There wasn’t a dry eye in the room when young Jaxon Carter delivered a speech as he graduated from Kindergarten, dedicating his hard work, good grades, and spelling bee victory to his deceased mother.
The 6-year-old lost his “beautiful mommy” Taryn Marie Gainey in an apartment fire in 2022, and was enrolled in a STEM-focused public Kindergarten just 2 months later.
Everything was new—life had taken an unhappy aspect of novelty, the school was new, and there were new faces, new rules, and new concepts to take on.
But Jaxon conquered it all, and as he neared the end of his time at New Dawn Academy, the boy was asked if he could deliver a short speech at the Academy’s Kindergarten graduation ceremony.
According to Justin Carter, Jaxon’s father, he worked on the speech with his grandmother in secret, and when the day of the ceremony arrived, it had turned into a full valedictory speech.
“When I started kindergarten at New Dawn Academy in August 2022, I was a little 5-year-old who had lost my beautiful mother a month before,” Jaxon said, taking a long breath after delivering that line.
“I learned to play with other kids, read books, answer or ask questions like how or why, use correct grammar, and use my school tablet. My kindergarten year helped me grow braver, smarter, kind-hearted, and more grateful.”
He went on to thank his father, his teacher, and his grandparents.
“I dedicate my speech, good grades, all school awards, and my Kindergarten graduation to my beautiful mommy, who I will always love and miss so very much,” he said. “I know she will always be with me in my heart.”
The speech blew away all who heard it, and rapturous applause followed closely after.
WATCH the story below from GMA…
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New technologies are often referred to as life-changing, but that phrase quite literally describes the work that 34 Lives is doing for those awaiting kidney transplants. The team’s innovative technology “revives” kidneys that might be otherwise rejected for consideration by transplant surgeons.
The team’s tenacious desire to save lives has resulted in ten successful kidney rescues and ten lives saved. And they’re just getting started.
More than 120,000 people in the US are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant and most of them are waiting for kidneys. When a patient joins the organ transplant waiting list, years can go by before a donor match is found. During this time, patients are often put on a grueling dialysis schedule and can become too sick to receive the transplant or die waiting. On average, 34 US lives are lost daily on the waitlist.
When the company considered where to plant its flag, West Lafayette, ten minutes from Pursue University, just made sense—Purdue has long supported groundbreaking startup companies like 34 Lives.
“We believe West Lafayette and the Purdue University ecosystem is the perfect fit for our startup,” said Jaynes. “Not only do we have access to world-class facilities and engineering talent, but we are able to merge our life-saving technology with Purdue’s aviation infrastructure. I can’t think of a better partnership.”
A giant leap in lifesaving tech
30% of kidneys recovered for transplant are discarded before they ever reach a recipient. These losses are not only devastating for those on the waitlist, but also for the families who hoped their loved ones could save a life.
“The whole mission around 34 Lives is centered around ensuring donated organs can save a life as it was intended,” said St. Jean. “To ensure we can save lives and honor the wishes of donors, we needed a holistic ecosystem to work from.”
A perfectly placed facility could change everything. That’s what 34 Lives found at Purdue Research Park.
Just minutes from Purdue University, the research park is one of the largest university-affiliated incubation complexes in the country and unites discovery and delivery. The flexibility of space in the research park meant the team could custom-build their own Organ Rescue Labs, two ORs where kidneys are revived and immediately sent out the door for transplant.
The most critical piece of the kidney-saving puzzle is time. For every second that ticks by, kidneys become less and less viable and surgeons become more and more unwilling to risk a patient’s life.
When kidneys are transported to hospitals on commercial airlines, problems quickly arise. Flights can be delayed or missed. Coolers may be overlooked in cargo areas. Transportation time to distant hospitals can quickly run out the clock—an acceptable “out of body” time is approximately 24 hours.
For 34 Lives, the additional time it would take to transport a kidney from Chicago or Indianapolis airports could mean the difference between the kidney being recoverable or not. In fact, St. Jean confirms that if the team hadn’t had access to Purdue’s regional airport, their fifth successful kidney transplant wouldn’t have happened.
Opportunities for first-class collaboration continue to expand with more high-tech companies taking note. For companies like 34 Lives and their patients, that connected ecosystem is everything.
With every kidney revived and every life saved, 34 Lives brings us closer to a future where no patient dies waiting for a transplant. The partnership with Purdue University exemplifies the power of collaboration and shared purpose, proving that when brilliant minds come together, world-changing solutions can become reality.
