Quote of the Day: “Your desire to be near to a window is your desire to be close to life!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
Photo: by F Mira – CC license on Flickr
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?
Listen to this heartwarming tale of a little boy’s dream come true in this week’s edition of MOTH Monday, a partnership with Good News Network that features inspiring videos from The MOTH, a nonprofit group showcasing the art of storytelling.
When Kwong Yue Yang was a little boy in school, he spent ages trying to figure out how to get his classmates to think he was cool.
He finally came up with the perfect plan to win over his classmates after he heard that Jackie Chan was visiting a restaurant in his Australian hometown.
Unfortunately, Yang failed to muster up the courage to introduce himself to his kung fu hero; but as he struggled with his own desperation and fear in the restaurant, he ended up learning a very valuable lesson.
(LISTEN to the sweet story below)
The Moth gives people an opportunity to tell a true story in front of a live audience, and sometimes their stories are chosen to air on the radio show, now celebrating its tenth year, and broadcasting on 485+ public radio stations—and on The Moth podcast, which is downloaded over 52 million times a year. The Moth’s third book, Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible is now available for purchase through your favorite booksellers.
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An exciting new study published this week has found that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of a specific area in the brain provides a robust antidepressant effect that is sustained over a long period of time in patients with treatment-resistant depression—the most severely depressed patients who have not responded to other treatments.
Deep brain stimulation, currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, is a neurosurgical procedure involving the placement of a neurostimulator (sometimes referred to as a “brain pacemaker”), which sends high-frequency electrical impulses through implanted electrodes deep in the brain to specific brain areas responsible for the symptoms of each disorder.
The long-term data presented in this study, conducted at Emory University and led by Professor Helen S. Mayberg, validates earlier work conducted by the research team and lays the foundation for additional studies to refine and optimize DBS for these patients. The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
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Dr. Mayberg led the first trial of DBS on the region of the brain called the subcallosal cingulate (SCC), known as Brodmann Area 25, for treatment-resistant depression patients in 2005, demonstrating that it could have clinical benefit. Subsequent small open-label trials produced similarly favorable results, yet despite these encouraging open-label results, a multi-center, randomized trial was halted early due to a lack of statistically significant antidepressant response at the designated, six-month a priori time point.
“Despite the fact that larger trials were halted early, what my colleagues and I were seeing as we continued to follow patients from our initial trials was that over time, they were getting better and not only that, they were staying better. So we stayed the course,” says Dr. Mayberg.
“Over eight years of observation, most of our study participants experienced an antidepressant response to the deep brain stimulation of Area 25 that was robust and sustained. Given that patients with treatment-resistant depression are highly susceptible to recurrent depressive episodes, the ability of DBS to support long-term maintenance of an antidepressant response and prevention of relapse is a treatment advance that can mean the difference between getting on with your life or always looking over your shoulder for your next debilitating depressive episode.”
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Specifically, the study documents the long-term outcome data (4 to 8 years) for 28 patients who were enrolled in an open-label clinical trial of SCC DBS for treatment-resistant depression. Three-quarters of all participants met the treatment response criterion for more than half of their participation in the study. Of 28 participants, 14 completed at least eight years of follow-up, 11 others completed at least four years, and three dropped out prior to eight years of participation. Data presented through this study support the long-term safety and sustained efficacy of SCC DBS for treatment-resistant depression.
“While clinical trials generally are structured to compare active and placebo treatments over the short term, our research results suggest that the most important strength of DBS in this hard-to-treat clinical population lies in its sustained effects over the long-term,” says Dr. Andrea Crowell, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. “For people suffering from inescapable depression, the possibility that DBS can lead to significant and sustained improvement in depressive symptoms over several years will be welcome news.”
All study participants met criteria for either major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder type 2 and were in a current depressive episode of at least 12 months duration with non-response to at least four antidepressant treatments, psychotherapy, and electroconvulsive therapy. All study participants underwent SCC DBS surgery at Emory University School of Medicine with the same surgeon and received the same device. The first 17 participants were implanted between 2007 to 2009 in an open-label trial with a one-month, single-blind, stimulation-off, lead-in period.
