Over the last 25 years, the proportion of girls being educated around the world has risen to 89%—a 16% increase since 1995.
Photo by UNESCO
A UNESCO report released last month shows that 180 million more girls have enrolled in primary and secondary education compared to a generation ago
Additionally, three times more women are now enrolled in universities.
The Global Education Monitoring Report entitled, A New Generation: 25 years of efforts for gender equality in education evaluated the progress in girls’ education over the last two and a half decades since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark commitment by 189 countries to advance the rights of girls and women.
“We all know that education is the cornerstone of equality – and the education of girls and women is the first step towards a more gender-equal world,” said the UN group in a press release.
Since 1995, the global enrollment rate for girls increased from 73% to 89%, with the biggest improvements seen in sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia, and especially in India.
Significant progress has been made in primary schools in 23 countries including Bhutan, Djibouti and Nepal, where gender parity has been achieved compared to 1995 when fewer than 80 girls for every 100 boys attended school.
Three times more women are also now enrolled in universities than two decades ago, with particular progress seen in Northern Africa and Western Asia. In Morocco, parity was achieved in 2018, compared to just 3 women enrolled for every 10 men in the early 1990s.
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As more and more tech companies and research organizations turn their sights towards space exploration, a Brooklyn-based startup has discovered a way to explore the solar system without polluting the Earth.
Photo by Air Company
The Air Company brand first gained notoriety back in November 2019 when it launched the world’s first carbon-negative vodka made of air, water and solar energy.
When the pandemic hit, they quickly pivoted their production facility into creating hand sanitizer—and now, they’re applying their groundbreaking carbon conversion technology to help make the space industry more eco-friendly by turning CO2 into rocket fuel.
“We discovered that we can make fuel very efficiently as somewhat of an accident,” electrochemist and Air Company co-founder Stafford Sheehan told Fast Company. “We were running our systems at higher temperatures than normal, under some conditions that we don’t typically do, and found out that we could very efficiently make these fuel molecules.”
Until now, rocket engines have used liquid methane made from natural gas, an unsustainable, non-reusable fossil fuel product. However, organizations like SpaceX and Blue Origin have begun to look for new propellants so they can power their rocket engines for commercial spaceflight and Mars exploration.
That’s where Air Company comes in. For every launch, If Air Company’s CO2-based rocket fuel formula was used for every launch, they would mitigate 715 tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere—that’s the equivalent of about a dozen flights between New York to Los Angeles on a 747 plane.
Image by Air Company
The carbon-negative fuel could also be used to mitigate the ecological effects of other forms of transportation, although the group is primarily focused on rocket fuel.
Furthermore, Air Company says that their formula could be used to fuel return flights from Mars since the planet’s atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide.
“The vision of humans inhabiting Mars is moving closer to becoming a reality, and it is imagined that CO2 can help us reach this goal,” reads Air Company’s website.
Image by Air Company
“We’ve proven the viability of our breakthrough technology and are impelled to defy the impossible by igniting innovation across every industry vertical we touch.”
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Quote of the Day: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” – Marie Curie
Photo by: Gemma Chua-Tran
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The Dog Mountain resort in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, has been attracting dog lovers and their pups for almost 20 years—and leashes are optional.
Dog Mountain chapel – SWNS
Designed by American artist Stephen Huneck, it features swimming ponds, a doggy agility course, and a canine art gallery.
But it’s perhaps the chapel that has become most famous, with its walls festooned by notes, pictures, and poems commemorating beloved canine friends who have passed away.
“It’s a traditional New England looking chapel, where people can come, remember their dogs and celebrate the bonds they had between them and their pets, after they pass,” said Dog Mountain general manager Pam McCann.
“The chapel walls are full of remembrances, lovely notes, and photos of dogs that have passed, left by people from all over the world” she continued.
The lush grounds are set on 150 acres of private mountaintop and open year around—even these days—for free, so the public can enjoy some socially-distanced dog fun.
“We’re glad we are still able to offer the park space as a COVID-friendly retreat and activity,” added McCann.
“Dogs are free to run, play, swim, and (best of all) meet other dogs,” states the website. “Dogs are not just welcome here, they are cherished.”
