Quote of the Day: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle, comedian
Photo: by Sergio Arze – public domain
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As rainfall continues to extinguish the bushfires still burning across Australia, this brigade of soldiers has been doing their part to help recovering wildlife by using their rest periods to help injured koalas.
The 9th Brigade of the Australian Army recently posted a photo of their soldiers from the 16 Regiment Emergency Support Force bottle-feeding koalas at the Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills.
According to the Brigade’s Facebook post, the soldiers have been using their time off from bushfire relief work to care for the koalas and build climbing structures for all the recovering marsupials.
Since the photos were posted to social media a few weeks ago, they have been shared more than 45,000 times.
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Not only have the soldiers been offering a helping hand to the wildlife center, they have also been helping to clear away burnt debris, hosting community benefits, offering emotional support to affected Australians, and tidying up residential properties.
Thankfully, the torrential rainfall across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory has extinguished more than 30 of the region’s the active bushfires—and officials say the downpour could put out the rest of the fires by the end of the week.
Although the downpour has resulted in some flooding across the provinces, the NSW Rural Fire Service says they are “over the moon” to see the rainfall aiding them in their fight against the bushfires.
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A new handheld 3D printer can deposit sheets of skin to cover large burn wounds—and its “bio ink” can accelerate the healing process.
The device, developed by a team of researchers from the University of Toronto Engineering and Sunnybrook Hospital, covers wounds with a uniform sheet of biomaterial, stripe by stripe.
The bio ink dispensed by the roller is composed of mesenchymal stroma cells (MSCs)—stem cells that differentiate into specialized cell types depending on their environment. In this case, the MSC material promotes skin regeneration and reduces scarring.
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The project is led by Richard Cheng under the supervision of Professor Axel Guenther, and in close collaboration with Dr. Marc Jeschke, director of the Ross Tilley Burn Centre, and his team at Sunnybrook Hospital.
Their successful in-vivo trials on full-thickness wounds are reported in the journal Biofabrication.
The paper is a major step forward for the team, which unveiled the first prototype of the skin printer in 2018. The device was believed to be the first device of its kind to form tissue in situ, depositing and setting in place in two minutes or less.
“Previously, we proved that we could deposit cells onto a burn, but there wasn’t any proof that there were any wound-healing benefits—now we’ve demonstrated that,” says Guenther.
The current method of care for burns is autologous skin grafting, which requires transplantation of healthy skin from other parts of the body onto the wound.
But large, full-body burns pose a greater challenge. Full-thickness burns are characterized by the destruction of both the outermost and innermost layers of the skin; these burns often cover a significant portion of the body.
“With big burns, you don’t have sufficient healthy skin available, which could lead to patient deaths,” says Jeschke.
Since 2018, the printer has gone through 10 redesigns, as the team moves towards a design they envision surgeons using in an operating room. The current prototype includes a single-use microfluidic printhead to ensure sterilization, and a soft wheel that follows the track of the printhead, allowing for better control for wider wounds.
Next, Cheng says that they ultimately want to “further reduce the amount of scarring, on top of helping with wound healing. Our main focus moving forward will be on the in-vivo side.”
Jeschke believes the handheld skin printer could be seen in a clinical setting within the next five years. “Once it’s used in an operating room, I think this printer will be a game-changer in saving lives.
“With a device like this, it could change the entirety of how we practice burn and trauma care,” he added.
Reprinted from University of Toronto Engineering
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As the fashion industry continues to phase out the use of animal fur, more and more people are cleansing their closets of all their rabbit, fox, and mink furs.
Rather than let those fur coats go to waste, however, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is putting them to good use by donating them to Afghani people in need.
Last week, PETA partnered with Life for Relief and Development to hand out more than 200 donated fur coats to the people of Kabul.
With temperatures dipping well below freezing, the coats are expected to offer some much-needed warmth to the men, women, and children living in poverty in the capital city of Afghanistan.
“Nothing can bring back the rabbits, minks, and foxes … but the coats that they died for can at least be used for good,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages everyone to donate their fur or fur-trimmed coats to help those who have but few options in life—the only people with any excuse to wear them.”
