Quote of the Day: “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.” – Edward Abbey
Photo by: © Andy Corbley
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?
56 years ago today, Sesame Street first aired on 180 PBS public television stations using Jim Henson’s puppets to teach letters, numbers, and colors, with the goal or preparing less advantaged children for school. Created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett and produced by their Children’s Television Workshop, the show by 2009 was translated and broadcasting in more than 140 countries. Watch the video at CBS, here —or see the behind-the-scenes tribute below… (1969)
(Article by Rohini Subrahmanyam originally published by Knowable Magazine)
As the microscopic, tear-shaped Lacrymaria olor swims around hunting for food, it does something remarkable: In a blink, the tiny protist extends its neck more than 30 times its body length, snatching up unwitting prey.
Then, just as quickly, the neck withdraws, returning to its original size. The movement is akin to a six-foot human suddenly stretching their neck some 200 feet and then snapping it back to normal.
This acrobatic behavior had been observed for more than a hundred years, yet only in 2024 did scientists finally understand how L. olor manages to whip out and store its neck so deftly.
The tiny hunter uses a kind of cellular origami: It folds its external membrane in pleats that it can unfold, deploy, and retract at will.
“This particular origami, which we named Lacrygami — humans did not invent it, nature invented it,” says Stanford University bioengineer Manu Prakash.
Anyone who has dabbled in origami knows that it can be frustratingly complicated, yet somehow its intricate folds have arisen naturally many times in living things. In recent years, scientists have taken a closer look at these complex folds of the biological realm, such as in delicate insect wings, a chick’s developing gut, or the lightning-fast neck of L. olor.
Some of what they’re finding is inspiring practical applications such as drones and robots, but the nature of origami itself is enough to keep scientists fascinated. Origami exists at a particular boundary, says Harvard University physicist Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, “where there is just enough balance between constraints and freedom, so that you can do remarkable things.”
Japanese people started practicing origami some time around the sixth century, but it wasn’t until about 40 years ago that scientists and engineers began investigating origami in earnest. Early studies focused on usefulness in space: With origami, one could tightly pack solar panel arrays on a rocket for unfolding later on.
Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura published what became a standard folding technique for such applications in 1985. Called the Miura-ori, this rigid fold is made of mountain and valley creases; it’s essentially a pattern of closely packed parallelograms.
With one pull, you can unfurl an entire folded sheet, such as a map or an array of solar panels, and then just as easily fold it up again. In 1995, the fold was used to efficiently pack solar panel arrays in Japan’s Space Flyer Unit satellite.
But long before then, the fold was deployed in nature. In a classic 2005 paper published in Science, Mahadevan and physicist Sergio Rica, currently at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, posited that a Miura-ori-like pattern could naturally occur in leaves or insect wings, due to inherent physical instabilities. Using mathematical models and a drying slab of gelatin, they demonstrated how light compression on a stiff, thin skin that’s supported by a soft, thick substrate can prompt the skin to settle into a Miura-ori like pattern, akin to how compression of the Earth’s crustal plates can lead to mountains and valleys.
More recently, Mahadevan and his team investigated how different parts of a chick gut — the large intestine with wrinkles, for example, the small intestine with zigzag folds — develop their very different creases. It turns out that the layers of gut tissue vary in thickness and stiffness across each portion. As the gut elongates during development, their mechanical properties cause these portions to buckle in different ways, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024. Other complex biological folds — like the wrinkles on our brain — are also likely to form during development due to similar physical force considerations.
“This is essentially a very natural consequence of pattern formation in physics,” Mahadevan says.
Scientists are also investigating how insects neatly fold and unfold their wings. Andres Arrieta, a mechanical engineer at Purdue University, and André Studart, a materials science engineer at ETH Zurich, turned to earwigs, which have hindwings tucked away under their forewings. Just before flying, the earwig unfurls the hindwings, and all the tightly packed creases elegantly open as thin, delicate wings stretching out to more than 10 times their folded size. The process takes place without the use of muscles.
The researchers were drawn to the earwig wing for three reasons: It has a large change in area as it folds or unfolds; it’s what scientists call bistable (it can be at rest in two different states, open and folded); and it doesn’t just have standard straight origami creases — it has curved creases.
Curved creases don’t fold flatly along a straight line, they fold along a curve, like a folded-over shirt collar. They are trickier than a standard flat crease; as you fold along a curve, the crease changes direction ever so slightly at every point. So, at each point, the sheet needs to fold in two directions: radially along the crease, where the two parts of the sheet bend like a hinge and come closer, and tangentially to the crease. Because the crease is curved, every part of it is angled slightly differently.
