed very likely for this tract of land as well.
Securing protection for this climate and nature-critical ecosystem means preserving habitat for some of the world’s most iconic wildlife species like jaguars and ocelots, as well as preserving a significant living carbon reserve that represents a natural solution to climate change.
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This project is a premier example of this sort of solution, preserving significant amounts of sequestered carbon, that would otherwise be lost due to deforestation, while offering valuable co-benefits, especially to biodiversity.
“In a warmer, more crowded world, the last best places to protect nature for biodiversity and climate solutions are mission critical,” said Dr. Jeffrey Parrish, Global Managing Director for nature protection at The Nature Conservancy. “Innovative and collaborative protection of nature is essential not only for the survival of species like jaguars, but also for sustainable livelihoods, clean air, water security, and for addressing the climate crisis.”
Natural climate solutions are conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in landscapes and wetlands across the globe. Combined with innovations in clean energy and other efforts to decarbonize the world’s economies, natural climate solutions offer some of our best options in the response to climate change.
The Belize Maya Forest is a tropical biodiversity hotspot, home to 200 species of trees across a patchwork of forest, savanna, and wetland, as well as over 400 species of birds, over 100 of them migratory.
MORE: The World’s Oldest-Known Wild Bird—Named Wisdom—Hatches Another Chick at 70 (WATCH)
Charismatic megafauna that depend on this precious ecosystem include tapir, howler monkeys, and spider monkeys—together with some of Central America’s largest surviving populations of jaguar, puma, margay and other native cats.
According to a statement, partners who made the Belize Maya Forest conservation project possible through years of effort include the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, International Tropical Conservation Fund, Global Wildlife Conservation, Mass Audubon, The Nature Conservancy, Rainforest Trust, and many others.
“This enormous forest tract is a linchpin for large scale conservation of the Mayan Forest, but its future hanged in the balance for decades,” John Fitzpatrick, director of Cornell Lab of Ornithology said. “Permanent protection of this huge parcel contributes all-important connectivity and scale for preserving the largest tropical forest ecosystem in Central America.” This win for the rainforest in Belize is hopeful indeed, and it’s especially welcome during Earth Month.
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A new species of dinosaur was recently discovered in a hotel room in Perth, Australia. While the origins of most recognizable dino specimens date back to the Mesozoic Era, the “Bagasaurus” is entirely the product of parental ingenuity in the Age of COVID.
Carly Catalano knew that moving from British Columbia to Australia with her partner, Sam, and their 3-year-old daughter Florence during the pandemic would mean undergoing a mandatory 14-day hotel-room quarantine.
Facing two weeks in tight quarters with an active toddler was a situation that demanded creative thinking, so Carly and Sam came up with a strategy to keep their precocious offspring engaged.
Working with takeout bags and containers, some disposable cutlery, an ironing board, and a few other miscellaneous items, the family began construction of its very own DIY dinosaur.
Should those in the scientific community wish to take note: The Bagasaurus stands 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) tall, adores little girls who dress up in matching paper-bag-scaled outfits, and is an herbivore—or would be if it actually ate the home-grown sprouts Florence offers her papier-mâché pet on a regular basis.
“We’ve been growing wheatgrass,” Carly explained in an interview with CBC Radio West. “So she’s been wanting to… feed the dinosaur wheatgrass—as well as eat most of it herself.”
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In addition to its other commendable qualities, while the Bagasaurus has some big claws, its carbon footprint is eco-friendly.
Rather than having the fossil’s remains consigned to a museum (or trash bin) when the family departs the hotel, they plan to recycle the entire beast, keeping only the head as a souvenir of their prehistoric adventure.
(WATCH a time-lapse video video to see how they did it…)
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North Carolina-based writer Judy Cole has a new rom-com murder mystery debuting at Amazon: And Jilly Came Tumbling After (from Red Sky Presents).
A farmer on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula was surprised to find a stone-lined passageway beneath a rock he had turned over in his fields.
Many stone tombs called “dolmans” are scattered across the peninsula, and this one seemed different. It appeared to pass under the ground and was in pristine condition.
The tomb is lined with standing stones and consists of a long central chamber and an adjacent nook. An oval-shaped stone that may have been rubbed smooth by human hands was recovered inside, while human remains were also found—these important finds have led the Museum of Ireland and the National Monument Service to keep the tomb’s location a secret.
Dingle-based archaeologist Mícheál Ó Coileáin has told the Irish Times this is a “highly unusual tomb.” “It is very well built and a lot of effort has gone into putting the large cap stone over it,” he added. The farmer was only able to dislodge it because he was operating a digger.
While the urge to date the tomb to the Irish Bronze Age, between 2,000 BCE and 500 BCE, was there at first, the uniqueness of the tomb has archaeologists second-guessing themselves, offering that it could also come from Ireland’s early Christian age.
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Smithsonian reports there are nearly 2,000 ancient monuments in the Dingle Peninsula, which has been inhabited for 6,000 years. In the Bronze Age the area may have been on average 2 °C warmer, allowing for greater human habitation.