Life for Relief and Development CEO Dr. Hany Saqr added: “With all of those that are less fortunate around the world, we at Life are honored to be able to work with PETA to give warmth during the harsh winter to those in need.”
This is not the first time that animal fur has been used to warm the less fortunate; back in November 2018, PETA and Life for Relief handed out 280 coats to Syrian refugees who had fled to Iraq.
PETA’s fur donation program also sends unwanted coats to homeless shelters and wildlife rehabilitation centers so they can be used as bedding for orphaned animals.
If you want to donate one of your own fur coats, you can visit the organization’s website to learn more.
(WATCH the video below)
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A New York City convenience store cashier is going viral for allowing his customers to load up on free food and snacks—but he does have one simple condition for his generosity.
20-year-old Ahmed Alwan has been asking his customers at the Lucky Candy deli to answer spontaneous math questions at the counter.
If they successfully solve the problem, Alwan gives them five seconds (and oftentimes more than five seconds) to grab all the goodies they can carry.
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Customers have walked out of the Bronx convenience store carrying everything from bluetooth speakers to bananas and loaves of bread—and Alwan gives it all away for free.
“All I wanted to do was to help people, but I wanted to make it fun,” Alwan told CNN. “It’s a way to entertain and educate people in need while putting a smile on their face, too.”
Since Alwan came up with the idea last month, he has uploaded more than a dozen videos of his endearing math challenges to social media, which has quickly made him an internet sensation.
Although he asks participants to refrain from trying to take his cat, Alwan has been happy to pay for all of the free goods with his own money.
Alwan’s father, Saleh Aobad, is the owner of the store—and he told CNN that he is “very proud” of his son for doing his part to help those less fortunate.
“It’s impacting the business in a positive way, bringing awareness and attention to the store as well as spreading positivity throughout the community,” he said.
Alwan says that many of the customers featured in his videos are low-income residents who often have trouble making ends meet and paying their bills on time—so he has been more than happy to offer them a brief financial respite in exchange for an algebra problem.
This is not the first time that Alwan has gone out of his way to help his fellow Bronx residents, either—the college student reportedly has a history of giving away store products on credit and offering free food and coffee to homeless people sleeping on the street.
Alwan is now accepting GoFundMe donations through a personal crowdfunding page so he can continue giving away free food and supplies to his customers.
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Quote of the Day: “The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorus, seen plainest when all around is dark.” – Grace Crowell
Photo: by Annie Spratt – public domain
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When Sarina Rohr was born almost three decades ago in 1990, her mother, Manuela, was simply grateful for each additional day she was able to spend with her micro-preemie.
Born just one pound and 15 ounces only five months into gestation, the doctors predicted Sarina wouldn’t survive the first few nights; and if she did, she would have severe handicaps.
But her mother, an avid yogi and yoga teacher, vowed the breath of life would save her baby girl—and now 29 years later, Sarina is a 5’8” tall college student who loves knitting.
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Sarina first began selling knitted hats and scarves as a means of earning taxi money to get to school. Then one day while admiring the hat her mother knit for her as a preemie, she had an epiphany: she could knit hats for other preemies to keep them warm.
And that’s how Hats with a Mission was born.
“I love the thought that not one baby born ‘too soon’ will go home without a hat,” Sarina excitedly explains. “I’m often lonely, but when I knit with others at my charity-knitting events, I feel wonderful. We have Girl Scouts and seniors knit with us—it’s so much fun!”
In the last few months, the mother-daughter duo has teamed up with other knitting groups from Santa Rosa, California to Germany (Manuela’s native country) and knitted more than 250 tiny hats adorned with the label “Hats with a Mission”.
Forty of the hats were donated to the NICU in her mother’s hometown of Speyer, Germany last June. Then to “pay forward” the gift of her own life in September, Sarina donated 40 more hats to the same NICU where she was born at University Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Additionally, her mother received 184 more hats back in November from their partnering knitting groups in Germany. Half of the hats will be donated to the NICUs in California and half will go to other NICUs around the country.