It turns out that earwigs stretch their wings ever so slightly at the curved crease along the wing’s middle. It manages this stretching with an elastic protein called resilin that can store and release energy like a spring. In the middle of the earwig wing — a spot the researchers call the mid-wing mechanism — the resilin is distributed both symmetrically and asymmetrically. The former helps the wing’s creases extend, like a stretchy spring, and the latter gives the creases the energy to rotate, like a bendy spring. Together, the two types of springs help to lock the wing in position, whether folded or unfolded.
Incorporating the stretchy springs into the folds was key to capturing the behavior of the wing, says Arrieta, who calls the approach “spring origami.”
After modeling how the insect wing folded mathematically, the researchers designed and 3D-printed a membrane that incorporated springs and could fold up on its own.
With some origami applications, the creases have to be folded in the right order to get the final shape. That requires a lot of control, says Arrieta. In contrast, a bistable structure has only two states, open and closed. “It’s just a little bit of effort and boom! the thing deploys.”
Eventually these bistable, foldable structures (see them open in this GIF) might be deployed as wings for drones, helping them fold up more compactly. Inspired by the earwig wing (in the video below), engineers incorporated a spring-like mechanism into a self-folding structure that may have applications in robotics.
The single-celled hunter L. olor presented a similar puzzle — and a similar solution. The scientists knew that the protist’s body had microtubule proteins that give it a helical structure, the way rods give tents their shape. But could those microtubules help explain its massively extending, then retracting, neck?
After all, the membrane can’t just appear and disappear, says Prakash, so where does it come from and where does it go?
On a trip to Japan, Prakash saw chochin lanterns that have paper stretched over bamboo frames and realized that the membrane of the single-celled creature might similarly stretch out over the bamboo-like microtubules. By testing this paper-based set-up using origami with his kids, he discovered that “there is a very easy way to fold and unfold this architecture.”
Cross-checking with L. olor’s microscopy data confirmed his hunch: The protist’s cell is folded up into pleats using curved creases, and anchored to a scaffold of helical microtubules. Opening and closing of these pleats drives the extraordinary extending neck.
Folding and storing the membrane and microtubules in this curved, helical fashion allows the cell to keep a lot of its gelatinous cytoplasm in a ready-to-release configuration. But L. olor doesn’t just release all that cytoplasm at once, says study coauthor Eliott Flaum, Prakash’s former graduate student who is now a biophysicist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. “It can control the neck length,” she says. “And that is only possible if it had really fine control over the material being stored.”
It exerts this fine control with the help of what are called singularities — points or kinks along the curved creases where the membrane sharply goes from being folded to being unfolded. Similar to resilin and the mid-wing mechanism in the earwigs, these points concentrate a lot of the bending energy when the membrane is all folded up. And by controlling how these points move, L. olor is able to rapidly unfurl its pleats and just as easily fold them back up again.
As the little hunter either deploys or reels its neck back in, the singularities move along with the neck — ensuring that all the creases open and fold back in sequentially — in the same way every time. Thus L. olor perfectly folds and unfolds its origami without fail — like the pleats of an accordion that open and tuck themselves back in.
“Mathematically, it does not allow any other folds,” says Prakash, “which is why it’s so robust — the cell folds and unfolds tens of thousands of times and does not make a mistake.”
Learn more about nature’s fantastic folding below…
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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine under CC BY-ND 4.0 license, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Sign up for Knowable Magazine’s newsletter.
Men with advanced prostate cancer have been offered fresh hope thanks to a “promising” new drug combination.
It could significantly delay the progression of a deadly form of the disease in patients with specific genetic mutations, say scientists at University College London following a major international trial.
They tested the addition of niraparib, a type of targeted cancer drug known as a PARP inhibitor, to the standard hormone therapy treatment of abiraterone acetate and prednisone, known as AAP.
The study focused on patients diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer where cells have spread to other parts of the body, and who were starting their first treatment and also had alterations in genes involved in an essential type of DNA defect repair, known as homologous recombination repair (HRR).
Scientists explained that those genes help repair damaged DNA and when they are faulty, cancer cells can grow and spread more aggressively.
Around one in four people with advanced prostate cancer at this stage have alterations in HRR genes, such as BRCA1, BRCA2, CHEK2, and PALB2.
The standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer is currently the hormone-related AAP or similar drugs, but the mutations make the cancer more aggressive and, consequently, the disease progression with standard treatment is often far quicker—with shorter life expectancies.
The new trial involved 696 men across 32 countries with an average age of 68.
Half received the new combination therapy of niraparib plus APP, while the other half received standard treatment with a placebo. More than half of patients had alterations in their BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes in this double-blind trial, meaning neither patients nor doctors knew which treatment was being administered.
The findings, published last month in the journal Nature Medicine, showed that, after an average follow-up period of 30.8 months, niraparib reduced the risk of cancer growth by 37% compared to AAP alone in all patients and by 48% in the subgroup of patients with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.