“It is an extremely significant find as the original structure has been preserved and not interfered with, as may have occurred in the case of other uncovered tomb,” said Dr Breandán Ó Cíobháin, another archaeologist familiar with the region. We’ll let you know of any treasures Irish farmers might dig up next.
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In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, guards watching for human trespassers are befriending and even caring for the descendants of dogs abandoned when tens of thousands of people had to abandon their entire lives and flee when reactor 4 exploded in 1986.
Their interactions, collected and documented through work from the BBC, tell a story of a spark of humanity returning to a place long void of it.
When reactor 4 went 34 years ago, the residents of Pripyat were told to leave everything behind including their pets. Jonathon Turnbull, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge, lives in Kyiv and has visited the 1,000 square mile Exclusion Zone many times.
There he met a variety of guards very unique in the world, those charged with ensuring no one sneaks into a contaminated wasteland. These guards, he learned, had formed complex relationships with the semi-wild dogs that inhabited the Exclusion Zone.
Their stories of feeding, naming, caring for, or altogether avoiding various dogs based on temperament and personality fascinated Turnbull. For his research in geography, he asked if the guards would be wiling to carry disposable cameras and photograph the dogs in their day-to-day lives.
“If I wanted to know the dogs,” Turnbull told BBC Future, “I needed to go to the people who know them best—and that was the guards.”
Their photographs are intriguing, as they capture so many interesting sides to the lives of millions of ownerless canines around the world. Not quite wild, not quite domesticated, they roam cities and settlements looking for food. Here in the Exclusion Zone however, the personalities of the dogs are similar, but the environment is totally different.
While having total freedom, even in roaming within and without the Exclusion Zone, their lives are difficult. Beset as they are by radiation, there are also hungry wolf packs, bears, wildfires, and manmade hazards left behind.
The guards give them names, sometimes. Some dogs linger too far from patrol routes and guard posts to reveal themselves. There’s Arka, who should not be pet, sausage, who warms herself by napping one heating ducts, Tarzan, who allegedly does tricks for food, and Alpha, which the guards explain is named after a kind of radiation.
MORE: Three Decades After Nuclear Disaster, Historic New Solar Farm is Launched in Chernobyl
Their relationships with the guards, who give them food, remove ticks, and will even administer rabies vaccines, are as varied as they are. In some cases they just want food, but the more talkative guards, who officially aren’t allowed to interact with the dogs for fear of contamination, explain they act as assistants in a way that’s reminiscent to early man’s domestication of wolves.
Barking in different tones to different things can warn guards of potential objects of interest, whether it be a wild animal, a human trespasser, or a tour vehicle.
“They give us joy,” said one of the guards. “For me personally, this is a kind of symbol of the continuation of life in this radioactive, post-apocalyptic world.”
GNN has reported on the men who live in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone in Japan in order to look after animals. There, like in Pripyat, thousands of animals were left behind.
While one of is the single-most irradiated man in Japan, scientists have told him that the radioactive mutations that would end his life won’t arrive for another 30-40 years, at which point he would be in his mid-’80s.
Caring for the animals gives him immense joy, and he can make a living from donations and from former pet owners sending him contributions over the internet.
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An interesting new study seems to indicate that monkeys increase the size of their social circles during times of strife or resource scarcity.
Researchers observed Puerto Rico’s rhesus macaque populations on Cayo Santiago in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, and observed each individual increase the amount of grooming activities, as well as the number of other monkeys groomed, following the disaster.
By the numbers, there was a greater than 50% increased chance that the monkeys would be seen grooming after the hurricane when compared to before, and they were four times more likely to be sitting close to another monkey.
Rhesus macaques are more closely related to humans than other monkeys, and the results speak a little about how humans band together during disasters.
Destroying 63% of the island’s green vegetation, Hurricane Maria took apart the infrastructure of normally deeply protective and competitive primate habitat.
Resources that were once plentiful enough to be guarded by small troupes of monkeys were now rare, and instead of transforming into the monkey-version of the Mad Max: Road Warrior wasteland, groups expanded their social circles.
The increase in social connections was measured by the monkey’s grooming habits, as well as sitting down within two meters of each other—metrics which could be compared with friends having lunch or a coffee, explains the study’s lead author. The most common bridge into other groups was friends of friends.
The results fit squarely within the “Social Buffering” hypothesis that says social animals will surround themselves with more members of their species during or after difficult times. This was true for extroverted macaques, but even more so for introverted, isolated ones, who increased their social bonding much more than the extroverts.
MORE: Baboon, Bear, or Bison: Find Out Which Animal Personality Best Matches Yours in a Free Fun Quiz
They also found that there was no additional effort to strengthen bonds between kin, or with the most powerful individuals in the group, only efforts to increase the size of each monkey’s social network.
The researchers postulate that the nature and specifics of the findings suggest that by expanding their social network, they are potentially getting access to resources known or controlled by another monkey, and the more monkeys, the more resources.
