As a Christmas present to the world, Finland is making its online crash course in artificial intelligence available to everyone for free.
The Nordic nation launched the 6-week “Elements of AI” course last year as a means of educating their citizens on the revolutionary new technology.
Since Finland will be passing on its rotating EU presidency to another member state at the end of the year, the country decided to graciously celebrate the occasion by translating the course materials into English, Swedish, Estonian, and German—as well as Finnish—and making it available for EU citizens to take (although there are no geographical limitations on who can take the course).
The course, which has thus far been taken by more than 220,000 students from about 110 countries, has become the most popular course offered by the University of Helsinki. It consists of seven modules, each of which takes about 5 to 10 hours to complete.
The university hopes to provide the course to at least 5 million EU citizens by the end of 2021 “to prove that AI should not be left in the hands of a few elite coders.”
The university and educational platform offering the course also plan to translate the materials into the remaining 20 EU languages over the course of the next two years.
Be Sure And Share The Good News With Your Friends On Social Media…
A Canadian waitress was shocked to be given a greeting card filled with cash by a complete group of strangers last week—all because she had been working hard.
Brenegan McNulty, who is a server at Yellowknife’s Nova Hotel restaurant in the Northwest Territories, says that her weekend shift had gotten off to a frantic start since they were a little short-staffed for the evening.
When a group of ten women entered the restaurant looking for a table, however, McNulty was still ready to serve them with a smile.
As she catered to the table, McNulty assumed that the women were celebrating a birthday since they had been passing around a card for all of them to sign.
To her shock, the women finished signing the card only to hand it over to her. Furthermore, she opened up the card and found that it contained $1,100 in cash.
When McNulty asked them why they had surprised her with such a generous gift, they simply said that they had selected her as a random server for a random restaurant.
“They wanted to do something nice for someone who was working hard during the holiday season,” she recalled to CBC. “That’s something you hear about happening on The Ellen Show, you know, not here in Yellowknife.”
Photo by Brenegan McNulty
Since McNulty works two jobs to support her 1-year-old son, she says the gift is a much-appreciated financial windfall for the new year.
“[It] could go toward a new stroller for him, groceries, [or] saving for rent for my own place, hopefully in the New Year,” McNulty told the news outlet. “[Despite working seven days a week,] going to work and having something great like this happen makes it all worth it. I felt like I won some sort of lottery. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
Be Sure And Share This Sweet Story Of Kindness With Your Friends On Social Media…
From zeroing in on different cancer cures to restoring vision and hearing to the blind and deaf—2019 was a year filled with medical breakthroughs.
While some of these accomplishments may be varied in their stages of research, each notable study is just one more milestone towards treating some of humanity’s most debilitating conditions.
So without any further ado, let’s give it up for the top ten health and medical breakthroughs of 2019.
An exciting study that was published back in January found that exposure to blue light is an effective, non-pharmaceutical treatment for high blood pressure, which simultaneously reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
The researchers who conducted the study from the University of Surrey and Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf discovered that exposure to whole-body blue light significantly reduced the systolic blood pressure of participants by almost 8 mmHg, compared to the control light which had no impact.
What’s even more remarkable is that the reduction of blood pressure from blue light is similar to what is seen in clinical trials with blood pressure lowering drugs.
Rather than targeting the typical rogue proteins associated with dementia, scientists found earlier this month that—for the very first time—they have reversed dementia in mice with a drug that reduces inflammation.
Up until now, most dementia treatments have targeted the amyloid plaques that are found in people with Alzheimer’s disease. However, experiments conducted at the University of California, Berkeley suggest targeting inflammation in the brain might stop it in its tracks.
If you didn’t already have enough reason to eat your vegetables, this study published back in May says that broccoli contains an amazing ingredient which could be the “Achilles’ heel” of cancer.
Broccoli is part of the cruciferous vegetable family, which includes cauliflower, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts—and though many people don’t like their taste, these vegetables contain a tiny, but powerful molecule that deactivates the gene responsible for cancerous tumor growth, known as WWP1.
Millions of blind people could have their vision restored using stem cells taken from the eyes of non-living donors, according to Scottish research publish back in March.
Thanks to the pioneering tissue transplant, eight patients with a common condition that destroys vision had the affected area repaired—and two patients were even able to read again after having severe macular degeneration.
Back in April, Canadian researchers developed a new treatment for mobility-impaired Parkinson’s disease patients—and the results were “beyond their wildest dreams.”
Scientists from Western University in Ontario published the results of a pilot study in which they used spinal implants to improve motor function in several patients with advanced Parkinson’s.
Prior to the study, the patients were barely able to stand on their own without falling over or they were forced to depend entirely on wheelchairs for mobility. After getting the spinal implant, however, the patients are now capable of walking unassisted for the first time in years.
