Freddy Montigny jumps from Vercors Massif mountain range on flying carpet – via SWNS
Freddy Montigny jumps from Vercors Massif mountain range on flying carpet – via SWNS
A daredevil has turned his childhood fantasy into reality—by soaring from mountain cliffs on a flying carpet.
The 44-year-old has spent years honing his skills with a triad of extreme sports to get ready for his dream of becoming a real-life Aladdin.
Freddy Montigny developed the unique stunt using his expertise in paragliding, skydiving, and hang gliding, all of which gave him the control needed to launch himself on a magic carpet ride.
The thrilling video shot by drones (see below) shows Freddy’s most daring jump to date from the Croix des Têtes—a 2,400-meter French mountain cliff in the Vercors Massif range—where he flew over the valley, descending to 1,600 meters on the small carpet, before pulling his parachute’s ripcord.
“I’ve always wondered what part of the myths and legends we were told as kids was true,” said the adventurer who lives in Choranche, France.
“I started paragliding at 25, skydiving at 30, and hang gliding at 35.
“All these activities helped me master the art of carpet flying.”
Freddy believes his carpet flights are safe after his years of practice at the Vercors range, near the city of Grenoble—and he always has a trusty parachute, his main safety net.
“If anything goes wrong, I just open it and release the carpet.
“With the height I’m jumping from, I have plenty of time to correct any mistakes.”
While he admits that his ‘magic carpet’ isn’t quite like the legends, it’s close enough.
“With this flying carpet, I’ve learned that while you can’t fly at any speed or to any destination, it’s still an amazing way to defy reality.”
Freddy, who previously worked as a professional drummer and stage technician, now calls himself a ‘professional carpet rider,’ chasing his dream to new heights.
Watch the jump below, preferably while playing Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf…
SHARE THE THRILL With Adventurous Friends on Social Media…
Some teachers consider finger counting a signal that youngsters are struggling with math, while others associate its use as advanced numerical knowledge.
Now, new research is the first to show that children’s performance in arithmetic can show a “huge” improvement through the teaching of a finger-counting method.
Swiss and French teams explored whether finger counting can help primary-school-aged children to solve math problems. They said adults rarely use their fingers to calculate a small sum, because such behavior could be attributed to cognitive impairments or “pathological difficulties” in math.
But young children under age 8 who use their fingers to solve such problems may be seen as intelligent, probably because they have already reached a level that allows them to understand that a quantity can be represented by different means.
The research aimed to determine whether children who don’t count on their fingers can be trained to do so, and whether such training would result in enhanced arithmetic performance.
The study, published in the journal Child Development, focused on 328 five- and six-year-old children at kindergarten, mainly living in France, and tested their abilities to solve simple addition problems.
The kindergarteners were recruited through their teachers, who voluntarily took part in the experiment, which included a pre-test, training held over two weeks, a post-test closely after the training’s end, and a delayed post-test.
The results showed an “important increase” in performance between pre- and post-test for the trained children who did not count on their fingers originally—from 37% to 77% of correct responses—compared to non-finger users in the control group.
Whether children who use finger counting are using it as an arithmetic procedure or understand something deeper about numbers will still need to be determined with future research.
“Our findings are highly valuable because, for the first time, we provide a concrete answer to the long-standing question of whether teachers should explicitly teach children to use their fingers for solving addition problems,” said study leader Dr. Catherine Thevenot.
“Finger calculation training is effective for over 75% of kindergartners,” she added. “The next step is to explore how we can support the remaining 25% of children who didn’t respond as well to the intervention.”
Dr. Thevenot, of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, says the study came about as a result of conversations with primary school teachers.
“They often asked me whether they should encourage or discourage children from using their fingers to solve calculations.
“Surprisingly, the existing research didn’t offer a clear answer, which left teachers understandably frustrated with my frequent response of ‘I don’t know.’
“This recurring question, coupled with the lack of concrete evidence, inspired me to investigate the issue myself.
“When I first saw the results, I was amazed by the huge improvement in performance among children who didn’t initially use their fingers to solve the problems.
“Before our intervention, these children were only able to solve about one-third of the addition problems during a pre-test. After training, however, they were solving over three-quarters of them.
“This improvement truly exceeded my expectations,” said Dr. Thevenot. “The difference was striking, especially compared to the control groups, where gains were insignificant.
“An important question now is to determine whether what we taught to children goes beyond a mere procedure to solve the problems.
“In other words, we want to know whether our intervention led to a deeper conceptual understanding of numbers, specifically whether children better grasp how to manipulate the quantities represented by their fingers.
“In fact, we have already started addressing this question and the initial results are very promising. However, we still need to carry out additional experiments to confirm that these improvements are indeed a direct result of our training program.”
1..2..3..GO! SHARE the Fascinating Study With Parents on Social Media…
Professor Zhugen Yang with origami paper sensor used for disease detection – Cranfield University / SWNS
Professor Zhugen Yang with origami paper sensor used for disease detection – Cranfield University / SWNS
A cheap new test using origami paper sensors can help detect infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, much earlier and easier than current methods, say scientists.
