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Colorado Wild Horse Bill Passes With Huge Majority of Politicians Supporting Laws to Protect the State’s Mustangs

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Good News Network
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Wild horses in Colorado – In Defense of Animals
Wild horses in Colorado – In Defense of Animals

The Colorado General Assembly has passed unprecedented and groundbreaking legislation known as The Colorado Wild Horse Project, a new law that adds state protections for the rights of mustangs and burros to reside in their homes, instead of being traumatically and expensively rounded up.

The move comes as a response to last year’s tragedy when 145 horses died during a flu outbreak in a holding facility that was later found to be in breach of 13 policies.

The bill’s sponsors included the Colorado House Majority Leader, Rep. Monica Duran (D), and the House Minority Leader, Rep. Mike Lynch (R), reflecting the vast bipartisan support in the General Assembly where SB23-275 was passed by an overwhelming majority of lawmakers—an indication of how important wild horses and public lands are to a broad swath of Americans.

CHECK OUT: Rescued Horses in Puerto Rico are Now Living the Perfect Life Thanks to Strangers Across the Sea

Nationally, the US Congress unanimously passed the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to protect America’s wild equids. But in 2004, many of the protections that the law provided were repealed when Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) attached a rider to the massive 3,000-page Omnibus Appropriations bill.

“We are thrilled state legislators have honored Colorado citizens’ overwhelming support for wild horses,” said Ginger Fedak, a Colorado resident and Senior Campaigner for In Defense of Animals. “With (its) passage, we can lead the way for other states and national legislation to rebalance the rights of mustangs and burros to live on our public lands.”

Wild horse advocates have been campaigning for more humane, practical, and affordable solutions to wild horse roundups and warehousing for years. Colorado will be the first state to put some of these into practice on a state level.

Wild horse foal – In Defense of Animals / GF

SB23-275 prioritizes retaining healthy wild horse herds in Colorado’s four Herd Management Areas (HMAs), thereby reducing costly and destructive removals. The legislation also aims to improve the poor quality of expensive holding facilities where wild animals were being confined in perpetuity.

LOOK: Willie Nelson Has Rescued 70 Horses Destined for the Slaughterhouse, So They Can Roam Free On His Farm

The new law also provides more staffing and resources for fertility control measures in the state’s herds.

A working group of various stakeholders experienced in wild horse issues will seek to find new areas for hundreds of the captured mustangs to live in sanctuary-type settings or be suitably adopted by horse farms when they adaptable to domestic life.

Funding for this new program will get a start-up of state funding of $1.5 million, after which private funding and support will be utilized.

WATCH: This Determined Bull Thinks He’s a Show-Jumping Horse!

After state legislators, including those with ranching interests, passed the bill last week by a margin of 58 to 7. Governor Polis, who is a strong proponent of improved wild equid management over roundups and removals, is likely to soon sign the bill into law.

“We hope Colorado can lead the way to a better, more humane approach to caring for these cherished wild horses,” says Ms. Fedak. “We stand with our allies, ready to help Colorado’s innovative new plan work and show by example how we can save our wild herds of mustangs and burros.”

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INTERESTING: New DNA From a Tooth Confirms Famous Wild Ponies in Maryland Descended From Spanish Shipwreck

GNN Founder Talks With BBC World Service About Positive News in the Media Landscape (Listen)

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Good News Network
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BBC

In a world dominated by news of destruction and disaster, millions of people across the globe are turning toward positive news platforms—and the BBC World Service recently spoke with a pair of female pioneers in the good news space.

BBC

Kim Chakanetsa hosted The Conversation with Good News Network founder Geri Weis-Corbley and Anuradha Kedia, co-founder of The Better India. Anuradha and her husband focus their multi-lingual media platform on creating a positive impact across India.

Produced by Abbie Bulbulian and Jane Thurlow, the podcast episode explores how we define good news and the effects it has on society.

SHARE the Interview With Anyone Who Needs a Diet of Good News…

Your Inspiring Weekly Horoscope From Rob Brezsny: A ‘Free Will Astrology’

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Good News Network
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Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)

