With more trains and buses to take, and the appeal of using travel time for pursuits other than dodging traffic, Americans are taking greater advantage of a renaissance in public transit, according to a new report.
The number of rides taken on public buses, trains and subways is the highest since 1956.
(READ the AP story from NPR)
It’s a great promotion for the London Zoo’s ongoing Animal Photography Prize, but this time the animal himself took the photograph.
A 12-year-old ring-tail lemur named Bekily grabbed the camera from his keeper during feeding time and held it up to his face to grab a selfie.
“We’re always taking quick pics of the animals we look after,” said Tegan McPhail. “With workmates this cute, it’s hard to resist – but Bekily definitely wanted to get in on the action himself this time.”
(See full shot below)
Jimmy Fallon & Jon Hamm surprise people at the top of Rockefeller Plaza’s “Top of the Rock” building by photo-bombing their pictures. Hilarious.
The Class 3A state high school wrestling championship this week in St. Paul, Minnesota ended with a standing ovation and some tears for the class act athlete who lost in the finals.
The cheers began after the victory of high school sophomore Mitchell McKee, who wanted to win the state title for his father because he is battling terminal cancer. But, the tears came after Malik Stewart, who lost the match, decided to go over to his opponent’s father and give him a hug.
“The crowd went wild and I heard a couple people say after I did it – that was pretty classy – but I just did it straight from the heart,” said Stewart.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from KARE-TV)
With every can or bottle he collects and returns, Tyler Laviolette takes one step closer to fulfilling the dream of his parents, who wanted him to live a normal, independent and productive life despite being born with cerebral palsy and diagnosed with autism.
As a young man in White Lake, Michigan, Tyler always loved putting cans in the return machines, according to his mother, so it seemed perfect for him.
“I am doing great,” Laviolette said.
(READ the story from the Oakland Press)
Jean-Marie Minani gets to witness powerful emotional moments with the simple use of a mobile phone. Minani is helping reunite families with loved ones in a refugee camp in Democratic Republic of Congo by providing free phone calls. Thanks to the humanitarian effort facilitated by Vodafone, nine-year-old Nirere was able to speak to her mother for the first time since they were separated 15 months ago.
Minani manages four free humanitarian calling booths at the Mugunga Refuge Camp in Goma as part of the Instant Network program run by the Vodafone Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm. 17,000 displaced people in the camp have connected with friends and family with the free mobile calls.
In late February, Oscar Farinetti, who founded the Eataly chain of food emporiums, announced a new plan to help rescue the economy: “Fico Eataly World,” a theme park devoted entirely to food and wine.
The project is a joint venture between Eataly and the city of Bologna, which is providing 86,000 square feet of land with warehouses to be transformed into food labs, grocery stores and, of course, restaurants.
The region of Emilia-Romagna, where the “Disneyland for food” is scheduled to open in Nov. 2015, is the home of Parmesan cheese, prosciutto di Parma, balsamic vinegar, and lasagna, among many other gastronomic delicacies.
(READ the story at NPR News)
In our day-to-day lives it is easy to overlook some of the smaller, simpler things that can disproportionally boost our happiness levels.
Luckily, there are lots of studies that show how to behave if you want to live a happier life.
Seven actionable steps are highlighted in an article by author Gregory Ciotti. These include:
(READ the How-To article in 99u.com)
What would your dream home look like if you had unlimited resources? Would you wrap a cat walkway around the house, or create a mini beach outside your door with a fire pit, or add a slide alongside your stairway?
From cleverly-hidden storage spaces to sporting furniture and cat transit walkways, here are some great examples of homes where people have been able to realize their greatest home design fantasies.
(Check out the cool ideas compiled by BoredPanda.com)
The historic B&B Café, known as the diner where a high-profile manhunt ended with the murder of Castle Rock Marshall Ray Lewis in 1946, is making new memories that make locals feel uplifted.
The Colorado eatery, normally open only for breakfast and lunch, opened its doors on Friday and Saturday night so the whole town could help an ailing toddler.
The owner, Robert Schoene, allowed an employee, who is a former Mexican chef, to use the B&B those two nights so he could prepare take-out and sit-down meals for people who were then asked to donate any amount they could for the cause.
Groceries were donated, according to the Castle Rick News Press, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go to help Jenimae Michener, an 11-month-old Castle Rock resident born with — Treacher Collins Syndrome.
How this fundraising event came about is because Jenimae’s mom was helping out someone else.
(READ the story from the Castle Rock News Press)
A 76-year-old man, Geoff Pilkington, had been sick with cancer for a two years. Finally, he recovered enough to play golf.
On the first hole, with his first shot, he scored a hole in one:
Playing at Southport and Ainsdale Golf Club, the man believes his late brother Roy, who passed away in December, was watching over the course and helped guide the ball in during heavy winds.
(READ the story from the Mirror.uk)
A sweetheart mom, Cathy O’Grady, recently planned a spree of 318 good deeds in honor of a friend, Chad, who survived for that many days after his cancer diagnosis.
Chad’s wife, Colleen, joined O’Grady and two friends to canvas the city February 28 as crusaders of kindness. Their plans required a lot of work ahead of time. They put together 250 care bags for nurses to show appreciation and boost morale at at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They were stuffed with an original poem and various treats. While inside the hospitals, they planted one hundred lottery tickets in various waiting rooms and handed out cookies.
They visited the subway station and scattered fifty cards for free subway rides, bought five coffees for strangers and left sixty quarters in grocery stores on gumball machines for children to enjoy.
