San Diego Zoo elephants in an alert circle - credit, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
San Diego Zoo elephants in an alert circle – credit, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Security camera footage from the San Diego Zoo recently showed how its elephant herd formed a protective circle around its young after they were surprised by a recent earthquake.
Originating about 3 miles south of Julian, Southern California, the magnitude 5.2 tremblor, gave the region down to Tijuana a good shaking.
At the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, a herd of three female elephants and their two calves were startled by the quake, and footage of them organizing to protect their young has made headlines.
Known to pachydermologists as an “alert circle,” the female adults quickly encircled their young back-to-back, tusks and trunks outward. It’s how the animals defend their young on the savanna, where predators’ only hope of poaching elephants depends on separating them from their youngsters.
Elephants have the ability to feel sound through their feet, so an earthquake is presumably more frightening for them than us. Many elephant strongholds such as Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa are prone to both intense and benign earthquakes.
“The herd, consisting of Ndlula, Umngani, Khosi, and youngsters Zuli and Mkhaya, went back to normal after about 4 minutes, though they did stay close to one another,” Emily Senninger, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Zoo, told GNN.
WATCH them make the ‘Alert Circle’ below…
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It takes bravery to be a police officer, but for someone with a fear of heights, it’s probably safe to assume most of the work will be done with feet on solid ground.
For one acrophobic Philadelphia officer however, preventing disaster meant going above and beyond the call of duty, literally.
Officer Eric Robbins was on patrol December 10th, among the two-storey houses on N. 64th Street, when he got a call from neighbors saying someone’s child was out and walking on the pitched-roof of a nearby house.
The child didn’t seem fazed about the 20-30 foot drop awaiting him. Robbins could feel it though, even from the ground floor, as he has a self-professed fear of heights.
“I just knew I had to get him off that roof,” Robbins told ABC 6. Gaining entry to the house, released body cam footage shows him charging up the stairs to the second floor, climbing out of the window and grabbing the child.
Arriving at the window, he realized his presence might spook the wayward boy into falling off the roof, so Robbins snuck into position to grab him, saying “I don’t even think he knew I was there.”
Though unwilling to talk to the police at the time, the family, who were completely shocked, thanked Officer Robbins for his dedication “to protecting and serving with such compassion.”
For his part, Robbins realized his acrophobia would have to wait.
“Instantly overcoming my fear of heights and getting him off the roof… it hit home because it could have been my kid and I would want someone to do the same,” he said.
WATCH the body cam footage below…
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Caleb and Ruchala Bone family portrait by House on a Hill Photography
Caleb and Ruchala Bone family portrait by House on a Hill Photography
A mom and dad in Tennessee has been called “angels on Earth” by filling their four walls with children who have complex medical conditions.
Caleb and Ruchala Bone were just at a district court to seal the adoption of their fourth child, Isabella, who like their biological son Griffin, was born with a heart condition and has spent much of her early life in a hospital.
It was Griffin’s early travails that made the couple decide that the big family they always wanted would be filled with kids like Griffin that needed that extra degree of care and had no one around to give it to them.
Griffin needed open-heart surgery at just 3 months old, and the family spent a lot of time in and out of Vanderbilt children’s hospital where they learned how many kids in the foster system have complex medical issues.
Whether through a belief in a god or simply at the urging of their own moral compass, they decided to do something about it, and in 2022, adopted a little boy named Maurice who needed a kidney transplant. In a report filmed by News Channel 5, little Maurice can be seen happy and healthy, and tramping about the corridors of the court with his new siblings.
The Bones have now either fostered or adopted four children with complicated medical situations, reports Forrest Saunders for Channel 5, many of whom through a foster program called Youth Villages, whose director Suzanne Jones called the couple “angels on Earth.”
“They are just the best kinds of people,” she said. “Foster parents have to go through training at the hospital, so sometimes that can be daunting. They have to go through the full medical training to know how to care for their medically needy child.”
Isabella, for example, came to the couple at just 5-months-old, having already received open-heart surgery. The ongoing medical care is taken care of through the state’s TennCare program, and the Bones are eligible for a foster parent stipend and other assistance as well.
