One North Carolina business owner is opening up his heart to the homeless by opening up his parking lot to people who may be living out of their cars.
James Charles is the manager of Kiplin’s Automotive Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. For about two months now, he has been encouraging people sleeping in their cars to use the company’s parking lot as a safe place to sleep at night.
Charles was first inspired to pursue his labor of love after his repossession team tried to take back a woman’s car back in January.
“The gentleman who was repossessing the car said, ‘We can’t take the car, there’s somebody living in the car,’” Charles told WBTV.
When he tried to get the woman into a homeless shelter, however, he was shocked to find that every shelter in the city was full. Although he paid for her to stay in a hotel for a few nights, he knew that there were other people suffering from the same dilemma.
“That was really the sign we took at that time and we realized, ‘You know what? This is something we need to be more involved in,’” he recalled.
Charles made a Facebook post back in January encouraging community members to spread the word about his initiative: “We would like to designate a safe place for those going through this tough time. We can’t put everyone in a hotel, but we can get you a safe place for the night,” wrote Charles. “We will provide a safe place to park at night. As this service to the community develops, we will look to help these families in other ways, but right now, a safe place is what we can offer.”
Since more and more people have shared his social media post, more and more people have donated hats, scarves, food, toiletries, and even a portable toilet for the parking lot. Not only that, about 20 different people have taken Charles up on his offer to park their cars overnight at the lot.
The influx of donations also inspired Charles to start his nonprofit, HALO Now, in order to raise money for the homeless people of Charlotte—and his GoFundMe campaign for the charity mission has raised more than $30,000.
“Any donations, no matter how small, will go towards helping homeless individuals and families who have fallen in between the cracks and need a helping hand,” reads the page. “One hand washes the other, two hands wash the face.”
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Feature photo by Kiplin Automotive Group
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Joe Hamilton, a participant in the University of Michigan RPNI study, naturally uses his mind to control a DEKA prosthetic hand to pinch a small zipper on a hand development testing platform. Photo by Evan Dougherty / Michigan Engineering.
In a major advance in mind-controlled prosthetics for amputees, University of Michigan researchers have tapped faint, latent signals from arm nerves and amplified them to enable real-time, intuitive, finger-level control of a robotic hand.
To achieve this, the researchers developed a way to tame temperamental nerve endings, separate thick nerve bundles into smaller fibers that enable more precise control, and amplify the signals coming through those nerves. The approach involves tiny muscle grafts and machine learning algorithms borrowed from the brain-machine interface field.
“This is the biggest advance in motor control for people with amputations in many years,” said Paul Cederna, who is the Robert Oneal Collegiate Professor of Plastic Surgery at the U-M Medical School, as well as a professor of biomedical engineering.
“We have developed a technique to provide individual finger control of prosthetic devices using the nerves in a patient’s residual limb. With it, we have been able to provide some of the most advanced prosthetic control that the world has seen.”
Cederna co-leads the research with Cindy Chestek, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the U-M College of Engineering. In a paper published this week in Science Translational Medicine, they describe results with four study participants using the Mobius Bionics LUKE arm.
Intuitive prosthetic control works on the first try
“You can make a prosthetic hand do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that the person is intuitively controlling it. The difference is when it works on the first try just by thinking about it, and that’s what our approach offers,” Chestek said. “This worked the very first time we tried it. There’s no learning for the participants. All of the learning happens in our algorithms. That’s different from other approaches.”
While study participants aren’t yet allowed to take the arm home, in the lab, they were able to pick up blocks with a pincer grasp; move their thumb in a continuous motion, rather than have to choose from two positions; lift spherically shaped objects; and even play in a version of Rock, Paper, Scissors called Rock, Paper, Pliers.
“It’s like you have a hand again,” said study participant Joe Hamilton, who lost his arm in a fireworks accident in 2013. “You can pretty much do anything you can do with a real hand with that hand. It brings you back to a sense of normalcy.”
Joe Hamilton, a participant in the University of Michigan RPNI study, naturally uses his mind to control a DEKA prosthetic hand to pinch a small zipper on a hand development testing platform. Photo by Evan Dougherty / Michigan Engineering.
