In a recent survey of 2000 Americans, housecleaning was shown to have some mood-boosting effects—but that doesn’t mean everybody does it willingly.
The majority of respondents said cleaning gave them a sense of accomplishment (65%) and helped them clear their mind (63%).
Half of these adults said they are most often motivated to clean when they’re happy. In fact, 63% of those surveyed find the experience of cleaning to be relaxing—even more so than getting fresh air (61%).
But that’s not the only reason people clean.
A whopping 70% admitted that tidying their home was a way of putting off having to do other things, with the average procrastinator using that trick four times a week.
The survey showed that 86% of respondents do feel on top of their chores, but the last deep clean of their kitchen happened over a week and a half ago. That’s no surprise because the kitchen is most dreaded of all.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of DishFish, makers of multipurpose sponges and non-scratch scrubbers, the survey honed in on people’s attitudes toward dirty dishes and how they get through the cringe-worthy task.
More than two-thirds of people (69%) let their dishes pile up between washings with 20% saying “always” letting them stack up in the sink, which left them feeling stressed.
More than any other room, the kitchen was rated as “very difficult” to tackle. And most people enjoy scrubbing their toilet or taking out the garbage more than washing dishes by hand.
How do they get through it? 66% listen to music while they clean.
72% have a go-to song that they blast while tidying up their home, with “Uptown Funk,” “Read All About It” and “Work” being the three favorite tunes on America’s cleaning playlist.
WHAT’S ON AMERICA’S “CLEANING PLAYLIST”? SURVEY SAYS…
• “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
• “Read All About It” by Emeli Sandé
• “Work” by Rihanna
• “All of Me” by John Legend
• “But a Dream” by G-Eazy
• “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 feat. Cardi B
• “Pretty Hurts” by Beyoncé
• “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston
• “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber
• “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida
A 29-year-old student pilot in Australia is being hailed as a hero after he managed a “perfect” airplane landing during his first flying lesson.
It had been Max Sylvester’s first time in a Cessna training aircraft when his instructor suddenly fell unconscious mid-flight.
Alone at the controls, he immediately contacted a nearby control tower and told them of his predicament. In a sound clip that was released by ABC News this week, Sylvester can be heard describing his instructor’s condition, saying: “He’s leaning over my shoulder, I’m trying to keep him up but he keeps falling down.”
Through radio contact with air traffic officials, Sylvester was guided through an emergency landing at Perth’s Jandakot Airport.
“You’re doing a really great job,” the air traffic controller told the trainee. “I know this is really stressful. But you’re going to do an amazing job and we’re going to help you get down to the ground, OK?”
An hour after his instructor fainted, Sylvester safely landed the plane—and local pilots say that they have never seen anything like it.
Chuck McElwee, owner and operator of Air Australia International for 28 years, says that he never would have expected such a perfect landing from a rookie student, especially because it had zero impact to the plane.
“I’ve had worst damage happen on good flights where nothing went wrong,” he mused.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by Sky News
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For the first time ever, a clothing company has come up with a sustainable way of making tee-shirts out of wood pulp and algae so they can be composted at the end of their life.
London-based tech startup Vollebak designed the Plant and Algae T-Shirt so that wearers can simply compost the shirt by burying it in their backyard.
The shirt’s fabric is made out of sustainably sourced eucalyptus, beech, and spruce trees that are chipped, pulped, and spun into textile yarn. The ink on the shirts is made entirely from algae that the designers grew in a bioreactor.
“Instead of passing lake water through a cotton net, we pass water from the bioreactor through a filter,” reads the Vollebak website. “This process separates the algae, leaving a soupy algae paste. This paste is then dried in the sun to create a fine powder, and this powder is mixed with a water-based binder to make algae ink.”
Since algae can’t survive out of water, it then turns into a natural pigment which fades to different colors over time. This way, Vollebak designers say that no two shirts end up looking the same after they’ve gone through multiple washes.
“The Plant and Algae T-Shirt feels like a normal t-shirt when you wear it. It’s not going to start biodegrading if you go for a run or hang it up to dry,” the website continues. “It’ll only start to biodegrade when you bury it in the ground or put it in the compost. It needs the fungus, bacteria and heat from the Earth to start to break down. If you want it to biodegrade, you have to bury it in the ground.”
The Plant and Algae T-shirt is as soft as a well-worn cotton tee, photo by Vollebak
The tees, which can biodegrade in 8 to 12 weeks, were developed to be an innovative solution to textile waste. According to a report from the EPA, about 10.5 million tons of textiles were sent to landfills in 2015, amounting to roughly 7.6% of total landfill waste.
