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Simple Amino Acid Identified as Perhaps the Difference Between Life and Death from Illness

By
Andy Corbley
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Disease trajectory - credit, Salk Institute, released
Disease trajectory – credit, Salk Institute, released

Not all diseases are caused nutrient deficiencies, but they often do come with one.

A deficiency of vitamin D, for example, is found most cases of illness, from cancer to upper-respiratory tract infections to sepsis and osteoporosis.

Recently, researchers at the renowned Salk institute for Biological Studies have identified that a simple amino acid called methionine, one which we all get from our diets mostly through animal-sourced foods, plays a key role in ameliorating the risk of death from infections.

Ambitiously, the Salk team were investigating what’s known as “disease trajectory” which describes the process from which an infection is contracted, or injury sustained, to the point at which the patient recovers or dies. Salk scientist Janelle Ayres, PhD, has spent decades researching why some patients go down the former track and others the latter.

Inflammation, she presents, is a key decider, and that the kidneys play an underappreciated role in clearing inflammation from the body when it’s important role in the healing process is finished.

“Our study indicates that small biological differences, including dietary factors, can have large effects on disease outcomes,” says senior author Ayres.

“Our discovery of a kidney-driven mechanism that limits inflammation, together with the protective effects of methionine supplementation in mice, points toward the potential of nutrition as a mechanistically informed medical intervention that can direct and optimize the paths people take in response to insults that cause disease.”

Inflammation is the immune system’s response to any invader. Whether that is a pathogen inside you or a splinter in your finger, immune cells rush to the scene to facilitate the healing process. As those immune cells arrive, they amplify the invader alarms using proteins called pro-inflammatory cytokines.

“Pro-inflammatory cytokines are ultimately what leads to sickness and death in a lot of cases,” says first author Katia Troha, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Ayres’s lab. “The immune system has to balance inflammation to attack the invader without harming healthy cells in the body. Our job is to find the mechanisms it uses to do that, so that we can target them to improve patient outcomes.”

To understand how the body regulates its cytokine levels, the researchers used a mouse model of systemic inflammation induced by the pathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. The first thing they noticed was that the infected mice were not eating as much—a sign of likely metabolic changes. To asses nutritional status, the researchers looked at the levels of circulating amino acids, which are protein building blocks that support cellular health throughout the body.

Infected mice showed depressed methionine levels—an essential amino acid found in our everyday diets. Curious, Troha decided to feed a new batch of mice with methionine-supplemented chow, and surprisingly, these mice were protected against the infection.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Vitamin K Used in ‘Groundbreaking’ Prospective Treatment for Neurodegenerative Diseases

Further experiments showed that methionine reduced circulating cytokine levels by partnering with a surprising ally: the kidneys. Methionine increased the kidneys’ filtration capacity, improving blood flow and helping the body excrete pro-inflammatory cytokines through the urine. Importantly, this methionine-kidney effect cleared excess cytokines without hindering other key aspects of the immune response.

Curious whether methionine’s effect was present in other conditions, the researchers also looked at sepsis and kidney injury models. They found that methionine was also protective for these mice, supporting that methionine may be a useful tool in other inflammatory disease settings.

By supplementing their diets with methionine, Salk scientists were able to give infected mice entirely different disease trajectories. The amino acid boosted the animals’ kidney function and protected them against wasting, blood-brain barrier dysfunction, and death without hindering their bodies’ ability to fight and kill Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.

MORE NUTRITIONAL ANCHORS: Another Study Shows Daily Multivitamin for People Over 60 Slows Memory Decline That Comes With Aging

And the sepsis and kidney injury models show these effects extend to other infections and inflammatory conditions, too, making methionine a potentially useful tool for the treatment of infectious diseases, particularly in cases of kidney disease or failure, or for patients undergoing dialysis.

“Our findings add to a growing body of evidence that common dietary elements can be used as medicine,” says Ayres. “By studying these basic protective mechanisms, we reveal surprising new ways to shift individuals that are fated to develop disease and die onto trajectories of health and survival.”

SHARE This Perfect Reason To Eat A Bit More Meat Or Consider A Methionine Supplement… 

Scientists Hail Record Number of Sightings in January as Auspicious for Endangered Right Whales

By
Andy Corbley
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- credit, CCS / Photo taken under NOAA permit 25740-02
– credit, CCS / Photo taken under NOAA permit 25740-02

As the Critically-Endangered North Atlantic right whale continues its long, slow journey back from the brink of extinction, there have been many joyful milestones worth celebrating.

With the year still so young, there’s already been another: a record-number of sightings taken by a single aerial survey flight when a local marine life organization flew over Cape Cod.

The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) says observers on a plane spotted 33 North Atlantic right whales on Saturday, the most ever for a single day in January, a statement by the center read.

Saturday’s survey was particularly noteworthy because researchers also observed right whale EgNo 1050, a male that’s at least 45 years old and has only been documented one other time in the last 15 years, as well as the 2025 calf of whale 2460. That calf surprised researchers last season when it was documented for the first time ever during a survey of Cape Cod Bay.

