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370,000 Acres of Rainforest and Granite Peaks Now Protected in French Guiana

By
Andy Corbley
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Hilly terrain in French Guiana - credit Lesly Derksen, unsplash
Hilly terrain in French Guiana – credit Lesly Derksen, unsplash

As part of new wildlands protection law, the French Government has announced the creation of a new nature reserve in French Guiana spanning 370,000 acres.

Called the Rocky Peaks of Armontabo, the reserve includes giant, isolated granite mountains surrounded by intact rainforest of rich biodiverse value.

The same law also protected 7 other landscapes in France proper, but by comparison add up to little more than 2,400 acres.

French Guiana contains over one-thousand species of tree, and has one of the highest forest-integrity index scores of any territory on Earth, with 41% of its land area comprised just of the Amazon Rainforest alone. Other forest biomes are also present.

It’s already host to one of the world’s largest national parks, Guiana Amazon National Park—also technically the largest in “Europe.”

The Armontabo Peaks are a feature of a geo-eco region called the Guiana Shield which stretches across the Guianas, Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia, and which is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

Their reserve takes the amount of French territory under “strong protections” closer to the country’s goal of 10% by 2030, and almost achieves the goal for 180,000 hectares of additional protections in Guiana by the same date.

“In concrete terms, this translates into less pressure on natural environments and stronger protection for species and habitats,” says Monique Barbut, France’s minister for ecological transition, biodiversity and international climate and nature negotiations.

The northeast corner of South America is rapidly becoming one of the most protected areas on Earth. Along with Armontabo and Guiana Amazon in French Guiana, neighboring Suriname announced protections for 25 million acres last year.

RAINFORESTS ON THE UP AND UP: America’s Largest Rainforest Safe from Logging Thanks to Alaska Court Ruling

The country is 90% forested, so virtually every last one of those acres will protect trees and the Amazon-style rainforest they form.

Re:wild, a conservation organization working actively in the Amazon and other South American landscapes, reports that more than 700 birds, 100 species of amphibians, and many charismatic mammals such as lowland tapirs, jaguars, giant river otters, and 8 different primates range throughout the country.

MORE SOUTH AMERICAN PROTECTIONS: Locals Finally Save ‘the Yosemite of South America’ After Decade Long Battle with Industrialist Who Owned it

“I’ve worked in Suriname for 50 years and I am absolutely delighted that President Geerlings-Simons has made this historic and unprecedented commitment to maintain Suriname’s forest cover at this level within her first two months in office,” said Russell Mittermeier, chief conservation officer at Re:wild.

“This sets a new standard for the Amazonian region as a whole, which has suffered from serious deforestation in recent decades.”

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Unique Double Cochlear Implant Surgery Lets Twins Hear Mom’s Voice For the First Time–Together

By
Andy Corbley
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Mom Emily with Artie, Jack, and their older brother - family photo
Mom Emily with Artie, Jack, and their older brother – family photo

In what is believed to be the first surgical program of its kind in Australia, a pair of profoundly deaf twins have received cochlear implants at the same time.

The marathon 8-hour surgery involved 4 implants on 4 ears and 2 boys, all done in order to minimize the impact of pre and post surgical preparation on the family, and for the twins—who survived a premature birth—to make another important milestone together: hearing mom’s voice for the first time.

Artie and Jack were born prematurely due to a genetic condition, and though they’ve grown up healthy in many ways, they couldn’t hear a fire engine if it were next to their head.

A cochlear implant is a small device that transmits sound directly to the hearing nerve while bypassing the ear. It’s fixed under the skin and held in place with a magnet that connects to an external device mounted above the ear helix.

In April, ear-nose-and-throat surgeon Rithvik Reddy operated on both at once in what is believed to be the first time this procedure has been organized this way.

After a recovery period, Artie and Jack went to the Shepherd Center, a provider that helps children who experience hearing loss in New South Wales, to calibrate the implants to each child’s needs, and, at long last, turn them on.

Their mother, Emily Porter, spoke with ABC News AU about that moment.

“It was incredible and emotional … for them to turn their head to the sound of my voice and see their little eyes widen at the sound of that was just, it’s just mind-blowing.”

In comparison to other Australian states, New South Wales has for years had less revenue for cochlear implant funding assistance.

HEARING LOSS REVERSED: 10 out of 10 Patients with Congenital Deafness Have Hearing Restored in Children’s Gene Therapy Trial

Covering Artie and Jack’s surgery, ABC News spoke with the NSW government and Health Minister Ryan Park to inquire about the deficit compared to other states, and received a reply that AUD$20 million would be provided in next year’s budget to organizations like the Shepherd Center—specifically for helping parents afford cochlear implants and surgery.

“I think this will be one of the most important decisions I make as a part of this budget and indeed during my time as a health minister,” said Minister Park. “These kids deserve the very best start to life and we’re hopefully playing a role in delivering that for them and their families.”

GOOD AUSTRALIA: Salt Water Restores Native Queensland Ecosystems After Dozens of Tidal Gates Removed

Though they will need extensive therapy for the rest of their childhood, Mrs. Porter and her husband Ewan are looking forward to the future—and to every morning when they and their first born son Tommy, get to turn on Artie and Jack’s implants, and bring them back into the wonderful world of sound which for so long they had lived apart from.