Many more hats are being prepared to fill orders which have come in from Austria, Albania, and several other countries as the word spreads.
“It’s Sarina’s vision. Like a lotus, it took root in the deepness of her soul’s longing and I see it bloom,” Manuela says. “And I will help her grow this dream. It holds mine in its arms.”
The mother-daughter duo now plans to register “Hats with a Mission” as a nonprofit, with funds distributed to knitters who have disabilities like Sarina for the organic cotton yarn (totaling about $15 a hat), needles, and shipping costs. They also plan to set up a fund for people like Sarina who are special-needs to support their education when it’s not granted by the state, and to help support them and their families as well.
“My mission, most of all, is to educate people to make inclusion possible,” says Sarina, a naturally determined human rights activist. “I don’t want to be on the side lines of life—I want to be with everybody else.”
“I want to show the world what’s possible if we focus on our strengths and not the weaknesses, and help each other. I don’t let my hiccups define me—but people who don’t know me do. I am different but not less.”
Lisa Cherry is the editor of Stories From the Yogic Heart, an inspiring collection of memoirs by yoga enthusiasts, including Sting and Mariel Hemingway, about their experiences in the mystical world of yoga. Lisa is also a freelance contributor to Yoga International, the Yoga Journal, Canada’s Globe and Mail, and more.
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In Afghanistan, it’s considered offensive and taboo for women to ride bicycles—but one nonprofit has given these girls a different kind of fun on wheels.
Skateistan is an organization that uses skateboarding to helps to empower marginalized youth and rescue them from the streets so they can be transitioned into a community that will teach them about leadership and independence.
Learning To Skateboard In A Warzone (If You’re a Girl)—a short film documentary about the organization’s mission in Afghanistan—recently brought Skateistan back into national headlines after it won the 2020 Academy Award for Best Short Film this week, although the nonprofit has been changing lives since 2007.
According to the Skateistan website, over 60% of their students are low-income and do not have access to education—but the organization believes that once they hook the kids into the program, the possibilities are endless.
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Whether it’s instilling feelings of confidence and autonomy through skateboarding, or simply letting children know that someone cares, the program has encouraged kids to believe in themselves.
“When skateboarding came into Afghanistan,” Skate Girls of Kabul photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson told BBC, “they didn’t even know what it was.”
Inspired by the young women’s joy, the photographer first approached Skateistan about documenting their life and community in 2012.
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One of her portraits of the skaters later ended up taking home the 2nd place prize in the 2014 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.
“[The skater] first caught my eye because she was wearing such a beautiful color,” recalled Fulford-Dobson to the news outlet. “She’s just immaculate. From the way she has tied her headscarf so beautifully and so naturally, you see that she has an innate sense of grace. Her little hennaed hand rests gently—yet possessively—on the skateboard, and how small she seems beside it! I love her assurance: her firm, steady gaze. One feels a sense of depth in her eyes, even though she is just 7 years of age.”
After just one year of attending the Back to School Skate program, the girl in the prize-winning portrait (left) passed her first three educational grades, and enrolled in the national school system—all will continuing to skate in her free time.
It may not be a conventional way of offering an education, but since Skateistan started in 2007, they have helped teach thousands of kids—44% of whom are girls—around the world to skate each week.
You can also donate to the organization on the Skateistan website or purchase Jessica Fulford Dobson’s book “Skate Girls of Kabul” here.
(WATCH the short film’s trailer below)
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Using your phone to diagnose disease or track your medical condition is the holy grail for remote health monitoring.
So far it’s been impractical to combine the two in a single device; tech companies don’t want the regulatory headaches that would come from labeling phones medical devices.
But University of Cincinnati engineers have come up with the next best thing.
UC professor Chong Ahn designed a tiny portable lab device that plugs into a phone, connecting it automatically to a doctor’s office through a custom app UC developed. With a single drop of blood or saliva on a custom plastic lab chip UC designed, the device smaller than a credit card can diagnose infectious diseases such as coronavirus, malaria, HIV, Lyme disease, or countless other health conditions like depression and anxiety.
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The phone provides the power and test protocol to the lab chip. A patient simply puts a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth then plugs that into a slot in the box to test the saliva.