The New England Aquarium, another organization monitoring North Atlantic right whales, said that during 2 of their research flights, 23 whales were spotted.

“All around us, we saw groups of whales rolling, splashing, and bursting out of the water,” scientist Kate Laemmle said. “Seeing these critically endangered right whales on our first surveys of the New Year is a great way to start the season and leaves us hopeful for more whales returning to the area.”

With current estimates of the population standing at 384, these surveys aren’t just interesting opportunities to observe baleen ethnology, but snapshots of more than a tenth of the entire living legacy of these once-numerous giants.

MORE WHALE NEWS: 

It’s arguable these whales receive more hands-on conservation work than any other of their race. Tuesday’s sightings by the NE Aquarium triggered the activation of a “slow zone” for boat traffic in the area they were spotted—just south of Nantucket.

Ship strikes and entanglement with derelict fishing gear are the largest of threats to these animals. Last year, GNN reported that 11 calves were born in 2025.

SHARE The Uplifting Start To Whale Watching Season In Cape Cod… 

“If you obey all the rules you miss a lot of the fun.” – Katharine Hepburn

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “If you obey all the rules you miss a lot of the fun.” – Katharine Hepburn

Image by: Getty Images for Unsplash+

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

Good News in History, January 30

By
Good News Network
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Menai Suspension Bridge, Wales CC License Rhys Morgan Jones

200 years ago today, a groundbreaking piece of civil engineering debuted– the massive Menai Bridge opened, cutting nine hours from the journey between Wales and London. A triumph for its designer and engineer Thomas Telford, it was the biggest suspension bridge in the world at the time. Sixteen huge chains held up 579 feet of deck, allowing 100 feet of clear space beneath for tall ships navigating the seaway underneath. READ more about its construction… (1826)

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Spider-Inspired Design Makes Metal Tubes ‘Unsinkable’–A Breakthrough in Maritime Engineering

By
Andy Corbley
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J. Adam Fenster, University of Rochester via SWNS
J. Adam Fenster, University of Rochester via SWNS

It’s been 113 years since the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic sank, and engineers still have hopes of someday creating unsinkable ships.

None more so than a team at the University of Rochester that recently present a new “superhydrophobic” design that could lead to more resilient ships, floating platforms, and renewable energy innovations.

The design is special for several reasons, not least of which being its use of normal aluminum tubes rather than some expensive alloy or material. The process also replicates how the diving bell spider traps air to breathe when hunting underwater, meaning it works off a proven concept.

By making little etchings along the interior of aluminum tubes, the research team at the University’s Institute of Optics in New York created microscopic pits on the surface that turn it superhydrophobic, repelling water and staying dry.

Once modified, the tubes should theoretically stay afloat no matter how long they are forced into water or how heavily they are damaged, and indeed tests demonstrated just this.

“When the treated tube enters water, the superhydrophobic surface traps a stable bubble of air inside the tube, which prevents the tube from getting waterlogged and sinking,” said Chunlei Guo, lead author of the study presenting the technology in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

“Importantly, we added a divider to the middle of the tube so that even if you push it vertically into the water, the bubble of air remains trapped inside and the tube retains its floating ability.”

Guo and his team first demonstrated superhydrophobic floating devices in 2019, but he says the current tube design “simplifies and improves” the technology in several key areas.

ENGINEERING AT SEA: The First Cargo Ship Running on Green Methanol Weighs Anchor Amidst Merchant Shipping Decarbonization

The disks that the researchers previously developed could lose their ability to float when turned at extreme angles, but the tubes are resilient against turbulent conditions such as those found at sea.

“We tested them in some really rough environments for weeks at a time and found no degradation to their buoyancy,” he commented to his university press. “You can poke big holes in them, and we showed that even if you severely damage the tubes with as many holes as you can punch, they still float.”

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS:  Intricate Feather Patterns of an African Bird Inspires New Water Bottle Design

Multiple tubes can be linked together to create rafts that could be the basis for ships, buoys, and floating platforms, while the technology could be easily scaled to the larger sizes needed for load-bearing floating devices, such as the moorings of an offshore wind turbine.

“The mechanism is similar to how diving bell spiders trap an air bubble to stay buoyant underwater or how fire ants form floating rafts with their hydrophobic bodies.

WATCH the story below from the Univ. of Rochester… 

SHARE This Innovative, Spider-Inspired Technology With Your Friends… 

Homeless Woman Sleeping on Late Husband’s Grave Visited by an ‘Angel,’ with a Tiny Home

By
Andy Corbley
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Rhea and Eddie Holmes - credit, family photo released
Rhea and Eddie Holmes – credit, family photo released

When a Syracuse police officer got the call that there was someone living among the dead at Oakwood Cemetery, you’d forgive them for perhaps being a little on edge.

But what they found wasn’t anything out of a horror film. Instead, it was 55-year-old widow Rhea Holmes, sleeping under a winter sky on the cold ground of her husband’s grave.

