Quote of the Day: “How long after you are gone will ripples remain as evidence that you were cast into the pool of life?” – Grant M. Bright (unconfirmed)
Photo: by 白士-李, CC license on Flickr – cropped
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Rather than shredding up your food waste and sending it into the sewers with a garbage disposal system in your kitchen, this contraption collects all of your dinner scraps for composting.
Composting is a sure way to combat climate change while also relieving additional burden on local landfills and using valuable nutrients to nourish the earth. However, handling smelly old food scraps might deter some people from composting at home.
That’s where the Sepura Home comes in.
The Sepura is a new kind of garbage disposal that can attach to any kitchen drain so homeowners can flush all of their food down the sink. The food is then collected into a sealed, scent-proof container that can hold up to four weeks of waste before it needs to be emptied.
Since the Sepura also eliminates the problem of garbage disposal blades becoming dulled over time, users can dump pretty much any kind of solid food down the sink so long as it fits through the drain hole.
The contraption, which was designed by Canadian engineering company Anvy Technologies, is being hailed as “the only sustainable food waste disposing device available” which can be permitted in any municipality.
According to Engadget, the Sepura is slated to go on sale this fall for $340.
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Despite having different languages, cultures, and gun laws, homicide rates across much of the world have been falling since the 90s—and those rates are continuing their positive trajectories into 2020.
Between 1990 and 2015, the number of homicides per 100,000 people fell by 46%, with countries in Oceania experiencing a 22% drop over the same period, and 36% in Asia.
Asia and Western Europe, where one is already the least likely to become a victim of a homicidal act, saw the most significant decreases over that period of time.
WATCH: Study of Surveillance Cameras Proves That Strangers Will Almost Always Intervene to Help
Homicide in Eastern Europe also fell by 18% over that time period, which is remarkable when you remember the Soviet Union collapsed with the Berlin Wall just a year before this period began, and many East European countries were facing governmental collapses, war, and economic depressions, and even genocide throughout the 90s.
According to crime statistics released by the FBI in September, large cities that had experienced an uptick in murders during 2015-2016 had fewer killings in 2018. In Chicago, the murder rate declined substantially, by 14 percent, and in Baltimore by 9 percent. in cities with populations of more than a million people, it fell by an average of 8.5 percent in 2018.
The less than optimistic news in the UK was reversed during 2019.
According to BBC, the majority of UK police forces saw a fall in homicides compared with 2018 which was the highest year of the decade. This includes reported homicides in West Yorkshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Mercia, Devon and Cornwall, Sussex and Cheshire.
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Scottish police said homicides fell by 11% from the previous year, including in Glasgow. 2016-2017 was the second lowest year on record, a triumph in a 15-year downward trend for the Scottish city.
Growing up in Glasgow, there were places “you absolutely didn’t venture,” Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s justice secretary, told The Washington Post. “[Now]… there’s not a place in Glasgow that I wouldn’t go to”.
Multiply The Good By Sharing The Positive News With Your Friends On Social Media – File photo by Vvillamon, CC
This 2-year-old pooch has been doggedly helping her owner pick up trash from their local English beach—and together, they have collected hundreds of pounds of garbage.
As a puppy, Molly the Labrador retriever would always find pieces of trash to play with—which inspired her owner Fliss Cater to turn the pup’s habit into a good cause by encouraging her to deposit all the garbage into a trash bag.
“I’ve had Molly since she was just nine weeks old and she’s always loved picking up plastic bottles,” says Cater. “Labradors are quite inquisitive and energetic so I was lucky that she immediately had a knack for it.
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“We’ll pick up hundreds of items every single day, and I’ve had to upgrade from small bags to massive bin liners,” she added. “She loves it so much she doesn’t ask for treats when she finds something, all she wants is a ‘good girl Molly’ and she’s a happy dog.”
When Cater moved to Scarborough, North Yorkshire to open a bath and skincare shop in 2017, she says she couldn’t believe how much litter she was left “senselessly” on the nearby beach.
She was shocked and appalled by the “unavoidable” amount of litter she found while taking Molly for walks along the coastline.
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“If you live by the beach and enjoy it, I think it’s our responsibility to keep it clean,” says Cater. “In the summer it was impossible to avoid the litter—it was just everywhere.”
After just a few months of training, however, Molly and her owner began collecting all of the ropes, discarded toys, and plastic bottles.