According to a report from May, people who experience anxiety symptoms might be helped by taking steps to regulate the microorganisms in their gut using probiotic and non-probiotic food and supplements.
Anxiety symptoms are common in people with mental diseases and a variety of physical disorders, especially in disorders that are related to stress. Previous studies have shown that as many as a third of people will be affected by anxiety symptoms during their lifetime.
Increasingly, research has indicated that gut microbiota—the trillions of microorganisms in the gut which perform important functions in the immune system and metabolism by providing essential inflammatory mediators, nutrients and vitamins—can help regulate brain function through something called the “gut-brain axis.”
In August, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine may have found the key to restoring hearing in people with irreversible deafness.
Using genetic tools in mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they identified a pair of proteins that precisely control when sound-detecting cells, known as hair cells, are born in the mammalian inner ear.
“Scientists in our field have long been looking for the molecular signals that trigger the formation of the hair cells that sense and transmit sound,” says Dr. Angelika Doetzlhofer, associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “These hair cells are a major player in hearing loss, and knowing more about how they develop will help us figure out ways to replace hair cells that are damaged.”
Photo by Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
As MDMA is now being recognized as a groundbreaking cure for emotional trauma, a new clinic in Pennsylvania could become one of the first legally-sanctioned facilities for using the psychoactive drug on treatment-resistant PTSD in the United States.
Now that it has reportedly opened its doors in Wyndmoore, The Landing medical facility will specialize in using several psychoactive drugs to treat a variety of mental health disorders.
Particularly, it has been pushing to receive FDA approval on using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for patients whose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has been untreatable.
Dental fillings may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to this breakthrough from Chinese scientists.
Enamel is the mineralized substance that protects the surface of teeth. Though it is one of the toughest tissues in our bodies, it is prone to degradation over time particularly as a result of consistent exposure to certain acids that are found in food and drinks.
We currently use resins and ceramics to fill in deteriorated enamel, but these fillings can often become loose within just a few years of their placement—and with tooth decay being one of the most prevalent chronic diseases amongst humans, scientists have puzzled over how they can recreate enamel.
Until now, we have not been able to reproduce the toughened tissue because of its complex cellular structure—but back in September, a team of researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine developed a gel that makes enamel repair itself.
With pancreatic cancer ranking as one of the most deadly forms of cancer, researchers were excited to report on a promising new breakthrough for a treatment.
Pancreatic cancer, which maintains a 95% mortality rate, is resistant to all current treatments. Patients have extremely poor chances of surviving for five years after being diagnosed—and since the disease does not show symptoms until the advanced stages, it is notoriously hard to diagnose.
However, this Tel Aviv University study published earlier this month finds that a small molecule has the ability to induce the self-destruction of pancreatic cancer cells. The research was conducted with xenografts—transplantations of human pancreatic cancer into immunocompromised mice. The treatment reduced the number of cancer cells by 90% in the developed tumors a month after being administered.
Cure Your Friends Of Negativity By Sharing The Good News To Social Media…
This 5-year-old girl has succeeded in paying off the outstanding lunch debts of her classmates simply by selling cookies and hot cocoa.
Katelynn Hardee was first inspired to peddle her baked goods after she overheard a student’s mother talking about how she was unable to afford an after-school program for her child.
Katelynn’s mother Karina then had to explain to the confused youngster that some parents did not have the same amount of money as other parents—which is why some families may not be able to enjoy the same kind of benefits and freedoms as the Hardee family.
Since Katelynn ran a lemonade stand over the summer, she immediately resolved to set up a cocoa and cookie stand to raise money for her classmates at Breeze Hill Elementary School.
For three hours, the kindergartener stood outside on the streets of Vista, California until she had successfully sold all of her cookies and cocoa packets for a grand total of $80.
By the time she had finished and donated the money to the school, she had raised enough money to pay off the outstanding lunch debts of 123 students.
“Everybody is just so proud and happy and other students are already talking about ways they can also make a difference,” Breeze Hill Principal Lori Higley told CNN. “It goes to show that even one small, kind act from a 5-year-old can mean the difference for someone in their life.”
Katelynn now plans on raising enough money to pay off the outstanding lunch debts of her entire school district.
“It’s all about kindness,” added Ms. Hardee. “Especially this holiday season, and with everything that’s going on in the world, we just need a little bit more kindness out there.”
(WATCH the news coverage below)
Be Sure And Share This Sweet Story Of Kindness With Your Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” – Confucius
Photo: by Ryan Smithright, CC license via Flickr, cropped and enhanced
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
“In my opinion, the most ideal drug or therapy is something that’s first safe, effective and affordable,” Dr. Mohab Ibrahim tells NPR. He works at a chronic pain clinic in Tucson’s University Medical Center helping people with migraines and other forms of chronic pain, and it would be hard to imagine anything safer and more affordable than a light bulb.