The innovative method identifies biomarkers in wastewater, enabling rapid tracking of diseases using the camera in a mobile phone—and costs only a buck for each use.
Cranfield University researchers in England built on work conducted during the Covid pandemic, saying the new test device could dramatically change how public health measures are directed in any future pandemics.
Testing wastewater is one of the main ways to assess the prevalence of infectious diseases. Scientists take samples from water treatment plants nationwide and use the results to understand which areas have the highest infection rates—a method that was used during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Professor Zhugen Yang led the development of the new sentinel sensors, working with scientists from the University of Glasgow and Zhejiang University in China.
He began the research in 2020 to develop a test to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Influenza A, and Influenza B in wastewater using a paper-based platform and ultraviolet torch or phone camera.
Until now, the most accurate ways of testing wastewater samples have been methods like the PCR test (polymerase chain reaction), which must be conducted in centralized laboratories by well-trained personnel.
That means samples are collected, stored, and transported under refrigeration to the lab location before being processed, which can take several days and is comparatively expensive.
Prof. Yang described the new test in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, calling it “rapid, user-friendly and portable”.
Wastewater samples are placed onto a wax-printed paper sheet which is folded in an ‘origami’ style. The paper contains chemicals that react to certain disease markers, triggering a fluorescent color to emerge.
Using a phone camera, the results can be read and the data collected easily shared.
“This could be a real game-changer when it comes to predicting disease rates and improving public health in the face of future pandemics.
“The simple test we have developed costs just £1 and uses the commonly available camera function in a mobile phone, making it readily accessible.”
At the peak of the pandemic in 2021, he performed tests at four quarantine hotels around Heathrow Airport.
The entire sample-to-answer process took less than 90 minutes compared to around four hours for a PCR test, with the process conducted in the basement of one of the hotels using minimal equipment.
Results showed that the new device gives results at least as accurate as the PCR test, but at a much lower cost—and can provide an early warning of disease in the community.
Yang says the device is particularly useful for areas with limited resource because of its ease of use, low cost and fast results.
“During Covid-19 we proved that fast community sewage analysis is a really effective way to track infectious diseases and help manage public health.”
In the future, it could potentially be used to track new variants and help to establish whether the variant is still spreading in the community, as well as monitoring antimicrobial resistance. Further development is being sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Scheme and a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
SHARE THE INNOVATION With Origami Lovers on Social Media…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of September 21, 2024
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The bird known as the gray-headed albatross makes long, continuous flights without touching down on the ground. I propose we nominate this robust traveler to be one of your inspirational animals in the coming months. I suspect that you, too, will be capable of prolonged, vigorous quests that unleash interesting changes in your life. I don’t necessarily mean your quests will involve literal long-distance travel. They may, but they might also take the form of vast and deep explorations of your inner terrain. Or maybe you will engage in bold efforts to investigate mysteries that will dramatically open your mind and heart.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
You are in a good position and frame of mind to go hunting for a novel problem or two. I’m half-joking, but I’m also very serious. I believe you are primed to track down interesting dilemmas that will bring out the best in you and attract the educational experiences you need. These provocative riddles will ensure that boring old riddles and paltry hassles won’t bother you. Bonus prediction: You are also likely to dream up an original new “sin” that will stir up lucky fun..
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Your spinning and weaving abilities will be strong in the coming weeks. I predict that your knack for creating sturdy, beautiful webs will catch the resources and influences you require. Like a spider, you must simply prepare the scenarios to attract what you need, then patiently relax while it all comes to you. Refining the metaphor further, I will tell you that you have symbolic resemblances to the spiders known as cross orbweavers. They produce seven different kinds of silk, each useful in its own way—and in a sense, so can you. Your versatility will help you succeed in interesting ways.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn basketball player JamesOn Curry had the briefest career of anyone who ever played in America’s top professional league. Around his birthday in 2010, while a member of the Los Angeles Clippers, he appeared on the court for 3.9 seconds—and never returned. Such a short-lived effort is unusual for the Capricorn tribe—and will not characterize your destiny in the coming months. I predict you will generate an intense outpouring of your sign’s more typical expressions: durability, diligence, persistence, tenacity, resilience, determination, resolve, and steadfastness. Ready to get underway in earnest?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
It’s a good time for you to embrace the serpent, metaphorically speaking. You may even enjoy riding and playing with and learning from the serpent. The coming weeks will also be a favorable phase for you to kiss the wind and consult with the ancestors and wrestle with the most fascinating questions you know. So get a wild look in your eyes, dear Aquarius. Dare to shed mediocre pleasures so you can better pursue spectacular pleasures. Experiment only with smart gambles and high-integrity temptations, and flee the other kinds. PS: If you challenge the past to a duel (a prospect I approve of), be well-armed with the future.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
The typical length of mating encounters for panda bears is from 30 seconds to two minutes. There was a dramatic exception to the rule in 2015, however. Lu Lu and Zhen Zhen, pandas living at the Sichuan Giant Panda Research Center in China, snuggled and embraced for 18 minutes. It was unprecedented. I encourage you, too, to break your previous records for tender cuddling in the coming weeks. The longer the cuddling lasts the more likely it is you will generate epiphanies and awakenings.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Few of the vegetables grown in the 21st century are in their original wild form. Many are the result of crossbreeding to increase the nutritional value of the food, boost its yield, improve its resistance to insect predators, and help it survive weather extremes. I invite you to apply the metaphor of crossbreeding to your life in the coming months. You will place yourself in maximum alignment with cosmic rhythms if you conjure up new blends. So be a mix master, Aries. Favor amalgamations and collaborations. Transform jumbles and hodgepodges into graceful composites. Make “alloy” and “hybrid” your words of power.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
“All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy,” quipped comedian Spike Milligan. I propose we make that your running joke for the next eight months. If there was ever a time when you could get rich more quickly, it would be between now and mid-2025. And the chances of that happening may be enhanced considerably if you optimize your relationship with work. What can you do now to help ensure you will be working at a well-paying job you like for years to come?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
The World Health Organization says that 2 billion people in the world don’t have facilities in their homes to wash their hands with soap and water. But it’s almost certain that you don’t suffer from this lack. Most likely, you get all the water you require to be secure and healthy. You have what you need to cook food and make drinks. You can take baths or showers whenever you want. You wash your clothes easily. Maybe you water a garden. I bring this to your attention because now is an excellent time to celebrate the water in your life. It’s also a favorable time to be extra fluid and flowing and juicy. Here’s a fun riddle for you: What could you do to make your inner life wetter and better lubricated?