Arabidopsis thaliana / thale cress by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC license
A plant which had previously been dismissed as not being medically useful could prove to be a hero in disguise, after scientists discovered that it stops the growth of breast cancer cells.
Arabidopsis thaliana / thale cress flowers by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC license
The ground-breaking research, which could lead to future chemotherapy cancer advances, starred Arabidopsis thaliana – also known as thale cress.
The leaves were treated with the plant hormone jasmonate, a substance discovered in jasmine that boosts plant responses to stress. Then they incubated the treated leaves with breast cancer cells.
The researchers found that not only did the cancer cells stop growing, the normal cells remained unaffected. This is significant as use of the plant in breast cancer treatment could potentially lead to a quicker recovery time and fewer secondary effects for patients subjected to chemical treatment. They have also discovered molecular mechanisms associated with the changes in the breast cancer cells that will allow development of further new treatments.
Professor Alessandra Devoto, from the Department of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway University, has been conducting this research since 2006 and has just published a paper on the findings in the journal New Phytologist, along with Dr. Amanda Harvey, from Brunel University London, and Prof Nicholas Smirnoff at the University of Exeter.
“I am truly excited to have discovered the amazing impact this unassuming plant has on breast cancer cells. It just proves that even plants with a non-medicinal pedigree can work for cancer treatment,” Prof Devoto said in a Brunel University press release.
“The plant is very much like the ‘Cinderella’ of the medicinal plant world – no one thought it was so special, but it has shown its true colors via our research. The discovery has important implications in developing treatments for cancer as well as other diseases.”
Dr Harvey and Professor Smirnoff added: “Combined with recent progress in metabolic engineering and biotechnology, our approach will also facilitate production and analysis of bioactivities of valuable metabolites from plants on an industrial scale.
“We are looking forward to continuing our collaboration with Prof Devoto to identify the plant-derived chemicals that interfere with breast cancer cells as well as with other diseases and to progress this research by gathering more funding to benefit society more widely.”
As much as plastic has been maligned in recent years, it was actually a remarkable invention for humanity, allowing us to craft unique materials for essential items and everyday necessities. The problem is that so much of it ends up in landfills and oceans.
The best way forward in dealing with plastic today is to create a circular economy in which resources can be reused, rather than thrown away—and a new technology developed by an international research team may be an innovative solution to address the problem.
In the October edition of the journal Nature Catalysis, scientists from Oxford and other universities in the UK, in collaboration with research groups in China and Saudi Arabia, announced they had developed a simple method for retrieving valuable chemicals from plastic waste, so that recyclers may have a means of making more money from collecting plastic waste.
According to the study, the team’s new process involves breaking plastic down into its molecular components by “pulverizing” it and using microwaves. Doing so can release the core components of plastic materials, including hydrogen and pure carbon, which can then form high-value products, like carbon nanotubes.
To accomplish this feat, the team used a novel set of catalysts—a fancy word for materials that spur subsequent chemical reactions.
Normally, waste recycling equipment will heat up the plastic itself to melt it down. In this case, however, researchers heated up their signature blend of catalysts first, which propelled the conversion process forward in fascinating new ways.
Between 30 to 90 seconds later, the team found their one-step rapid conversion process would produce useful chemicals. The hydrogen they obtained was 97 percent pure, providing a great potential source of clean hydrogen fuel—and the carbon they obtained was crafted into high-value carbon nanotubes, a next-generation engineering material that is incredibly durable but lightweight. These materials, taken together, could provide a crucial revenue stream for recyclers.
One of the researchers, Professor Peter Edwards at Oxford’s Department of Chemistry, said, “This opens up an entirely new area of catalysis in terms of selectivity and offers a potential route to the challenge of the plastic waste Armageddon, particularly in developing countries as one route to the hydrogen economy – effectively enabling them to leap-frog the sole use of fossil fuels.”
It’s important to keep in mind that the team cited here used only a small sample set of plastic waste. However, they believe the process can scale meaningfully to an industrial level.
A study in Finland showed, for the first time, that the immune system of children ages 3-5 improved when forest undergrowth, lawns, and planter boxes were added outside daycare centers.