Here is your weekly horoscope…

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of May 13, 2023
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
A famous football coach once said his main method was to manipulate, coax, and even bully his players into doing things they didn’t like to do. Why? So they could build their toughness and willpower, making it more likely they would accomplish formidable feats. While this may be an approach that works for some tasks, it’s not right for many others. Here’s a further nuance: The grind-it-out-doing-unpleasant-things may be apt for certain phases of a journey to success, but not for other phases. Here’s the good news, Taurus: For now, you have mostly completed doing what you don’t love to do. In the coming weeks, your freedom to focus on doing fun things will expand dramatically.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Most of us have an area of our lives where futility is a primary emotion. This may be a once-exciting dream that never got much traction. It could be a skill we possess that we’ve never found a satisfying way to express. The epicenter of our futility could be a relationship that has never lived up to its promise or a potential we haven’t been able to ripen. Wherever this sense of fruitlessness resides in your own life, Gemini, I have an interesting prediction: During the next 12 months, you will either finally garner some meaningful fulfillment through it or else find a way to outgrow it.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Many of us Cancerians have high levels of perseverance. Our resoluteness and doggedness may be uncanny. But we often practice these subtle superpowers with such sensitive grace that they’re virtually invisible to casual observers. We appear modest and gentle, not fierce and driven. For instance, this is the first time I have bragged about the fact that I have composed over 2,000 consecutive horoscope columns without ever missing a deadline. Anyway, my fellow Crabs, I have a really good feeling about how much grit and determination you will be able to marshal in the coming months. You may break your own personal records for tenacity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Why do migrating geese fly in a V formation? For one thing, it conserves their energy. Every bird except the leader enjoys a reduction in wind resistance. As the flight progresses, the geese take turns being the guide in front. Soaring along in this shape also seems to aid the birds’ communication and coordination. I suggest you consider making this scenario your inspiration, dear Leo. You are entering a phase when synergetic cooperation with others is even more important than usual. If you feel called to lead, be ready and willing to exert yourself—and be open to letting your associates serve as leaders. For extra credit: Do a web search for an image of migrating geese and keep it in a prominent place for the next four weeks.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
I boldly predict that you will soon locate a missing magic key. Hooray! It hasn’t been easy. There has been luck involved, but your Virgo-style diligence and ingenuity has been crucial. I also predict that you will locate the door that the magic key will unlock. Now here’s my challenge: Please fulfill my two predictions no later than the solstice. To aid your search, meditate on this question: “What is the most important breakthrough for me to accomplish in the next six weeks?”

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Losing something we value may make us sad. It can cause us to doubt ourselves and wonder if we have fallen out of favor with the Fates or are somehow being punished by God. I’ve experienced deflations and demoralizations like that on far more occasions than I want to remember. And yet, I have noticed that when these apparent misfortunes have happened, they have often opened up space for new possibilities that would not otherwise have come my way. They have emptied out a corner of my imagination that becomes receptive to a fresh dispensation. I predict such a development for you, Libra.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Kissing is always a worthy way to spend your leisure time, but I foresee an even finer opportunity in the coming weeks: magnificent kissing sprees that spur you to explore previously unplumbed depths of wild tenderness. On a related theme, it’s always a wise self-blessing to experiment with rich new shades and tones of intimacy. But you are now eligible for an unusually profound excursion into these mysteries. Are you bold and free enough to glide further into the frontiers of fascinating togetherness?

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) worked at a variety of jobs. He sold cloth. He was a land surveyor and bookkeeper. He managed the household affairs of his city’s sheriffs, and he supervised the city’s wine imports and taxation. Oh, by the way, he also had a hobby on the side: lensmaking. This ultimately led to a spectacular outcome. Leeuwenhoek created the world’s first high-powered microscope and was instrumental in transforming microbiology into a scientific discipline. In accordance with astrological omens, I propose we make him your inspirational role model in the coming months, Sagittarius. What hobby or pastime or amusement could you turn into a central passion?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
I wonder if you weren’t listened to attentively when you were a kid. And is it possible you weren’t hugged enough or consistently treated with the tender kindness you deserved and needed? I’m worried there weren’t enough adults who recognized your potential strengths and helped nurture them. But if you did indeed endure any of this mistreatment, dear Capricorn, I have good news. During the next 12 months, you will have unprecedented opportunities to overcome at least some of the neglect you experienced while young. Here’s the motto you can aspire to: “It’s never too late to have a fruitful childhood and creative adolescence.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
As I’ve explored the mysteries of healing my traumas and disturbances over the past 20 years, I’ve concluded that the single most effective healer I can work with is my own body. Expert health practitioners are crucial, too, but their work requires my body’s full, purposeful, collaborative engagement. The soft warm animal home I inhabit has great wisdom about what it needs and how to get what it needs and how to work with the help it receives from other healers. The key is to refine the art of listening to its counsel. It has taken me a while to learn its language, but I’m making good progress. Dear Aquarius, in the coming weeks, you can make great strides in developing such a robust relationship with your body.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Can we surmise what your life might be like as the expansive planet Jupiter rumbles through your astrological House of Connections and Communications during the coming months? I expect you will be even more articulate and persuasive than usual. Your ability to create new alliances and nurture old ones will be at a peak. By the way, the House of Communications and Connections is also the House of Education and Acumen. So I suspect you will learn a LOT during this time. It’s likely you will be brainier and more perceptive than ever before. Important advice: Call on your waxing intelligence to make you wiser as well as smarter.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):
All of us are always telling ourselves stories—in essence, making movies in our minds. We are the producer, the director, the special effects team, the voice-over narrator, and all the actors in these inner dramas. Are their themes repetitious and negative or creative and life-affirming? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to work on emphasizing the latter. If the tales unfolding in your imagination are veering off in a direction that provokes anxiety, reassert your directorial authority. Firmly and playfully reroute them so they uplift and enchant you.

WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com

(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)

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“Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.” – John Ruskin

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Quote of the Day: “Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.” – John Ruskin

Photo by: Di Chap, CC license

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?

Farmer Filmed the Adorable Moment His Newborn Quails Caused a Mini Stampede in His Home

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Andy Corbley
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Bernard holds one of the quail chicks –SWNS
Bernard holds one of the quail chicks –SWNS

A farmer was understandably giddy to film the adorable moment when his bumblebee-sized baby ‘king’ quails stampeded through his home.

Bernard Henry raises birds on his farm as pets and recently hatched a baker’s dozen of the small species which he now keeps in his home, and watching them charge about is too cute to handle.

The 29-year-old man from New Milford, Connecticut has been hatching birds as a hobby for a decade, but specifically “loves” quail.

Henry let the quails fluff up in the incubator for a few days and transferred them to a small heated pen in his house.

“These tiny ones in the video are called button or king quail and are the smallest species of quail that I raise,” said Henry. “They’re the size of bumblebees when they hatch!”

He now has 60 quails in total on his flower farm, as well as 90 other birds including pheasants, chickens, ducks, and peafowls.

“I name a few of my favorites but it’s hard to name them all,” he said. “Some of my favorite little quail are called Boots, Dash, Jet, Quinn, Finn, Jake, and Daisy.”

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: In This Family, The Dogs Take the Horse for a Walk – WATCH

Bernard’s videos are a hit online where they have garnered over 35 million views on TikTok.

“I love that everyone’s just as obsessed with these tiny creatures as I am. In person, it’s even more incredible to see just how small these little birds are when they first hatch,” he said. “Videos and pictures sometimes don’t do them justice.”

Bernard with a quail on his shoulder –SWNS

“I try and compare them to everyday items like the tip of an iPhone charger or a water bottle cap to try and show my followers just how microscopic button quail chicks are!”

Bernard’s gang of 13 quails is set to increase in numbers as he plans to more than double the amount of chicks during the next hatch.

He gets up every morning to feed and let out the birds and animals so they can roam freely over an acre of land, while supplementing their diet with feed. For so many birds, he spends about $200 a week on food.

WATCH the stampede below… 

SHARE This Adorable Video With Your Friends Who Need A Pick-Me-Up… 

Canadian Family Turns Old School into Hydroponic Farm Growing Fresh Veggies Even in Winter For the Whole Town

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Andy Corbley
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Canadian Family Turns Old School into Hydroponic Farm Growing Fresh Veggies, Even in Winter, For the Whole Town
credit – Let-Us Grow Facebook

A rural Saskatchewan winter is nothing to take lightly, and if there’s any farming to be done it better be in a greenhouse.

Or does it? It turns out that an old schoolhouse will do just fine for one farming couple, who provide fresh veggies to the whole town.

In Hudson Bay, June and Jan Nel run a hydroponic farm equipped with a drive-through window where they grow and distribute romaine, butter, baby romaine, red romaine, green oakleaf, red oakleaf, muir, and batavia lettuces, as well as kale, dill, basil, cucumbers, arugula, swiss chard, tomatoes, radishes, and parsley.

They do it in the old community school in the town of 1,504 after immigrating there from South Africa.

After arriving, the derelict schoolhouse next to their home was open for alternate-use plans, which is when Jan got the idea to start a hydroponics business. He made the pitch to the town and got approved to move in.

“I think when my husband first said ‘let’s grow lettuce inside an old school building,’ I did not really think that it would become what it has,” said June, who runs Let-Us Grow Hydroponics alongside Jan.

“I didn’t really realize how the community would love it and embrace it, and how much I would enjoy doing it.”

Let-Us Grow / Facebook

Most of the year, the town about 180 miles northeast of Saskatoon has its produce trucked in. The food distribution centers of Canada, Jan and June learned during the government-imposed lockdowns and travel restrictions during COVID-19, have only around 3 days’ worth of produce on hand.

MORE INDOOR FARMING: Startup Builds 3 Huge Indoor Farms in Appalachia Turning Coal Country into Agricultural Hub

At the moment they’re growing in a few classrooms and the library, but they hope to take up more space after seeing just how ecstatic the community has become over their drive-through veggie bags.

Hydroponics can supplement food insecurity to a limited degree. They can only grow certain kinds of plants, and exclude staples like beans and potatoes. Furthermore, complications with pests, temperature, and nutrients can arise extremely quickly and wipe out indoor crops much faster than field-grown ones.

MORE CANADIAN NEWS: Chinese Method For Growing Veggies Year-Round in Frigid Canada Really Works–And Has No Heating Costs

But the success is there, and the Let-Us Grow Facebook page is filled with row upon row of lettuce bursting with vibrant greens and reds, as well as cucumbers stacked like lumber.

Future plans involve a cafe and conference room, to share the joy, tastes, and knowledge of hydroponic farming in rural Canada.

WATCH the story below from CBC. 

