Quote of the Day: “Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.” – C. JoyBell C.
Photo by: engin akyurt
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?
For families across the US, Thanksgiving this year is likely to look a little different—with grocery stores across the nation stocking up on smaller turkeys to meet people’s changed needs.
As for Zoom? As a thank you to its customers, from midnight ET on November 26 through 6am ET on November 27, they’re lifting their 40-minute time limit on free meetings.
As a thank you to our customers, we will be lifting the 40-minute limit for all meetings globally from midnight ET on Nov. 26 through 6 a.m. ET on Nov. 27 so your family gatherings don't get cut short. ❤️🏡 #ZoomTogether pic.twitter.com/aubsH0tfxG
— Zoom (@zoom_us) November 10, 2020
Normally, paid yearly packages for Zoom cost between $150-$200. If a host opts to stick with the free option, then a meeting runs for a maximum of 40 minutes. From there, a new free video call needs to be started when participants want to chat for longer.
The video communications platform isn’t just lifting the free time limit in the US—this Thanksgiving initiative is global, so whether you have family or good friends in Sydney or London or Taipei, you can talk to them this coming Thursday. For as long as you like.
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The long-hypothesized ban in the UK on the sale of cars that burn fossil fuels has been officially scheduled for 2030, making it the earliest of the powerful Western economies to do so.
The ban comes into effect five years ahead of previously discussed deadlines; it would affect both gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles, and five years after that, even hybrids.
The announcement came on Wednesday from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said the ban would be part of a broader “green industrial revolution,” in which £12 billion ($16 billion) would be spent on other projects as well, such as a proposed quadrupling of offshore wind energy, investing in hydro and nuclear powers, making homes and offices more efficient, and more.
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Although this year has taken a very different path to the one we expected, the United Kingdom is looking to the future and seizing the opportunity to build back greener,” Johnson said in a statement. “The recovery of our planet and of our economies can and must go hand-in-hand.”
Concerns about a lack of reliable infrastructure for such a dramatic overhaul in sales potential in a country where 263 automobiles are sold every hour are to be addressed with £1.2 billion ($1.59 billion) for investment in public charging stations, £582 million ($773 million) in subsidies to make certain electric vehicles cheaper, and £500 million ($664 million) in R&D for better battery technologies according to CNN.
MORE: Electric Vehicle Sales in Europe Have Smashed Through Even the Most Optimistic Forecasts
“We share government’s ambition for leadership in decarbonizing road transport and are committed to the journey,” Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said in a statement.
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When the Jimmy Kimmel Live! staff writers heard about a woman in Maryland who’s one of Barack Obama’s biggest fans, they realized the time was ripe for setting up a good-natured prank.
Joyce Taylor was told she was going to be part of a special screening where she’d watch pre-taped clips of the former president reading aloud from his new memoir, A Promised Land.
That simple prospect alone was exciting enough for a super fan—but when she realized she was on a personal video call with Barack, she could not contain herself.
ALSO: Watch Jimmy Kimmel Prank His Staffers By Moving His New Wax Museum Replica Around the Building
Although 900,000 copies of Obama’s book were sold in a single day, only Joyce got a personal reading, and the shock of a lifetime.
(WATCH the hijinks ensue…)
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Scientists at the University of Alberta just cured diabetes in mice, opening the floodgates for research on adapting this cure for humans.
The potential cure is a landmark moment in preventing the growing prevalence of diabetes in our society, a disease which, according to WHO, burdens 422 million people worldwide.
The process involves a stem cell application that reverse-engineers insulin islets out of blood cells—this cured mice of the disease.
“We’ve been taking blood samples from patients with diabetes, winding those cells from the blood back in time so that they can be changed, and then we’re moving them forward in time so that we can turn them into the cells we want,” explains the procedure’s pioneer Dr. James Shapiro to CTV, who famously developed the “Edmonton Protocol”—another diabetes treatment, in the 1990s.
The Edmonton Protocol involved using islet cells from organ transplants, but required powerful anti-rejection medication. The new stem cell process uses the patient’s own cells so rejection is impossible.
Like any good scientist, Shapiro won’t move beyond the phrase “more research is needed,” but hopes he can receive support from governments if he can prove the science is the same in humans.