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An additional 11 participants with major depressive disorder were implanted using tractography-guided anatomical targeting between 2011 and 2013. A total of 178 patient-years of data were collected and combined for analysis in this long-term follow-up study. Participants were seen by a study psychiatrist weekly for 32 weeks, starting at least four weeks prior to surgery. Visits were then tapered to every six months for years 2-8 of the study. Currently, 23 patients continue in long-term follow-up.
“At the Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at Mount Sinai, we are currently gearing up for the next phase of this research, now funded by the National Institutes of Health Brain Initiative,” says Dr. Mayberg.
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“Our new study will recruit treatment-resistant depression patients, as before, but they will be implanted with a new research prototype DBS system (Summit RC+S) that allows simultaneous recordings of brain activity directly from the site of stimulation during active DBS therapy. Advanced imaging, behavioral, and physiological assessments will also be performed at regular intervals in the lab.
“These studies will provide an unprecedented opportunity to monitor the trajectory of recovery over days, weeks, and months at the neural level,” she added. “Building on preliminary findings from Emory, we anticipate that these brain signatures will provide important new insights into DBS mechanisms and, importantly, will help guide future decisions about DBS management that can further optimize clinical outcomes in our patients.”
Reprinted from The Mount Sinai Hospital
Treat Your Friends To Some Good News By Sharing This To Social Media – File photo by Dr. Craig Hacking, A. Prof Frank Gaillar, CC
17-year-old Tyra Winters isn’t just renowned at her high school for being an excellent cheerleader—she is also now making national headlines for saving the life of a choking toddler last month.
Tyra and her teammates from Rockwall High School in Texas had been aboard a homecoming parade float, waving to the crowd when she saw a woman holding a toddler and crying for help.
The 2-year-old boy, who had been choking on a piece of candy, was quickly turning purple when Tyra spotted him from the float.
The boy’s mother, Nicole Hornback, says that she had tried to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her son, but since she never learned how to perform the technique properly, she failed to dislodge the candy.
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“I just happened to look over to him and there was no noise, there was no coughing, there was no breathing,” Hornback told KTVT in the interview below. “And at that moment that’s when I tried to give him the Heimlich, and I’ve never taken a class. To feel so useless as a mother was the most terrifying thing in my life.”
After Hornback started calling for help, Tyra jumped off of the float and ran to the distressed mother’s side. The senior then grabbed the toddler, turned him upside down, and dislodged the candy simply by giving him three firm slaps on the back.
Tyra says that she learned how to help choking children as a result of her mother working in the medical field—and Hornback could not be more grateful for the teen’s intervention.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by KTVT
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Since the start of the #MeToo movement, actress Emma Watson has been a leading advocate for preventing sexual harassment in the workplace—and the launch of her latest project is helping to do just that.
Back in August, Watson collaborated with the Time’s Up UK Justice and Equality Fund to create a first-of-its-kind telephone hotline that provides free legal advice to women experiencing harassment in the workplace.
The hotline, which is available to women in England and Wales, is currently only open on Mondays and Tuesdays—although the group says that they plan on expanding their operating hours within the new future.
Research suggests that as many as 1 in 2 of women have experienced sexual harassment at work, although only 1 in 5 are comfortable reporting it to human resources. The hotline’s legal advice will be provided by Rights of Women legal staff and volunteer women employment lawyers through a dedicated telephone line. Women calling will be able to get specialist legal advice on what behavior constitutes sexual harassment, how to bring a grievance against their employer, how to make a claim in the Employment Tribunal, settlement agreements and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and other related legal problems faced by women experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace.
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The advice line is funded by the Time’s Up UK Justice and Equality Fund, managed by the UK Fund for Women and Girls, and kickstarted by donations from other celebrities such as Watson, who donated $1.2 million to the project.
Watson published a statement on the hotline’s launch, saying: “It’s completely staggering to think that this is the only service of its type given that research has found that as many as one in two women experience sexual harassment in the workplace.
