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Twin Paramedics Whose Dad Died of Cardiac Arrest Saved Stricken Man With Same Condition the First Time Working Together

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Steve and Angie Mills Paramedic twins - SWNS
Steve and Angie Mills Paramedic twins – SWNS

Paramedic twins whose dad died of a cardiac arrest 21 years ago saved a man suffering the same condition—in a tag-team effort, only a day after the anniversary of his death.

Angie Mills and her brother Steve Mills were only working together by chance during a rare joint shift as part of the same ambulance crew when they resuscitated the patient, whose heart had stopped beating for five minutes.

Steve works for the London Ambulance Service as an Emergency Medical Technician, but Angie is a 999 call handler, so the pair are not part of the same team.

But they were out in the same ambulance earlier this month when Angie decided to shadow a frontline crew for the day.

The twins, from south east London, were initially called to a man who had fallen, but soon after arriving both had to jump into action to save his life.

Angie—who had previously only instructed callers to do chest compressions over the phone—started CPR, while Steve and his crewmate, Paul, focused on giving the patient oxygen.

Thanks to their quick-thinking, the man was revived and began talking again, despite having no heart beat for five minutes.

“I had never needed to resuscitate someone myself,” said Angie. “It wasn’t until we were driving to hospital that I reflected on what I’d just done.

“I started thinking about how things can change so quickly, and in a matter of minutes you can switch between life, death—and again, life.”

WATCH: Teen Lifts a Truck to Free His Trapped Father: ‘My Son is My Hero’ 

Angie and Steve Mills in 1975 – SWNS

The incident felt particularly close to home for the twins, who lost their dad Hugh Mills to a cardiac arrest when he was just 61, a similar age to the man they brought back to life together.

“Because he was of similar age to our dad when he passed away, it brought back some powerful memories,” Angie added. “I thought about the fact that my dad didn’t get to enjoy retirement.”

Hugh Mills passed away in 2002, before Angie and Steve had both joined the Ambulance Service. At the time, Angie was working in a bank and Steve was a builder.

The 51-year-old brother recalls, “When the paramedics were with my dad, I was there the whole time and I couldn’t help him.

RELATED: Cardiologist Reveals Top 10 Heart Symptoms You Should Never Ignore, But Many People Do

“He received by-stander CPR from a police officer who lived nearby, but unfortunately, he still didn’t make it.

“When I first started my job I always dreaded getting sent to a cardiac arrest. I didn’t know how I would cope with that type of job because of the way my dad had died.

Angie and Steve both said that saving a life together was an extraordinary achievement which would make their dad proud.

“It feels even more special because I was doing it with Steve. My CPR was effective also because I felt so comfortable doing it next to my brother, and we are so close.

“Steve kept saying to me ‘you’re doing a great job, the timing is perfect, the depth of the compressions is great’.”

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All call handlers like Angie get training in how to do CPR and use a defibrillator and regularly instruct members of the public in these life-saving skills.

Mark Faulkner, who works with them as a consultant paramedic, said of the team’s achievement: “Less than ten percent of people who go into cardiac arrest outside of hospital survive.

“The fact that this patient woke up and started talking after five minutes is all down to the quick intervention of the team.

“As chest compression were provided immediately, the patient could keep his brain supplied with blood and that proved vital in him recovering so quickly once his heart had started to beat again.”

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Angie pondered her own future after the meaningful event. “It made me think about how precious life is and how I should enjoy it more. Take every opportunity that you’ve got, don’t put things off.”

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New Sensor Can Tell Whether You Have Covid-19 or The Flu – And Do it Within 10 Seconds

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Dmitry Keeriv / SWNS
Dmitry Keeriv / SWNS

Have a cough, sore throat and congestion? Any number of respiratory viruses could be responsible. Conventional tests can identify the culprits by relying on chemical reactions—but researchers now want to swap chemistry tests for electrical changes sensed by nanomaterials.

They reported using a single-atom-thick nanomaterial to build a device that can simultaneously detect the presence of COVID-19 and the flu—at much lower levels and much more quickly than conventional tests for either.

The symptoms of both flu and COVID-19 overlap considerably, making it difficult to distinguish between them, notes Deji Akinwande, Ph.D., who presented the work at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society.

“When both of these viruses are circulating together as they did earlier this winter, it would be immensely useful to have a sensor that can simultaneously detect whether you have COVID, flu, none of the above, or both,” said Akinwande, of the University of Texas at Austin.

The device could also be modified to test for other infections, and for other applications, as well.

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The group, including Dmitry Kireev, Ph.D., constructed the sensor using graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice pattern. Its extreme thinness renders graphene highly sensitive to any electrical changes in its environment.

“These ultra-thin nanomaterials generally hold the record for best sensitivity, even down to the detection of single atoms, and they can improve the ability to detect very small quantities of basically anything that needs to be sensed, whether it’s bacteria or viruses, in gas or in blood,” Akinwande said in a press release.

To build the infection sensor, the researchers had to make graphene respond to the presence of viral protein. To do so, they looked to the immune system, which produces antibodies that are fine-tuned to recognize and latch onto particular pathogens. The researchers linked antibodies—from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and the flu virus—to graphene. When a sample from an infected person is placed on the sensor, these antibodies bind to their target proteins, prompting a change in the electrical current.

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The researchers did not have the safety facilities needed to use whole, active flu or SARS-CoV-2 viruses to test the roughly square-inch sensor. To substitute, they used proteins from these viruses delivered in fluid that resembles saliva.