SHARE This Town-Transforming Business With Your Friends… 

Woman Lost 8 Days in the Australian Bush Survives to See Her 4 Children Again ‘It is miraculous’

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Queensland Police Service
credit – Queensland Police Service

“I was ecstatic to have this outcome,” said Detective Inspector Jason Shepherd. The experienced policeman knew that someone reported missing for 8 days in Australia’s rugged outback has a slim chance.

“It is miraculous,” he told ABC News, just 30 minutes after having prepared a statement that mother-of-4 Rikki Mitchell had not been found and, that the rescue crews and homicide detectives were nearing the end of their search.

Then the 38-year-old woman from Queensland turned up on the Flinders Highway, covered in cuts and scrapes, but alive.

The ordeal started when Mitchell and her partner of 7 months were traveling from Townsville and Charters Towers in north Queensland, and they decided to stop at a rest area.

Her partner decided to go visit a friend nearby for a quick hello while she decided to do a bit of swimming and walking at a swimming area near the rest stop.

As unlikely as the story already sounds, this is surprisingly typical of stories of people getting lost in wild country. They underestimate how easy it is to become disoriented and get lost at distances of mere hundreds of yards from parking lots, campsites, or roads.

MORE SURVIVAL STORIES: Missing Texan Trapped for 3 Hours in Her Submerged Car Saved by Passing Fisherman–Learn How to Save Yourself Too

“It’s common knowledge that if you’re out in the bush in the heat [with] little food and little water, that you can become disoriented quite quickly,” Detective Inspector Shepherd said on this point. “I would imagine that she’s then probably headed off in the wrong direction.”

The report leaves out any details of the events between that moment and the moment of rescue 8 days later, when she “borrowed” an ATV she found on a ranch property she probably didn’t know she was on, and drove it until she heard the sounds of Flinders Highway, and ran into the ranch owner who knew the search was taking place in the area.

Rescue teams report her being covered in light scrapes and her feet were cut open and bleeding, but no major injuries besides.

MORE AUSTRALIAN NEWS: Instead of Demolishing its Tallest Building, Australia Holds Contest to ‘Upcycle a Skyscraper’ Saving Tons of CO2

Shepherd said that while she obviously was not a trained survivalist, she must have known a thing or two to have lasted so long in the heat without a ready source of fresh water and food.

About 20 emergency service personnel partook in a search that was difficult from the start. Because it was a rest area, footprints were everywhere, and so the few tracks they were able to follow out into the bush led nowhere.

Everyone was so happy to hear the mother-of-four was safe, and the story is a poignant reminder—whether you’re in Appalachia or the Bush—of how easy it is to accidentally walk oneself into a survival situation.

SHARE This Harrowing Yet Happy Ending With Your Friends Down Under…

7,000-year-old Road Uncovered in Croatia is Paved in Stone–A ‘Sensational Find’

By
Andy Corbley
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Korcula road University of Zadar Facebook
Korcula road University of Zadar Facebook

The island of Korcula is something Croats are exceptionally proud of—and rightly so. It is said to be the birthplace of Marco Polo, and it’s the oldest part of the world where documents can prove that slavery was abolished (1214 CE).

Along with its stunning natural beauty, Korcula has a secret—a truly ancient past where a ‘stacked stone’ road was found underwater dating to a period 5,000 years before the Roman Empire.

At the submerged Neolithic site of Soline, an astonishingly modern-looking road of stacked stone was found under deposits of sea mud. It connected an artificial island associated with a people known as the Hvar Culture, with the coast of the island of Korcula.

The road was four meters broad, or about 12 feet. The date 7,000 BCE was determined via radiocarbon dating of preserved wood from buildings of the Hvar culture’s settlement.

Other underwater sites ringing Korcula have yielded stone axes and flint tools. The whole research endeavor was conducted by an all-Croat team of archaeologists from several museums and universities in the country.

To grasp the magnitude of this discovery, it’s necessary to watch the video below of the divers. But putting this find into its proper context almost necessitates a brief re-writing of the history of civilization.

Unsurprisingly, the confirmed oldest ‘constructed’ road, excluding blazed tracks shared by humans and animals together, dates back to 4,000 BCE to probably the world’s second-oldest city of Ur, part of ancient Sumeria. Much of Ur’s history was borrowed from the even-older Sumerian ‘capital’ of Eridu, so we can be generous and go back a few hundred years more.

Brick roads begin appearing in India about 3,000 BCE, which is also around the time they begin appearing in Greece.

MORE PREHISTORIC HISTORY: Evidence of Amputation in Prehistoric Times Shows Patient Surviving for a Decade–Proves Medical Expertise Existed

But Korcula road, featuring sophisticated stone-stacking and some sort of material to encase the stones in their positions, was made around 1,000 years before Ur and Eridu, to an epoch where agriculture and animal domestication were still developing or state-of-the-art technologies.

Korcula is already one of Croatia’s top tourist destinations. It seems that the ancients, just like us today, found its beauty irresistibly captivating.

WATCH a diver cross the road below… 

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“Against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.” – Arthur C. Clarke

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Photo by: Morgane Le Breton

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?