Turning a tiny muscle graft into a nerve signal amplifier
One of the biggest hurdles in mind-controlled prosthetics is tapping into a strong and stable nerve signal to feed the bionic limb. Some research groups—those working in the brain-machine interface field—go all the way to the primary source, the brain. This is necessary when working with people who are paralyzed. But it’s invasive and high-risk.
For people with amputations, peripheral nerves—the network that fans out from the brain and spinal cord—have been interesting, but they hadn’t yet led to a long-term solution for a couple of reasons: The nerve signals they carry are small. And other approaches to picking up those signals involved probes that eavesdropped by force. These “nails in nerves,” as researchers sometimes refer to them, lead to scar tissue, which muddles that already faint signal over time.
The U-M team came up with a better way. They wrapped tiny muscle grafts around the nerve endings in the participants’ arms. These “regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces,” or RPNIs, offer severed nerves new tissue to latch on to. This prevents the growth of nerve masses called neuromas that lead to phantom limb pain. And it gives the nerves a megaphone. The muscle grafts amplify the nerve signals. Two patients had electrodes implanted in their muscle grafts, and the electrodes were able to record these nerve signals and pass them on to a prosthetic hand in real time.
“To my knowledge, we’ve seen the largest voltage recorded from a nerve compared to all previous results,” Chestek said. “In previous approaches, you might get 5 microvolts or 50 microvolts—very very small signals. We’ve seen the first ever millivolt signals.
“So now we can access the signals associated with individual thumb movement, multidegree of freedom thumb movement, individual fingers. This opens up a whole new world for people who are upper limb prosthesis users.”
And their interface has already lasted years. Others degrade within months due to scar tissue.
The future of prosthetics research and industry
The findings also open up new possibilities for the field, said Chestek, whose expertise is on real-time machine learning algorithms to translate neural signals into movement intent.
“What we found is now the nerve signals are good enough to apply the whole world of things we learned in brain control algorithms to nerve control,” she said.
The approach generates signals for finer movements than what today’s prosthetic hands are capable of.
“Other research groups have contributed to this as well, but we’ve leapfrogged the capabilities of the prosthetic hands that are currently available. I think this is strong motivation for further developments from prosthetic hand companies,” said Philip Vu, a research fellow in biomedical engineering and first author of the paper.
A clinical trial is ongoing. The team is looking for participants.
“So many times, the things we do in a research lab add to the knowledge in the field, but you never actually get a chance to see how that impacts a person,” Cederna said. “When you can sit and watch one person with a prosthetic device do something that was unthinkable 10 years ago, it is so gratifying. I’m so happy for our participants, and even more happy for all the people in the future that this will help.”
Chestek added: “It’s going to be a ways from here, but we’re not going to stop working on this until we can completely restore able-bodied hand movements. That’s the dream of neuroprosthetics.”
Tesla has just become the first electric vehicle manufacturer to have assembled 1 million vehicles—an impressive feat for an automotive company that only released its first consumer car 12 years ago.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk congratulated his workforce on the exciting milestone by publishing a photo of the company’s new Model Y to Twitter this week.
Since Tesla debuted The Roadster back in 2008, they have gone on to release the Model S, Model X, and Model 3. The company now plans on shipping their pre-ordered Model Ys to the public months ahead of their original fall 2020 deadline.
According to the company’s January earnings report, they hope to ship at least 500,000 cars worldwide during the coming year.
Based on Tesla’s cumulative sales, they finally overtook Chinese automaker BYD in December to become the world’s largest electric automaker.
A little girl’s determination to wear her BB-8 costume to a theme park earned her some celebrity friends. And, when she got to meet her robot hero in real-life, it was even too cute for the Disney attendants to handle.
The 4-year-old girl named Belle had insisted on wearing the costume for her visit to Hollywood Studios in Florida last year.
Her outfit was so cute, she caught the eye of two stormtroopers who insisted on escorting her and her mother to a meet-and-greet with Star Wars celebrity antagonist Kylo Ren.