Their results indicated that not only could the sensor detect the presence of the proteins, it could do so when they were present at extremely low quantities. This sensitivity suggested to Akinwande that the sensor could be used for detecting the much more sparse viral particles found in breath.

The sensor also worked quickly, returning results within about 10 seconds of dropping in a sample. By comparison, conventional COVID-19 tests can take hours, depending on the type, and a dual COVID and flu test recently authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes 30 minutes to produce results.

Akinwande and his group are working to improve its performance further, including by expanding the slate of viruses it can detect.

MORE: School Closures During Lockdowns Slashed Rates of Mysterious Fever That Causes Heart Disease in Kids

No word on when it will be available to airports and healthcare providers, but with funding from the National Science Foundation, they’re developing a sensor designed to test for SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as omicron and delta—and even future virus strains.

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Scientist Finds Saturn Doing Something Never Seen Before in Our Solar System: ‘Hiding in Plain View for 40 Years’

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Credit: NASA / ESA / Lotfi Ben-Jaffel (IAP LPL) via SWNS
Saturn image by NASA / ESA / Lotfi Ben-Jaffel (IAP LPL) via SWNS

Using data from several space missions and the Hubble telescope, an astronomer discovered that Saturn’s rings are heating its own atmosphere—something that has never been seen before in our solar system.

“The secret has been hiding in plain view for 40 years,” a NASA spokesperson announced on Thursday. “But it took the insight of a veteran astronomer to pull it all together within a year.”

“Saturn’s vast ring system is heating the giant planet’s upper atmosphere. The phenomenon has never before been seen in the solar system. It’s an unexpected interaction between Saturn and its rings that potentially could provide a tool for predicting if planets around other stars have glorious Saturn-like ring systems, too.”

The study used images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and retired Cassini probe, in addition to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and the retired International Ultraviolet Explorer mission.

The telltale evidence was an excess of ultraviolet radiation, seen as a spectral line of hot hydrogen in Saturn’s atmosphere.

“The bump in radiation means that something is contaminating and heating the upper atmosphere from the outside,” explained NASA.

“The most feasible explanation is that icy ring particles raining down onto Saturn’s atmosphere cause this heating. This could be due to the impact of micrometeorites, solar wind particle bombardment, solar ultraviolet radiation, or electromagnetic forces picking up electrically charged dust.

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“All this happens under the influence of Saturn’s gravitational field pulling particles into the planet.”

NASA

When NASA’s Cassini probe plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere at the end of its mission in 2017, it measured the atmospheric constituents and confirmed that many particles are falling in from the rings.

“Though the slow disintegration of the rings is well known, its influence on the atomic hydrogen of the planet is a surprise,” said the author of a paper published this week in the Planetary Science Journal, Lotfi Ben-Jaffel of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and the University of Arizona. “From the Cassini probe, we already knew about the rings’ influence. However, we knew nothing about the atomic hydrogen content.”

“Everything is driven by ring particles cascading into the atmosphere at specific latitudes. They modify the upper atmosphere, changing the composition. And then you also have collisional processes with atmospheric gasses that are probably heating the atmosphere at a specific altitude.”

LOOK: NASA Astronaut Thrilled by His ‘Absolutely Unreal’ Photo of Aurora From Space

Ben-Jaffel’s conclusion required pulling together archival ultraviolet-light (UV) observations from four space missions that studied Saturn—including Voyager probes that flew by Saturn in the 1980s and measured the UV excess. At the time, astronomers dismissed the measurements as noise in the detectors.

The Cassini mission, which arrived at Saturn in 2004, also collected UV data on the atmosphere over several years. Additional data came from Hubble and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which was launched by ESA, NASA, and the UK in 1978.

But the lingering question was whether all the data could be illusory, or instead reflected a true phenomenon on Saturn.

“The key to assembling the jigsaw puzzle came in Ben-Jaffel’s decision to use measurements from Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS),” said NASA in a press release. “Its precision observations of Saturn were used to calibrate the archival UV data from all four other space missions that have observed Saturn. He compared the STIS UV observations of Saturn to the distribution of light from multiple space missions and instruments.”

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Lotfi Ben-Jaffel explained, “When everything was calibrated, we saw clearly that the spectra are consistent across all the missions. This was possible because we have the same reference point, from Hubble, on the rate of transfer of energy from the atmosphere as measured over decades.

“It was really a surprise for me. I just plotted the different light distribution data together, and then I realized, wow – it’s the same.”

“At any time, at any position on the planet, we can follow the UV level of radiation. This points to the steady “ice rain” from Saturn’s rings as the best explanation.”

RELATED: Huge Meteorite Found in Antarctica–One of the Biggest Ever Recovered

Ben-Jaffel concluded, “We eventually want to have a global approach that would yield a real signature about the atmospheres on distant worlds. One of the goals of this study is to see how we can apply it to planets orbiting other stars. Call it the search for ‘exo-rings.'”