“I taught her different commands to keep her safe, because there’ll be things on the beach that could harm her,” says Cater. “There are needles and sharp objects or just things you wouldn’t expect, so I wouldn’t let her go and pick anything up on her own.
“As a puppy, she picked up a dead animal once or twice, but I told her off and put on my angriest voice and she’s never done it since.
“She’s such a good girl and she’s never had any issues unless she spots a tennis ball—tennis balls take precedence over everything.
Cater says she never leaves the house without stuffing her bag with bin liners and plastic gloves because she knows Molly will always find something.
“We always pick litter when we go on walks, no matter what … I can’t take credit for her great work, she’s the best dog and it’s really just the way she is.”
Their daily walks have since made Molly somewhat of a celebrity among the beach-goers, too.
“She still doesn’t know the difference between an empty discarded bottle and a bottle that is still full which has led to some interesting situations. She’ll sometimes come back to me with a full bottle and I’ll look across the beach and there’ll be a confused person wondering why this dog has just stolen their drink.
“Her intentions are good though, and she’s just trying to do the right thing,” says Cater. “Thankfully no one ever gets angry because she’s so cute.
“We get stopped all the time by people who think it’s adorable that she’s cleaning. She gets so much attention and she loves it, she knows she’s a bit of a star.”
Cater hopes Molly’s unique skill set will not only help clean up the beach, but also make people think twice before littering.
“Unfortunately Molly can’t clean the beach on her own, but she’s trying,” says Cater. “We want to get people involved or at least make them think twice before disposing of their litter so carelessly.
“It’s particularly alarming on the beach because people will drop rubbish in the sand, and then it’s a battle against the tides to beat them to it.
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“Once the tide comes in, the litter is gone and will make its way into the sea and threaten our marine life.
“If you’re a business here, who relies on people coming to the beach, I think you’ve got a responsibility to protect it.”
The cleaning duo don’t expect to ever complete their task, but Cater says they won’t stop until the beach is clean.
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Quote of the Day: “Just like the heart beats involuntarily, the mind thinks involuntarily. Thinking during meditation is actually an indicator that stress is leaving the body.” – Emily Fletcher
Photo: by Betty Nudler, CC license on Flickr – cropped
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Have you ever felt warm and fuzzy inside after doing something compassionate for someone else? Well, this impressive new study shows there might be a lot more serious science behind that warm and fuzzy feeling than we originally thought.
Researchers from several Chinese universities put together the study in order to more closely examine why humans might act altruistically at their own expense.
Devising a number of tests, the researchers were able to measure charitable actions—mostly altruistic giving—in parallel with pain sensitivity and management. Their work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals some startling insights into different reasons why we may choose to give or help others at the cost of our own livelihood.
Notably, the scientists found that “acting altruistically relieved not only acutely-induced physical pain among healthy adults, but also chronic pain among cancer patients”.
In early human societies—or even in those of our earlier ancestors—intelligence and social cooperation were our only tools for survival along with more time-tested evolutionary strategies like tooth, claw, strength, speed, venom, or camouflage.
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In order for us to survive and reproduce, our brains evolved to make sacrifices for the sake and wellbeing of our social groups, even going so far as to risk personal injury or death to do so.
The newly-published paper demonstrated that acute pain was reduced when subjects acted for the benefit of others; indicating a sort of biological incentive.
“The prevalence of altruism under life-threatening circumstances raises an important yet poorly understood question: what is happening within the individual at the time when he or she helps?” ask the scientists in their foreword.
It wasn’t an obvious question for them since there are—as the paper details—two prevailing and competing hypotheses.
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Previous theories suggested that the unilateral nature of acting altruistically leads to painful sensations because it involves objective loss (time, money, blood, effort, food, etc.), while a competing view suggests that while tangible loss is involved with altruistic actions, intangible gains are received, such as reductions in depression, increases in self-esteem and sense of purpose.
Using fMRI machines and other methods, the Chinese researchers could test these competing views in randomized, placebo controlled-trials.
In just their first pilot study, dramatic results were found after individuals were reported to have experienced more pain when having blood drawn for regular lab tests than when their blood was drawn for donations to earthquake victims—even though the needle used was larger and the quantity of blood taken was greater in the donation subjects compared to the test-taking subjects.