By Janko Ferlič
Dozens of comparative studies have previously found that children who live in rural areas and are in contact with nature have a lower probability of catching an illness resulting from disorders in the immune system—and a lower risk of developing coeliac disease, allergies, atopy, and even diabetes.
The recent study shows that repeated contact with nature-like elements five times a week diversified the body’s microbes which offered protection against diseases transmitted through the immune system in daycare children.
“This is the first in which these changes offering protection against diseases have been found when adding diversified aspects of nature to an urban environment”, says Aki Sinkkonen, research scientist, who led the study for the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).
The study published in Science Advances, measured what happened when children planted and tended crops in planter boxes, and played on lawns that were added to paved, tiled, or gravel-coated yard areas at daycare centers.
75 daycare children were monitored for one month at ten daycare centers in Lahti and Tampere. Changes in microbes in children who attended daycare with the added nature areas were compared with children who attended normal daycare centers (with no green yard area) or daycare centers with no green yard area, but regular field trips.
Playing in the biodiverse yards over a one month period increased microbial diversity in the children’s skin. There were also changes in blood counts. Increases in gammaproteobacteria, which strengthen the skin’s immune defense, increased the content of the multifunctional TGF-β1-cytokine in blood and reduced the content of interleukin-17A, which is connected to immune-transmitted diseases, according to a statement from Heikki Hyöty, professor of virology from the University of Tampere who participated in the study
“We also found that the intestinal microbiota of children who received greenery was similar to the intestinal microbiota of children visiting the forest every day,” says dissertation researcher Marja Roslund from the University of Helsinki.
Based on this study and previous comparative studies, Sinkkonen says children’s motor skills and ability to concentrate will also improve, with the close relationship to nature.
When we are in contact with nature, we expose ourselves to a broad range of microbes, activating different parts of our defensive system.
The researchers suggest leaving autumn leaves to decompose naturally, rather than carrying them away, and allowing the fallen tree limbs to decay naturally on the ground.
“We should modify our daily life so that we can be in contact with nature. It would be best if children could play in puddles… and we could take our children out to nature five times a week to have an impact on microbes”, Sinkkonen says, which will also keep your tetanus vaccination effective.
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Quote of the Day: “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.” – George Santayana
Photo by: Jorge Vasconez
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Hamilton County JFS Adoption & Foster Care Recruitment
While it’s true that none of us gets to choose our relatives when we’re born, we can have a say in who we choose to call family. That’s just what foster dad Robert Carter did when he decided to adopt an entire brood of five siblings.
Hamilton County JFS Adoption & Foster Care Recruitment
29-year-old Carter, who’d spent years in the Ohio foster care system himself, knew only too well what it was like to lose touch with loved ones. He entered the system at age 12. It wasn’t until years later that he was finally reunited with his younger sister and brother.
The children Carter adopted, whose names are Marionna, Makayla, Robert, Giovanni, and Kiontae, were living in three separate foster homes when he was awarded custody.
“Mr. Carter was the only foster parent willing and able to adopt all of the children,” caseworker Stacey Barton told WCVB-5 TV. “His childhood background has made him aware of the importance of keeping siblings together.”
Prior to the adoption, Carter was already fostering the three brothers. When he arranged for the girls and their foster moms to meet up so the children wouldn’t lose touch with one another and realized how distressed they all were at the end of the visit, he knew there was only one course of action.
The responsibility was a lot for the single dad to take on by himself, but Carter was determined to keep these kids together. It’s not always easy. You can choose your family, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to feel like a family overnight.
Right now, Carter is concentrating on earning his children’s trust and trusting that in time, love will come along, too.
“[I’m] making memories to replace a lot of the bad ones,” Carter said. “Every night, I talk to them and let them know, ‘I’m your dad forever. I know what it’s like, and I’m always here for you.’”
Matthew Verdolivo/UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services
When a grave containing the remains of a 9,000-year-old human alongside an extensive hunter’s tool kit was discovered, archaeologists reckoned they had found a great chief—a revered hunter.
Matthew Verdolivo/UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services
However, bio-archaeologist Jim Watson of the University of Arizona informed the discoverers who were working high in the Peruvian Andes mountains that, based on the dimensions of the bones, the “big” man as they had been calling it, was actually a woman.