“They smile … you can tell that they’re understanding what you’re saying. You’re talking to them … it really is a gift and a miracle,” Mr. Porter said.

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Firemen Rushed a 5-year old’s Fingertips to Hospital Where She Recovered and Painted a Thank-You Picture for Them

By
Andy Corbley
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Olive meets the firefighters who saved her fingers - Essex Fire and Rescue Service
Olive meets the firefighters who saved her fingers – Essex Fire and Rescue Service

A 5-year-old who had her fingertips sliced off in a freak merry-go-round accident recently visited the station of the firefighters who saved them.

As Olive was rushed to the hospital, a group of 8 “Red Watch” volunteers at the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service frantically searched for the severed digits in the grass.

Finding all of them and putting them on ice, the firefighters hopped in their engine and with sirens blaring, delivered them to Broomsfield Hospital where they were successfully reattached.

8 weeks after the incident, Olive was able to visit Rayleigh Weir Fire Station to meet the team, bringing the perfect thank-you gift: paintings of them and their fire engine done with the same hand that was operated on.

“We’re incredibly grateful for what they did that day. Their determination and care meant so much to us as a family,” said Olive’s mother Linda, remarking how quickly everything had happened, but how the Red Watch didn’t waste a second.

“Our firefighters showed great professionalism, determination and care in supporting Olive and her family,” said group manager Dave Walpole, who leads the South East Command at Essex Fire and Rescue.

MORE FIREFIGHTERS AT WORK: 

“While Olive was receiving treatment, crews remained focused on doing everything they could to assist. It’s great to see how well she is recovering, and I know Red Watch loved welcoming her to the station.”

While visiting, the Red Watch presented Olive with a certificate of bravery, signed by Chief Fire Officer, Rick Hylton.

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Italy’s Forest Cover is Larger Than Agriculture Land for the First Time Since the Middle Ages

By
Andy Corbley
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A view from a mountain town down into the Valle Ossola, Piemonte region - credit, Andrew Corbley
A view from a mountain town down into the Valle Ossola, Piemonte region – credit, Andrew Corbley

For the first time since the Middle Ages, Italy has more woodland than agricultural land.

Forests now stretch across 60,000 square miles of the Italian Peninsula, overly concentrated in mountain areas, but which nevertheless represent the gradual reversion of cultivated land to woodland again.

The milestone was officially hit in 2020, but only revealed this week thanks to a report published by National Union of Mountain Municipalities and Entities.

The report stresses the forest’s role providing work for free as a major net benefit from this reforestation.

In a single Italian municipality, called Marcetelli in the Rieti Province, where 94% of the land is covered in trees, the combined natural functions of the forests to store carbon, filter water and air, and to prevent erosion, would cost some $9.5 million if industrial solutions had to be sought.

Additionally, the increase in forested acreage is creating a somewhat ironic reversal of rural Italy’s emigration crisis.

For the last 2 decades, young people have increasingly left mountain and rural-plains areas for the big cities, resulting in the abandonment of marginal land or traditionally farmed/pastured lands, as well as an emptying of small towns—many of which have habitation records going back to medieval times.

Since 2021, however, 932 Italian municipalities showed a positive net migration of 10 per 1,000 inhabitants, with a significant share of these municipalities being located in heavily forested areas.

Discounting the coastlines, Italy’s geography is pretty straightforward. The Alps give way to the pre-Alpine hills which fall into the North Italian Plain, which give way to the Apennines until you reach the far south. These three mountain regions and the 3,598 municipalities nested therein account for three-quarters of Italy’s total forested area, even though they harbor just 13.5% of the country’s population.

It’s a statistic that captures their rurality, but also highlights the benefit beyond these trends in migration.

For locally endangered species like bears and wolves, more woods in mountain areas will go a long way toward supporting their populations.

There are ample opportunities to use these new forests for eco-tourism and sustainable forestry, while expansion of habitat for animals like wild boar and red deer offers increased bounty for Italy’s hunters who supply so many national restaurants with these favored game meats.

NOTIZIE D’ITALIA: Italy Unifies its Historic Pilgrimage Trails to Offer Slower, More Intimate Tourism

The report nonetheless points out that many of these forests weren’t just appearing out of nowhere—they’re taking over agricultural land where farmers and ranchers used to ply there own trade.

All things being equal, however, the supply of farmland and pasture in Italy was clearly in a glut, otherwise the demand for agricultural products would have kept farming families there to satisfy it. In economic terms, the demand for living close to nature has grown, while the demand from living in farming communities has declined.

A GREENER EUROPE: Herd of Bison Reintroduced in Europe Are Climate Heroes–Helping Store CO2 Equal to 43,000 Cars

Therefore, though the report colors the loss of farmland as an economic decline, it cannot be logically said to be so.

Those seeking to experience some of these rich woodland ecosystems on a trip to the Peninsula can find in the data some clear signals: of the 5 most-wooded municipalities in Italy, 2 are in the province of Perugia, and 2 are found in Udine.