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In their second pilot study, subjects were asked whether they would participate in an altruistic activity, in this case revising a handbook for the children of migrant workers. The test groups were sorted by those who chose to (altruistic) those who chose not to (non-altruistic) and those who did so as a mandate (control).
Sinking their hands into cold water, participants were asked to report their pain every 15 seconds after a reminder, and once again it was the altruistic group who experienced the smallest degree of pain. It was also the altruistic group who managed on average to keep their hand submerged in cold water the longest.
Another test involved a session of wearing a blood pressure tourniquet for three minutes while reporting on pain they experienced every 15 seconds. It had participants complete a survey on consumer decision-making—and upon completion they earned 10 yuan for earthquake victims as opposed to themselves. Donating participants reported less pain experienced during the tourniquet pain session.
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In the final experiment the researchers examined the effects of altruistic analgesia on chronic cancer patients. Over the course of a week, the group which chose a daily altruistic activity, in this case cleaning the common areas for their wardmates and preparing a nutritional diet plan for their wardmates, had a gradual reduction in pain symptoms throughout the week, compared to the non-altruistic and control groups.
“Our research has revealed that in adverse situations, such as those that are physically threatening, acting altruistically can relieve unpleasant feelings, such as physical pain, in human performers of altruistic acts from both the behavioral and neural perspectives,” the conclusion reads.
“The finding that the incurrence of a personal cost to help others may buffer performers of altruistic acts from unpleasant conditions contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of human altruism.”
Help Your Friends See This Inspiring News By Sharing It To Social Media — File photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals, CC
After experiencing years of childhood loneliness in the foster care system, this single mother has just adopted six young boys into her home.
Jessica Benzakein was only 12 years-old when her mom surrendered her to the state. Since older foster kids are far less likely to get adopted, Benzakein languished in the foster care system until she turned 18, and then headed off to college.
Benzakein spent many holidays as a young woman wishing for a family—so when she finally had a house of her own in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she decided to open her heart and home to foster kids and siblings who were enduring the same struggles she had as a child.
In addition to co-parenting two biological sons with her ex-husband, Benzakein welcomed the six boys from the foster care system several years ago.
Four of the boys are biological brothers currently ranging in age from 8 to 18; the other two boys, aged 4 and 6, are also related.
The youngsters were originally only supposed to stay with Benzakein for a weekend, but those few days quickly turned into several years as a happy family—which was officially sanctioned earlier this week when Benzakein adopted the boys to become their legal guardian.
“Everybody tells me how lucky these kids are and what a good thing I did,” the 46-year-old mother told TODAY. “But … I’m going to cry … they grounded me. I went through my 20s thinking I didn’t really need a family. But I did.”
“They give me purpose.”
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Screenshot image from WTMJ-4 News video
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If you don’t want to memorialize family members with headstones in crowded cemeteries, this creative couple from Seattle has taken a much more artistic approach—and their creations are breathtaking.
Greg and Christina Dale specialize in turning the cremated ashes of people’s loved ones into swirling, colorful glass sculptures and pendants—and already 50,000 of their memorials have helped families to grieve and remember.
Greg first got the idea for the unique labor of love after he and his wife were forced to consider funeral arrangements for his father.
“I almost lost my father to a surgery,” Greg told Good News Network. “We were going over options if I lost him and the idea for our amazing business was hatched.
“Getting shot out into space, fireworks, and becoming part of a reef are great ideas we went over,” he added. “But I realized everyone is looking for help healing, and I thought beautiful glass art would help.”
Although Greg’s father apparently made it through the surgery, he did end up using his grandparents’ ashes to make a memorial of his own—a fitting start to the Dales’ work.
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Boyan Slat is the young engineer responsible for the organization that recently collected two shipping containers of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for the first time in history—and now, the Dutch conservationist is setting his sights on the very source of most of that water pollution.
Slat already has his oceanic cleanup vessels deployed along the path of key ocean currents, allowing vast amounts of plastic waste to drive themselves toward his devices before being hoovered up and moved to shore for recycling. He has also confirmed they are capturing even microplastics that are one millimeter in size.
But, simultaneously, he is also tackling a related issue—a facet that is just as critical to the overall plastic pollution problem: the world’s most littered rivers.
Slat and his organization, The Ocean Cleanup, began targeting river pollution after their research revealed that 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for depositing 80% of all the trash that is currently swirling in the ocean.
By “turning off the taps” and catching the plastic along the river’s course, the much more difficult task of capturing it in the ocean can be mostly avoided.