Holmes enjoyed 26 years of wedded bliss with her husband, Eddie. Together, by 2024, they had collected enough money to buy a small home in Syracuse. It wasn’t much, but it was their dream.

Offer accepted, they must have been preparing to sign on the dotted line, when Eddie suffered a fatal heart attack the very same day.

In shock, Holmes took the down payment and spent it on a grave plot, headstone, and bench incised with his name where she could come and reminisce. However, without her beloved Eddie by her side, she slipped into a depression, lost her job, and got evicted.

Rudderless, directionless, and alone, Holmes decided to go to the only place in the world where she felt she belonged: the slab of marble where Eddie Holmes lay in eternal rest.

Too proud to sleep at a shelter, she would volunteer at a food kitchen where she too could eat, and then, with night as her cloak, would slip into the cemetery to sleep under the stars—which she did from May of 2025 to this month.

“I assumed that I was going to die there,” Holmes said of the cemetery, but then “along comes an angel.”

Syracuse Police Officer Jamie Pastorello was informed of Holmes’ presence by a retired colleague, and went to investigate.

HELPING HANDS TO THE HOMELESS: Retired Cop Rehabs Bus into Mobile Laundry: He Now Washes Clothes for the Homeless

“First, he paid for a hotel room for Holmes,” wrote CBS News’ Steve Hartman in his “On the Road” segment. “Then he connected her with the president of LeMoyne College, who let Holmes stay on campus while the students were on winter break.”

Lastly, he connected her with a nonprofit called A Tiny Home for Good, which got Holmes her own tiny home at an affordable price.

THE LAST STREET JOURNAL: Boy Who Offers Tombstone Cleaning Services Wins National Attention And Donates Profit to Funeral Charity

“It was just the right thing to do,” Pastorello told Hartman. “And I wasn’t going to let Rhea sleep outside again. A complete turnaround, you know, in 20 days, she went from sleeping on the cold, hard ground in a cemetery, to her own home.”

He visits her from time to time, and all at once, the warm, confident character that’s easy to see how Eddie Holms could have fallen for emerges, and one gets the feeling, writes Hartman, she won’t go back to sleeping in a graveyard for a fair few years still.

WATCH the story below (tissues recommended)… 

SHARE This Tragic Story With A Happy Ending With Your Friends On Social Media…

Farmers Enjoy Record Spring Harvests Despite Drought Thanks to Mixture of New and Old Methods

By
Andy Corbley
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Darla Hueske - via Unsplash
Darla Hueske – via Unsplash

Farming adaptations have seen Canada’s farmers turn out record harvests in the middle of a 5-year drought.

Truly unsavory conditions, like oppressive rainfall followed by an immediate return to drought, would typically have left the wheat on Simon Ellis’ fields shriveled and worthless.

Instead, plump grains were ready to be scooped up by his combine. He contributed the extra grain—almost all of which will be exported abroad to developing countries—to a national harvest total that tops any on record despite a drought that started in 2020.

Spring wheat yielded 58.8 bushels per acre this year, according to a government data release. That’s a gain of 77% from 30 years ago, based on a three-year average, according to Reuters. 

“We are constantly making little tweaks,” Ellis told the outlet. “That’s how we’re going to be able to keep fighting the changing climate.”

His farm in Wawanesa, Manitoba, has been the sight of some of those constant tweaks, including an underground system to prevent flooding, slow-release fertilizer, and more precise weedkilling.

But a huge effect will have come from the zero-till method of farming the 4th-generation farmer is employing. Today, 75% of farmers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta don’t till the soil before seeding.

The reason being that ripping up the ground exposes the whole of the soil microbiome to the annihilating rays of the Sun. It also reduces the need for weedkiller and pesticide spraying, because weeds grow rarely and more slowly in an already-grown field. Rip up the clover, grasses, and forbes, and invasive or pioneer weed species have free-rein.

This microbiome is a key part of robust plant health, as the interrelations of bacteria, fungi, and other microscopic life anchors the crop’s immune system, just as it does our own.

Zero-till agriculture is one of the key strategies of what is generally called regenerative agriculture, which means that from the time of the harvest to the next planting season, the fields become even more rich and fertile than the previous harvest. This is often accomplished by a combination of zero-till seeding and running animal herds over the fields before planting.

TECH ON THE FARM: Genetic Mutation Could Pave the Way for Self-Fertilizing Cereal Crops and a Revolution in Agriculture

Other strategies, like intercropping—growing multiple crops at the same time—and cover cropping—growing a harmless plant like clover after harvests to protect the soil from the Sun—as well as self-guided tractors and “tile drainage,” mean that in conditions that would have once produced crop failures, farmers are growing more food than they could in the best conditions two decades ago.

Conditions in the Western Canadian Prairie are notoriously difficult to farm, and would be more difficult still under current changing climatic patterns if not for the incredible success in farming technology. Grain-growing regions in Australia face similar challenges, Reuters reported, but is seeing similar successes thanks to a similar suite of farming advances.