After the remains were indeed proven to be female, it caused the team, a mixture of anthropologists and archaeologists from the Universities of California and Arizona, to reexamine other reports of burials hypothesized as belonging to male hunters and found that an additional 10 had been incorrectly recorded as male.
Beginning with an influential 1966 Chicago symposium, researchers believed that “man the hunter” was separated in his paleolithic duties from women, who spent their time gathering.
Archaeological evidence of female hunters has been scant, and anthropological examinations of hunter-gatherer groups today, like the Hadza of Tanzania or the San in Namibia, show that indeed men hunt big game and women gather plant-based food.
The team hadn’t set out to study the gender dynamics of hunting in the prehistorical Andean world, but nevertheless the corresponding report on their discoveries included a meta-analysis of studies done on Andean gravesites and determined that of those buried with hunting tools, 10 were female while 16 were male, suggesting that hunting was “gender-neutral”.
Women hunting through the ages
Considering that for thousands of years, there were only two main jobs to do: hunting and gathering, it would seem unbelievable that there was never any line-blurring in gender responsibilities of food acquisition.
Many things could have caused a female in Andean society to put down the basket and pick up the atlatl—like fewer hunting-age males in society due to conflict with other tribes, or males dying on hunting expeditions.
In mythological pantheons across the world, it’s not uncommon for hunting to be in the domain of a goddess, such as Skaði, repeatedly mentioned in Old Norse epic poetry, or Diana, the Hellenistic huntress deity that was also appropriated by the Romans.
In Egypt, there were female and male deities of hunting. Neith was a female goddess that is one of the oldest recorded deities in Egypt, when she was often revered for her hunting characteristics.
Today, according to Chris Dorsey writing for Forbes, the fasting-growing segment of the population in America who hunt is women. His findings suggest it has a lot to do with a desire to get away from industrial agriculture and over-processed meat.
“I wanted to know what I was feeding my family,” one South-Carolina huntress told Forbes. “Wild game is hormone, steroid and antibiotic-free, the healthiest meat you can eat.”
“Women have always been able to hunt and have in fact hunted,” archaeologist Bonnie Pitblado of the University of Oklahoma, Norman, told Science Magazine reporting on the discovery in the Andes. “These women were living high up in the Andes, at 13,000 feet full time; if you can do that, surely you can bring down a deer.”
In Why Women Hunt, K. J. Houtman writes, “For some, it’s a sense of independence that comes from possessing the skills to hunt, the ability to provide food without having to rely on others.”
National Geographic says the percentage of women who hunt in America rose by 25% between 2006-2011, and reports that hunting workshops for women around the country tend to be booked solid for months in advance.
Whether it’s to provide food for one’s family, to spend long periods outdoors in nature, or to perfect a skill, the modern huntress—like this ancient woman with her 20-stone projectile points and blades for cutting and scraping her catch—hearkens back to ancient longings and necessities.
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A Brit is engaged to a woman he travelled 4,000 miles to meet—after she liked a photo of him holding a cat on a Facebook group for chubby cats.
SWNS
29-year-old Adam Lawrence and 26-year-old Anna Hosey connected in October 2019 after Adam posted a photograph of himself holding a friend’s cat in the This Cat Is Chonky group.
He messaged Anna after she called him “cute” in the comments. And just two months later, after a flurry of calls and messages, he flew to America to meet her.
They have dated long-distance ever since, and when Adam’s next visit to the States got cancelled due to the pandemic, hair stylist Anna flew to London as soon as the border opened in July 2020.
She moved in with Adam for lockdown and Adam proposed. Now these two smitten kittens are happily engaged just one year after their chance encounter.
Graphic designer Adam said: “I knew Anna was leaving and I wanted our relationship to carry on so I just decided to propose.
“My friends and family all love her.
“I don’t usually date. I haven’t had that many relationships so when everyone met Anna, they all said wow she’s amazing, you guys have to try and make it work.
“We had spoken about getting married a couple of times but hadn’t really reached a decision.
Anna, from Chicago, said: “I wasn’t completely surprised—when it happened, it was more of a sense of excitement for the direction that our future is going to be going officially. It felt more like affirming what we wanted.”
