Quote of the Day: “Those who won our independence… believed liberty to be the secret of happiness—and courage to be the secret of liberty.” – Louis D. Brandeis (Happy Birthday, America!)
Photo by: Jakob Owens (cropped)
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?
Happy Birthday to the United States of America. On this day 250 years ago, the leaders of the Continental Congress of the 13 American colonies voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, breaking with the King of England to form their own country. Unlike any other founding document, the D of I affirmed that rights are inherent to Man, “endowed” by his creator, and not granted by political structures or sovereigns; that when these structures prove detrimental to the exercise of natural rights, it is the duty of those governed to abolish them. From there, the fledgling nation created the Articles of Confederation to bind the 13 sovereign states in perpetual union and firm friendship. READ the Declaration’s most enduring message… (1776)
A representative for America’s favorite showgirl said that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have made donations totaling $26 million to over a dozen nonprofit organizations and charities.
Though it’s not entirely clear when and where the couple will have their wedding, some sleuthing from the Guardian suggests it might be soon, and it might be at Maddison Square Garden.
The donations go mostly to organizations in 4 cities: Nashville, where Swift got her start in the music industry, Kansas City, where her fiancé Kelce has won 2 Super Bowls with the Chiefs, and New York City, the supposed location of their wedding. Other cities such as Los Angeles, also appeared on the list.
The release from the representative stated the following.
“This week, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift donated $26 million to charities across the United States. They include the following: City Harvest, New York City; Food Bank For NYC; New York Cares; Los Angeles Regional Food Bank; Harvesters – The Community Food Network, Kansas City, MO.”
“The Store, Nashville, TN; Helping Harvest, Reading, PA; Rhode Island Community Food Bank; Feeding America; ASPCA; Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library; Grammy In The Schools; Education Through Music, New York, NY; Answer The Call, New York, NY and Musical Mentors, New York, NY.”
MORE OF TAYLOR’S GENEROSITY: After Taylor Swift Visits Children’s Hospital, Her Fans Donate Tens of Thousands to Patients
It follows a pattern of Swift making huge donations—particularly to hunger related causes—when her record-setting Eras Tour generated billions in economic activity across the country.
The tour also saw Swift present her tour staff with 6-figure bonuses.
SHARE The News About Taylor’s Big Day, Bigger Wallet, And Even Bigger Heart…
In one of Australia’s premier wine regions, a woody tourist icon closed for 3 years has reopened to the relief of locals.
The second-tallest “fire-lookout tree” in the world, climbing the Gloucester Tree is something of a rite of passage for locals and visitors to Australia’s far southwest.
Not far from the massive land-locked coastal sand dunes at D’Entrecasteaux National Park, residents of the former timber industry town of Pemberton loved little more than watching sunrise and sunset from the observation platform 200 feet up the Gloucester Tree.
Since 1947, the 250-year-old Eucalyptus, or Karri tree, has worn a curving ladder of pegs stuck into its trunk which once upon a time were used by foresters to survey the vast karri forests for wildfires.
No harnesses or ropes have ever been provided to those looking to climb the tree, a strange relic of a bygone pioneer era in our safety-first society today.
“It is a magnificent view,” said local government president Donelle Buegge. “To watch the sunrise through the canopies of the trees is absolutely incredible.”
Then in 2023, the tree was closed because of safety concerns, dealing a blow to the local tourism industry which relies on outdoorsy types who visit looking to enjoy long-distance hiking trails, the rich forest ecosystem, multiple national parks, and the area’s wine and agricultural operations.
Engineers and arborists re-pegged the tree, along with another of similar age and height called the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, in 2023, but it was eventually closed while they evaluated how best to address structural issues.
Recently reopened, a new observation platform has been installed just over 100 feet up, while the one 200 feet, or 61 meters up the trunk remains closed. There are still no harnesses or ropes—climbing is done at your own risk, and although it takes some nerve it’s still substantially safer than Alpine skiing, which kills or injures dozens of people every year.
TRAVEL AUSTRALIA:
Tim Foley from the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation, and Attractions, told ABC News that he recognized how important visitation driven by the trees is to the community. Ensuring work was done right to avoid future closures was paramount.