Other sustainability reports say that it can take anywhere from 25 to 40 gallons water to dye 2 pounds of fabric with the textile industry uses almost 25 trillion gallons of water every year.
Though these Plant and Algae T-Shirts are currently being sold at $110 a pop, the idea could spark an entirely new generation of eco-friendly clothing.
“The wood is turned into fabric using an environmentally-responsible and closed-loop production process,” says the website. “In practice this means that over 99% of the water and solvent used to turn pulp into fibre is recycled and reused. And on the Higg MSI scoring system—which measures the impact of producing a kilogram of fibre taking into account fossil resource depletion, water scarcity, eutrophication and global warming—this fabric scores 10 against cotton’s score of 60. Our eventual aim is to score 0.”
The company’s waterproof and highly breathable Solar Charged Jacket, which is made to glow in the dark (even after being near only a light bulb) and can roll up in your hand, was named as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2018.
(WATCH the video preview below)
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This wiener dog and his best friend—a rescued baby porcupine—might be the cutest dynamic duo you will see on the internet this week.
Zookeeper Estelle Morgan has been hand-rearing Diablo the porcupette since he was rejected by his mom at Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire, England.
When Diablo was just a few days old, Morgan took him home to give him a better chance of survival and introduced him to her dachshund puppy Fig for some essential social interactions to help with his development—and the two critters quickly became best friends.
According to Morgan, the prickly pair now spend all day playing together.
“When Diablo gets excited he will do a buckaroo-style run, where he thrashes his head around and jumps up in the air,” she said. “Under close supervision, they will run around the garden together and Fig has been very gentle and patient with Diablo.”
Diablo was born to parents ‘Hannah’ and ‘Prickle’ at Cotswold Wildlife Park in Burford, but the decision was made to hand-rear the baby porcupine when his mother rejected him.
SWNS
“[Diablo’s mother] Hannah previously had twins in February that she is still caring for, so it is likely she wasn’t really ready for another baby so soon,” says Morgan. “His unexpected arrival was a big surprise for all of us.”
Little Diablo was “very feisty” from birth, but is now showing his softer side and building his social skills with best buddy Fig.
He is currently being bottle-fed by Morgan in her kitchen at her home located within the wildlife park.
SWNS photo
“When Diablo was first born he … wasn’t scared to give me a nip,” says Morgan. “Now he has settled into a good routine and will comfortably follow me around the kitchen and will even come to me for reassurance.”
For the first month, he was fed one bottle every two hours to get him into a good routine. At the time, he weighed just 300 grams (half a pound)—but now at six weeks old, he has grown to a whopping 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds) and developed a liking for apples and sweet potatoes.
SWNS
“My most stand out moment hand-rearing Diablo was when he latched on and suckled on his own from the bottle for the first time,” says Morgan. “This happened when he was three days old and was just a huge relief for me—the first few days are always worrying.
“Now, at six weeks old, he is tasting solid foods so he can go longer in-between feeds, which also means I’ve been able to get more sleep,” she added.
(WATCH the adorable video below)
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Quote of the Day: “There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill.” – Deepak Chopra
Photo: by Mon Œil, CC License, 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?
When devastation and trauma struck David Lawrence’s perfectly healthy, happy family, the courageous father responded by making the impossible… possible.
At 11 years old, his son David Jr. underwent surgery on his brain stem to remove a life-threatening growth. After the procedure, the surgeons and doctors said that David Jr. would never walk again.
Seeing his son paralyzed from the neck down and facing life as a quadriplegic, David Sr. stayed by his son’s side through months of intensive rehabilitation. Then as the devoted dad was researching different therapies, David Sr. came across Hyperbaric Oxygen treatment.
Since David Sr. has been a scuba diver for many years, this therapy sparked his interest—so he began taking David Jr. to a local swimming pool for a new kind of workout. Kitted out in dive gear, David Jr.’s progress was amazing.
The physical “workout” that David Sr. designed for his son helped to rewire his nervous system until—over time—it brought life back to his once-paralyzed body.
David Sr. consistently reminded his son that he could do it, encouraging him to push through the pain and exhaustion and keep his goal in focus. Fast forward 10 years and David Jr. is now getting his PhD at university; he walks, runs, and works as a scuba instructor for his father’s business, The Scuba Gym in Clermont, Florida. After David Jr.’s mom, Kim, and his two younger sisters jumped on board, rehabilitation has become their family business.
Lyndi Leggett of The Scuba Gym in Australia, with David Sr., and David Jr.