For 70 year-old Arizona resident Ann Jones, who regularly suffers from migraines—sometimes as many as two dozen per month—any treatment short of surgery was worth a shot.
Speaking to NPR, Jones revealed she had little to no hope for any relief after she enrolled in a study to test the results of daily exposure to green LED-light.
“This is going to be one more thing that doesn’t work,” she thought to herself.
At around 6 weeks of daily exposure to green light in a darkened room, however, Ann Jones began to see a significant reduction in symptoms. Dr. Ibrahim, the study’s principal investigator, claims that on average 60% of patient symptoms were relieved, bringing down migraine totals per month from as high as 20 to 6.
“I got to the point where I was having about four migraines a month, if that many, and I felt like I had just been cut free,” Jones told NPR.
File photo by Victory of the People, CC license
Ibrahim, an anesthesiologist who tends to favor pharmacological methods of treating pain had his doubts, as well. “There was a healthy dose of skepticism,” he said. “It was kind of strange. Why are you using light to treat pain?”
However his thoughts were piqued, and in 2017, he helped design a study that appeared in the journal Pain, that demonstrated a reduction in pain after exposure to green light therapy in rats.
Disco Healing
There’s a lot of research piling up about how physicians can use lights, electric stimuli, and certain low-frequency noises to manipulate brain waves to affect physiological change such as easing depression and causing the clearance of Alzheimer’s–causing plaque in the brain.
Another study found that chronic back pain and even symptoms of depression were reduced in a randomized placebo-controlled trial that exposed participants to light at different frequencies.
While science across the world is facing a reproducibility crisis, Ibrahim was able to replicate his findings again and again. “We were able to reproduce it over and over and over again to the point where you just had to follow the story,” he says.
Notably, Ibrahim has been experimenting with green light specifically, and found in his animal trials that both glass lenses and external light sources in the color green were found to reduce pain responses.
“We basically made the conclusion that whatever effect is happening is taking place through the visual system,” he says. “That’s why when we recruited patients, we told them you cannot fall asleep when you’re undergoing this therapy.”
Grass-Tinted Glasses
“It is very intriguing, but it still has a long way to go,” Dr. Andrew Hershey, co-director of the Headache Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told NPR commenting on the research.
“Trying to do a classic placebo-controlled study to see if one light works or not is likely not doable in this area,” he says, since the patient knows the color of the light.
Neurologist Levin Morris said he would welcome the treatment if it proved effective in human trials. Migraine sufferers are “very sensitive to environmental stimuli,” and Levin told NPR that the idea of manipulating light to lessen headache severity is a plausible approach.
But, environmental stimuli is difficult to account for in scientific research. For example, sitting in a semi-dark room staring at a green light could be isolating the patient from other forms of stimuli that bring on the migraine, such as sunlight or blue-light from computer screens.
One possible explanation could be that since research has shown being in nature—specifically theorized as being surrounded by different shapes of green—can reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety, the green lights simulate a more natural environment.
In a separate clinical trial, researchers at Duke University are experimenting with green light exposure therapy with a wearable treatment. The researchers have been giving their patients glasses with green lenses. Wearing glasses has much less of an impact on daily life than sitting in a dark room with an LED for an hour.
Because of the ease of application, Duane Lowe, a chiropractor with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Grand Junction Colorado, thought he would go ahead and try it. He works with patients in chronic pain and reasoned there was nothing to risk and a lot to possibly gain, as long as patients were told it was an experimental treatment.
“I just gave them to patients to try for a week,” he says. “After a very short period of time, patients were coming back giving very positive reviews.”
A lot more research needs to be done before anyone can make a claim this way or that, but based on documented efficacy, ease of use, and cost-per-application ratio, green light exposure therapy with either windowpane glass, house plants, wearable lenses, or LED lights could help reduce the number of headaches a patient gets per week.
SEND a Green Light to Your Friends With Pain on Social Media…
You’re on a diet, but the aroma of popcorn in the movie theater lobby triggers a seemingly irresistible craving.
Within seconds, you’ve ordered a tub of the stuff and have eaten several handfuls.
Impulsivity has been linked not only to excessive food intake, binge eating, weight gain, and obesity, but several psychiatric disorders including addictions and excessive gambling.
A team of researchers that includes a faculty member at the University of Georgia has now identified a specific circuit in the brain that alters food impulsivity, creating the possibility scientists can someday develop therapeutics to address overeating.
“There’s underlying physiology in your brain that is regulating your capacity to say no to (impulsive eating),” said Emily Noble, an assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences who served as lead author on the paper. “In experimental models, you can activate that circuitry and get a specific behavioral response.”