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Quote of the Day: “No way of knowing which way it’s going. Hope for the best, expect the worst.” – Mel Brooks
Image by: Jeremy Bishop
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Courtesy of Mexico's ambassador to the US Esteban Moctezuma Barragán
Courtesy of Mexico’s ambassador to the US Esteban Moctezuma Barragán
Anything could have happened to the vase as it sat on a shelf in Anne Lee Dozier’s Washington D.C. home.
A cat, dog, or any one of her three boys could have elbowed it onto the floor while roughhousing, and instead of ending up at Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology and History, the thrift store vase which was actually made by Mayan potters over 1,200 years ago would have been forever lost.
Backing up, the story began in 2019 when Dozier, who worked in Latin America for a human rights advocacy group, saw a decorative and old vase on the clearance shelf at the 2A Thrift Store in Clinton, Maryland.
Considering it would be “a nice little thing” to remind her of Mexico, and with a price tag of just $4.00, there was no reason to pass it by. Dozier thought the vase might have been decades old, but after a visit to Mexico City five years later, she noticed that the vases at the National Museum were strikingly similar to the one she had on her mantle at home, so much so that she asked a museum official.
The official recommended that she contact the embassy in Washington on her return, which she did. After examining the pictures, the embassy wrote back.
“I got an email saying, ‘Congratulations—it’s real and we would like it back,’” Dozier told the Guardian.
“I am thrilled to have played a part in it’s repatriation story. I would like it to go back to its rightful place and to where it belongs,” she said, this time to WUSA, a CBS affiliate. “But I also want it out of my home because I have three little boys and I [would] have been petrified [if] after two thousand years I would be the one to wreck it!”
Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, estimates that the case dates to between the 2nd and 8th centuries CE, dating to the Classical Mayan period when their civilization was at its zenith.
Anne Lee Dozier, middle, stands next to Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, right, at a ceremony during which Dozier returned an ancient Maya vase to Mexico. Photograph: Courtesy of Mexico’s ambassador to the US Esteban Moctezuma Barragán
“It’s really important to recognize that some of these things, especially with such historical and cultural value to an entire country and people—you can’t really put a number on that,” said Dozier, adding that the feeling of playing a part in a nation’s cultural heritage was worth more than any amount she could have gotten at auction.
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20 million Americans who suffer from tinnitus may have an over-the-counter option available to them, one which improved symptoms in 84% of users.
It may seem strange, but a small device that zaps your tongue with electricity whilst playing white noise through headphones is able to refocus the brain away from the ringing in one’s ears, diminishing its effect on their lives.
The device is called Lenire, and though it costs $4,000 and most insurance won’t cover it, multiple clinical trials bear witness to its efficacy.
It’s already approved by the FDA and is being used by clinicians. Few data exist to demonstrate its long-term, continuous viability as a treatment, but early results are impressive, with 80% of users of Lenire reporting they’d recommend it to a friend, according to NPR.
“It’s not a cure, what Lenire is is a significant step forward in terms of the standards of care,” said Ross O’Neil, founder of Neuromode Devices that invented Lenire. “It’s the first and only one that’s been approved by the FDA on the basis of clinical data.”
The device works by shifting the attention of the brain away from the ringing in one’s ears, described by audiologist Brian Fligor, a consultant on the development phase of Lenire, as moving the ‘spotlight’ on a stage from one actor to another.
Users rarely report the ringing in their ears disappearing entirely, but NPR reports that it allowed one working musician—a singer-songwriter named Victoria Banks—to get back to singing, writing, and performing.
Fligor said the device isn’t so much a ‘cure-all’ but rather a ‘go-to’ for anyone, especially older patients, who come to him seeking relief. A full session includes 12 weeks with 1 hour of usage per day, and Banks told NPR that a refresher session can help suppress returning symptoms.
WATCH the story below from Reuters…
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What started out as a nice weekend fishing trip turned into a massive rescue operation for two colleagues at State Farm Insurance for a pack of hunting dogs that almost drowned in a Mississippi lake.
Bob Gist, 61, and his friend had hired a local bass fishing guide named Jordan Chrestman to take them out on Granada Lake, and after a morning without much action, they decided to change spots. That’s when they heard the barking.
Casting their lines, the pair, along with Gist’s friend Brad Carlisle, deduced that some hounds had chased a deer into the lake which was paddling along at a good clip, with the dogs unable to keep pace.
Eventually, Chrestman noticed that the dogs were still there, treading water and barking, and asked Gist if he could take time out of the fishing trip to investigate.
When their bass boat arrived on the scene, it was pandemonium. 38 dogs struggling to stay afloat.
“We’re just flabbergasted because it’s dogs everywhere, and they’re all going in different directions because they can no longer see the bank on either side,” Gist told Fox News Digital.