Quote of the Day: “Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.” – Gen. Omar Bradley
Photo by: Johannes Plenio
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
107 years ago today, Xuan Hua, also known by the dharma name An Tzu, was born. Xuan Hua founded The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California, bringing Chan Buddhism and the fully ordained monastic order to the West. He also founded the Dharma Realm Buddhist University at CTTB, and the Buddhist Text Translation Society which works to translate Buddhist scriptures from Chinese into English, Vietnamese, Spanish, and many other languages. READ about his long efforts in the West… (1918)
US Marshals escort Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in 1960
US Marshals escort Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in 1960
Screaming protestors surrounded the building as federal marshals escorted a brave six-year-old girl on her way to making history. In first grade.
It was November of 1960 when Ruby Bridges became the first black student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.
After many white parents chose to withdraw their children from school, the principal kept everyone else far away from her. In fact, Ruby ended up being the only pupil in her class during the entire first year.
The circumstances might have been impossible to bear if not for her teacher, Barbara Henry. The woman’s kindness made such a difference that Ruby has stayed in touch with her for more than six decades—and she just published a public tribute.
A love letter of sorts, the children’s book is entitled Ruby Bridges: A Talk With My Teacher. It explores the tremendous impact that Ms. Henry made in just one year—and also shares the story of the pair’s reunion several years later.
“We often say, both of us,” Bridges told the TODAY show, “…that despite all the hate that was going on outside, inside that room it was filled with love.”
Illustrated by Trudy Tran
Ms. Henry, a Boston native, made a commitment to Ruby even though other teachers were resigning from their jobs in protest—or flat-out refusing to work with a black child.
She brought positivity into that first grade classroom, even as protestors raged outside.
“I would not have gotten through that if it had not been for my teacher,” Bridges recalled in the TODAY video (below).
“She filled my day with things to do. She made school fun. I enjoyed learning. Even though the crowd was outside yelling, she would go and close the window, and she’d say, ‘We’re going to have music today,’ just to drown out everything.”
Second grade became much worse because Ms. Henry was no longer her teacher. Yet, Bridges persevered.
Ruby eventually graduated, worked as a travel agent, and had four kids of her own. She started the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which promotes “the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences.”
She’s now 70 and still doing her best to make the world a better place.
But no matter how long she lives, she’ll never forget the kindness displayed by her first grade teacher. The lady who was a constant source of love and compassion while the world wailed outside.
“I think that each and every one of us, we probably remember one teacher that made an impact in our lives,” Bridges told TODAY. “And she was the one for me.”
SHARE THE INSPIRING STORY With All Teachers On Social Media…
A photo showing a man with a cane sitting on the ground at a bus stop led to a groundswell of compassion and a determination to make things right.
This is my area neighbor who suffers from chronic pain prohibiting him from bending his legs and he just got surgery. Now hes sitting on the ground in downtown berkeley because @CityofBerkeley and @rideact dont have benches at their bus stops. pic.twitter.com/vltTqqws5g
— Darrell Owens (idothethinking on bluesky) (@IDoTheThinking) November 1, 2023
From that uncomfortable predicament, a local movement in Berkeley, California, was born.
It started when Darrell Owens noticed his neighbor, who had just undergone surgery for chronic leg pain, sitting down on the sidewalk while waiting for a bus.
“For many years, I had complained about the lack of seating for bus benches in Berkeley and got no response from either the city of Berkeley or AC Transit,” Owens said in a recent article on SFGate.
Owens snapped a photo of his neighbor awkwardly sitting on the curb and posted it on social media, which gained the attention of Mingwei Samuel, a local software engineer who offered to move his own bench to the location.
Samuel had been building benches after learning about the Public Bench Project, which installs them—and donates them to local businesses and organizations—to “promote community-oriented public spaces”.
Before long, Samuel’s bench was placed at the infamous bus stop—and he tweeted a picture of the problem solved.
Screenshot of tweet by MingweiSamuel of bus stop bench
Samuel’s social media post soon earned more than 100,000 Likes and created a whole bunch of positive vibes and goodwill in the community. An idea and a movement began.