LAUNCH This Breakthrough On Your Social Media Feed For Stargazing Friends…

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

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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 April 1, 2023
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com

ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Sometimes, I give you suggestions that may, if you carry them out, jostle your routines and fluster your allies. But after trying out the new approaches for a short time, you may chicken out and revert to old habits. That’s understandable! It can be difficult to change your life. Here’s an example. What if I encourage you to cancel your appointments and wander out into the wilderness to discuss your dreams with the birds? And what if, during your adventure, you are flooded with exhilarating yearnings for freedom? And then you decide to divest yourself of desires that other people want you to have and instead revive and give boosts to desires that you want yourself to have? Will you actually follow through with brave practical actions that transform your relationship with your deepest longings?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
You have done all you can for now to resolve and expunge stale, messy karma—some of which was left over from the old days and old ways. There may come a time in the future when you will have more cleansing to do, but you have now earned the right to be as free from your past and as free from your conditioning as you have ever been. APRIL FOOL! I lied. In fact, you still need to spend a bit more time resolving and expunging stale, messy karma. But you’re almost done!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Businessman Robert Bigelow hopes to eventually begin renting luxurious rooms in space. For $1.7 million per night, travelers will enjoy accommodations he provides on his orbiting hotel, 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. Are you interested? I bet more Geminis will be signing up for this exotic trip than any other sign. You’re likely to be the journeyers most excited by the prospect of sailing along at 17,000 miles per hour and witnessing 16 sunsets and sunrises every 24 hours. APRIL FOOL! In fact, you Geminis are quite capable of getting the extreme variety you crave and need right here on the planet’s surface. And during the coming weeks, you will be even more skilled than usual at doing just that.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):
The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to become the overlord of your own fiefdom, or seize control of a new territory and declare yourself chieftain, or overthrow the local hierarchy and install yourself as the sovereign ruler of all you survey. APRIL FOOL! I was metaphorically exaggerating a bit—but just a bit. I do in fact believe now is an excellent phase to increase your clout, boost your influence, and express your leadership. Be as kind you can be, of course, but also be rousingly mighty and fervent.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In his poem “The Something,” Charles Simic writes, “Here come my night thoughts on crutches, returning from studying the heavens. What they thought about stayed the same. Stayed immense and incomprehensible.” According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you Leos will have much the same experience in the coming weeks. So there’s no use in even hoping or trying to expand your vision. APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is, you will not have Simic’s experience. Just the opposite. When your night thoughts return from studying the heavens, they will be full of exuberant, inspiring energy. (And what exactly are “night thoughts”? They are bright insights you discover in the darkness.)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
If there will ever come a time when you will find a gold bullion bar on the ground while strolling around town, it will be soon. Similarly, if you are destined to buy a winning $10 million lottery ticket or inherit a diamond mine in Botswana, that blessing will arrive soon. APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating a bit. The truth is, I suspect you are now extra likely to attract new resources and benefits, though not on the scale of gold bullion, lottery winnings, and diamond mines.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Do you have a muse, Libra? In my opinion, all of us need and deserve at least one muse, even if we’re not creative artists. A muse can be a spirit or hero or ally who inspires us, no matter what work and play we do. A muse may call our attention to important truths we are ignoring or point us in the direction of exciting future possibilities. According to my astrological analysis, you are now due for a muse upgrade. If you don’t have one, get one—or even more. If you already have a relationship with a muse, ask more from it. Nurture it. Take it to the next level.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Dear Valued Employee: Our records show you haven’t used any vacation time over the past 100 years. As you may know, workers get three weeks of paid leave per year or else receive pay in lieu of time off. One added week is granted for every five years of service. So please, sometime soon, either take 9,400 days off work or notify our office, and your next paycheck will reflect payment of $8,277,432, including pay and interest for the past 1,200 months. APRIL FOOL! Everything I just said was an exaggeration. But there is a grain of truth in it. The coming weeks should bring you a nice surprise or two concerning your job.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Sagittarian poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827) was a hard-working visionary prophet with an extravagant imagination. His contemporaries considered him a freaky eccentric, though today we regard him as a genius. I invite you to enjoy your own personal version of a Blake-like phase in the coming weeks. It’s a perfect time to dynamically explore your idiosyncratic inclinations and creative potentials. Be bold, even brazen, as you celebrate what makes you unique. BUT WAIT! Although everything I just said is true, I must add a caveat: You don’t necessarily need to be a freaky eccentric to honor your deepest, most authentic truths and longings.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Some of my friends disapprove of cosmetic surgery. I remind them that many cultures throughout history have engaged in body modification. In parts of Africa and Borneo, for example, people stretch their ears. Some Balinese people get their teeth filed. Women of the Indigenous Kyan people in Thailand elongate their necks using brass coils. Anyway, Capricorn, this is my way of letting you know that the coming weeks would be a favorable time to change your body. APRIL FOOL! It’s not my place to advise you about whether and how to reshape your body. Instead, my job is to encourage you to deepen and refine how your mind understands and treats your body. And now is an excellent time to do that.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
I invite you to make a big change. I believe it’s crucial if you hope to place yourself in maximum alignment with current cosmic rhythms. Here’s my idea: Start calling yourself by the name “Genius.” You could even use it instead of the first name you have used all these years. Tell everyone that from now on, they should address you as “Genius.” APRIL FOOL! I don’t really think you should make the switch to Genius. But I do believe you will be extra smart and ultra-wise in the coming weeks, so it wouldn’t be totally outrageous to refer to yourself as “Genius.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Your body comprises 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion microbial cells, including the bacteria that live within you. And in my astrological estimation, those 69 trillion life forms are vibrating in sweet harmony with all the money in the world. Amazing! Because of this remarkable alignment, you now have the potential to get richer quicker. Good economic luck is swirling in your vicinity. Brilliant financial intuitions are likely to well up in you. The Money God is far more amenable than usual to your prayers. APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating a bit. But I do believe you now have extra ability to prime your cash flow.