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It’s a hopeful image—monkeys banding together in times of crisis, something we should think about the next time a crisis buffets our shores.
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Quote of the Day: “It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.” – Marcus Aurelius (born 1,900 years ago today)
Photo: by Ishan Gupta
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?
The world’s oldest known wild bird, a Laysan albatross named Wisdom, hatched another chick this season at age 70.
Every year, millions of albatrosses return to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to their same nesting site—and reunite with the same mate.
In the world’s largest colony of albatrosses, Wisdom and her mate, Akeakamai, have been hatching and raising chicks together since at least 2012, when biologists first banded the male.
“At least 70 years old, we believe Wisdom has had other mates,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Dr. Beth Flint. “Though albatross mate for life, they may find new partners if necessary—if they outlive their first mate.”
Albatross don’t typically lay eggs every year and when they do, they lay only a single egg.
Biologists estimate that Wisdom has hatched at least 30–36 chicks in her lifetime. In fact, in 2018, biologists observed the chick that she fledged in 2011 returning to the spot just a few feet away from her current nest.
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Almost as amazing as being a parent at 70 is the number of miles Wisdom has flown—by the time she was 60 she’d logged at least 2-3 million miles since she was first banded in 1956. That’s 4-6 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare.
One reason for all these frequent-flyer miles is that every Laysan albatross spends their first 3 to 5 years fledging at sea, never touching land.
“Each year that Wisdom returns, we learn more about how long seabirds can live and raise chicks,” said Flint. “Her return not only inspires bird lovers everywhere, but helps us better understand how we can protect these graceful seabirds and the habitat they need to survive into the future.”
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Wisdom has likely flown 50,000 miles every year as an adult, and countless generations of albatrosses have a similar long-distance family reunion at Midway Atoll each year.
Albatross parents share incubation duties for 65 days and once the chick hatches, they share feeding duties. Chicks fledge, and fly for the first time, in the months of June and July.
Nearly 70% of the world’s Laysan albatross and almost 40% of black-footed albatross—as well as the endangered short-tailed albatross—all rely on Midway Atoll. 20 other bird species breed here, totaling over three million individual birds calling the Refuge home.
MORE: Birds in San Francisco Started Singing Differently in the Silence of the Pandemic Shutdown
The refuge, on the far northern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, is cooperatively managed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior, and the State of Hawaii. To date over 275,000 albatrosses have been banded at the Refuge. Thus, biologists can make more informed management decisions that ensure seabirds have the habitat and resources they need in the future.
To support the conservation work of volunteers and staff working to restore the habitat and remove invasive species, you can donate on the website of Friends of Midway Atoll here:
WATCH some amazing video of Wisdom taking care of her chick…
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This week, during the international Climate Summit, three governments and nine giant corporations announced a groundbreaking coalition, called LEAF, which is mobilizing to raise at least $1 billion this year, alone, for large-scale forest protection and sustainable development.
The coalition already includes the governments of the UK, US, and Norway, and international companies, including Airbnb, Amazon, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle, and Unilever.
Known as LEAF, for Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance, the global initiative represents by far the single largest private-sector investment to protect tropical forests.
The goal is for governments, businesses, and NGOs to pay for high-quality emissions reductions from tropical forests, verified against an independent standard.
The LEAF Coalition offers an important new approach that can help protect swaths of trees by offering the financial assurance needed for countries to start prioritizing policies that reduce deforestation.
“With local-level involvement, this approach can be a triple-win: for the climate, tropical forests and for people that depend on them.” said Manish Bapna, Interim President and CEO of World Resources Institute.
More participants are expected to join in coming months.
“This is a game-changer in the fight to save tropical forests—a new model for catalyzing finance, at a scale that is truly up to the challenge,” said Environmental Defense Fund Senior Vice President, Nathaniel Keohane.
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“The LEAF Coalition sets a high standard for how companies can supplement deep cuts in their own emissions by investing in additional emission reductions from tropical and subtropical forests and also by ensuring that the rights of indigenous peoples who have and who continue to protect these forests are respected and fulfilled,” added Keohane.
This pioneering model of forest finance could channel tens of billions of dollars per year into ensuring the protection of trees on the scale needed to address the climate crisis and meet world‘s climate goals.
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In order to preserve a species threatened by an infectious disease, Saint Louis Zoo scientists have hired an elite team of sleuths—turtle-hunting dogs.
Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Park is a 425-acre site christened last year to be used as part of the zoo’s extensive conservation programming. Last week, seven Boykin spaniels began sniffing for three-toed box turtles, a species that has been in decline due to development—but, recently, due to an emerging pathogen called Ranavirus.
Not much is known about the disease. It affects turtles, fish, and amphibians, but is particularly fatal in box turtles—about 80% fatal.
That’s why the zoo called the man known as the “Turtle Whisperer.” John Rucker trained these dogs and says they are the “only dogs anywhere that do this kind of work.”
Like they have done in Iowa and Illinois, the spaniels helped the Missouri research team track and retrieve box turtles with their strong sense of smell, which allows them to find animals in a matter of hours, where it would take researchers weeks.