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Cancerian rapper and actor Jaden Smith has won a few mid-level awards and has been nominated for a Grammy. But I was surprised that he said, “I don’t think I’m as revolutionary as Galileo, but I don’t think I’m not as revolutionary as Galileo.” If I’m interpreting his sly brag correctly, Jaden is suggesting that maybe he is indeed pretty damn revolutionary. I’m thrilled he said it because I love to see you Cancerians overcome your natural inclination to be overly humble and self-effacing. It’s OK with me if you sometimes push it too far. In the coming weeks, I am giving you a license to wander into the frontiers of braggadocio.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Research by psychologists at Queen’s University in Canada concluded that the average human has about 6,200 thoughts every day. Other studies suggest that 75% of our thoughts are negative, and 95 percent are repetitive. But here’s the good news, Leo: My astrological analysis suggests that the amount of your negative and repetitive thoughts could diminish in the coming weeks. You might even get those percentages down to 35 percent and 50 percent, respectively. Just imagine how refreshed you will feel. With all that rejuvenating energy coursing through your brain, you may generate positive, unique thoughts at an astounding rate. Take maximum advantage, please!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
You have probably heard the platitude, “Be cautious about what you wish for. You might get it.” The implied warning is that if your big desires are fulfilled, your life may change in unpredictable ways that require major adjustments. That’s useful advice. However, I have often found that the “major adjustments” necessary are often interesting and healing—strenuous, perhaps, but ultimately enlivening. In my vision of your future, Virgo, the consequences of your completed goal will fit that description. You will be mostly pleased with the adaptations you must undertake in response to your success.
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
Quote of the Day: “Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Photo by: Michael Niessl
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 power connections at the Sherco Coal Power Plant in Becker, MN - credit, MPCA Photos, CC 2.0.
The power connections at the Sherco Coal Power Plant in Becker, MN – credit, MPCA Photos, CC 2.0.
Researchers at the Berkeley National Labs have determined that oil, coal, and gas power plants still have a major role to play in America’s energy economy—as electrical sockets.
There are years of red tape needed for renewable energy projects to connect fully with the grid, but because coal and gas plants already negotiated that process long ago, one of their best uses for Americans in the future will be to act like a home electrical socket that the renewables could “plug” into.
In a feature piece on CNN, “experts” say that there are more clean energy projects waiting to be connected to the grid than there is power—from all sources—circulating in the grid right now; a startling statement considering the billions in borrowed money being spent to transition the US electrical grid to renewable sources.
Described by CNN as “seven years of bureaucracy and red tape,” attaching new solar and wind farms to the grid is so much more difficult than connecting them to a thermal power plant and piggybacking on that existing infrastructure.
“This should be one of the main strategies that we adopt going forward, because we already have so many existing assets, so much grid infrastructure and we don’t want to just throw them away,” said Umed Paliwal, a senior scientist at UC Berkeley and a lead author of a new study on the topic.
The study found that there are enough suitable lands around thermal power plants that are currently decommissioned or that run only as backup power sources to build 1,000 gigawatts of renewable capacity that could all use the grid connections at the thermal plant to deliver clean energy years ahead of schedule, if they weren’t built next to one.
In the piece at CNN, Sherco’s aging power plant in Minnesota is currently awaiting decommissioning, but its power grid infrastructure is being used by an enormous solar farm from Xcel Energy—one of the largest in the country.
“Any fossil fuel power plant does not operate every single hour of the day,” Sonia Aggarwal, CEO of clean energy think tank Energy Innovation told CNN. “[T]hat big plug, this really valuable resource that everyone is waiting years to get access to—that’s just sitting there, not being used.