Enter Slat’s latest creation, The Interceptor: an efficient solar-powered barge that gobbles up plastic river garbage.
The Interceptor collects trash by extending a water-permeable barrier halfway across the river. A conveyor belt at the front of the Interceptor then scoops the plastic out of the water and deposits it onto a shuttle that moves across the length of the barge and deposits the trash into one of 6 dumpsters which can be remotely monitored by an onshore crew.
Once full, the dumpsters—which sit on a separate barge—can be removed by another boat and brought ashore for recycling.
At top performance, the Interceptor can extract 220,000 pounds (100,000 kilograms) of trash per day, and with several Interceptors placed along key or narrower parts of the river, minimal amounts of garbage are ever likely to reach the ocean.
Interceptor 002 at work in Klang, Malaysia. Was amazing to see it in reality! pic.twitter.com/7xXoYojgzX
— Boyan Slat (@BoyanSlat) November 5, 2019
Slat’s goal is to have Interceptors in all 1,000 of the worst polluting rivers by 2025. The Interceptor is scalable and easily manufactured, allowing it to be more widely available in poorer countries where pollution is at its worst because waste disposal is far less developed than in most Western countries.
Currently, The Ocean Cleanup has Interceptors in the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur—which is among the 50 worst rivers for pollution—and the Cengkareng Drain in Jakarta.
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The Ocean Cleanup will help anyone looking to lobby their local governments for implementation of the Interceptor in their own rivers, which readers can explore by visiting the “Nominate your River” section of the organization’s website, which also describes how you can become an operator, and where the 1,000 worst rivers are in the world.
If you DONATE $50 to keep the Interceptors and ships operating, you are guaranteed to receive one of the first recycled products, to be announced later this year, from the Pacific Garbage Patch.
(WATCH the video explaining the brilliance of the Interceptor below)
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This young Canadian boy with dyslexia is proving to the internet that anything is possible—no matter your learning disorder.
9-year-old Benjamin Russo recently made a video in which he designed a massive portrait of WWE star John Cena out of 750 Rubik’s cubes.
It took Benjamin just five hours of work over the course of three weeks to finish the intricate masterpiece.
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Despite how Benjamin’s dyslexia has always made it hard for him to read and write, he has always had a knack for memorizing and copying patterns at an incredible speed.
His mother Melanie Russo says that his heightened sense of spatial awareness is part of what makes solving Rubik’s cubes so easy for the youngster. In fact, he can finish just one side of a Rubik’s cube in about one second.
“Dyslexia is not my disability,” reads one of the printed notecards in Benjamin’s Rubik’s cube video. “Dyslexia is my SUPERPOWER.”
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” – Marcus Aurelius
Image: by HaPe Gera, CC license on Flickr – adjusted levels
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California’s housing crisis is hitting especially lower-income communities harder than ever, as rent prices continue to rise stemming from the endless injections of big-tech money into areas like San Francisco and Oakland.
According to The Guardian, the number of homeless encampments within the city of Oakland outnumbers the square kilometers that make up that city—but at the corner of 37th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, this community of housed and unhoused citizens are creating reasons for people to change their attitudes toward the often embattled encampments.
“37MLK” was just a vacant Oakland lot of overgrown weeds squared away by tattered chain link fencing in the northwest part of town where Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, a local resident, walked on her way to work.
“Every single day for the past decade I lived here, I walked on my way to work past this vacant lot, this eyesore, this blight that was never put to good use to the community,” the 32-year-old told The Guardian. “Meanwhile, you would see the tents grow just a half a block down there. You see people literally sleeping on the side of the street, on the side of freeways.”
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Today, 37MLK has become far more than a homeless encampment; it is a homeless sanctuary.
There’s a solar shower, a garden that grows food and flowers, a communal kitchen and dining table, camping toilets and a pump-operated sink, all of which are maintained and kept clean by the campers in the community—mostly homeless black women.
The little community feels protected inside the fencing—and the walkways between tents are lined with solar-powered lights and mini white picket fences. The women also keep chickens, which provide eggs and help keep insect and rodent populations under control.
Echeverría-Fenn and other housed neighbors do their part to take care of the community by providing the services which 37MLK cannot provide for themselves, such as trash and waste disposal.