The soft-mouthed dogs gently pick up the turtles and bring them to John and the researchers, who swab the turtles’ mouths and tag them, to follow them for one year, until they hibernate again.
The dogs’ assistance comes at a crucial time: Saint Louis Zoo scientists discovered a positive Ranavirus case in box turtles in the area, and this research is important to learning more about the virus.
RELATED: New Technology for Saving Endangered Sea Turtles Uses Decoy GPS Eggs to Catch Poachers–And it Works
They are tagging them to be proactive, doing infectious disease testing at their lab—and don’t worry, the dogs cannot pick up the disease, or spread it to other turtles.
“Every year we do annual health assessments of our turtles at our field sites. We spread out in a line and just walk the woods, eyes to the ground—and we don’t do it well because they’re good at hiding,” explains Jamie Palmer, of the St. Louis Zoo Institute for Conservation Medicine.
“There’s so much error in humans, and we’ve spent hundreds of hours. But dogs, their noses are better than ours…and we’ve seen them find a lot of turtles.”
LOOK: Rare Turtles Known For Their Smiles Saved From Extinction in Myanmar
What better way to combat an invisible threat to the ‘state reptile of Missouri’, but to use a pack of gorgeous and gentle dogs?
WATCH the local news coverage…
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It has long been known that obesity is an inflammatory disease, i.e. a chronic defensive reaction of the body to stress caused by excess nutrients.
Based on this knowledge, a group of researchers led by Nabil Djouder, Head of the Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), decided to try to fight obesity by preventing inflammation—and they succeeded.
Their paper, published this month in Nature Metabolism, shows that digoxin, a drug already in use against heart diseases, reduces inflammation and leads to a 40% weight loss in obese mice, without any side effects.
Digoxin reverses obesity completely, according to CNIO. Treated mice became the same weight as healthy, non-obese animals. The mice were also cured of metabolic disorders associated to obesity.
Digoxin reduces the production of a molecule called interleukin 17A, (IL-17A) which generally triggers inflammation. The study identifies it as a causal factor of obesity: “When you inhibit the production of IL-17A or the signaling pathway that this molecule activates, you don’t have obesity,” says Djouder.
The Madrid researchers found that IL-17A acts directly on adipose tissue to cause obesity and severe metabolic alterations associated with body weight gain, the so-called metabolic syndrome, which includes type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.
“Since no effective treatments for obesity and metabolic syndrome are available, digoxin may represent an effective therapeutic option,” they wrote in the paper in Nature Metabolism.
The animals, obese due to a high-calorie diet, continued to eat as before when they were taking digoxin. However, they showed activation of their basal metabolism, which results in the burning of excess fat and weight loss.
Djouder’s group at the CNIO already observed weight loss within a few weeks, with no adverse effects. The benefits were maintained for at least eight months, suggesting that resistance mechanisms do not develop.
These findings are therefore clinically relevant: “It is tempting to propose that obese patients could take digoxin for a short period until weight loss stabilizes, and then follow a healthy diet,” says Ana Teijeiro, first author of the paper. “The drug could also be indicated for obesity-related pathologies, such as hypercholesterolemia, hepatic steatosis and type 2 diabetes,” adds Teijeiro.
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But the researchers also stress that the results were obtained in mice and that epidemiological studies and clinical trials are required to corroborate them in humans.
In addition to this potential clinical relevance, the finding has basic value because it “identifies a causal link between inflammation and weight gain,” says the authors. It opens new avenues for crucial research to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that make obesity an inflammatory disease.
“Thanks to this study, we know that weight loss and systemic metabolic changes are controlled by a unique molecular mechanism, IL-17A, which acts directly on adipocytes and changes their genetic profile and responsiveness to excess nutrients,” Djouder says.
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“We still don’t know how nutrients trigger the inflammatory reaction or which cells produce interleukin 17A, and that is what we are going to study next,” Djouder reveals. “Understanding the connection between nutrient excess, inflammation and obesity is essential to find novel approaches to treat weight gain,” he adds.
Defined by the authors of the paper as “excessive fat accumulation usually caused by chronic overfeeding and/or inadequate physical activity,” obesity today has no effective treatment.
“Current options are limited and have not improved in the last 20 years, mainly due to insufficient knowledge about the pathophysiology of obesity and the mechanisms governing fat accumulation,” wrote the team.
Therapies based on lifestyle changes—changes in diet and physical activity—achieve a weight reduction of approximately 10%, and drugs that target appetite or fat absorption typically result in a loss of body weight between 2% and 7%.
This study provides a possible therapeutic strategy based on a novel approach: fighting obesity by targeting its inflammatory component.
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The team started this line of research five years ago, when, in another study on inflammation and liver cancer, they observed that mice were losing weight, so they postulated that blocking the production of IL-17A with digoxin would reduce the action of IL-17A and thus reduce the weight of the mice. “That was indeed what we saw immediately,” says Djouder.