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“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.” – George Washington Carver

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Good News Network
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Credit: Getty Images for Unsplash+

Quote of the Day: “Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.” – George Washington Carver

Photo by: Getty Images for Unsplash+

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Credit: Getty Images for Unsplash+

Good News in History, June 26

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Good News Network
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Left, US release cover, right original UK release

29 years ago today, the first installment of the Harry Potter book series – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in the UK under Bloomsbury. It won most of the British book awards that were judged by children. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling fiction in August 1999 and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has been translated into at least 73 other languages, and sold 120 million copies, making it the third best-selling book of all time. READ more about the book’s acclaim… (1997)

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Million Dollar Makeover Turns Old Railroad Bridge into City’s Trendiest Venue With a View

By
Andy Corbley
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Former railroad bridge now serves as a public gathering space over the Kansas River – Credit: Thornton Tomasetti
Former railroad bridge now serves as a public gathering space over the Kansas River – Credit: Thornton Tomasetti

GNN has previously reported on heritage American architecture finding new life as hospitality and entertainment centers.

On the Kansas River, a 120-year-old railroad bridge has been infused with the labor and love of both states the trains used to pass through, and has been resurrected into a restaurant and event space plus walking path.

The Rock Island Bridge opened this April, with a full opening of all areas slated for mid-summer. Its CEO, Mike Zeller, holds a 66-year lease on the structure received from the united authority of Wyandotte County Kansas and Kansas City Missouri.

Zeller was the “band leader” behind the project, which started on a boat trip up the Kansas where he passed the old rail bridge which seemed like others he remembered loitering on as a young man; an object that something should be done with

10 years later, in 2017 he founded the company that would lead the bridge’s renovation: Flying Truss LLC, which after several years of begging, pitching, and brainstorming, managed to coalesce a coalition which Zeller called a “P6 approach” for public-private-philanthropy-people-purpose-process.

Speaking with Engineering News Record, Zeller said that some 35 local businesses donated materials and labor for the job—everything from the big neon entrance sign made by Hammer Out Design, to a local legal firm which worked pro bono for 7 years.

Many ideas were floated out, from being entirely a part of the city’s burgeoning trail network to a place were food vendors would work out of shipping containers. Eventually it was agreed that there’d be a two-story restaurant, an event venue, and an open-air space that would connect with the levee-top trails being built by Kansas and Missouri governments—costing $16 million.

A pretty standard rail crossing, the Rock Island Bridge was about 18-feet wide and utilized 3 steel trusses built by Andrew Carnegie’s steel firm. Trusses are those cage-like structures that sit atop flat river bridges to add stability.

After structural analysis found the bridge able to support 3.16 million pounds before any elements were removed, such as the old rail track and concrete, primary contractor. L.G. Barcus and Sons, Inc. determined that not much needed to be done to the original components. A few bolts needed to be replaced and some rust addressed, but that was it.

For the new structure, 15-foot cantilevers would support a wrap-around deck for restaurant space. Intriguing challenges awaited Barcus, such as what would happen if everyone moved to one side of the bridge to watch fireworks, and how to fit the second and first stories of the restaurant under the 300-foot-long central truss without covering them up.

BRIDGES AS VENUES: Contest Winner Turns Bridge into the Longest Walking Art Gallery in South Korea

As far as the trusses were concerned, existing machinery called lift gates had been well maintained, and Barcus was the original contractor on a 1952 project to raise the trusses to meet the heights of newly-built levees following a flood. With nothing more than a new motor and new grease, not only could the trusses be raised to accommodate the second story of the restaurant, but to satisfy the US Army Corps of Engineers’ standards for both a 750-year flood and the levees they were building along the Kansas River.

All the new support steel and cantilevers added up to around 680,000 pounds—well within the weight constraints.

Opened in April, it’s already one of the highlights of the city’s many venues. The truss beams occasionally plunge right through the walkway—even the tables, but they transmute the charm of the old architecture into the place—just like the steel railroad track acting as the footrests along the restaurant’s bar.

SIMILAR STORY IN SCOTLAND: Scotland’s Largest Greenhouse Set to Be Preserved as ‘Living Ruin’ and New Event Space

At the conclusion of the project, the cost was a mere $20 million, funded through a mixture of private investment (60%) public funding and grants (30%) and philanthropic donations (10%), which Zeller said had helped “create something spectacular for Kansas City that our kids and our grandkids are going to enjoy,” … “a gift from about 200 Kansas Citians to our city.”

Kansas City Magazine, attending the opener, wrote that Rock Island Bridge is free to enter and walk across, “and Zeller says visitors can also expect fun events, from farmers markets and live musicians to ticketed concerts and more.”

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Musée d’Orsay Opens Gallery Dedicated to Still-Unclaimed Artworks Stolen by Nazis in WWII

By
Andy Corbley
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‘Madame Alphonse Daudet’ by RENOIR - Credits © Musée d'Orsay-dist RMN Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt (right) The Paris museum - by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (CC BY 2.0)
‘Madame Alphonse Daudet’ by RENOIR – Credits © Musée d’Orsay-dist RMN Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt (right)
The Paris museum – by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (CC BY 2.0)

The world-famous Musée d’Orsay has opened the doors to a very unique gallery—its dream would be to get rid of all the paintings inside.

That’s because it exhibits a rotating selection of 225 works that were stolen when the Nazis occupied Paris during the Second World War. Currently 12 paintings, including works by Renoir and Degas, and a sculpture from Rodin are on display.

To Whom Do These Belong is part of the museum’s efforts to reckon with the city’s past, and, if at all possible, to find the rightful inheritors of these masterworks.

Though the north of France resisted Nazi occupation, the south, governed by the Vichy regime, collaborated with the Germans including in carrying out the Holocaust.