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“…there are the allegations that homeless people are dirty or don’t keep the space clean,” Echeverría-Fenn said. “There’s only one reason why we’re clean and other encampments are dirty: we have actual access to trash facilities and we have access to running water that other encampments don’t.”
While the police have been called twice in the community’s history, among the residents there’s a sense of collective responsibility, with regular meetings held to discuss cleanliness and to remind everyone that noise or blight complaints could lead to the dismantling of their quiet and peaceful way of life.
Oakland city council members recognize the role that camps like 37MLK may play in the tackling the homelessness epidemic now, while the much-needed affordable housing is erected.
Recently $600,000 was allocated to a pilot project based on the 37MLK model in an Oakland district.
“These are spaces that people may need to stay in for two to five years, not a matter of months,” Nikki Fortunato Bas, the local lawmaker heading up the project told The Guardian. “And we need to be able to house them in a way that’s healthy and safe and dignified.”
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“The homelessness and housing affordability crisis has grown to an extent that we can no longer ignore it,” Bas said. “You juxtapose that…with stories like 37MLK being an incredibly creative and inspiring and successful story of unsheltered older black women. I think we have to draw from the human resilience and creativity we’re seeing from people who are in deep crisis and respond with that same level from government, respond with that same level of creativity and urgency.”
Readers who live in the city of Oakland can follow 37MLK on Facebook, where posts report semi-frequently about goings-on in the community and how local housed residents can help if they feel inspired to. Often this involves visiting and just saying hello, while perhaps taking a bag of garbage with you when you leave.
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Anxiety disorders are the most common type of psychiatric illness, yet researchers know very little about factors associated with recovery.
However, Canadian researchers were heartened to report earlier this week that there is hope on the horizon for people suffering from anxiety.
The study from the University of Toronto investigated three levels of recovery in a large, representative sample of more than 2,000 Canadians with a history of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
The study reports that 72% of Canadians with a history of GAD have been free of the mental health condition for at least one year. Overall, 40% were in a state of excellent mental health, and almost 60% had no other mental illness or addiction issues, such as suicidal thoughts, substance dependence, a major depressive disorder or a bipolar disorder, in the past year.
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The definition of excellent mental health sets a very high bar. To be defined in excellent mental health, respondents had to achieve three things: 1) almost daily happiness or life satisfaction in the past month, 2) high levels of social and psychological well-being in the past month, and 3) freedom from generalized anxiety disorder and depressive disorders, suicidal thoughts and substance dependence for at least the preceding full year.
“We were so encouraged to learn that even among those whose anxiety disorders had lasted a decade or longer, half had been in remission from GAD for the past year and one-quarter had achieved excellent mental health and well-being,” says Esme Fuller-Thomson, lead author of the study. Fuller-Thomson is director of the University of Toronto’s Institute for Life Course and Aging.
“This research provides a very hopeful message for individuals struggling with anxiety, their families and health professionals. Our findings suggest that full recovery is possible, even among those who have suffered for many years with the disorder,” she says.
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Individuals who had at least one person in their lives who provided them with a sense of emotional security and wellbeing were three times more likely to be in excellent mental health than those without a confidant.
“For those with anxiety disorders, the social support that extends from a confidant can foster a sense of belonging and self-worth which may promote recovery,” says co-author Kandace Ryckman, a recent graduate of University of Toronto’s Masters of Public Health.
In addition, those who turned to their religious or spiritual beliefs to cope with everyday difficulties had 36% higher odds of excellent mental health than those who did not use spiritual coping. “Other researchers have also found a strong link between recovery from mental illness and belief in a higher power,” reports Fuller-Thomson.
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The researchers found that poor physical health, functional limitations, insomnia and a history of depression were impediments to excellent mental health in the sample.
“Health professionals who are treating individuals with anxiety disorders need to consider their patients’ physical health problems and social isolation in their treatment plans,” says Ryckman.
The researchers examined a nationally representative sample of 2,128 Canadian community-dwelling adults who had a generalized anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. The data was drawn from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health and the research was published online ahead of press this week in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Reprinted from the University of Toronto
Multiply The Good News By Sharing It With Your Friends On Social Media – File photo by Practical Cures, CC
Thousands of Australians are being heartened by these striking photos of greenery and plant life growing out of an area that was left charred and blackened by the bushfires last month.
The pictures were taken by Australian photographer Murray Lowe in the Kulnura area of the Central Coast in New South Wales.
