Quote of the Day: “Hope is patience with the lamp lit.” – Tertullian
Photo by: Vladimir Fedotov
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
When Boy Asks Strangers for Yard Work to Save up for New Game Console, Cops Are Called–And They Buy Him a New PS5 (WATCH)
It’s not every day one reads that a young black man’s day was made after police officers are called to the scene.
That boy’s day might have been ruined in the Georgia town of Hapeville, where the unnamed lad was going door to door asking if there were any yard work that needed doing.
His hope was to save up money mowing lawns and trimming hedges to be able to afford a PlayStation 5.
One of the neighbors had other ideas—specifically, picking up the phone and calling the police, and asking for him to be removed from the area.
Officer Colleran of the City of Hapeville Police Department was dispatched to the area where he quickly made contact with the boy.
“The young man was polite, respectful, and truthful,” wrote the department on Facebook. “He was in the area because he wanted to do yard work: pulling weeds, cutting grass, and trimming hedges to save up for a PlayStation.”
MORE KIND COP CALLS: Police Melt Over This 4-Year-old Boy’s Emergency Call Inviting Them to Come See His Toys (LISTEN)
“Officer Colleran, a gamer himself, was impressed with the young man and thought he would help him reach his goal.”
Driving back to the neighborhood and meeting up with the boy, he surprised him with a PS5 right in the back of his squad car, one that he bought after getting his fellow officers all to pitch in around $400-$500.
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“Officer Colleran and some of his friends were able to not only get this young man the video game system but a gift card to pay for the membership so he could play immediately.”
Before leaving the man to enjoy his console, Colleran ensured he knew how to contact him over the PS5 network so they could play together.
WATCH the priceless reaction when Colleran opens his trunk…
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Is it a Bear or a Man in a Costume? In This Video, it’s Hard to Tell (WATCH)
Sometimes, nature just throws you a curveball that leaves you scratching your head.
Take a look at the video below and ask yourself, is this a bear, or a man in a bear costume?
At first it seems bear-ly believable, but by the end of the video you’re likely not sure what to think.
Whether man or beast, the object of our focus is (allegedly) a sun bear, an ursid from Southeast Asia and the world’s smallest true bear. While not endangered, the animal is considered Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List.
They are the most arboreal of all bears as well, perhaps because of their smaller stature. They spend a lot of time sleeping in trees. They get their name from the orange-colored patch of fur on their breast.
WATCH the video and decide for yourself…
MAKE Your Friend’s Day A Little Bit Weird By Sharing With Them This Video…
Molecule that Kills Most Solid Cancer Tumor Cells Leaving Others Unaffected Shows Promise After 20 Years’ Hard Work
City of Hope today announced that the first patient to receive its novel, promising cancer medicine AOH1996 is doing well.
The Phase 1 clinical trial testing the safety of a potentially cancer-stopping therapy in people with reoccurring solid tumors is expected to continue for the next two years. The investigational pill has been effective in preclinical research treating cells derived from breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin, and lung cancers.
Linda Malkas Ph.D., pioneer of AOH1996 at City of Hope’s Department of Molecular Diagnostics & Experimental Therapeutics, began her research 20 years ago, believing that proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), which plays an essential role in the replication and repair of cells, would be a less toxic cancer therapy that targets mutated cancer cells while leaving normal cells alone.
The new treatment has been shown in preclinical research to target PCNA and inhibit the growth and spread of a broad range of human cancer cells.
The research protocol notes that AOH1996 is not toxic to healthy cells and that treatment with this medicine both pauses cell DNA synthesis and inhibits DNA repair, leading to a type of cell death known as apoptosis in the cancer cells.
“Imagine cancer as the water filling up a bathtub. Left unchecked, the tumors or water will eventually overflow and damage other parts of your home. The treatment my team at City of Hope created is akin to a watchful homeowner who shuts the water off — stopping the spread of tumors to other parts of the metaphorical house — and then drains the tub, eliminating the cancer,” said Malkas.
“No one has ever targeted PCNA as a therapeutic because it was viewed as ‘undruggable,’” said study co-author Dr. Long Gu. “We discovered that PCNA is one of the potential causes of increased nucleic acid replication errors in cancer cells.”