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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“They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.” – Martin Luther

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Quote of the Day: “They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.” – Lutheran reformer, Martin Luther

Photo by: AQVIEWS (colorized)

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?

Not a Single Collision for Seabird Populations in Offshore Wind Farm Says $3M Radar Study

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Andy Corbley
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Middelgrundel wind farm - CC 3.0. European Wind Energy Association
Middelgrunden wind farm – CC 3.0. European Wind Energy Association

There’s something deeply comical about suggesting that seagulls are smart enough to wait for you to look away before stealing your french fries, but dumb enough to fly into wind turbine blades.

A two-year study on the interactions of several seabird species at an offshore wind farm found that not a single case of birdstrike was recorded over the study period or in the 10,000 videos taken.

Looking at herring gulls, gannets, kittiwakes, and great black-backed gulls, Swedish state wind company Vattenfall found that most of the birds maintained a 50 to 230-yard distance between themselves and the radius of the spinning turbines.

“This is the first time that any kind of bird species has been studied this closely and in detail at an offshore wind farm,” said study author Henrik Skov. “And these birds are really good at avoiding the turbines. Now we need studies on more varieties.”

The study was conducted on a wind farm consisting of 11 offshore turbines near Aberdeen, Scotland. It used radar surveys and mounted video cameras to gather data.

MORE GOOD BIRD NEWS: Floating ‘WALL-E’ Scarecrow Stops Seabirds from Diving into Fishing Nets

Why these seabirds avoided the turbines could be down to the individual species observed since other studies have shown seabirds tend to rank high in offshore wind turbine mortality, and of medium risk for land-based wind turbine mortality.

Skov also offered that it could be the turbines are, for one reason or another, outside of prominent flight corridors, and therefore aren’t where birds have historically flown either for migration and nesting purposes, or feeding.

MORE WILDLIFE SAVING STORIES: One Simple Change Cut Accidental Albatross and Seabird Deaths by 98%: ‘Absolutely amazing’

The study is a big milestone in scientists’ attempts to learn how and where to build wind turbines so that they don’t interfere with birds’ flight patterns. If there is something in the data of this study or future observations that could reveal the secret as to why there was no mortality at the Aberdeen wind farm, it could mean that hundreds of thousands of birds could be saved in the future.

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Hero Pilot Guides Novice Aviator in Emergency Landing After He Sees Her Tire Fall Off

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Andy Corbley
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Pilot Taylor Hash - YouTube
Pilot Taylor Hash – YouTube

A young pilot is thanking her lucky stars there was someone on hand to guide her down into an emergency landing after she lost part of her landing gear during takeoff.

Chris Yates, a veteran pilot at the airport, radioed the control tower to alert them of the potential disaster, but the control tower operators had never seen it happen before and didn’t know what to do.

The tower patched Yates through to the young pilot, whose name was Taylor Hash. Hash was only on her third-ever solo flight, and the anxiety was thick in her voice.

“Taylor this is Chris, my daughter’s name is Taylor and I taught her to fly! We’re gonna be just fine kiddo,” were among the first things he said.

A student pilot, Hash was up in a Diamond Star single-engine aircraft from Oakland County International Airport, Michigan. At the time of the incident, she had 57 total flight hours.

Yates, the former director of aviation at SpaceX, managed to calm Hash down with the comment about his daughter, before beginning to instruct her on how to make an emergency landing.

Hash would have to land without a front tire, so Yates told her to keep circling the field until she felt ready to try and land the plane.

“When you touch down, I just want that stick all the way back. You’re gonna hold that stick back like you don’t want that nose to touch,” he can be heard saying over the recorded radio conversation.

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“The nose is gonna come down, you’re okay, you’re okay. Talk to me. Thatta girl, proud of you.”

WXYZ News Detroit shared another video of the landing taken by two onlookers who remarked “beautiful, beautiful,” as she managed to touch down without the nose immediately smashing into the ground.

“I was thinking of my daughter and just how afraid and alone (Hash) probably felt,” Yates told NBC News correspondent Gadi Schwartz.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: After Instructor Became Unconscious Mid-Flight, Student Pilot Achieves ‘Perfect’ Emergency Landing During His First Lesson

NBC News TODAY interviewed Hash who told them that “as soon as he said [thatta girl] he goes, ‘I’m proud of you,’ the waterworks came,” Hash said, with Yates revealing he too was crying.

The FAA has stated they are investigating what the cause of the malfunction was, while Hash has said that despite the frightening incident, she has no plans to give up flying.

WATCH the coverage of the story from TODAY below…

Colorful Mumbai Overpass Goes Viral After Being Converted into Sporting Complex for Community

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Andy Corbley
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Navi Mumbai Bridge –@Dhananyaj_Tech / Twitter
Navi Mumbai Bridge –@Dhananyaj_Tech / Twitter

In the urban sprawl of Mumbai, kids have an awesome and surprising new place to play cricket and badminton—under a highway overpass.

Built beneath the Sector 15 Sanpada overpass in Navi Mumbai, a video of the kids playing went viral and drew the attention of other city administrators who celebrated the clever transformation of an unhappy space into one of real joy.

The overpass is enormous and over 20,000 square feet of space is available underneath. Under the tallest section, 3 courts for badminton and 1 for basketball have been built. A cricket zone with a pitch of 22 yards enclosed by a net has been created, as well as a sizable skating rink facility, running track, and yoga area.