Solar Farms Erected in Gobi Desert are Set to Power 1.5 Million Chinese Households

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit - China News Service
Credit – China News Service

Aside from teacups and rice bowls, China doesn’t do anything on a small scale. To wit, their recently-completed solar array in Ningxia Hui is gargantuan—capable of powering 1.5 million homes.

Billed as 1 million kilowatts of capacity, and capable of generating 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours per year, the Ningxia Hui array is the first of several giant renewable energy projects slated for construction in the arid western areas like the Gobi, Tengger, and Taklamakan deserts.

China Energy Investment Corp. says it is the first solar farm in the country to include an ultrahigh-voltage power transmission channel that will bring the electricity generated there to the central Hunan Province.

The transmission is a result of Hunan having a population of 66 million people, compared to Ningxia’s 7 million.

In their most recent Five Year Plan, the Chinese government outlined their intention to install 100 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2026; particularly solar and wind in the desert regions.

MORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Inspired by Marvel’s Mythical ‘Wakanda’, Ugandan Village is Built on Shea Butter and Solar Power

The National Energy Administration said installed capacity of renewable energy in China continued to expand in the first quarter, reaching 47.4 million kW, an increase of 86.5% compared with the same period last year.

Like most rural Chinese provinces, Ningxia, along with Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia—the provinces wherein rest the three deserts mentioned above, rely heavily on coal for electricity, and the major installations of solar and wind are hoped to accelerate economic development in these mostly-agricultural economies.

SHARE This Inspiring Renewable Energy Project With Your Friends… 

Download a Free Native-Plant Garden Plan for Your Specific Region

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Wild Ones
credit – Wild Ones

Native gardening isn’t only beneficial to the animals in your environment, it’s also a lot less of a hassle because you don’t need to constantly fight the climate and conditions in your area.

To that end, a group of plant-lovers created a free native-plant garden planner that contains species lists which are tailored to 19 different US biomes.

Wild Ones, the nonprofit organization behind the online service, believes in “environmentally sound landscaping practices to preserve biodiversity through the preservation, restoration, and establishment of native plant communities.”

The eco-regions included in the planner are located in major metropolitan areas, including Boston, Chattanooga, Chicago, Columbia River Basin, Denver/Front Range, Grand Rapids, Greensboro, Lafayette, Las Cruces, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Princeton, St. Louis, Tallahassee, Toledo, Tucson, and Washington, D.C.

A plant list accompanies each design and provides a quick preview of the diversity and beauty of the native plants incorporated within each design. The nonprofit ensured the plans are formatted for printers so that users can have the plan in their hands while walking through their gardens.

“We can no longer leave conservation to the conservationists,” stresses Wild Ones Honorary Director Doug Tallamy. “We must now act collectively to put our ecosystems back together again.”

CHECK OUT GNN’s WEEKLY GARDENING COLUMN: Good Gardening

So many of the most used and coveted ornamental plants were, centuries ago, brought to Europe from China and the rest of Asia. Those traditions were passed onto gardeners in the young U.S. of A., along with species like the azalea and rhododendron, camellia and gardenia, hibiscus, peony, and chrysanthemum.

There are hundreds of attractive native ornamentals that will survive better, and attract more wildlife than these imported oriental species—and it’s just a matter of getting to know them.

SHARE This Awesome Gardening Idea With Your Greenthumb Friends… 

Practicing and Listening to Music Can Slow Cognitive Decline in Healthy Seniors by Producing More Gray Matter

By
Andy Corbley
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Released by University of Geneva © UNIGE - Damien Marie
Released by University of Geneva © UNIGE – Damien Marie

Listening to music or playing an instrument can delay cognitive decline as we age—by producing gray matter in the brain—a new study shows.

The researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practiced music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months, which when finished resulted in an increase in working memory performance by 6% and a total reduction in gray matter loss in the piano playing group.

Taken altogether, the scientists believe that while musical interventions cannot rejuvenate the brain, they can prevent aging in specific regions, specifically in people with no musical background who start playing in their senior years.

As the brain ages, it loses a trait that everybody who wants to understand a little about their own neurology should remember—neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the measurement of the brain’s ability to flex and work on different tasks by enhancing neuronal connections and creating new ones to suit new tasks.

Key among neuroplasticity is working memory, which describes the kind of mental effort needed to remember a whole phone number long enough to be able to reach the pen and paper to write it down, or translate a sentence from a foreign language.

A team from the University of Geneva wanted to see how much the musical domain could prevent this loss of working memory associated with age-related cognitive decline.

‘‘We wanted people whose brains did not yet show any traces of plasticity linked to musical learning. Indeed, even a brief learning experience in the course of one’s life can leave imprints on the brain, which would have biased our results’’, explains Damien Marie, first author of the study.

The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.

