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.
(WATCH the sweet news coverage below)
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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
(WATCH the video below)
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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.
(LISTEN to the interview below)
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Quote of the Day: “I dream of a world where none will be so poor they have nothing to give and none will be so rich they have nothing to receive.” – John Paul II
Photo: by Stanley Zimny– 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?
Reverend Gilbert and Grace Caldwell were overjoyed about tying the knot 60 years ago. They were then immediately heartbroken, however, by the honeymoon that followed.
Back in 1957, the Caldwells got married at a church in North Carolina before driving eight hours to the Mount Airy Resort in Poconos, Pennsylvania for their honeymoon.
Despite having a reservation, the happy couple was forced to drive eight hours back home after they were turned away from the hotel for being black.
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The incident spurred the Caldwells to join the civil rights movement where they worked side-by-side with Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. In the decades that followed, Grace and Gilbert continued giving speeches and lectures to schools and organizations about their experience with racial injustice.
But when they told the story of their honeymoon to the New Jersey fifth graders at Bear Tavern Elementary back in January 2018, the kids became especially saddened by the tale.
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Months after seeing the Caldwells speak at the school, all of the fifth graders banded together and wrote letters to the Mount Airy Hotel asking for an all-expenses-paid second honeymoon—and their wish was granted.
“It makes me feel really good inside because we know that even though we’re just kids, we made an impact on the world,” one student told CBS News.
(WATCH the heartwarming video below) – Note: International viewers can watch the full video on the CBS News website.
Click To Share The Compassionate Story With Your Friends – Photo by CBS News
This intriguing new study is the first to report evidence that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin may lessen the adverse effects of air pollution exposure on lung function.
The researchers analyzed a subset of data collected from a cohort of 2,280 male veterans from the greater Boston area who were given tests to determine their lung function. The average age of participants was 73 years. The researchers examined the relationship between test results, self-reported NSAID use, and ambient particulate matter (PM) and black carbon in the month preceding the test, while accounting for a variety of factors, including the health status of the subject and whether or not he was a smoker.
They found that the use of any NSAID nearly halved of the effect of PM on lung function, with the association consistent across all four weekly air pollution measurements from same-day to 28 days prior to the lung function test.
Because most of the people in the study cohort who took NSAIDs used aspirin, the researchers say the modifying effect they observed was mainly from aspirin, but add that effects of non-aspirin NSAIDs are worthy of further exploration.
While the mechanism is unknown, the researchers speculate that NSAIDs mitigate inflammation brought about by air pollution.
The team of researchers from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Boston University School of Medicine published their findings in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
“Our findings suggest that aspirin and other NSAIDs may protect the lungs from short-term spikes in air pollution,” says first and corresponding author Xu Gao, PhD, a post-doctoral research scientist. “Of course, it is still important to minimize our exposure to air pollution, which is linked to a host of adverse health effects, from cancer to cardiovascular disease.”
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“While environmental policies have made considerable progress toward reducing our overall exposure to air pollution, even in places with low levels of air pollution, short-term spikes are still commonplace,” says senior author Andrea Baccarelli, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia Mailman School. “For this reason, it is important to identify means to minimize those harms.”
An earlier study by Baccarelli found that B vitamins may also play a role in reducing the health impact of air pollution.
Reprinted from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health
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A Canadian tourist has made quite a good impression on art enthusiasts since he photographed a cloudy sky that looked like something out of a Vincent van Gogh painting.
31-year-old oncologist Doron Berlin was on holiday in Belgium in July when he looked up to see swirling clouds of blue and grey set against the brilliant sun and spires of the Belfry Bell Tower of Bruges.
The scene looked breathtakingly similar to Van Gogh’s 19th-century masterpiece The Starry Night—so he snapped a photo of the “magical and beautiful” sky.
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“The clouds were particularly striking, and the effect of the sun shining into the camera created a very interesting vortex-type look,” Berlin mused. “That, mixed with the amazing architecture in Bruges and good lighting all came together for a great oil-on-canvas feel.
“The cloudy sky really did look like a work of Van Gogh, and it makes you wonder if this is the type of thing that inspired him,” he added.
Post-impressionist artist Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889, inspired by the view from his French asylum room in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Museum of Modern Art in New York determined the sky was painted with ultramarine and cobalt blue, while the moon was painted with Indian yellow together with zinc yellow.
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For the first time in history, conservationists have collected trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for recycling.
After one year of testing, The Ocean Cleanup organization announced this week that their System 001/B vessel is successfully capturing and collecting plastic debris.
The self-contained system uses the natural forces of the ocean to passively catch and concentrate plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, thereby confirming the most important principle behind the cleanup concept that was first presented by Boyan Slat back in October 2012.
The patch is a massive island of trash drifting halfway between California and Hawaii. Over a trillion pieces of debris have collected there because of the swirling vortex of current—a floating mass roughly twice the size of Texas.
After discovering the patch in the 90s, scientists said it would take thousands of years to clean it up—but Slat quickly made a name for himself after he presented a TEDx talk in which he claimed that he could do it in less than ten, if he could get his special machinery built.
Though his claim caused many skeptics to raise their eyebrows, Slat dropped out of college so he could bring his plans to life. In addition to crowdfunding $2.2 million for his idea, he garnered millions more dollars through interested investors.
Now, the System 001/B vessel—which launched from Vancouver in June—is The Ocean Cleanup’s second attempt to prove its concept of collecting garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In addition to collecting plainly visible pieces of plastic debris, as well as much larger ghost nets associated with commercial fishing, System 001/B has also successfully captured microplastics as small as 1 millimeter—a feat which the organization was pleasantly surprised to achieve.