Belle’s mother Brittany Beard said her daughter got a little nervous about meeting the film’s evil star and wanted to make sure that he knew she wasn’t the real BB-8.
“I am just a little girl dressed up!” she said. “I am just a little girl!’”.
When Belle got to meet her real hero— the robot BB-8—her mom captured the precious moment on video. Since she shared it on Facebook and the scene has been viewed more than half a million times.
(WATCH the adorable video below)
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Quote of the Day: “Kindness makes a fellow feel good whether it’s being done to him or by him.” – Frank A. Clark
Photo: by Daiga Ellaby – public domain
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?
“Girl” by @chanthar. A woman paints umbrellas in Mandalay, Myanmar.
“Colorful Cotton” by Zay Yarlin in Myanmar. “These colorful threads are made from lotus stems and can only be seen at Inle Lake. The worker can be seen hanging the brightly colored garments over wooden bars while she balances on a narrow wooden boat. The threads are divided by color, and then put out to dry underneath the hot sun.”
These stunning images are just a few of the finalists from an international photography competition searching for pictures that showed “what work means” to people around the world.
“Harvesting salt” by Cao Ky Nhan – A farmer raking salt in Hon Khoi, Vietnam.
More than 9,000 images were entered into the worldwide #Work2020 competition hosted by the free-to-use photography app Agora.
“Gold of Farmer” by F Dilek Uyar – A farmer throws corn in Turkey.
After Agora users were asked to vote on the best photo, the picture “Washing Water Lilies” was selected as the winner.
“Washing water lilies” by @ptkhanhhvnh – “The women were washing water lilies, a flower that grows in many lakes in the western rivers of Vietnam. They use boats to go everywhere to pick water lilies, then wash and sell them at the local market. This is has been the traditional work for women living in Western Vietnam for generations. This edible flower is also a delicacy for locals and tourists.”
The photo was taken by 34-year-old Vietnamese photographer and bank worker Khanh Phan, who bought her first camera in 2017 and taught herself to use it during her travels all over the country.
“Pottery” by @thwethwetun – A potter in Yangon, Myanmar.
Another striking finalist captured by Liam Man shows a construction worker taking a break in an unused section of the London underground.
“The Tunneler” by Liam Man, who said he “wanted the mood of this image to be somber and still.”
“Much narrower than the main tube tunnels, this line was used to transport the city’s mail,” said the photographer. “In 2017, it was turned into a museum, and I was given early access to the tunnels before they opened to tours.”
“Girl” by @chanthar. A woman paints umbrellas in Mandalay, Myanmar.
As part of its ongoing effort to speed-up the response to the COVID-19 epidemic, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a new initiative dedicated to identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments for the virus.
The newly-formulated COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator—which is being funded by The Gates Foundation, London-based research charity Wellcome, and Mastercard—will play a catalytic role in accelerating and evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term.
Currently, there are no broad-spectrum antivirals or immunotherapies available for the fight against emerging pathogens, and none approved for use on COVID-19.
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome are each contributing up to $50 million, while the Mastercard Impact Fund has committed up to $25 million to catalyze the initial work of the accelerator. The Gates Foundation’s funding is part of its up to $100 million commitment to the COVID-19 response announced last month.
“Viruses like COVID-19 spread rapidly, but the development of vaccines and treatments to stop them moves slowly,” said Mark Suzman, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “If we want to make the world safe from outbreaks like COVID-19, particularly for those most vulnerable, then we need to find a way to make research and development move faster. That requires governments, private enterprise, and philanthropic organizations to act quickly to fund R&D.”
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will work with the World Health Organization, government and private sector funders and organizations, as well as the global regulatory and policy-setting institutions to focus on drug pipeline development through manufacturing and scale-up. By sharing research, coordinating investments, and pooling resources, these efforts can help to accelerate research.
This kind of collaboration was a key lesson from the 2014 Ebola outbreak. By providing fast and flexible funding at key stages of the development process, the Accelerator will de-risk the pathway for new drugs and biologics for COVID-19 and future epidemic threats, ensuring access in lower-resource countries.