“Ventured out into the fire grounds today to capture some images of how the Aussie bush responds to fire, and the way it regenerates itself and comes back to life,” Lowe wrote in a Facebook post. “Even without any rain, life bursts through the burnt bark from the heart of the trees and the life cycle begins again.
“It’s so heartening to see the bush coming back to life again,” he added.
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One Facebook user thanked Lowe for the photos, saying: “I think everyone is so happy to see your beautiful photos showing something positive after weeks of heartache—it gives us hope.”
Another commenter wrote: “Thank you for sharing these Mr Lowe! It’s so nice after all the tragedy to see the new growth in our bush.”
Since Lowe posted the photos to social media earlier this week, they have been shared more than 39,000 times.
Lowe is now selling prints of the photos so he can donate all of the proceeds to wildfire relief.
“I did not, in my wildest dreams, anticipate the overwhelming response to my photos that I’ve seen,” he wrote in an update. “It’s both humbling, and heart-warming.”
Lowe is not the only one shining a light on the landscape’s recovery; Koala Hospital Port Macquarie posted their own pictures of the steadily returning greenery in Port Macquarie, New South Wales.
Other social media users have posted additional photo updates on the region’s recovery while international groups and activists rally behind the Australian provinces still battling the bushfires.
Regrowth is already showing in the Blue Mountains after the #bushfires. pic.twitter.com/JM8oWXHH3m
— Bianca Nogrady (@BiancaNogrady) January 8, 2020
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Fewer and fewer people are dying from cancer in the United States every year, with 2017 showing the largest single-year drop in cancer mortality ever reported.
The cancer death rate declined by 29% from 1991 to 2017, including a whopping 2.2% drop from 2016 to 2017.
Overall cancer death rates dropped by an average of 1.5% per year during the most recent decade of data (2008-2017), continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s and resulting in the 29% drop in cancer mortality in that time.
The drop translates to approximately 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred had mortality rates remained at their peak. Continuing declines in cancer mortality contrast with a stable trend for all other causes of death combined, reflecting a slowing decline for heart disease, stabilizing rates for cerebrovascular disease, and an increasing trend for accidents and Alzheimer disease.
The steady 26-year decline in overall cancer mortality is driven by long-term drops in death rates for the four major cancers—lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate, although recent trends are mixed.
The pace of mortality reductions for lung cancer—the leading cause of cancer death—accelerated in recent years (from 2% per year to 4% overall) spurring the record one-year drop in overall cancer mortality. In contrast, progress slowed for colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers.
The news comes from Cancer Statistics 2020, the latest edition of the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer rates and trends. The article appears early online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and is accompanied by a consumer version, Cancer Facts & Figures 2020.
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Lung cancer death rates have dropped by 51% (since 1990) in men and by 26% (since 2002) in women, with the most rapid progress in recent years. For example, reductions in mortality accelerated from 3% per year during 2008-2013 to 5% per year during 2013-2017 in men and from 2% to almost 4% in women. However, lung cancer still accounts for almost one-quarter of all cancer deaths, more than breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers combined.
The most rapid declines in mortality occurred for melanoma of the skin, on the heels of breakthrough treatments approved in 2011 that pushed one-year survival for patients diagnosed with metastatic disease from 42% during 2008-2010 to 55% during 2013-2015.
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This progress is likewise reflected in the overall melanoma death rate, which dropped by 7% per year during 2013-2017 in people ages 20 to 64, compared to declines during 2006-2010 (prior to FDA approval of ipilimumab and vemurafenib) of 2%-3% per year in those ages 20 to 49 and 1% per year in those ages 50 to 64. Even more striking are the mortality declines of 5% to 6% in individuals 65 and older, among whom rates were previously increasing.
Highlights from the report:
“The accelerated drops in lung cancer mortality as well as in melanoma that we’re seeing are likely due at least in part to advances in cancer treatment over the past decade, such as immunotherapy,” said William G. Cance, M.D., chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. “They are a profound reminder of how rapidly this area of research is expanding, and now leading to real hope for cancer patients.”
Reprinted from the American Cancer Society
Save Your Friends From Negativity By Sharing The Exciting News To Social Media — File photo by Airman Adam R. Shanks / US Air Force
At just 7 years old, this boy was inspired to become the youngest yoga teachers in the United States—and one of the youngest in the world after he saw how the ancient discipline helped his mom recover from chemotherapy.