Digoxin has long been used to treat heart failure, and it was known to act on IL-17A. Its effect on body weight, however, had never been observed. Djouder ascribes this to the fact that the cardiovascular disease of patients using digoxin causes high liquid retention, which masks the weight-loss effect of digoxin.
Moreover, the dose at which digoxin is currently used in humans is three times lower than that used in mice to combat obesity, with no toxic effects. The fact that no side effects were observed in animals suggests that, in humans, the dose at which weight loss could be observed may not be harmful.
This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the State Research Agency, co-funded by European Regional Development Fund., the Carlos III Health Institute, the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes and the Pfizer Foundation.
Source: CNIO
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Quote of the Day: “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius (born 1,900 years ago tomorrow)
Photo: by Barthelemy de Mazenod
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?
A trucker was at the right place at the right time to become a hero when he rescued a utility worker who was trapped in a raised bucket truck, which had caught fire below.
With just minutes to spare before the truck exploded, a police officer ran over to a tractor trailer that was stopped at a nearby intersection.
The driver, Efrain Zepeda, sprang into action, moving his trailer beneath the Santa Rosa, California utility worker, without care for his own safety, to provide the man with a means of escape.
Amidst plumes of black smoke and flames, the worker was able to jump down onto the truck, and evade serious injury or death.
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Zepeda works for Estes Express Lines which praised their driver’s actions in an email to GNN.
“It is nothing short of a miracle that our driver, Efrain, was there just as this individual needed rescue from such a dire situation. Enough can’t be said about his bravery and immediate actions that allowed the worker to escape,” said Webb Estes, the company’s vice president of process improvement.
“At Estes, the safety of everyone on the road is our highest priority and Efrain’s heroics exemplify this to the fullest.”
WATCH: Woman Frantically Pounds on Door to Save Family From Fire Just Before Roof Collapses
The Sonoma County Professional Firefighters union, which posted the video on Facebook, summed it up: “Our citizens never cease to amaze us!”
WATCH the rescue unfold below in the video from #socolocal1401…
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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 April 23, 2021
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Some traditional Buddhist monks sit on city streets in Asia with a “begging bowl” in front of them. It’s a clay or iron container they use to solicit money and food from passers-by who want to support them. Contemporary American poet Mariannne Boruch regards the begging bowl as a metaphor that helps her generate new poems. She adopts the attitude of the empty vessel, awaiting life’s instructions and inspiration to guide her creative inquiry. This enables her to “avoid too much self-obsession and navel-gazing” and be receptive—”with no agenda besides the usual wonder and puzzlement.” I recommend the begging bowl approach to you as you launch the next phase of your journey, Taurus.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Gemini-born Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is today regarded as an innovative and influential painter. But his early years provided few hints that he would ultimately become renowned. As a teenager, he attended naval preparatory school, and later he joined the French navy. At age 23, he became a stockbroker. Although he also began dabbling as a painter at that time, it wasn’t until the stock market crashed 11 years later that he made the decision to be a full-time painter. Is there a Gauguin-like turning point in your future, Gemini? If so, its early signs might show themselves soon. This pivot won’t be as dramatic or stressful as Gauguin’s, but I bet it will be quite galvanizing.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
A research team found that some people pray for things they are reasonably sure God wouldn’t approve of. In a sense, they’re trying to trick the Creator into giving them goodies they’re not supposed to get. Do you ever do that? Try to bamboozle life into offering you blessings you’re not sure you deserve? The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to dare such ploys. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll succeed, but the chances are much better than usual that you will. The universe is pretty relaxed and generous toward you right now.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In 2013, the New Zealand government decided to rectify the fact that its two main islands had never been assigned formal names. At that time, it gave both an English and Māori-language moniker for each: North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island, or Te Waipounamu. In the spirit of correcting for oversights and neglect, and in accordance with current astrological omens, is there any action you’d like to take to make yourself more official or professional or established? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to do so.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Author Grant Morrison observes that our heads are “big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there!” That’s why it’s so unfortunate, he says, if we fill up our “magical cabinet” with “little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over.” In accordance with astrological potentials, Virgo, I exhort you to dispose of as many of those sad trinkets and little broken things as you can. Make lots of room to hold expansive visions and marvelous dreams and wondrous possibilities. It’s time to think bigger and feel wilder.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Libran author bell hooks (who doesn’t capitalize her name) has a nuanced perspective on the nature of our pain. She writes, “Contrary to what we may have been taught, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us, but need not scar us for life.” She acknowledges that unnecessary and unchosen suffering does indeed “mark us.” But we have the power to reshape and transform how it marks us. I think her wisdom will be useful for you to wield in the coming weeks. You now have extra power to reshape and transform the marks of your old pain. You probably won’t make it disappear entirely, but you can find new ways to make it serve you, teach you, and ennoble you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