The time until symptoms got worse was twice as long for patients who received niraparib compared to those who received a placebo, reducing the number of patients who had notable worsening in symptoms from 34% to 16%.
The research team observed a trend toward improved overall survival in the niraparib group, but they say a longer follow-up period is needed to confirm that niraparib improves life expectancy.
“Although current standard treatments are very effective for the majority of patients with advanced prostate cancer, a small but very significant proportion of patients have limited benefit,” said study leader Professor Gerhardt Attard, of the university’s Cancer Institute.
“We now know that prostate cancers with alterations in HRR genes account for a significant group of patients whose disease recurs quickly and has an aggressive course.
“By combining with niraparib we can delay the cancer returning and hopefully significantly prolonging life expectancy.”
HERE’S A TIP: Improving Physical Fitness with Cardio May Cut Prostate Cancer Risk by More Than a Third
“These findings are striking because they support widespread genomic testing at diagnosis with use of a targeted treatment for patients who stand to derive the greatest benefit.
While the treatment was generally well tolerated, Prof. Attard said side effects were more common in the niraparib group, such as an increase in cases of anemia and high blood pressure, with 25% of patients requiring blood transfusions.
MORE PROSTATE CANCER HOPE:
• New Way of Supercharging Prostate Cancer Treatment Weakens Tumors at Cellular Level
• New Way of Treating Aggressive Prostate Cancer Shows ‘Promise’ in Cedars-Sinai Phase III Clinical trial
The team said that while the results are “promising” further research is needed to confirm long-term survival benefits and to analyze the impact of newer imaging techniques and broader genetic testing.
Australian soldiers slipped the letters into a bottle, closed the cap, and pitched it overboard from a ship in the Pacific Ocean as World War I battlefields beckoned them both.
The bottle was a time capsule that would be delivered by fate—and it arrived for overjoyed ancestors last month—more than 100 years after the bottle first hit the water.
On October 9, Peter Brown and his daughter Felicity found the Schweppes-brand bottle resting just above the waterline at Wharton Beach on the south coast of Western Australia. The Brown family frequently walks the beach and helps to clear garbage, but this piece was much more treasure than trash.
Nestled inside the bottle were letters written by two Army privates, Malcolm Neville and William Harley, originally dated August 15,1916.
Back then, Neville was 27 and Harley was 37. They were on board the ship HMAT A70 Ballarat and were leaving Adelaide on a mission to reinforce Australia’s 48th Infantry Battalion in World War I.
As the ship rocked back and forth on familiar waters, the soldiers wrote down messages that were soon swallowed by the sea. Surprisingly, their words were still legible when the letters reemerged weeks ago.
Neville’s letter from “somewhere at sea” requested that the finder send its contents to his mother in South Australia.
“We’re having a real good time, food is real good so far, with the exception of one meal which we buried at sea…The ship is heaving and rolling, but we are as happy as Larry”—which is a well-known Australian expression of contentment.
Meanwhile, Harley wrote, “may the finder be as well as we are at present.”
Although neither man lived long—Neville died in battle a year later, and Harley passed away in 1934 with a cancer that his family blamed on gases used in war—their letters arrived in excellent shape, as if destined to provide a clear portal to the past.
The bottle was in “pristine condition” without a single barnacle, said Deb Brown who worked to retrieve the letters from the bottle.
“If it had been exposed for that long, the paper would’ve disintegrated from the sun,” opined Brown, who thinks the bottle got buried in a sand dune soon after it was tossed overboard, until it broke free and gave unsuspecting family members a new connection to their ancestors.
MORE MAGIC IN A BOTTLE:
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Once Brown removed the letters from the bottle, she used an internet search pairing Neville’s last name with his hometown in the letter (Wilkawatt) and soon found a Facebook page for his great-nephew Herbie.
“It’s been unbelievable,” Herbie said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “It’s sort of brought us all closer together. It really has.”
Brown was lucky enough to locate relatives of Harley too. And interestingly enough, Harley had a number of grandchildren who were still around to savor the news.
“We are all absolutely stunned,” Ann Hurley, a granddaughter of Harley, said.
“There are five grandchildren who are still alive. We’re all in constant contact since it happened and we just can’t believe it.
“It really does feel like a miracle. We do very much feel like our grandfather has reached out to us from the grave.”
TEARS IN A BOTTLE: Daughter Gets Dad’s Long Lost Message in a Bottle 50 Years Later
KEEP THE BOTTLE MOVING by Sharing This on Social Media…
Brooke Eby used to take her adopted dog Dray on long walks and hikes in San Francisco, until she was waylaid by a diagnosis of ALS that landed her in a wheelchair.
She tried adaptive leashes, but they often left the little pooch tangled in the wheels because they aren’t designed for Dray’s small size.