The whole complex is painted in bright colors to beautify the space. Construction of the sports complexes began back in 2021.

MORE MUNICIPAL SPORTS: How Tony Hawk Joined an Apache Pro Skater to Bring New Skate Park to Reservation

Hyderabad’s Municipal Administration and IT Minister K. T. Rama Rao expressed interest in replicating similar projects in his city—the fourth-largest in India—and tagged the Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar in a tweet, saying, “Let’s get this done in a few places in Hyderabad. Looks like a nice idea.”

“The space under most of the [overpasses] in Navi Mumbai is lying unused and taking advantage of the situation some people have encroached on them for parking vehicles and running small shops among others,” Sanjay Desai, Navi Mumbai Municipal Council’s city engineer told The Hindustan Times.

“Some homeless people are also staying under a few flyovers and neither we, nor the police department has any idea about their backgrounds. So to beautify the place, we have decided to develop sports infrastructure and open gyms under the flyovers.”

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“The golden hour has secrets to reveal. Be alert for merriment. Be greedy for glee. Go in quest of jubilation’s mysterious blessings.” – Rumi

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Quote of the Day: “The golden hour has secrets to reveal. Be alert for merriment. Be greedy for glee. Go in quest of jubilation’s mysterious blessings.” – Sufi poet Rumi

Photo by: Paul Rysz

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Recently Arrived Ukrainians in Minneapolis Head to Mississippi to Help Tornado Victims

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Andy Corbley
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Ukrainian refugees attending Orthodox Church in Minneapolis - credit American Service
Ukrainian refugees attending Orthodox Church in Minneapolis – credit American Service

The mainstream media is filled with headlines of how the United States is helping Ukraine, but under the radar is how some Ukrainians are actually returning the favor.

Having arrived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as recently as a few months ago, a group of 7 Ukrainian refugees has signed up for a 2,000-mile road trip to Mississippi to help with tornado relief.

Tornadoes tore a path of destruction across rural Mississippi and Alabama on the night of Friday the 24th. The nonprofit American Service is just one of several aid organizations heading to help the victims.

They quickly organized a team of volunteers and headed down to North Fork, MI, expecting to arrive on Tuesday.

American Service’s Director of Operations, Sofiia Rudenko, is a Ukrainian who has only been in the country since Christmas, but after receiving help settling in from American Service, she quickly dedicated her time to help other new arrivals.

MORE GREAT REFUGEE NEWS: British Woman Who Fled War in ‘74 Closes Her Hotel to Tourists–Giving Ukrainian Refugees a Home Instead

“Here in America a lot of people helped me to establish here and we have this kind of culture that we want not only to take but also to give back and to help the others,” Rudenko told MPR News. 

“I found a group of people, Ukrainian, that are not working today and willing to go immediately and now we’re packing and going. It’s so exciting, I hope we can do something great for this world.”

MORE GREAT REFUGEE NEWS: State Department Launches ‘Welcome Corps’ Program to Allow Citizens to Easily Sponsor Legal Refugees

American Service has so far helped 80 Ukrainians like Rudenko find temporary housing, jobs, and a bit of community in Minneapolis.

Their first trip down to Mississippi was going to bring exclusively water, and a second trip will follow based on whatever it was they discovered is in short supply after the first trip.

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One Stem Cell Injection to Target Inflammation Slashed Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke By 58%

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Andy Corbley
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Dr. Perin holds up the stem cell treatment - Texas Heart Institute
Dr. Perin holds up the stem cell treatment – Texas Heart Institute

A large trial showed that a single injection of a patient’s own stem cells into their heart was able to reduce inflammation and risk of heart attack and stroke by 58% if they had heart failure.

6 million Americans have clinical diagnoses of heart failure, a condition designated by a lack of ability for the heart to pump blood sufficiently.

“For the first time, we’ve discovered that stem cells can successfully treat the inflammation that causes heart failure,” study lead author Dr. Emerson Perin, told the European Pharmaceutical Review.

It’s the largest clinical trial of cell therapy for heart disease to date and demonstrated several positive results. Before understanding the cure, it’s worth taking a moment to understand the problem.

When less than 40% of the blood inside the heart is pumped out into the body, an individual has heart failure, and could in theory at any moment suffer a cardiovascular event like a heart attack. This is called left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), with a healthy person’s fraction being 55%-70%.

Because inflammation is closely associated with heart disease—both arise from the same poor lifestyle patterns which cause the majority of cases of heart disease—cardiologists at the Texas Heart Institute designed a treatment that could address the inflammation.

What they selected were stem cells taken from a patient’s bone marrow called mesenchymal precursor cells, which are replicated in a lab via proprietary methods developed by a pharmaceutical company called Mesoblast, and injected straight into the heart.

MORE NEWS ON STEM CELLS: Sound Waves Convert Stem Cells Into Bone in Regenerative Breakthrough

First and foremost, the treatment, called rexlemestrocel-L, was well-tolerated and didn’t cause additional inflammation in any patients who received it. Secondly, the treated patients showed increased performance of LVEF; their hearts were pumping out more blood volume.

“We are very encouraged by these study data that indicate the potential of our allogeneic cellular therapy to address the major areas of unmet need in heart failure patients where conventional treatments are not effective,” said Mesoblast CEO Dr. Silviu Itescu in a statement.

MORE NEWS ON STEM CELLS: Yale Scientists Successfully Repair Injured Spinal Cords Using Patients’ Own Stem Cells

“Improvement in LVEF at 12 months may be a functional surrogate endpoint for rexlemestrocel-L’s subsequent benefits on long-term MACE outcomes and survival in this high-risk patient population with chronic heart failure.”