FARMING IN THE FUTURE: This Year’s Nice Rice Price Marks an 18-year Low Amid a Doubling of Per-Acre Yield

At the front end, many of these innovations are really expensive. A smart combine or high-speed-data-enabled tractor/seeding drill can run more than a million dollars, even without insurance. Tile drainage, a system of pipes that takes water and channels it into an underground network rather than letting it pool atop the field, is expensive as well.

At the backend, however, these also save sizable amounts in annual fuel, fertilizer, pesticide, water costs.

SHARE This Blend of Traditional And Cutting Edge Ag Techniques Bringing Massive Yields To Canadian Fields… 

‘DC Snow Heroes’ Shovel Neighbors Out of Trouble After Winter Storms

By
Andy Corbley
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Courtesy of DC Snow Heroes / The Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs (via Instagram)
Courtesy of DC Snow Heroes / The Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs (via Instagram)

After low winter temperatures battered multiple regions of the country with snow, heroes in Washington, DC, stood up to be accounted for.

With major thoroughfares taking priority for District plows and employees, the ‘DC Snow Heroes’ hit the blocks, shovels in hand, to clear sidewalks for the elderly, the young, the disabled, or even just the overwhelmed.

Organized by the mayor’s office, Serve DC is a volunteer program that includes a special segment whose mission it is to shovel snow and clear ice—both of which had accumulated in the District at the start of this week.

“As a community, we have to stick together, we have to do what we can do for one another, and it’s a lot of people that [are] unable to do things, so that’s where we come in,” David Ford, one of the Snow Heroes, told DC News Now.

“Service is the gateway to all success,” remarked another volunteer when asked why he volunteers his time shoveling snow.

The storm had dumped mounds of dry snow 10 inches high on Sunday, which promptly refroze over the evening, making it treacherous to walk on.

Volunteers cleared both the snow and the ice in front of homes like that of Shirley Thomas, a DC resident who needs a crutch to get around.

“It’s not too many people in the world like that,” she said watching the Snow Heroes do their heroics.

MORE SNOW STORM HEROICS: Man Saves Boatloads Of ‘Stunned’ Animals After He Spotted Shadows in the Waves

Organized by the mayor’s office of Muriel Bowser, anyone living in the area looking to be a hero, as David Bowie said, just for one day, can go to the Serve DC website here.

“It is outstanding… This is really neighbors helping your neighbors showing the kind of community and love that the mayor thrives off that we are building, and making sure that we sustain a district,” said Lamont Carey, Director of Community Affairs for the Mayor’s Office.

WATCH the story below… 

SHARE These Fantastic American Volunteers Helping Neighbors In A Storm… 

“The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.” – Alfred Adler 

By
Good News Network
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Credit: Felix MacLeod

Quote of the Day: “The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.” – Alfred Adler 

Image by: Felix MacLeod

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

Credit: Felix MacLeod

 

Good News in History, January 29

By
Good News Network
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181 years ago today, Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic poem The Raven was first published. Printed in the New York Evening Mirror, it made Poe a household name almost immediately, and turned the writer into a national celebrity. The narrative poem depicts a mysterious bird’s midnight visit to a distraught lover. READ a short excerpt… (1845)

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Guatemala Opts Out of Oil Extraction in Favor of Protecting Jaguars and Macaws in Mayan Biosphere

By
Andy Corbley
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Security forces arrive at the Xan Oil Field - credit, Gobierno de Guatemala
Security forces arrive at the Xan Oil Field – credit, Gobierno de Guatemala

Guatemala has opted out of renewing a lease agreement on a 7,000-acre oil field in order to use the land for better protection of the surrounding Laguna del Tigre Biosphere Reserve.

An 830,000-acre component of the greater Mayan Biosphere Reserve which allows Mesoamerican wildlife to roam freely between the country and neighboring Belize and Mexico, it’s one of the world’s most important protected areas.

As such, the presence of an oil field inside its borders was controversial, even as the revenues provided critical GDP growth for the developing country. Now, a combination of pollution from the oil operations, sustained low oil prices, and illegal activities within the biosphere has led the government to determine that it is no longer profitable, and chose not to renew the extraction agreement with the Anglo-French developer Perenco.

Instead, the wells will be closed and the land will be turned over to the Guatemalan military for purposes of keeping a closer eye on the giant green emerald that is Laguna del Tigre.

“This marks the beginning of a process of taking control of a vast portion of the national territory that has long been open to all kinds of actors who often exploit it for illicit activities,” President Bernardo Arévalo said during a speech about the new facility.

Laguna del Tigre is one of the most-often exploited parts of the Mayan reserve, with thousands of acres lost every year to illegal cattle ranching, farming, and logging.

The Ministry of National Defense and the National Civil Police will occupy the Campo Xan for the purpose of cracking down on these illegal activities and incorporating a more collaborative cross-border policing program with Mexico and Belize.