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“It finally feels like people are realizing the scale of the problem, and I’m certainly hopeful that with global standards such as the recent International Labour Organization treaty on harassment at work, we’ll start to see a new climate of prevention and accountability on this issue domestically.
“Understanding what your rights are, how you can assert them, and the choices you have if you’ve experienced harassment, is such a vital part of creating safe workplaces for everyone, and this advice line is such a huge development in ensuring that all women are supported, wherever we work,” she concluded.
Multiply The Good By Sharing The Positive News With Your Friends On Social Media — Photo by Emma Watson / Instagram
A British teen has just finished writing a novel with her favorite author despite their 66-year age gap.
Aspiring writer Taryn Everdeen was only 15 years old when she first wrote a fan letter to 84-year-old Carolyn Meyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico to thank the author for her historical novels.
“Carolyn was one of my favorite authors. I grew up reading her books. When I was nine or ten I would listen on cassette every night … That led to a love of history,” recalls Taryn.
“I was visiting Hever Castle, the home of Anne Boleyn, and I wondered why I was so excited about history. Then I remembered reading these books and becoming obsessed with the Tudors.
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Taryn, who is from Norwich, England, was then stunned when Carolyn wrote back and suggested they collaborate on a project.
Meyer, an American author who writes novels for children and young adults, has sold millions of copies of her historical fictions, most notably the “Young Royals” series. She has published more than 60 children books, although she has never wanted to work with another writer until she was “blown away” by the Taryn’s letter.
“Every now and then someone comes along with whom I have a strong and immediate connection regardless of age, gender and background,” says Meyer. “The age difference was, believe it or not, irrelevant.”
After Taryn wrote to her three years ago, Meyer invited the young Brit to stay with her in the US so they could write a novel together.
They settled on a time-traveling story about a teenage boy in present-day Roanoke Island, North Carolina and a girl living in Happisburgh, Norfolk during the 1500s.
In addition to the pair sending ideas to each other via email, Meyer visited Taryn last year and Taryn flew to the US over the summer after she finished her school exams.
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The pair now have a first draft of “Mirror of Time” which they plan to give to Meyer’s agent and gauge interest from publishers.
“This has been my first proper go at writing a novel. We have been working on it for three years. It’s amazing,” says Taryn. “[And] I have never met anyone like her.
“She is completely unlike any stereotype of an 84-year-old. I think she is a really powerful role model. She’s my mentor, and my work partner, but I see her as a friend more than anything else.”
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Taryn, now 18 years old, returns from her trip to the USA this week and plans to have a gap year before starting university next year.
“We worked hard, but we got up to other things together, too. While I was there, we went to a few theater shows, I went with her to an open mic where she did a stand-up comedy routine, and we went on a road-trip to Taos, staying in a motel overnight there.
“She’s very open, and I can talk to her about pretty much all the things I talk to my other friends about,” she added. “She’s taught me how to be a better writer.”
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Quote of the Day: “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” – Winston Churchill
Photo: by Stan Lupo – CC license on Flickr, cropped
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?
The City of Angels opened their hearts for a woman with an angelic voice, and it’s lifting her up to new heights.
A homeless Russian-American woman was singing opera in the subway when an admiring police officer asked if he could tweet a video of her voice—and, now she is now beyond grateful to the man who changed her life.
After the melodic encounter rocketed her to fame, the folks at the LA police department asked Emily Zamourka what they could do for her.
What she wanted most was to thank Officer Frazier for sharing the video, so they set up a meeting:
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said as she broke into tears and embraced the brawny Frazier who wrapped her in a bear hug.
We saw with our brains, but we listened with our hearts.
— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) October 3, 2019
Her voice continues to captivate our city, and as the offers for help pour in, we asked: “Emily, what can we do for you?” Her answer: “I want to thank Officer Frazier for taking the video.”