Then, she heard about a pet company making holiday wishes come true, so she wrote a letter in Dray’s voice to ‘Chewy Claus’ begging for a solution so he can once again take a nice walk with his momma.
Dray’s was the first doggie-wish to be granted, kicking off Chewy’s annual letter-writing campaign in Potomac, Maryland, where Brooke and her senior rescue dog received a huge basket of gifts, along with the custom wheelchair accessory that is providing a new leash on life.
Now, Brooke can resume one of her favorite activities—taking a walk with her best friend—and bask in the sense of independence it brings. (See the results in a video below…)
“Dray has seen me be less and less active, and this leash is just showing him that I’m still there, still the same leash-holder I’ve always been,” said Brooke. “This is one less time I have to ask someone to help me do something I used to do by myself multiple times a day in my normal life.”
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Brooke’s infectious spirit is captured in her new mantra of “living life in dog years,” a reminder to make every moment count, even when time is uncertain.
In Brooke and Dray’s honor, Chewy Claus is donating $10,000 to Team Gleason, an ALS advocacy organization, and will support pet parents afflicted with ALS, providing them with resources to carry forward Brooke’s message of fully embracing life.
Chewy Claus is currently fulfilling thousands of wishes, and is accepting letters at chewy.com/ChewyClaus—whether they are submitted via paws, claws, fins, wings, hooves, or any other letter-writing appendage.
For every wish submitted between now and December 24, Chewy Claus will deliver five meals (up to 16 million total meals) to pets in need as part of Chewy’s pledge to donate $10 million to shelter and rescue animals throughout the U.S. in the form of toys, supplies, treats, and meals.
Since the program launched in 2022, more than one million pets have submitted their holiday wishes to Chewy Claus — from favorite toys and tasty treats to cozy beds and second chances for animals seeking forever homes.
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In a media release the company said, in the days ahead. “Chewy Claus will reveal more fulfilled wishes – including Fern, a people-loving duck who is throwing her Detroit-area hometown the best holiday party ever, and Taylor, a senior therapy dog outside Chicago, who is receiving a well-deserved, multi-species retirement sendoff.”
So dream big on behalf of your pawsome pets.
HELP OTHERS GET THEIR WISH By Sharing This on Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Peering from some high window, at the gold of November sunset and feeling that if day has to become night, this is a beautiful way.” – E. E. Cummings
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?
49 years ago today, Gary Kasparov won his first Chess World Championship after overcoming his opponent Anatoly Karpov whom he faced inconclusively the year before in what was and still is the only world championship ever abandoned without a result. Kasparov secured the world crown in Moscow by a score of 13–11 making him the youngest champion in history at just 22 years of age, and began a reign of dominance that ranks him among the best in history. READ what happened next… (1985)
Stunning pictures from England show hungry birds feasting on sunflower seeds in a gorgeous autumn scene.
Photographer Andrew Fusek Peters captured the magical moment from his kitchen in Shropshire, as the birds dove into the seeds to release them from fading sunflowers.
“It’s basic botanical biology happening before our eyes,” he mused in an interview with SWNS news agency.
“When the sunflowers go, they start setting seeds and that’s when we get sunflower seeds—one of the main things the birds eat…”
Among the multiple seed-eating bird species that are a natural part of the landscape in the West Midlands are the great tit, Parus major (above), and the European greenfinch, Chloris chloris (see the pair below).
“You don’t get anything more natural than them plucking them from the plant itself. It’s magical.
“I was very happy with the photos, full of rich autumn colors.
“There’s one where the seeds are all falling out the plant and it’s just beautiful.
“I was inside the kitchen. The light comes around and in the afternoon that’s when you get these wonderful shots.
“It’s quite cheerful.”
MUST SEE–> Comedy Wildlife Contest Unveils Wonderful Photo Finalists to Make Everyone Smile
DO WISH A HAPPY AUTUMN to Friends By Sharing This on Social Media…
A unique Airbnb in England offers the chance to spend the night in a decorated barn containing a friendly miniature horse.
Brittany Sparham began renting out part of her barn in a rural village outside Nottinghamshire during the pandemic in response to the rising popularity of ‘staycations’.
Since the rustic apartment would share its wall with the stables, the 28-year-old owner decided it would be fun to create a door so renters could visit their equine neighbor, Basil.
“We thought why not do something really unique and open up the doorway between the two rooms, so guests could see Basil,” she told SWNS news agency.
“It works out well for Basil too as he always has company and gets lots of fuss and attention.
The barn soon became very popular with animal lovers who want to spend a night with the 12-year-old miniature Shetland pony. (See the video below…)
“Basil is a very chilled individual. He loves playing out with his friends in the field during the day, but also gets very excited to come into his stable for the night.
“We just open the gate from the field, and he runs right in on his own, he knows he gets lots of attention and all the hay to himself for the night.”