TREES OVER OIL: Rainforest Oil Exploration Stopped as Court Rules Uncontacted Tribes Have Right to Remain in Isolation

Critics have suggested the taking over of Xan Oil Fields is more of a political show than anything tangible, and that the reserve already has a security component—rendered inefficient by rampant corruption, Mongabay reports.

However, President Arévalo ran on a platform of ecological integrity, environmental protection, clean energy, and indigenous rights, so at the very least there is a mandate to put an end to these exploitative activities.

MORE CENTRAL AMERICAN NEWS: Newly-Found Metropolis with Pyramids Shows We’re Not Even Close to Discovering Every Mayan City

Environment and Natural Resources Minister Patricia Orantes said the government is trying to do a “180-degree” shift on many management decisions, with a special focus on the Mayan Biosphere.

“We must conserve [the Maya Forest] for the good of Guatemalans and for the world,” Orantes said. “Protecting the climate is our responsibility, and that is what we’re aiming for.”

SHARE This Great Story With The Eco-Lovers In Your Social Medias… 

Astonishing 916% Increase in Breeding Birds Seen at England’s Premier Rewilding Project

By
Andy Corbley
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Copyright Knepp Wildland
Copyright Knepp Wildland

Birdwatchers can’t believe what’s been appearing through their binoculars on a small landholding in West Sussex, England, where the nation’s premier rewilding project continues to compound on its already staggering achievements.

The Knepp Estate has increased the number of breeding birds from just 55 individuals of 22 species in 2007, to 559 individuals of 51 species in 2025, a recent survey determined.

Common nightingale in Belgium – credit CC 4.0. Warrieboy

More than a dozen of these species are threatened with extinction nationally, and the tiny estate is now home to 1% of the entire British nightingale population.

The Knepp Estate stretches across a measly 3,500 acres of once-fallow farmland 41 miles outside of London, where owners Charlie Burrell and his wife Isabella Tree decided in 2000 to take radical action after years of failed crops.

The rewilding project at Knepp has created one of the most biodiverse areas in all of Britain, and it was achieved by “taking our hands off the wheel,” Tree said, in 2021. The estate grounds act as home to nearly all English megafauna, as well as the rarest mammal in Europe, the barbastelle bat.

Rare birds such as turtle doves, peregrine falcons, white storks, and all five species of owls found in Great Britain inhabit the grounds, while one summer the Butterfly Conservatory counted 87 male purple emperor butterflies, an exceptional number for anywhere in England.

At the heart of the Knepp Estate is the River Adur, which was restored to a natural state in 2011 with help from the British government by removing four separate weirs and filing in agricultural drainage canals.

A male (left) and female (right) purple emperor butterfly – credit, SWNS

The restored wetlands surrounding the river’s natural meandering path play host to wading birds, amphibians, water insects, sea trout, and other fish, and important endangered wetland plants like the black poplar.

For Charlie and Isabella, their monetary problems disappeared like their once-fallow fields, and along with controlling the herbivore population with free-range organic wild meat, the estate offers camping and “glamping” in a shepherd’s hut, nomad’s yurt, and tree houses. They also offer safari tours of the grounds, fishing, photography workshops, and rewilding courses.

OTHER REWILDING SUCCESSES:

Having just completed their quarter-century of management, this recent bird richness review provides a lovely postage stamp moment for the couple, who have demonstrated that even a small pocket of land, when restored to a wild, native habitat, can have an outsized impact on the overall conservation landscape.

Insects have gotten a boost too. Earlier were mentioned purple emperor butterflies, well in 2025, a single day’s counting recorded 283 individuals. Dragonflies and damselflies showed an 871% increase between 2005 and 2025, with species diversity up 53%. Red-eyed damselflies alone surged 2,000% over five years.

Visitors routinely describe seeing wild encounters with nature, such as a white-tailed eagle getting mobbed by kites, and beavers bumping into wading storks on the River Adur.

SHARE This Incredible Progress With Your Friends Who Love Nature… 

AI’s Latest Trick Is Pulling Valuable Commodities Out of Our Trash

By
Andy Corbley
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AMP - released
AMP – released

As prices of recycled paper, plastic, and aluminum increase, waste management firms are seeing an unexpected return on investment from their installations of AI-powered robotic trash sorters.

Certainly with any robotic system, the ROI is expected to come from labor saving, but due to a variety of factors such as tariffs on aluminum, pulp mill closures, and others, the price of our trash is becoming intriguingly high.

Republic Services, the nation’s second-largest waste management company, now have AI-powered robotic sorters in one-third of their 79 facilities. These machines, as GNN has reported previously, are trained on thousands of varieties, colors, and states of common trash.

They make thousands of decisions a-minute according to an object’s quality, integrity, and other characteristics, and use claw arms or puffs of air to blow trash this way and that to ensure it arrives in the correct bales.

Take for example AMP’s Delta sorting machine, which can pick out 80 separate items from waste streams per minute while recognizing billions of different shapes, sizes, granular specifics, colors, logos, and even SKU numbers among the garbage that would often remain hopelessly entangled.