Using a rat model, researchers focused on a subset of brain cells that produce a type of transmitter in the hypothalamus called melanin concentrating hormone (MCH), according to the team’s published paper earlier this month in the journal Nature Communications.
While previous research has shown that elevating MCH levels in the brain can increase food intake, this study is the first to show that MCH also plays a role in impulsive behavior, Noble said.
“We found that when we activate the cells in the brain that produce MCH, animals become more impulsive in their behavior around food,” Noble said.
To test impulsivity, researchers trained rats to press a lever to receive a “delicious, high-fat, high-sugar” pellet, Noble said. However, the rat had to wait 20 seconds between lever presses. If the rat pressed the lever too soon, it had to wait an additional 20 seconds.
Researchers then used advanced techniques to activate a specific MCH neural pathway from the hypothalamus to the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved with learning and memory function.
Results indicated MCH doesn’t affect how much the animals liked the food or how hard they were willing to work for the food. Rather, the circuit acted on the animals’ inhibitory control, or their ability to stop themselves from trying to get the food.
“Activating this specific pathway of MCH neurons increased impulsive behavior without affecting normal eating for caloric need or motivation to consume delicious food,” Noble said. “Understanding that this circuit, which selectively affects food impulsivity, exists opens the door to the possibility that one day we might be able to develop therapeutics for overeating that help people stick to a diet without reducing normal appetite or making delicious foods less delicious.”
A team of researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, has developed a self-cleaning material that can repel all forms of bacteria, preventing the transfer of antibiotic-resistant superbugs and other dangerous bacteria on surfaces found in settings ranging from hospitals to kitchens.
A treated form of conventional transparent wrap—it can be shrink-wrapped onto door handles, railings, IV stands and other surfaces that can be magnets for bacteria such as MRSA and C. difficile.
The treated material is also ideal for food packaging, where it could stop the accidental transfer of bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella and listeria from raw chicken, meat and other foods, as described in a paper published this week in the journal ACS Nano.
The research was led by engineers Leyla Soleymani and Tohid Didar, who collaborated with colleagues from McMaster’s Institute for Infectious Disease Research and the McMaster-based Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy.
Inspired by the water-repellent lotus leaf, the new surface works through a combination of nano-scale surface engineering and chemistry. The surface is textured with microscopic wrinkles that exclude all external molecules. A drop of water or blood, for example, simply bounces away when it lands on the surface. The same is true for bacteria.
“We’re structurally tuning that plastic,” says Soleymani, an engineering physicist. “This material gives us something that can be applied to all kinds of things.”
The surface is also treated chemically to further enhance its repellent properties, resulting in a barrier that is flexible, durable and inexpensive to reproduce.
“We can see this technology being used in all kinds of institutional and domestic settings,” Didar says. “As the world confronts the crisis of anti-microbial resistance, we hope it will become an important part of the anti-bacterial toolbox.”
The researchers tested the material using two of the most troubling forms of antibiotic-resistant bacteria: MRSA and Pseudomonas, with the collaboration of Brown and his colleagues at McMaster’s Institute for Infectious Disease Research.
Their co-authors on the paper include Sara M. Imani, Roderick Maclachlan, Kenneth Rachwalski, Yuting Chan, Bryan Lee, Mark McInnes, Kathryn Grandfield and Eric D. Brown.
Grandfield helped the team verify the effectiveness of the surface by capturing electron microscope images showing that virtually no bacteria could transfer to the new surface.
The researchers are hoping to work with a commercial partner to develop commercial applications for the wrap.
Reprinted from McMaster University – Photo by Georgia Kirkos, released by the University
Share This Innovation With Your Friends On Social Media…
Although the history of Native American indigenous peoples have unquestionably been filled with hardship, the Esselen Tribe in California—maybe the smallest native tribe in the country—has perhaps struggled the most. But now, thanks to a historic deal, it has gotten its land back.
Forcibly converted to Christianity by Spanish missionaries, pulled into missions for tutoring, and exploited for forced labor, the number of remaining descendants from their tribe located in Big Sur is so small that in 2010, the Bureau of Indian Affairs denied their request to be recognized as a tribe and given tribal status.
Recently, however, California authorities managed to raise $37 million for 21 different cultural and city projects, including a $4.5 million grant to buy a large tract of ancestral Esselen land as part of the Esselen Tribal Lands Conservation Project.
The 1,199-acre ranch, once owned by a Swedish man named Alex Adler, runs along the Little Sur Coast near the Central California shore where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise above the Pacific Ocean.
Tracts of old-growth oak and redwoods, grasslands, and chaparral cover the area where the Spanish missionaries first encountered the Esselen during their travels north through California. Thanks to the grant, the Esselen are no longer landless; the forests and fields where their ancestors lived are theirs once more to continue the traditions of the past.