To end their amazing day together, they paid for three meals for random people and delivered 150 care packages to Thornton-Naumes House, the Hope Lodge, and the Beacon House — all lodging facilities for adults with cancer.
“During the day, we will share Chad’s story and encourage others to reach out and spread a little joy, especially through their sorrows, wrote O’Grady on her jewelry website, CreationsCathys. “Although Chad’s time here has come to an end, on his behalf, we will personally reach out to 318 people who might need a positive moment or a helping hand.”
(READ more of her story from Boston Magazine)
When scientists made the stunning announcement last year that a baby born with H.I.V. had apparently been cured through aggressive drug treatment just 30 hours after birth, there was immediate skepticism that the child had been infected in the first place.
But on Wednesday, the existence of a second such baby was revealed at an AIDS conference here, leaving little doubt that the treatment works. A leading researcher said there might be five more such cases in Canada and three in South Africa.
The announcement was the third piece of hopeful news in two days about the virus that causes AIDS.
(READ the story in the New York Times)
Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report.
The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels – diesel, for example – that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags.
A report of the new study appears in the journal Fuel Processing Technology.
There are other advantages to the approach, which involves heating the bags in an oxygen-free chamber, a process called pyrolysis, said Brajendra Kumar Sharma, a senior research scientist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center who led the research. The ISTC is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.
Only about 13 percent of plastic bags used currently in the US are recycled. The rest of the bags end up in landfills or escape to the wild, blowing across the landscape and entering waterways.
Previous studies have used pyrolysis to convert plastic bags into crude oil. Sharma’s team took the research further, however, by fractionating the crude oil into different petroleum products and testing the diesel fractions to see if they complied with national standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel and biodiesel fuels.
“A mixture of two distillate fractions, providing an equivalent of U.S. diesel #2, met all of the specifications” required of other diesel fuels in use today – after addition of an antioxidant, Sharma said.
“This diesel mixture had an equivalent energy content, a higher cetane number (a measure of the combustion quality of diesel requiring compression ignition) and better lubricity than ultra-low-sulfur diesel,” he said.
The researchers were able to blend up to 30 percent of their plastic-derived diesel into regular diesel, “and found no compatibility problems with biodiesel,” Sharma said.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “We can just use it as a drop-in fuel in the ultra-low-sulfur diesel without the need for any changes.”
(Report by Diana Yates for Illinois.edu)
The American economy appeared to emerge from a winter hibernation in February, creating more jobs than in either of the previous two months and suggesting that momentum in the labor market might gradually build with the arrival of spring.
With employers hiring 175,000 workers, “The report showed solid job growth despite clearly negative effects from the weather,” said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays. “It suggests the jobs numbers should improve as the weather gets better.”
(READ more story from the NY Times)
Two sisters in Edmond, Oklahoma were having trouble sleeping, fraught with worry over whether their home was safe from crime. Their mother even began showing them the locked windows and doors each night and allowed them to sleep with baseball bat under the covers.
Then, Lt. Paul Barbour, on his night shift patrol for the local police department, took a few minutes to pen a hand-written note to the girls assuring them that “everything looked good” in their neighborhood. He taped the note to the door, having learned about the trouble from his wife, who was a friend of their mother.
The note did the trick, and the sisters, ages 9 and 11, are now sleeping with the lights off again.
“I felt a lot more safe and secure knowing that someone is watching after us.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from KFOR-TV)
Living in sub-zero temperatures and traveling to and from your Alaska cabin on a snowmobile is a way of life for some. It only becomes a problem when you crash violently and are left badly injured lying in ice with night falling around you.
Otis Orth is lucky that he always travels with his golden retriever. If not for her, the 52-year-old Trapper Creek resident said Tuesday, he wouldn’t be alive.
Amber stayed by his side and snuggled against him as the temperature dropped. He tried to continuously move his legs, but about midnight, he said he lost feeling.
The next day, she was able to bark at nearby snowmobiles, alerting them that something was wrong. Amber led them to the accident scene.
(READ the story in the Anchorage Daily News)
When the sun sets on a remote desert outpost and solar panels shut down, what energy source will provide power through the night? A battery, perhaps, or an old diesel generator? Perhaps something strange and new.
Physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) envision a device that would harvest energy from Earth’s infrared emissions into outer space.
Heated by the sun, our planet is warm compared to the frigid vacuum beyond. Thanks to recent technological advances, the researchers say, that heat imbalance could soon be transformed into direct-current (DC) power, taking advantage of a vast and untapped energy source.
Food science is ever evolving. Things that used to be labeled detrimental for your diet, such as salt, are now shown to be crucial for optimal health.
These foods are actually ancient: Unrefined salt contain essential minerals; eggs boost our good -HDL- cholesterol; dark chocolate is full of flavonoids; coffee is loaded with antioxidants; and coconut oil lowers bad -LDL- cholesterol and contains highly beneficial lauric acid.
These seven food items have gone from being considered healthy (long ago) to unhealthy (within the last generation or two) to healthy again, even essential.
(READ the article in Salon.com)
A Nebraska soldier who’d never seen his baby daughter was welcomed home this week by a sign so cute that the photo posted on Facebook got a million Likes in its first day.
The adorable little girl wearing a bow in her hair sat waiting in a stroller sitting next to a big pink poster using the “Call Me Maybe” song to welcome her dad, Cole Tesar, home.