“There needs to be preliminary data and ideally a handful of patients that would demonstrate to the world that this is possible and that it’s safe and effective,” said Shapiro.
The lack of funding has led to a group of volunteers to create a “22 by 22” campaign to raise $22 million by 2022 in order to help advance the procedure so it can be available to humans as soon as possible.
Canada is no stranger to making breakthroughs in diabetes treatments—Sir Frederick Banting had the idea for insulin 100 years ago, with 2022 marking the centennial anniversary of its groundbreaking first use.
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Reprinted with permission from World At Large, a news website of nature, politics, science, health, and travel.
The American Prairie Reserve, one of the nation’s largest and most ambitious conservation projects, acquired the property of Blue Ridge Ranch in northern Montana’s Great Plains in August last year.
The property is home to a large elk herd, along with a healthy population of prairie dogs, burrowing owls, bighorn sheep, and mule deer.
“The topography and habitat of Blue Ridge are extremely important to the regional elk population,” said Reserve Superintendent Damien Austin in a statement. “We feel very fortunate to be able to add such a wildlife-rich area to the Reserve”.
The American Prairie Reserve (APR) is like nothing else on the North American continent. It is a project designed to acquire enough privately owned land—in the hundreds of thousands of acres—between the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument to connect two units of federally managed land in a mosaic of terrain that would create the single largest reserve in the lower 48 states.
The scale epitomizes Montana’s nickname of “Big Sky State,” as the reserve’s private-public mix of 419,000 acres stretches across the North American Prairie—one of the largest grassland ecosystems on Earth, and one of only four places on the planet where a grasslands ecosystem can be preserved on an ecosystem-wide scale.
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The eventual goal is to acquire 3.2 million acres, or around 5,000 square miles of ground, which is about the size scientists reckon an ecosystem-scale grassland reserve would have to be to ensure that all the resilience and resources necessary would be present for the wildlife, and have it be managed by private, state, Indian, and federal wildlife management agencies together.
Alison Fox, the CEO of APR, noted the importance of the new acquisition when she said: “We are very excited to add Blue Ridge to the Reserve and we anticipate recreationists will be as well. The Blue Ridge acquisition moves us one step closer to achieving our goal of building a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.”
Indeed, the 29th purchase brought the total acres of land in the reserve to 419,625, of which 104,578 acres are private lands owned by the reserve, and 315,047 acres are public lands (federal and state) leased by the reserve. This excludes the 1.5 million acres of the Charles M. Russell NWR, and the Upper Missouri Breaks NM, which act like the bread in the conservation sandwich.
The Blue Ridge Ranch unit shares a five-mile border with another parcel of land owned by the reserve, connecting it with the nearby Russell NWR, opening critical migratory corridors for traveling mammals like pronghorn antelope.
In years past, the reserve was a small patchwork of disconnected units, and the APR was a dream of the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Now however, the APR is becoming one of the best places in the state for researching wildlife, and papers published on the reserve’s properties include ones about beavers, cougars, upland game birds like the Greater Sage Grouse, bison and pronghorn migration ecology, and research on the endangered swift fox.
Along with the goal of having the nation’s largest bison herds, the reserve’s purchasing of the deeds of ranches in the proposed area has retired 63,777 acres of leased-public land in the Russell NWR that was originally for cattle ranching. It will now return to wildlife management purposes, expanding available grazing land for bison.
In an earlier World at Large story, we noted that the American Prairie or Great Plains region stretches across 16 states, is the ancestral home of dozens of Native American tribes, and contains the natural habitat for almost all species of North American megafauna.
In 1999, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) published Ecoregional Planning in the Northern Great Plains Steppe, which, for the first time, pinpointed specific, critical areas of the Northern Great Plains that were the most viable for conserving the existing diversity of plants and animals.
The region just north of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Montana was identified as a top priority for grassland conservation, owing to the relatively pristine condition of the land and the diversity of wildlife species in the area.
READ: World’s Biggest Wildlife Crossing Will Protect Animals From Drivers on the 101 in Los Angeles
Shortly after TNC published its findings, the WWF decided to initiate a conservation effort in the Montana Glaciated Plains, one of the key areas identified by TNC. They determined that an independent entity, in this case APR, that would be capable of focusing all of its time and resources on the preservation of Montana’s Northern Great Plains would be the best vehicle through which to initiate a large-scale conservation effort.