The three men then knew for sure they were hunting dogs because they had large GPS collars on, which provided a good grip for hauling the soaking-wet dogs out of the lake and onto the boat.
They needed to make three trips to get them all, bringing the first haul of a dozen hounds to the shore where their anxious owners rejoiced in relief. Traumatized by the event, the dogs were afraid to disembark, believing everything beyond the confines of the boat to be water.
One of the men had the tracking equipment for the dogs’ collars, and joining the rescue effort, led Chrestman and Gist to a third group of dogs that had gotten separated. These were in a very bad way, and could barely keep their heads above water.
“The hero here is Jordan,” Gist told ABC News, noting that the guide had recognized the danger and sped the boat over. “If it wasn’t for Jordan, there would have been 38 dead dogs.”
“If Brad and I had been there in a boat by ourselves, we wouldn’t have known anything was wrong, but that 20-something-year-old kid—I’m 61, so I’m calling him a kid—he knew something needed to be done,” Gist said similarly, this time to Fox.
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Frontier Airlines recently had a special guest on their flight from Florida to Puerto Rico—5-year-old Xavier Rivas who was preparing to ‘graduate’ from Kindergarten.
But because the graduation at his school was taking place whilst young Xavier was 35,000 feet above sea level, Frontier attendants stepped in to give him a special ceremony.
Calling his name from the intercom, they invited all the passengers to offer congratulations as Xavier walked down the aisle in a red cap and gown.
“He is missing his graduation, his Kindergarten graduation today. And because he chose to fly Frontier instead, we are giving him his graduation ceremony on this flight,” the attendant said.
Passengers were recording the special moment and many offered high-fives to the little guy, whose special day included a visit to the cockpit to meet the pilots, and some small presents as well.
“He was just beyond excited, like his face lit up,” Xavier’s mom, Janeiry Rivas, told Good Morning America. “He was super super excited, getting high fives from people and getting cheered on.”
Quote of the Day: “That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Image by: Joshua Coleman
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Two months after NASA crews reestablished diagnostic communications with Voyager 1, they just recently received scientific observational data as well.
Transmitted via the last remaining instruments still operational aboard the furthest man-made object from Earth, the data provides critical observations on plasma and magnetism in interstellar space.
It’s been 46 years and 7 months since Voyager 1 left Earth, and 11 years and 8 months since it bade Pluto farewell and left our solar system. It’s currently 15 billion miles, or 24 billion kilometers from Earth.
GNN reported that in March 2024, mission control for Voyager 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Technical Institute, managed to hone in on the issue that was preventing two-way communication with the probe.
After diagnosing and fixing this issue by dividing corrupted computer code into short sections and storing them in different places on the probe’s flight data subsystem before ensuring the onboard computer could find them again, JPL once again issued commands to restart sending scientific data on May 19th.
Two of the four science instruments returned to their normal operating modes immediately. Two other instruments required some additional work, but now, all four are returning usable science data.
The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space, which is the region outside the heliosphere — the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the Sun.
“We never know for sure what’s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, told CNN in April.
In as little as one year or perhaps just a little longer, some of these four instruments will have to be powered because of the drain on the probe’s battery. By 2036, the probe will depart the Deep Space Network and be beyond all communications, carrying the Golden Record out into the unknown.
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Virginia ‘Ginger’ Hislop receives her Stanford master’s degree at age 105 – Credit: Charles Russo for Stanford University
Virginia ‘Ginny’ Hislop receives her Stanford master’s degree at age 105 – Credit: Charles Russo for Stanford University
Stanford University’s 2024 graduation ceremony featured a 105-year-old student completing a master’s degree in education—83 years after she started her coursework.
Eight decades ago her diploma was put on hold, in favor of the bounties of a husband and children, but Virginia Hislop finally earned the chance to don a cap and gown and grab that parchment, to the applause of her peers.
While attending Stanford in 1940, Hislop needed to write a master’s thesis in order to achieve a master’s degree—a significant challenge during the best of times. Alas, in the middle of the school year, the US entered the Second World War.
Her fiance, George, was called to serve in the military, so they quickly married and she join the homefront war effort. After the fighting was finished, Hislop began a long career of educational work, putting the teaching certificate she obtained via her bachelor’s degree in education to use, by serving on various school boards.
She described her career in a nutshell as trying to improve education opportunities for the largest number of people possible.
Decades went by, and Hislop eventually learned that the master’s thesis requirement had been removed—there was almost nothing stopping her from visiting a campus and picking up where she left off.
83 years later, in June, she finally did just that, with her grandkids and great-grandkids looking on.
“For a lot of people the degree is a badge of accomplishment, and it was great to be able to celebrate someone who cared so much about learning, and dedicated her lifetime to other people’s learning,” said Stanford Dean Daniel Schwartz on the occasion of the 105-year-old’s graduation.