“This is one of the first times a tribe has gotten its land back,” Tom Little Bear Nason told Monterey County Now. “We consider the place sacred and we intend to protect it. We will use it to preserve our traditions.”
Nason, who heads the Esselen Tribe of Monterey, a nonprofit set up in June to accept ownership of the ranch, also added that there will be no commercialization of the land and their culture, although they do plan to allow small tour groups to visit and learn from their settlement a few times a year.
Big Sur, California — Photo by Joseph Plotz, CC
“The possession of land has played a role in how other tribes have gained acknowledgement,” he continued, referencing the 2010 rejection by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “It could bolster [the Esselen tribe’s] claims of political and social continuity”.
Nason also said the tribe plans on using the land to carry out rites of passage, birthing ceremonies, and funerals, while also transporting the remains of deceased relatives onto the land of their ancestors.
The Esselen weren’t the only tribe to benefit from the grants offered by the California Natural Resources Agency. The largest tribal group in California, the Yurok Tribe, was awarded $2.7 million to acquire 2,584 acres in Humboldt County allowing it to continue to reclaim ownership of its ancestral territory.
One of the benefits of tribal land concessions is that properties like the Yurok parcel are managed in coordination with modern stewardship practices like sustainable forest management, habitat restoration, sediment reduction, fire and fuels reduction, and carbon sequestration efforts.
Pass On The Positive News By Sharing It With Your Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.” – Richard Dawkins
Photo: by Darla, CC license via Flickr, cropped and enhanced
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
This veteran-run nonprofit has been pairing ex-service members suffering from isolation and PTSD with senior dogs rescued from overcrowded shelters where they could potentially be euthanized.
Because many veterans live alone without family or friends nearby, they can often become isolated and lonely from the lack of connection. As some veterans also suffer with post traumatic stress disorder, their social interactions can also become difficult.
That’s when the Vet Friends Foundation can step in with a helping hand. The organization delivers companionship to both the vets and the senior shelter dogs who need caring homes to live out the rest of their lives.
Joel Rockey, the Foundation’s founder, says that he came up with the idea for the organization after spending five years in the Navy in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Rockey returned home from his deployment, he wanted to focus on something he felt truly passionate about.
As fate would have it, he found his calling one day when he stumbled upon an old dog in a freezing snowstorm. He took the dog home and nursed it back to health even though the dog was blind, deaf, and badly injured.
Although the dog only lived for a few more months, Rocky made sure that those last days were filled with love and attention. He realized that it didn’t matter how long senior dogs still had to live—it mattered that their last moments were spent in a caring home.
Since senior dogs in shelters are often overlooked and have a very hard time getting adopted, Rockey knew that he could make a real difference; so he got his other veteran buddies together and launched Vet Friends Foundation.
Since 2016, they have found homes for more than 130 dogs from shelters across the US. Once the medical needs and personalities of the dogs are evaluated, the canines are ready to be adopted into loving homes.
Part of the reason why senior dogs make great pets for veterans is because they are calm, relaxed, and laid-back. Whenever a veteran chooses a dog to adopt, the organization covers the pet’s medical bills for the rest of the pup’s life.
Although this nonprofit is based in the Detroit area, they also have volunteers working to expand the mission in Ohio, Missouri, and California—to provide a sense of purpose and connection for American war veterans.
“A child on the street with nothing to do is a dangerous thing.”
The words echo back to American civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X—and I heard them again after walking into a local art gallery in the Namibian beach town of Swakopmund.
The man behind the counter wearing pressed slacks and a thin-striped sweater, named Toivo, runs the shop where tourists can buy African-flavored art. Most visitors probably just have a quick look around, before heading across the street to get gelato at the Italian-themed eatery, but I find myself quickly engaged in conversation.
“What we do today, this is tourism. This is totally not something that a local person walks in and buys everyday,” he tells me, as our conversation drifts back from combatting poverty to his shop.
Now 25 years old, Toivo grew up on the streets of Namibia’s capital city of Windhoek, and described a rough upbringing that anyone from Baltimore, Chicago, or Detroit could easily relate to. He told me he used to be part of a nonprofit that tried and bring kids off the street and into donor-funded projects to give them confidence.
“The thing that destroys us, what really kills the whole thing is that we don’t try, we always have this certain negativity before us,” he says, showing me the pieces in his gallery. “In most of the country for people like us, employment is very seldom—maybe 48 to 49 percent.”
Namibia was owned by South Africa until 1990 when she won her independence. Swakopmund, where Toivo now lives and works, was a German colony until 1915. 100 years later, there is still a shocking disparity of wealth between the German neighborhoods and the black communities around them.
We stop at a sculpture of undulating wooden beams wrapped about each other and stretching 6 feet or more off the ground; Toivo’s recent piece.