By the end of the conflict, over 100,000 items of cultural property had been looted. Some 60,000 works were recovered in Germany and Austria after the war; many of them had been sold on the art market and were easily traceable. 45,000 were restituted, while 15,000 went without identified owners according to a statement from the museum.

Most of these 15,000 were sold by France in the early 1950s, except for 2,200 of them, which were selected to be entrusted to the custody of various museums. Today, the museums are “duty-bound” to keep them in trust of their original owners and to investigate the provenance of their arrival in state hands.

Credit: Musée d’Orsay © L. Striffling

Over the last thirty years, 15 of these works conserved at the Musée d’Orsay have been returned to their rightful owners. 225 others remain because of uncertain origin, and in a few case because it has been established that they were not stolen or plundered.

Credit: Musée d’Orsay © L. Striffling

“The opening of this room on the permanent itinerary enables rotating exhibition with a view to providing a glimpse of the investigative work underway. A selection of 13 works is currently on exhibition there, highlighting the legacy’s complexity and the issues involved in it,” the statement read.

“Suspended between past and present, each of them testifies to ongoing provenance research, revealing the diversity of situations, both as regards quality and background. Others are on display in the Museum and are now identifiable by their special (purple) labels, or are on long-term loan to many other French museums.”

CREATIVE MUSEUM EXHIBTIONS: Visitors Can Now Watch the Restoring of a Masterpiece Bellini in Venice (Check out the Video)

CNN spoke with a British man of German origin whose family inheritance was looted by the Nazis. He, like other individuals highlighted in the Musée d’Orsay, has worked for years to establish clear evidence for the return of his family’s stolen property—some of it identified in German museums.

“I think it’s great that its [the looted works] going on display and it’s going to be an actual room set aside for art that is stolen,” said the man, named Antony Easton.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Concealed for 100 Years by Empress Who Defied Hitler, Royal Jewels Thought Lost are Set for Public Exhibit

The established facts accompany each work, including when it was sold in France, where it was brought in the Third Reich, and who painted it, but the key part—who owned it—is unknown for each of the 13 exhibited works apart from one.

That one is Le Souper au Bal (The Supper at Ball) by Edgar Degas and was acquired in 1919 by the Jewish collector Fernand Ochsé, who went on to be deported and murdered in Auschwitz. 22 years later, it arrived in Germany at the Brame gallery via a Mr. M. Coutot. It’s unknown if anyone from Ochsé’s family or extended family lives or was aware he owned the piece.

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USA’s Largest Renewable Project Comes Online–With More Power Than the Hoover Dam

By
Andy Corbley
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The transmission line of the SunZia project from Pattern Energy - credit, Pattern Energy, ©
The transmission line of the SunZia project from Pattern Energy – credit, Pattern Energy, ©

The largest renewable energy infrastructure project in US history is fully operational.

The SunZia project is expected to generate and deliver more power than the Hoover Dam and be a reliable energy to the western United States for the next 30 years.

The approximately 3,650-megawatt (MW) wind project and 550-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line that comprise SunZia generate power in New Mexico to Arizona and deliver it to customers across the western grid.

At full capacity, the project can deliver enough energy to power approximately one million American homes annually.

The wind turbines are located between Torrance and Lincoln counties in New Mexico, while the transmission line runs to a station in Pinal County just south of Phoenix.

At the center of that solution is SunZia’s HVDC transmission system, which moves large amounts of electricity efficiently across long distances. With major converter stations at each end of the line converting power for delivery and then back for use on the grid, SunZia is deploying one of the first major HVDC systems built in the United States in a generation.

“SunZia proves that we can still build the consequential infrastructure this country needs,” said Hunter Armistead, CEO of Pattern Energy, which owns, funded, and built SunZia.

“We did this the right way, we did it on time and on budget—in genuine partnership with the local communities and landowners who trusted us, with the environmental stewardship this unique landscape deserves, and with the determination to see something through that many thought was too big and too complex to finish.”

Complexities included many, from an agreement to relocate existing mature saguaro cacti and large agave plants to building the tall HVDC towers is remote, environmentally sensitive areas supplied almost entirely by helicopter.

WORLD’S BIGGEST RENEWABLES: A Desert Full of Power: Gargantuan Solar Array 250-Miles Long to Power Beijing

Construction on SunZia began in September 2023 and more than 2,000 quality jobs were supported at peak construction. The project also created more than 100 permanent operations jobs in New Mexico and Arizona.

Pattern Energy claims the facility will invest over $20 billion in New Mexico and Arizona communities including $1.3 billion in direct payments to local governments, schools, counties and private landowners over the first 30 years of operations.

WIND POWER IN THE US: Right to Build Offshore Wind Power Upheld by US Judge for 5th Time Since Attempted White House Ban

“Large-scale transmission is essential to meeting the West’s growing energy needs and strengthening reliability across the grid,” said Elliot Mainzer, President and CEO of the California Independent System Operator (ISO).

“Projects of this scale help deliver energy reliably to areas of rising demand, improve the movement of power across states and support a more resilient, flexible, and affordable electric system. SunZia represents the kind of long-term infrastructure investment needed to serve customers today and prepare the grid for the future.”

RING In This Amazing Addition To The US Grid With Your Friends…

Mars Perseverance Rover Completes a Marathon on Mars to Cap Off Extraordinary 5 Years

By
Andy Corbley
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A map of the Perseverance Mars rover marathon - credit, NASA
A map of the Perseverance Mars rover marathon – credit, NASA

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover just completed a special milestone as it recently marked 5 years on the Red Planet.