Her wish was granted tonight. pic.twitter.com/lH4V51YTZ4
In just one day, the video of her voice echoing on a subway platform opened a floodgate of online donations and paid singing gigs. On Saturday, she sang the identical operatic song in front of thousands at the grand opening of Historic Little Italy in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles councilman Joe Buscaino, an Italian-American who was involved with event organizers, invited Zamourka to do a performance. After his speech, he introduced her to the crowd before she sang the Italian aria by Puccinni.
Holding the microphone, she said, “I’m so glad that I could touch your hearts with my voice. Thank you so much. I’m so overwhelmed.”
The councilman and his staff have taken the formerly homeless woman under their wing, helping her to get shelter and paying her $700 for the 3-minute performance.
After serious health problems a decade ago, the 52-year-old musician and former piano teacher was struggling to make ends meet. Then, disaster stuck when, she said, the $10,000 violin, which she played on sidewalks in order to make extra money, was taken and destroyed by a passerby. After that, she became homeless.
A GoFundMe campaign started by a consultant for Buscaino has raised more than $68,000—with many donors hoping it will be enough to replace her violin.
Zamourka says so many violins have been offered to her since the story went viral—and she “very much appreciates“ all the generosity—but she is waiting for an opportunity to acquire one that is closer to the stringed beauty that she lost.
“My violin was a very special violin,” she told TMZ. “I’m looking for an instrument that I can fall in love with.”
Over the whirlwind of last week, Zamourka was offered a recording contract from music producer Joel Diamond who drafted an offer letter in the hopes of creating a classical-EDM crossover hit. But with counsel from others, she is wisely keeping her options open.
She just wants to return to her normal life, working again as an artist to sustain herself. Thanks to Officer Frazier and all the kind donations, it looks like that dream is just around the corner.
(WATCH the video of her Little Italy performance…)
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Quote of the Day: “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” – Maya Angelou
Photo: by jordy clarke– CC license on Flickr, cropped
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?
Scientists have unveiled a new technique using a super-resolution ultrasound method that improves resolution by 5 to 10 times compared to standard ultrasound images.
The procedure, which allows whole organs to be scanned in super-resolution for the first time, is expected to lead to earlier cancer diagnoses and allow medical staff to more effectively target treatments to any malignant tissue. In fact, it could eventually replace the need for biopsy altogether.
Writing in the Journal of Investigative Radiology, the team demonstrated for the first time the detection of prostate cancer by mapping the blood vessels that surround it and showing a different pattern to that of normal tissue.
The enhanced images utilize existing clinical two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound equipment and standard Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) modes. This means hospitals won’t be required to invest in new equipment and no new hardware technology needs to be developed.
Having demonstrated that it works with live animals, the researchers from Heriot-Watt University aim to start human trials using the new technique by December 2019. Prostate patients will be the first to benefit from the enhanced imaging.
The approach is based on CEUS, an ultrasound examination mode that is set to visualize the blood circulation of organs such as the prostate, pancreas or liver with millimeter accuracy, which is typical for most medical imaging.
CEUS imaging assesses vascular flow using the intravenous injection of the gas-filled microbubbles, which can efficiently scatter ultrasound. Their diameter, typically around 2 to 3 μm, allows them to pass through the entire vascular bed. The CEUS mode relies specifically on processing within the ultrasound equipment that enhances their scatter while also suppressing tissue signals. However, after more than 20 years of research in this area, there are currently very few CEUS applications in a clinical setting globally.
The breakthrough, developed by Heriot-Watt University, is an image analysis methodology, translated from algorithms used in astronomy and light microscopy, that employs a bolus or infusion injection of microbubble suspensions at the start of the examination. New features that are tailored for CEUS data and the blood circulation dynamics have been developed for microbubble scatter detection and segmentation, allowing the algorithm to localize them and track them as they cross the blood stream, thus delineating the vascular tree in view.
“Ultrasound imaging is an indispensable tool in medical diagnosis, primarily due to its cost-effectiveness and unique real-time capability,” said Dr Vassilis Sboros who led the research. “Scotland has pioneered medical ultrasound starting with its invention over 60 years ago. However, the limitations of current ultrasound images mean more expensive techniques like MRI are often employed for diagnosis and treatment.