SWNS
The pair got on from their very first phone call. It lasted five hours. “”We are both very passionate about music so we were sending music to each other back and forth and we had deep meaningful conversations,” says Anna.
“From that conversation on, I remember going to my friends and saying I don’t know why, I don’t know this guy but I feel like I’m going to marry him!”
The happily engaged pair are looking forward to the future and hope to get married next year in London with Anna looking to eventually move to the UK full time.
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Due to a highly effective global vaccine program, the proportion of children under five who are chronically infected with Hepatitis B has plummeted significantly—to just under 1%.
WHO
This is down from around 5% in the pre-vaccine era (the period between the 1980s and the early 2000s), according to new estimates from the World Health Organization
Eliminating viral hepatitis has been part of a UN Sustainable Development Goal to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” since 2015.
Reaching a rate of under 1% prevalence of HBV infections in very young children is a huge milestone that brings the world closer to the UN aim of ending hepatitis by 2030.
“No infant should grow up only to die of hepatitis B because they were not vaccinated─today’s milestone means that we have dramatically reduced the number of cases of liver damage and liver cancer in future generations,” said public health researcher Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Preventing mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B is the most important strategy for controlling the disease and saving lives. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must ensure that mothers and newborns have access to life-saving services including hepatitis B vaccinations.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) is now calling for united and stepped-up action to build on this achievement through intensified efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV through testing pregnant women and provision of antiviral prophylaxis to those who need it and maintaining and expanding access to hepatitis B immunization and birth dose vaccine.
Preventing Hepatitis B
Infants can be protected from HBV through a safe and effective vaccine that provides over 95% protection against infection.
WHO recommends that all infants receive a first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine as soon as possible after birth–preferably within 24 hours–followed by at least two additional doses.
The scale-up of hepatitis B vaccine worldwide over the last two decades, which has been in large part due to the support provided by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has been a great public health success story and contributed to the decrease in HBV infections among children.
In 2019, coverage of three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine during childhood reached 85% worldwide, up from around 30% in 2000.
However, access to the first critical dose within 24 hours of birth remains uneven. Global coverage of this birth dose is 43%, but this drops to 34% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region and only 6% in the WHO African Region.
“Expanding access to a timely birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is the cornerstone of efforts to prevent mother-to-children transmission of HBV. For countries especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine has not yet been introduced, it is a priority to assure that protection as early as possible,” said Dr Meg Doherty, Director of Global HIV, Hepatitis, and STI Programs.
Eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HBV is also an important stepping stone for reaching the targets of WHO’s global hepatitis strategy, which aims to reduce new hepatitis infections by 90% and deaths by 65%, compared to 2015 levels.
We’ll continue to share hopeful health news from around the world as it comes in.
Back in 2018, 3M began publishing public attitudes towards science around the world. Prior to the pandemic, a general drop in trust towards science and scientists was showing in 3M’s figures.
Then COVID-19 hit the world, and everything changed: In their latest polling, the multinational company 3M has found the downwards trend dramatically reversed—with trust in science showing a huge rise since March 2020.
In fact, against the backdrop of the coronavirus, trust in science and scientists is the highest it has been in three years since these surveys first began.
For its State of Science Index (SOSI) pollings, 3M targets a demographically representative group of over 1,000 participants in around a dozen countries: including Brazil, the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan.
The latest SOSI survey was fielded in eleven countries throughout July and August of 2020, about six months into the pandemic.
89% of those surveyed said they trust science; 86% trust scientists; 77% are more likely as a result of the pandemic to agree that science needs more funding; and more than half (54%) agree science is very important to their everyday lives–a double-digit increase from the pre-pandemic data (44%).
Rounding out the picture, 92% of global respondents believe actions should follow science to contain the global pandemic, revealing another measure of trust in science.
COVID-19 has made people more sensitive to and appreciative of what science can do
“As people face the most challenging health crisis in our lifetime, science is more relevant, more trusted, and more important to people all over the world,” explained Mike Roman, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of 3M.
People who stated, “I am skeptical of science,” dropped by 7 points to 28% during the pandemic this summer, from its high of 35% last year. Relatedly, respondents who only believe science that aligns with their personal beliefs is down six percentage points from when the question was first asked in 2018.