Like an aging sports star who’s not quite ready to call it quits, the energy sources that powered America’s past may yet have a game or two left in the tank to help the team, so to speak, move ahead to a brighter future.
SHARE These Remarkable Facts And Figures With Your Friends…
A mature queen conch - creidt, Jennifer Doerr, NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Galveston.
A mature queen conch – credit, Jennifer Doerr, NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Galveston.
This incredible critter is the queen conch, and look out fellas she’s single.
She’s one of many queen conch bachelorettes being saved by a new initiative in Florida that’s relocating these endangered mollusks to deeper waters.
Warming seas off the Florida Keys have made this species lethargic and survival-focused, impeding their reproductive activities. Marine biologists hope that in the cooler, deeper waters, they will pair up and mate without issue.
The small but dedicated team of mollusk matchmakers at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) have moved over 200 individuals of this species of near-shore conch to an offshore reef in the Upper Keys from waters around the city of Marathon.
The Gulf of Mexico is a tumultuous environment for native sea life, with oil spills, hurricanes, and some of the fastest-warming water temperatures on the planet.
“It’s because we’re dealing with very shallow water, too cold in the winter, OK in the spring, and in the summer it gets too hot,” Gabriel Delgado, a research scientist and conch specialist with the FWC who played chief matchmaker during the relocation project, told the Guardian.
“The animals shut down. Instead of going into reproduction, they shunt their energy into basically survival and never really develop their reproductive organs very well.”
In a successful example of crowdsourcing, the FWC asked the public to help locate queen conchs near the shore that could be relocated.
“We asked the public to keep their eyes open. They reported them online, some people emailed, and we used community volunteers to gather up the 208 that we moved in June to an offshore aggregation,” said Delgado.
It’s been more than a year since the relocation happened, and while breeding activity hasn’t been recorded yet, the most recent dive to check up on the loveshells found them all still mingling in the reintroduction zone.
SHARE This Hardwork On Behalf Of A Special Species With Your Friends…
A Scottish woman has been leaving notes and trinkets of affirmation in random places around her hometown.
Reading “I AM ENOUGH: Radiate Positivity” she hopes they serve to put smiles on the faces of those who find them and lift the spirit of the whole city of Glasgow.
Education worker and admitted “Swifty,” Beth McNeill said she made around 70 of the bracelets for the Wembly Leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, where fans regularly exchange them with each other.
But dealing with depression and anxiety herself, McNeill felt there was a place for the bracelets beyond the concert venue, and began leaving them inside envelopes around Glasgow.
“It’s infectious really, making someone happy in turns makes you happy. I think more than ever we need the little things in life to put a smile on our face,” McNeill told the Daily Record. “We never know what someone is going through, if my bracelet puts a smile on someone’s face that is having a tough time or not it’s a win for me.”
– credit Beth McNeill, released to the media.
The envelopes read “Open Me!” and pictures are beginning to appear on social media from people discovering them.
“I like to be that cheerleader for my students. I came up with the idea that if I can put these affirmations on bracelets it can be a lovely reminder on your wrist how wonderful a person you are, that you aren’t your anxiety, you can get through the day,” said McNeill.
SHARE This Woman’s Great Idea To Spread Positivity In Scotland…
Spanish technical archaeologists have identified ancient irrigation ducts in desert regions around the world using AI.
The AI was trained to pour through old spy satellite photos taken during the Cold War and look for evidence of underground aqueducts that carried water from highlands or mountains down into baking plains.
Unlike the iconic Roman above-ground aqueduct, these ‘qanats’ as they’re called, contained channels dug underground that were punctuated by a series of vertical shafts to allow airflow and maintenance. Being below ground prevented them from drying out in the desert sun.
A collection of qanats in Iran was included in a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016 that ensconced the Great Wall of Gorgon, and others are pending designation elsewhere. These fascinating innovations are found cross-culturally in North Africa, South America, China, and Central Asia.
The earliest qanats examined by the AI may have been dug 3,000 years ago, and unless one is standing right next to the access shafts, they are extremely difficult to locate and identify.
“These systems were extremely innovative,” Hector Orengo at the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology in Spain who led the study, told New Scientist. “They allowed people to live in areas where it would have been unthinkable before.”
US Cold War spy satellites photographed vast areas of the globe for the intelligence services, and Orengo et al. trained their AI to examine these for signs of qanats in the Middle East and North Africa taken between 1959 and 1986 by the HEXAGON satellite.
The AI was trained on satellite pictures of qanats known to archaeologists, like those in Rissani, Morocco; Afghanistan’s Maiwand region, and the baking hot Gorgan plain in Iran.
The AI provided the team with guesses as to where a qanat may be located, and in 88% of these instances, it guessed correctly. Of these discoveries, the AI was able to identify the entire length of the qanat 62% of the time.
The newly-trained AI should be ready to examine photographs for undiscovered qanats across these regions—a method unquantifiably more efficient and safer than using human surveyors.
SHARE This Awesome Use Of AI With Your Friends Who Like History…
Quote of the Day: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” – Edmund Burke
Photo by: Bekah Russom
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?