“MRI doesn’t provide clinicians with more detail but it has generally provided better results than other methods. However, in the prostate for example, biopsy has to be performed as a separate procedure which is more expensive for the hospital and can be both disruptive and distressing for the patient.
“Our new technique has the advantage that it can be done as an adjunct to the ultrasound examination which allows the biopsy to be integrated into it. Due to the super-resolution capability of the image created, we anticipate that the ability of the medical staff to pinpoint, diagnose and treat a range of cancers will be greatly enhanced. We will work to establish the usefulness of our method in the upcoming clinical study. We hope that further research will help expand this method to other applications in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, liver disease and transplant rejection and one day biopsies may not be necessary.
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“Until now, CEUS’ use has been limited due to its high inter- and intra-observer variability compared to other imaging techniques like MRI or CT. While existing ultrasound imaging provides comparable resolution to MRI or CT, a number of factors including the equipment type and settings, the patient variability and contrast material has affected its performance. We believe our technique overcomes a large part of these challenges.
“Another key limitation of super-resolution imaging can be the unrealistic amount of time a patient is expected to remain still in a clinical setting. We have overcome this, ensuring the imaging is achievable in a realistic examination period of a few minutes, comparable to existing times.”
The morbidity and mortality associated with a large number of tumors is due to the development of a vascular network that supports them and is responsible for secondary malignant growths at a distance from the primary site of cancerous cells. Mapping the development of such networks will provide a new tool to clinicians in an effort to better understand and harness the progression of cancer.
Initial images of prostate cancer have been included in the initial study with promising results. Both the density and velocity maps generated show strong correlation with the histological evaluation after surgery. The research team hope their method will be a significant advance in the fight against cancer.
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Professor Alan McNeill, Consultant Urological Surgeon at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh said: “Prostate cancer is an increasing problem for our society. Whilst we have a number of methods for detecting it, these don’t always provide us with the important information that we need regarding who has cancer that needs to be treated and who doesn’t.
“A method that maps the blood flow of the tumor accurately could well provide new information about the disease state that allows us to better identify those men who need urgent treatment and those who don’t. It is exciting that we will be the first hospital in the world that will assess this method with patients.”
Reprinted from Heriot-Watt University
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Over the last month, the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma have been puzzled by a series of digital billboards all sporting the same simple, but sweet message: “Amy, I love you more!”
Many people believed the message derived from a begging husband asking for forgiveness over some untold grievance—but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
41-year-old Josh Wilson had originally signed a year-long lease on the billboards back in January as a means of advertising his company, Living Water Irrigation. Upon reviewing his data in August, however, Wilson found that the billboards weren’t helping his business very much.
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Since his contract required him to continue paying for the ads until January, he simply decided to use the billboards to tell Amy Jones, his wife of two years, just how much he loved her.
“I’m not in trouble. I’m not in the doghouse,” Wilson told FOX23 with a laugh. “I’m just in love with my wife.”
It took Amy a few weeks to notice the signs, but when she finally did, she was incredibly touched by her husband’s sweet gesture; although she later told him that he should replace the digital message with a photo of their dogs instead.
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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Rather than making purses out of plastic, this small Canadian company has begun making vegan leather clothing items out of apple peels that are recycled from the juicing industry.
The two sisters behind the Toronto-based fashion line SAMARA recently launched their Mini purse, which is the first object made out of their new ‘apple leather’.
The designers say they were inspired to develop the material as a means of replacing the petroleum-based materials that are typically used to make vegan ‘leather’.
Though the designers told Tree Hugger that they are currently using polyurethane (PU) as a binding agent, they reassured readers that the glue is still a much more eco-friendly material compared to the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that is commonly used in the textile industry.
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“As the vegan leather industry is growing, we decided that it was time to raise the bar and start experimenting with other plant-based materials,” reads the SAMARA website. “We’ve been hard at work over the last year, aiming to create our best seller—the Mini—out of apple-based leather.