“I’ve been working on this piece here. I call it The Rope. It’s the business bond, because if you pull here and here it makes two knots.”
“The Business Bond”
A Sense of Meaning
Across Namibia, locals were keen to discuss with me the issues that make life challenging—like corruption, unemployment, and wealth disparity. Toivo recounted how, back before he opened his shop, he would specifically visit folks recently released from prison and offer to sell artistic pieces of theirs.
While he never detailed how he managed it one way or another, he seemed to suggest that he would contact people actually in prison and encourage them to pick up drawing, painting, sculpting, or something else creative, so that they had a chance to make something of themselves after their sentence.
“A lot of people’s confidence has been boosted since we opened the shop. There’s a lot of people that know ‘I’ve got something at the end of the day,’” he says. “A lot of what’s here is done by local artists.”
“Percentage-wise how often are these pieces made by people whose livelihoods depend on selling art?” I ask. He looks at the ceiling trying to come up with a number, fingers pressed together, before telling me “about 70 percent”.
Zin Maisiri is a local artist who does the abstract, richly colored pieces that cover the walls—elephants and giraffes made of cloth, newspaper, and thick globs of paint. “He is the reason we have survived.”
“The most important principality in business is discipline. If you don’t have the certain push, it’s not going to work,” he continued after my tour had been concluded. “It needs to start inside.”
Toivo’s shop in Swakopmund
It Needs to Start Inside
Toivo seemed as eager to talk about art as a business, as a method of giving meaning to people who have it only in rations, more so than art as an expression of self, the world, perspective, color, or anything else you might learn in an art history course.
I asked him if it was mainly to give an outlet to struggling black artists that he opened his art gallery.
“That as well,” he responded, always straight-backed and managing a swagger without motion. “But it was more like ‘let’s try this, let’s give it a shot and see where we’re at.’”
“It’s like when you dive in a pool of crocodiles—you don’t really care how they’re going to strike or not, you just dive in. You just take a chance,” he explains (although he was perhaps using a local metaphor that doesn’t particularly translate into English).
“We break even sometimes. Sometimes we don’t even break even. But we’re still here, we’re still here pushing.”
By now, we’ve exchanged email addresses and I regret that I don’t have the kind of disposable income to purchase marked-up art pieces; even though I would love to have a large stone springbok on my bookshelf in Washington D.C.
“If we sit back and relax and complain that we don’t got anything and this and that, the world is not going to feel pity for us,” Toivo says, again echoing the sentiments of black American figures like Malcolm X. “You can go out and compete. You’ve got a brain, you’ve got two hands.”
“I don’t have a degree, but I can make a piece that you can buy. So why not make a piece?”
“Most of the time you would rather do something than do nothing. Something’s always better than nothing, so why not try?”
It’s a powerful message, reflecting the powerful challenges that a young man has overcome in his life. But whether it’s Selma, or Swakopmund, it reflects the truth.
Nate Boyer is a former football player renowned for being the oldest rookie to ever play in the NFL, but he wasn’t always a professional athlete.
After serving six years and multiple tours as a U.S. Army Green Beret in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Boyer enrolled at the University of Texas and wanted to play college football, despite never having played a single game of organized football in his life.
After he decided to try out for the school’s team that Fall, he learned that their starting long snapper was getting ready to graduate.
Despite not even knowing what a long snapper was, he decided to try out for the position. Unfortunately, since he was deploying to Afghanistan that summer in the Army National Guard, he did not have time to train for a new position.
Just two weeks before his mother suddenly died, a devoted son was able to surprise his Christmas-obsessed mom with a giant handmade sleigh.
51-year-old Jeffrey Michaels secretly constructed the massive carriage as a birthday surprise for his 80-year-old mother Rita Ruffner back in October.
Ruffner, a grandmother-of-ten in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, adored Christmas so much, she decorated her home with festive ornaments all year round.
“Christmas was her best holiday. It was an all-year-round thing for her,” recalled Michaels. “She kept up her holiday decorations and listened to Christmas music all-year-round. She watched Christmas movies no matter the season.”
Michaels—a former Hollywood set designer who now lives in Nevada—flew home from Las Vegas and snuck into her garage to build the holiday structure before she had any idea that he was even in town.
“She always wanted a big Santa Claus sleigh in her yard. This year I finally decided to go ahead and build one for her,” said Michaels.
“She had no idea I was even in town. I was staying at my sister’s house and working in my mother’s garage. It was a real labour of love.”
SWNS
Michaels cut the 8-by-4-foot structure out of birch wood before painting it red and gold. The two-person sleigh, which only cost him about $300 in materials, is also pulled by a prancing grey horse.
Michaels says that while reindeers pull Santa’s sleigh at Christmas, he surmises that horses take over the task for the rest of the year.