The unit is retrofitted with a kitchen, a bathroom, a den and a bedroom containing a double bed and bunk beds that are right next to the stable door. (Watch the video at the bottom to see more…)
The property, on the grounds of a 17th-century manor, is available for a two-night-minimum with a total cost of $473 (£360)
Guests aren’t able to feed Basil, but tools are provided for brushing him—and cleaning his stable, for anyone who wants to dig-in.
“We’ve had Basil for over 10 years, since he was just 2 years old, so he’s a very much loved and well-respected member of our family.”
The listing on Airbnb does warn that since you will be living with a horse there is a chance of noises and smells.
“People think it might smell or be too noisy, but everyone who stays loves it.
“Lots of people have fallen in love with Basil’s cheeky character and come back to stay often, some guests we’ve had return seven or eight times over the years.”
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In the paddocks they also have a herd of Highland cows, Hebridean sheep, horses, pigs, chickens, and Norwegian Forrest cats.
Thankfully, Brittany lives onsite so can take care of issues. One time a sheep jumped over the door into the bedroom and got a little too comfortable on the bed—so he’s been banned from entering Basil’s stable.
SHARE THE TIP With Horse-Lovers Who Wish They Lived on a Farm…
An innovative smart keyboard designed to significantly improve typing ability for people living with Parkinson’s disease has been named a Global Winner of the prestigious 2025 James Dyson Award.
The groundbreaking invention, called “OnCue”, was created by Italian product designer Alessandra Galli as a school thesis project at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
It’s the first assistive keyboard that integrates cues to help manage motor symptoms like tremors, slowed movement (bradykinesia), and ‘freezing’.
“OnCue is a clever and empowering solution, allowing people with Parkinson’s and other motor conditions to stay connected and communicate independently,” said the award’s founder James Dyson, a visionary inventor known for his persistence in developing groundbreaking products (like the 5,126 prototypes he built over four years before perfecting the first bagless vacuum cleaner).
Galli developed OnCue after focus groups revealed how typing obstacles challenged the independence and confidence of Parkinson’s patients.
The device’s core features work in concert to support a steady typing flow:
In addition, OnCue is designed with customization in mind, allowing users to adjust haptic and visual cue intensity through software or physical sliders, accommodating the daily fluctuations in Parkinson’s symptoms.
Galli says the $40,000 award from Dyson will help bring her invention to market for those who need it. She plans to enhance the electronics and conduct further usability testing with occupational therapists and Parkinson’s organizations.
CHECK OUT: Previous Dyson Award Winning Inventions
Learn more and stay up-to-date on the keyboard’s development by visiting the project’s website, OnCueDesign.net.
ALERT FOLKS WITH PARKINSON’S by Sharing the Good News on Social Media…
Our partner Rob Brezsny, who has a new book out, Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle, provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of November 8, 2025
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Martin Luther King Jr. said that harnessing our pain and transforming it into wise love can change the world for the better. More than any other sign, Scorpio, you understand this mystery: how descent can lead to renewal, how darkness can awaken brilliance. It’s one of your birthrights to embody King’s militant tenderness: to take what has wounded you, alchemize it, and make it into a force that heals others as well as yourself. You have the natural power to demonstrate that vulnerability and ferocity can coexist, that forgiveness can live alongside uncompromising truth. When you transmute your shadows into offerings of power, you confirm King’s conviction that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in seemingly random data. On the downside, it may cause a belief in delusional conspiracy theories. But it can also be a generator of life’s poetry, leading us to see faces in clouds, hear fateful messages in static, and find key revelations in a horoscope. Psychologist Carl G. Jung articulated another positive variation of the phenomenon. His concept of synchronicity refers to the occurrence of meaningful coincidences between internal psychological states and external events that feel deeply significant and even astounding to the person experiencing them. Synchronicities suggest there’s a mysterious underlying order in the universe, linking mind and matter in nonrational ways. In the coming weeks, Sagittarius, I suspect you will experience a slew of synchronicities and the good kind of apophenia.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Philosopher Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase “the map is not the territory.” In other words, your concepts about reality are not reality itself. Your idea of love is not love. Your theory about who you are is not who you are. It’s true that many maps are useful fictions. But when you forget they’re fiction, you’re lost even when you think you know where you are. Here’s the good news, Capricorn: In the weeks ahead, you are poised to see and understand the world exactly as it is—maybe more than ever before. Lean into this awesome opportunity.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Babies are born with about 300 bones, but adults have 206. Many of our first bones fuse with others. From one perspective, then, we begin our lives abundant with possibility and rich with redundancy. Then we solidify, becoming structurally sound but less flexible. Aging is a process of strategic sacrifice, necessary but not without loss. Please meditate on these facts as a metaphor for the decisions you face. The question isn’t whether to ripen and mature—that’s a given—but which growth will serve you and which will diminish you.