“Now that we know the problem area and can inhibit it, we will dig deeper to understand the process to develop more personalized, targeted cancer medicines,” he said.
MORE GOOD CANCER STORIES: Cancer Screening Could Predict Tumors Decades Before They Start Growing Thanks to This Discovery
The Phase 1 clinical trial is open at City of Hope Los Angeles. Its objective is to determine the maximum tolerated dose of the investigational pill, AOH1996, and to evaluate the medicine for preliminary efficacy.
Eligible patients include adults with solid tumors who have not found standard treatments effective. Participating patients will be asked to take the medication in pill form twice a day.
Malkas said other targeted therapies, like checkpoint inhibitors, that inhibit the growth and spread of cancer have helped innumerable cancer patients, adding that perhaps one day AOH1996 will be a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved inhibitor that could be used in combination with existing therapies to both enhance cancer-killing effects as well as decrease side effects related to lifesaving cancer treatments.
MORE GOOD CANCER NEWS: Groundbreaking Myeloma Cancer Treatment Has 90% Success Rate: ‘Dramatic Results’
AOH1996 is named after Anna Olivia Healey, a young girl born in 1996 who unfortunately was not able to beat cancer. AOH1996 is exclusively licensed by City of Hope to RLL, LLC, a biotechnology company that Malkas co-founded.
With the infrastructure and support of City of Hope, Malkas was able to commercialize her basic research, moving her promising laboratory discovery into a clinical trial for people who need the therapies of tomorrow today.
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She Lost Her Father’s Ashes but a Stranger Digs 4 Hours Through Trash to Find Them
When Emily Dickerson lost a ring containing a jewel made of her father’s ashes, an unlikely set of heroes emerged to return it to her.
The 17-year-old was out in San Antonio performing with her school choir, when at the end of the week the organizers decided to take some 200 singers and bandmembers to the beach at Corpus Christi.
At the time, Dickerson was wearing four sentimental rings: the cremation ring, one from her boyfriend, and two from her family members. Not wanting to lose them in the water, she hid them in a place where no potential thief idling by would think to look—in the empty box from the Subway lunch Dickerson had just eaten.
But in a case of out of sight out of mind, during the hustle of departure, she forgot about the Subway box, and it ended up in a dumpster with 200 others just like it.
“I realized where I had left them, and I was in a complete panic,” Dickerson told local news. “I called my mom and told her the situation. I was a mess.”
Dickerson’s father died when she was just 7 years old. She wears the ring continuously, knowing that he is always there with her.
Dickerson’s mom Tina Koch contacted the Dept. of Parks and Recreation in Corpus Christi, but it was by then 8 pm on a Friday. Leaving a desperate voicemail, Koch hoped without much hope that something might be done.
Enter Laura Perez, the parks operation supervisor, who listened to the voicemail first thing on Monday morning. Perez, according to the Washington Post, makes every effort to track down lost items, but she knew chances were slim.
All the beach trashcans would be collected and deposited into a 40-yard dumpster slated for pickup at 8:00 am; it was already half-past the hour.
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Nevertheless, she called the staff cleaning up that section of beach and was shocked to hear the dumpster was still there, at which point she ordered horses to be held, and rushed for a little Monday morning dumpster diving.
Jesse Martinez and Robert Trevino joined Perez in combing through the trash left baking over the weekend’s nearly 100°F heat. They searched for hours until they came upon a big with the Subway boxes, and methodically began opening them one by one until, at last, a purple jewel shined in the morning light.
“It was in the last bag we went through,” Perez told the Post. “I was so excited to let her know.”
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Ring Lost Down Toilet 13 Years Ago is Discovered at Wastewater Treatment Facility 1,000 Feet From Her Home
“We’re talking about four rings in a hot, nasty dumpster,” Koch told the Post in the aftermath. “I’m blown away. I don’t have enough praise for these people.”
As it happened, they only found the cremation ring first, but despite Koch’s pleadings, they kept on searching until half an hour later they had turned up all three.