This is the true and inspiring story that motivated me—Lyndi Leggett (above)—to bring the scuba therapy to Australia, as a scuba instructor and leadership trainer on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
The therapy techniques that David Lawrence developed over the last 10 years have served to help people with disabilities and special neurological needs to improve their muscle tone, reduce their pain and spasms, stand up and walk with a quad cane, and even progress to walking unassisted. Furthermore, scuba therapy improves lung function, lymphedema, and boosts the lymphatic system.
Our clients at The Scuba Gym in Australia have been able to seek employment, sometimes for the first time in their lives, rather than being dependent on disability services that can often be inadequate.
All it takes is the desire and commitment to work hard. So often we hear from our clients that their medical team had reached the limit of what traditional rehabilitation could offer them. It takes pioneers who think outside the box—or in our case, outside the wheelchair—to bring hope back to people who’ve been told that there is none.
We challenge and change the way healing and rehabilitation is approached and combine that innovative thinking with a passion for scuba diving—because in an anti-gravity environment, where the restrictions of land don’t apply, we can achieve incredible things.
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Everyone knows that a healthy lifestyle involves eating fruits and vegetables and getting lots of exercise—but new research says that it might have a much more dramatic impact on our cognitive health than we previously thought.
Last month, researchers at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Los Angeles presented a new study on how five specific lifestyle choices were linked to a 60% reduction in the risk of developing the disease. In fact, the compiled report states that even adopting four of the five maintained the same 60% reduction.
The factors included in the study were:
getting 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week
not smoking
limiting alcohol to one drink per day
participating in cognitive stimulation (such as puzzles, or other problem-solving tasks)
a “good diet” (mostly vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, seafood, poultry and olive oil—and avoiding pastries, sweets, fried food, and too much red meat or saturated fats).
The researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago who managed the study were confident there would be some link between the lifestyle factors and cognitive outcomes, but co-author and professor Klodian Dhana said that he and the other authors of the study were all shocked by the “magnitude of the effect.”
But, not all of the study’s participants were stringent in adopting all five of the listed habits over the course of the 6 to 9 years of research—and this revealed another promising statistic: for those who added just one of the healthier lifestyle choices to whatever their current number of factors was, the risk of dementia decreased by an additional 22%.
Even for most people with a genetic predisposition to dementia, a healthy lifestyle can be equally protective, according to a separate study of over 200,000 individuals published in JAMA on the same day.
Out of the lifestyle elements that were tracked, probably the most interesting is the foods we choose to eat. In the coming decades, the familiar refrain of “eat your vegetables” may become “get your polyphenols and phytonutrients.” Scientific research has proven that these mysterious components of plant-based foods are what we should be eating if we value our brain function.
For instance, this 2016 study featured on GNN found that blueberries help to fend off Alzheimer’s thanks to their phytonutrient flavonoids called anthocyanins.
“The blueberry group demonstrated improved memory and improved access to words and concepts,” said Robert Krikorian, leader of the research team. “Our new findings corroborate those of previous animal studies and preliminary human studies, adding further support to the notion that blueberries can have a real benefit in improving memory and cognitive function in some older adults.”
Another study featured on GNN in 2018 found that combining blueberries and grapes also resulted in surprising improvements in the memory, spatial recognition, and learning capabilities. This is because the two fruits are rich in polyphenols, which are micronutrient plant compounds that are good for your brain. The two polyphenol-rich extracts combined together resulted in a boost much greater than using one or the other exclusively.
And then there’s ergothioneine, or ET: a compound found in mushrooms which is also a protector of cognitive function. Instead of warding off Alzheimer’s, however, it protects against mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Still, a team from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS) found that seniors consuming more than two portions of mushrooms every week were linked with a reduction in odds of experiencing mental decline by as much as 50%.
Another Lifestyle Choice With Dementia Implications: Flossing Your Teeth
Researcher Piotr Mydel from the University of Bergen “discovered DNA-based proof that the bacteria causing gingivitis can move from the mouth to the brain.” Once in the brain, the bacteria excrete toxins that kill cerebral nerve cells.
While the bacteria don’t directly cause Alzheimer’s, the presence of the bacteria in the brain increases the risk of developing the disease and can result in a faster onset for people who are already at risk. In addition, a drug has been developed that can block those enzymes, which is scheduled to be tested in clinical trials in late 2019.
In terms of getting some exercise, this 68-year-old man with Alzheimer’s has staved off the the disease by climbing a mountain every day for the last 50 years.
Another way to elevate your fortitude against dementia is by pulling out a crossword puzzle or word search quiz for a low-cost and readily available way to exercise your gray matter.