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Beneath every thriving forest lies a lacework of mycelium. Through it, tree roots trade nourishment, warn each other of drought or illness, and make sure that young shoots benefit from elders’ reserves. Scientists call it the “wood-wide web.” Indigenous traditions have long understood the principle: Life flourishes when a vast communication network operates below the surface to foster care and collaboration. Take your cues from these themes, Pisces. Tend creatively to the web of connections that joins you to friends, collaborators, and kindred spirits. Proceed with the faith that generosity multiplies pathways and invites good fortune to circulate freely. Offer what you can, knowing that the cycle of giving will find its way back to you.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to the American wildlife area known as Yellowstone Park after a 70-year absence. They hunted elk, which changed elk behavior, which changed vegetation patterns, which stabilized riverbanks, which altered the course of the Lamar River and its tributaries. The wolves changed the rivers! This phenomenon is called a trophic cascade: one species reorganizing an entire ecosystem through a web of indirect effects. For the foreseeable future, Aries, you will be a trophic cascade, too. Your choices will create many ripples beyond your personal sphere. I hope you wield your influence with maximum integrity.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
I authorize you to explore the mysteries of sacred laziness. It’s your right and duty to engage in intense relaxing, unwinding, and detoxifying. Proceed on the theory that rest is not the absence of productivity but a different kind of production—the cultivation of dreams, the composting of experience, and the slow fermentation of insight. What if your worth isn’t always measured by your output? What if being less active for a while is essential to your beautiful success in the future?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
You are not yet who you will become. Your current struggle has not yet generated its full wisdom. Your confusion hasn’t fully clarified into purpose. The mess hasn’t composted into soil. The ending that looms hasn’t revealed the beginning it portends. In sum, Gemini, you are far from done. The story isn’t over. The verdict isn’t in. You haven’t met everyone who will love you and help you. You haven’t become delightfully impossible in all the ways you will eventually become delightfully impossible.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
By the time he became an elder, Cancerian artist David Hockney had enjoyed a long and brilliant career as a painter, primarily applying paint to canvases. Then, at age 72, he made a radical departure, generating artworks using iPhones and iPads. He loved how these digital media allowed him to instantly capture fleeting moments of beauty. His success with this alternate form of expression has been as great as his previous work. I encourage you to be as daring and innovative as Hockney. Your imaginative energy and creative powers are peaking. Take full advantage!
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Black activist Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” He was proclaiming a universal truth: Real courage is never just about personal glory. It’s about using your fire to help and illuminate others. You Leos are made to do this: to be bold not just for your own sake, but as a source of strength for your community. Your charisma and creativity can be precious resources for all those whose lives you touch. In the coming weeks, how will you wield them for mutual uplift?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Who would have predicted that the first woman to climb Mount Everest would have three planets in Virgo? Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei did it in 1975. To what did she attribute her success? She described herself not as fearless, but as “a person who never gives up.” I will note another key character trait: rebellious willfulness. In her time, women were discouraged from the sport. They were regarded as too fragile and impractical for rugged ascents. She defied all that. Let’s make her your inspirational role model, Virgo. Be persistent, resolute, indefatigable, and, if necessary, renegade.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Among the Mbuti people of the Congo, there’s no word for “thank you.” Gratitude is so foundational to their culture that it requires no special acknowledgment. It’s not singled out in moments of politeness; it’s a sweet ambent presence in the daily flux. I invite you to live like that for now, Libra. Practice feeling reverence and respect for every little thing that makes your life such an amazing gift. Feel your appreciation humming through ordinary moments like background music. I guarantee you that this experiment will boost the flow of gratitude-worthy experiences in your direction.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
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Quote of the Day: “There is nothing permanent except change.” – Heraclitus (around 500 BC)
Photo by: Natalia Blauth for Unsplash+ (cropped)
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?
60 years ago today, the ironically-named Murder Act of 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom for almost all crimes. Introduced by MP for Liverpool Sydney Silverman, it replaced hanging with mandatory sentences of life-imprisonment in all but 4 cases. The outstanding exceptions related to military-intelligence crimes, such as piracy with the intent to cause grievous injury, high treason, and espionage. READ more… (1965)
A new study shows that visiting an art gallery and appreciating the works therein can reduce your risk of heart disease and even boost your immune system.
But how could that work?
There are some general wellness maxims that could connect the large span between these two seemingly unrelated subjects though, and it may mean the same reduction in risk could come from all sorts of enjoyable leisure activities.
Where there’s inflammation without injury, there’s aging and illness. Key inflammatory proteins called cytokines, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a) are basically correlated with every disease known to man. While they play a key role in stimulating wound healing, they can also become active in preparation for wounds.
The stress hormone cortisol prepares the body for risk. A hormonal state of stress triggers increases of IL-6, TNF-a, and other cytokines in certain circumstances. Ipso facto, reducing stress reduces inflammation, inflammation reduces physiological degradation.