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Quote of the Day: “If our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.” – Robert F. Kennedy (born 95 years ago)
Photo by: Mantas Hesthaven
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People with autism generally see the world through a different lens than the rest of the world, and it’s often one with a singular focus. Such is the case with 12-year-old Anthony Schmidt. Anthony is driven—by his obsession for cars.
His extensive collection of model cars is mind-boggling, but Anthony’s love of automobiles doesn’t stop there. He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much every car that’s ever been built from their first inception to today’s latest models.
Show him a car, and he can tell you everything about it down to the smallest detail. It was a skill that came in handy for some New York detectives who had only a grainy image of a suspect’s car in an ongoing criminal investigation.
When Anthony saw the picture, he was able to identify its make, model, and year immediately—making it one getaway car that didn’t get away after all. Thanks to Anthony’s fine-tuned savvy, the suspect was apprehended soon after.
Anthony lives with his mom, Ramona, near Seattle, Washington. She says her son’s car enthusiasm began when he was about 2 years old. By age 6, he’d begun creating a photographic series of tableaus starring his model cars staged in hyper-realistic settings.
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When he was 9, Ramona launched an Instagram page to showcase Anthony’s extraordinary work. He’s got a Facebook page as well.
“Everyone freaked out,” Ramona told the Woodinville Weekly. “He gets recognized in public. There was an overwhelming response from people asking for calendars or coffee table books.”
With his mom’s help, Anthony has since gone on to launch his own product line that includes books, calendars, photographic prints, and other branded merchandise, all of which can be found on his Anthony Schmidt Photography website.
To keep track of his 600-something model collection, Anthony uses an Excel spreadsheet. Like many people with autism, organization and mathematics are intrinsic to his worldview.
Structure and routine are also important. So every day, with his mom to assist, Anthony painstakingly sets up a photoshoot—indoors or outside, depending on the weather—arranging and tweaking the cars and their surroundings until he’s sure he’s got the perfect shot.
The results of his singular vision are often breathtaking.
“It’s truly because of the autism, not in spite of it,” Ramona told KOMO News 4.
Anthony Schmidt loves cars. His mom says he plans to make them his life’s work. He hopes to inspire others with special needs and their families by living his success story one day at a time for everyone to see. “You can set your mind to whatever you want,” he explained.
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They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but Anthony’s determined focus does more than simply create beautiful imagery, it opens a window to another world and another way of seeing altogether. And that is a precious gift for all of us.
(WATCH Anthony in action in the Q13 Fox video below.)
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According to a traditional carol, it’s partridges in pear trees we should be on the lookout for at this time of year, but one man found a very different kind of holiday surprise this Monday—a teeny owl hiding in the Rockefeller Center’s 2020 Christmas tree.
When a worker helping set up the iconic New York tree discovered a tiny bird tucked among its giant branches on Monday, he called his wife. “The owl’s not flying away,” he said. “We need to get some help.”
His wife called the experts at Ravensbeard Wildlife Center and asked if they took the owls in for rehabilitation. “Yes we do,” a staff member in Saugerties replied on the phone. There was silence for a moment, then the wife said, “Okay, I’ll call back when my husband comes home, he’s got the baby owl in a box tucked in for the long ride.”
When a staff member met the husband halfway between New York and the refuge, they peeked in the box. It wasn’t a baby bird. It was a tiny male saw-whet owl—which grows to be only 8.3 inches tall at full size.
Rescuers fed the owl and gave him fluids. Having made a 170-mile journey in a trailer from Oneonta, New York, to Manhattan on Saturday, it definitely needed the TLC.
Ravensbeard Wildlife Center director Ellen Kalish said the owl was seen by a vet on Wednesday and given X-rays, and has since been declared fit and healthy.
“It’s just a story out of a movie,” said Kalish, who is now caring for the bird.
Over the past few days, the little bird has “had a buffet of all-you-can-eat mice,” she said, so now “he’s ready to go” back in the wild.