Her son-in-law described her as a woman under whose feet “moss doesn’t grow” owing to her active lifestyle of volunteering, voracious reading, and walking around her garden.
WATCH the story below from GMA…
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Painted rock art at site AS19.100 - credit Cooper et al.
Painted rock art at site AS19.100 – credit Cooper et al.
Geologists have known for years that from 5,000 years ago and beyond, much of what is today called the Sahara Desert was a lush grassland.
Some exceptional evidence of this recently surfaced in Sudan, where a paper published on a survey done in 2018 reveals the presence of rock art that depicts cattle herders and even boats.
Discovered in a region of the eastern Sahara called Atbai, there hasn’t been rain enough to support cattle here for at least 5,000 years.
Another exciting discovery was rock carvings depicting 6 boats on a cave wall found 90 miles from the nearest branch of the Nile. Near the entrance to a naturally-formed tunnel in a large rock outcrop in the desert, the boats “are arranged in the manner of a ‘fleet’ or ‘flotilla’, all seemingly emanating from the tunnel interior,” the authors write.
Several anomalies exist in the discovery, chief among them is the dissimilarity of the boats to other known carvings, particularly because of how simple and straightforward they appear.
“This provides a hint as to the identity of the rock art makers, who were probably not present in this remote section of the desert as government officials, but were arguably rather ‘common people’ conveying popular traditions through rock art,” they add.
The cattle drawings, found elsewhere, were similarly isolated from any water source.
“The cattle rock art is very significant, as cattle can no longer live in this hyper-arid desert,” lead author Julien Cooper, an archaeologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, told Live Science in an email. “It tells us that the people that made the art had a close connection to cattle.”
Pottery found in connection to the petroglyph sites suggests that the fourth millennium BCE was when their carvers lived in the area. At the end of this millennium, around 5,000 years ago, conditions in the Atbai were becoming very arid.
credit Paul Wordsworth
Because of this, and because of the obvious connection between the boat carvings and a waterway of some kind, the authors hypothesize that the carvers were Neolithic groups of Nubians who were early gold prospectors, as golden items have been found in burials dating back to the end of the fourth millennium BCE.
“[P]astoralists may still have found ephemeral grasslands and periodic surface water in this desert east of Lower Nubia,” the authors write. “Roughly similar latitudes in the Western Desert still received some of the northerly reaches of the African monsoons as documented by surveys…”
In the cattle carving, the beast’s udder is clearly depicted, indicating that milking them was an integral part, as it still is today with pastoralists, of the man-animal relationship. However, to produce enough milk to feed the herders would require ample forage—another sign that whoever made these carvings had grown up in a tradition of pastoralism from wetter climes than Atbai, or at least wetter time periods.
The study authors conclude by describing the carvers as “the last embers of an ancient para-Nilotic nomadic pastoralism that existed before conditions ultimately dried to their present state.”
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Despite the UK being the world’s second-largest generator of electronic waste per capita, a flourishing sub-culture of ‘Repair Cafes’ and other social groups is helping to balance out the island’s wasteful side.
A featured story from the Guardian reports that 580 such repair cafes are hosting regular events where volunteer fixers and tinkerers spend several hours sitting with people to troubleshoot, diagnose, and repair a litany of household items.
Author Sally Howard interviewed over half a dozen participants and organizers, and found the benefits to be legion: helping old people stay involved in the community, keeping undegradable waste out of the landfills, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, disseminating knowledge on repairing electronics, keeping old skills like tailoring and cobbling alive, and even combating loneliness.
“Anyone can mend a toaster if they have the right tools; this knowledge is a gift we need to share as widely as possible,” said Stefania Fantini, a 59-year-old sound engineer who hosts Rosie the Restarter, a social group for women and non-binaries who want to learn how to repair household items.
Rosie the Restarter works under the organizational umbrella of the Restart Project, a non-profit coordinating and advocacy group that finds places and volunteers to host repair cafes, works to pass legislation in Parliament under the Right to Repair Europe banner, and produces educational literature about the burden of e-waste in our societies.
Electronic waste, being modular in nature, is a growing burden on the landfill system worldwide. Millions of tons of broken electronics are thrown out every year for four chief reasons.
Many people don’t know how to fix mechanical or electronic components or don’t have the tools to do so. The urge to toss something is greater than ever as companies have been able to make most consumer electronics delightfully inexpensive, allowing low and middle-income countries to afford them as well; in other words, replacing things isn’t all that much more expensive than repairing them.