Dozens of benches were soon on the way
Samuel and Owens, strangers just a few weeks prior, started collaborating on their own bench building project called the SFBA Bench Collective, launching a simple website that allows visitors to join the movement, report a problem, or request a bench.
To date, their organization has installed approximately 77 benches at local bus stops. Each bench complies with AC Transit guidelines and the regulations required for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The estimated cost for each bench is just $70—and the group prioritizes placing benches at the highest-ridership stops.
The effort has created a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game in the transit community. The bench collective will sometimes install their own benches, only to see them replaced by official ones from the city.
Owens finds it satisfying, saying, “That means the collective’s work is complete: We got the cities to build benches for its citizens.”
Elsewhere the movement keeps growing. A climate activist who volunteered for the bench collective posted a video of a bench build that tallied 3.2 million views—and the cause continues to gain traffic across social media with numerous groups across the country pushing for comfortable amenities to support public transit.
“After the election, I think there’s been more energy to do something good in the world, for once, so other people have helped step up to organize bench-build weekends,” Samuel said.
An 81-year-old restaurant server named Betty in Pittsburgh must have been smiling the rest of her shift: a woman had given her an outsized, $40 tip.
She might have thought that was the end of their interaction, but Betty could not have imagined what that $40 tip would lead to.
Tamie Konzier, a Pittsburgh-based esthetician and TikToker, had taken her son Leo to eat at a local restaurant called Eat’n Park, and when she heard Betty confide to another customer that she struggled to finish out her shifts from back pain, but couldn’t retire from financial difficulties. The small $910 social security check in the mail wasn’t enough.
Moved by Betty’s plight, Konzier whipped out her phone and pressed record. “If I make one video go viral, let it be this one.”
Describing to her fans Betty’s situation, she announced she’d give any proceeds that her TikTok Creator Rewards Program might generate from the post to Betty, and post-scripted the video by offering Betty $40, or “all the money in my purse.”
Betty was moved and grateful, and ensured Konzier that even at 81 she can “still outdo all these whippersnappers.”
Konzier got her wish: the post went viral. Within 24 hours she had received so many requests for a place to donate, she had to set up a GoFundMe to channel the generosity.
At $140,000 she went to tell Betty the news.
“I think I better get a financial adviser!” Betty said, clearly stunned. “You don’t know what this is going to help me for.”
“I can not express how grateful Betty is for her retirement fund!” Konzier wrote in the final update on the fundraiser. “My lawyer, Max Petrunya, and I have set Betty up with an Elder Law attorney, Colin Morgan of Julian Gray Associates. We are in the process of setting up a trust fund for Betty so her social services are not affected. Thank you again for your donations, we expect to close the go fund me at the end of April.”
SHARE This Incredible Response To A Simple Request On Social Media…
Ruopodosaurus hand and footprints from Tumbler Ridge in Canada - Royal BC Museum via SWNS
Ruopodosaurus hand and footprints from Tumbler Ridge in Canada – Royal BC Museum via SWNS
With nothing more than the beast’s footprints, paleontologists in Canada have identified a new tail club-swinging armored dinosaur.
The 100-million-year-old fossilized prints were found at two different locations in the Canadian Rockies mountain range.
Researchers explained that there are two main groups of ankylosaurs. Nodosaurid ankylosaurs have a flexible tail and four toes, while ankylosaurid ankylosaurs have a sledgehammer-like tail club, and only three toes on their feet.
Unlike the well-known ankylosaur footprints of Tetrapodosaurus borealis found across North America, which have four toes, the new tracks have only three, making them the first known examples of ankylosaurid ankylosaur footprints anywhere in the world.
The research team named the new species Ruopodosaurus clava, meaning “the tumbled-down lizard with a club/mace” – referencing both the mountainous location in which the tracks were found and the distinctive tail clubs of these dinosaurs.
The research team reported their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
“While we don’t know exactly what the dinosaur that made Ruopodosaurus footprints looked like, we know that it would have been about 5-6 meters long, spiky and armored, and with a stiff tail or a full tail club,” Dr. Victoria Arbour, the curator of paleontology at the Royal BC Museum.