“There really is value in a lot of recyclables and garbage,” Matanya Horowitz, founder and chief technology officer at AMP, told the Wall Street Journal. “The problem has been that the cost of pulling those materials out is similar to or greater than the actual value of those materials.”

AMP has recently signed a 20-year agreement to operate a materials recovery facility (the technical term for a recycling facility), for Virginia’s Southeastern Public Service Authority, which had an appalling recycling rate of just 7%.

Finished 2-years ago, AMP will get a $50 fee for every ton of waste it takes, and agree to pay damages to the Authority when it fails to divert 50% of the received contents from the landfill, something it so far has never failed to do.

MORE ROBOTS LIKE THIS: $16 Million Investment Will Expand Production of Superior Trash Sorting Robots for Recycling Facilities – (WATCH)

At Republic Services, the advent of air-blowing machines was a real sea change, as it substantially increased the speed at which even the machine could sort trash. What few workers remain merely guard the start of the conveyor system against dangerous or bulky items.

“Because of the speed, because of the throughput capabilities, we’re starting to see these economies where these are very good investments,” Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability at Republic Services, told the Journal. “And that’s not about labor; that’s about recovery rates, value extraction, purity and quality.”

GOOD WASTE STORIES: Inspired by Asthma Attack, New Delhi Teens Recycle 2 Million Pounds of Waste Across 14 Indian Cities

The Journal’s Ryan Dezember reports that the nation’s largest waste management firm, the aptly-named Waste Management, has spent $1.4 billion on trash sorting robots for their facilities. Their third-quarter profits rose 18% on higher quantity and quality of sales of recycled material.

Job loss is often presented as a drawback to AI-driven automation, but as many outlets have reported, most people don’t want to work at a recycling facility; and should we as a society really want them to either?

SHARE This Advancement With Your Friends Frustrated About America’s Recycling Habits… 

Harpoons Carved from Whale Bones Confirm Ancient Whaling Culture 5,000 Years Ago

By
Andy Corbley
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- credit, Patricia del Amo Martín, released in a statement ©
– credit, Patricia del Amo Martín, released in a statement ©

How do you hunt a whale when your boat is made of logs lashed with vines and your harpoon is carved from animal bone?

That’s what Spanish researchers were left wondering when they discovered evidence from a museum in southern Brazil that indigenous people 5,000 years ago were hunting large baleen whales like the humpback before they’d discovered sailing, and before metallurgy.

A study presenting the analysis of the museum artifacts proposes that groups inhabiting the area greatly prized not only whales as game animals, but the activity of whaling as an important, potentially sacred event.

That evidence comes from the site where the artifacts were discovered. In the area around Brazil’s Babitonga Bay, hundreds of man-made mounds of shells, refuse, bones, and marine remains called “sambaquis” were disassembled during coastal development between 1940 and 1960.

Archaeologists recovered some 9,000 artifacts from the shell mounds, and stored them in a local museum. Among the trove were whale bones buried in the mounds next to human skeletons.

Many years later, according to Smithsonian Magazine, a team of researchers from Spain and Brazil examined the artifacts more closely, and as soon as André Carlo Colonese saw the whale bones, he realized he was looking at something special.

Lead author Krista McGrath analyzes one of the harpoons. Autonomous University of Barcelona

“The curators went in back and brought out dusty boxes with whale bone artifacts inside,” Colonese tells Science. “The moment they took them out, I said, ‘Guys, these are harpoons.’”

Using state of the art techniques, the study co-author from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and his colleagues identified the harpoons as being carved from the bones of southern right whales, humpback whales, sei whales, and even the largest whale on Earth, the blue whale.

With the size of their quarry and their bones, it’s not surprising that the bone-carved harpoons were quite long; longer than lead author Kristina McGrath’s forearm.

“The data reveals that these communities had the knowledge, tools, and specialized strategies to hunt large whales thousands of years earlier than we had previously assumed,” McGrath, said in a statement.

Indeed, it’s believed whaling began among postglacial societies in North America about half as many years earlier. The Sambaqui builders were previously believed to have carved their tools from dead whales that had washed up on the beach—the most rational explanation considering the force required to spear one from a raft in a time before iron.

Living off so much marine life as they did, one can imagine the taking of a whale to be a monumental event; an invaluable resource worthy of celebration.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Scientists Use Stones to Build Canoe Like Their Ancestors and Sailed it 140 Miles Across Dangerous Waters

“You can imagine a big feast where everyone eats a lot of meat and blubber, and at the same time they collect oil,” Colonese tells National Geographic. “You can store the oil for a very long time, you can use it as fuel. And then you have all the bones… A whale is very valuable.”

The results also offer important ecological insights. The abundance of humpback whale remains suggest that their historical distribution extended much further south than the current main breeding areas off the coast of Brazil.