The robotic science lab has put 26.2 miles under its wheels: in other words, a marathon.

Having conducted hundreds of experiments so far, the rover’s data has already helped refine our understanding of the Martian surface, and in celebration of its marathon achievement, a summary of success is in order.

Through its drilling efforts at the bottom of Jezero Crater, where it landed, Perseverance has helped scientists confirm that the crater at some point was filled with water, leaving lake sediments at its base.

In 2022, the rover drove up from the crater floor onto the delta, a vast expanse of 3-billion-year-old sediments that, from orbit, resembles river deltas on Earth.

As the rover drove onto the delta, its  Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment instrument (RIMFAX) fired radar waves downward at 10-centimeter intervals and measured pulses reflected from depths of about 65-feet below the surface (20 meters). With the radar, scientists can see down to the base of the sediments to reveal the top surface of the buried crater floor.

The Martian surface outside of Jezero Crater appears strikingly different compared to the sandy red bed of the crater floor – Credit NASAJPL-CaltechASUMSSS

The images showed that the sediments are regular and horizontal—just like sediments deposited in lakes on Earth.

That same year, the rover captured video footage of a Martian solar eclipse with the tiny moon Phobos. The potato-shaped sphere doesn’t block out the sun, but was still cool to watch.

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. This allowed for unrivaled color and detail to appear in the eclipse video.

By the end of 2023, Perseverance had finished exploring Jezero crater, and began exploring the furthest reaches of the canyon where the river would have flown into the lake. Rich carbonate deposits had been spotted along the margin which stood out in orbital images.

“We picked Jezero Crater as a landing site because orbital imagery showed a delta—clear evidence that a large lake once filled the crater. A lake is a potentially habitable environment, and delta rocks are a great environment for entombing signs of ancient life as fossils in the geologic record,” said Perseverance’s project scientist, Ken Farley of Caltech.

In April 2025, Perseverance was back with its head down, studying the Martian geology at the fastest rate since the early sample gathering in Jezero.

By then it had summited the crater rim, and conducted almost 100 sampling efforts.

This included some of the earliest molten rock to form on Mars, and formerly underground boulders juxtaposed with well-preserved layered rocks and other masses that seem to have been sculpted by running water; a veritable rock bonanza that may have also included the oldest sample yet.

JPL / NASA video

As the rover passed the Marathon mark, there is still no concrete plan for how to get Perseverance’s cached samples back from Mars. The sample return mission seen as feasible when the rover launched saw its costs rise to $11 billion, prompting NASA to begin a complete overhaul of the plan and solicit new proposals from industry and academia to find a more affordable and faster way to return the samples to Earth.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has floated the idea out of sending a manned mission to Mars and simply having astronauts pick them up by hand. Such a mission is an eventual goal of NASA and its sole rocket supplier SpaceX, which would like the costs of a robotic sample return mission rather redundant.

The samples were deposited in tubes of sterilized sapphire dubbed the “cleanest surfaces in the universe,” and so are therefore presumably durable enough to last a few decades provided a meteor doesn’t smash them to pieces.

WATCH the rover’s progress sped up below… 

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“I love everything that’s old—old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.” – Oliver Goldsmith

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Good News Network
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By mana5280

Quote of the Day: “I love everything that’s old—old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.” – Oliver Goldsmith

Photo by: mana5280

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

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Good News in History, June 25

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Good News Network
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70 years ago today, the renegade travel host and chef Anthony Bourdain, was born. With his food and culture show, No Reservations, and the groundbreaking book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, he became known as “the culinary bad boy”. The pair catapulted him to stardom, resulting Parts Unknown, the definitive American travel program on basic cable. It ran for over 60 episodes before being interrupted tragically by Bourdain’s death by suicide. READ more… (1956)

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8 Acres of Rewilding Completed Along Santa Monica Coastline: ‘It’s Still Your Beach, Only Better’

By
Andy Corbley
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LA County used to be covered in vegetated dunes like these - credit, Annie Spratt, unsplash
LA County used to be covered in vegetated dunes like these – credit, Annie Spratt, unsplash

A group in Los Angeles is ensuring that the city’s famous beaches retain enough nature to protect wildlife and the city from harsher storms.

“Your beach is still your beach, only better.” That was Tom Ford’s message to any Angelinos who might be indignant at the sight on his nonprofit staking out and roping off big squares of Santa Monica Beach sand.

It’s part of The Bay Foundation‘s effort to rebuild the ecosystems of Southern California’s dune landscapes, lost, but not forgotten.

If you’ve never seen vegetated and wild coastal sand dunes bloom in springtime, you’re missing out on exactly what Ford is describing—a better beach.

So far the Bay Foundation has helped restore 8 acres of natural dunes on the Santa Monica beaches by creating big patches of vegetated sand halfway between the ocean and the coastal road.

“The native plants provide that habitat value for native wildlife. So, if you want to have endangered El Segundo blue butterflies, you need Sea Cliff Buckwheat, which is the plant that they count on,” Ford told CBS news.

As the plants grow and take root in the sand, grains blown about by the ocean wind catch and build up on the plants. These then must grow taller, allowing for more surface area, more sand, and higher dunes.