When 17-year-old John Frates realized his grandmother was struggling with the word searches she had always loved, he created a book of large-print puzzles to soften the effects of her dementia. It had simpler words and no diagonal or backward spellings. Mary Frates was delighted. “Every time I showed her a new word search, her eyes lit up,” John told Good News Network.
John then conducted a scientific study on how the word searches could benefit elderly patients with dementia and presented his findings at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Conference in 2017, suggesting that even those who have already noticed signs of cognitive decline can continue to “use it,” perhaps just with a little help.
We all hear these reminders from doctors and parents: Eat your fruits and vegetables… Don’t forget to floss… Get some exercise. It’s good to know these are all aligned with today’s cutting-edge research on Alzheimer’s.
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What started as a kind gesture between two friends is now being rolled out as a global pilot program that will allow thousands of blind children to build LEGO sets all on their own.
Using AI technology, the LEGO Group is aiming to make their play experience more accessible for those with vision impairment by converting their instruction manuals into an audio and braille formatting.
The idea came from Matthew Shifrin, a 22-year-old man from Boston who was born blind. As a child, he developed a strong passion for LEGO play. However, he always needed assistance when it came to specific LEGO-building instructions.
“I had a friend [and babysitter named Lilya] who would write down all the building steps for me so that I could upload them into a system that allowed me to read the building steps on a braille reader through my fingers,” says Shifrin. “She learned braille to engage with me and support my LEGO passion, and then spent countless hours translating LEGO instructions into braille.”
Shifrin would then pore over his customized instructions to create models such as the LEGO Sydney Opera House and London Tower Bridge—the latter of which required over 850 pages.
But for the first time ever, he is able to build LEGO sets independently, without needing anyone else guiding him through the instructions.
“This is extremely important for blind children because there aren’t a lot of places where we can say, ‘Look Mom and Dad! I built this on my own… I did this’” says Shifrin. “For blind children, we don’t have access to what sighted kids are used to. LEGO bricks enable us to learn about our environment, to see the world. It is so important because blind kids get left out of a lot of social stuff, especially in elementary school. But LEGO building is one of the things we can do.”
For years, Lilya and Shifrin spent hours working together to translate different LEGO manuals and decided to publish them to a website, “LEGO for the Blind”, so they could share their work with other children. To date, their website has published the braille and audio instructions for about 40 different sets—but they had bigger dreams.
When Lilya passed away in 2017, Shifrin was determined to honor her memory by ensuring others benefitted from her idea of creating and sharing the instruction manuals. Thanks to one of his friends at MIT, he was finally introduced to those who run the Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group.
The team took his idea to the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence who developed new AI software to translate LXFML data (LEGO Exchange Format Mel Script) from the visual digital building instructions to text-based descriptions for braille and voice commanded instructions. Speech synthesis company, CereProc then provided the Software Development Kit and a voice that reads the instructions.
The free service is now available in English through their accessible new LEGO Audio Instructions website. The first four instructions to be launched include a set from LEGO Classic, LEGO CITY, LEGO Friends, and LEGO Movie 2.
Visitors can either choose to hear audio instructions using their screen reader or with audio provided by the LEGO Group. Alternatively, users can also choose to read the instructions using a Braille reader. Depending on consumer feedback on the four pilot instructions, which will be collected until the end of 2019, the company plans on launching more audio and braille instructions during the first half of 2020.
The innovation is being hailed as a welcomed follow-up to the launch of LEGO Braille Bricks, launched four months ago to help teach braille to young children with vision impairment in a playful way. Co-developed with the LEGO Group, both projects have been funded by the LEGO Foundation.
“As I build a set, I develop a better sense of what a building looks like and how it is laid out and constructed,” says Shifrin. “For blind people LEGO sets act as miniature 3D substitutes for real-life buildings in lieu of two-dimensional photographs. LEGO bricks allow me to see things that are impossible to explore by touch, such as the arches of a Middle Eastern palace or the towers of the London Tower Bridge.
“I would like to get my instructions out to the blind community so they can feel on par with a sighted builder. I want every blind person to feel that the once impossible is now possible; that he or she can now build a miniature LEGO world.”
(WATCH the video below)
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Rather than using his birthday vacation money to go to Disney World, this little boy chose to feed Hurricane Dorian evacuees instead.
Jermaine Bell will be turning 7 years old on September 8th. His parents had originally saved up some money so they could celebrate the youngster’s big day at ‘the happiest place on Earth’—but since the hurricane hit the east coast, Jermaine wanted to make sure those in the midst of it had something eat.
He and his family from Allentown, South Carolina then used their savings to buy sandwiches, snacks, and waters for families headed inland from the coast. Together, they stood on the side of the road with signs advertising how they were giving away free meals to evacuees.