Now 14 years old, Tabay Atkins teaches three classes a week and holds seven different yoga teacher certifications.
The young yogi was devastated to watch his 40-year-old mother Sahel Anvarinejad struggle as she underwent chemo and even shaved his head in solidarity when she lost her hair.
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But when he saw how yoga helped her to walk and find joy in life once more, he was determined to help others find the same healing on the mat.
“My mom beat cancer and two weeks later, she was introduced to yoga,” says Tabay. “She was able to walk on her own and things that used to stress her out didn’t matter as much as they did before.
“That’s when I decided to be a yoga teacher,” he continued. “I wanted to teach yoga so I could heal people the way yoga had healed my mom.”
Sahel was diagnosed with stage 3 non-hodgkin lymphoma in April 2012. She says: “I had gone to the doctor for almost a year complaining of flu-like, cold-like symptoms,” says Sahel. “By April, I could barely breathe. My neck became so big that my parents took me to the emergency room. The tumors were the size of softballs.
“Doctors told me if I had waited til the next morning to come to hospital, I wouldn’t have made it.”
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Sahel underwent intensive chemotherapy treatment and spent almost all her time in a hospital bed.
“I was in such bad shape. I was basically living at the hospital,” recalls Sahel. “Tabay couldn’t be around me a lot, all we had were quick visits.
“It was really hard because I had everything you could imagine—blood clots, blood transfusion, bone marrow biopsy, and staph infection. But I am a single mom and all I kept thinking about was Tabay. He was 6 years old, I didn’t want to die.”
When Sahel lost her long hair as a side effect of the chemotherapy, her devoted son even shaved his head in solidarity with his sick mom.
“He came and surprised me with a shaved head to support me,” says Sahel. “He was so sweet.”
In September 2012, doctors told Sahel she was cancer-free. After being broken down by the chemo, however, Sahel worried about how she would build up her strength.
“I had been very active, I did pilates five times a week and I went to the gym—but before my diagnosis, I judged yoga,” says Sahel. “I assumed it was for people who wanted to sit in a dark room with their eyes closed. I thought: ‘No thanks, I’ll get a workout.’”
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But Sahel’s mind changed when an acquaintance, who had supported her during her cancer journey, turned out to be a yoga teacher starting a teacher-training course.
“I walked into the gym and she was sitting in the lobby with eight other people who had been doing yoga together and they had huge manuals in their laps,” Sahel remembered.
“She told me she was starting a 200-hour teacher training course. I laughed. I had barely done yoga in my life. I couldn’t walk or bend my knees. I was still bald with no eyelashes, no eyebrows, no hair. She just said: ‘This is meant to be’.”
Sahel admitted that at times, she didn’t think she would complete the course but Tabay was by her side.
“There were so many times that I wanted to leave,” she said.
“Tabay was by my side the whole time, I didn’t have anyone to watch him. The training was two and half months long and in those months, I was able to walk again.
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“I felt like I could take a deep breath for the first time in years. I thought: ‘This is life-changing’.
“And then Tabay said to me: ‘I want to be a yoga teacher so I can heal people the way yoga healed you.’”
Tabay received his first yoga certificate at 7 years old and underwent the very same 200-hour teacher training when he was 10 years old.
“It was me and four adults,” he recalled. “It was very intensive teacher training.
“At certain times in training, they wanted to give up but when they saw me, a 10-year-old, doing it, it made them think they could do it too.”
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Tabay now has seven yoga teacher certifications, including aerial yoga, restorative yoga, and yoga for those on the autism spectrum.
The youngster splits his time between teaching three classes a week either at his mom’s studio Care4Yoga in San Clemente, California, or in resorts and schools in Maui, Hawaii. Additionally, he has taught yoga classes all over the world, including in the UK, France, Australia, Mexico, and New York.
“At my mom’s yoga studio, I teach some donation-based classes where I donate all the money we make to helping people who have cancer,” says Tabay.
He added that some students are shocked to walk into class and learn that their teacher is a 14-year-old.
“Sometimes they ask me where the teacher is,” says Tabay. “At the beginning, they often don’t think it’s going to be a good class. But my sixth grade English teacher took one of my classes—she has been doing yoga for 19 years—and she said my class is the best she ever took.
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“A lot of students leave crying after class because it’s such an amazing experience.”