A renewed trust in science appears to translate into taking action too: More than half of those surveyed (54%) agree COVID-19 has made them more likely to advocate for science, whereas pre-pandemic data showed only 20% would stand up for science when debating its merits with others.
When asked about issues people most want to solve for, unsurprisingly, finding a cure for emerging viruses (such as COVID-19) ranks at the top (80%), followed by finding a cure for other major diseases (62%).
Outside of healthcare, social justice and the environment are among the greatest priorities. Social justice/STEM equity (advocating for racial equality in society and/or ensuring underrepresented minorities have access to STEM education) is the top non-health related issue (55%)—and addressing the effects of climate change is the second (51%).
Quote of the Day: “A knight does not stop at each victory. He pushes on to risk a more significant failure.” – Ethan Hawke (who turns 50 today), Rules for a Knight
Photo by: Marie Bellando-Mitjans, in Berlin, Germany
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As the world waits for the outcome of the U.S. presidential race, we found some good news to focus on down the ballot. From record-high voter turnout to a historic number of Native Americans winning seats in the 117th Congress, here’s a look at some of the results from Tuesday’s nationwide elections.
This election saw the highest voter turnout in over a century
The U.S. Elections Project, which tracks voter turnout, has found that more than 160 million Americans voted.
Representing nearly 70% of the potentially eligible voting population, this marks the largest election participation since 1900.
Huge numbers of young people registered and cast their votes
More than 15 million Americans have turned 18 since the last presidential election, and they’ve been registering to vote in droves. In Idaho, Minnesota, Georgia, and Vermont, registrations of young people exceeded 2016 numbers by over a third.
The Center for Information Research & Civic Learning and Engagement has been tracking early and absentee voting by young people aged 18-29: It found that more than seven million youths across the country had already cast their ballots by October 27, including over four million in 14 key states.
Americans too young to vote signed up as poll workers
In the 2018 midterm elections, roughly 58% of poll workers were aged 61 or older, so young citizens stepped up to volunteer to eliminate older people’s risk at being exposed to the COVID-19 virus.
In fact, more than 37,000 young people—some of whom are not old enough to vote—signed up to be poll workers on November 3 through the Poll Hero Project.
Foreign interference was not the issue it was in the 2016 election
Despite worries of disinformation and hacking attempts coming from Russia, China, and Iran, the Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was able to confidently announce on November 3, “We have no indications that a foreign actor has succeeded in compromising or affecting the actual votes cast in this election.”
According to Elisabeth Braw at Foreign Policy, two things have changed since 2016: “U.S. authorities, election machine manufacturers, and social media companies are now acutely aware of the interference risk and try to limit it.” Furthermore, U.S. Cyber Command “went on offense early with its Defending Forward strategy.”
Native Americans made history
Six Native American candidates won seats in the 117th Congress—three women and three men; three Democrats and three Republicans; two from Oklahoma, two from New Mexico, one from Kansas, and one from Hawaii; including two Cherokee, one Chickasaw, one Ho-Chunk, one Laguna and Jemez Pueblo, and one Native Hawaiian.
We made history y’all!
SIX Native Americans are headed to the 117th Congress.
3 women, 3 men 3 Democrats, 3 Republicans 2 from OK, 2 NM, 1 KS and 1 HI 2 Cherokee, 1 Chickasaw, 1 Ho-Chunk, 1 Laguna and Jemez Pueblo, and 1 Native Hawaiian. https://t.co/twMWkSO7gg
New Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to their House delegation.
Yvette Herrell and Teresa Leger Fernandez were elected, joining Deb Haaland, who won her reelection.
A nurse and single mother from Springfield made history in Missouri
After her victory, Cori Bush became the first Black woman elected to Congress from the state of Missouri. She tweeted the single word “First,” along with this photo standing in front of a painting of Shirley Chisholm—who became the first African-American woman elected to the US Congress in 1969, representing New York.
Cori Bush/Twitter
The first openly gay Black men will take seats in the US Congress
Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones both won their congressional races in New York, bringing the total number of LGBT members of Congress to nine.