“The people that are traveling to go to other places, I wanted them to have some food to eat, so they can enjoy the ride to the place that they’re going to stay at,” Jermaine told local reporters in the interview below.
Over the course of just one day, Jermaine fed more than 100 evacuees—and he hopes to feed many more.
His mother Lauren Bell says that she has been incredibly touched by her son’s compassion—which is why she still hopes to take her son to Disney World, even if it means they simply have to put it off for a while.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by WJBF
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Quote of the Day: “The spiritual path has more to do with subtraction than addition. It’s not so much a matter of adding virtues as it is relinquishing everything that can possibly be abandoned.” – Belden C. Lane
Photo: by Ken Brown, CC License, 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?
On a recent podcast, world renown comedian Kevin Hart recalled the moment at 19 years-old when he finally followed his mother’s advice, and it paid off—big time—both for his wallet and his heart.
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…
Kevin’s mom never wanted to attend any of his shows. She was very religious, but, despite his edgy humor, she was always very supportive of his career.
When he was 19, he was struggling to make it in comedy and over several months couldn’t pay his rent. Eventually, he went to his mom saying, “Look, you said you were going to help me— and I really need some money.”
She said, “Read your bible.”
Kevin told her, “I do read the bible, but the eviction notice is on the door!”
She replied, “Come back to me when you read your bible.”
A couple days went by, and they changed the color of the notice: “They’ve shifted to PINK. This is serious!”
Kevin Hart in 2014, photo by Eva Rinaldi, CC license
Kevin went back to his mom and said, “Mom, They’re going to kick me out. I need the money or else I’m not going to have a place to live.”
She asked again, “Did you READ your bible? — If you read your BIBLE, then you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
”Mom, this isn’t the TIME.”
…And, back-and-forth they went, the same as before.
That night, Kevin was in his bed. He said he opened the drawer and was like, “Lemme read this damn bible, so I can really tell this woman that I read the bible.”
So, he opens the book—and the rent checks for every month that entire year tumbled onto his lap.
Even though she didn’t like his cursing and drinking, after she died in 2006, Kevin found a big box in her home with flyers and clippings of everything he had ever done in standup—back to the earliest days.
Today, Hart—who’s also a business tycoon in a variety of fields from entertainment to fashion to wellness to financial education—says he knows “a hundred percent that she’s still applauding everything” he’s doing, “just from another level.”
Solar panels may be able to supply us with much more than just clean energy; this new research says that it might also help crops to thrive in arid areas.
Agrivoltaics, also known as “solar sharing”, is the co-locating of agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels. The idea has been gaining traction in recent years; however, few studies have monitored all aspects of the associated food, energy, and water systems involved. Furthermore, none of this research has focused on dryland areas: regions that experience food production challenges and water shortages, but have an overabundance of sun energy.
“Many of us want more renewable energy, but where do you put all of those panels? As solar installations grow, they tend to be out on the edges of cities, and this is historically where we have already been growing our food,” said Greg Barron-Gafford, an associate professor in the School of Geography and Development and lead author on the paper that was published today in Nature Sustainability.
The University of Arizona-led research published in Nature this week found that current croplands are the “land covers with the greatest solar PV power potential” based on an extensive analysis of incoming sunlight, air temperature and relative humidity.
“So which land use do you prefer—food or energy production? This challenge strikes right at the intersection of human-environment connections, and that is where geographers shine!” said Barron-Gafford. “We started to ask, ‘Why not do produce both in the same place?’ And we have been growing crops like tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, and herbs in the shade of solar panels ever since.”
Using solar photovoltaic, or PV, panels and regional vegetables, the team created the first agrivoltaics research site at Biosphere 2. Professors and students measured everything from when plants germinated to the amount of carbon plants were sucking out of the atmosphere and the water they were releasing, to their total food production throughout the growing season.
The study focused on chiltepin pepper, jalapeno, and cherry tomato plants that were positioned under a PV array. Throughout the average 3-month summer growing season, researchers continuously monitored incoming light levels, air temperature and relative humidity using sensors mounted above the soil surface, and soil surface temperature and moisture at a depth of 5 centimeters. Both the traditional planting area and the agrivoltaic system received equal irrigation rates and were tested using two irrigation scenarios—daily irrigation and irrigation every second day.
They found that the agrivoltaics system significantly impacted three factors that affect plant growth and reproduction: air temperatures, direct sunlight and atmospheric demand for water. The shade provided by the PV panels resulted in cooler daytime temperatures and warmer nighttime temperatures than the traditional, open-sky planting system. There was also a lower vapor pressure deficit in the agrivoltaics system, meaning there was more moisture in the air.