As for the owl’s new name? Of course it’s Rockefeller.
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When you wander the aisles of a big-box hardware store, you can hunt up everything from garden gear to grills to paint. What you might not expect is that in the appliance section, you can also find a jumbo-sized package of goodwill and compassion.
Lowe’s may be a hardware giant, but it seems they have a soft spot when it comes to one very special Missouri 4-year-old.
Like most children his age, Jaxon Maples is bright and inquisitive. He also has autism.
From an early age, Jaxon has been drawn by the language of mechanical objects. The whir of a fan, the thrum of a washing machine, and the tumbling cadence of the dryer were among his favorite fascinations.
It’s not surprising that when Jaxon discovered the appliance section at the local Lowe’s store on a family visit, it was as if he’d stepped into his own personal wonderland.
Jaxon’s mom, Shauna Rippee, reveals her son’s love for the hardware store has turned out to be something of a godsend.
“Lowe’s has been the center of our world, because our world is Jaxon,” she told the Springfield News Leader. “When you have a child who is on the spectrum, he can have massive meltdowns. We are so thankful that we know how to calm him down before it gets into a really bad situation. We just get in the car and go to Lowe’s.”
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But it turns out, Jaxon’s adoration isn’t a one-way love affair.
When Rippee contacted Lowe’s head office to explain her son’s unique situation and ask if they might send him one of their signature associate vests, the generous response went far beyond her expectations.
With corporate’s blessing, the South Springfield Lowe’s not only got Jaxon a vest, they made him an honorary associate and gifted him with a bounty of child-friendly branded merchandise.
“My team was really inspired by his story and his connection to Lowe’s,” store manager Marty Davis said. “Jaxon’s visit made our team’s day and brought several associates to tears.”
They also presented the boy with a Lowe’s football signed by our team, wooden DIY kits, and a small desk fan to help keep Jaxon calm.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed Jaxon’s visits to some degree, he knows he’ll always be welcomed to his favorite place with open arms and spinning appliances.
MORE: Girl Who Challenged Dave Grohl to Drum Battles Is Now Co-Writing a Song to Perform With Foo Fighters
The extraordinary bond between a child with special needs and a hardware giant that truly cares is a win/win for everyone. Not only does he get to hang out in his happy place, it’s a good bet Lowe’s has earned a customer for life.
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An Arkansas school district saved so much money from switching to solar power for their buildings, they were able to bump up their teachers’ salaries and eliminate their budget deficits.
The Batesville School District in Arkansas switched to solar power in 2017 when—following an audit by an energy efficiency company called Entegrity—they discovered they were spending $600,000 a year on electricity between six school buildings, while simultaneously running a $250,000 budget deficit.
Batesville superintendent Michael Hester, who knew faculty pay was low, causing a quick staff turnover, took out a bond to help finance a switch from conventional electric power to renewable energy in the form of 1,400 PV solar panels.
In just three years, Hester’s gamble turned the quarter-million dollar budget deficit into a $1.8 million surplus, which he used to raise teachers’ pay and even the test scores of their district as a result of being able to hold on to quality teachers. The surrounding districts proceeded to follow Hester’s example and install solar panels themselves.
Living near a coal-fired plant set to close in a decade, the administrators were worried what public opinion might be regarding the switch, but instead they found a sympathetic populace who understood, according to one report, that solar power represented the jobs of the future.
RELATED: Breakthrough 3D Solar Panel Design Increases Light Absorption By 125% – A Potential Game-Changer
Batesville joins a number of other school districts nationwide who are switching to solar power. At the end of 2019 in the US, 5.3 million children attended schools powered by solar electricity.
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The Bezos Earth Fund, created by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and worth $10 billion, has just distributed $791 million in grant money to large environmental organizations that focus on restoring forests and wildlife, and cutting carbon emissions.
The fund, which lacks a website, a board of directors, or even a grant application process, exploded into life on Monday with grants to the Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlife Fund, World Resources Institute, and Environmental Defense Fund.
The Nature Conservancy announced their receipt for $100 million in Bezos bucks, saying that it would go to “protect the Emerald Edge forest in the United States and Canada,” as well as “efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of farming practices in Northwest India and curtail agriculture’s contribution to Delhi’s air pollution.”