“Ankylosaurs are my favorite group of dinosaurs to work on, so being able to identify new examples of these dinosaurs in British Columbia is really exciting for me.”
Dr. Charles Helm, scientific advisor at the Tumbler Ridge Museum, had noted the presence of several of the three-toed ankylosaur trackways around Tumbler Ridge for several years, and invited Dr. Arbour to work together to identify and interpret them during a visit in 2023.
The tracks date back to the middle of the Cretaceous period, about 100 to 94 million years ago, according to the researchers.
No bones from ankylosaurids have been found in North America from about 100 to 84 million years ago, leading to some speculation that ankylosaurids had disappeared from North America during that period.
But the footprints show that they were alive and well in North America during the gap in the skeletal fossil record.
The discovery also shows that the two main types of ankylosaurs—nodosaurids and ankylosaurids, including this new three-toed species—co-existed in the same region during that time.
“It is really exciting to now know through this research that there are two types of ankylosaurs that called this region home, and that Ruopodosaurus has only been identified in this part of Canada,” said Dr. Helm.
“This study also highlights how important the Peace Region of north-eastern BC is for understanding the evolution of dinosaurs in North America—there’s still lots more to be discovered,” added Dr. Arbour.
SHARE This Story With Your Friends Who Love Dinosaurs…
Quote of the Day: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” – Rumi
Photo by: Joshua Earle for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The First Impressionist Exhibition - credit, public domain
151 years ago today, a team of like-minded artists put on Paris’ First Impressionist Exhibition. Rejected by the Paris Salon, the artists took their work to No.35 Boulevard des Capucines, the studio of the famous photographer Nadar. Once there, an art critic and satirist called it the “Impressionist Exhibition” leading to the birth of the movement’s name, and fame. Led by the sagely Camille Pissarro, the exhibitors included Renoir, Monet, Manet, Degas, and others. SEE the exhibition’s works… (1874)
In a fascinating new study, several dozen participants were separated into groups and fed either a fish oil supplement or fish itself, and the supplement proved more effective at delivering omega-3 fatty acids into the body than the actual fish.
It was for years the norm, and likely still is in some quarters, for physicians to recommend trying to get all vital nutrients from foods, and not to rely on supplements.
But the study at least has shown this to be wrong, as both white and oily fish weren’t able to replicate some of the more penetrative effects of omega-3 from a supplement. As a result, those who can’t afford to eat cod or salmon every day may need not worry about it.
The strength of the study is that it was double-blinded and placebo controlled, meaning that neither the participants nor the scientists knew who got the fish oil and who ate fish, and in what combinations, a technique known as the “gold standard” in scientific research.
Analyzing the data after the study had been concluded revealed that a rather complex marker of disease risk called extracellular vesicles had only been improved by the presence of an additional intake of omega-3 from a supplement, and not by the consumption of white or oily fish alone.
Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA are arguably the most important human nutrients for health and longevity. The P.hD. and science researcher Dr. Rhonda Patrick has a database of simple explanations on omega-3 that’s worth a read, and probably the most detailed informational resource on the internet for these valuable nutrients.
The scope of their value in disease prevention and longevity is stunning. For example, one study Dr. Patrick cited shows that non-smokers with low omega-3 levels and daily smokers with high omega-3 levels have similar risk of death from cardiovascular disease, suggesting deficiency in omega-3 fatty acids is as great as risk of death as smoking.
Extracellular vesicles, the culprit in many diseases
In this new paper published in the British Journal of Nutrition, 42 participants were separated into three groups and had their diets controlled by 12 weeks. The first group was fed fish oil supplements plus white fish, the second was fed placebo plus oily fish, and the third placebo and white fish.
The target of the paper was extracellular vesicles, (EVs) the source of an emerging body of literature on disease pathology. EVs are produced and excreted by all cells that have been examined for it. They can’t replicate, but these lipid-like particles do carry fragments of DNA and can enter other cells. For this reason they are implicated in a number of cancers, as well as neurodegenerative diseases, atherosclerosis, neurological problems, chronic inflammation, and aging.