BETTER BEACHES, WORLDWIDE: 

Higher vegetated dunes can reduce the impact of storm surges by absorbing wave energy, slowing erosion, and protecting coastal real estate. Early response to the 8 natural acres has been positive, and the Coastal Commission has permitted an additional 30 acres of natural dune creation all the way down to Venice Beach.

Unlike seawalls which protect only what’s behind them, these natural dunes protect what’s in front of them. And what’s in front of them is what helped make LA so famous—a “non-optional” feature of priceless necessity for the city and county, Ford says.

“We work extremely hard with the lifeguards, with the police, with the sports groups, with the various clubs down here to make sure that all that space for those activities is preserved,” Ford said. “Your beach is still your beach, only better.”

WATCH the story below from CBS News…

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Dawn of Modular Architecture Sees 26-Story Apartment Finished in 5 Days Thanks to US-China Collab.

By
Andy Corbley
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The Jindu Holon tower - credit, BROAD Group, released
The Jindu Holon tower – credit, BROAD Group, released

It was a rare snowy day in southcentral China’s Changsha—a city of ancient innovation—when flatbeds loaded with steel arrived at a building site.

On January 7th, 2024, workers began to arrange stainless steel modules on the empty site. Standing in its place just 5 days later was a 26-story high-rise apartment complex.

The nothing-short-of-remarkable demonstration of module construction on the grandest scale yet seen won major international engineering acclaim, but more than that, the Jindu Holon Tower fulfilled a company’s 17-year journey that started amid disaster.

A terrible earthquake rocked the province of Sichuan further south in 2009, killing tens of thousands of people and knocking down reinforced concrete towers in cities like Chengdu as if they were sand castles. Watching on was the founder of the Chinese construction firm BROAD Group. He realized something had to change.

BROAD Sustainable Building was formed as a direct response to the disaster, hoping to pioneer modular construction methods to make towers flexible and resistant to seismic events.

It can take 3 years to pour the concrete and install the utilities of a medium-height apartment building in New York or London. All the while, roads are disrupted, and gas-guzzling trucks move in and out every day bringing in concrete mix and sand, rebar and other components. Risks of accidents compound daily by the sheer number of days—in the rain, in the heat—that workers are assembling the structure.

Then, in 5-7 years, major concrete renovations may already be needed.

In Hunan, the event was totally different. Trucks rolled in carrying stainless steel shipping-container-like modules, each measuring 12 meters long, 3 meters high, and 2.4 meters wide. A crane stacked one atop the other, and workers bolted them into place. No concrete needed to be poured, nothing needed to be welded.

The interior of a Jindu Tower apartment – credit BROAD Group

In 5 days they had finished and were ready to start welcoming residents. That’s because each of these stainless steel modules had everything already built in: the plumbing, the windows, the HVAC, the lights, the kitchen cupboards even—all of it was assembled on a factory floor in the space of 21 days.

BROAD Sustainable Building uses a patented stainless steel “sandwich” called B-CORE that boasts high tensile strength that will allow the building to bend not break if faced with another magnitude 8 earthquake like in Sichuan. Stainless steel is also much more resistant to corrosion and weathering.

Andrew Zimman, marketing director at BROAD Group USA, spoke to the French Modular Building Institute, which gave it the Innovation of the Year Award back in 2022, about the decision.

“We switched to stainless steel about five years ago,” Zimman explained, “because we realized that the mechanical properties of stainless steel weren’t limited to corrosion resistance, which is good for facades, but that stainless steel also had great ductility. That’s why we chose stainless steel for our load-bearing elements. We’re the first to do so.”

FUTURE ARCHITECTURE: ‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work

“Even though our volumetric product is only two years old, we’re constantly innovating,” Zimman continued. “For example, in the first Holon building we built two years ago, the beams had to be installed on-site. Now, when we lower the modules, the beams are integrated into the floor system of those modules. So there’s no welding on-site. There are only bolts. The cranes are ready; all you have to do is select and position, stack, bolt, connect the utilities, and you’re good to go.”

Zhang Yanwei, a manager at BROAD Group Holon Jianan Co, which manages the actual building, told China Daily that the company furnished the units before handing them over with everything that isn’t portable. Washing machines, refrigerators, beds, etc. are not included.

There’s another party trick the Holon modular building system boasts that is especially interesting to those of an eco-friendly persuasion. When it’s time to go, there’s no demolition. The whole structure can be unbolted, unstacked, reloaded onto trucks, and driven off. No waste, no noise, no dust, no gas-guzzling excavators working dawn till dusk to clean up a collapsed building, and no landfill waste.

MORE INNOVATION TO EXCITE: Stylish Prefab Home Can Be ‘Dropped’ into Flooded Areas or Anywhere Housing is Needed

This is a game changer for municipalities balancing zoning laws, or insurance firms calculating for various disaster risks. If for legal or safety reasons the building has to go, it can, as it turns out, simply go.

Zimman told the institute that BROAD Group has projects in the pipeline for Ohio, Texas, and California, alongside work in the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. Like many of the world’s great suspension bridges, the performance of stainless steel suggests that there isn’t a particular height limitation: as far as there is design and demand, their buildings can keep climbing.