“On an Australian level and probably on the international level, they’re pretty unique … so we’re encouraging people to come visit the sites and also all the other amazing things you can do around Pemberton.”
Pemberton is located 190 miles south of Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
SHARE This Rare Opportunity For An Epic Tree Climb To Anyone Visiting Perth…
You can reduce your diesel engine’s emissions by 60% with THIS surprisingly simple solution—just add water.
In all seriousness, according to a review of studies from around the world published by a research team from Nigeria, mixing small amounts of water into diesel fuel could dramatically reduce harmful emissions while preserving, and in some cases even improving, engine performance.
Diesel engines power the industrial world. They are valued for their strength, durability, and fuel efficiency. Diesel exhaust, however, is a major source of air pollution, releasing gases like nitrogen oxides and particles that can harm human health and contribute to environmental problems.
Now, researchers in Nigeria say a surprisingly simple solution may help tackle that problem.
The research team from the Federal University of Technology Owerri examined evidence on Water-in-Diesel Emulsion (WiDE) technology, an approach that blends tiny water droplets into diesel fuel.
Their findings suggest that this relatively straightforward fuel modification could provide a practical way to make diesel engines cleaner without requiring expensive redesigns.
Nitrogen oxides contribute to the formation of city smog and can irritate the lungs, while particulate matter consists of microscopic particles that can be inhaled deep into the respiratory system. Exposure to these pollutants has been linked to respiratory illnesses and other health concerns, and millions of life-years are lost in urban centers around the world every year because of them.
Modern diesel vehicles often rely on technologies such as catalytic converters and particulate filters to reduce pollution. While effective, these systems can increase both the complexity and cost of engines. The researchers suggest that Water-in-Diesel Emulsion technology may offer a simpler complementary approach.
At first glance, adding water to diesel fuel may sound counterintuitive. Water and fuel are usually considered a bad combination inside an engine.
The key is that the water is not simply poured into the fuel tank. Instead, tiny droplets of water are evenly dispersed throughout the diesel using compounds known as surfactants. Surfactants act like stabilizers, helping the water remain suspended in the fuel and preventing the mixture from separating. According to the review, properly formulated emulsions can remain stable for up to 60 days.
When the fuel is injected into the engine and ignites, something unusual happens. The trapped water rapidly turns into vapor. This sudden expansion creates what researchers call a “micro-explosion,” breaking the fuel into finer droplets and improving the way it mixes with air.
Better mixing leads to more complete combustion. At the same time, the presence of water helps lower peak combustion temperatures inside the engine. This combination delivers two important benefits. Lower temperatures reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides, while more complete combustion reduces soot and particulate emissions.
AUTOMOTIVE AFRICA: Tunisian Solar-Powered Cars Leverage African Sunshine to Charge 30 Miles for Free Everyday
Compared with conventional diesel fuel, WiDE fuels reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by as much as 67% percent and particulate matter emissions by up to 68% percent.
The benefits were not limited to cleaner exhaust. Many experiments also found improvements in brake thermal efficiency, a measure of how effectively an engine converts fuel energy into useful mechanical power. Higher efficiency means more of the fuel’s energy is used to perform work rather than being lost as heat.
“Water-in-diesel emulsions are a practical and cost-effective way to make diesel engines cleaner,” said lead author Dr. Chukwuemeka Fortunatus Nnadozie. “Because the technology does not require redesigning the engine, it offers an immediate path toward lower emissions in developing and developed countries alike.”
MORE FOSSIL FUEL FIXES: World-First South Korean Natural Gas Project Paves a Route to More Power and Cheaper Carbon Capture
A major factor in the success of WiDE technology is the choice of surfactants.
The researchers found that using combinations of surfactants often produced the most stable fuel mixtures and the best combustion performance. Selecting the right surfactant formulation was identified as one of the most important aspects of making the technology work effectively.
Although the results are promising, the researchers emphasize that additional studies are still needed. Future work could help identify the most effective surfactant combinations and determine how long-term use of water diesel emulsions affects engine components over time.