“WWF is profoundly grateful for this transformational investment, and the impact this commitment will have on millions of people around the world,” said a statement on World Wildlife Fund’s website.
The WWF will take its grant and use it to restore mangrove forests, considered a natural climate change solution due to their enhanced ability to sequester carbon in their roots, and to investigate new markets for seaweed farming—an aquacultural activity that supports developing economies without deforestation.
RELATED: MacKenzie Scott Has Given $1.7 Billion Dollars To Non-Profits Since Her Divorce
“I’ve spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who’ve made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post.
A myriad of smaller organizations also received money, including the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and more.
Many of these smaller grants were for carbon-reduction objectives, with the Union working on advocating for electric trucking, the Salk Institute for its plant project of genetically enlarging the carbon-capturing parts in the roots of common agricultural crops, and the Rocky Mountain Institute for a campaign to create carbon-free buildings.
MORE: Jeff Bezos is Giving Away $10 Billion in Grants to Innovators in the Climate Battle
The Bezos grants are likely an attempt to help reduce the carbon footprint of the world’s largest retailer, which the founder hopes will be carbon neutral through a strategy of emission-cuts and carbon credits by 2040.
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Quote of the Day: “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” – Mary Oliver
Photo by: Austin Schmid
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?
Scientists have designed a set of “green” tableware made from sugarcane waste and bamboo that doesn’t sacrifice on convenience or functionality and could serve as a potential alternative to plastic cups and other disposable plastic containers.
Unlike traditional plastic or biodegradable polymers‚ which can take as long as 450 years or require high temperatures to degrade—this non-toxic, eco-friendly material only takes 60 days to break down and is clean enough to hold your morning coffee or dinner takeout. While these bowls and
“To be honest, the first time I came to the US in 2007, I was shocked by the available one-time use plastic containers in the supermarket,” says corresponding author Hongli (Julie) Zhu of Northeastern University. “It makes our life easier, but meanwhile, it becomes waste that cannot decompose in the environment.”
She later saw many more plastic bowls, plates, and utensils thrown into the trash bin at seminars and parties and thought, “Can we use a more sustainable material?”
To find an alternative for plastic-based food containers, Zhu and her colleagues turned to bamboos and one of the largest food-industry waste products: bagasse, also known as sugarcane pulp.
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Winding together long and thin bamboo fibers with short and thick bagasse fibers to form a tight network, the team molded containers from the two materials that were mechanically stable and biodegradable.
The new green tableware is not only strong enough to hold liquids as plastic does and cleaner than biodegradables made from recycled materials that might not be fully de-inked, but also starts decomposing after being in the soil for 30-45 days and completely loses its shape after two months.
“Making food containers is challenging. It needs more than being biodegradable,” said Zhu. “On one side, we need a material that is safe for food; on the other side, the container needs to have good wet mechanical strength and be very clean because the container will be used to take hot coffee, hot lunch.”
READ: H&M In-Store Recycling Machine Turns Old Clothes into New Threads—A World First
The researchers added alkyl ketene dimer (AKD), a widely used eco-friendly chemical in the food industry, to increase oil and water resistance of the molded tableware, ensuring the sturdiness of the product when wet. With the addition of this ingredient, the new tableware—which is currently still in the development stage—outperformed commercial biodegradable food containers, such as other bagasse-based tableware and egg cartons, in mechanical strength, grease resistance, and non-toxicity.
The tableware the researchers developed features in the journal Matter, and comes with another advantage: a significantly smaller carbon footprint. The new product’s manufacturing process emits 97% less CO2 than commercially available plastic containers and 65% less CO2 than paper products and biodegradable plastic.
The next step for the team is to make the manufacturing process more energy efficient and bring the cost down even more, to compete with plastic. Although the cost of cups made out of the new material ($2,333/ton) is two times lower than that of biodegradable plastic ($4,750/ton), traditional plastic cups are still slightly cheaper ($2,177/ton).
MORE: Mollusks and Algae Could Form the Sustainable Diet of the Future
“It is difficult to forbid people to use one-time use containers because it’s cheap and convenient,” says Zhu. “But I believe one of the good solutions is to use more sustainable materials, to use biodegradable materials to make these one-time use containers.”