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will operate jointly as an initiative of the funders, drawing on expertise from inside and outside their organizations, and will also pursue several aspects of the development cycle to streamline the pathway from candidate product to clinical assessment, use, and manufacturing.
To identify candidate compounds, the Accelerator will take a three-pronged approach: testing approved drugs for activity against COVID-19, screening libraries of thousands of compounds with confirmed safety data, and considering new investigational compounds and monoclonal antibodies. Drugs or monoclonal antibodies that pass initial screening would then be developed by an industry partner.
The biotech and pharmaceutical industries will be critical partners, bringing their compound libraries and clinical data to the collaboration and lending commercialization and other expertise that will be required to scale up successful drugs and monoclonal antibodies. In parallel to the development of the COVID-19 drug pipeline, the Accelerator will work with regulators to align criteria and develop manufacturing capacity with industry. An accelerated pathway to bringing effective treatments to patients is around one year for products that have current regulatory approval or candidates with existing clinical data. The timeline would be longer for compounds further upstream in the pipeline that have limited existing clinical data.
Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome said: “Science is moving at a phenomenal pace against COVID-19, but to get ahead of this epidemic we need greater investment and to ensure research co-ordination. The Therapeutics Accelerator will allow us to do this for potential treatments with support for research, development, assessment, and manufacturing.
“COVID-19 is an extremely challenging virus, but we’ve proved that through collaborating across borders we can tackle emerging infectious diseases,” he added. “We must strive to strengthen efforts in the face of COVID-19, and in doing so, continue to make sure advances are accessible and affordable to all. Investing now, at scale, at risk and as a collective global effort is vital if we are to change the course of this epidemic. We welcome others to join us in this effort.”
While antiviral drugs are approved to lessen the severity of seasonal flu and treat HIV, among other viral diseases, none have demonstrated efficacy against the current epidemic. One reason for the lack of effective treatments is that products may not have an immediate market, which can slow or prevent their research and commercial development. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator is designed to help by bringing together resources and expertise to lower the financial and technical risk for academia, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies, while ensuring that these products are accessible and affordable to people in low-resource settings. The expertise of pharmaceutical companies will be critical in identifying, researching, and commercializing successful drugs.
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This 9-year-old Russian boy is using his artistic talents to benefit underserved animal shelters.
Pavel Abramov was first inspired to launch his labor of love after his pet dog passed away more than a year and a half ago. As a means of honoring his late companion, he picked up a paintbrush and started accepting online commissions for pet portraits.
In exchange for the masterpieces, Pavel asks his customers to donate pet food and supplies to his local animal shelters in Nizhny Novgorod.
Pavel is the youngest volunteer at the sole animal shelter in the small city of Arzamas. The shelter cares for about 100 animals at a time, many of which have benefited from Pavel’s contributions.
Pavel and his mother, Ekaterina Bolshakova, collect the donations through their project “Good Paintbrush”. Since many of the youngster’s works are published on the duo’s social media page “What is a Little Volunteer Capable of?”, Pavel has received commissions from as far away as Spain, Germany, and the US.
Over the course of his 2-year mission, Pavel has painted hundreds of pet portraits. Although the Good Paintbrush project has been entirely volunteer-run, he and his mother are now pursuing financial support so they can improve their international commission process and find more ambitious ways of helping shelter animals.
If you want to check out more of Pavel’s work, you can visit his VT or Instagram page.
Carbon emissions from the world’s power sector reportedly fell by 2% in 2019—the single largest drop in electrical CO2 production since 1990.
According to a new report from environmental think tank Ember, the historic decline in CO2 emissions was largely caused by Europe and the US shifting away from coal, resulting in a global 3% decline in coal-fired power generation, which is also the largest drop in 30 years.
Coal usage in Europe declined by 24% in favor of wind and solar power while coal declined in the US by 16% in favor of natural gas. Collectively, this means that Europe’s coal usage has been almost halved by 43% since 2007.