MORE NEUROLOGY NEWS: Scientists Find Surge of Specific Brain Activity in Dying Patients that Could Help Explain Near-Death Experiences

‘‘After six months, we found common effects for both interventions. Neuroimaging revealed an increase in grey matter in four brain regions involved in high-level cognitive functioning in all participants, including cerebellum areas involved in working memory. Their performance increased by 6% and this result was directly correlated to the plasticity of the cerebellum,’’ says Clara James, another author of the study.

In blue, the areas affected by the increase in grey matter in the elderly as a result of music practice. Released by University of Geneva © UNIGE – Damien Marie

In the pianists, the volume of gray matter around the auditory cortex remained consistent; it didn’t shrink with age. For those in the musical analysis group, the gray matter did decrease at normal rates.

Also, a general pattern of brain atrophy was still observed in both groups, suggesting that complex interactions with music are limited in their effects on our most complex organ.

MORE MUSICAL SCIENCE: Revolutionary Music Therapy Helps Paralyzed Man Walk and Talk Again – It ‘Unlocked the Brain’

These results show that practicing and listening to music promotes brain plasticity and cognitive reserve. The authors of the study believe that these playful and accessible interventions should become a major policy priority for healthy aging.

SING ALOUD This Interesting Finding To Your Senior Friends… 

Scientists Release Hundreds of Endangered Seahorses Back Into the Wild–’Best We’ve Ever Done’

By
Andy Corbley
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White's seahorse released in Australia - Supplied- by Dr. .David Harasti
White’s seahorse released in Australia – Supplied by Dr. David Harasti

Marine biologists restoring populations of seahorses off Australia’s east coast are ecstatic at the best efforts they’ve seen so far.

Hundreds of White’s seahorses, the only seahorse or seadragon species on Australia’s national endangered species list, were released into the waters north of Newcastle into specially-made “hotels.”

The project was conducted through a private-public effort consisting of the Sydney Aquarium and the Department of Primary Industries, (DPI) an agency that oversees hunting, agriculture, fishing, and forestry.

A generation ago, divers might see two dozen White’s seahorses at a time off Sydney Harbor at a refuge called Port Stephens, but coastal development and boat moorings have disrupted the habitat of these beautiful and strange creatures.

Sydney Aquarium has a very successful breeding program for the animal that uses individuals from Port Stephens as broodstock. The fathers raise the eggs of the next generation in a belly pouch—a feature unique in the entire animal kingdom—and are collected in large bags of seawater after they hatch.

They are then taken to the refuges and lowered down into their hotels. The hotels are essentially cages meant for much larger animals. They create plenty of nooks and crannies that serve as habitat for them and their prey species like crustaceans.

MORE AUSTRALIAN WILDLIFE: 29 Species Have Recovered Enough in Australia to be Taken Off Endangered List–a Milestone for Celebration

Recently, aboard a DPI boat off Nelson Bay, Dr. David Harasti, a scientist with the department, released 350 baby seahorses at one time.

The seahorse “hotels” – Dr. David Harasti

“That was the best one we’ve ever done—350 baby seahorses sitting around in their new home,” he told ABC au, who filmed him doing the release. 

“It’s great to see and I can’t wait to go back in a couple of weeks and see how they’re doing.”

MORE MARINE BIOLOGY: Scientists Discover Pristine Deep-Sea Coral Reefs in Galápagos Marine Reserve ‘Teeming With Life’

Harasti is planning to check up on his charges this coming October to see how they’re doing.

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“He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.” – Elbert Hubbard

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.” – Elbert Hubbard

Photo by: Sherman Yang

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?

Scientists Find Surge of Specific Brain Activity in Dying Patients that Could Help Explain Near-Death Experiences

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Andy Corbley
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brain electric CC Allan Ajifo
brain electric CC Allan Ajifo

For the first time, scientists have observed a surge of energetic activity in the brains of dying patients, a discovery that reveals that our consciousness can be active even as our hearts stop beating.

Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, found surges of brain activity in the form of gamma brain waves in the “hotspot” of conscious processing in 4 unresponsive patients who were taken off life-support with the permission of their families.

The surge, detected with electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors, correlated to data Borjigin had seen previously in her career in the brains of dying rats, and suggests an increase in brain activity during cardiac arrest in the moments of death.

The data, which Borjigin described as about as good as it could possibly get in this remote field of study, could help shed light on the phenomenon of near-death experiences, described in Borjigin’s paper as “a biological paradox that challenges current understandings of near-death consciousness, which until now was widely believed to be non-functioning.”

Vice Media, reporting on the paper, said that it’s impossible to know exactly what the surge of gamma wave oscillations in the four patients’ brains would be like in terms of sensory experience, though a hypothesis was that there could have been audio and visual components to it.

Individuals who have experienced near-death visions have remarkably similar stories: of distant lights, a sense of levitation, and a highlight reel of life’s memories. The aching question inherent in Borjigin’s discovery is whether or not those experiences are generated during this surge in gamma brain waves.

MORE NEUROLOGY NEWS: First Effective Treatment for Back Pain Changes How Brain and Back Communicate

More research is needed to establish any connection between this and near-death experiences. For example, a weakness in Borjigin’s study was that it included only 4 people, and of them, only 2 had surges in gamma waves in the moments leading up to death.