After Michaels finished the sleigh, Ruffner’s family threw her a surprise party for her 80th birthday—and he was finally able to unveil the sleigh in her front yard.
“I put it in the front yard for her and told her to come outside. She was shocked and ecstatic,” says Michaels. “She was so proud of it—she called everyone to tell them about her sleigh.”
Jeffrey Michaels with his mom Rita Ruffner. SWNS.
Sadly, just a fortnight after her son unveiled the surprise gift, Ruffner passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack.
After his mother’s death, Michaels says the sleigh has become even more important to the family.
“Something special happened with the sleigh itself after we lost my mother,” said the Las Vegas musician. “It has taken on its own identity. It is still sitting in the front yard of the house and people come by to have their pictures taken with it.
“One of the things my mother wanted was for families to take pictures in the sleigh,” he added.
SWNS
Michaels believed that he was meant to make the sleigh just before she passed away. Though she had been talking about a sleigh for the past few years, this year he finally had the time to build it.
“I’m so glad she saw it before she was gone.”
Michaels now hopes that people who see Ruffner’s sleigh will consider making a donation to the American Heart Association in her name.
“It’s about Rita’s love of Christmas and the spirit of giving.”
Be Sure And Share This Sweet Yuletide Story With Your Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “The Winter Solstice is a powerful time—a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken.” – Frederick Lenz
Photo: by Kerttu, CC license via Flickr, cropped and enhanced
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Madame Tussauds Wax Museums are famous for bringing visitors face-to-face with their favorite celebrities—but when Jimmy Kimmel was gifted his own wax replica earlier this week, he couldn’t help but use it to have a little fun in his own workplace.
The lifelike Kimmel dummy is set to be the centerpiece of the new “Jimmy Kimmel Live Experience” at Madame Tussauds in Hollywood.
Prior to the exhibit’s launch, however, the prankster TV show host used the dummy to prank his co-workers—particularly his cousin Micki.
Soon after, on his show, Kimmel shared a cheeky film reel of his staffers’ reaction to the dummy moving around the office throughout the day—and the results are hilarious.
(WATCH the footage below)
Multiply The Laughs By Sharing The Video With Your Friends On Social Media…
A team of neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have zeroed in on a new way to “switch off” epileptic seizures in animal models—and it could revolutionize the way we treat the disorder.
The findings, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provide the first evidence that while different types of seizures start in varied areas of the brain, they all can be controlled by targeting a very small set of neurons in the brain or their tendril-like neuronal axons.
Zeroing in on specific neurons suggests that treatment for epilepsy can be improved, researchers say. For example, the deep brain stimulation used today could be minutely targeted at the cell body of these neurons or at the areas their axons touch, depending on the type of seizure, says the study’s senior investigator, Patrick A. Forcelli, an assistant professor in neuroscience and in pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown.
“We have found a major choke point in epilepsy circuits in rat brains that we believe can be harnessed to disrupt the onset of seizures or to stop their propagation within the brain,” he says. “Circuit-based therapy for people will help offset the known side effects that come with drug therapy and other techniques.”
According to the CDC, about 3 million adults and almost 500,000 children in the US suffer from epilepsy, making the incidence about 1% of the population, and the fourth most common brain disorder. (Epilepsy is diagnosed when a person has had more than one seizure.)
Seizures occur when nerve cells in the brain misfire. While there are about 30 specific types of seizures, there are two main categories: focal, which start in particular areas of the brain, and generalized, which occur when nerve cells on both sides of the brain misfire. Within this category are tonic-clonic (formerly known as grand mal) convulsive seizure and absence (formerly known as petit mal).
File photo by Jesse Orrico / Unsplash
Researchers have known for about 30 years that while inhibiting a certain area of the brain, the substantia nigra pars recticulata (SNpr) can help stop a seizure, the circuits by which the SNpr controls a seizure have remained unclear. The SNpr is a small area deep within the brain.
“It is usually thought to be involved in movement and movement disorders,” says Forcelli. “We knew targeting SNpr can stop a seizure, but we didn’t know how. Neurons in this area have axonal projections that go to many different parts in the brain.”
This study, he says, is built upon the pioneering work done at GUMC in the 1980s when researchers, led by Dr. Karen Gale “built a metaphorical Rand McNally-type atlas of neuronal pathways involved in seizures and epilepsy—these maps have moved forward both basic biology and for pharmacological treatment of epilepsy.”
The aim of his research is “to make a ‘Google maps’ version with higher resolution and the ability to zoom in on each address, to improve brain stimulation therapy,” says Forcelli.
With his team, Forcelli used four models of experimental epilepsy in seizure-prone rats, designed to reflect a different type of seizure (absence, forebrain tonic-clonic, brainstem tonic-clonic, and limbic) seen in human epilepsies.