The device automatically transmits results to the patient’s doctor through a custom app UC created for nearly instant results.
In his latest study, Ahn and his research team used the smartphone device to test for malaria. But the device could be used for smart point of care testing for countless chronic or infectious diseases or to measure hormones related to stress.
“Everybody has a phone—more than 3 billion people,” Ahn said. “So how can we use that technology to test for infectious diseases such as coronavirus? It’s a rapid diagnostic tool you can use at home. Right now it takes several hours or even days to diagnose in a lab, even when people are showing symptoms. The disease can spread.”
Ahn’s study on malaria was published in January in the Nature journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.
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The project demonstrates UC’s commitment to research as described in its strategic direction called Next Lives Here.
Ahn’s research team developed the device by creating a novel lab chip that uses natural capillary action, the tendency for a liquid to adhere to a surface, to draw a sample down two channels called a “microchannel capillary flow assay.” One channel mixes the sample with freeze-dried detection antibodies. The other contains a freeze-dried luminescent material to read the results when the split samples combine again on three sensors.
Ahn said the device is accurate, simple to use and inexpensive.
“The performance is comparable to laboratory tests. The cost is cheaper. And it’s user-friendly,” Ahn said. “We wanted to make it simple so anyone could use it without training or support.”
UC doctoral student Sthitodhi Ghosh, the study’s lead author, said the biggest advancement in the device is in the novel design of its tiny channels that naturally draw the sample through the sensor arrays using capillary flow.
“The innovation of this device is using a capillary-driven microfluidic lab chip,” Ghosh said. “So the entire test takes place on the chip automatically. You don’t have to do anything.
“This is the future of personal healthcare,” Ghosh said.
While the device has applications for diagnosing or monitoring viruses or other diseases, Ahn said he sees potential in the field of mental health. Mental health providers already use smartphones to track the wellness of patients through regular surveys. But psychosocial data can be subjective.
Ahn recalled the excruciating stomach ache he felt when he was hospitalized for an infection. He had trouble translating how he felt on a pain scale of 1 to 10 for his doctors. The pain left him feverish and soaked in sweat, but he reasoned it could surely be worse.
“I said, ‘I’m a 2’ so they didn’t give me pain medicine. My wife says, ‘Honey, you almost died! Take the pain medicine.’ So from then on I said I was a 6 or 7 and I got pain medicine and I was good,” he said.
By routinely testing hormones or other biomarkers associated with depression or anxiety, Ahn said he could help doctors correlate how patients feel with actual changes in their biochemistry. This could improve treatment for countless patients, he said.
And the device can use saliva as well as blood, which is less invasive and stress-inducing than a finger prick.
“If you’re stressed from doing a finger prick, it’s already creating a bias in the testing of stress,” Ghosh said. “That’s why we’re moving to a noninvasive method.”
Ahn is pursuing a patent to commercialize his device. Medical diagnostics company Mico Biomed, which has offices in Cincinnati, is a co-author of the study.
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The biggest hurdle could be making people feel confident and comfortable enough to use the unfamiliar device at home, he said.
But the vast amounts of data collected from the tests over time could help psychiatrists better understand the biochemistry underlying mental illness, which could lead to better evidence-based treatments, he said.
“My dream for the rest of my career at UC is to improve public and mental health by providing a new mobile health tool,” he said.
Reprinted from University of Cincinnati
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Rather than rotting in a landfill, more than 30,000 pounds of leftover Super Bowl food are being used to feed hungry Floridians.
All the uneaten food from last week’s game at the Hard Rock Stadium has been donated to local shelters throughout southern Florida.
NFL Green organizers partnered with Centerplate and food recovery charity Food Rescue US in order to facilitate the massive volunteer mission throughout the week following Sunday’s game.
“We know food insecurity impacts one in seven people in the state of Florida,” said Carol Shattuck, CEO of Food Rescue US. “Through our work with Centerplate and NFL Green, we can make sure excess food from Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami Beach Convention Center helps to feed individuals and families throughout Miami, while also not contributing to the growing food waste crisis in the U.S.”