Furthermore, both of these patients were susceptible to seizures, though neither had had one within the four hours leading up to their deaths.

A strength of the study was that it showed how rats experienced surges in a wide scale of brain activity, while in human brains it was concentrated in gamma waves.

MORE BRAIN MYSTERIES: Revolutionary Music Therapy Helps Paralyzed Man Walk and Talk Again – It ‘Unlocked the Brain’

“What excites me most is to probe the role of the brain in cardiac arrest from these studies,” Borjigin told Vice. “Our data reveals that the dying brain is far from hypoactive. Then, why would a dying brain be activated? What is the function of brain activation at near-death?”

“Producing an internal state of consciousness (NDE) cannot be its sole function when survival is truly at stake,” she concluded. “Much of my future research will focus on the role of the brain in cardiac arrest, including covert consciousness.”

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Man Builds Motorized Trash Bin Complete with Steering Wheel and Horn that Goes 8 mph (VIDEO)

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Andy Corbley
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- SWNS
– SWNS

There are all kinds of ways to make people smile. You can tell jokes, offer free hugs, or, if you’re this guy, you build the world’s only road-legal wheelie bin.

Taxed and registered, the electric motor can propel the creation along England’s roads at 8 miles per hour.

Inventor Kevin Nicks says part of the reason he does what he does is “just to make people smile.”

“There’s a lot of negativity in the world one way or another at the moment, but what I try to do is bring some fun to people,” says the almost 60-year-old inventor.

He often drives with the lid open for safety reasons, although a series of mounted cameras allow to him drive with the lid closed for a real shock to passersby.

He had originally set out to make the world’s fastest lawnmower, but discovered that A: it had already been done, and B: the record was 140 miles per hour.

Kevin Nicks – SWNS

Setting his sights instead on the world record for fastest motorized wheelie bin, he discovered the record was held by a man who did it in honor of his friend who had terminal cancer.

So he decided to let the record stand and outfitted a slower model.

WATCH him driving his wheelie bin…

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Small Acts of Kindness Are Universal: Global Study Finds People Help Each Other Every 2 Minutes

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Andy Corbley
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By Annie Spratt
By Annie Spratt

An international study of people on five continents has found that humans help each other with small things about every 2 minutes, and acquiesce to calls for help overwhelmingly more often than reject them.

For sociologists, understanding the root of any kind of human behavior first requires them to attempt to parse out how much influence on it comes from nurture, and how much from nature.

Kindness, generosity, anger, curiosity—how much are these expressions amplified or tamped down by the culture a person grows up in, and how much is built-in to the human animal?

Attempting to tackle kindness and cooperation, a team of researchers at UC Los Angeles conducted a study of observing everyday interactions between strangers and relations to see how often they helped each other.

Previous literature was, in hindsight, aiming a little too high in attempting to answer this question.

For example, the UCLA press room states in a report on the paper, that while whale hunters of Lamalera, Indonesia, follow established rules about how to share out a large catch, Hadza foragers of Tanzania share their food more out of a fear of generating negative gossip.

In Kenya, they continue, wealthier Orma villagers are expected to pay for public goods such as road projects. Wealthy Gnau villagers of Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, would reject such an offer because it creates an awkward obligation to reciprocate for their poorer neighbors.

While these are valuable insights into human social organization, they are dealing with complex phenomena with consequences, such as how to divide a whale kill among dozens of people, or financing road construction.

Instead, UCLA sociologist Giovanni Rossi aimed a bit lower. His team analyzed over 40 hours of video recordings of everyday life in towns in Italy, Poland, Russia, Aboriginal Australia, Ecuador, Laos, Ghana, and England.

OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCE NEWS: Americans Are Taking More Small Steps to Create Positive Societal Change

“Cultural differences like these have created a puzzle for understanding cooperation and helping among humans,” said Rossi, the paper’s first author. “Are our decisions about sharing and helping shaped by the culture we grew up with? Or are humans generous and giving by nature?”

They registered signals for help, such as asking if someone could pass them the water at a dinner table, or a visual signal of help such as struggling to lift a heavy object into a truck, and identified more than 1,000 such requests.

They found that people complied with small requests seven times more often than they declined, and six times more often than they ignored them. Rejections of help came at a rate of 11% at most, but 74% of all rejections came with an explanation as to why the rendering of help wasn’t possible.

MORE KINDNESS NEWS: The Top 10 Acts of Kindness in 2022 Warmed Our Hearts and Restored Our Faith in Strangers and Neighbors

In other words, only 2.5% of all help signals were denied without explanation.

“While cultural variation comes into play for special occasions and high-cost exchange, when we zoom in on the micro level of social interaction, cultural difference mostly goes away, and our species’ tendency to give help when needed becomes universally visible,” Rossi told the UCLA press.