“The global decline of coal and power sector emissions is good news for the climate but governments have to dramatically accelerate the electricity transition so that global coal generation collapses throughout the 2020s,” says Ember Electrical Analyst Dave Jones. “To switch from coal into gas is just swapping one fossil fuel for another. The cheapest and quickest way to end coal generation is through a rapid roll-out of wind and solar.”
This year’s edition of Ember’s annual emissions report uses data representing electrical generation and demand across 217 countries, covering 85% of the world’s electricity production. The full report is free for public access.
The report’s key findings go on to say: “Wind and solar generation rose by 15% in 2019, generating 8% of the world’s electricity. Compound growth rate of 15% of wind and solar generation is needed every year to meet the Paris climate agreement. This was achieved in 2019 and lower prices provide hope it can be sustained.
“However, maintaining this high growth rate as volumes scale up will require a concerted effort from all regions.”
The report goes hand-in-hand with research published by the International Energy Agency last month outlining how global CO2 emissions had actually defied expectations by plateauing in 2019 thanks to a rise in renewable power sources and declining coal usage.
The United States recorded the largest emissions decline on a country basis, with a fall of 140 million tons, or 2.9%. US emissions are now down by almost 1 gigaton from their peak in 2000.
Emissions in the European Union fell by 160 million tons, or 5%, in 2019 driven by reductions in the power sector. Natural gas produced more electricity than coal for the first time ever, meanwhile wind-powered electricity nearly caught up with coal-fired electricity.
Japan’s emissions fell by 45 million tons, or around 4%—the fastest pace of decline since 2009, as output from recently restarted nuclear reactors increased.
Photo by Phil MacDonald / Ember
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This woman officially became the last Ebola patient in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after she was released from medical care and provided with an official bill of health last week.
Medical teams have been fighting to control the Ebola outbreak since it began in August 2018, making it the nation’s second-worst outbreak with more than 2,000 deaths. Since Masika Semida was the last patient treated for Ebola, healthcare workers cheered and danced in celebration as she was discharged from their treatment center in Beni.
Officials have been closely monitoring several dozen people who were in contact with Semida prior to her treatment—but with no new Ebola cases reported within the last two weeks, UN officials believe the outbreak may have finally come to an end.
“I applaud the tireless efforts that have been made to respond to this outbreak and I’m truly encouraged by the news that the last Ebola patient has left the treatment centre healthy,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
The end of the outbreak can only be officially confirmed once there have been no new reported infections 42 days after the last reported case has tested negative. However, all the aspects of the Ebola response remain in place to ensure that any new cases are detected quickly and treated.
According to WHO, surveillance, pathogen detection and clinical management are ongoing, including validating alerts, monitoring the remaining contacts, supporting rapid diagnostics of suspected cases and working with community members to strengthen surveillance on deaths in the communities.
(WATCH the video below) – Photo by ABC News
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Quote of the Day: “Imperfection is not our personal problem—it is a natural part of existing.” – Tara Brach
Photo: by Christopher Rusev – public domain
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 remarkable story of this blind piano prodigy is now helping scientists to better understand the human brain.
Matthew Whitaker has been blind since birth. His parents were told that he only had a 50% chance of survival, and he underwent 11 surgeries before he was even two years old.
Despite being faced with these grim odds, he survived his prognosis. Not only that, he exhibited an extraordinary gift for playing the piano since before he could even walk; by the time he was 3 years old, he was playing two-handed piano compositions and writing his own songs without ever having a teacher.
The piano prodigy from Hackensack, New Jersey can now play anything he hears—from Dvorak to Beyonce, his repertoire is immense and fluid.
Dalia Sakas, the director of New York’s Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School for the Visually Impaired, recalls the moment she decided to take Matthew on as a student when he was five years old, making him the youngest person to ever attend the school.
“I was performing a couple of recitals and the Dvorak Piano Quintet is a piece actually for a piano and string quartet. So there’s five of us,” Sakas told CBS reporters. “So Matt and his mom came to hear, you know, the night I played. He comes in Saturday morning. I walk into the studio and he’s playing the opening of the Dvorak Quintet.”
One day after hearing it at the recital, Whitaker was playing this difficult piece of music by ear—all five parts, usually performed by five different people, at the same time.