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“After beginning this journey seven years ago, this first year of testing in the unforgivable environment of the high seas strongly indicates that our vision is attainable and that the beginning of our mission to rid the ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, is within our sights,” said Slat.
“Our team has remained steadfast in its determination to solve immense technical challenges to arrive at this point. Though we still have much more work to do, I am eternally grateful for the team’s commitment and dedication to the mission and look forward to continuing to the next phase of development.”
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Despite the early success of System 001/B, there is still much work to do. With new learnings and experience derived from the successful deployment of System 001/B, The Ocean Cleanup will now begin to design its next ocean cleanup system, System 002; a full-scale cleanup system that is able to both endure and retain the collected plastic for long periods of time.
Once fully operational, The Ocean Cleanup will return plastic to land for recycling. The timing of that phase of the mission is contingent upon further testing and design iteration.
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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Despite spending years of his life as a fisherman, Paul Swanson has found a new purpose in casting his line for a different kind of catch.
The fisherman from Spokane, Washington is the founder of the H2O Magnet Fortunes club: a magnet fishing group dedicated to collecting rusty scrap metal from the Spokane River.
When asked why he started the organization, Swanson simply told KXLY: “I got bored.”
“Doctor pretty much said ‘you need to change your game plan of life,’” he continued. “Couldn’t fish no more, hardly. It was hard to do, tying on the lines and stuff, so I decided to create a little magnet fishing love here in Spokane.”
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Since the club began hoarding all of their scrap in mid-June, they collectively salvaged 11,100 pounds of metal, all of which they sold to a recycling company this week so they could donate the proceeds to SOAR, a caregiving organization for children with autism.
Ordinarily, processed iron sells for $80 per ton—but the staffers at Pacific Steel and Recycling were so touched by the group’s mission, they doubled the price of their original offer to help with the donation.
Swanson is now attempting to contact Guinness World Records about setting the world record for the most amount of scrap metal collected by a magnet fishing club.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by KXLY
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Quote of the Day: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year… and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photo: by Michelle Hyacinth – CC license on Flickr, cropped
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TripAdvisor and their subsidiaries have just announced that they are ending commercial relationships with facilities that breed or import captive whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
More specifically, the travel platform says that they will no longer sell tickets to, or generate revenue from, any attraction that continues to contribute to the captivity of future generations of cetaceans.
As a result, any commercial facility that either breeds or imports cetaceans for public display will be banned from sale on TripAdvisor and Viator. Products currently on sale and found to breach the new rules will be removed over the course of the next few months, with the policy in full force by the end of 2019. The new policy will not apply to seaside sanctuaries that provide care to cetaceans already in captivity.
The policy aims to drive captivity industry towards seaside sanctuaries as an alternative environment for current generation of captive whales and dolphins.
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The decision follows an extensive consultation process with a range of experts, including marine biologists, zoologists and conservationists, and considered the scientific evidence and arguments presented from all sides. It also continues TripAdvisor’s commitment to improving the welfare of animals globally, particularly animals in tourism, since they passed their animal welfare policy in 2016.
“The extensive evidence presented to us by the experts was compelling. Whales and dolphins do not thrive in limited captive environments, and we hope to see a future where they live as they should—free and in the wild,” commented Dermot Halpin, President, TripAdvisor Experiences and Rentals. “We believe the current generation of whales and dolphins in captivity should be the last, and we look forward to seeing this position adopted more widely throughout the travel industry.”
Conservation groups and animal welfare experts welcomed the move as an important step forward.
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“TripAdvisor is on the right side of history,” said Dr. Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute. “Whales and dolphins cannot thrive in captivity and enlightened tourists no longer tolerate exploiting these intelligent and socially complex marine predators for human entertainment.”
That being said, TripAdvisor’s policy extension also takes into account that while it is possible to prevent future generations of cetaceans from a life of captivity, the situation is different for those already in captivity. For most of the current population of cetaceans, release into the wild is not a realistic option. Therefore, the policy includes several stipulations aimed at protecting the needs, safety and health of cetaceans currently in captivity, too.
“Our aim is not only to prevent future generations of whales and dolphins from being raised in captivity, but also to encourage the industry to move towards alternative models, like seaside sanctuaries, that will better provide for the needs of the current captive population,” added Dermot Halpin, President of TripAdvisor Experiences and Rentals. “Seaside sanctuaries have enormous potential, but they need more backing from the tourism industry. As long as facilities with captive whales and dolphins continue to profit from keeping these animals in smaller, cheaper and less natural living environments, then they don’t have enough incentive to adopt serious change. We hope our announcement today can help turn the tide.”
Be Sure And Share The News With Your Friends On Social Media – File photo by scooby12353, CC
This rescue story from Roseville, California sounds like something straight out of a Nancy Drew novel.
This tenacious team of kids is responsible for the rescue of 97-year-old Glenneta Belford, a non-verbal woman with dementia who went missing from her home on Monday evening.
Upon learning about her disappearance, the Roseville Police Department made a social media post about Belford in hopes that community members may be able to find the missing senior.
To their surprise, Belford was found by none other than five “junior detectives” who had spent their evening searching for the woman on their bicycles after they learned of her disappearance.
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After they finally managed to find her, the youngsters called the police department and reported her location.
“As it turns out, they were the team to locate the missing 97-year-old,” wrote the Roseville Police Department Facebook page. “Our surprised dispatchers took the initial call from this team of junior detectives which helped connect officers to the missing person.
“This is a great example of our exceptional community coming together to lend a helping hand. This proves a great point, age is just a number and anyone can help out in a time of need.”
Be Sure And Share The Sweet Story With Your Friends On Social Media…