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Complete Dinosaur Fossil Found by a Dog Renews Rural Coal Town in Colorado

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Good News Network
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Image credit: Emily Poole/High Country News
Image credit: Emily Poole/High Country News

By Derek Maiolo

Ten years ago, a clumsy but enthusiastic Great Dane named Walter was out with his owners on public land near Rangely, Colorado, when he stopped near a strange-looking rock.

His owners investigated and found what experts say was a 74 million-year-old fossil. After painstaking work, scientists uncovered a nearly complete specimen of a hadrosaur duck-billed dinosaur.

Now, the Cretaceous-era fossil proudly carries the name of its paleontologist pooch: Walter.

The same year Walter was found, Colorado’s coal production hit a 20-year low; the town of Craig’s power plant and coal mines in the county are scheduled to shut down by 2030. Numerous businesses have closed, and Ms. Johnson dreams of turning one of those empty buildings into a dinosaur museum to attract tourists.

Rewind time just a bit, and it was near the cypresses and ferns of a brackish swamp that an aging dinosaur strained its arthritic body to drink. It was about as long as a school bus, with a bony lump on its nose and an old wound that had become infected.

Perhaps it died there, or maybe it was still lumbering about when a flood or landslide struck and sediment buried its body, along with the surrounding cypress and ferns. Heat and pressure compacted the vegetation into coal. But the dinosaur, encased in a sarcophagus of mud and sand, remained intact.

Hadrosaurs—the “cows of the Cretaceous”—once grazed in herds across prehistoric North America and Eurasia. Walter is a remarkably complete specimen, and researchers believe that this fossil represents a new species.

As the scientists, volunteers, and students excavated, they found more fossils: a Daspletosaurus tooth, chunks of what may be dinosaur skin, and imprints of ancient plants like screen prints on the rock. The Paleontological Resources Preservation Act says that such discoveries must go to approved repositories, typically at government or museum facilities in cities like Denver and Washington, D.C.

MORE DINOSAUR NEWS: ‘Impossible Fossil’ Preserves the Exact Moment the Dinosaurs Died: ‘It’s Absolutely Bonkers’

But Liz Johnson, a paleontologist at Colorado Northwestern Community College, wanted to change that.

“This is northwest Colorado history. It should stay in northwest Colorado,” she said. Fortunately, that was also in the federal government’s interest, so the Bureau of Land Management worked with the college to make it happen, short-circuiting a process that can take years, if not decades. Walter and the other finds will stay in Craig.

MORE FOSSIL NEWS: Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Our Planet Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms

The town of Craig loves Walter; the county visitor center sells replicas of Walter’s tooth. Students and community volunteers worked for five summers to help uncover Walter’s remains. The most dedicated volunteers still spend weekends and holidays meticulously cleaning fossils.

In 2021, visitors to Dinosaur National Monument, about a hundred miles to the west, spent $24.3 million. That’s a lot of money, but tourism doesn’t pay as well as mining. Still, as Craig scrambles to attract investors and new industries, Walter’s fans hope paleo-tourism can add fresh appeal. “This place used to be a swamp. Now it’s high desert. Change is constant,” Johnson said. “We have to change, too.”

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Reprinted with permission from High Country News. 

“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” – William Shakespeare

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” – William Shakespeare

Photo by: Clement Souchet (Meteora, Greece)

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2,000-Year-old Buddha Statue Turns Up at Ancient Egyptian Port—What Was it Doing There?

By
Andy Corbley
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- Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism
– Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism

When the Ancient Egyptians were still leaving offerings to Amun in their temples, a faith from more than 4,000 miles away was already turning up at the docks of the Pharaohs.

A 28-inch long (71-centimeter) statue of Gautama Buddha was found in excavations of the Egyptian port of Berenice on the Red Sea, dating back to the Roman Era.

Evidently, ships laden with goods from India and offshore islands were, even at this early stage of history, already capable of crossing the Indian Ocean routinely on trading missions, bringing spices, jewels, and religion with them.

A Polish-U.S. archaeological mission discovered the statue “dating back to the Roman era while digging at the ancient temple in Berenice.”

The find holds “important indications over the presence of trade ties between Egypt and India during the Roman era”, the head of Egypt’s supreme antiquities council Mostafa al-Waziri said.

The statue depicts Buddha with a halo around his head and holding a lotus flower in his hand.

Known as the Maritime Silk Road, the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean were plied for thousands of years, connecting the wealth of China to that of India and the Spice Islands, back to the Arab World and North Africa, through to Constantinople and Europe beyond.

GNN has previously highlighted the incredible complexity of global trade even in the earliest periods of civilization.

MORE ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS: Archaeologists Uncover ‘Complete Roman City’ From 1,800 Years Ago in Luxor–Including Pigeon Towers

Last year, cutting-edge analysis of tin isotopes has shown that tiny tribes of pastoral nomads from modern-day Uzbekistan supplied a third of all the precious tin needed to make the bronze that fueled ancient Mediterranean commerce.

Getting the tin from Uzbekistan to the Med involved a vast multi-regional, multi-vector trade network that bears comparison with our own time—3,500 years after it was developed.

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