WATCH the story below from KRIS…
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“All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.” – Alexandre Dumas
Quote of the Day: “All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.” – Alexandre Dumas
Photo by: Soheb Zaidi
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Groundbreaking Immunization Against Lyme Disease Takes Aim at the Microbiomes of Ticks and Mosquitoes
The glory days for some of the most debilitating pathogenic diseases may be numbered thanks to a new class of immunizations that change the gut microbiome of ticks and mosquitoes.
Rather than targeting the pathogen that causes a disease, the vaccine targets the microbes that the pathogen requires to survive, and a new study investigating a vaccine that did just that demonstrated it was remarkably successful in mice.
While human use for a vaccine typically takes 8-10 years of tests and development, a similar vaccine could be prepared for animals such as dogs, cats, and livestock much sooner which would have the potential to save pet owners hundreds in veterinary bills, and ranchers tens of thousands.
Lyme disease needs little introduction: it’s a debilitating condition caused by the Borrelia genus that can leave a human or animal weak and bedridden for a decade. It’s been previously discovered that Borrelia pathogens can alter a tick’s gut microbiome
A new study found that by immunizing mice with a harmless E. coli bacteria as a Trojan horse, it elicited an immune response within the tick’s gut that greatly reduced the amount of Escherichia-Shigella, a common bacterial taxa found within the guts of mice and humans.
The authors report that this greatly decreased the ability of Borrelia afzelii, one of the pathogens that cause Lyme disease, to survive within its tick host, and protected the mice as well.
This immunization is part of an emerging class of drugs called anti-microbiota vaccines, and the same concept is being applied to malaria, and the family of pathogens called Plasmodium that cause it.
MORE NEWS LIKE THIS: We Can Now Use CRISPR Gene Editing on Ticks – to Fight Lyme Disease in Humans
Early last year, scientists demonstrated that a vaccine targeting Enterobacteriaceae injected into domestic canaries worked with similar effectiveness. Southern house mosquitoes which fed on these birds demonstrated a gut microbiome that proved hostile to the Plasmodium relictum malaria strain.
“These antimicrobiota vaccines are interesting for other pathogens because they specifically target the vector microbiota,” Dr. Alejandro Cabezas-Cruz, an infectious disease researcher and author on both the tick and mosquito papers, told Newsweek.
“As the microbiota is essential for many vector-borne pathogens, this approach could be used to target a wide range of diseases, whether caused by viruses, parasites, or bacteria.”
MORE VACCINE SCIENCE: After 8 Years of Research World-Changing Malaria Vaccine Approved in Africa
It’s a lot to think about, since mosquitoes and ticks spread far more than just Lyme disease and malaria. It also shows, yet again, just how critical the gut microbiome is to the health of all organisms.
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Houston Woman Spent Three Days Crawling in Storm Drains Trying to Rescue Puppies
All of last weekend, Callie Clemons was crawling in and out of storm drains and manhole covers in the Houston heat, searching for abandoned puppies.
Saying the area is infamous for “puppy dumping” as she refers to it grimly, she says won’t rest until all three of the black labrador-terrier mutts are located.
Clemons, whose name comes from her marriage with the son of Yankee pitching legend Roger Clemons, received a call from a concerned citizen Wednesday night that three stray puppies had fallen down a storm drain in the neighborhood of Spring Branch.
By Friday, Clemons, a dedicated group of volunteers, and her own dog Gizelle, had found two of the abandoned puppies, and she was already going back down on Saturday night to find the last one.
Clemons says in her 7 years of rescuing animals, she’s never lost one.
While she told Britain’s Daily Mail that the city of Houston was supportive—unlocking drains and moving manhole covers, she told the New York Post that her work stems from a lack of action on the part of the city and county, or the ASCPA who are too swamped with phone calls to stay on site more than an hour.
“There’s no way the puppy can get out by itself so it’s up to us and I have no shame to go down and get it,” the five-foot-tall woman told the Mail.
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While Houston animal control did little to help, the city was able to provide Clemons with blueprints of the Spring Branch sewers to help her map her way through the cockroaches and fetid water.
“I’m not stopping, I mean, I already told my mom, “I think I’m going to keep this dog if I find it,’ I’m so invested,” said Callie.