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The rescued food includes uneaten chicken wings, ribs, tenderloins, and charcuteries from concession stands and VIP booths.
The food is expected to feed 20,000 people after it is all successfully distributed between the Miami Rescue Mission, Broward Outreach Center, Broward Partnership for the Homeless, Lotus House Shelter, and Camillus House.
Food Rescue US Miami director Ellen Bowen told ESPN: “It’s a full volunteer job for everyone. We just want to help people in need. It’s amazing to see how much food there is that otherwise would have been thrown in the trash that can now feed so many people.”
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This is the awe-inspiring moment that a wild orangutan offered its hand to a man wading through snake-infested waters.
The brief interaction was captured by amateur photographer Anil Prabhakar as he was on a safari with his friends through a conservational forest on the Indonesian island of Borneo last month.
The forest, which is maintained by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), is a sanctuary for the critically endangered apes who may need refuge in the face of injuries, poaching threats, or habitat loss.
Since venomous snakes are the orangutan’s only real predator in the forest, it is quite likely that this particular ape knew the consequences of approaching the muddy waters.
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The man in the photo was a conservancy guard who was busy clearing off the snakes for Prabhakar and his friends when the orangutan offered its hand. Prabhakar later told CNN it was as if the orangutan was saying “May I help you?”
Due to the unpredictability of wild orangutans, the warden ended up circling around to a different point in the bank and climbing out of the water on his own—but not before Prabhakar snapped a photo of the breathtaking interaction.
“I just grabbed that moment,” he said. “It was really emotional.”
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Quote of the Day: “Try not to get lost in comparing yourself to others. Discover your gifts and let them shine!” – Jennie Finch
Photo: by David Clode – public domain
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Over a third of Americans have felt judged about their cooking skills—and no wonder. Four in Ten said in a new survey that they can only prepare one meal without outside help, and that is breakfast—eggs and French toast.
A survey of 2,000 adults found that a “Top Chef” appearance probably isn’t in the future for these Americans, as one in five (just 21%) say they have only one standout dish in their arsenal.
The survey, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Mazola corn oil, asked respondents what makes them feel most confident in kitchen.
The top five meals that they can make without consulting a recipe are eggs over easy (49%), scrambled eggs (46%), hard boiled eggs (44%), poached eggs (44%) and french toast (41%).
But even the simplest recipes can cause chaos for these folks in the kitchen. On average, respondents said they forget four ingredients per month while cooking. And, over half admitted they’ve had a full-on kitchen disasters, prompting 31% to trash it and start from scratch.
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The best news of all? Kitchen mishaps will not keep these intrepid cooks from taking on new culinary challenges in 2020.
49% plan on tackling more complex recipes in the new year and 45% hope to diversify the types of cuisine they cook.
They also aspire to update their skills with 42% hoping to master air frying, which claims to mimic deep frying with nothing more than hot air and a few drops of oil—just in time for Healthy Heart Month in February. 36% are dreaming of becoming a baking maestro, and a third want to set their grill skills on fire.
WHAT MEALS CAN YOU MAKE WITHOUT A RECIPE? … SURVEY SAYS:
1. Eggs over easy 49%
2. Scrambled eggs 46%
3. Hard boiled eggs 44%
4. Poached eggs 44%
5. French toast 41%
6. Soup 36%
7. Grilled cheese 36%
8. Pasta 36%
9. Rice 36%
10. Salad 36%
(Featured photo by Gabriel Gurrola–public domain)
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A Berlin supermarket is tackling the challenge of reducing food waste by reselling all of the unattractive products that other grocery stores refuse to carry.
The SirPlus grocery store stocks their shelves with foodstuffs and produce that is expired, near to expired, misshapen, or just a bit odd, and offers it to shoppers for up to 80% less than the regular supermarket prices.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown out or wasted every year across the world. This amounts to one third of all food produced worldwide, at the same time as trash landfills are filling rapidly.
The majority of the global waste comes from Europe and North America, with the average European wasting 210 to 254 pounds (95 to 115 kilograms) of food every year.