“After many iterations and quality checks, it’s finally here. Made from apple skins that are by-products of the juicing industry, and some PU that acts as a binding agent, we’ve designed our newest addition to the Mini Collection: our Apple Leather Mini.”
The Mini is now on sale at the SAMARA website for $50 a pop. Additionally, a portion of every purchase made through the company’s website helps to send a “solar-powered backpack” to a child in East Africa.
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What was once an abandoned landscape of waterless scrubland has been transformed into a lush green oasis—thanks to the business acumen of a nature-lover from Ohio.
After growing up poor on a farm, salesman David Bamberger relocated to Texas and helped grow Church’s Fried Chicken into a successful franchise with 467 stores across the U.S. He left the company in 1974 and began plowing his financial windfall back into Mother Earth, inspired by his own mother’s love of the land.
“My objective was to take the worst piece of land I could possibly find in the hill country of Texas and begin a process of restoration that would change it back to be one of the best,” Bamberger told National Geographic.
The original plot of land was covered with scrub brush and evergreen cedars. There wasn’t any water and nobody wanted it. “Fifty years ago, you could hardly walk through this place,” he recalled. “There was wall-to-wall brush.”
Bamberger hired a well driller to probe the area for groundwater. Seven wells were drilled 500 feet deep, but none produced any water. However, the contractor reported the discovery of a dry limestone cavern at the top of a hill.
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The chemical makeup of the limestone meant that the first 125 feet under the soil was naturally porous, but paired with environmental erosion after rainfall, this particular area couldn’t retain the moisture at all.
With the discovery that there was this subterranean aquifer, Bamberger realized that the rainwater must not be getting into the ground, so he re-introducing natural grasses that would help retain rainwater by moving it underground via its root system.
It was a ‘Eureka’ moment—and, eventually, the seven springs began percolating with water.
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Local wildlife was drawn back to the resurrected ecosystem, and families that live nearby now have abundant water. The land, now known as the Selah Bamberger Ranch, retains so much water that they can even send it downstream towards the city of Austin.
Bamberger chose the name “Selah”, based on a word he discovered in his bible, in Psalms, as a young man. It means to stop, to pause, to look around you, and reflect on everything you see—a fitting description for his work.
The Selah Bamberger Ranch Preserve is now run by a foundation, which educates visitors on the wise use of land, and will keep the property in its restored state, in perpetuity.
(WATCH the Nat Geo video below) –Article co-written with Jennifer Zolper
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Quote of the Day: “October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen.” – Hal Borland
Photo: by Pedro Fernandes– CC license on Flickr, cropped
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Saltwater and dry desert climates may not seem like a good recipe for growing healthy produce, but that is exactly what a group of scientists has managed to do.
Researchers from the UK-based Seawater Greenhouse company have discovered a drought-proof way to farm fruits and vegetables simply by using solar power and saltwater for irrigation and cooling.
The company has launched plantation projects in arid regions such as Australia, Abu Dhabi, Somaliland, Oman, and Tenerife. Despite the harsh climate of these locations, the plantations are able to grow thousands of pounds of produce simply by making “cooling houses” out of thick walls of dampened cardboard.
While glass greenhouses are designed to keep gardens moist and warm, the cardboard structures use “evaporative cooling” to keep the interior of the plantation structures humid and cool.
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The design of the corrugated cardboard panels helps to cool down the wind coming from the outside of the structure. At the same time, a small solar-powered pump dispenses seawater at the top of the panels so that it can trickle down through the walls of the cardboard for evaporation.
This “evaporative cooling” technique creates the perfect conditions for farming produce in drought-stricken regions.
Additionally, since the seawater is repeatedly collected and recirculated throughout the cardboard panels, the salt can precipitate onto the exterior of the walls. Not only does this help to fortify the cardboard, it can also be harvested and sold for commercial profit.