MORE ANIMAL RESCUES: Man Heads Into Wildfire to Rescue Dozens of Pets After Northwest Territories Evacuation: ‘I didn’t want them to be forgotten’
Clemons additionally told the Post that she had been down in storm drains crawling around for around 8 hours into the small watches of the night.
WATCH the story below from Fox 26…
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Woman Brings to Life Fashion Sketches Made By Her Grandma After 80 Years on Paper (LOOK)
TikTok users tuning into a viral video got to see a brief glimpse into the special relationship between a young woman and her grandmother, with the former teaching herself to sew in order to bring to life fashion sketches made by the latter over 60 years ago.
Julia, (@boringbb on TikTok) a content creator with a passion for fashion, said she was so inspired by the sketches she decided to start making some of them herself.
She started by watching YouTube videos on various techniques of sewing and stitching, and playing around with different items she would thrift until she had something like what she saw in the sketches.
Her grandmother dropped out of fashion and design school in the 1940s to support her family financially and never returned to the career she fancied.
“It’s one thing to see it in a drawing but it’s—when you’re putting it together and I see it in real life it kind of makes me want to cry a little bit,” her grandmother said in the video with about 20 million views, after Julia unveiled a black and blue “Moulin Rouge” ballet dress.
While that was just one moment on TikTok, Julia has been doing this for years, and imagined erroneously that people would get bored after the third or fourth dress. People have continued to enjoy the videos in large numbers.
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Regardless, the brief spurt of social media stardom isn’t what Julia is after. She thoroughly enjoys making the dresses as a way of connecting with her grandmother—both to her Depression-era fashion sense and to who she is today.
“Now, she talks to me more about fashion and her interests, more of an adult sort of friendship relationship that we have now,” Julia told GMA. “I think that she’s now able to not only see me as her granddaughter but also see me as a friend.”
WATCH the video from Good Morning America below…
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Palm Beach County Smashes All-Time Record for Sea Turtle Nests: 21,800 and Counting
Palm Beach County has already shattered the record for the number of turtle nests recorded during a single nesting season on Juno Beach, with three months of counting still to come.
By Sunday, the 9.5-mile Juno Beach in the northern part of the county had seen 21,872 mostly-loggerhead sea turtle nests, compared to an end-season total of 18,132 nests last October.
“We are so excited to break this all-time nesting record and can’t wait to see if each sea turtle species breaks its individual record,” Dr. Justin Perrault, vice president of research at Loggerhead Marinelife Center, said in the news release.
The overwhelming majority, around 15,000 of the nests, belong to the loggerhead species, but green and leatherback sea turtles also nest there. All of these species are considered vulnerable or endangered.
“Ocean conservation efforts that have been practiced for decades are finally coming to fruition, and we need to make sure that we continue to protect these animals and their ecosystems,” he said.
The counting was done by the Center on Juno Beach, Jupiter-Carlin Park, and Tequesta.
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Joyously, it’s not only Florida that is having a bumper crop of turtles.
On the beaches of Baldwin County in Alabama, experts believe they are on pace for a banner year. Unlike Florida, the end of August heralds the end of the nesting season, and the 13 nests of loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley, and green sea turtles are already 2 more nests than the whole of the 2016 and 2017 nesting seasons.
MORE TURTLE NEWS: After 10 Year Absence, World’s Most Endangered Sea Turtle Nests on Texas Beach, With a Little Help From Friends
“Those were our benchmarks and being ahead of that already at this point, it’s very exciting,” said the program director for Share the Beach, a volunteer organization that stakes and marks out turtle nests.
In recent years, some US Gulf Coast and Atlantic states have seen record increases in turtle nests, projecting an image of the United States as a turtle sanctuary since any turtle that hatches there will return year after year to lay their eggs on the same beach they were born on.
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“There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.” – Lorraine Hansberry
Quote of the Day: “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.” – Lorraine Hansberry
Photo by: Benjamin Brunner
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
In Frigid Maine So Many Heat Pumps Were Sold the State Passed its Clean-Energy Target Two Years Early
Governor Janet Mills announced that Maine has, two years ahead of time, surpassed its goal of installing 100,000 new heat pumps by 2025, a milestone that represents significant progress in reducing Maine’s reliance on heating oil, lowering heating costs, and curbing harmful carbon emissions.