Tabay also taught yoga at a school in San Francisco for children on the autism spectrum.
“The school staff called my mom and warned us that sometimes these kids can get violent, they can’t have their eyes closed, they can’t make contact with other students.
“I still wanted to teach them and in class, the students were all doing meditation with their eyes closed and they were doing partner poses with each other.
“The staff were shocked,” he added. “It just goes to show you that everyone is capable.”
“Once my students try the food they are shocked, because it tastes like the real thing.”
Tabay and Sahel start each day by practicing yoga for an hour together. The youngster, who graduated high school earlier this year with a 4.0 GPA, says that yoga helped him concentrate on his school work.
Tabay is also a vegan cook and teaches vegan cookery with his mom in Hawaii and California. He now plans on growing up to be a full-time yoga instructor and vegan chef.
“I want to continue inspiring as many people as I can to live healthier,” says Tabay.
Tabay shares his yoga teachings on his Instagram page and also offers online yoga and vegan cooking courses on his official website.
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Photo: by Sonja und Jens, CC license on Flickr – cropped
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A team of engineers has developed a mineral-coated sand that can soak up toxic metals like lead and cadmium from water.
Along with its ability to destroy organic pollutants like bisphenol A, this material could help cities tap into stormwater—an abundant, but underused water source.
The team’s findings were recently published in the journal Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.
The researchers from UC Berkeley knew that the naturally occurring minerals they coated onto sand could react with organic contaminants like pesticides in stormwater. However, the ability of the coated sand to also remove harmful metals during filtration could unlock urban water supplies that had been written off.
Cities with Mediterranean climates, like Los Angeles, could store stormwater underground during wet winters, where it could serve as an inexpensive, local supply during the dry season. But this resource has gone mostly untapped because stormwater picks up toxic chemicals as it runs through streets and gutters.
“The pollutants that hold back the potential of this water source rarely come one at a time,” said study lead author Joe Charbonnet, who conducted this research as a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering. “It makes sense that we fight back with a treatment technology that has these impressive double abilities to take out both toxic metals and organics. We suspected that the mineral-coated sand was special, but the way it continues to impress us with multiple capabilities is rather extraordinary.”
Cities often discard stormwater as pollution because it picks up contamination like lead particles left behind from decades of leaded gasoline emissions or pesticides from lawns. Exposure to these chemicals is associated with slow neurological development in children and some types of cancer.
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However, researchers say that their coated sand material could be installed in rain gardens in places like parking lots where stormwater can be collected and cleaned. They estimate that this material could remove metals from stormwater for over a decade in a typical infiltration system, which would convey runoff into underground aquifers.
The researchers see this material turning pollution into a solution for strained water supplies, particularly in parched cities that pay to import water.
“Rainwater used to percolate into the soil and recharge aquifers,” said David Sedlak, professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-author of the paper. “That changed when we covered city landscapes with hard surfaces like roads and buildings. As water-stressed cities try to figure out how to get urban stormwater back into the ground, we have serious concerns about the quality of that water. Our coated sands can remove not one, but two major classes of contaminants that threaten groundwater quality during stormwater infiltration.”
To make the filtration media, the scientists coated sand particles with manganese oxide, a naturally-occurring nontoxic mineral commonly found in soil.
Work has already begun to investigate how well this material performs at large scales. Researchers have deployed large test columns of the mineral-coated sands to treat stormwater at sites in Los Angeles and Sonoma, California.
Reprinted from UC Berkeley Engineering
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This 15-year-old girl had only been volunteering at her local animal shelter for a few days when she was suddenly reunited with her childhood cat named Spunky.
Hannah Rountree had not seen Spunky since he disappeared from her home in Roseburg, Oregon during a family vacation three years ago.
In the days following his disappearance, Hannah would often cry over her missing feline friend—and as more and more time went by, she and her family assumed the worst.
Now 15 years old, Hannah started volunteering at the Saving Grace Pet Adoption center back in December. As fate would have it, it was only her second day on the job when she noticed a cat who looked shockingly like Spunky.
To her surprise, it was indeed her missing cat.
The feline had been found on the side of a highway back in September. After he was put up for adoption, he was taken home by a couple only to be brought back to the shelter a few weeks later because he didn’t want to catch mice.
Since Hannah brought him back home, she says he has quickly become comfortable with his old stomping grounds once more—although this time, she made sure to get him microchipped.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by KMTR
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