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Minnesota Artist’s ‘Mini Art Vending Machine’ Has Sold Nearly 3,000 Pieces of One-Dollar Art

By
Andy Corbley
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Mini Art Vending Machine with tiny art for $1 (at Inkwell Booksellers) - Credit: OneTiredArtist on IG
Mini Art Vending Machine with tiny art for $1 (at Inkwell Booksellers) – Credit: OneTiredArtist on IG

A Minnesota artist who wanted to do more to help her peers built and installed a “Mini Art Vending Machine” at a local book store.

Head inside Inkwell Booksellers at 426 E. Hennepin in Minneapolis, put 4 quarters in and turn the wheel, and a little envelope will fall down containing a mystery piece of art.

Each row features mini works by the same artist, whose bio can be read about on the left-hand side of the machine.

It might seem kitsch, but it’s a hit—almost 3,000 pieces of art have been sold in the vending machine, with every $1 going straight back into the artist’s pocket.

It was created by local artist Lilyan Lauzon, who goes by OneTiredArtist online and works as community engagement manager at Inkwell.

“For new and emerging artists, it’s really hard to find spaces to sell your artwork, and I wanted to make a project that was fun and collaborative for local artists,” said Lauzon.

The machine needs restocking every month with works from artists who apply for “gallery space” online. Lauzon told CBS news that she’s seen the vending machine be the catalyst that many artist’s can’t find elsewhere.

“Artists have told me that people have come to their art fairs to buy more of their artwork because of what they got in this snapshot of their portfolio,” said Lauzon. “There’s also been a few people who have had larger commissions come out from the mini art vending machine.”

MAKING ROOM FOR ART: 

The machine only takes quarters, but the Inkwell staff have loads on hand to exchange for dollars.

Following the project’s success, Lauzon wants to see about getting a second vending machine to install at another location.

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7.4 Mil. Plant and Fungi Samples Have Been Digitized to ‘Democratize Knowledge’ and Save Species

By
Andy Corbley
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A man in the cold specimen storage at the Kew seed vault - Jeff Eden © RBG Kew
– Jeff Eden © RBG Kew

After a marathon effort to digitize each of the 7.4 million plant and fungi samples in its herbarium, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew has said the result will help “democratize knowledge” while leveraging AI’s incredible computation power to plan conservation strategies, discover new chemicals, and more.

The new archive is just one part in an international online archive of herbariums that are aiming to assess as many plants and fungi species as possible.

The effort has already revealed fascinating and important trends in these kingdoms, such as how flowers worldwide are blooming weeks earlier than in earlier decades.

RBG Kew has one of the largest plant and fungi collections on the planet. Its scientists have been collecting samples since the time of Charles Darwin. But a 180-year-old pressed stem with a few leaves makes for a difficult ID job for a pair of eyes; not so for artificial intelligence models which have been trained to examine microscopic details.

With the advent of such technology, RBG Kew began a marathon effort to digitize every specimen: stem, leaf, seedhead, flower bud, and more. This has proven especially useful for mosses or forbs, plants which can have no perceptible difference between species.

“We can use digital assets, artificial intelligence and other technologies to really harness the information locked in many of these specimens that have been here for centuries, and use that to advance science and conservation at a global level,” said Kew’s executive director of science Alexandre Antonelli.

“We can use this digitized information to discover new species, and also to reveal species that have gone extinct or are likely to have done so.”

OTHER KEW ACTIVITIES: Quarter Century of Collecting Seeds From Around the World Safeguards Them From Extinction

The possibilities are expansive. Thousands of plant and fungi species are identified every year, but nothing substantial is known about at least 300,000 plants which have already been identified. Additionally, it’s believed that there are still 100,000 plants and 2 million fungi species that are undescribed.

Each one could hold genomic secrets that could support or even transform agriculture, medicine, or materials sciences. Penicillin and statins were both isolated from fungi, to name the most obvious examples.

SIMILAR EFFORTS: Scientists Map Underground Fungal Networks and Find They Cover 62 Quadrillion Miles

A broader, instantly accessible digital archive will supercharge environmental DNA gathering, a method of scientific observation that can identify species by biological material shed into the environment—invaluable for estimating ecosystem-wide populations of hard-to-find species like fungi which may only fruit a few times a year.

Efforts like Kew’s and others mean that an archive of 145 million plant, animal, and fungi samples is now freely available to anyone with an internet connection worldwide who might want to access them for any reason.

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“Yesterday is but today‘s memory. Tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Khalil Gibran

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Good News Network
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Credit: Jr Korpa

Quote of the Day: “Yesterday is but today’s memory. Tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Khalil Gibran

Photo by: Jr Korpa

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Credit: Jr Korpa

Good News in History, June 24

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Good News Network
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A pair of red Converse all-stars, also known as chucks - credit Lesekreis CC 0

125 years ago today, the shoe salesman Chuck Taylor was born in Indiana. While playing basketball in high school, Taylor began wearing the Converse All-Star shoe introduced way back in 1917. He became such a fan that he approached the company for a job, and traveled across America selling the shoes at basketball clinics he organized. He became so successful in promoting the shoes that he won an 80% share of the entire sneaker industry. READ more… (1901)

 

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Sighting of Elusive ‘Miner’s Cat’ a Fitting Reward for Philanthropists Rewilding Their Private Land

By
Andy Corbley
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The ringtail, a North American mammal - credit, Elster Photography, released
The ringtail, a North American mammal – credit, Elster Photography, released

For a philanthropic couple in Oregon, the sighting on a trail camera of one of North America’s most elusive animals was both surprising and not.