As regards repairs, the third reason for the growth in e-waste is that many small item repair shops—the cobbler for example—are disappearing from streets across Europe and North America, and the fourth is that many companies deliberately make it difficult to repair their products—being particularly true of big-ticket items like laptops and smartphones.
Government action to address this last problem is progressing, but slowly. In the meanwhile, repair cafes, libraries of things, and other such establishments are fighting back against the loss of these small shops, the knowledge of repairing things, and the growing e-waste burden.
“We conducted a study at a recycling center, and found that half of electricals being thrown away could have been reused, many needing only minor repairs,” said Shelini Kotecha from the Restart Project.
“Restart Parties are about enabling communities to learn how to fix their things for free, keeping items in circulation for longer and lowering our negative impact on the planet. They have a fun and collaborative spirit where everyone is welcome to learn new skills and meet new people”
The Restart Project is one entity playing a big role—especially in London where they have an objective to put a repair cafe in every neighborhood in every borough. It took them 6 months to find a partner and location that could be accessible to the people of Islington, London.
Spreading the word that the Islington Climate Centre was going to be the site of the new repair cafe, 20 interested volunteers visited to see what the event was about—Restart Project needed people to collect data and be part of the organizing team.
Then opening day came, and 30 Islingtonians brought in items in need of repair.
“A printer!” one of the organizers yelled after a local brought in a broken one. “Who wants to fix a printer?”
Soon, the visitor was sitting with a volunteer doing a diagnosis—a new print head was needed.
48% of everything that was brought in was repaired the same day, which Restart Project said saved 391 kilograms of carbon emissions.
Others are more established, for example The Repairium in Bristol. Open every Sunday from Lunchtime until half past four, the repair cafe at The Repairium will soon open a second-hand electronics shop of all the goods donated.
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Quote of the Day: “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” – Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher
Watercolor by: Elena Mozhvilo
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Detail of a mosaic taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a boulder field on “Mount Washburn” Credit: NASA / Western Washington University / SWNS
Detail of image taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows boulder field on “Mount Washburn” Credit: NASA / Western Washington University / SWNS
Scientists are puzzling over a bright white rock, of the type never before observed on Mars.
NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted the 14-inch-high boulder starkly standing out in a large field covered with dark rocks in a region named Mount Washburn, inside the massive Jezero crater.
Nicknamed Atoko Point by researchers, the boulder is 18 inches wide and has speckles on a light-toned surface.
Instrument analysis by Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z indicates that the rock is at least partly composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar.
“In terms of the size, shape, and arrangement of its mineral grains and crystals—and potentially its chemical composition—Atoko Point it is in a league of its own,” said NASA in a news release.
“The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond,” said team co-leader Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University.
“Among all these different rocks, there was one that really caught our attention.”
Perseverance, which landed on the Red Planet in 2021 specifically to probe the ancient crater, encountered the sparkly boulder while traversing a dried river delta that once flowed billions of years ago. On its way to an area inside the rim where rocky outcrops are being examined for sediment that could shed light on Mars’ history, the rover changed course to avoid rough terrain. It took a short cut through a dune field and reached the hill strewn with boulders.
Composed of 18 images, this natural-color mosaic from Mars shows the boulder field inside Jezero Crater – NASA / SWNS / Western Washington University
Some of the Perseverance scientists speculate the minerals that make up Atoko Point were produced in a subsurface body of magma that is possibly exposed now on the crater rim.
Others on the team have suggested the boulder may have been created far beyond the walls of the Red Planet’s 28-mile-wide Jezero crater and transported there by the “swift Martian waters” eons ago.
“Either way, the team believes that while Atoko is the first of its kind they’ve seen, it won’t be the last,” says NASA.
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life.
The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, with the aim to pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
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7th century Saxon gold sword pommel found in a field – Noonans Mayfair auction house / SWNS
7th century Saxon gold sword pommel found in a field – Noonans Mayfair auction house / SWNS
A stunning gold Saxon sword pommel that was unearthed in a field in Leicestershire, England by an 81-year-old woman has sold at auction for $22,000 (£16k).
The rare 7th-century artifact was found in 2021 while the long-time metal detector enthusiast was searching a field during a local gathering of detectives.
They told her that there was nothing to be found in the field where she was searching, but she persevered and found the gold pommel seven inches beneath the ground.
Described as “a beautiful example of fine Anglo-Saxon gold”, the sword handle decorated by beaded wire filigree features two dragon-like beasts facing each other, with their heads and front paws touching, and an interlaced snake-like pattern on the reverse side (pictured below).
“This was a stunning piece,” said Nigel Mills, Artifact and Coin expert at Noonans Mayfair auction house. “The imagery displayed would have imbued a mystical power to the sword.”