“We found that many of our food crops do better in the shade of solar panels because they are spared from the direct sun,” Baron-Gafford said. “In fact, total chiltepin fruit production was three times greater under the PV panels in an agrivoltaic system, and tomato production was twice as great!”
Jalapenos produced a similar amount of fruit in both the agrivoltaics system and the traditional plot, but did so with 65% less transpirational water loss.
“At the same time, we found that each irrigation event can support crop growth for days, not just hours, as in current agriculture practices. This finding suggests we could reduce our water use but still maintain levels of food production,” Barron-Gafford added, noting that soil moisture remained approximately 15% higher in the agrivoltaics system than the control plot when irrigating every other day.
In addition to the benefits to the plants, the researchers also found that the agrivoltaics system increased the efficiency of energy production. Solar panels are inherently sensitive to temperature because as they warm, their efficiency drops. By cultivating crops underneath the PV panels, researchers were able to reduce the temperature of the panels.
Photo by University of Arizona
“Those overheating solar panels are actually cooled down by the fact that the crops underneath are emitting water through their natural process of transpiration—just like misters on the patio of your favorite restaurant,” Barron-Gafford said. “All told, that is a win-win-win in terms of bettering our how we grow our food, utilize our precious water resources, and produce renewable energy.”
The authors say more research with additional plant species is needed. They also note the currently unexplored impact agrivoltaics could have on the physical and social well-bring of farm laborers. Preliminary data show that skin temperature can be about 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler when working in an agrivoltaics area than in traditional agriculture.
“Climate change is already disrupting food production and farm worker health in Arizona,” said Gary Nabhan, an agroecologist and co-author on the paper. “The Southwestern U.S. sees a lot of heat stroke and heat-related death among our farm laborers; this could have a direct impact there, too.”
Barron-Gafford and the team are now working with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab to assess how well an agrivoltaics approach can work in other regions of the country and how regional policies can promote adoption of novel approaches to solve these pervasive problems.
This emotional display of sportsmanship between two young female tennis players is warming hearts across social media.
15-year-old Coco Gauff made history in July as the youngest woman to reach the fourth round of Wimbledon—and last week, the American player faced off against 21-year-old Naomi Osaka for the US Open.
Unfortunately for Gauff, Osaka defended her championship title with a 6-3, 6-0 victory.
After the match, however, Osaka noticed that Gauff was emotional after the loss, and the Japanese champ insisted on her competitor joining her for the post-match interview.
“It was kind of instinctive because when I shook her hand, I saw that she was kind of tearing up a little. Then it reminded me how young she was,” Osaka recalled in a news conference. “I was just thinking it would be nice for her to address the people that came and watched her play. They were cheering for her.”
What followed was an emotional exchange between the two athletes. As Gauff wiped tears away from her eyes, she thanked Osaka for allowing her to share the moment in front of a microphone.
She later told reporters: “I’m glad that I was able to experience that moment. I’m glad the crowd was kind of helping me and her.
“For me a definition of an athlete is someone who treats you as their worst enemy on the court but after they treat you like you’re their best friend. That’s what she did,” she added.
(WATCH the emotional video below)
Since I’m on the feels beat tonight — this was wonderful between Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka pic.twitter.com/8ly8AhTJ7h
Bob Ross and his soothing televised painting classes have long been a source of comfort and zen for Americans of all ages—and now, his legacy is bringing even more beauty into the world by helping inmates plant “happy little trees” in Michigan parks.
In celebration of their 100th birthday, the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reached out to Bob Ross Inc. and asked if they could collaborate for the centennial.
More specifically, the state’s Department of Corrections manages a “prison grow” career and education program in which inmates get the opportunity to learn horticulture practices and help raise trees for reforestation efforts—particularly at state parks.
Since Bob Ross was renowned for his love of painting cheerful greenery, the DNR partnered with the artist’s estate to rename their program “Happy Little Trees”.
“We love anything that has to do with helping the environment and trees. Bob would’ve loved that,” DNR staffer Michelle Coss told Road Tripper.
Every year, inmates from three of Michigan’s correctional facilities help to grow about 1,000 new trees from native seeds that have been collected by volunteers. The saplings are then used to replace any state park foliage that has been damaged.
This year, Bob Ross Inc. joined in on the program by putting out a call for potential volunteers on their website, saying that all participants who helped to plant the inmates’ trees would be given a free “Happy Little Trees” tee-shirt.
Coss was delighted to report that more than 500 volunteers signed up for the program. Although if you’re disappointed about missing your opportunity to get the free tee-shirt, she says that the shirt is also on sale on their website—and all of its sales are invested right back into the program.