EVs also act as a procoagulant and senolytic, however, and have also been seen to extend the immunological memory of T cells, showing how they aren’t all bad. Their role may be similar to that of inflammatory cytokines TNF-alpha and Interleukin-6, which are implicated in virtually every disease known to man, but also play a role in healing the body through acute inflammation.
EVs are a compelling marker of disease to measure the impact of omega-3 levels, since they are created in comparatively low numbers in most organs and tissues and present a systematic challenge.
It was only the group that received the fish oil supplements which saw a reduction in the circulation of EVs in the bloodstream, while those who ate the kinds of fish recommended for improving omega-3 levels could not replicate this effect.
While the number of participants was small, both the randomized study design and the length of the study period of 3 months contribute to an overall strength of the findings.
In order to raise the levels of omega-3 in the body above the threshold at which the most robust effects are seen, researchers in one analysis found that a range of 1,750 to 2,500 milligrams was optimal and well-tolerated by the body. WaL
A woman has spoken to the media for the first time after becoming a mother to the UK’s first child born from a transplanted womb.
Grace Davidson was able to have that opportunity thanks to her sister, who donated her womb in what Davidson called “a huge act of sisterly love.”
Born in February, little Amy Isabel was named after her aunt who donated the womb she was conceived in, and given a middle name of the leader of the team that led her surgery.
The first-ever baby born from a transplanted womb was in Sweden in 2014. The procedure has been replicated dozens of times since then, and 65 babies have come into the world as a result.
A charity in the UK that’s currently running a clinical trial of transplant wombs paid for Davidson’s surgery, and the 17-hour marathon procedure was done pro bono by a staff of 30 physicians and surgeons.
“It was quite overwhelming because we’d never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here,” Davidson told the BBC. “It was really wonderful.”
Davidson was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome that results in a woman’s womb being missing or underdeveloped. It doesn’t, evidently, preclude the possibility forever of having children, since the ovaries are intact and normal.
Davidson and her husband Angus had originally planned to seek a womb transplant in 2018, but the original donor proved unsuitable. The pair had received confirmation from Davidson’s sister Amy that she would be willing to donate her womb, which she used to have two children, but the pandemic delayed things further.
In February of 2023, Isabel Quiroga at Churchill Hospital in Oxford led a team of 30 in performing the procedure, after which Davidson became pregnant at the first attempt of IVF.
“I’m not often short of words but when the baby came out I was speechless—there were a lot of tears in the theater that day,” said Richard Smith, a gynecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare who led the team which retrieved the womb from Amy. “The whole thing is astonishing and incredibly moving.”
Professor Smith leads the charity Womb Transplant UK, which is undergoing a clinical trial, of which Grace was a part, that will see 15 transplants done from 5 living, and 10 deceased donor organs. Grace’s surgery was paid for by the charity, and has enough to afford two more, according to the BBC.
HEAR the emotion in their voices in this video report from Reuters…
SHARE This Miracle Birth Born Of A Miracle Of Modern Medicine…
Courtesy of State troopers in Jackson County Michigan
Courtesy of State troopers in Jackson County Michigan
Spring evening temperatures around Detroit were falling to a high of 40°F when Jackson County state troopers took to the air to search for a toddler who’d gone missing in nothing but his diaper.
The story, which has a happy ending, is a reminder to all parents of just how challenging it can be to keep enough eyes on your child, especially at the end of the day when you’re feeling drained.
“The child was in the living room. They walked out. They come back a few minutes later and the door to the apartment unit was open,” Michigan State Trooper Brandon Franklin, a tactical flight officer, explained to ABC‘s “Good Morning America.”
This was around 8 p.m. on April 5th in Blackman Charter Township, about an hour outside of Detroit.
With light and heat rapidly vanishing, Franklin and his co-pilot Cole Martin took to the skies with infrared heat-sensing technology in the hopes of detecting the toddler from above.
As both men are fathers to their own children, they weren’t going to stop while hope remained.