To continue Maine’s momentum, Governor Mills also unveiled a new target: installing another 175,000 additional heat pumps in Maine by 2027, thereby bringing the number of heat pumps installed in Maine homes, businesses, and public buildings during her time in office to 275,000.
If this target is achieved, Maine would have more than 320,000 heat pumps in total installed across the state.
Heat pumps can be thought of as temperature recycling machines. They are filled with refrigerant fluid and contain a compressor, and they work by extracting excess heat and moving it around, either in or out of a house depending on whether it’s hot or cold.
It’s believed they work best in hot weather, but in February, Maine’s temperatures in some places plummeted during a cold snap to -60°F. Efficiency Maine which aided in the state’s adoption of heat pumps by organizing rebates for customers under the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, did a survey of owners they had helped the previous year.
Many of them reported they were comfortable and warm, and offered to bring up the fact that by February they had already saved hundreds of dollars on home heating systems, over boilers, gas furnaces, and heating oil.
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“We are setting an example for the nation,” said Mills at the announcement event. “Our transition to heat pumps is… curbing our reliance on fossil fuels, and cutting costs for Maine families, all while making them more comfortable in their homes—a hat trick for our state.”
Double Supermoons and the Most Popular Meteor Shower of the Year Coming in August Stargazing
On the night of Tuesday, August 1st, a supermoon will rise over the Earth, with 99% illumination occurring during the night.
A supermoon is when the moon reaches peak illumination at a time that coincides with its closest approach to the Earth in its orbit, arriving at just over 220,000 miles from the surface of our planet. This is called its perigee, as opposed to apogee.
Called the “Sturgeon” Moon, after the prolific fish species of North America, other Native American tribes use names related to grains, such as corn, rice, or harvest moon. It will be the first of two full moons in August, with the second appearing on the 30th, called the Blue Moon.
The Blue Moon will be the biggest full moon of the year, while the Sturgeon Moon will be the second-biggest.
Out of the northeastern sky on August 13th come the Perseid Meteor Shower. At nearly 150 fifty meteors a night thanks to the Earth passing through a stream of debris left by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, the Perseids are the most popular in the world, thanks to their great position of observation in the Northern Hemisphere, and the warm summer weather.
August 13th will be a near-moonless night, meaning much less native light pollution for spotting shooting stars.
Lastly in August, there are three great chances to see Saturn with the aid of binoculars or a telescope. The first comes on August 3rd during the pre-dawn hours when it comes to within 2°15′ of the moon.
At this time it will be visible with the naked eye, but with binos you can see its rings. This almost exact occurrence will come about again on August 30th.
Then on August 27th, Saturn will be in opposition to the sun from the perspective of the Earth, meaning it will be exceptionally lit up. The Moon will be bright, so using a moon chart will help one with a pair of binoculars or a telescope find and enjoy its rings in the blackness.
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The Largest Landfill in Latin America has Been Turned into a Mangrove Forest
At nearly 150 acres, the Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro was one of the largest and most infamous in all of Latin America. Now it’s a mangrove forest teeming with life.
Decommissioned 11 years ago, between 1970 and 2012 the dump, bordering Rio’s famous Guanabara Bay, received 80 million metric tonnes of trash from the area’s Gramacho neighborhood.
Now, a public-private partnership led by the Rio Municipal Cleaning Company has returned the area to nature, specifically mangroves, one of the most valuable of all ecosystems.
Planting 24 acres of mangroves at a time, today the forest stretches out more than 120 acres and is the largest mangrove area of the bay.
“Before, we polluted the bay and the rivers. Now, it’s the bay and the rivers that pollute us,” a lead official on the project told Africa News. “Today, the mangrove has completely recovered.”
Other organizations have taken action to restore mangroves along the bay as well. The non-profit Ocean Pact funded the Green Guanabara Bay Project which successfully restored 12.5 hectares or around 25 acres of mangroves.