UPS driver Raheem Cooper was passing through his normal route in the Georgian town of Valdosta when he saw an elderly woman collapsed on her driveway.
Calling emergency services, Cooper stayed with the woman, identified later as Marie Coble, all the while calling her ‘grandmother.’
The woman was checked into the hospital where emergency brain surgery had to be performed on a subdural hematoma. She made it through the harrowing procedure and began the road to recovery in the hospital.
Kayla Cochran, Coble’s granddaughter, heard of what Cooper had done for her and managed to track him down.
“I found his number and called him and told him thank you,” Cochran told WALB News. “That he was truly an angel to our family to have found her because if he wouldn’t have, she would have died that day.”
“Five days after the surgery, she hadn’t talked at all,” Cochran said. “And when he came into the room, she brightened up and actually pushed herself up and gave him a hug. That’s the first time since this whole thing has happened.”
Following up, Cooper started a GoFuneMe to raise money for the family, seeing as how members had to drive in from out of town to stay with Coble while she recovered. He just wants to lend a helping hand, he insists, and kicked the fund drive off with $100 of his own money.
Earlier this week Raheem Cooper, received a letter from UPS’s chief executive officer for his acts of heroism. At his local branch, a coworker got him tickets to the Florida State University football game, and the supervisor presented him with a plaque in his honor.
WATCH the story below from WALB…
SHARE The Story Of Raheem The Angel in Brown With Your Friends…
Juan Pardo scanning his Pokémon card collection – SWNS
Juan Pardo scanning his Pokémon card collection – SWNS
A woman was left stunned when she discovered that her husband was sitting on a small fortune thanks to his childhood Pokémon card collection.
Because Madeline Brice and her husband Juan Pardo are each one year either side of 30, it means they were born bang in the middle of the emergence of Pokémon in the US, which took the toy and video game market by storm and never let up.
Pardo began collecting Pokémon cards at the age of five after becoming obsessed with the Pokémon television show that arrived on these shores along with the cards. He owns 1,500 and has preserved them safely in laminated card collection sleeves.
Finding an app that allowed him to scan each card and see its value across collectible markets, Pardo was shocked to see that many were worth triple-digit sums. After scanning the first 670 cards, the reported value was above $2k.
Many of the cards were bought by Pardo’s mom after he had stopped collecting them in the lead-up to attending university. His mom kept going for old time’s sake.
“It’s my collection but it’s mainly her thing,” he admitted to the British news agency SWNS. “I was totally shocked when I realized how much they’re worth.”
Juan’s most valuable card is a Reverse Holo Charmander currently valued at $229.
Though the collection could fetch a decent sum, Pardo has no plans to sell his childhood treasure anytime soon, not least because another 20 years in storage might see the value go up even further.
SHARE This Man’s Fortune With Anyone You Know Who Might Have Some Cards…
Study author and big wave surfer Scott Atkinson doing what he loves - Conservation International, released.
Study author and big wave surfer Scott Atkinson doing what he loves – Conservation International, released.
Nearly 90 million metric tonnes of planet-warming carbon have been found surrounding surf breaks across the world, making these coastal locations essential climate allies and ideal locations for conservation efforts.
The news came from a groundbreaking study by conservationists examining forests, mangroves, and marshes around surf breaks—submerged features like rocks or reefs that create great surfing areas.
All the better as far as the surfers themselves are concerned. Protecting these coastal ecosystems from development means more space, and more waves, for them.
For the study, researchers analyzed more than 4,800 popular surf spots across 113 countries and found that immediately surrounding areas (within 0.6 miles or 1 kilometer of the waves) store over 88 million tonnes of irrecoverable carbon. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual emissions from 77 million gas-powered cars.
When the surrounding area is expanded to 3 kilometers or 1.8 miles, the amount of carbon stored in the ecosystem more than doubles to 191.7 million tonnes. Irrecoverable carbon refers to the carbon-rich lands humanity must protect to prevent the worst impacts of climate change according to the most up-to-date models.
“This research demonstrates the enormous role that protection of surf breaks and surrounding coastal areas can have in our global fight to reverse biodiversity loss and combat climate change,” said Scott Atkinson, a surfer, senior director of surf conservation at Conservation International, and an author of the study.
“Our study shows where we must now focus on legally protecting these areas. Surfers across the world are fantastic allies for efforts like this—they love the ocean, know that it is threatened, and are extremely motivated to protect it. They’ve been ‘on board,’ so to speak, helping to lead the establishment of all the Surf Protected Areas we’ve partnered to create.”
To date, Conservation International—which partners with the surfers from the Save the Waves Coalition, has contributed to the establishment of 30 Surf Protected Areas in Indonesia, Costa Rica, and Peru. These Surf Protected Areas are centered on surf breaks and seek to protect their larger surrounding ecosystems including coastal forests, mangrove, beaches, seagrass, coral reefs, and the waves themselves.
Over half of these (23 Surf Protected Areas) have been established in Indonesia, which was used in the paper as a case study in creating an effective network of community-based protections. Collectively, the 23 locations form Indonesia’s initial Surf Protected Areas Network covering more than 60,000 hectares, which can be expanded to hundreds of world-class surf sites across the incredibly biodiverse and carbon-rich country.