INTERNAL COMBUSTION: Ferries, Planes Line up to Purchase ‘Solar Diesel’ a Cutting-Edge Low-Carbon Fuel from Swiss Start-up
“This technology can bridge the gap between conventional diesel use and a cleaner energy future,” said co-author Professor Emeka Emmanuel Oguzie. “With proper formulation and testing, it could become an important part of sustainable transportation and industrial power systems.”
For industries that continue to depend on diesel power, a simple blend of water and fuel could offer an unexpectedly effective path toward cleaner air.
SHARE This Remarkably Simple Fix That Could Cut Emissions Enormously…
More insights into Classical literature have been recovered from the burned papyrus scrolls destroyed in the same eruption that buried Pompeii.
They include ruminations on Stoic philosophy by an unknown author, and the title “Book 8” from a work called On Gods, by the Greek philosopher Philodemus.
Fruits of major scientific advancements in particle acceleration and AI, the discoveries shed light on what people were reading at the time, of the bibliographies themselves, and the philosophical content.
The papyrus scrolls in question were found in Herculaneum, a city destroyed by Vesuvius’ eruption in a villa that may have belonged to Julius Caeser’s father-in-law.
The collection of 800 scrolls was found 275 years ago, and represents the only intact library known from the Classical World. Many archives of thousands of clay tablets from the ancient kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon have been found, but being made of clay, they tend to last longer than papyrus.
Many scientists have attempted over the years to safely unravel them, or utilize chemical methods to duplicate some of the writing, but all such efforts were met with not only failure, but irreparable damage to the scrolls in some cases.
Today though, using a combination of CT scans and machine learning, a distributed series of efforts are managing to recover bits and pieces of this ancient literature.
None of these efforts have gone farther than the Vesuvius Challenge, which sought to inspire young people to use AI technology to decode the burnt scrolls which started in 2023.
The Challenge’s grand prize was collected by Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger, splitting a $700,000 bounty for their efforts.
The trio was able to create a deep learning program that took a rolled-up scroll of papyrus that was turned to charcoal in the Vesuvius eruption and decode 4 passages of 140 characters each, with at least 85% of characters legible.
Silicon Valley figures Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman created the Vesuvius Challenge in coordination with Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, in March of 2023. They offered up to $1 million in cash prizes to any engineers who could program AIs to read the carbonized papyrus.
The scrolls can’t be unrolled—they would simply turn to ash—but some of them held at the Institut de France were imaged at the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator near Oxford by Gross and Friedman. These high-resolution CT scans of the scrolls were then released to anyone who wanted to try to decode them.
Nader, Ferritor, and Schilliger, recovered a page from On Vices, written by Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, a Greek who lived at Pompeii nearly 200 years before Vesuvius’ eruption, and several centuries after the life of Epicurus himself, a prominent Athenian thinker whose ideas have been discovered among the scrolls before.
On Vices has received special attention over the decades, not only because of its philosophical content, but also because in one of its books, Philodemus addresses some of his friends, namely Quintilius Varus, Varius Rufus, Plotius Tucca, and the great Vergil.
Now, scientists led by the University of Naples Federico II have succeeded in fully unwrapping one scroll—almost 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of text. Work to render legible the 20 columns of text is ongoing. Lead researcher from the university Federica Nicolardi, an assistant professor in papyrology, shared the status of the scroll in a statement released at an international press conference.
“While a few isolated letters were visible, overlapping layers obscured the writing, and the scroll was assigned a readability score of zero. But now, with virtual unwrapping, we can follow sustained arguments across multiple columns. That’s a transformational shift.”
AI IN HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY: Mystery of Nazca Lines Deepens as AI Survey Doubles Number of Geoglyphs and Alters Their Meaning
“The scroll’s handwriting and internal references suggest the artifact dates from the second century BC or possibly from the late third century BC—making it one of the oldest scrolls in the collection.”
Legible parts so far include references to two concepts of Greek philosophy: “horme” and “phronesis,” the first translated as something like impulse and the second as practical wisdom.