I love people who inspire me to surprise myself. I’m appreciative when an ally provides me with a friendly shock that moves me to question my habitual ways of thinking or doing things. I feel lucky when a person I like offers a compassionate critique that nudges me out of a rut I’ve been in. Here’s a secret: I don’t always wait around passively hoping events like these will happen. Now and then I actively seek them out. I encourage them. I ask for them. In the coming weeks, Scorpio, I invite you to be like me in this regard.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
“Where did last year’s lessons go?” asks Gillian Welch in her song “I Dream a Highway.” Now I’m posing the same question to you—just in time for the Remember Last Year’s Lessons Phase of your cycle. In my astrological opinion, it’s crucial for you to recollect and ruminate deeply on the breakdowns and breakthroughs you experienced in 2020; on every spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence you weathered; on all the scary trials you endured and all the sacred trails you trod.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn painter Henri Matisse had a revolutionary influence on 20th-century art, in part because of his raucous use of color. Early in his career he belonged to the movement known as Fauvism, derived from the French term for “wild beasts.” During his final years, he invented a new genre very different from his previous work: large collages of brightly colored cut-out paper. The subject matter, according to critic Jed Perl, included “jungles, goddesses, oceans, and the heavens,” and “ravishing signs and symbols” extracted from the depths of “Matisse’s luminosity.” I offer him as a role model for you, Capricorn, because I think it’s a perfect time to be, as Perl describes Matisse, both “a hard-nosed problem-solver and a feverish dreamer.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
“The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity, but distrust it.’” Aquarian philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that, and now I’m proposing that you use it as your motto in the coming weeks, even if you’re not a natural philosopher. Why? Because I suspect you’ll thrive by uncomplicating your life. You’ll enhance your well-being if you put greater trust in your instinctual nature and avoid getting lost in convoluted thoughts. On the other hand, it’s important not to plunge so deeply into minimalism that you become shallow, careless, or unimaginative.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
In ancient Greek comic theater, there was a stock character known as the eiron. He was a crafty underdog who outwitted and triumphed over boastful egotists by pretending to be naive. Might I interest you in borrowing from that technique in the coming weeks? I think you’re most likely to be successful if you approach victory indirectly or sideways—and don’t get bogged down trying to forcefully coax skeptics and resisters. Be cagey, understated, and strategic, Pisces. Let everyone think they’re smart and strong if it helps ensure that your vision of how things should be will win out in the end.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Blogger Emma Elsworthy wrote her “Self-Care List.” I’ll tell you a few of her 57 action items, in hopes of inspiring you to create your own list. The coming weeks will be a perfect phase to upgrade your focus on doing what makes you feel healthy and holy. Here are Elsworthy’s ideas: Get in the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. Organize your room. Clean your mirror and laptop. Lie in the sunshine. Become the person you would ideally fall in love with. Walk with a straight posture. Stretch your body. Challenge yourself to not judge or ridicule anyone for a whole day. Have a luxurious shower with your favorite music playing. Remember your dreams. Fantasize about the life you would lead if failure didn’t exist.
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)
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A four-astronaut team launched by NASA and Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX made history by becoming the first humans propelled into space by an entirely reused rocket booster.
SpaceX has previously reused boosters multiple times since 2017, but they only transported cargo.
‘Crew-2’ astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide, and Thomas Pesquet were launched into space by the same Falcon 9 rocket booster that sent four of their colleagues to the International Space Station (ISS) in November during the Crew-1 mission.
The international crew, including the first French commander and an astronaut from Japan’s JAXA space agency, lifted off early Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and are now orbiting in the Crew Dragon spacecraft to begin a six-month science mission on the space station.
During Crew Dragon’s flight, SpaceX will command the spacecraft from its mission control center in Hawthorne, California, and NASA teams will monitor space station operations throughout the flight in Houston.
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“It has been an incredible year for NASA and our Commercial Crew Program, with three crewed launches to the space station since last May,” said NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “This is another important milestone for NASA, SpaceX, and our international partners at ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA. It will be an exciting moment to see our crews greet one another on station for our first crew handover under the Commercial Crew Program.”
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, plans to dock autonomously to the forward port of the ISS about 5:10 a.m. Saturday.
Elon Musk, Chief Engineer at SpaceX, said, “I’m really proud of the SpaceX team and honored to be partnered with NASA and helping JAXA and ESA as well. We’re thrilled to be a part of advancing human spaceflight.”
NASA points out this commercial partnership with Musk’s company has several firsts, including:
NASA Television, the NASA App, and their website are providing ongoing live coverage through docking, hatch opening, and the ceremony to welcome the crew aboard the orbital outpost.
Crew-2 will join the ISS inhabitants Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, as well as Soichi Noguchi of JAXA and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-1 astronauts Walker, Hopkins, Glover, and Noguchi return a few days later.
When Aki Hoshide joins astronaut Noguchi during the commercial crew handover period, it will mark the first time two JAXA astronauts are on station at the same time.
Crew-2 also is the first commercial crew mission to fly an ESA astronaut. Pesquet is the first of three ESA crew members assigned to fly to station on commercial crew spacecraft, kicking off a continuous stay of ESA astronauts on the space station for about a year and a half – in total – for the first time in more than 20 years.