Atkinson also highlighted the positive impacts of the community-based Surf Protected Areas on Morotai Island in Indonesia, the focus of the paper’s case study.
“They are protecting precious marine and coastal ecosystems and strengthening community bonds and cultural heritage. Local people on Morotai have surfed on handmade wooden boards since at least World War II and have a strong surf culture,” he said.
“Additionally, local surf and conservation-related livelihoods are starting to flourish, with eco-friendly tourism and sustainable fishing practices becoming the norm. The community’s involvement in conservation efforts has fostered a sense of pride and ownership, showcasing the power of grassroots initiatives in achieving lasting environmental and social benefits.”
SHARE This Tubular News With Your Friends Who Love The Waves…
Even with things that are generally ‘good for you,’ continually adding more of them to your schedule has diminishing returns that may actually be working to grind you down and burn you out.
ABC News AU’s Emily McGrorey recently recounted a visit to her psychologist where she expressed her desire to start a morning meditation practice, but instead, was recommended to abandon the plan—along with several other habits she had already built up, because it was just too much.
She was told she needed a ‘to-don’t’ list.
Rachel Botsman, a Trust Fellow from Oxford University, is credited in the profession for coming up with to-don’t lists.
Sitting down and writing out goals, tasks, or objectives can lead to valuable neurological orientation, and this phenomenon is typically leveraged through to-do lists. The same principle works in reverse. Taking time to write out the overburdening and absolutely non-essential activities that were clogging up McGrorey’s day made her realize just how non-essential or postponeable some of them were.
Amantha Imber, an organizational psychologist and podcast host who spoke to McGrorey on the topic, said that even though time is finite, we’re always adding more things to our to-do list in the hope that it will get us ahead.
I’ve felt this before: if I eat lunch while working rather than take a break to do so, I can finish 30 minutes earlier, which will allow me to do ___ earlier, so I have time to do ___ after I exercise. That way I’ll be ready to start dinner at 5:40.
“Obviously, there are things in life that do drain me, but I have to say yes to them because as a mother, for example, some things just have to get done. But a lot of the time, when I think about the things that are draining me, they’re things that I can either stop doing or that I can delegate,” Dr. Imber told ABC News.
Quote of the Day: “To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.” – Auguste Rodin
Photo by: Navaneeth Kishor, CC licensed photo (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?
Chromosomes pictured (blue) inside a human cell nucleus. Image by Steve Mabon and Tom Misteli, NCI Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
Chromosomes pictured (blue) inside a human cell nucleus. Image by Steve Mabon and Tom Misteli, NCI Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
With the flick of a light, researchers have found a way to rearrange life’s basic tapestry, bending DNA strands back on themselves to reveal the material nature of the genome.
Scientists have long debated the physics of chromosomes—structures at the deepest interior of a cell that are made of long DNA strands tightly coiled around millions of proteins.
Do they behave more like a liquid, a solid, or something in between? Much progress in understanding and treating diseases like cancer depends on the answer.
A Princeton team has now developed a way to probe chromosomes and quantify their mechanical properties: how much force is required to move parts of a chromosome around and how well it snaps back to its original position.
According to their findings, the answer to the material question is that the chromosome acts in some ways like fluid, and in others with elasticity. By leveraging that insight in exacting detail, the team was able to physically manipulate DNA in new and precisely controlled ways.
“What’s happening here is truly incredible,” said Cliff Brangwynne, the director of Princeton’s Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute and principal investigator of the study. “We haven’t been able to have this precise control over nuclear organization on such quick timescales before.”
The key to the new method lies in the researchers’ ability to generate tiny liquid-like droplets within a cell’s nucleus. The droplets form like oil in water and grow larger when exposed to a specific wavelength of blue light. Because the droplets are initiated at a programmable protein—a modified version of the protein used in the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR—they can also attach the droplet to DNA in precise locations, targeting genes of interest.
With their ability to control this process using light, the team found a way to grow two droplets stuck to different sequences, merge the two droplets together, and finally shrink the resulting droplet, pulling the genes together as the droplet recedes. The entire process takes about 10 minutes.
Physically repositioning DNA in this way represents a completely new direction for engineering cells to improve health and could lead to new treatments for disease, according to the researchers. For example, they showed they could pull two distant genes toward each other until the genes touch. Established theory predicts this could lead to greater control over gene expression or gene regulation—life’s most fundamental processes.
In order to fit the human genome into each cell’s nucleus, DNA and the chromosomes they contain need to be tightly coiled. However, since DNA is both a carrier of information and a physical molecule, the cell needs to unfurl the tightly coiled parts of the DNA to copy its information and make proteins.
The areas along the genome that are more likely to be expressed are less rigid physically and easier to open up. The areas that are silenced are physically more coiled and compact and therefore harder for the cell to open up and read, like an instruction manual that opens more easily to some pages than others.