Now only 18 years old, Whitaker has since toured around the world, headlined prestigious venues from Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center, and won a number of music awards.
Such is the height of Whitaker’s talent that he caught the attention of Dr. Charles Limb, a neurologist who also happens to be a fellow musician. Dr. Limb was fascinated by what might’ve been going on inside Whitaker’s brain, so with the permission of the musician and his family, Whitaker underwent two MRI exams—first while being exposed to different stimuli, including music, and then while he played on a keyboard.
What Dr. Limb was surprised to find was that Whitaker’s brain seemed to have repurposed its own disused visual cortex in order to build other neurological pathways. Even when Whitaker was simply listening to one of his favorite bands, his entire visual cortex lit up.
“It seems like his brain is taking that part of the tissue that’s not being stimulated by sight and using it … to perceive music,” Limb told CBS News for the 60 Minutes interview. “It’s sort of borrowing that part of the brain and rewiring it to help him hear music.”
When Dr. Limb presented Whitaker with his brain scans showing how his brain lit up when he listened to music, the musician was amazed.
“I didn’t even know that that was happening,” Whitaker said. When asked about why he thought his brain was illuminated in such a way, he simply said “I love music.”
If you want to hear more of Whitaker’s talent for yourself, his music is for sale on Amazon.
(WATCH a quick clip of Whitaker’s talent below—or check out the CBS News website to watch the full 13-minute video)
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Imagine if we could use naturally-grown products, like plants and fruit, to store the electricity that charges commonly-used electronics, such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops and even electric cars?
Researchers from the University of Sydney have done just that by developing a method that uses durian and jackfruit waste to create energy stores for rapid electricity charging.
School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering academic Associate Professor Vincent Gomes explains how he and the research team managed to turn the tropical fruits into super-capacitors. Their findings were published this week in the Journal of Energy Storage.
How does it work?
“Using durian and jackfruit purchased from a market, we converted the fruits’ waste portions (biomass) into super-capacitors that can be used to store electricity efficiently,” said Gomes.
“Using a non-toxic and non-hazardous green engineering method that used heating in water and freeze drying of the fruits’ biomass, the durian and jackfruit were transformed into stable carbon aerogels—an extremely light and porous synthetic material used for a range of applications.
“Carbon aerogels make great super-capacitors because they are highly porous. We then used the fruit-derived aerogels to make electrodes which we tested for their energy storage properties, which we found to be exceptional.”
Photo by Pixabay
What are super-capacitors?
“Super-capacitors are like energy reservoirs that dole out energy smoothly. They can quickly store large amounts of energy within a small battery-sized device and then supply energy to charge electronic devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops, within a few seconds,” explained Gomes.
“Compared to batteries, super-capacitors are not only able to charge devices very quickly but also in orders of magnitude greater charging cycles than conventional devices.
“The current super-capacitors are made from activated carbon which are nowhere near as efficient as the ones prepared during this project.”
Why durian and jack fruit?
“Durian waste was selected based on the excellent template nature provides for making porous aerogels,” he continued.
“The durian and jack-fruit super-capacitors perform much better than the materials currently in use and are comparable, if not better, than the expensive and exotic graphene-based materials.
“Could the world’s smelliest fruit charge your mobile phone?” –University of Sydney
“Durian waste, as a zero-cost substance that the community wants to get rid of urgently due to its repulsive, nauseous smell, is a sustainable source that can transform the waste into a product to substantially reduce the cost of energy storage through our chemical-free, green synthesis protocol.”
What could this technology be used for?
“We have reached a point where we must urgently discover and produce ways to create and store energy using sustainably-sourced materials that do not contribute to global warming,” said Associate Professor Gomes.
“Confronted with this and the world’s rapidly depleting supplies of fossil fuels, naturally-derived super-capacitors are leading the way for developing high efficiency energy storage devices.”
When fears of coronavirus outbreaks prevented an Ohio sports event from accommodating its typical crowd of 200,000 people, the stadium sent their surplus of event food to first responders and tornado victims in Nashville.