The DNR says that they will be honoring the tree-planting initiative’s new name by installing “Happy Little Trees Ahead!” signs with Bob Ross’s smiling face at three of their parks: Orchard Beach, Port Crescent, and Yankee Springs.
The Lovington, Sleeper, and Warren Dunes parks are all scheduled to receive signs as well.
Photo by Michelle Coss / DNR
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Not all heroes wear capes, but this guy was actually flying through the air when he managed to save a stranger’s phone from destruction earlier this week.
Samuel Kempf, who is a fistball player from New Zealand, is currently in Spain for the World Fistballing Championship.
In addition to representing his home country in the tournament, Kempf decided to have a little fun on his trip and visit the Port Aventura theme park in Barcelona.
He and his brother were particularly excited to ride the Shambhala rollercoaster, which had been Europe’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster going 130kps (81mph) until it was bested by a Polish ride in July 2018.
As they strapped themselves into the rollercoaster, Kempf joked to his brother that they should “get ready to catch” all of the things flying out of people’s pockets—but that ended up being exactly what he did.
Just as they were ascending the second hill of the rollercoaster, Kempf saw an iPhone X flying past his car. Without hesitation, the athlete used his catlike reflexes to snatch it out of the air and continue enjoying the ride.
He was later able to reunite the phone with the grateful owner—and as a token of their appreciation, the passenger bought Kempf a video of his amazing mid-air catch as a souvenir.
Since uploading the footage to YouTube this week, Kempf’s video has racked up more than 1.7 million views.
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” – Lao Tzu
Photo: by Vicente Mas, CC License, 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?
When Hannah and Danny Iwanejko had finally had enough of their community council’s “rubbish” green waste procedures, the eco-warriors took it upon themselves to set up their own free recycling center right in their driveway.
Since the English couple first built their green waste hub out of recycled wood and metal last month, they have saved almost 2,000 pounds of recyclable plastic and materials from ending up in a landfill.
The family accepts all manner of items including crisp and cracker packets, contact lenses, Tetra Pak packaging, coffee pods, and baby food pouches.
Hannah then drives the waste to specialized recycling sites that are within a 10-mile radius of their English home in Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire.
From there, the materials are turned into small plastic pellets that can be used to make items such as outdoor furniture, trays, roofing, and flooring.
Much of the processing is handled by Terracycle: a recycling company that focuses on hard-to-recycle items—and since their recycling programs are all funded by companies and manufacturers, the recycling schemes are all free for the public to use.
SWNS
Hannah and Danny, both of whom are 36-year-old maintenance engineers, came up with the idea after watching the BBC’s Planet Earth series.
“The moment I decided to do something myself was [my daughter’s] first birthday in August,” says Hannah. “I saw what was going on in the Amazon and the war on plastic and David Attenborough’s programs. So I thought: ‘Hang on a second, I can do my bit. I need a central point where people can easily recycle.’
“My husband really likes building stuff so he made the recycling hub out of scrap material,” she continued. “It barely cost us anything. It’s a small village so I’ve only just made my first 30-minute trip to the recycling bins at the leisure center.
“It was just meant for the community—but now people are coming with their waste from outside the village and people from all over are contacting me asking how to do it themselves.”
SWNS
When reporters asked Hannah why she disapproved of the local recycling procedures, she said: “The problem is there is no consistency across the council. One council says you can recycle this, this, this, and this. Another council says you can recycle this, this, this, and this.
“However, it is all recycled by the same people—yet one bin allows something and
another doesn’t. Why is it not across the board?
“Why aren’t we creating consistency and ease for people to do this all the time?
“It is so frustrating that the council won’t take tetra, crisp packets and bread bags. People want to recycle, but the council is not making it easy for us. There is so much bureaucracy and red tape in the way.
SWNS
“I don’t know what it will take for them to do something about it. The councils send rubbish to the same place.”
Hannah and Danny are now appealing for Newark and Sherwood District Council to improve the recycling facilities in order to prevent more complex materials from being sent landfill.
(WATCH the interview below)
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California just became the first US state to ban the practice of fur trapping.
The state’s newly-approved Assembly Bill 273 prohibits the trapping of any fur-bearing mammal or non-game mammal for purposes of recreation or commerce in fur. It also bans the sale of raw fur and eliminate the licenses of fur dealers and agents.
The legislation, which was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom earlier this week, is expected to benefit thousands of native species, such as foxes, coyotes, beavers, badgers, and mink. It was approved by 30-9 in the Senate and 51-19 in the state Assembly.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) says that she penned the legislation because—in addition to being an inhumane practice—fur trapping was also shown to be a drain on taxpayer dollars in 2017.