(Source: Cell Press)
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It takes a lot to phase New Yorkers. Even the sight of a woman schlepping a live swan and lugging a bicycle on the subway didn’t cause much of a stir.
“Nobody seems to be fazed,” Ariel Cordova-Rojas, the swan schlepper told The New York Times. “One man was sitting right in front of me and he’s just on his phone. I don’t even know if he noticed there was a swan in front of him.”
While Cordova-Rojas’ subway appearance might have been dismissed as whimsical performance art by some, she was in fact performing a very real act of mercy. The swan she’d found earlier in the day was ailing and she was determined to get it the help it needed.
Cordova-Rojas faced an arduous journey from Queens, through Brooklyn, to Manhattan’s Wild Bird Fund facility. She started out on foot. Several automobile rides and a stint on public transportation later, she was able to deliver the sick swan to its final destination, the Wild Bird Fund rehabilitation center located on New York City’s Upper West Side.
When she’d headed out for some birdwatching at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens that morning, Cordova-Rojas had no idea of how the day’s events would unfold. Luckily for the infirm female mute swan she encountered, it was a case of the right person being in the right place at the right time.
Not only is Cordova-Rojas an avid birder, she’s also had extensive training wildlife rescue. Having spent five years as an animal care manager at the Wild Bird Fund facility herself, she was no stranger to dealing with sick and injured avians.
After assessing the swan’s condition, which was was quiet, lethargic, and weak, Cordova-Rojas wrapped the bird in her jacket. Although hampered by having to haul both bike and bird, she began planning the convoluted rescue.
Along her route, she was aided by some good Samaritans who drove her, her bike, and her feathered charge to a nearby subway station. During the ride, she hooked up in Brooklyn with former colleague, Tristan Higginbotham, another animal care manager at the Wild Bird Fund, who is also a volunteer for the New York City Audubon Society.
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Higginbotham said the Audubon Society already had word of the bird being ill, however, volunteers had been unable to find the downed swan during earlier attempts to locate her.
At the end of the 23-mile trek, a relieved but happy Cordova-Rojas finally handed the swan into the care of the capable Wild Bird Fund staff for evaluation and treatment.
MORE: Nat Geo Series Follows Rescued Chimpanzees in Sanctuary Where High Jinx is Job One
It might not have been how she planned to spend her day, but Cordova-Rojas believes the unexpected adventure was one of the best gifts she’s ever been given.
“That was kind of the perfect culmination of my 20s,” she told The Times. “It was the perfect birthday present to be in nature and be able to save a life.”
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An American astronomical society is proving that, like the Vikings of old, exploration of foreign shores—in this case foreign planets—is possible if you but master the use of the humble cloth sail.
LightSail 2, designed and crowd-funded by the Planetary Society, is a small spacecraft that has been moving around at high-speeds in Earth’s orbit, and turning direction by capturing solar photons with a square sail the size of a boxing ring.
Having launched in July 2019, the vessel has spent over a year meandering about 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the International Space Station, at 460 miles above Earth, it has produced a trove of scientific data which mission engineers at the Planetary Society will use to advance humanity’s understanding of solar sailing—potentially, it will be a very important and reliable form of space travel in the decades to come.
Now LightSail 2 is entering the extended mission phase, where scientists will study how things like orbital decay—the degree to which the spacecraft’s trajectory gradually falls, similar to how a hula hoop falls when it stops spinning—will affect the bread loaf-sized craft as it slowly falls towards Earth and eventually burns up on re-entry.
“During our extended mission we’ll continue making changes to our sail control software, which will help future solar sail missions optimize their performance,” states Planetary Society chief scientist and LightSail 2 program manager Bruce Betts.
The little ship moves at the whim of two powerful forces: gravity and the sun, which one might imagine as acting like an ocean current and the wind.
LightSail 2 is in orbit like a satellite around the earth, and so the scientists must steer, recharge batteries, and take photographs in response to where its orbit, which due to the non-spherical nature of our planet is quite wobbly, takes it.
However, for about 28 minutes of its 100-minute orbit, it can turn its 34-square meter sail, which rather than absorbing the light like normal cloth, repels it thanks to its reflective material called Mylar.