Researchers from King’s College London measured the physiological responses of participants viewing the collections of the Courtauld Gallery in the UK capital. Cardio data was provided by a continuous heart-rate monitor, which also captured skin temperatures. Saliva samples were taken before and after the 20 minute viewing exercise.
Compared to viewing the same paintings as replica images in a non-gallery setting, the stress hormone cortisol fell by an average of 22%, and 16% more than those viewing the pictures of the paintings.
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IL-6 fell 30% and TNF-a by 28%.
“Stress hormones and inflammatory markers like cortisol, IL-6 and TNF-alpha are linked to a wide range of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to anxiety and depression,” Dr. Tony Woods, a researcher at King’s College London, told the Guardian.
“The fact that viewing original art lowered these markers suggests that cultural experiences may play a real role in protecting both mind and body.”
MORE RESEARCH LIKE THIS: How LEGO Is Being Used to Reduce Stress, Combat Childhood Trauma, and Manage PTSD
It’s not wild or difficult to explain what went on here in simple terms: going to the Courtauld Gallery was an enjoyable de-stress for the participants.
The study is the first of its kind, its authors say, and though it marks an excellent reason to plan a visit to your local art gallery, its implications carry a far broader message: remember to stop and enjoy things from time to time, it could save your life.
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Toddlers safely built a tolerance to small amounts of peanut proteins thanks to a simple skin patch, which helped prevent the progression of a potentially deadly allergy.
More than 70% of these toddlers could tolerate 3 or 4 peanut kernels after a 3-year course of treatment, say American scientists working to commercialize the skin patch.
The findings, from an FDA-registered, long-term, phase 3 clinical trial offer encouraging news for parents of the one child in 50 born every year with the susceptibility to peanut allergies.
The study found that a peanut patch treatment—called epicutaneous immunotherapy, or EPIT—continued to help toddlers safely build tolerance to peanuts over three years. It used the DBV Technologies Viaskin Peanut Patch, which delivers small amounts of peanut protein through the skin.
The goal is to train the immune system to tolerate peanut exposure and reduce the risk of severe allergic reactions from accidental ingestion.
The new analysis looked at toddlers who originally received a placebo in an earlier one-year study and then used the peanut patch for up to 3 years.
After 3 years of treatment, more than 70% of the children could tolerate the equivalent of at least 3 to 4 peanut kernels—a “significant” improvement from their first year of treatment.
Nearly half could tolerate even higher amounts, according to the research team.
“Importantly, the treatment continued to show a strong safety record,” said study lead author Dr. Matthew Greenhawt. “No cases of treatment-related anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, were reported in the third year.
“Skin irritation at the patch site, the most common side effect, became less frequent over time.”
The research team also found that children’s reactions during food challenges became milder, with fewer severe symptoms after 3 years than after 1 year.
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“These results show that ongoing treatment with the peanut patch continues to improve tolerance and remains safe over time,” said Dr. Greenhawt, who holds the directorship of the Food Challenge and Research Unit at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
“For parents of toddlers with peanut allergies, this kind of approach may one day offer peace of mind by reducing the risk of having an allergic reaction, including severe reactions, from accidental exposure.”
MORE BREAKTHROUGH CHILDCARE: A Daycare Rewilded its Yard and the Children Became Healthier: Now the Whole Nation Is Doing it
The findings add to growing evidence that early intervention in young children helps change the course of peanut allergy development. Researchers stressed that parents should not attempt any form of peanut desensitization at home, and should discuss emerging treatment options with a qualified allergist.
The findings were presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) in Orlando, Florida.
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It was said that all roads lead to Rome, but from where do all the roads to Rome lead?
Using a mountain of data, a team of two dozen scientists have created a digital road atlas of the Roman imperial world, complete with many features you’d recognize from Google Maps.
Called Itiner-e, it displays the roads that would have been found throughout the Roman Empire around the year 150 CE. It’s the most expansive research project on the topic to date, and increases the estimated length of the empire’s road system by over 60,000 miles.
At its height in the second century CE, the Roman Empire included over 55 million people and stretched as far north as modern day Britain to as far south as Morocco, eastward to the Syrian deserts, and, turning towards Europe, included all of Turkey, northeastern Bulgaria, and the Danube. It was carved up and maintained by a network of stone/gravel/sand highways stretching 117,162 miles.
But the total extent of the Roman interstate system had remained incompletely mapped and existing digitizations were low resolution. Seeking to improve on them, a vast international and interdisciplinary team of scientists from across Europe created Itiner-e using archaeological and historical records, topographic maps, and satellite imagery.
The dataset increases the known road converge to 180,000 miles across over 1 million square miles, mainly from new mapping across the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, and North Africa.