They were able to stop these seizures by placing light-sensitive ion channels into neurons in the SNpr; when exposed to light, the neurons can be turned on or off. They found that seizures could be turned off by either silencing activity of the SNpr cell bodies or, in some cases, the areas that these neurons project to.
“We can’t target therapy if we don’t know how the circuits work. Discovering that silencing one area that a SNpr projects to can turn off specific seizures suggests a much more targetable therapy. For example, deep brain stimulation could be aimed at that area,” Forcelli says.
“These findings clarify a long-standing question in the field: the role these individual SNpr neural pathways play in the control of seizures,” he says.
After calmly providing her address to the dispatcher, the youngster waited until EMTs arrived on the scene so she could use a chair to reach up and unlock the front door.
According to New Jersey 12 News, Isla then kept the family’s three 80-pound rescue dogs under control as medical officials attended to her mother. On top of that, she kept her 2-year-old sister and twin 1-year-old brothers calm by feeding them yogurt.
Isla’s mother ended up being hospitalized for a bacterial infection for four days—and it is quite likely that she may not have survived the medical emergency if it had not been for her daughter.
Isla was later honored by the police department with a certificate of heroism, an official police badge, and a tour of the station.
“I know adults that cannot handle that kind of incident with that much bravery, poise, and distinction,” Lt. Philip Rizzo of the Franklin Township Police Department said during the news conference. “For that, this young lady needs to be commended.”
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Feature photos by Franklin Township Police Department
Save Your Friends From Negativity By Sharing The Inspiring Story To Social Media…
This 2-story building in the United Arab Emirates is being hailed as the largest 3D-printed structure in the world—and its developers are now using the technology to bring affordable housing to the US.
The building, which was 3D-printed on site in Dubai using locally sourced materials, was finished after just two weeks of construction. Measuring in at 6,900 square feet (640 square meters), the building will now be used as an administrative facility for the Dubai Municipality.
Apis Cor, the San Francisco-based company responsible for the project, required only three workers and a construction crane on site to finish the building in October.
Now, the startup says that they will be using the same technology to build the first ever 3D-printed house in Santa Barbara County, California.
Jennifer McGovern, President and CEO of Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara County, hailed their partnership with Apis Cor for the project, saying: “It has become increasingly difficult and expensive to develop affordable housing, particularly in high cost housing markets. We must create a paradigm shift if we are to begin to meet local, regional and national affordable housing needs for our residents.
“We are excited about the potential for 3D-printing to significantly lower the time and cost involved in constructing affordable housing and to promote the use of sustainable building materials. We believe that 3D-printing of homes will have broad future application for meeting a range of local housing needs. We plan to share the results of this trail-blazing collaboration with Apis Cor with our peers in the affordable housing industry and to promote this innovative new housing technology.”
This is not the first building developed by Apis Cor—the company made international headlines back in 2017 after they premiered a demo building at their Moscow testing facility. Not only did they finish the simplified structure in just one day, they also used about $10,000 in materials.
Apis Cor now hopes to debut their first permitted, 3D-printed US home in early 2020. After that, the company plans to make their printers available for purchase later the very same year.
“Construction 3D printing technology is only at the early stages of development,” said Nikita Cheniuntai, CEO and Founder of Apis Cor. “We do extensive R&D work to make the technology available for mass use.
“We are thankful for the opportunity to collaborate with Dubai Municipality,” he added. “The project gave us unique knowledge and invaluable experience that will help us improve our technology and develop a new version of our 3D printer.
“The improved version will be more reliable and time-efficient (twice as fast). Moreover, during the project we tested and improved our own-developed 3D mixture. This project is a huge step forward in the concrete 3D printing industry.”
(WATCH the video below to see the project in action)
Build Up Some Positivity By Sharing The Good News With Your Friends On Social Media…
Dozens of Florida families can breathe a sigh of relief this holiday season thanks to a veteran whose past struggles inspired him to give back.
When Michael Esmond received his utility bill for the month of December, he was reminded of a time back in the 1980s when he had trouble making ends meet.
Since Esmond was unable to pay the bill on time, the utility company had actually cut off his gas connection during what he calls “one of the coldest winters in Florida history”. For the rest of the cold season, Esmond was without heating—all while temperatures dropped into the single-digits.
Thankfully, Esmond is not as cash-strapped as he once was; he now owns a small business called Gulf Breeze Pools and Spas in Gulf Breeze, Florida.
So as Esmond was preparing to pay this months gas bill, he felt inspired to share his good fortune with other people struggling with the same financial difficulties.
He then called the local utility company and asked to pay the bills for all of the households at risk of having their gas and power cut off. In total, he paid $4,600 worth of utility bills for 36 families.
Not only does Esmond hope his good deed will help struggling homeowners during the holiday season, he also hopes the gesture will inspire other small business owners to give back to their community.