To study chromatin in more detail, postdoctoral scholar Amy R. Strom and recently graduated Ph.D. student Yoonji Kim, built upon previous research from the Brangwynne lab that used laser light to create and fuse droplets together. In this new work, they utilized an additional component that attaches droplets to specific locations on the DNA strands and directs their movement quickly and precisely via surface tension-mediated forces also known as capillary forces, which Princeton researchers had suggested could be ubiquitous in living cells.
Previously, moving DNA like this relied on random interactions over a period of hours or even days. Now that they can move the strands around in a controlled way, they can start to look at whether the genes in their new positions are expressed differently. This is potentially important for furthering our understanding of the physical mechanisms and material science of gene expression.
Strom said that scientists have looked at the stiffness of the nucleus by poking at it from the outside and taking a measurement of the whole nucleus. Scientists can also look at one gene and see if it is turned on or off. But the space in between is not well understood.
“We can use this technology to build a map of what’s going on in there and better understand when things are disorganized like in cancer,” said Strom.
This new tool is poised to help researchers understand gene expression better, but it is not intended to edit the DNA. “Our tool does not actually cleave the DNA sequences like CRISPR does,” said Kim.
“CRISPR is really good for diseases that are related to the need to cut and actually change the DNA sequence,” said Strom. This technology could work for a different class of diseases, especially those related to protein imbalances such as cancer.
It’s probably fair to say that Starry Night is the second most famous painting ever made behind the Mona Lisa, but what its many admirers likely do not know is that its famous swelling skies are “alive with real-world physics.”
Van Gogh’s brush strokes create an illusion of sky movement so convincing it led atmospheric scientists specializing in marine and fluid dynamics in China and France to wonder how closely it aligns with the physics of real skies.
They explained that while the atmospheric motion in the painting cannot be measured, the brushstrokes can act as a stand-in.
And, after measuring the relative scale and spacing of the whirling strokes, the researchers say van Gogh “accurately captures” cascading energy.
They discovered what they described as “hidden turbulence” in the painter’s depiction of the sky.
“The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” in this discovery, said study author Dr. Huang Yongxiang. “With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”
To reveal hidden turbulence, the research team used brush strokes in the painting like leaves swirling in a funnel of wind to examine the shape, energy, and scaling of atmospheric characteristics of the otherwise invisible atmosphere.
They then used the relative brightness, or luminance of the varying paint colors as a stand-in for the kinetic energy of physical movement.
“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” said Dr. Huang. “Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
The study, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, analyzed the spatial scale of the painting’s 14 main whirling shapes to find out if they align with the cascading energy theory that describes the kinetic energy transfer from large to small-scale turbulent flows in the atmosphere.
They discovered the overall picture aligns with Kolmogorov’s law, which predicts atmospheric movement and scale according to measured inertial energy.
Drilling down to the microcosm within the paint strokes themselves, where relative brightness is diffused throughout the canvas, the research team also discovered an alignment with Batchelor’s scaling, which describes energy laws in small-scale, passive scalar turbulence following atmospheric movement.
They said finding both scalings in one atmospheric system is rare, and it was a “big driver” for their research.
SHARE This Wild, New Discovery Hidden In Such A Well-Known Painting…
Spirostreptus sculptus (Photo by Dmitry Telnov/NHM London, UK)
Spirostreptus sculptus (Photo by Dmitry Telnov/NHM London, UK)
It may be the very definition of a creepy crawly, but this species of giant millipede was a major discovery for a recent scientific expedition to Madagascar.
Not seen in 126 years, it was part of a bevy of species identified by scientists among the trees and waterfalls in a remote section of the largest forest on the island, called Makira.
The expedition was part of Re:wild’s Search for Lost Species program, on the progress of which GNN has reported substantially over the last four years. It included teams of scientists and conservationists from 4 different organizations, as well as local guides.
Different specialized team members were searching for mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates that have not had a documented sighting in at least a decade or more, but are not assessed as extinct by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The full team, which numbered more than 30 people, searched Makira for several weeks in September 2023 and spent several months analyzing their results.
“In the past the Search for Lost Species has primarily looked for one or two species on each expedition, but there are now 4,300 species that we know of around the world that have not been documented in a decade or more,” said Christina Biggs, lost species officer for Re:wild, whose eDNA work during the expedition detected 37 additional vertebrate species that the taxonomic experts didn’t sight.
“Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot and Makira is an underexplored area within the country, so we decided to pilot a new model for lost species searches there. We convened a group of scientists to search for as many species as possible, and it proved successful.”
The expedition team initially had a list of 30 lost species they were hoping to find in Makira. The species on the list included 3 mammals, 3 fish, 7 reptiles, 12 insects, and 5 spiders. With the help of local guides and fishermen, the team found the 3 fish species on the list highlighted by the Makira rainbow fish, not seen in 20 years.
Setting up a light trap in Makira to survey invertebrates at night during a lost species expedition in September 2023. (Photo by Merlijn Jocque)
“When we didn’t find anything during the first five days of the expedition it was very frustrating,” said Tsilavina Ravelomanana, fish biologist at Antananarivo University, who had been to Makira 20 years earlier to survey freshwater fish. “We sampled a small tributary of the Antainambalana River, then the main river, then upstream, and then downstream, but we still didn’t find any fish.”