Horme is something to guard against, while phronesis is considered one of the highest virtues in Greek and Stoic philosophy.
“We will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature,” the scroll reads.
MORE ANCIENT LITERATURE: Lost Page from Archimedes Manuscript Found in Museum with Hidden Text Beneath Illustration
Additional work was done on another scroll which offered up the tantalizing headline On Gods: Book 8. On Gods was not known as a book series, nor was it known to be anywhere long enough to fill up another 7 installments.
Undoubtedly more of these scrolls will be decoded as the years progress as the yet-young methods of their decoding are refined further.
SHARE This Latest Chapter In An Ongoing Effort To Recover Lost Literature…
Quote of the Day: “True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what’s right.” – Brigham Young
Photo by: Jovan Vasiljević
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?
251 years ago today, George Washington assumed command as “General and Commander in Chief of the army of the United Colonies,” having been nominated for the post by John Adams the previous month. Following the engagements at Lexington, Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington’s first act as wartime leader was to drive the British out of Boston thanks to the sneaky placement of heavy artillery on a hill in the city suburb of Dorchester, causing the British garrison commander Viscount Howe to evacuate. READ more about his generalship during the war… (1775)
A team of materials scientists in China have developed a solar-powered device that can produce freshwater from seawater with better economics than bottled water.
By creating a weave of nanomaterials and organic polymers which were both durable and highly reflective, they created a device that could absorb 90.2% of incoming sunlight and use it to evaporate water with 47.5% less energy.
After it generated 5 gallons of fresh water every day for a year of testing, the scientists say that at scale it would be cheaper than producing bottled water.
It wasn’t a coincidence that after seawater desalination plants were threatened with destruction during the recent war in the Persian Gulf, virtually all belligerents came to the negotiating table.
The some-400 desalination plants located along the Gulf’s shoreline represent most of the world’s R&D into the technology, which for decades has been stuck with an energy-intensive process known as membrane or reverse osmosis desalination.
Engineering teams around the world have been attempting to develop new methods of seawater desalination to improve drinking water economies around the world’s arid regions; GNN has reported on several.
This new method, pioneered from a team from Beijing-based Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenzhen University, was used in a test to irrigate 50-square feet of vegetables year round.
Membrane desalination forces seawater through a thin membrane that catches the salt particles. It sounds simple, but other steps drive the energy use up to the point that only energy-rich countries like Saudi Arabia can afford to base their entire water supplies around it.
Solar-powered evaporation is another potential method—the one used by the Chinese scientists—but it had been plagued with materials failures. Ultrafine solar-absorbing powders clumped like flour; organic polymers cracked like cheap plastic.
CHINESE WATER TECH: How Beijing Restored its Aquifer and Reversed its Groundwater Depletion
Drawing inspiration from a shirt button, the Chinese scientists constructed nanoparticle spheres that could be threaded together with polymer like yarn pulled through the holes in a button. The resulting structure consisted of billions of these microspheres, and proved extremely robust and durable, even in conditions that simulated a squally coastline.
All the individual spheres reflected light out into each other, boosting the solar-thermal capacity to 90.2%, ensuring the heat radiating out into the water was hot enough to drive evaporation at the highest rate possible.
MORE INNOVATION: California’s First Solar Panel-Covered Canal Is Now Fully Online
This device was able to produce 5.3 gallons of WHO-grade drinking water every day to irrigate bok choi, beans, and corn for a year. According to their calculations, the system could do far more if scaled up exponentially, to the point where it would produce, after 2 years of use, drinking water for less than a bottled water plant.
“The team is now working to improve condensation efficiency and reduce system costs, with the aim of scaling up the technology for use in water-scarce coastal areas, islands and remote regions,” SCMP reported.
SHARE This Potentially World-Changing Innovation With Your Friends…
Early in June, international experts joined leaders from Southeast Asia for a summit in Laos, where they discussed the “last mile” of malaria elimination from the eastern-most sector of the region.
Burgeoning economically for decades, Vietnam and Cambodia, but also Laos DPR, have seen malaria transmission fall 67% over the last 15 years.
Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) attribute this decline to increased surveillance for earlier detection, expanded access to diagnosis and treatment, and years of cooperation between neighboring countries—the borders between which the mosquito does not respect.
“I am proud to reaffirm Lao PDR’s commitment to achieving our national malaria elimination goal by 2030,” Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone told delegates.
Tough talk, but Siphandone’s goal is more than hope; it’s a reflection of the fact that malaria transmission across these 3 states have fallen to the low hundreds.
To be confirmed malaria free, the transmission-incubation cycle has to be broken for 3 straight years—something recognized as last having occurred in Egypt.
“We are proud of the progress our country has made, and we are under no illusion that the work is completed,” Lao Health Minister Baykham Khattiya said.
BIG POPULATION HEALTH WINS:
Impoverished Myanmar and wealthier Thailand have had much more difficult times combatting malaria. Each possesses broad and remote border regions that are difficult to access for health workers.
At APLMA, leaders were urged to maintain government funding for malaria, as final elimination is not only one of the most complicated parts of the eradication process, but also the most expensive. Amid other public interest groups and funding recommitment decisions, a few cases here or there can easily appear trivial from the halls of power in Vientiane or Phenom Penh.
The previous country to be certified by the World Health Organization as malaria-free was Egypt, and before that Cape Verde, an island nation off the coast of Africa.
SHARE This Tremendous Cusp Of Success For Southeast Asia…
A week after two magnitude 7 earthquakes struck Venezuela’s capital of Caracas, search and rescue teams from around the world are still rescuing people from the jaws of death.
This includes Aaron Levi Cantillo, who was trapped under rubble for more than 4 days, and a 3 year old named Klieber Moran, who was rescued by Jordanians visiting to aid in the rescue effort.
It took 43 hours to rescue Cantillo, who had already been trapped for more than 2 days under a collapsed building.
Footage released by the office of the Acting President of Venezuela also showed 3-year-old Moran face down and covered in dust when he was located by snake cameras operated by rescue teams above.
The boy was underneath the Caracas building for 6 days.
The video, filmed on June 30th, 6 days after the earthquakes occurred, shows members of the Jordan International Search and Rescue Team carrying the child to safety after pulling him from the debris.
Among international calls of solidarity, South American leaders from both sides of the political spectrum—who often have nothing good to say about one another—stepped up to help in a big way.
Brazil’s President Lula Da Silva dispatched a team of 71 firefighters, 4 National Civil Defense technicians, 6 specialists from the National Telecommunications Agency and 6 firefighter dogs as well as at least 12 tons of search and rescue equipment, 100 water purifiers, 6.5 tons of medical equipment and a Brazilian Navy portable hospital, operated by 93 Marines and medical specialists.
Chilean President José Antonio Kast sent a Chilean Air Force plane with 37 team members from the Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue Group. The following day, a second plane was sent with 16 rescuers, three tons of humanitarian aid, and two tons of firefighters’ equipment.
The National Unit for Disaster Risk Management of neighboring Colombia deployed more than 60 rescuers, 4 rescue dog teams, and 12 metric tons of equipment.
DISASTER RESPONSES AROUND THE WORLD
Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa said that he had ordered the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid, as well as the deployment of 46 urban search-and-rescue personnel, search dogs, and 6 metric tons of equipment.
More than 150 Salvadoran rescue workers and supplies arrived in Venezuela on 26 June as part of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele’s pledge to send 300 rescue workers and paramedics and 50 tons of medical supplies.
Mexican authorities provided 250 military rescue crew, rescue dogs, medical supplies, and rescue equipment on board 4 aircraft.
The National Emergency Commission of Costa Rica announced a deployment of 48 specialized rescuers along with approximately 12 tons of rescue equipment and humanitarian supplies.
Other nations, such as the US, Italy, Czechia, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, India, Vietnam, Thailand, the UK, Qatar, Jordan, and even Syria, also deployed emergency rescue personnel.
SHARE This Inspiring Response To A Tragic Natural Disaster In South America…
With plenty to see across the firmament this month, one event surely stands out for stargazers: when 2 meteor showers bombard the sky over the last nights of July.