“We know he cannot wait to start working,” ESA said of their French commander.
WATCH the astronauts in their nifty modern spacesuits board and lift off on their historic mission, with Frenchman Thomas Pesquet expressing his excitement…
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Diseases continue to be a major threat to coral reef health, but a new study by Florida researchers reveals how a common antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections in humans is showing great promise.
A recent outbreak of an infectious disease called stony coral tissue loss has affected 20 different stony coral species. First discovered in 2014 in Miami-Dade County, the disease has spread throughout Florida’s Coral Reef and into parts of the Caribbean.
In treating disease-affected Montastraea cavernosa coral colonies (the Great Star Coral widely found in the Atlantic), the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute of Florida Atlantic University found that an amoxicillin treatment had a 95 percent success rate at healing individual disease lesions.
Though, it did not necessarily prevent treated colonies from developing new lesions over time, preserving M. cavernosa colonies is important due to its role as a dominant reef builder in Florida’s Coral Reef.
“There are three possible scenarios that may explain the appearance of new lesions in the amoxicillin treated lesions of the corals that had healed in our study,” said Erin N. Shilling, M.S., the study‘s author.
“It’s possible that the causative agent of stony coral tissue loss disease is still present in the environment and is re-infecting quiesced colonies. It also could be that the duration and dose of this antibiotic intervention was sufficient to arrest stony coral tissue loss, but insufficient at eliminating its pathogens from other areas of the coral colony.”
“Success in treating stony coral tissue loss disease with antibiotics may benefit from using approaches typically successful against bacterial infections in humans—for example using a strong initial dose of antibiotics followed by a regimen of smaller supplementary doses over time,” said Joshua Voss, Ph.D., senior author, an associate research professor at FAU Harbor Branch and executive director of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology.
“Further efforts are needed to optimize dosing and delivery methods for antibiotic treatments…and scale up intervention treatments effectively.”
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The study was conducted approximately 2 kilometers offshore from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in Broward County. Colonies were monitored periodically over 11 months..
This research is a collaboration that includes the Disease Advisory Committee (DAC) organized by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and NOAA, of which Voss and Shilling are members.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, was funded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation.
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Quote of the Day: “I’m an optimist because I know how sad, how challenging, how miserable, how unfair, how unkind life can be—and I think a pessimist is somebody who finds this out new every morning.” – Peter Ustinov
Photo: by Emma Simpson
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 Arctic gold miners discovered a lost and helpless bear cub whose mother had died, it didn’t take long for her to melt their hearts.
As the orphaned cub grew to trust the men, the furry guest soon felt like a friend to the workers on remote Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. She even loved bear hugs.
But with the crew scheduled to leave the base when their work contract came to an end, the vulnerable bear would be left to fend for herself. Between the threat from other predators and her lack of adequate hunting skills, she wouldn’t manage to survive without help.
Fearing they’d only delayed the inevitable, the miners hoped the large store of refuse they’d left behind would be enough to sustain their beloved pal until they could organize a rescue mission for her.
Having had no means of outside contact while at the base, the men reached out Moscow Zoo for guidance at their earliest opportunity.
“All we knew was that the cub’s mother died and that it was months ago when it discovered the base attracted by the smell of food,” Andrey Gorban, director of Royev Ruchey Zoo in Krasnoyarsk told the Siberian Times.
Following protocol, Gorban contacted Russian wildlife authorities to determine a course of action. After deciding the cub was incapable of being on her own, a rescue party was sent to bring her to the zoo.
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“For right or wrong, they fed the endangered animal and through that tamed it,” Gorban explained. “The shift workers saved its life, the cub had no chance to survive.”
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So, while it was technically against the law for the miners to care for the bear, all things considered, at least this now-not-so-little cub is receiving the help she needs, and is being cared for in the way that suits her circumstances.
(MEET the polar bear cub in the Daily Mail video below.)
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North Carolina-based writer Judy Cole has a new rom-com murder mystery debuting at Amazon: And Jilly Came Tumbling After (from Red Sky Presents).
The evolving science of wisdom rests on the idea that wisdom’s defined traits correspond to distinct regions of the brain, and that greater wisdom translates into greater happiness and life satisfaction while being less wise results in opposite, negative consequences.
Scientists have found in multiple studies that persons deemed to be wiser are less prone to feel lonely while those who are lonelier also tend to be less wise.
In a new study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine take the connection between wisdom, loneliness, and biology further, reporting that wisdom and loneliness appear to influence—and/or be influenced by—microbial diversity of the gut.
The human gut microbiota is comprised of trillions of microbes—bacteria, viruses, fungi—that reside within the digestive tract. Researchers have known for a while about the “gut-brain axis,” which is a complex network that links intestinal function to the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain.
This two-way communication system is regulated by neural activity, hormones, and the immune system; alterations can result in disruptions to stress response and behaviors, said the authors, from emotional arousal to higher-order cognitive abilities, such as decision-making.