Mercifully, after just 15 minutes of searching, the two men detected a small white-hot figure in a ditch by the highway.
In camera footage released by Michigan State Police, one of the troopers can be heard saying, “We got him!”
Awake and alert, the toddler was reunited with his parents.
“Later on at night, it dropped below freezing,” Franklin said. “So if no one would have found this child, the outcome would not have been the same most likely.”
Quote of the Day: “As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” – Proverbs (25:25)
Photo by: GWC copyright 2016
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
86 years ago today, John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath was published, a story he wrote after interviewing displaced migrants who escaped the Dust Bowl (a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology of the Midwestern prairies during the 1930s and the Great Depression). The book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and soon after was made into a celebrated Hollywood film starring Henry Fonda. WATCHa video… (1939)
Meet a talented boy who is creating impressionistic paintings of natural scenes from memory.
Now three-and-a-half years-old, Andria mixes his paints by himself and applies them to canvases, but his natural talent became clear when he recreated a seaside scene after a family holiday.
Despite never taking any art classes, the pint-sized prodigy instinctively blends colors and shapes, painting everything from landscapes to animals.
Andria’s mom Mariam Jakhaia, a clinical psychologist from Tbilisi, Georgia, says his artistic development has been all-natural.
“His creativity and attention to detail seem to come instinctively,” she told SWNS news.
She recognized his talent when he was just a baby.
“At seven months old, I introduced him to paints in a playful way so he could mix the colors with his hands. By the time he was one, he was already holding crayons and brushes.
“One day he drew an owl from The Gruffalo (children’s book) and I realized he wasn’t just playing, he was intentionally recreating images.”
“He especially loves the sea, summer, and lush green landscapes—they frequently appear in his paintings, reflecting his fascination with the natural world and his joyful connection to it.”
Andria painting flowers on canvas (via SWNS)
One of Mariam’s proudest moments was when Andria painted an entire ocean scene from memory.
“He had seen the sea, the sand, and palm trees and when we got home he painted it all perfectly from memory.
SWNS
“That’s when I knew I had to invest in better materials for him.”
So far, Andria has created 14 paintings on canvases, which were purchased by his parents.
There’s already an Amber Alert for children—now, one entrepreneur has asked the question, why isn’t there an Amber Alert for pets?
That’s how FidoAlert was born. Using technology, a QR code, and SMS texting, it’s an alert for animals. And the best part is… it’s free.
The pet alert network currently has over a million members across 50 states, with 1.5 million pets registered.
40,000 pets have been reunited with owners using a unique FidoID and QR tag system. When a pet goes missing, an owner can trigger an alert to anyone within a few miles of the pet’s last known location.
If a lost pet is found, the animal’s QR code tag can be scanned which triggers a notification delivered to the owner and up to 10 emergency contacts. The SMS-based alert system—which the company says uses “privacy-protected contact information”—means no app is required to download.
Every owner who registers at the website gets a free pet tag with a QR code and unique pet ID that comes with the ability to be notified when your pet is found, even if you’re unaware of their absence.
“I wanted to create a product as a part of a social mission, where we would make it free to every pet owner,” says Founder John Bradford. “My hope is that every pet owner in America signs up for FidoAlert, so if the unthinkable happens there will be another layer of protection so pets and owners can be reunited.”
FidoAlert.com
“I got the free tags and set up my account almost a year ago…completely free,” said Brenda B. Smith. “A few weeks back our dog snuck out of our yard, and before I even knew he was missing, I got a text from www.fidoalert.com that my dog had been found—and gave a phone number to call to pick him up.”
“I got my tag a long time ago and my large dog broke off his steel chain and thanks to FidoAlert he was found,” said Elizabeth Heeman. “This service is literally a life saver and it really is actually free 100%.”
How it Works:
Pet owners create a profile on FidoAlert.com and register their pet(s), establishing a user profile where pets’ information is managed. After signing up, pet owners can:
Add emergency contacts that will also be notified if a stranger finds the pet
Add multiple photos for each pet to aid in proper identification
Profile info exists in the background, until it is needed to send an alert for a missing pet
When an alert is triggered, an SMS text is sent to any network members within close proximity to the pet’s last-known location
Pet owners will occasionally receive alerts from nearby neighbors when member pets go missing.