The first is the Southern Delta Aquariids, and though they can be seen as early as July 12th, their peak display will come on July 30th/31st. On these nights one can expect to see 20 shooting stars per hour.
Peaking at the same time are the Alpha Capricornids, producing a more modest 5 shooting stars per hour, but are known for bright, streaking fireballs.
These Aquariids can be seen best in the Southern Hemisphere, but are visible in the North—the farther south the better. However the featured image above was taken in Washington state. The Capricornids can be seen well across both.
The only problem is that the moon, though waning, will be very bright and large that night, meaning that some of the gentler meteors won’t be seen. National Geographic recommends that one should look 40 degrees away from the radiant point—the constellation where it appears the shooting stars emanate from.
If conditions aren’t ideal, consider July 11th and 17th, two dates when the beauty of a crescent moon will line up with Venus, and separately with Mars and the so-called Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades.
Two hours before sunrise, on the morning of July 11th, the crescent moon will form a triangle with the Pleiades in the east, with Mars sitting just a few finger widths away.
The Pleiades are beautiful to view with a simple pair of binoculars, but if you’re having trouble spotting the cluster of 7 tightly packed asterisms, try using your peripheral vision—a neat trick for identifying things in the dark.
Two hours after sundown on July 17th, look to the west to see the crescent moon sitting just a few degrees below a shining Venus—one of the brightest objects in the evening sky.
SHARE This Great Reason To Get Out In The Night Air This Month…
Quote of the Day: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which HE stands by the country.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Photo by: Shelley Pauls
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?
On this day, 250 years ago, a dying patriot rode all night through a storm so America could be born. Caesar Rodney, a delegate to the Continental Congress from Delaware, was tending to protests by British loyalists on the night of July 1st when a storm brewed to the north. Suffering from asthma and a facial cancer tumor that would lead to his death 8 years later, a letter arrived stating that Delaware’s vote was tied, 1 vote in favor of independence, 1 against it. Determined not to let this chance slip, Rodney immortalized himself by mounting a horse and riding to Philadelphia as lightning swirled around him. READ more inspiring details about this Founding Father… (1776)
A sophisticated AI-powered examination of coral reef resistance extrapolated into the future found that there’re about 64,000 square miles of coral reefs on Earth that could still be resisting climate change by 2050.
The common theory states that CO2 emissions create a greenhouse effect which warms the seas which causes coral reefs to bleach or even die, yet there are environments—as GNN has frequently reported—where corals seem to be more resilient.
The authors of this new study found that when they used 45,000 observations of coral reefs going back as far as 1960 as the data set for an AI model to examine, it predicted according to 46 different criteria that 25 years from now there’d still be swaths of coal reefs totaling the size of Wisconsin located primarily in 8 countries, and that these would be capable of surviving and thriving in the warming seas.
The findings were presented at Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya, and are available on the preprint server EcoEvoRxiv.
Most of the coral distribution was plotted out in the Philippines, Indonesia, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Australia. Belize, Nicaragua, and the Turks and Caicos Islands also showed coral resilience in 2050 according to the estimates.
The criteria for where in the world the AI would map as good coral habitat comes from a concept of ‘coral refuges’ which are observations that coral species can either endure warming seas, recover from damage faster, or avoid damage altogether in certain places.
Where these are in the world comes from the 45,000 observations mentioned earlier.
Why coral seem to enjoy these conditions in these particular places isn’t exactly clear—particularly as regards Nicaragua’s neighbor Honduras, where the country’s largest coral reef is also the victim of substantial ecosystem disturbance by human activity, yet seems to be flourish year round.
Sara Hashemi, a daily correspondent at Smithsonian Magazine, wrote that the authors of the new study want their work “to offer a road map for where countries should invest conservation funding, especially for small nations with limited resources.”
Hashemi started her report by noting that “it’s hard to feel optimistic for coral reefs” these days. It’s hard—if one doesn’t read GNN.
There’s great news on coral all around the world. In terms of protections, 77,000 square miles of tropical seas will be off limits to fishing thanks to bold conservation action by Papua New Guinea this year.