The trial was a phase 3, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial, i.e. the gold standard for medicine, and it should open up the door to future trials of the same kind and turn the research into real treatments for thousands of people.

SHARE This Encouraging Study Result With Your Friends… 

When Life Gives You Carbon… Make a Factory for Producing Carbon-Negative Concrete

By
Andy Corbley
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Photo from VTT / by Vesa Kippola
Photo from VTT / by Vesa Kippola

Concrete is being made in Finland with a carbon-negative replacement for cement, something the company hopes will trap more CO2 than it takes to produce throughout its lifecycle.

One of the most ubiquitous of human building materials, concrete is nevertheless one of the most carbon-intensive manufacturing methods in society.

Finnish materials researchers at VTT Technical Research Center said that they were aiming to create carbon-negative concrete “before they know how to do so.”

One of the interesting things about concrete is that it reabsorbs carbon over the years, which can lead to the corrosion of steel reinforcements like rebar inside it.

Experimenting with different substitutes, they discovered that slag from blast furnace smelting could be combined with bio-ash to replace cement in concrete.

During smelting, when the ore containing iron or copper is exposed to high temperatures, impurities within it such as oxides of calcium, magnesium, silicon, iron, and aluminum, are separated from the molten metal and can be removed. Slag is the term for the collection of compounds that are removed.

MORE CARBON-NEGATIVE TECH: America’s First Carbon-Negative Hotel in the Middle of Denver is Inspired by Aspen Trees

Powdered slag can absorb higher amounts of carbon than cement, and VTT senior scientist Tapio Vehmas explained how his team figured out how to suck CO2 from the air and deposit it into the powered slag, before putting it in cast concrete to fulfill his team’s vision.

“We have demonstrated in the pilot unit that our technology is capable of reducing the CO2 emissions of conventional concrete by 45%,” said Vehmas, now CEO of VTT spin-out company Carbonaide.

“Last autumn, we demonstrated lowering our products’ carbon footprint to -60 kg/m3 by replacing Portland cement with slag.”

Yard stones and tiles – VTT

But this isn’t a story about scientific experimentation. Carbonaide has secured nearly $2 million in funding to build a production center for its cast concrete blocks that will be capable of mineralizing “up to five tons of CO2 per day.”

MORE GOOD MANUFACTURING: Batteries 3D-Printed Using Layers of Powder Use 40% Less Material, Charge in Minutes and Recycle Easier

With concrete being one of man’s most-used building materials, the startup is going ahead to scale up its production capacity by 100 times thanks to an already-secured value chain.

Five tons of CO2 per day would cover the average emissions for the business commute of around 415 people in their cars, if people commute 15 miles to work, and 15 miles home.

WATCH the blocks being cast… 

SHARE This Great Example Of A Circular Economy With Your Friends Worried About The Climate… 

Amateur Gold Digger Finds Huge Nugget Worth $160,000 in Australia

By
Andy Corbley
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Lucky Strike Gold owner Darren Kamp with the massive nugget - credit Lucky Strike Gold
Lucky Strike Gold owner Darren Kamp with the massive nugget – credit Lucky Strike Gold

An Australian gold digger turned up a stone weighing 10.1 pounds, more than half of which is gold, and one of the largest finds in recent times.

It’s the kind of photo that one would expect to see from the 1850s, in black and white, with the man wearing breeches, a wide-brimmed hat, and a bandana around his neck.

But even though it’s 2023, experienced prospector Darren Kamp says he’s never seen a rock like it before in his life.

“When it hit my hand, my jaw dropped with it,” Kamp told CNN on Tuesday. “It was just incredible. Once-in-a-lifetime find.”

Kamp runs Lucky Strike Gold which runs recreational prospecting trips into the gold-containing regions of Australia known collectively as the Golden Triangle, a profession he’s been engaged in for 43 years.

credit Lucky Strike Gold

The finder took the rock to Kamp’s shop, believing there might be a few dozen grams of gold inside. It was very dirty, but after they split it open Kamp described the gold just “oozing out of it”.

The media called the finder an amateur, but equipped with a Minelab Equinox 800 detector with a price tag of USD$800, he probably had more than just beginner’s luck on his side.

The largest gold specimen Kamp ever found was a 24-ounce piece, which now would be worth around USD$46,753 at current market prices.

SHARE This Ridiculously Lucky Find With Your Friends… 

“Daffodils know the goal of living is to grow.” – E. E. Cummings (The same is true for humans.) 

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Daffodils know the goal of living is to grow.” – E. E. Cummings (The same is true for humans.)

Photo by: Chloé Leblanc

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?

Watch Mars Kiss Our Crescent Moon – the Highlight of April Stargazing

By
Andy Corbley
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Bossco CC license via Flick.
Bossco CC license via Flick.

As we are only a week of waxing away from the full moon of April, it’s worth taking a look at other celestial sightseeing opportunities in the springing month.

Around midnight of Wednesday, April 5th, the Pink Moon will fully illuminate the sky. Also known as the Paschal Moon, it sets the date for Easter on the Sunday after the first full moon in April.

Despite cherry blossoms and other flowers heralding spring, the Pink Moon is not actually pink. The name corresponds with the early springtime blooms of Phlox subulata—commonly called creeping phlox or moss phlox, native to North America where Old Farmer’s Almanac keeps track of all the names given by a mix of settlers and native tribes.