The Greater Columbus Convention Center (GCCC) had already ordered enough food to feed its usual amount of spectators ahead of the annual Arnold Sports Festival.
The multi-sports festival is particularly beloved because of its “Classic Arnold” bodybuilding competition named after its most famous participant: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
After the Ohio Department of Health prohibited general spectators from attending this week’s festival, however, the GCCC found themselves with enough food to feed thousands of people—but no one to eat it.
Since the stadium knew that other local restaurants prepared for the festival would be donating their own surplus of food to community charities, the GCCC loaded up a refrigerated truck with more than a ton of sandwiches, mixed green salads, fresh fruit, yogurt, vegetables, brown rice, potato chips, and bottled water.
The truck then brought all the food to Ohio’s neighbors in Nashville and used it to feed several thousand first responders and tornado-affected families.
“We’re accustomed to accommodating ever-changing client needs at the GCCC,” said GCCC General Manager John R. Page in a statement. “When the unique circumstances affecting the Arnold Sports Festival this year came to fruition, we were proud to be able to send excess food to assist Nashville residents impacted by true devastation while we focus our efforts here on supporting the Arnold Sports Festival in its revised format.”
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The buzz and rumble of boats passing through Amsterdam’s famous canal system is one of the most iconic traits of the Dutch city.
However, a newly-elected Green Party mayor is pushing to transform the second-most popular form of transportation in the city into an all-electric powered force for a cleaner Amsterdam.
Soon, the sound of diesel-powered boat engines could be consigned to history since the city is now planning to ban the diesel engine before 2025.
The city’s commercial fleet is already close to achieving that goal since 75% of the city’s 550 commercial vessels are already meeting the planned emissions-free regulation, according to Reuters.
The news outlet goes on to say that contractors are expected to install 100 more boat charging stations by the end of 2021. Furthermore, startup Skoon Energy will be launching a floating charging station this week to help with grid balancing.
Although there are still several thousand recreational vessels that are still in need of emission-free upgrades, the canal’s new infrastructure is expected to quicken the city’s transition to cleaner waterways.
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A 21-year-old college student is going viral for bringing a particularly spiffy guest to his sister’s wedding last week.
Mendl Weinstock showed up to his sister Riva’s wedding ceremony with a llama in tow. Not only that, the llama was wearing a tuxedo which he had custom-made just for the occasion.
Mendl says that he facilitated the amusing prank as a means of fulfilling a 5-year-old promise to his sister. The two siblings had been on a road trip from Ohio to Indiana in 2015 when—for one reason or another—Mendl joked that he was going to bring a llama to Riva’s wedding.
Since Riva was just 17 years old at the time with no concrete plans for marriage, she rolled her eyes and said Mendl’s llama would be invited to her wedding whenever it would be.
After Riva got engaged in October, Mendl knew he had to make good on his promise—so he reached out to a local farm and paid $400 to rent a sweet and well-behaved llama named Shocky for the duration of Riva’s wedding day.
“Ever since that day [in 2015] I have promised her I would bring a llama. I fulfilled that promise,” Mendl told USA Today. “She was shocked at first but more impressed that I kept my promise from 5 years ago.”
To Mendl’s delight, Shocky quickly became a beloved part of the wedding ceremony. In addition to the barnyard critter sitting politely throughout the wedding ceremony, he also posed for photos with the other wedding guests.
Mendl later posted a photo of his sister’s initial reaction to Shocky’s arrival to Reddit—and it has since been shared thousands of times across social media.
Although Riva was gracious about her brother’s gag, she says she does plan on getting him back during his graduation ceremony from the University of Akron in the fall. Mendl has agreed that this is only fair, but he has requested that his sister refrain from pulling any kind of prank or surprise while his name is being called for his diploma.
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Quote of the Day: “With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning.” – Ernest Hemingway
Photo: by Nitish Meena – public domain
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?
Since the United Nations first officially adopted International Women’s Day in 1975, March 8th has been a day for celebrating womanhood around the world.
In recognition of the holiday, women’s rights advocate Malala Yousafzai created a Spotify playlist that exclusively features songs by female artists.