Located in the legendary Coral Triangle, where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet, the newly-designated Western Manus Marine Protected Area will form part of the newly established Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves, a network of national and jointly managed protected areas spanning Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea.
The science of coral breeding and restoration is advancing in leaps and bounds. This January, GNN reported that scientists on the island nation of Mauritius are naturally breeding heat-resistant corals that faced a bleaching event last summer with 98% survival rates.
Marine biologists weren’t even able to breed coral in a lab 20 years ago, but recently, scientists on the Maldives bred 10,000 corals in just weeks using a portable station shipped in a container to the archipelago.
In 2022, the breeding of coral took a cosmic leap with the first ever out-of-season spawning event for lab-bred corals along Australia’s northeastern coast.
Even just learning about these incredible organisms and what they’re capable of is an ongoing and encouraging process. GNN reported in 2024 that a Nat Geo expedition found the world’s largest coral ever, a leviathan shadow on the seabed that stretched out longer than a blue whale—longer than 4 tennis courts.
SHARE This Great News Roundup For Coral With Your Friends…
It was 7 years ago that the heavy wooden doors of transport crates slid open, and 12 European bison who had grown up in zoos suddenly were looking around, blinking at an unfamiliar wild landscape.
They were standing on the slopes of Shahdagh, or the King’s Mountain, northern Azerbaijan—their new home.
Together with the UN Environment Program Fund and the Azerbaijani Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, World Wildlife Fund spearheaded the effort to return the bison to the slopes of the south Caucasus, an effort ongoing across several European countries, including Portugal, the UK, and Romania.
Once native to most of Eurasia, these big-bodied ecosystem engineers lumbered freely around the whole of the continent before being fragmented, isolated, and hunted out of existence.
As has been the case with other animals, a West Europe zoo held the last remaining male member of the Caucasian bison population. He was bred with several European bison as part of an effort to restore the animal to Azerbaijan, which began in 2012 and culminated with the release of the first animals in 2019.
In Shahdagh, WWF Azerbaijan has slowly watched over the herd as it grew through the additions of 25 calves born wild so far.
“We now have a historic opportunity to restore our species,” said Elshad Askerov, head of WWF Azerbaijan, adding that the environment of Shahdagh was severely degraded during the Soviet period. “Soils and forests were severely overused, and many animals lost their habitats.”
NEWS FROM THE REGION:
“The rewilding projects are very successful in Azerbaijan—they are a model for other Caucasian countries,” says Askerov. “We hope that eventually, these different herds will meet each other and become one big Caucasian population.”
Askerov suggested that there was a neighboring country—perhaps Georgia or Armenia—that was interested in replicating the project.
BISON ON THE BOUNCE: Bison Return to Illinois Prairie to the Sounds of Drumming After 200 Years of Absence
Bison do more than just provide an opportunity for tourists to stop their cars and get photos (and occasionally gored) they shape the forest in a way few animals can. Their shaggy coats act as excellent seed dispersers. Their foraging controls understory vegetation and reduces fire risk.
Their dung provides food for plant and insect species, and their substantial mixture of weight and width breaks up and tramples their environment in such a way as to create a vibrant “mosaic” of grassland/woodland habitat where many different species can thrive.
GRUNT About This Great Rewilding News With Your Friends On Social Media…
In Michigan, a prospective law would eliminate virtually all regulations on that ole’ chestnut: the childhood lemonade stand.
If it can be believed, state house Representative Cam Cavitt (R-Cheboygan), had the issue brought to his attention after the local health department in his district demanded that some children pay repeated fees to run their lemonade stands.
The parents reached out to Cavitt, who introduced common sense protections for the classic child-run, non-alcoholic beverage stand, and it passed overwhelmingly in the state house.
“This is a practical change that will make it easier for our kids to gain real business experience and develop civic responsibility. I was glad to see the votes pour in,” Cavitt told CBS News.
The law permits minors to operate a temporary food business serving non-temperature controlled beverages on private property without paying anyone for that privilege.
Provided the beverages aren’t alcoholic and the business makes less than $5,000 a year, the minor is free to operate freely according to their God-given right.