For example, you have Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Lakota), Moon When the Geese Lay Eggs (Dakota), Frog Moon (Cree), Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin), and Budding Moon (Tlingit).

Further out into space, the second half of April will present some excellent viewing opportunities for those with a telescope or binoculars.

On April 15th, overnight into the 16th, the planet Saturn will come within very close proximity to the Moon. They will appear just 3° apart, and while the ringed planet can be seen by the naked eye, a decent pair of binos will allow you to see the rings.

On April 20th, for those readers from Indonesia, Timor Leste, and Australia, particularly in the Ningaloo area, there will be a hybrid solar eclipse.

That means that as the eclipse travels along the path of totality, depending on where you are along it, you will see different shapes pass over the sun as the moon’s shadow affects viewing on Earth.

The full moon of April will be called the “Pink Moon” or the “Frog Moon”

Time and Date have put together a great article on how to see it if you live Down Under.

April 23rd will be the peak time of the Lyrid Meteor Shower, where in the pre-dawn hours one will be able to see around 20 shooting stars per hour.

The point in the sky out of which they seem to radiate is in the constellation Hercules. The Lyrids aren’t the largest meteor swarm, but the moon will be very small that night and offer no light pollution of the meteors one would see.

Lastly, after sunset on April 25th, the waning crescent moon of April will pair on its bright side with Mars just behind it as a glowing red sphere. This one can also be seen without binos or a telescope, but they will make the opportunity all the more special.

SHARE These Awesome Stargazing Opportunities With Your Friends… 

Laid Off in Lockdown, Construction Worker Starts Crafting Radiator Covers–And Earns First Million

By
Andy Corbley
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Furniture maker Liam Mchale-Smith – SWNS
Furniture maker Liam Mchale-Smith – SWNS

A man has turned his lockdown side hustle into a thriving business—which he says has now turned over a million pounds.

After the government-imposed lockdowns caused Liam Mchale-Smith’s construction firm to close down and lay him off, he took over the garden shed and began handmaking furniture.

His wife Ruth then posted pictures on her social media and inquiries came flooding in.

Three years later and the man who once made $700 per week as a tradesman has now sold over $1.3 million (£1 million) in goods, and is unsurprisingly “very proud” of it.

“I really never thought something like this would happen to me,” said 33-year-old Mchale-Smith, “I have no experience running a business or being the boss.”

“But I wouldn’t go back to being employed now. I love being the CEO, I’m just glad Ruth is great with computers and social media.”

At age 15, Liam started studying carpentry before taking a job in construction. His first offerings were a wall-mounted garden bar and radiator cover.

Liam Mchale-Smith, 33, with radiator cover –
SWNS

“Unique Designs by Liam” continued to grow and by January 2021 he could afford a new workshop, as well as three employees—two apprentices and his dad.

MORE HANDICRAFTS: Dad Wakes From Coma to Discover Artistic Skills he Never Had Before–And is Now a Carpenter and Model Maker

As soon as lockdowns lifted Liam and Ruth were delivering furniture as far away as Aberdeen in Scotland, a more than 350-mile trip on Britain’s motorways.

Unique Design by Liam –
SWNS

By the end of 2022, he had sold 10,350 items across Etsy and his website, earning him over $1.3 million.

“It is very hard work,” said Liam. “I can’t take a week off like I used to, so it has a huge impact on our home life.”

MORE SELF-MADE MEN: Two in Three U.S. Business Owners Believe They’re Currently Living the American Dream

“But the success is very much deserved,” Ruth adds. “I don’t know anyone who works as hard as Liam—he’s unique, and such an inspiration to others.”

He has since bought a new family home, and acquired a fleet of trucks and several members of staff who together work to produce up to 40 pieces a day, all handmade from locally sourced materials.

SHARE This Inspiring Handyman With Your Friends… 

Monet’s Water Lilies Masterpiece is Recreated Using 650,000 Lego Pieces

By
Andy Corbley
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© Ela Bialkowska OKNO Studio
© Ela Bialkowska OKNO Studio

If you don’t know who Ai Weiwei is, he’s an artist who likes big, statement-setting installations, but in a new exhibition he is throwing it back to the Impressionists, with a massive interpretation of Water Lillies by Monet, made from 650,000 Lego bricks.

Titled Water Lillies #1, it’s the largest Lego sculpture the Chinese artist has ever made, and it will go on display in “Ai Weiwei: Making Sense” at the Design Museum in London, UK, from April 7 to July 30.

The nearly fifty-foot-long sculpture takes up a whole wall at the museum. The gentle flowing colors are interrupted suddenly by a dark portal that represents the underground tunnel built by his father at the family house in China’s Xinjiang Province—where they would often hide from the authorities.

“In ‘Water Lilies #1’ I integrate Monet’s Impressionist painting, reminiscent of Zenism in the East, and concrete experiences of my father and me into a digitized and pixelated language,” Ai said in a statement.

“Toy bricks as the material, with their qualities of solidity and potential for deconstruction, reflect the attributes of language in our rapidly developing era where human consciousness is constantly dividing.”

MORE FROM GREAT SCULPTORS: Viewed Through Venetian Glass: Old Art Form Captures Modern Global Challenges in Stunning Exhibition

© Ela Bialkowska OKNO Studio

Ai has worked with Lego many times before. In his exhibition “The Human Comedy” on San Giorgio Island in the Venice Lagoon, Lego portraits of monsters and animals showed how similar the two can look at various resolutions.