Some of the food rejected by other supermarkets, restaurants, or wholesalers—which SirPlus quality assurance specialist Timo Schmitt and his team inspect every day—is discarded because of something as little as a cucumber that has grown at a 90-degree angle, or a jar of jam that is mislabeled.
Others, like items past their expiry date, are carefully inspected to ensure that it is safe to eat. “We check smell, taste, consistency and packaging,” Schmitt told Klaus Sieg, a Hamburg journalist. “If in doubt, we call in a laboratory.”
As long as food has been deemed safe to eat and the customer understands the risks inherent in what they are purchasing, expired biscuits or even castaway yogurt and meat is legal to sell under German law.
“Suppliers such as farmers, […] wholesalers [and] retailers have a strong economic incentive to partner with us,” explain the founders of SirPlus in an interview in 2017. “When buying or trading their surplus via our marketplace […] we’re saving them significant disposal costs, while providing a new revenue source”.
France passed a law four years ago that supermarkets must not throw away food that has reached its sell-by date. This could mean donating to food banks, composting it, or recycling it for use in pet food or biofuel—but all of the above require larger operational expenses than simply selling it.
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Fellmer and Schott allow producers and distributors to save storage and disposal costs by selling or donating their food to SirPlus, which if their own storage space can’t accommodate, will be offered for free to NGOs.
In 2019, SirPlus saved 2000 tons of food (4.4 million pounds). The company also has bold plans for 2020 and wants to continue opening stores in Berlin while expanding into other cities, to launch their own product line with the SirPlus label made specifically from food that’s been rescued, and create an online platform that allows for home grocery delivery—all to distribute the increasingly larger amounts of donated food coming SirPlus’ way, which includes one million croissants last year.
They also have a subscription service called the “Retterbox” (Rescue Box) containing a random assortment of quality-controlled products that have been saved from the dumpster and delivered to your house on a monthly basis with free shipping throughout Germany.
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A new ban on “conversion therapy” for minors has been enacted in the traditionally conservative Republican state of Utah, which joined 18 other states outlawing the practice.
Last year lawmakers sought to get a ban through the state legislature but failed after repeated amendments left the bill wayward. So, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, the longest serving governor in the United States, requested that state regulators look into the practice and assess the evidence supporting either its damaging or benign effects on youth.
“I certainly have concerns about some of the abuse that I’ve heard talked about, but I’m not a psychologist,” Herbert said during a news conference last June, when he announced his request.
“This is not my background. I’m going to rely upon the experts to tell us what should be done, or not be done, or how it should be done.”
The practice of attempting to convert a homosexual adolescent into a heterosexual one has been widely discredited by major psychological organizations like the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“The American Psychiatric Association (APA) today reiterates its long-standing opposition to the practice,” reads a statement from 2018 on the APA’s website.
“Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation,” reads a statement from 2000 on the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“The American Psychological Association expressed support for a report released today by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration calling for an end to the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ for children and youth,” reads a statement from 2015 on the APA’s website.
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“We want to thank Governor Herbert and his administration for not allowing this issue to be politicized,” the executive director of Equality Utah Troy Williams said at a Wednesday news conference announcing the news according to NPR.
“He saw how polarizing this was becoming, and he made the decision to allow science to prevail over politics. He kept his word to the LGBTQ community, and we are deeply grateful to him.”
Even though Republicans control both houses of the Utah state legislature and the governorship, it joined a group of 18 states that have banned conversion therapy—all but a few of which have democratic majorities: California (2012); New Jersey (2013); Oregon and Illinois (2015); Vermont (2016); Rhode Island, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Nevada (2017); Washington, Maryland, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Delaware (2018); and New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and, now, Utah (2019).
Be Sure And Share The Good News With Your Friends On Social Media – File photo by Mkomarova11, CC
There’s been a lot of conversation about artificial intelligence over the last decade, as the controversial science fiction-turned-non-fiction technology begins to trickle into various economic sectors. Now, for the first time in history, an AI system created by British company Exscienta has invented a drug molecule that is entering phase 1 human trials.