A right-to-repair car law was significantly expanded in Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, a Right to Repair law being called “the most advanced in the world” was voted in. From 2022 onwards, car manufacturers in the Bay State will have to share repair data beyond just dealers—to consumers and repair stores.
This law will allow car owners and local mechanics back into the repair process, instead of restricting repairs to dealerships and their partners.
Voters in the Magnolia State overwhelmingly approved the citizen-led Initiative 65, making it the 35th state to establish a medical marijuana program.
In fact, citizens in states across the country have voted to ease restrictions for recreational adult use.
Montana, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Arizona voted to legalize recreational pot
Adults in these states will be able to legally buy recreational weed in the future—with tax revenue in Arizona being earmarked for community colleges and “public safety.”
Currently, 11 states have fully legalized adult marijuana use. Oregon also became the first state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of any drug. Such a law lays the groundwork for people with substance abuse issues to receive the treatment they need instead of time in jail, according to the Washington Post.
Oregon also legalized the therapeutic use of psychedelic mushrooms, with D.C. joining in voted to decriminalize plant psychedelics, including psilocybin and ayahuasca.
Countless families have been torn apart by jail sentences for people who are only doing what drinkers of alcohol do—de-stressing with their drug of choice. Ending the policy that wastes taxpayer dollars to incarcerate otherwise law-abiding citizens is surely good news.
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From next week, US veterans and the immediate family members of fallen service members will get to visit the nation’s most iconic wonders—its national parks, wildlife refuges, and other federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior—any time, for free.
National Park Service photo
As of Veteran’s Day on November 11, Gold Star Families and anyone who’s worked in the US Armed Forces, including the National Guard and Reserves, can go to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, or Yosemite for no cost.
US Parks don’t only include natural wonders, but historical ones as well, like Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace in Kentucky, the Civil War Appomattox Court House in Virginia, the Frederick Douglass home in DC, and forts and battlefields in dozens of states.
2,000 public locations spread out across more than 400 million acres of public lands, which host activities to fit any lifestyle, from serene to high octane, including hiking, fishing, paddling, biking, hunting, stargazing and climbing, will now be that bit more accessible to those who have served the country.
“Our veterans and Gold Star Families have made incredible sacrifices to defend our freedoms and our homeland. Ensuring that they are able to enjoy all of the wonders of the country that they’ve served is one small way of saying thank you,” said U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley in a statement from the Department of Interior.
Todd Wendy
The positive impacts of being out in nature are well known to scientists: Even a 20-minute walk in a natural place significantly lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
“Exposure to outdoor recreation can provide a wide range of mental health benefits, and given our nation’s ongoing veteran suicide crisis, this is a welcome step forward using a whole of government approach to improve the lives of veterans,” explained Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America CEO Jeremy Butler.
As such, this new initiative from the Department of the Interior could make a positive difference to the lives of many thousands of people across the States.
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Wayne Chen, Britton Ledingham for the Libin Cardiovascular Institute
Wayne Chen, Britton Ledingham for the Libin Cardiovascular Institute
A research team at the University of Calgary has made an exciting breakthrough with the potential to prevent and reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
The team, led by Dr. Wayne Chen, discovered that limiting the open time of a channel called the ryanodine receptor, which acts like a gateway to cells located in the heart and brain, reverses and prevents progression of Alzheimer’s disease in animal models. They also identified a drug that interrupts the disease process.
The effect of giving the drug to animal models was remarkable: After one month of treatment, the memory loss and cognitive impairments in these models disappeared.
“The significance of identifying a clinically used drug that acts on a defined target to provide anti-Alzheimer’s disease benefits can’t be overstated,” said Chen.
The results of this groundbreaking study were recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports.
This work is potentially highly impactful as millions around the world live with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, suffering memory loss and other cognitive impairments with a negative impact on quality of life.
The science behind the findings
Previous research has shown that the progression of Alzheimer’s disease is driven by a vicious cycle of the protein amyloid β (Aβ) inducing hyperactivity at the neuron level. However, the mechanism behind this wasn’t fully understood nor were there effective treatments to stop the cycle.
Chen’s team used a portion of an existing drug used for heart patients, carvedilol, to treat mice models with Alzheimer’s symptoms. After a month of treatment, researchers tested animal models with very promising results.