Their work also adapted previously-proposed road routes to fit geographical realities. This includes allowing roads crossing mountains to follow winding paths, as they likely would have, rather than direct lines.
It was estimated that around a third of the road system was highways, while two thirds would today be called B roads or secondary roads. The authors report that the precise locations of only 2.7% of the roads are known with certainty, while 89.8% are less precisely known, and 7.4% are hypothesized.
Using Itiner-e, a trip from the Spanish-Roman city of Salmantica (Salamanca) to near Comum, the city closest to the Italian home of GNN’s Managing Editor Andy Corbley, would have taken some 447 hours on Roman roads. Such a traveler could, however, be expected to make 2.4 miles per hour on foot because of the fine condition of the roads.
According to Itiner-e, one would take a Roman highway northeast to Pompelo (Pamplona) and continue on up over the Pyrenees, before turning off onto a secondary road towards Elusa in southern France. From there, the traveler would rejoin the highway running due east past Tolosa (Toulouse) and along the Cote d’Azur past Nemauses, (Nimes).
Secondary roads would take the traveler over and down the French Alps to Cuneo and then to Augusta Taurinorum (Turin) where there was a straight shot to Novaria (Novara). A secondary road would take the traveler north to the crossing of the River Ticino, where he would then leave the road to Comum via an undocumented Roman track that would see the weary wanderer home at last to Vergiate.
MORE ROMAN STORIES: Spy Satellite Photos Reveal Hundreds of Long-Lost Roman Forts, Challenging Decades-Old Theory
The road system was extremely sophisticated, allowing parts of it to last to our present time because of the many layers used to construct them. The goal was to build them so as to require as little maintenance as possible.
Typically a flat trench called a fossa would be dug down to the bedrock or firmest ground that was available. Fill, such as rubble or gravel, was then poured in until it filled the cracks in the bedrock and created a level surface. It would then be filled with native soil and then sand, if it were available.
DIGITAL ATLAS PROJECTS: Watch How Continents Moved Over 100 Million Years in Video – Mapped by Scientists as Never Before
Once the filling reached 1 yard of the surface, a layer of gravel would be tamped down, and a concrete-lime filling would follow, into which the Romans would stack stones as if the road were a wall, seeking the best and most natural fit between each stone to allow as little water and seed infiltration past the concrete. The road would be built in a slight arch to allow for quick drainage, just like modern motorways.
Sometimes, like in the Roman colonial city in Algeria, called Timgad, the roads had two lanes, also just like ours do today, (they drove on the right). A kind of mile marker and road sign would also be found, especially on the secondary roads.
WATCH a video production on the scope of the road system…
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After five years of testing, an autonomous electric bus has been deployed to a park in Madrid for one final, real-world experiment in driverless vehicles for public transit.
If it succeeds, the cute little caterpillar-shaped bus may become a mainstay in the Spanish capital, ferrying passengers around Casa de Campo park and beyond.
Developed through a partnership with the Madrid transit authority (EMT) and Automotive Technology Center of Galicia (CTAG), in northern Spain, the driverless bus has been in action between the 15th of September and 24th of October.
It drove in a circuit around Casa de Campo, picking up passengers at 6 stops, and operating for five of the city’s peak hours.
The vehicle is 100% electric, and though many of its body components were manufactured abroad, the brain, eyes, ears, and other software were made at CTAG.
“This bus is one of the best I have ever tested,” César Omar Chacón Fernández, head of the EMT’s Rolling Stock Planning Division, told Euronews. “It behaves very well dynamically. Let’s say that the technology is very well integrated, it doesn’t behave erratically or robotically like other buses.”
The aim of EMT and CTAG is not replacing drivers, but providing a suitable and safe alternative for predictable, shorter routes that can help cities address a current shortage of professional bus drivers.
Though fully autonomous, and capable of detecting pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, scooters, animals, crosswalks, stop signs, traffic lights, and roundabouts, and making decisions over when to brake, accelerate, turn, and open/close the doors, a safety officer is always on board just in case.
MORE SPANISH IDEAS:
“The vehicle detects any object, from a bicycle to an animal, and reacts accordingly to avoid collisions,” Chacón said. “It is a fully autonomous line, but we never leave anything to chance.”
A cute little thing, it joins a growing number of miniature, electric, European automotive options that fit better into crowds of cyclists, narrow streets, and cramped parking spaces.
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Quote of the Day: “Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
Photo by: Travis Grossen
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?
16 years ago today, Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan became the first in professional basketball history to win 1,000 games with a single team. Described as “one of the greatest and most respected coaches in NBA history,” he spent nearly his entire 23-year coaching career at Utah, managing the team through good times and bad, leading some spectacular talent such as Carlos Boozer and Karl Malone, and making the Western Conference playoffs 16 times in a row. READ excerpts from his milestone victory… (2009)