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According to Seawater Greenhouse founder Charlie Paton, you would only need about 10 square miles (2,000 hectares) of these structures to feed all of Somaliland—which is a country of about four million people.
Upon completing the company’s Somaliland project in November 2017, it now produces about 300 to 750 tonnes of tomatoes per year—and Paton says that he is excited for his company to launch even more projects in drought-prone regions around the world.
(WATCH the FreeThink video below) – Photo by Seawater Greenhouse
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It’s the battle of the century.
With winter waiting just around the corner, these wild bears are beefing up for hibernation—and one national park service has taken it upon themselves to hold a nail-biting competition for who will be the fattest bear of 2019.
Every year, the Katmai National Park and Preserve Facebook page rallies social media users together to participate in their annual Fat Bear Week.
The administrators host the competition by comparing the “before” and “after” photos of two local brown bears. The “before” photos depict the massive mammals at their typical summer body weight.
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The “after” photos, on the other hand, are taken more recently to show off the bears’ impressive weight gain after months of stuffing their faces with salmon for the long chilly months ahead.
Once social media users have voted on which bear is the chunkiest, the winner moves on to the next round of the tubby tournament.
The park rangers say that they first launched the competition several years ago as a means of teaching people about bears in a fun and engaging way—so now with several hundred votes on each bear, it’s probably pretty safe to say that their plan worked.
As of right now, there have already been several scrawny bears eliminated from Fat Bear Week—but there are still many rounds to go.
If you want to vote on who will be the fattest bear, make sure that you check out the Katmai National Park Facebook page as the competitors are selected throughout the week.
May the fattest bear win.
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These exuberant high school band members were “so happy” to play their hearts out at a Michigan football game earlier this week—but it’s not because they were cheering for their own team.
When the Forest Area Schools didn’t have enough students for a football team, they found themselves with a high school band, but no football teams to play for.
As fate would have it, the neighboring Glen Lake school district football team had the opposite problem: they had a football team, but no student band.
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The Glen Lake team then invited the Forest Area band to play at their game—and even though the young musicians had to drive an hour to attend the gig, they jumped at the opportunity.
“I absolutely flipped. I was so happy,” a Forest Area senior student band member told UpNorth Live. “Since it’s my last year after playing for six years, it’s the most important thing to me to be able to be out here and show people what we can do.”
Despite being forced to play their instruments in the rain, they nailed the performance—and Glen Lake said that the band was more than welcome to come back and play for more games in the future.
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Scientists have helped three amputees “merge” with their bionic prosthetic legs so they can use and feel their the limb as if it’s a part of their own body.
The amputees were able to climb over various obstacles without having to look thanks to sensory feedback from the prosthetic leg that is delivered to nerves in the leg’s stump.
Djurica Resanovic lost his leg in a motorbike accident several years ago which resulted in amputation above the knee. Thanks to novel neuroprosthetic leg technology, Resanovic was successfully connected to his bionic leg during clinical trials in Belgrade, Serbia.
“After all of these years, I could feel my leg and my foot again, as if it were my own leg,” reports Resanovic about the bionic leg prototype. “It was very interesting. You don’t need to concentrate to walk, you can just look forward and step. You don’t need to look at where your leg is to avoid falling.”
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Scientists from a European consortium led by Swiss Institutions, ETH Zurich and EPFL spin-off SensArs Neuroprosthetics, with clinical trials in collaboration with institutions in Belgrade, Serbia, successfully characterized and implemented bionic leg technology with three amputees. The results appear in this week’s issue of Science Translational Medicine.
“We showed that less mental effort is needed to control the bionic leg because the amputee feels as though their prosthetic limb belongs to their own body,” explains Stanisa Raspopovic, the ETH Zurich professor who led the study.
“This is the first prosthesis in the world for above-knee leg amputees equipped with sensory feedback,” he continued. “We show that the feedback is crucial for relieving the mental burden of wearing a prosthetic limb which, in turn, leads to improved performance and ease of use.”