The momentum of mass-less traveling photons bouncing off the sail gives it a slight push to be able to steer itself during those 28 minutes, proving that solar sailing is viable for use in steering and propelling “CubeSats”—smaller satellites that will really push the boundaries of space exploration, not least because a solar-sailing spacecraft doesn’t need chemical propulsion.
In 1608, Johannes Kepler theorized that the sails of ships could be adapted for the “heavenly breezes,” and 300 years later, fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke published “The Sunjammer,” about a solar sailing vessel.
Famous American astrophysicist Carl Sagan, co-founder of the Planetary Society, presented a model of a solar sailing spacecraft which NASA had designed to visit Halley’s Comet on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1976, but it was only three years after Sagan’s death that the Society he helped start began designing the solar sailing vessels which would eventually lead to LightSail 1 and 2.
With its sail and small area-to-mass ratio, this spacecraft can resist the drag of the earth’s atmosphere which would have resulted in a normal satellite falling back down to the surface much faster. The Society had envisioned it crashing by now, but this new timeline of orbital-decay which they are studying in the extended mission phase will provide NASA and other entities that want to deploy a solar sailing spacecraft with invaluable calculations.
Future missions will take place at higher orbits, or even on interplanetary trajectories, where there will likely be much more sailing than spinning going on. NASA’s NEA Scout will ride a Space Launch System rocket to an area near the Moon before deploying its solar saii to ride cosmic winds on a visit to an asteroid.
LightSail 2 data is directly supporting NASA’s solar sailing programs which the agency describes as being capable of “conducting orbital plane changes more efficiently than spacecraft using conventional chemical propulsion,” and “of achieving remarkable speeds, enabling rapid exploration of the outer solar system.”
It’s a tremendous achievement for the Planetary Society, who created the entire program, from blueprints to the extended mission phase.
This body of work has stretched over a decade, on just $7 million, gathered from Planetary Society memberships, private donations, foundational support, corporate partners, and a 2015 Kickstarter campaign which holds the record for the most successful space-related Kickstarter in history; raising $1.24 million via 23,500 backers.
CHECK OUT: In Historic First, NASA Lands on Asteroid and Collects Samples of Debris That Helped Form Our Earth
“Even a year later, I am inspired and humbled by the tens of thousands of passionate individuals who came together to make this mission a reality,” said Planetary Society chief operating officer Jennifer Vaughn. “As we celebrate the success of LightSail 2’s primary mission, we’re also celebrating the power of everyday people working together to explore space.”
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A study published by the University of Oxford has demonstrated that video gaming during lockdowns increased mental well-being due to a variety of factors, and that time spent playing was not the most critical factor.
The combination of more national lockdowns across Europe and North America and the Christmas season likely has video game developers, whose industry didn’t take much of a hit during the economic contractions from the COVID-19 pandemic, expecting increased sales.
However, as a pre-print study by Oxford University scientists demonstrates, it might not be a bad thing to get a copy of Animal Crossing or Plants vs. Zombies in your stocking this year.
That is because, as Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute found, the long-lasting use of poor scientific methods to measure the effects of gaming on individuals’ mental well-being has potentially obscured the benefits, especially social, especially in lockdown, that complex and engaging video games can provide.
“Recent evidence suggests self-reports of digital behaviours are notoriously imprecise and biased, which limits the conclusions we can draw from research on time spent on video games and well-being,” explains Przybylski in his paper which has yet to be published.
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Video games can provide positive or calming stimulation to the mind, as things like interacting with well-designed characters, dialogue, or storylines can be even more engaging than the same three aspects in other things like films, since in a video game you get to act out the story.
One study found as well that there can be physiological changes that games like Tetris can place you in—flow states that reduce anxiety and can help prepare for stressful situations.
Przybylski’s study utilized self-reporting, but only for measures of mental well-being and not, critically, of game time.
“Working with Electronic Arts and Nintendo of America we’ve been able to combine academic and industry expertise,” Przybylski told Oxford University Press. “Through access to data on peoples’ playing time, for the first time we’ve been able to investigate the relation between actual game play behavior and subjective well-being, enabling us to deliver a template for crafting high-quality evidence to support health policymakers.”