“We treated them for a month and the effect was quite amazing,” says Chen, explaining the drug was successful in reversing major symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. “We couldn’t tell the drug-treated disease models and the healthy models apart.”
Chen, a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, is optimistic about the future of this research, however, there are many steps to be taken before this finding would lead to a clinical trial.
A rather innocuous observation of the small cyanobacteria living in the hot springs and boiling pools of Yellowstone National Park by a scientist in 1966 would lead to the discovery of a molecule that now 54 years later is being used to fuel the testing process for the viral RNA of a virus responsible for a civilization-altering pandemic.
Ken Lane
As Jeff Goldblum’s character said in Jurassic Park, “Life, uh, finds a way.” Outside the realm of Hollywood, it was these mats of squishy cyanobacteria found in pools of water which can reach a boiling point that created a revolution in science—proving that life could indeed survive in conditions which used to be considered untenable even for bacteria.
“What use could there be in looking for living bacteria in hot springs and boiling pools at Yellowstone National Park?” the scientist Thomas Brock said in his acceptance speech for an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Well, along with creating the trigger for the founding of another dimension of life sciences, it led to another foundational discovery—a heat-resistant enzyme called DNA-polymerase, which to this day allows scientists to accurately test for COVID-19 by replicating DNA at will.
Life finds a way
In the 1980s, American biochemist Kary Mullis discovered it was possible to mimic the way DNA copies itself, and that if he marked regions of the organism with “primers,” small segments of DNA, and then applied DNA-polymerase, the enzyme would turn the primers into whatever Mullis wanted to copy.
To do this, according to National Geographic, the sample needed to undergo a circular heating and cooling process that damaged the DNA-polymerase. It could still work, but it was slow, arduous, and, like continually heating a piece of meat, it caused breakdowns in the proteins that would eventually end the process altogether.
However, Mullis realized that thermus aquaticus—the species of cyanobacteria discovered by Mr. Brock in Mushroom Springs, Yellowstone—spent all its time in water that averaged 191 degrees Fahrenheit, and that the DNA-polymerase from its cells might be resistant to the heat needed to activate the replicating process.
Sure enough, his hunch was right, and it’s that process, made from the enzyme found inside thermus aquaticus, that is being used to test individuals positively or negatively for COVID-19.
After the viral-RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 is converted to DNA, the replicating method of Mullis is applied to areas where the virus is detected, endlessly replicating the cells on a test sample until the presence of the virus is clear or not.
If you go to Yellowstone and read some of the placards surrounding the iconic bunches of geothermal features, you’ll notice that one explains the discovery of cyanobacteria and how it changed scientists’ understanding of the fundamental components of life. That discovery has been expanded by further investigations of microbes living on undersea thermal vents, which has put together a picture of what microbial life might need to survive on other planets.
But, in the meantime, the cyanobacteria behind the discoveries of Brock and Mullis are fueling the testing process that helps us humans to survive on Earth amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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As polling lines snaked around city blocks and stretched through neighborhoods across the country in 2020, a volunteer-led non-profit delivered more than 1.3 million pizzas, burgers, empanadas, donuts, cookies, and other snacks to people at polling sites.
Associated Press for Pizza to the Polls
According to Pizza to the Polls, their mission is a simple one: to send snacks to crowded polling locations—and this year they delivered the free food in 48 states paid for by donations totaling a whopping $1.45 million from grassroots supporters eager to cheer up their fellow American voters.
With historic turnout for early voting and COVID-19 safety measures lengthening wait times, the organization delivered pizzas to more than 3,200 polling locations across the country and deployed 262 food trucks to 29 cities through their partnership with Uber Eats and others.
Voters, poll workers, and children accompanying their parents were able to enjoy treats paid for by donations raised from 28,418 donors, with an average donation of $49.23
The program generated some attention and received support from celebrities like Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, and Tracee Ellis Ross.
“Food can be a major mood-shifter for people who have been waiting for hours to vote or who have been volunteering to ensure the process runs smoothly,” Pizza to the Polls co-founder Scott Duncombe said. “We’ve seen people get really excited about our deliveries—and some have even told us that it was the boost they needed to stay in line.”