“Further research has shown that the town where it was found, Billesdon, means ‘sword hill’.
“So it’s very apt that the pommel—which we think would have belonged to an Anglo-Saxon chief who probably lost it in a battle with a Viking—was found there.”
Weighing 20.5 grams, the pommel—which the Leicester Museum declined to purchase—would have been fixed to the end of the sword handle both as a counterbalance and to stop the hand from slipping.
The woman who found the pommel, who wished to remain anonymous, has been metal detecting for 60 years. When she started detecting back in the 1960s people asked her what she was doing, and she always told them she was “looking for bombs”. Since then, she has found many Medieval and Roman coins, but the pommel discovery has been one of the most exciting.
“I was at a local detector meeting searching a field that everybody said had nothing in it when I had a signal from my Minelab Deus 2.”
“After digging to a depth of seven inches, I discovered a gold sword pommel.”
She will use her half of the sale price to buy a new car, while the other half will be given to the landowner.
The auction experts said the artifact compares with the detectorist-found Staffordshire hoard of gold jewelry, while the motif of the confronting beasts can also be seen on a shield from the Sutton Hoo ship burial.
Noonans Mayfair auction house – SWNS
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Former orthopedics patient Romino, ten years after his surgery, revisits the Africa Mercy - SWNS
Former orthopedics patient Romino, nine years after his surgery, revisiting the Africa Mercy – SWNS
A boy who was given life-changing leg surgery as a toddler has returned to the same hospital ship a decade later, declaring he wants to become a doctor himself.
Romino developed bowed legs in early childhood which prevented him from walking properly. Doctors in his Madagascar hometown suggested leg massages to correct the issue, but nothing seemed to work.
Then, in 2015, his worried mother Claudia brought her three-year-old to a charity hospital ship called Africa Mercy, while it was docked nearby.
Doctors on board performed surgery on the little lad, so he could grow up running, walking, and playing football just like his friends.
This year, Africa Mercy returned to Madagascar—and Romino stepped aboard again, in an emotional return.
He told the staff that he wants to become a doctor himself, inspired by the Mercy Ships surgeons that saved his legs nine years ago.
“I remember when Mercy Ships taught me how to walk again and when they picked us up at our house,” said the 12-year-old. “Now I want to give people the same healing that I received.”
Claudia started to notice her son’s bowed legs developing when he was two-and-a-half years old—and it became more and more clear as he began to walk.
She couldn’t believe her luck when she learned Mercy Ships was coming to her country to provide free surgical care for children.
The Mercy Ships vessel in 1993 – SWNS
After the toddler’s surgery, he recovered well and grew up with healthy straight legs. In fact, Romino, who is nicknamed Tilos, says he wins most races he runs against his friends today.
“People are surprised when they see him, because no one believed that he would look like this,” said Claudia.
“However, he’s like this now, and they always ask ‘Is it you? Is this Tilos?’”
Romino had faint memories of the giant hospital ship, the Africa Mercy, and the people who helped him, but his experiences inspired him to want to help others.
But he never imagined he would step back aboard the vessel of compassion.
This marks Mercy Ships’ fourth field service in Madagascar, following previous visits in 1996, 2015 and 2016.
“I’m so happy,” said Romino. “I’m happy because I never thought I was coming back here to see the ship again.”
Over the course of previous visits to the island nation of Madagascar, Mercy Ships collaborated with the government Ministry of Health to provide more than 6,425 life-changing surgical procedures and over 52,395 dental procedures, while also training local health care providers in new techniques.
Don and Deyon Stephens founded the interdenominational Christian organization in Switzerland in 1978 with the purchase of their first ship. Since then, various Mercy Ships have visited more than 55 developing nations—and 18 developed nations around the world—with a focus on Africa. They currently operate a two-ship fleet consisting of the Global Mercy and the Africa Mercy.
They describe their mission as “bringing hope and healing to the forgotten poor, following the 2,000-year-old model of Jesus”. So far, they’ve treated 2.87 million patients free of charge—including more than 117,000 surgeries and a half million dental procedures—without regard to religion, race, age, or gender.
And they inspire little boys to become doctors.
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A remarkable new genus of giant horned dinosaur has been unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
First discovered in the badlands of northern Montana in 2019, it’s among the largest and most ornate ever found, with two huge blade-like horns on the back of its frill—a distinctive horn pattern that inspired its name, Lokiceratops (‘Loki’s horned face’), to honor the blade-wielding Norse god Loki.
Estimated to be 22 feet long (6.7 meters) and weighing around five tons (11,000 lbs), the Lokiceratops rangiformis appeared at least 12 million years earlier than its famous cousin Triceratops, and was the largest horned dinosaur of its time.