The molecule has been found to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but the noteworthy news is that the normal 5-year period for synthesizing a drug and preparing the best version for trial was cut down to just 12 months because it was placed into the brain of an intelligent machine.
Exscienta chief executive Prof Andrew Hopkins described the breakthrough to the BBC as a “key milestone in drug discovery”.
“We have seen AI for diagnosing patients and for analyzing patient data and scans, but this is a direct use of AI in the creation of a new medicine,” said Hopkins.
“There are billions of decisions needed to find the right molecules and it is a huge decision to precisely engineer a drug,” he added. “But the beauty of the algorithm is that they are agnostic, so can be applied to any disease.”
Hopkins went on to predict that by the end of the year, all drug molecules could be discovered or created by artificially intelligent systems.
This could significantly bring down costs of drug R&D for pharmaceutical companies since the process of discovery, synthesizing, and trialing a drug in most countries is so expensive. The enormous costs place enormous risks on any new drug endeavor, especially during the 5 years of groundwork that needs to be done by well-educated and well-paid employees.
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If the attempts to bring an experimental drug to market fail after phase I, II, or phase III clinical trials, the development cost is even greater. AI could reduce costs of labor and R&D of pharmaceuticals by 80%.
The front-loaded savings means that more drugs for more diseases can be synthesized and moved into trials. This would be especially valuable for patients with diseases that are uncommon, because a smaller market might be one that pharmaceutical companies would otherwise avoid.
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Quote of the Day: “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. You have the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman
Photo: by Jeff Burak @jburak1271 – public domain
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You may have cheered some of the many GNN reports of critically-endangered species rebounding after human intervention—like, declining numbers of humpback whales, green sea turtles, and bald eagles entirely reversed by conservation heroes.
Another area of environmental degradation that is now turning around in the right direction is the surprising recovery of fish stocks.
In the most comprehensive review of fisheries’ management and fishing management on a per region basis, to date, an international team of researchers concluded that fish stocks are mostly increasing in these world waters.
In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research team gathered data from 50% of the world’s fish stocks, which include harvest rate, recovery rate, fishing pressure, and population numbers, as well as 50% of the world’s fisheries—including management strategies, fluctuations, and predictions in maximum sustainable yield.
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The conclusion provided in their paper is striking—good news that may be surprising to most. Where commercial fishing is managed, stocks are growing.
“This article compiles estimates of the status of fish stocks from all available scientific assessments, comprising roughly half of the world’s fish catch,” the authors begin, “and shows that, on average, fish stocks are increasing where they are assessed.”
“Where fisheries are intensively managed, the stocks are above target levels or rebuilding.”
While the last major dataset accumulated for fish stocks only included North America, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Europe, the researchers added the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, Northwest Africa, South America, Russia, and Japan.
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Fish stocks declined on average globally until 1996, when the trend began to halt. In 2005 it started going the other way, and in 2016 the biomass of animals was higher than the maximum sustainable yield marker and fishing pressure was lower than the unsustainable maximum yield marker—averaged across all measured fish stocks worldwide.
The team’s study modeling also gives nations looking to increase the biomass of their fish stocks a very simple and concrete solution—keep the fishing pressure below the unsustainable maximum yield marker, and fish stocks will recover. Their paper details that 19% of fish stocks that are still depleted are poised to recover based on fishery management along this basic principle.
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“Scientifically managed and assessed fish stocks in many places are increasing, or are already at or above the levels that will provide a sustainable long-term catch,” concludes the paper.
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Carbon capturing and carbon sequestering, meaning the uptake and storage of CO2 molecules in a solid object, like a building or a tree which it can’t escape from, is one of the many tools for entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and businessmen, who want to do their part to combat the climate crisis.
Similarly, a startup working in Israel is eradicating one environmental toxin by placing it inside of another. UBQ Materials is taking household waste that would normally end up in landfills, and embedding it in liquefied recycled plastic to create “a thermoplastic, composite, bio-based, sustainable, climate-positive material”.
The trash is sorted, passed over a magnet to remove metals, before being dried and shredded into a kind of trash-confetti. It’s then added to plastic that’s ready for recycling and melted together before finally being dried and chopped into little pellets.