Historically, trapping for fur was a large industry in California, but the harmful effects of trapping on the wildlife population can be traced to the early 1800s when sea otter populations along the San Francisco Bay and North Coast were decimated. Fur trapping has also played a role in the decline of wolves, wolverines, fishers, martens, and beavers in California.
Fur trapping in California is currently done on an extremely small scale, but hundreds of fur-bearing animals have been trapped each year so their pelts can be sold for a profit overseas. In 2017, a total of 133 trapping licenses were sold to fur trappers in California, generating approximately $15,000 for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is just a fraction of the financial resources required to oversee the industry.
“Not only does the cruel fur trapping trade decimate our increasingly vulnerable wildlife populations, running this program doesn’t even make fiscal policy sense,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “Taxpayers are subsidizing this unnecessary commercial activity because the cost of managing this program isn’t even covered by the revenue from trapping license fees.”
Photo by Jacob Dawson, CC
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An anonymous shopper is being praised for spending thousands of dollars on electrical generators to benefit Hurricane Dorian victims in the Bahamas.
The man was photographed by Alec Sprague earlier this week at a Costco store in Jacksonville, Florida.
Sprague had been buying a generator of his own when he learned that his fellow shopper was buying 100 generators for $450 apiece so he could send them to Bahamian communities affected by the devastating storm.
The man also bought a variety of different meals and foodstuffs that will be shipped to the islands along with the generators. In total, he spent $49,285.
Though the man asked news reporters to withhold his name, Sprague snapped a photo of the unidentified benefactor and published it to Facebook. In just 24 hours, the post has been shared more than 34,000 times.
“All I could do was shake his hand and thank him!” wrote Sprague. “There still are good people in the world!”
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In an award ceremony that is considered to be the “Oscars of Science”, more than $21.6 million has been distributed to scientific trailblazers for their groundbreaking achievements in life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics.
Now in its eighth year, the Breakthrough Prize annually recognizes achievements in disciplines that ask the biggest questions and seek the deepest explanations. Considered to be the world’s most generous science prize, each Breakthrough Prize is $3 million.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founding sponsors—including Mark Zuckerberg and a number of other tech moguls—today announced the recipients of the 2020 Breakthrough Prize and 2020 New Horizons Prize.
This year’s winners are credited with discoveries that address important and compelling scientific questions—from “What does a black hole look like?” to “Why do chilis taste hot?” and “What are the causes of neurodegenerative disease?”
As a collective, this year’s Breakthrough Prize laureates probed the galaxies to capture the first image of a black hole; imagined gravity at the quantum level; laid the foundation for non-opioid analgesics to extinguish chronic pain; established the biological basis of how much we eat and weigh; and discovered common mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders, including early-onset dementia.
This year’s prize for Fundamental Physics was awarded to the team of 347 scientists who managed to capture the first image of a supermassive black hole, taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes.
Using eight sensitive radio telescopes strategically positioned around the world in Antarctica, Chile, Mexico, Hawaii, Arizona and Spain, a global collaboration of scientists at 60 institutions operating in 20 countries and regions captured an image of a black hole for the first time. By synchronizing each telescope using a network of atomic clocks, the team created a virtual telescope as large as the Earth, with a resolving power never before achieved from the surface of our planet. One of their first targets was the supermassive black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy—its mass equivalent to 6.5 billion suns.
In the Life Sciences category, another $3 million prize was awarded to the researchers who discovered the biological machinery of how proteins can dramatically influence the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
As we age, this machinery might slow down and leave proteins messily clumping—“like the white of an egg congealing in a hot frying pan”—and setting the stage for cancer as well as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.
Collaborating between Connecticut and Germany, the researchers Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich are now investigating how to repair or support the cell’s folding machinery to inhibit protein clumping and preserve healthy functioning as we age.
Professor David Julius from the University of California, San Francisco was awarded for his pioneering research on the molecules, cells, and mechanisms underlying pain sensation.
Julius is hailed for discovering the cellular signaling mechanisms that produce pain sensation. Among other curiosities, he found that chili peppers and menthol trigger the same sensory receptors in the nervous system that ordinarily respond to heat and cold. While most pain functions as an early warning system, chronic pain is debilitating—but by identifying specific cellular targets for the chronic pain of IBS, arthritis, cancer, etc., his team is laying the foundation for a next generation of non-opioid, precision analgesics.
The new Breakthrough Prize laureates will be recognized at the eighth annual Breakthrough Prize gala awards ceremony on November 3rd at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and broadcasted live on National Geographic.
(WATCH the summary video below) – Photo by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation
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