According to some estimates, 1 acre of mangrove forests can store more carbon in roots and soil than 4 acres of even the most biodiverse rainforest, making them paramount to any world climate mitigation strategy.
MORE LANDFILL NEWS: South Korea Created A Program that Reuses 90% of the Country’s Food Scraps–to Grow Crops Instead of Landfills
Furthermore, their impressive lattice work of roots and insane durability means that storm surges impacting mangroves lose about 66% of their kinetic energy without even destroying the trees.
Lastly, coastal fishing communities, in two words, cannot exist without mangroves. They act as nurseries and perfect habitat for all kinds of fish and crustaceans that small-scale fishermen rely on for their daily bread.
WATCH the story below from Africa News…
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Man Heads Into Wildfire to Rescue Dozens of Pets After Northwest Territories Evacuation: ‘I didn’t want them to be forgotten’
As town after town in Canada receive evacuation orders, one man from the town of Yellowknife drove toward the fires: on a mission to rescue any pets left behind.
Square in the fire’s path was the town of Behchokǫ, in the country’s province called the Northwest Territories, and when it received an evacuation order Jason Card drove to the nearby SPCA, loaded up his truck with dog crates, and headed off for the fire zone.
Onboard were his teenage child and 80-year-old stepfather. They drove the 63 miles from the city of Yellowknife up the highway to Behchokǫ where they found people in the midst of evacuation. By 8:00 pm they had a truck filled with pets.
“Literally as soon as we got into town and people heard that we were rescuing dogs, we had people coming up to us asking us to get the dogs and if we had room. We filled every kennel that we had,” Mr. Card told national news.
Despite being after dark, they unloaded the crates of mostly dogs, turned around, and went straight back to Behchokǫ, this time returning to Yellowknife at 5:00 am.
Dr. Michelle Tuma, with Vets Without Borders Canada in Yellowknife, heard what Card was doing, and got in touch in order to try and find temporary accommodation for the animals in Yellowknife whilst their owners safely evacuated.
MORE ANIMAL RESCUES: Kind Stranger Rescues Kitty Frozen to the Ground in a Storm–and He Now Looks Amazing
Meanwhile, after a few hours of sleep, the trio of rescuers headed out yet again, only to find the highway closed. While planning to see how many dogs they could fit on a plane, they heard the highway was reopening and so carried on rescuing like before, saving more than 30 dogs and some cats as well.
MORE FROM RURAL CANADA: Leslie Dart has Planted 372,290 Trees Across Canada Over the Past 3 Summers and Inspired So Many Others
Tuma called the Cards efforts “insanely heartwarming.”
“It just shows, I mean, the sense of community that is in the North and the lengths that people will go to,” she said.
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“We live in a rainbow of chaos.” – Paul Cezanne
Quote of the Day: “We live in a rainbow of chaos.” – Paul Cezanne
Photo by: Katie Rainbow
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People With Heart Failure Can Step Their Way to Significantly Better Health: New Study
People with heart failure who increase their daily step count saw improvements in their health in just 12 weeks, according to a peer-reviewed study published last week.
The research suggests that physical data from wearable devices, such as FitBits and step counters, can be clinically significant.
Consumer wearable devices to track health status and progress are commonly used and part of a growing trend of mobile health technology. However, how to interpret data from wearable devices is at times unclear.
“Our research showed increased step counts were significantly associated with improvements in health status, suggesting that increases in step count over time as assessed by a wearable device may be clinically meaningful,” said Dr. Jessica Golbus, first author of the paper published in JACC: Heart Failure.
Golbus’s team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, sought to determine the relationship between daily activity and patient outcomes for people with heart failure. Researchers used data from a randomized controlled trial that provided 425 participants with a Fitbit and asked them to complete questionnaires through a smartphone application.
The questions measured physical symptoms, quality of life, and social limitation, scored on a scale of zero to 100 with higher scores indicating better health. Changes in scores of five points or more are considered “clinically significant” and have previously been shown to be associated with heart failure outcomes.
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After two weeks, the mean physical limitation score was 55.7 and the total symptom score was 62.7. Physical limitation scores increased by four points on average through 12 weeks and total symptom scores increased by 2.5 points.