Additionally, as an added cherry on top for your day of feminine empowerment, here are 17 of our favorite inspiring quotes from strong women throughout history.
“Feet – what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?” -Frida Kahlo
2. “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” -Audre Lorde
3. “Women are like teabags: we don’t know our own strength until we are in hot water.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
4. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” -Indira Gandhi
5. “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations can never effect a reform.” -Susan B. Anthony
6. “Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.” -Julia Child
7. “Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one’s back they are a heavy weight.” -Marina Tsvetaeva
8. “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations can never effect a reform.” -Susan B. Anthony
9. “Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.” -Gloria Steinem
10. “If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.” -Angelina Jolie
11. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anaïs Nin
12. “You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.” -Shonda Rhimes
13. “Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” -Brene Brown
14. “If I stop to kick every barking dog I am not going to get where I’m going.” -Jackie Joyner-Kersee
15. “You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” -Leymah Gbowee
16. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” -Amelia Earhart
17. “The bad news is: your reality is up to you. The good news is: it’s totally up to you.” –Geri Weis-Corbley, GNN Founder
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An Alaska mom’s amusing attempt at wasting time—rather than doing her taxes—has gone viral.
Denise Ekstrand recently became inspired to recreate her daughter’s childhood drawing of her face—a typical portrait with big eyelashes, red lips, and crooked smile.
Ekstrand, whose daughter is now in college, grabbed some makeup and began drawing on her face. She then took a selfie next to the original drawing and posted it to Facebook on February 22nd.
Only three of her friends hit the “Share” button on her comical comparison, but it eventually managed to spread across social media until it was appearing in national media outlets.
Denise’s cousin Patty told GNN that the Alaskan mom is always doing something to embarrass her daughter Mia—and with “winter cabin fever” constantly distracting her, the crafty mom may never get her taxes done.
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Before 60 years of whaling decimated their population, the South Georgia Island off the coast of Antarctica was a teeming feeding ground for humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, and southern right whales.
Now, researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that many of these whales have returned—some in large numbers—to South Georgia.
Since the international moratorium on whaling in 1982, decades of protection have allowed the critically endangered blue whale—the largest of these beasts and the largest animal ever to live—to bounce back considerably after losing 97% of the species.
In 2018, the research mission recorded only 1 sighting and several acoustic confirmations of blue whales—but this year’s voyage logged 36 sightings, totaling 55 individuals.
“For such a rare species (blue whale), this is an unprecedented number of sightings and suggests that South Georgia waters remain an important summer feeding ground for this rare and poorly known species,” reads a press release on the British Antarctic Survey website.
The 2020 expedition also found evidence of around 20,000 humpback whales, and managed to satellite tag several rare southern right whales.
“After three years of surveys, we are thrilled to see so many whales visiting South Georgia to feed again,” says team leader Dr. Jennifer Jackson, a whale biologist at the BAS. “This is a place where both whaling and sealing were carried out extensively. It is clear that protection from whaling has worked.”
Speaking with The Independent, Jackson revealed that her team was “thrilled” at the sighting of so many blue whales, which also suggested there is still ample food available for these leviathans.
“Relative to many other oceans on the planet, the Southern Ocean is still relatively pristine, so it still has capacity to support large numbers of whales,” she said.
In a recent presentation to the World Economic Forum, economist Dr. Ralph Chiami and whale biologist Michael Fishbach presented an economic analysis on great whales as agents of climate-change prevention. They estimated that the life of each whale is worth around $2 million dollars because of the massive role they play as storehouses of carbon, due to the enormous amount of feces which feeds the proliferation of phytoplankton—the marine algae that breathe half of the oxygen into planet earth.
Photo by Michael L. Baird, CC
No whale is worth more to the public good than the blue, and these massive beasts take more than 33 tons of carbon with them down to Davy Jones’ locker when they die. While alive, their massive “fecal plumes” nourish entire communities of phytoplankton which suck up hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 every year.
The discovery during the BAS 2020 survey has prompted the call for a new assessment of Antarctic blue whale recovery to be conducted by the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee next year in order to find out how well they are recovering from the whaling years.
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