“This new dinosaur pushes the envelope on bizarre ceratopsian headgear, sporting the largest frill horns ever seen in a ceratopsian,” said Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University, who announced the new species this week in a published study.
“We started to realize that it was different than anything that anyone’s ever seen before,” said co-lead author Mark Loewen, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah and geology professor at the University of Utah.
Lokiceratops rangiformis reconstruction by Ddinodan – CC BY 4.0
“These skull ornaments are one of the keys to unlocking horned dinosaur diversity and demonstrate that evolutionary selection for showy displays contributed to the dizzying richness of Cretaceous ecosystems,” added Sertich.
The second name, rangiformis, which means ‘looks like a caribou’, refers to the differing horn lengths on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetric antlers of caribou and reindeer.
Like other ceratopsian (horned) dinosaurs, Lokiceratops had a mouth filled with more than 200 teeth honed into a shearing, cutting surface that could chop vegetation and small branches.
While ceratopsian ancestors were widespread across the northern hemisphere throughout the Cretaceous period, their isolation on Laramidia—the island continent that stood alone where Montana now sits, a few miles from Canada—led to the evolution of huge body sizes and distinctive patterns of horns above their eyes and noses, on their cheeks, and along the edges of their elongated head frills.
Lokiceratops rangiformis skull fossil bones – Museum of Evolution in Denmark
More than 78 million years ago, Lokiceratops inhabited the swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of Laramidia, the island that was created when a great seaway divided the continent around 100 million years ago. Mountain building and dramatic changes in climate and sea level have since altered the hothouse world of Laramidia where Lokiceratops thrived.
Fossils recovered from this region suggest horned dinosaurs were evolving in a small geographic area—found nowhere else—implying the dinosaur diversity here is underestimated.
“Previously, paleontologists thought a maximum of two species of horned dinosaurs could coexist at the same place and time,” said Professor Loewen. “Incredibly, we have identified five living together at the same time.”
The skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis is dramatically different from the other four animals it lived alongside.
It possesses several unique features, among them are the absence of a nose horn, huge, curving blade-like horns on the back of the frill—the largest ever found on a horned dinosaur—and a distinct, asymmetric spike in the middle of the frill.
Paleontologist Mark Loewen stands next to casts of the head and skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis – Photo by Mark Johnston / Natural History Museum of Utah
Overall, the horned ceratopsids evolved around 92 million years ago (during the Late Cretaceous), and diversified into a myriad of fantastically ornamented species that survived until the end of the time of dinosaurs.
Scientists have argued about the patterns of evolution within the group of horned dinosaurs for years.
“Rapid evolution may have led to the 100- to 200-thousand-year turnover of individual species of these horned dinosaurs,” said Loewen.
This rapid evolution is most consistent with sexual selection acting upon these animals. “Sexual selection acting on the genes responsible for the horns of the frill would produce modifications to cis-regulatory elements that would express differences in the size and shape of individual frill horns producing the variations in patterns we see in these animals,” said coauthor Jingmai O’Connor of the Field Museum in Chicago.
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Over half of Americans say their parent is their best friend, according to a new survey.
The poll of 2,000 Americans over the age of 40 revealed that 58% feel closer to their aging parents, now more than ever before.
Conducted by Talker Research on behalf of Comfort Keepers for the National Day of Joy on June 26, the survey asked respondents about experiences with parents ‘in their golden years’.
88% of respondents said engaging in shared activities with senior loved ones had an overwhelmingly positive impact on their parent-child relationship.
33% said they were going out shopping with mom or dad, 26% were trying new restaurants, and 16% are traveling to places they’ve never been before.
Half of those polled said such bonding moments made them more grateful for their time together, and 50% said it improved their loved one’s mood, as an added result.
Notably, 64% of respondents reported their parents were keeping a positive attitude about aging.
The activities they did together had the added benefit of inspiring some parents to stay more active (35%) and made them more open to trying new things (30%).
“Sharing in activities with senior loved ones isn’t just about creating memories and moments of joy for older Americans, it’s about forging lasting connections that enrich the lives of both generations,” said Sherri Snelling, gerontologist, author and spokesperson for Comfort Keepers.
“These bonding experiences not only bring happiness but also contribute to a positive mindset towards aging, ultimately promoting longevity and well-being for all ages.”
Hanging out with your favorite silver senior also means learning more about them.
Four in 10 said they learned something about their parent’s youth that surprised them—including previous marriages, military service, or celebrity connections.
Twenty-five percent learned that they’re more similar to their parents than they thought previously—and over half (58%) said that discovering these things about their parents made them much more relatable.