ANCIENTS THAT IMPRESS: This Bronze Age Ship Replica, Made from Reeds and Goat Hair, Just Sailed 50 Nautical Miles

“The recent increase in sightings in southern Brazil may therefore reflect a historical recolonization process, with implications for conservation. Reconstructing whale distributions before the impact of industrial whaling is essential to understanding their recovery dynamics,”  Marta Cremer, co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

SHARE This Impressive Discovery And Even More Impressive Feat Of Ancient Hunting… 

“The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Good News Network
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Credit: Getty Images for Unsplash+

Quote of the Day: “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Image by: Getty Images for Unsplash+

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

Credit: Getty Images for Unsplash+

 

Good News in History, January 28

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Good News Network
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And, 68 years ago today, the son of a Danish carpenter and successful toymaker named Godtfred Christiansen, walked into a patent office and filed for a design of interlocking plastic bricks that would go on to become the world’s most successful toy company. Meaning “play well,” LEGO, as we know it today, was born when Godtfred began to realize the capability which plastic had for replacing wood in children’s toys. It took five years to find the right material for the brick which that patent still produces today. It’s made of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer, and 600 billion have been made to date. READ more about the famous toy system… (1958)

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This Animal Shelter Closes Empty from Day After Day of Instant Adoptions: ‘It’s Been Nonstop’

By
Andy Corbley
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Two already-adopted cats at Bide Awhile - credit, Bide Awhile Animal Shelter, via Facebook
Two already-adopted cats at Bide Awhile – credit, Bide Awhile Animal Shelter, via Facebook

It’s always a bit of a struggle to walk through an animal shelter, past all those pairs of eyes watching you from behind bars, knowing you can’t take more than a couple home with you.

At Bide Awhile Animal Shelter in Nova Scotia, there’s no such struggle—the cages are all empty.

“It’s crazy to say but today we actually have no one available for adoption,” Sam Cole, communications and marketing coordinator for the shelter, told CTV News. “Everyone is either adopted and waiting for their veterinary health certificate.”

The shelter staff has been scratching their heads at a surge in demand for animal companions. With January still blowing cold, they’ve already adopted out 30 animals, and they’ve had trouble keeping any listed for adoption on their website longer than a day.

The longest stay this month was 21 days, but “the majority” are adopted the same day it’s announced they are up for adoption.

“Last year around this time, adult cats and senior cats or cats with medical complications were staying in the shelter a little bit longer than your average kitten that is quickly scooped up by a fun-loving family. But this year we are not even seeing that. Our adults, our seniors and our medical complications are getting adopted the same day they are posted. It has been nonstop since the doors opened this January,” says Cole.

The intense demand was seen last year as well, when over 12 months 500 pets were adopted, an average of 41.6 per month. An online waitlist for the first kitten available was 300-people long, so this year they’ve switched to a walk-in system.

GREAT ADOPTION STORIES: 

Bide Awhile strongly encourages prospective adopters to check their website before getting in their car to make sure the animal is still available.

When CTV spoke with the shelter, staff said that for three days in a row, by 9:00 a.m. opening, there’s a line out the door.

There aren’t many businesses that look good with barren shelves, but this shelter is certainly an exception.

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Star’s Final Breath Appears Like Columns of Smoke in Breathtaking New James Webb Image

By
Andy Corbley
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The Helix Nebula interior ring - credit, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The Helix Nebula interior ring – credit, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

In a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the dying breaths of the star at the heart of the famous Helix Nebula are exposed in wonder and radiance.

Imaged many times by previous space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, the Helix Nebula is loved for its similarity to the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings films.

Rather than a physical manifestation of evil, the Helix Nebula is a white dwarf star that’s in the final stages of life.

The circular shape reminiscent of an iris is made up of layers of gas and dust, with the hottest material taking on a blue color, and the coldest a red hue.

A new image by James Webb’s NIRcam instrument takes the detail to a whole new level, with streaks of ionized gas colliding with a ring of cooler material where hydrogen atoms fuse to make molecules in a deep orange color.

At first, it appears like columns of gaseous projectiles—like fireworks or comets, streaking upwards from a burning surface, but when combined with a second image taken from the ground-based Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), one sees that they perceive it in reverse.

The Helix Nebula interior ring – credit, ESO, VISTA, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Emerson (ESO); Acknowledgment CASU
The Helix Nebula by Hubble – credit, NASA

The comet-like figures are actually steaming out towards the orange mass before cooling and floating out into space as a red haze where it will seed a new generation of stars and planets, millions of years from now.

“Together,” NASA wrote in an article on the image, “the colors show the star’s final breath transforming into the raw ingredients for new worlds, adding to the wealth of knowledge gained from Webb about the origin of planets.”

At 650 light years from Earth, the Helix Nebula has been observable with telescopes for the last 200 years.

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Man Donates Empty Field to His Town So it Can Be Made Community Orchard

By
Andy Corbley
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Skylar Zilka - via Unsplash
Skylar Zilka – via Unsplash

When Mr. Michel Éprinchard inherited a large empty field in Western France, he didn’t think much of it.