Higher daily step counts equated with increased scores for both physical limitation and total symptom scores. People with total symptom scores of zero-24 averaged 2,473 steps per day and those with scores of 75-100 averaged 5,351 steps per day.
When comparing results to differing step counts, people who walked 1,000 steps per day had total symptom scores that were 3.11 points lower than people who walked 2,000 steps per day. And people who walked 3,000 steps per day had total symptom scores that were 2.89 points higher than those who walked 2,000 steps per day.
However, little association was seen once step counts reached higher than 5,000 steps per day.
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Changes in step count over time were also significantly associated with changing scores, suggesting that step count data from a wearable device may be leveraged to inform clinical care.
The study found participants whose step counts increased by 2,000 steps per day saw a 5.2-point increase in their total symptom scores and a 5.33-point increase in their physical limitation scores when compared to participants with no change in step count.
People who saw a decline in their step count had numerical declines in their physical limitation score that were not statistically significant, when compared to participants with no change in step count.
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“What does this mean at the end of the day? If providers see improvements in step counts, then that is a good thing, however, seeing a decrease in step counts does not necessarily mean the converse.”
WALK This Encouragement to Pals With Heart Issues on Social Media…
Armless 7-Year-old Boy Gets to Finally Go Fishing–After Donation of a New ‘Hero Arm’ (LOOK)
A seven-year-old boy born without an arm has been able to hold a fishing rod with two hands for the first time.
Alex Sparkes spent birthdays ‘wishing his arm would grow’, but now he’s happily casting alongside his dad using a new ‘life-changing’ $16,000 prosthetic limb.
The Black Panther-themed arm was a gift from ‘Britain’s kindest plumber’ James Anderson, a 55-year-old who was touched by Alex’s tale.
His mother Dionne, now 33, said she’d had a normal pregnancy but Alex was born without a limb. It was heartbreaking, especially later, when the boy went to school and young kids were afraid of him because of his missing arm.
He’d been on the list of UK patients due to receive a prosthetic arm from the National Health Service before the pandemic, but three years later, he was still waiting in Lancashire, England.
After his parents attended an event by Open Bionics, which makes a robotic arm so advanced it allows wearers to pick up a pin with its fingers, they launched a crowdfunding bid to raise the £12,700 ($16,000) needed to purchase the arm, which they said would be life-changing for Alex.
When plumber James saw the online appeal he ‘fell in love’ with Alex and offered to pay for the arm.
SO SWEET! 70 Million People Cheer on Young Texan Boy Who Rang A Doorbell Asking for Help Finding Friends
Since receiving his Black Panther-themed arm, Alex has been able to put toothpaste on his toothbrush for the first time and will learn how to tie his shoelaces.
And Alex is ecstatic to have finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of holding a rod for the first time during a fishing trip with his dad to nearby Cornfield Fisheries.
“With his new hero arm, he’s a lot more independent, I don’t have to be there by his side all the time with the fishing rod. He can handle the rod on his own and he’s able to catch his own fish.
“We’re realizing what he couldn’t do before, rather than what he can do now.”
CHECK OUT: A Trip to Delaware Hardware Store Turns into Life-Changing Moment
Alex said the new arm they picked up last week is ‘amazing’.
“I can now pick up stuff. I feel happy when I’m fishing with two hands and I can reel the rod.”
Dionne said Alex ‘had the biggest smile on his face’ when they picked up his new bionic arm on July 24.
“Now that he’s got the arm, every half an hour he’s asking me if I can believe he’s got his arm.
GNN posted a story in 2022 about the plumber James, who runs DEPHER, the social benefit organization that normally provides free services to the elderly and others struggling with rent and housing problems.
“It’s also given him the independence of pouring a drink himself and not needing any help—and he can fully get dressed by himself.
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“He could do it before, but now he’s got his arm he can do it normally.
“To me, that’s him feeling like he’s complete.”
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The ‘Do Good Fest’ Raised Nearly $1.5 Million for Vermont After Historic Flooding
The National Life Insurance Company was founded 175 years ago in Montpelier, Vermont—and, following historic flooding, they are still living up to their motto: ‘Believe in tomorrow. Do good today.’