Past studies have associated gut microbiota with mental health disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, as well as personality and psychological traits regarded as key, biologically based components of wisdom.
Recent research has connected the gut microbiome to social behavior, including findings that people with larger social networks tend to have more diverse gut microbiotas.
The new Frontiers in Psychiatry study involved 187 participants, ages 28 to 97, who completed validated self-report-based measures of loneliness, wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement. The gut microbiota was analyzed using fecal samples.
Microbial gut diversity was measured in two ways: alpha-diversity, referring to the ecological richness of microbial species within each individual and beta-diversity, referring to the differences in the microbial community composition between individuals.
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“We found that lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of wisdom, compassion, social support, and engagement were associated with greater phylogenetic richness and diversity of the gut microbiome,” said first author Tanya T. Nguyen, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
The authors said that the mechanisms that may link loneliness, compassion, and wisdom with gut microbial diversity are not known, but observed that reduced microbial diversity typically represents worse physical and mental health, and is associated with a variety of diseases, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and major depressive disorder.
A more diverse gut microbiota may be less susceptible to invasion by outside pathogens, which could contribute to and help promote better resilience and stability of the community.
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“It is possible that loneliness may result in decreased stability of the gut microbiome and, consequently, reduced resistance and resilience to stress-related disruptions, leading to downstream physiological effects, such as systemic inflammation,” the authors wrote.
“Bacterial communities with low alpha-diversity may not manifest overt disease, but they may be less than optimal for preventing disease. Thus, lonely people may be more susceptible to developing different diseases.”
The relationship between loneliness and microbial diversity was particularly strong in older adults, suggesting that older adults may be especially vulnerable to health-related consequences of loneliness, which is consistent with prior research.
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Conversely, the researchers said that social support, compassion, and wisdom might confer protection against loneliness-related instability of the gut microbiome. Healthy, diverse gut microflora may buffer the negative effects of chronic stress or help shape social behaviors that promote either wisdom or loneliness. They noted that animal studies suggest that gut microbiota may influence social behaviors and interactions, though the hypothesis has not been tested in humans.
The complexity of the topic and study limitations, such as the absence of data about individuals’ social networks, diet, and degree of objective social isolation versus subjective reports of loneliness, argue for larger, longer studies, wrote the authors.
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“Loneliness may lead to changes in the gut microbiome or, reciprocally, alterations of the gut milieu may predispose an individual to become lonely,” said Dilip V. Jeste, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and senior author of the paper. “We need to investigate much more thoroughly to better understand the phenomenon of the gut-brain axis.”
We’ll be sure to share research updates about the fascinating potential links between what’s going on in the gut and what’s going on in the mind as they come in.
Source: University of California – San Diego; Featured image: Curtis Clark, CC license
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Drinking a certain root vegetable juice promotes a mix of mouth bacteria associated with healthier blood vessels and brain function, according to a new study of people aged 70-80.
Certain foods including lettuce, spinach, and celery are rich in inorganic nitrate, and many oral bacteria play a role in turning nitrate to nitric oxide, which helps to regulate blood vessels and neurotransmission, or chemical messages in the brain.
Older people tend to have lower nitric oxide production, and this is associated with poorer vascular (blood vessel) and cognitive (brain) health.
In a new University of Exeter study, 26 healthy older people took part in two 10-day supplementation periods: one with nitrate-rich beetroot juice and another with nitrate-free placebo juice, which they drank twice a day.
The results, published in Redox Biology, showed higher levels of bacteria associated with good vascular and cognitive health, and lower levels of bacteria linked to disease and inflammation.
Systolic blood pressure dropped on average by five points (mmHg) after drinking the beetroot juice.
“We are really excited about these findings, which have important implications for healthy ageing,” said lead author Professor Anni Vanhatalo, of the University of Exeter.
“Previous studies have compared the oral bacteria of young and older people, and healthy people compared to those with diseases, but ours is the first to test nitrate-rich diet in this way.
“Our findings suggest that adding nitrate-rich foods to the diet—in this case via beetroot juice—for just ten days can substantially alter the oral microbiome (mix of bacteria) for the better.
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“Maintaining this healthy oral microbiome in the long term might slow down the negative vascular and cognitive changes associated with ageing.”
“Our participants were healthy, active older people with generally good blood pressure,” Professor Vanhatalo stressed. “Dietary nitrate reduced their blood pressure on average, and we are keen to find out whether the same would happen in other age groups and among people in poorer health.
“We are working with colleagues in the University of Exeter Medical School to investigate interactions between the oral bacteria and cognition to better understand the how diet could be used to delay cognitive decline in older age.”
Much research has been conducted into the benefits of a healthy gut microbiome, but far less is known about the oral microbial community, which plays a crucial role in “activating” the nitrate from a vegetable-rich diet.
It’s all hopeful news, and a good reminder to try and ensure rich and varied diets for ourselves—diet that perhaps includes a little more beetroot juice than we might otherwise think to drink?
Source: University of Exeter
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