3,274 players of “Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville” and “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” completed self-reporting surveys of mental well-being which produced stunning data.
Only 25 players of Plants vs Zombies who reported between 1 to 6 for positive mental well-being (rather than 0 to -6) had close to or more than 40 hours of total account play time over two weeks. The overwhelming majority had between 0 and 20 hours.
Perhaps a more dramatic finding was among the players who reported in the negative for mental well-being. There were only three who logged more than 20 hours, truly issuing a blow to the idea of addictive video games being bad for mental health, as those who weren’t experiencing joy of some kind didn’t play very much at all, in other words if they felt bad, they stopped.
Animal Crossing held much the same story, with the majority of players playing between 0-20 hours, and the majority reporting positive mental well-being. Animal Crossing is a little more complex, and so unsurprisingly there were more hours logged, as well as far more players in general.
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Even still, there were only 20 players who reported negative mental well-being that had logged 40 or more hours in Animal Crossing.
The study measured feelings of autonomy, relatedness, competence, enjoyment, and feeling pressured to play, as well as other questions that measured the enjoyment of online social interactions.
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“Our findings show video games aren’t necessarily bad for your health; there are other psychological factors which have a significant effect on a persons’ well-being,” writes Przybylski. “In fact, play can be an activity that relates positively to people’s mental health—and regulating video games could withhold those benefits from players.”
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Dolly Parton says she’s feeling honored to have contributed money to research that has led to one of the most encouraging COVID-19 vaccines, so far.
In April 2020, the superstar shared on Instagram that she was donating $1 million to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The Tennessee-based center has been an early trial site for the Moderna vaccine which, according to early data, is 94.5% effective. Immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci says that vulnerable groups in the US—such as health care workers and the elderly—could expect to get the first of these vaccinations as soon as the second half of December.
Speaking with the BBC, the 74-year-old country music singer said she was “so excited” to get word of the vaccine’s efficacy. “I just felt so proud to have been part of that little seed money that will hopefully grow into something great and help to heal this world,” she explained.
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A spokesperson from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, John Howser, added that her generous donation is also helping fund a convalescent plasma study–used to treat people who are already suffering from the virus—and research involving antibody therapies: two of which are currently being tested by a multinational pharmaceutical company.
Parton’s donation has surprised few. The “Jolene” singer has a long history of charitable giving. Since 1995, in fact, she’s gifted more than 147 million books to children in need through the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Still, fans of ‘Saint Dolly,’ including Zack Braff, are spreading the love for her latest philanthropic success.
I always knew Dolly Parton would save us.
— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) November 17, 2020
Give Dolly Parton the Nobel Peace Prize
— Morgan Jerkins (@MorganJerkins) November 17, 2020
Dolly Parton saving us all would be the perfect deus ex machina ending that 2020 deserves.
— Rebecca Renner 🌈 (@RebeccaRennerFL) November 18, 2020
Cheers to that. And cheers to Dolly.
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Quote of the Day: “Successful people seek out their futures from the present; failures seek out their futures from the past.” – Li Ao
Photo by: Markus Winkler
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 National Zoo in D.C. needs a name for its newest panda cub, and everyone’s invited to help name the little guy.
Born on August 21, 2020 in the US capital, this wee one is known to excel at napping, nursing, and cuddling with his mother Mei Xiang—there’s even a Giant Panda Cam so you can see him and his parents in action.
The possible names—chosen by the zoo and Chinese partners who strive to conserve this beloved and endangered bear—reflect the happiness people share for the young panda.
Here are your four naming options to choose from:
1. Fu Zai (fu-tzai) | 福仔: Mandarin Chinese for “prosperous boy”
2. Xiao Qi ji (shiau-chi-ji) | 小奇迹: Mandarin Chinese for “little miracle”
3. Xing Fu (shing-fu) | 幸福: Mandarin Chinese for “happy and prosperous”
4. Zai Zai (tzai-tzai) | 仔仔: Mandarin Chinese nickname for a boy
Head here and select your favorite name once per day from November 16 to November 20.
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The name that receives the most votes? It will be bestowed on the cub Nov. 23, so keep an eye for that.