They were set to hold their annual benefit concert, the Do Good Fest, historically held on the company’s back lawn, when disastrous flooding hit the area.
Within three days, they transformed the event to an indoor acoustic performance that was live-streamed so that viewers across Vermont, the nation, and globally, could support the rebuilding of Vermont through online donations.
The Do Good Fest fundraiser exceeded expectations and the company raised their original promise to match $500,000, when donations poured in.
During the July 15 event, company CEO Mehran Assadi announced that National Life will match donations, now nearing $750,000 for a total of $1.5 million, making it the largest gift so far to the VT Flood Response & Recovery Fund 2023.
The money will go to the Vermont Community Foundation’s VT Flood Response & Recovery Fund 2023, with the first $500,000 dispersed to local relief agencies immediately.
The tax-exempt public charity, as of ten days ago, had collected more than $2.5 million in gifts or commitments to the Recovery Fund since in its first week, but donations are still being accepted.
“National Life Group is an insurance company with a soul,” Mr. Assadi said. “We have been a part of this community since 1848, and this is what a good company does – it takes care of its neighbors.”
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Dan Smith, president of the Vermont Community Foundation said, “Vermont is at its best when we look out for each other and our neighbors.
“As an employer and a neighbor, National Life has embodied that for over a century and has done so again with this incredible commitment.”
“We are so grateful to be able to put these resources to work for families, farms, and small businesses affected by this catastrophic storm. Together we remain Vermont-strong.”
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You can watch the telethon-type event and donate to the rebuilding at DoGoodFest.com/Vermont.
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An Infinitely Recyclable Plastic Could Solve the World’s Pollution Problem
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a new infinitely recyclable plastic that could be the answer to the world’s growing pollution problem.
They’ve engineered microbes to make the ingredients for a sustainable alternative to the 90% of plastics that can’t currently be recycled, many of which use finite, polluting petrochemicals as the building blocks.
The California research team has successfully engineered microbes to make biological alternatives for the starting ingredients in an infinitely recyclable plastic known as poly(diketoenamine), or PDK.
“This is the first time that bioproducts have been integrated to make a PDK that is predominantly bio-based,” said project leader Dr Brett Helms.
“And it’s the first time that you see a bio-advantage over using petrochemicals, both with respect to the material’s properties and the cost of producing it at scale.”
He explained that, unlike traditional plastics, PDK can be repeatedly deconstructed into “pristine” building blocks and formed into new products with no loss in quality.
PDKs initially used building blocks derived from petrochemicals, but those ingredients can be redesigned and produced with microbes instead.
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Now, after four years of trying, the researchers have manipulated E. coli to turn sugars from plants into some of the starting materials – a molecule known as triacetic acid lactone, or bioTAL – and produced a PDK with roughly 80 percent bio-content.
“We’ve demonstrated that the pathway to 100 percent bio-content in recyclable plastics is feasible, said Jeremy Demarteau, a project scientist on the team. “You’ll see that from us in the future.”
He said PDKs can be used for several products—including adhesives, flexible items such as computer cables or watch bands, and even building materials.
Researchers were surprised to find that incorporating the bioTAL into the material expanded its working temperature range by up to 60 degrees Celsius compared to the petrochemical version.
They say that opens the door to using PDKs in items that need specific working temperatures, including sports gear and automotive parts such as bumpers or dashboards.
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“We can’t keep using our dwindling supply of fossil fuels,” said Professor Jay Keasling, senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area. “We want to help solve the plastic waste problem by creating materials that are both biorenewable and circular – and providing an incentive for companies to use them.
“Then people could have the products they need for the time they need them, before those items are transformed into something new.”
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The study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, also builds on a 2021 environmental and technological analysis, which showed that PDK plastic could be commercially competitive with conventional plastics if produced at a large scale.
Corinne Scown, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area, added: “Our new results are extremely encouraging.
“We found that with even modest improvements to the production process, we could soon be making bio-based PDK plastics that are both cheaper and emit less CO2 than those made with fossil fuels.”
SHARE The Recycling Breakthrough On Social Media… (With writing by Stephen Beech, SWNS)