Closer parental bonds also allow for honesty around possible health issues. In that way, it’s more important than earlier in life for parental friendships to be nurtured, so communications lines stay open and free-flowing.
The Maclean brothers rowing practice for the Pacific Ocean voyage – The Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row / SWNS
The Maclean brothers rowing practice for Pacific Ocean voyage, The Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row – SWNS
A trio of brothers are on a quest to row across the Pacific Ocean in a custom made boat—completing a record-breaking voyage with the goal of raising tens of thousands for charity.
Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan Maclean are planning to row 9,000 miles from Peru to Australia (14,400-km) in a boat they designed and built to go faster than any before.
The trio from Edinburgh broke records in January 2020, when they became the first three brothers to row across any ocean, and the youngest—and fastest—trio to row across the Atlantic Ocean in their 35 day trip. (That GNN story is here)
Today, the brothers range in age from 26-32 and on their upcoming trip they hope to become the quickest to cross the Pacific—within 120 days—shaving 42 days off the current record.
They “thoroughly enjoyed” their previous ocean-crossing experience, and came up with the idea of starting a charity foundation during the long hours rowing. After setting up the Maclean Foundation, once they returned home, the brothers quickly decided to complete an even longer row to raise money.
“Even before we’d set foot back on land, we’d decided that we’d like to go on to do another challenge – but we didn’t know what that would be,” said Jamie, 30.
“Pretty soon, we came back around to the idea of doing another row. We’ll be doing a full Pacific row from South America to Australia, approximately 9,000 miles, after we add-in wiggling around islands.”
The brothers made several trips to Amsterdam to help fellow ocean rower Mark Slatts build the boat—which they described as the “lightest and strongest ocean rowing boat ever made”.
The Maclean brothers in Campbeltown practicing for The Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row – SWNS
At just 617 lbs., it’s only slightly heavier than the three brothers themselves (280 kg) and it is only a quarter of the weight of their last boat, thanks to the ultra-light carbon fibre technology most commonly seen in Formula One cars.
“It’s a true first of its kind”, said 32-year-old Ewan, who works as a design engineer for Dyson.
“Being involved in that process—from design through to construction, sanding and painting—was an incredible experience.
“So much can go wrong when you’re at sea, so it was important for us to understand every single inch of the boat. We already feel like we’re at one with the boat, and we’ll have plenty more time to get to know it.”
Jamie explained that they want to “keep the boat moving as fast as we possibly can” for the full crossing. They’re aiming for 120 days at sea, but it could be longer because it is so dependent on the weather.
They will have limited opportunities to sleep at night, but someone will need to be on the oars to keep the boat moving 24 hours a day.
The Maclean brothers in new boat for The Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row -SWNS
“It takes its toll on you, physically and mentally, so we started training in earnest about a month ago.”
To prepare for the journey, the brothers have been working with a coach who specializes in injury prevention, and spending 1-3 hours in the gym each day.
The trip is partly sponsored by their father, Charlie Maclean, one of the world’s leading whisky experts, and thus has been dubbed ‘The Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row’.
Their previous ocean crossing raised money that was used to dig four clean water wells serving 800 people in rural Madagascar.
Youngest brother Lachlan, 26, said: “Clean water is the most basic human necessity on the planet, yet 10% of people worldwide don’t have access to it. We’re doing something to change that.
“The more we talked uninterrupted with the clarity of being on the ocean, the more we realized this is what we wanted to do.”
“It’s incredibly inspiring to go out and see how the money raised is converted into the provision of clean water to people that don’t have it,” added Jamie.
The Maclean brothers playing instruments while on a break from rowing in Campbeltown – SWNS
For entertainment on the boat, the three musicians will each bring an instrument along for the trip. Ewan plays the guitar, Jamie plays the bagpipes, and Lachlan plays the accordion.
“For the Atlantic (voyage), I took a set of bagpipes so that I could play them out in the ocean—but also so I could pipe us into the finish line in Antigua,” Jamie told SWNS news. “I’ll be doing the same for the Pacific, because it’s a longer crossing and there will be more time to pass.
“During the day, there are a fair few hours that you’re not on the oars, but if you’re not eating or trying to rest, it’s nice to have something to distract you.”
Set to spend nearly 3,000 hours together at sea, the three believe the challenge will bring them closer together—something the Atlantic Ocean tested, for sure.
“That was our biggest strength for the Atlantic, the fact that we’re brothers,” Jamie said. “We get on incredibly well and always have.”
“It means that we trust each other and know each other’s thresholds and breaking points. We know when each other needs a helping hand.
“When you’re thousands of miles from shore and you’re sleep deprived, you’re essentially at your worst. You need to know you’re in it with people you trust.