Wearing a blindfold and earplugs, Resanovic could feel his bionic leg prototype thanks to sensory information that was delivered wirelessly via electrodes surgically placed into the stumps’ intact nervous system. These electrodes pierce through the intact tibial nerve instead of wrapping around it. This approach has already proven to be efficient for studies of the bionic hand led by Silvestro Micera, co-author of the publication, EPFL’s Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering.
Resanovic continues: “I could tell when they touched the [big toe], the heel, or anywhere else on the foot. I could even tell how much the knee was flexed.”
Resanovic is one of three leg amputees, all with transfemoral amputation, who participated in a three-month clinical study to test new bionic leg technology which literally takes neuroengineering a step forward, providing a promising new solution for this highly disabling condition that affects more than 4 million people in Europe and in the United States.
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Thanks to detailed sensations from sole of the artificial foot and from the artificial knee, all three patients could maneuver through obstacles without the burden of looking at their artificial limb as they walked. They could stumble over objects yet mitigate falling. Most importantly, brain imaging and psychophysical tests confirmed that the brain is less solicited with the bionic leg, leaving more mental capacity available to successfully complete the various tasks.
These results complement a recent study that demonstrated the clinical benefits of the bionic technology, like reducing phantom limb pain and fatigue.
“We develop the sensory feedback technology to augment prosthetic devices,” explains Francesco Petrini, CEO and co-founder of SensArs Neuroprosthetics, and who is guiding an effort to bring these technologies to market. “An investigation longer than 3 months, with more subjects, and with in-home assessment, should be executed to provide more robust data to draw clinically significant conclusions about an improvement of the health and quality of life of patients.”
The fundamental neuroengineering principle is about merging body and machine. It involves imitating the electrical signals that the nervous system would have normally received from the person’s own, real leg. Specifically, the bionic leg prototype is equipped with 7 sensors all along the sole of the foot and 1 encoder at the knee that detects the angle of flexion. These sensors generate information about touch and movement from the prosthesis. Next, the raw signals are engineered via a smart algorithm into biosignals which are delivered into the stump’s nervous system, into the tibial nerve via intraneural electrodes, and these signals reach the brain for interpretation.
“We believe intraneural electrodes are key for delivering bio-compatible information to the nervous system for a vast number of neuroprosthetic applications. Translation to the market is just around the corner,” explains Silvestro Micera, co-author of the publication.
Reprinted from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
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An entire high school stepped up their kindness game last week, just when a new girl in town needed it most.
LISTEN to the inspiring story told on the radio by our GNN founder (in the Good News Guru podcast below) or READ the full story after that…
Megan Carr has had a rough time, ever since a girl who was mentoring her on the Brazoswood Belles High School Drill Team suddenly died. Not only did she lose the girl she called a “big sister”, but her family moved from Lake Jackson, Texas and she had to start over at Dayton High School.
After joining the new drill team, she told her teammates about the upcoming one-year anniversary of her friend’s death.
The high school teens were so moved by the story of friendship between the senior and sophomore, they decided to do something special to honor the memory of her “big sister” Ravenne Dodge.
Upon learning that Ravenne’s favorite color was yellow, and she loved sunflowers, Megan’s drill team all showed up to school wearing sunflowers and yellow clothes—and they even festooned the entire locker room with yellow decorations and sunflowers.
According to Megan’s mother Kellie Baldwin, that was just the start of what makes this such an amazing story.
“Somehow, without my daughter’s knowledge, the drill team was able to get the entire school to wear yellow on the same day in honor of this young girl—even though they have no idea who she was.”
“What a wonderful thing, for a school to come together to support just ONE student…to just maybe make her feel a little better and get through a tough day,” Kellie said in a radio interview with 100.3 The Bull in Houston.
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Ravenne’s mother Amie Dodge, was also astonished. She told GNN, “When I saw the students at the school in another district wearing yellow in memory of my daughter, I was just blown away! It brought tears of joy to my eyes to think that my daughter had an impact on the people she didn’t even know.”
Dayton High School went even further to show their support, as yellow ribbons were worn last Friday at the school’s pep rally and football game.
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