Bill and Sarah Epstein had committed a large plot of family-owned land to conservation, and so the appearance of a “ringtail” or “miner’s cat” was a sign that their work has been a success.

The Epstein Family Forest, in Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains, is described by the trust that manages it as “a rich mosaic of oak woodlands, conifer forests, riparian corridors, and wetlands—supporting rare wildlife and clean water.”

It doesn’t come much rarer than the ringtail, even if it’s not considered endangered.

Despite being the cousin of the common raccoon, don’t expect to see the ringtail digging through your garbage. Nocturnal, rarely studied, smaller than a house cat, and protected under federal law even before the Endangered Species Act existed, it can be seen in the video jumping into the camera’s view, rearing up to look about, and then walking away, the rings on its tail testifying to its namesake.

Because of their rodent-hunting abilities, they were often kept as pets in mining camps and cabins, earning them the name “miner’s cat” or “ring-tailed cat”—despite not being felines.

The sighting on the 405-acre Epstein Family Forest, located near Ashland, didn’t happen by chance. Landowners Bill and Sarah have spent decades restoring a heavily damaged forest and subdivision of country homes into a model for conservation and fire-resilient, ecologically managed forest.

PRIVATE CONSERVATION AT WORK: Man Gathers Up Family Acres- Home to Moose and Mountain Lion– and Returns Them to Indian Tribe

They bought the land decades ago after it had been heavily logged and burned by a historic wildfire in 1973. The years of helping to return the ecosystem to a native state has seen hundreds of species of birds, amphibians, mammals come to range across that land as their habitats flow across the boundaries of public and private lands.

Since a member of the family received a stage-4 cancer diagnosis, they have been working with the Pacific Forest Trust to complete a “working forest conservation easement” on the land.

MUST WATCH CAMERA TRAP FOOTAGE: Rare Ocelot Caught on Camera in Arizona, the First Sighting in the Area for 50 Years

Such an easement is a permanent legal agreement that keeps forests in production while ensuring management practices support biodiversity and ecosystem health.

“It is a profound comfort to know the goals we have for our property will be steadfastly managed and protected in perpetuity,” the couple said in a statement.

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Study Finds Many Older Adults Will Improve Over Time–Depending on Their Mindset

By
Andy Corbley
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Getty Images for Unsplash +
Getty Images for Unsplash +

A new study by scientists at Yale University suggests that older individuals can and do ‘improve,’ in all the senses of that word, over time.

Analyzing the results of a large study of older Americans that ran for a decade, a key data point was that the individual’s mindset toward aging plays a major part in their success.

If they believed aging was a process of decline, they declined. If they believed aging was a process of refinement, they improved.

Lead author Dr. Becca R. Levy, PhD, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) found that nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both, over time.

The improvements were not limited to a small group of exceptional individuals and, notably, were linked to a powerful but often overlooked factor: how people think about aging itself.

“Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” said Dr. Levy, an international expert on psychosocial determinants of aging health. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”

The findings are published in the journal Geriatrics.

For the study, the researchers followed more than 11,000 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, a federally supported longitudinal survey of older Americans. The research team tracked changes in cognition using a global performance assessment, and physical function using walking speed—often described by geriatricians as a “vital sign” because of its strong links to disability, hospitalization, and mortality.

Over a follow-up period of up to 12 years, 45% of participants improved in at least one of the two domains, according to the study. About 32% improved cognitively, 28% improved physically, and many experienced gains that exceeded thresholds considered clinically meaningful.

When participants whose cognitive scores remained stable over that period (rather than declining) were included, more than half defied the stereotype of inevitable deterioration in cognition.

“What’s striking is that these gains disappear when you only look at averages,” said Dr. Levy, author of the book Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & How Well You Live.

“If you average everyone together, you see decline,” Dr. Levy continued. “But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants that we studied got better.”

As for why, Levy and her co-authors hypothesized that an important factor could be participants had assimilated more positive or more negative views about aging by the start of the study. In support of this hypothesis, they found that those with more positive age beliefs were significantly more likely to show improvements in both cognition and walking speed, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression, and length of follow-up.

AGING RESEARCH: 2 Years of Exercise Reversed 20 Years of Aging in the Heart, Says Longest-Ever Randomized Trial on Exercise

The findings build on Dr. Levy’s stereotype embodiment theory, which posits that age stereotypes absorbed through a range of domains including social media and advertisements eventually become self-relevant and biologically consequential.

Credit: Getty Images for Unsplash+

Dr. Levy’s prior studies have found negative age beliefs predict poorer memory, slower walking speed, higher cardiovascular risk, and biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The current study shows that those who have assimilated more positive age beliefs often show improvement, Dr. Levy said.

“Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life,” she said. “And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level.”

BETTER AGING: This Rarely-Trained Muscle Is Recognized Worldwide as a Marker of Human Health–And the Test for Living to 100

The improvements were not limited to people who started out with impairments. Even among participants who had normal cognitive or physical function at baseline, a substantial proportion improved over time. That challenges the assumption that later-life gains reflect only people getting better after being sick or rebounding from earlier setbacks, the authors said.

The authors hope their findings will reverse the popular perception that continuous decline is inevitable and encourage policy makers to increase their support for preventive care, rehabilitation, and other health-promoting programs for older persons that draw on their potential resilience.

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