The resulting pellets can be easily shipped out and used in various manufacturing processes like injection molding and composite brick-making. Dye can be added at any point along the way to ensure the customer can have plastic of any color he desires.
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The company’s founders were so confident that the science behind their revolutionary recycling process would prove successful they commissioned Swiss environmental consulting firm Quantis to perform an analysis on just how green their operation was.
Quantis found that substituting a ton of UBQ’s pellets for the same amount of polypropylene saves the equivalent of about 15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, making it the most sustainable thermoplastic material on earth.
The concept of taking landfill-bound trash, which would generate harmful greenhouse-methane gas, and encasing it inside recycled plastic can be traced back, according to The Post, to an Israeli military man who thought that by mixing mud from the polluted Kishon River with plastic he might help the river recover. This idea never worked, but encasing environmentally-damaging substances in plastic that would then be used to make other materials and products and thereby ensuring it doesn’t have a chance to pollute (or further complicate the climate of) our planet, was a core concept which wasn’t abandoned.
Generating a $50 million dollar fortune as a hummus food mogul, Rabbi Yehuda Pearl has helped the company go from a bankrupt idea to the brink of international acclaim and wealth through $3.5 million in slow savvy investing and R&D. UBQ, short for Ubiquitous. is already selling its thermoplastic composite plastic granule to Plasgad, an Israeli company that manufactures pallets, crates, and recycling bins—2,000 of which are on their way to the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority.
The UBQ facility on the Tze’elim Kibbutz can produce about one ton of their special material in an hour, resulting in between 5,000 and 7,000 tons produced annually. The company’s success is leading to a new facility that will produce 100,000 tons annually.
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If you ever wanted to help dwindling honeybee populations, ecologists are encouraging that you “learn to love weeds” and leave the dandelions alone this coming spring.
At the start of her tenure as the new president of the oldest ecological society in the world, Jane Memmott reminded everyone last week that working to live in harmony with nature can be as simple as keeping your lawn pollinator-friendly.
The Bristol University professor admitted she mows around the dandelions and buttercups when she cuts her grass because “you can’t personally help tigers, whales and elephants, but you really can do something for the insects, birds, and plants that are local to you.”
“Think about what you’ve had for breakfast,” she began. The pumpkin seeds in your muesli, apples, whatever made the marmalade on your toast, or even the coffee beans and tea leaves that make up your morning cuppa—all of these products rely on pollinators to survive and thrive.”
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The new leader of the British Ecological Society dismissed as silly the origins of lawn fussiness—and most people in America can relate with what she sees in England: “This whole business of keeping your lawn clipped and pulling the weeds out is part of some British obsession with tidiness.”
Whether you have a community allotment, a balcony garden, a front or back garden and lawn, or simply a potted plant, the choice of plants you make can have an impact on your local ecology.
Memmott explains a few general rules for planting pollinators—namely that one should “learn to love weeds,” avoid planting too many pom pom-shaped flowers that focus too much energy into petal production and not enough into producing nectar and pollen. She says that any plant with nectar and pollen parts that you can see without pulling back the petals means that pollinators can see—and use them—too.
“Dandelions are fantastic for early season pollinators. The UK has about 270 species of solitary bee and they love dandelions,” she explains, adding later that if they were rare, people would be fighting over them.
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Interacting with ecology in everyday life is the kind of thing Memmott knows can benefit people, as well.
There’s a mound of scientific evidence to support claims she makes that if you act charitably towards nature, it will repay your kindness many times over. For instance, a massive study found that people who spend at least 120 minutes per week visiting natural settings—such as town parks, woodlands, and beaches—are significantly more likely to have good health and higher psychological wellbeing. Another case-control study found that self-esteem, mood, and confidence were all improved, some significantly, by gardening in the UK.
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A summary on well-being from Wildlifetrusts.org found that being present in various natural settings from a room with several houseplants to raw wilderness can lead to reductions in stress and anxiety, improvements in well-being and mood, improvements to immunity, attentiveness and physical fitness, reductions in symptoms of ADHD in children, and even in criminal activity.
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