In response to a truly head-scratching number of legal assaults on the running of lemonade stands by children around the country, several states, including Texas and Georgia, have made them exempt from most if not all business law requirements.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Loyal Dog Who Lived by Owner’s Grave Inspires New Law Allowing Pets a Place in Family Plots
Cavitt’s House Bill 6007 will now go to the Senate for a vote.
Nearby in Colorado, such protections were also extended to home-cooked meals sold informally provided they take a food safety course and not transport the food more than 2 hours from the place it was cooked.
Colorado House Majority Leader Monica Dura said that the ‘Tamale Act gives’ people a chance to turn family recipes and cooking skills into a business opportunity.
SHARE The New Of The Young Small Business Owner Receiving The Protections He Deserves…
It took a new and special space telescope to parse out each one of these individual stars gleaming in a dizzying mass at the center of our own dear Milky Way galaxy.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid Telescope, orbiting 1 million miles from Earth at the 2nd Lagrange Point—an orbit it shares with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope—the probe took 9 of these photographs in visible light while pointed at the galactic center for 26 hours straight.
It shows the incredible density of stars located at the center—60 million in just a snapshot of the sky the size of your average full moon, but it wasn’t aiming for the stars per se, rather the planets almost certainly to be orbiting them.
“It was never built with this science in mind,” Dr. Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist at the University of Manchester, reminded the Guardian, “but it has proved to be a superb facility for the work.”
“This data fires the starting pistol in a new age of exoplanet discovery, where we go from knowing about 6,000 exoplanets to finding more than 100,000 across the galaxy.”
Put aside any notions you have about humans finding a new place to live or looking for aliens and exoplanet astronomy is still the most exciting aspect of the field for the average person.
GNN’s reports on exoplanet study include such worlds as one almost as big as its star, another that orbits two stars like Tatooine from Star Wars, some which don’t rotate and have permanent dark and daytime sides, one with the density of a marshmallow, a gaseous giant with clouds that turn to stone, and one that’s shaped like a lemon where it rains diamonds.
Even still, as Dr. Kerins said, the Euclid telescope was built to study dark matter and dark energy.
The universe is believed to be made up of 5% regular matter, 25% dark matter, which tends to clump around galaxies and may even be responsible for coalescing them, and 70% dark energy which is believed to be fueling the expansion of the universe.
SPACE TELESCOPES: Citizen Scientist Spots Earth-like Planet: Now Astrophysicists Will Focus Most Powerful Telescopes on it
Though infrared light is more appropriate for studying these invisible forces spread across so many cosmic acres, Euclid’s visible light camera is designed to image large chunks of the night sky over many hours to track star movements. This will give information on the forces moving them—even the ones that can’t be seen.
However, it also provides an exceptional method of seeking out exoplanets: using the microlensing method of detection.
MORE EXOPLANET RESEARCH: Two ‘Super-Puff’ Planets Lighter Than Cotton Candy Discovered by Researchers
The way this works is through an observational phenomenon called lensing. When viewing a star located behind another star, the gravity of the nearer star bends the light coming from the farther star, making it appear brighter. If that lensing suddenly increases in intensity, it’s often because an orbiting exoplanet passed the star at its closest point, so close that its gravity intensified the light’s distortion.
For this reason, Euclid is believed to be well-positioned to coordinate the locations of tens of thousands of exoplanets, each one ready for closer examination with a telescope like James Webb or Hubble.
Euclid was launched in 2024.
SHARE This Brilliant New Space Telescope’s Exciting Debut With Your Friends…
Quote of the Day: “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” – Albert Einstein
Photo by: Getty Images for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
123 years ago today, the starting pistol rang out for the first Tour de France, the most prestigious cycling competition today. Set up and sponsored by the newspaper L’Auto, ancestor of the current daily, L’Équipe, it ran from the 1st to 19th of July in six stages over 2,428 km (1,509 miles) and was won by Maurice Garin. Of the three Grand Tours of European cycling, with the other being the Giro d’Italia, and the Vuelta a España, the Tour de France had by far the longest stages. READ how the first event went… (1903)