Two of the expedition’s local guides, Melixon and Edmé, hiked around a steep waterfall and over mountains to villages that were within a few days’ walk of the expedition’s base camp along the Antainambalana River. After several days, the guides were able to find a Makira rainbow fish, a common fish to local communities, and brought it back to the camp in a bucket of water.
Ptychochromis makira, a species lost to science since 2003. It was rediscovered in 2023 with the help of local guides and fishermen (Photo by John C. MittermeierAmerican Bird Conservancy)
The semi-translucent fish is only a few inches long. The guides were also able to find Ptychoromis makira, which biologists think may only live in one small area near Andaparaty, and is a rare species—even to local communities.
Makira proved to be home to several lost species of insects including bugs and some that were not even on the initial list of lost species for the area. Entomologists found two different species of ant-like flower beetles that had been lost to science since 1958. However, the most unexpected rediscovered lost species was a giant, dark brown millipede.
“I personally was most surprised and pleased by the fact that the giant millipede Spirostreptus sculptus, not uncommon in Makira Forest, appeared to be another lost species known only from the type specimen described in 1897,” said Dmitry Telnov, an entomologist on the expedition team. “The longest specimen of this species we observed in Makira was a really gigantic female measuring 27.5 centimeters [10.8 inches] long.”
New species of spider Madagascarchaea sp. discovered during Makira expedition (Photo by John C. MittermeierAmerican Bird Conservancy)
The expedition team also found a variety of spider species in Makira, including five jumping spiders that were lost to science and 17 spiders that are new to science. The longest-lost spider was the jumping spider Tomocyrba decollata, which had not had a documented sighting since 1900, when it was first described by science.
The most unexpected discovery was a new species of zebra spider. One evening a hanging egg sac in the entrance of a small cave caught the eye of one of the team members.
“I immediately recognized them as something special,” said Brogan Pett, director of the SpiDiverse working group at the Biodiversity Inventory for Conservation and doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter.
“Pendulous egg sacs are one of the characteristics of the family of zebra spiders this new species belongs to. I crawled a short way inside the cave and saw a few adult spiders guarding egg sacs—they were quite large spiders and it was remarkable that they had gone unrecognized for so long.”
Although the expedition found nearly two dozen lost species, there were several that the expedition team was unable to find including the Masoala fork-marked lemur; a large chameleon, Calumma vatososa, meaning “beautiful stone” in Malagasy, and the recently rediscovered dusky tetraka. The lemur has not had a documented sighting since 2004 and the chameleon since 2006.
The dusky tetraka was rediscovered by the Search for Lost Birds in Madagascar in December 2022 and January 2023 in two different locations in Andapa and Masoala. Makira is between these sites, and ornithologists were hoping to determine if the species also lives there. They were unable to find any of the cryptic olive and yellow birds during the expedition, but they are not ready to rule out the forest as a habitat for the species yet.
“The Makira Forest has the potential for two rare bird species, the dusky tetraka, and the Madagascar serpent eagle, but we were not able to find them this time,” said Lily Arison Rene de Roland, Madagascar program director for the Peregrine Fund, another organization that joined the expedition.
Madagascar has one of the highest rates of endemism of anywhere on planet Earth. For millions of years, plants and animals have evolved in seclusion—creating unique ecosystems that don’t exist anywhere else.
SHARE These Hidden Natural Wonders Of Evolution With Your Friends…
When Dover Police Department responders picked up the phone on August 27th, who knows what was more surprising: that the caller’s ship was sinking, or that he had an East European accent.
The phone call arrived in the US State of Delaware’s capital city, but the man, an Albanian, was talking about the English Channel—over 3,500 miles away.
He was trying to call Dover, one of the most prominent channel port cities in southern England, not Dover, Delaware, but the police dispatcher on the end of the line didn’t waste any time explaining this.
Instead, Communications Operator MacKenzie Atkinson started carefully taking down critical information about the man’s situation, including the name and coordinates of the vessel—piloted by the caller’s brother, who had earlier called him for help getting in touch with emergency services after it started sinking.
Fortunately for the Albanian brothers in England, Atkinson, on the other side of the Atlantic, had recently completed a course from the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch and followed the protocol for a vessel in distress.
Within four minutes, Atkinson’s colleague Connor Logan established contact with the French Coast Guard, His Majesty’s Coastguard, the United Kingdom’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s Coordination Center, and, eventually, the correct ‘Dover’ police station.
On September 5th, the MCACC confirmed that the vessel had been located and all aboard rescued.
Dover (Delaware) police officials have nominated Atkinson, Logan, and two other communications officers on duty during the emergency for a Distinguished Unit Commendation.
“The caller had conducted an internet search for the `Dover Police Department’ and the first search result on the screen proved to be the Dover, Delaware Police Department,” police officials said in a news release Thursday. “The family member thought they were calling Dover, England but was connected with our agency here in the United States.”
SHARE This Dramatic Case Of Mistaken Identity (And Happy Ending) With Your Friends From Delaware…
Quote of the Day: “It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” – Honore de Balzac (Yesterday was Voter Registration Day in America–Check out how to register at the link…)
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?