In “Making Sense” Ai has prepared some other massive installations, including one made from 200,000 pieces of broken pottery from the Beijing workshop he used to run before the Communist Party demolished it.

SHARE This Awesome Exhibition Opportunity With Your Artsy Friends… 

Hate Needles? Future Vaccines Could be Delivered by a Gentle Puff of Air

By
Andy Corbley
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By Jeremiah Gassensmith
By Jeremiah Gassensmith

Nobody likes needles, but they’re necessary for delivering many vaccines and biologics into the body. But what if those could be puffed through the skin instead, with just a little pressure, like being hit in the arm with a foam toy?

Today, scientists report steps toward making that a reality. Using powdered vaccines that don’t require refrigeration and a system driven by compressed gas, their “MOF-Jet” could easily deliver therapeutics against cancer and other diseases in a painless and less fear-inducing way.

The idea for the project was formed out of pandemic-induced boredom. The project’s principal investigator, Jeremiah Gassensmith, Ph.D., had ordered inexpensive pieces of a compressed gas-powered jet injection system to mess around with while stuck at home.

Later, after everyone was back on campus, he handed the pieces over to Yalini Wijesundara, a graduate student in the lab, with the instructions, “See what you can do with this.”

Despite looking and sounding like something out of science fiction, jet injectors were in use in the military back in the 1960s, but were discontinued due to them actually being more painful, and often blowing the liquid vaccine back into the face of the administer.

The medical media in Wijesundara’s invention is called a MOF, or metal-organic framework; essentially tiny miny cages that can contain a vaccine powder until it’s safely inside a cell.

These are normally made of gold or tungsten and are extremely expensive. Wijesundara and her team instead found a way to use zeolite.

GIZMOS AND GADGETS: 17-Year-old Wins $150,000 in Science Talent Search for Remarkable Way to Diagnose Pediatric Heart Disease

“We can also store vaccine formulations within it as powders at room temperature, which eliminates the need for the extremely cold temperatures many liquid vaccines require,” said Wijesundara.

According to Gassensmith, the blast from the injector just feels “like you got hit with a Nerf bullet,” and the team found it worked on both mice and onions.

By tinkering with the MOF-Jet, Wijesundara soon realized that cargo release could be tuned by simply changing the injector’s carrier gas.

MORE MEDICAL INNOVATION: Uganda Joins African Nations Using Drones to Deliver Life-Saving Medical Supplies to More Than 22 Million People

“If you shoot it with carbon dioxide, it will release its cargo faster within cells; if you use regular air, it will take four or five days,” she explains. “Once we realized that, it opened up a lot of possibilities,” added Gassensmith.

The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

WATCH the invention in action below… 

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“May my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple.” – E. E. Cummings

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “May my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple.” – E. E. Cummings

Photo by: Joe Pohle

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?

Participating in Group Sports Can Offset High Stress and Contribute to Academic Competence During Challenges

By
Andy Corbley
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credit Steven Abraham
credit Steven Abraham

A new study found that having an active sporting hobby offset stress and contributed to academic competence even during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The effect was calculated during the so-called two weeks to flatten the curve, and the researchers believe the observed effect was robust enough to be applicable in future periods of societal disruption.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo found that participation in activities such as fitness classes and drop-in sports before the pandemic was linked to lower levels of stress and higher levels of perceived competence to handle challenges and master school workload during the lockdown.

The study used factor and regression analyses based on self-reported responses from 116 students active in campus recreational sports at two-time points: January 2020, before the pandemic, and April 2020, after lockdowns.

“Our findings suggest that the impact of campus recreational activities on reducing stress went beyond the obvious physical health benefits and contributed to overall well-being even down the line,” said Steven Mock, a researcher in the department of Recreation and Leisure Studies.

“It’s possible that students who had learned how to deal with challenges and losses in the context of sport and recreational activity developed key skills such as adaptability that helped them manage with pandemic-related setbacks.”

MORE ON KIDS’ HEALTH: Adventurous Play Helps Boosts Children’s Mental Health, Research Says

At the beginning of winter 2020, stress levels for students were generally low. Managing academic demands, building new relationships, and trying to achieve personal goals were the top three stressors at that time.

“Students had just come back from the holiday break, their academic workload was still low, and they were not anticipating any societal disruption such as COVID-19,” said co-author Narges Abdeahad, a former Ph.D. candidate in the department of Recreation and Leisure Studies.

By April 2020, after lockdowns had begun, the overall level of stress had increased to above the midpoint, and the top stressors had changed to online delivery of quizzes and exams, the influence of the pandemic on their lives, and managing academic demands.

“We also found that graduate students and, even more so, international students had very low participation in campus recreational sports pre-pandemic, which has wellness implications for these two groups of students,” said Abdeahad.

– Nicole Green, Unsplash

“Since campus recreational sports appear to help develop lifelong skills that offset stressful events, educational institutions should consider including campus recreational sports as a strategy to enhance student mental health and well-being.”

Theodore Roosevelt was a leading proponent of campus sports. Born a sickly child with asthma, his father told him he would have to build himself a body since God had given him a weak one.

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Roosevelt became an accomplished collegiate boxer and wrestler, activities he continued to partake in routinely even after entering the White House. He praised the development of sports in university, and “was delighted” to hear his children had taken it up.

“I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football,” the president wrote in a letter to his son.

SHARE This Great Reason To Get Your Kids Into Sport…

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