TabbyAlert is also their cat service that works the same way–with the website providing connections to reunite lost felines and their peeps.
A research team at Nagoya University School of Medicine in Japan has discovered that “a unique sound stimulation technology” can reduce motion sickness and may become a simple and effective way to treat this common disorder.
Even a single minute using a device that stimulates the inner ear with a specific wavelength of sound was able to reduce the discomfort felt by test subjects who were asked to do tasks like reading in a moving vehicle.
Takumi Kagawa co-led the study that was published in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, which demonstrated the effects of their so-called ‘sound spice’.
“It alleviates symptoms of motion sickness, such as nausea and dizziness,” he said. “The effective sound level falls within the range of everyday environmental noise exposure, suggesting that the sound technology is both effective and safe.”
The discovery is an expansion of recent findings about sound and its effect on the inner ear. Increasing evidence has suggested that stimulating the part of the inner ear associated with balance can potentially improve any spatial imbalance.
Using a mouse model and humans, the researchers identified a unique sound at 100 Hz as being the optimal frequency.
“Vibrations at the unique sound stimulate the otolithic organs in the inner ear, which detect linear acceleration and gravity,” explained co-leader of the study Masashi Kato in a press release. “This suggests that a unique sound stimulation can broadly activate the vestibular system, which is responsible for maintaining balance and spatial orientation.”
To test the effectiveness, the researchers recruited voluntary participants and provided the sound stimulation. Motion sickness was induced by a swing, a driving simulator, or riding in a car.
By Takumi Kagawa and Masashi Kato at Nagoya University, CC license
The researchers then used postural control, ECG readings, and Motion Sickness Assessment Questionnaire results to assess the effectiveness of the stimulation.
Exposure to the 100 Hz sound before being exposed to the driving simulator enhanced sympathetic nerve activation. The researchers found symptoms such as “lightheadedness” and “nausea,” which are often seen with motion sickness, were alleviated.
“These results suggest that activation of sympathetic nerves, which are often disregulated in motion sickness, was objectively improved by the unique sound exposure,” Kato said.
Their results suggest a safe and effective way to improve motion sickness, potentially offering help to millions of sufferers. The researchers plan to further develop the technology with the aim of practical application for a variety of travel situations including air and sea travel.
SHARE THE GOOD NEWS On Social Media For Friends With Motion Sickness…
Noah Carrigan says goodbye to his favorite Garbage man – SWNS
Noah Carrigan says goodbye to his favorite Garbage man – SWNS
This is the moment a nine-year-old boy said goodbye to his local trash collector after greeting him every week on the road outside his driveway for years.
Noah Carrigan had waited for the same garbage man every Tuesday since he was five – forming a sweet friendship.
But when the Florida county government switched to a new waste management company, Noah had to say his final goodbye on March 25.
His mother Catherine Carrigan said the tradition began after Noah became fascinated with the big green truck that arrived every week.
“It started out as something so simple—he was just fascinated by the garbage truck.
“For years, every Tuesday, he would run outside to wave and the garbage man always waved back, honked the horn, and acknowledged him.”
The 41-year-old says Noah’s father is a firefighter, so there’s “a lot of truck-love” in their home.
Noah’s farewell letter to his favorite Trash man – SWNS
But, even as he grew older and busier with school, he’d still make time to say hello.
In a heartfelt final meeting, Noah handed the sanitary worker a handwritten note and some gifts, along with a bottle of water to thank him for years of kindness.
Noah Carrigan gives his toy garbage truck to trash man – SWNS
“When we told him it was the last time he’d see the garbage man, he immediately ran inside to write a note and grab some of his old garbage truck toys to give him.
“He wanted to say thank you. It was so sweet.
Noah’s gifts included a letter in a mini bin and a mini garbage truck – SWNS
“This man had been part of Noah’s life for years. It was a friendship built on smiles and waves.”