Overgrown with weeds and childhood memories of walks along the tree line, for a long time neither he nor anyone else in his family had any interest in developing it.

That all changed with a change of his heart, when he had the idea to donate the entire land parcel to the town of his childhood—provided the mayor and council promised to turn it into a fruit orchard and community garden that the whole town could benefit from.

Mr. Éprinchard warned the municipality of Clussais-la-Pommeraie, population 560, that should it choose to accept their land donation, it would come with a cost of developing the garden/orchard project, which the man estimated would require the equivalent of $12,000.

Mayor Étienne Fouché accepted the project, and work began last year.

“The first condition is to create a garden with specific varieties of fruit trees, and the second condition, undoubtedly the most important, is that the entire community can benefit from it, shared among all”, Éprinchard explained to the French media outlet Franceinfo, via translation.

“There are apple trees, pear trees, and plum trees,” Mr. Fouché explained. “Now we will let them grow, we will monitor the diseases, we will take care of the soil, and then people will come to pick their own apples or make jam.”

Many in the community came out to assist in planting the first 50 trees for the orchard. This year, another 50 will be planted, as well as a new hedge, flower beds, and flowering trees.

It will take about four years before the first harvests. But no one seems impatient. The project already fulfills its function: to gather, excite, and return the land to a common use.

SMALL TOWN FRANCE: ‘A Beautiful Idea’: This French Town Is Making its Cemetery a Source of Solar Energy

The story is reminiscent of a man who passed away and left it some ten million euros in his will to a tiny town he had never visited.

Roger Thiberville was born in Mantes-la-Jolie, located in a wine-growing region 50 kilometers west of Paris. The inheritance of his parents was originally intended for his sister, who died without heirs, meaning it passed to him.

IN SIMILAR SPIRIT: Inspiring College Principal Converts 8 Acres of Treeless Land into Mini Forest and Orchard on India Campus

When he too died without an heir, a tiny Normandy town also called Thiberville learned he had left his fortune as an endowment for their use. Thiberville the man had never been to Thiberville the town, but requested that his ashes be buried with a plaque in the town’s cemetery.

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Cherry Crops Kept Safe from Diseases Thanks to Tiny Kestrel Falcons in Michigan

By
Andy Corbley
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The American kestrel - credit, Charles J. Sharp via Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0
The American kestrel – credit, Charles J. Sharp via Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0

This is the American kestrel; a sight to behold.

Sporting a back that’s emblazoned with pheasant rust and bars of black, supporting wings of battleship grey tipped with white dots like a moth’s, and streaks of menacing black down its eyes, the smallest of the New World falcons is a treat for any birdwatcher.

That’s just one of several reasons why a new method of pest control among American cherry orchards is so appealing: the farmers can reduce crop loss while spotting this gorgeous bird every day.

A study run by Michigan State University in the state’s upper peninsula has discovered that encouraging American kestrels to nest in cherry orchards also reduces the presence of food-borne illnesses that can be passed via the fruit to consumers.

By keeping rodents—but particularly small, fruit-eating birds out of the orchards, kestrels were found to be an effective means of pest control.

“Kestrels are not very expensive to bring into orchards, but they work pretty well,” said Olivia Smith, lead study author and assistant professor of horticulture at Michigan State University. “And people just like kestrels a lot, so I think it’s an attractive strategy.”

The hypothesis of Smith and her colleagues was that by keeping fruit-eating birds away, fewer avian pathogens would reach the shelves of the grocery store. This proved largely correct, as kestrel-guarded orchards showed an 81% decrease in instances of crop damage, including missing fruit and fruit with bite marks, and a 66% decrease in bird droppings on the fruit trees.

“I’ve noticed a difference having the kestrels around, hovering over the spring crops,” Brad Thatcher, a farmer based in Washington state who has housed kestrels in the fruit and vegetable areas on April Joy Farm for over 13 years, told Inside Climate News. “There’s very little fecal damage from small songbirds at that time of year versus the fall.”

MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS: Duck alla Pest Control—This Horde of Ducks Have Been Protecting 140 Acres of Vineyards for a Half Century (WATCH)

There are no shortage of problems for cherry and fruit farmers these days, from wild weather swings to labor shortages. Perching birds are just one more issue to deal with, and they’re quite the issue, causing some $85 million in losses every year among major growing states like Michigan and California.

Growers attempt to prevent the fruit loss in a variety of ways, including chemical repellents, lethal shooting, trapping, hanging nets over their trees, visual and auditory scare tactics, and even deforesting the area surrounding the orchard.

SIMILAR STORY BUT FOR OWLS: California Vineyards That Once Used Only Toxic Chemicals to Protect Vines Now Use Nesting Owls

Not only were the kestrels found to be more effective at keeping the birds away, but the detectable levels of Campylobacter, the most common foodborne pathogen spread by bird feces, were lower on branches in orchards with kestrel nest boxes (0.97% compared to around 10%).

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