Turkey will soon host the world’s largest tidal power station—a 77 megawatt system of large pier-like machines that generate clean energy from the sea’s endless rhythm.
Swedish firm Eco Wave Power (EWP) entered into the agreement for the potential construction in Ordu, Turkey, starting with a small pilot project.
EWP said that if it proves viable, the estimated $150 million power station would be Turkey’s first grid-connected tidal energy station, and upon completion, would be the biggest in the world.
Anchored to structures such as jetties or seawalls, the rising and falling motion of the waves powers hydraulic pistons inside the metal hulls—called “floaters”—which in turn powers a turbine on land which then sends energy to the grid via an inverter.
According to the terms of the agreement, government-owned Ordu Enerji will assign nine potentially suitable breakwaters to EWP for a period of 25 years from activation of the relevant pilot or power station.
“Subject to certain conditions, including, among others, receiving favorable results from feasibility studies and receipt of applicable licenses and permits, the 77 MW power station is planned to be constructed in several stages, starting with an up to 4 MW pilot station, and continuing with the construction, operation, and maintenance of the remaining capacity of the plant of up to 73MW,” said the company.
Eco Wave Power will be responsible for constructing, and commissioning the power plants and selling the electricity to be generated by the power plant in accordance with an approved production quota to be determined for the site.
EWP has a grid-connected power station at Israel’s Port of Jaffa and ran a demonstration plant in Gibraltar for six years.
“With the goal to build a self-sufficient grid, Ordu sees Eco Wave Power as an important asset to fully realising our potential for 100% clean energy,” said Mustafa Kemal Macit, President and CEO of Ordu Enerji.
“The entire municipality of Ordu is excited to fully realize the sea’s potential and use its unlimited source of energy to power our electrical grid. This project demonstrates that Ordu Enerji is committed to investing in innovative clean energy technologies.”
WATCH a short news spot highlighting the technology.
WAVE At Your Friends With This Green Energy Story…
Quote of the Day: “Tomorrow isn’t promised. Am I OK with how I’m living today? It’s the only thing I can help.” – Hayley Williams
Photo by: Prottoy Hassan, public domain
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A photographer snapped snow-capped Stirling Castle shrouded in mist as he compared it to something out of Harry Potter. Dad-of-two Brian Smith, 55, was leaving work on Tuesday at 4.30pm when he saw the historic castle covered in snow.See SWNS story SWNAcastle. Fog and clouds parted above the building which is on a steep hill, so Bill took a picture with long exposure. Brian, a college lecturer, said: "It looks very festive."It looks like something out of Harry Potter.
A snow-capped Stirling Castle shrouded in mist –Brian Smith / SWNS
A photographer captured a magical moment when he looked up and snapped the snow-capped Stirling Castle shrouded in mist at sunset.
Brian Smith was leaving work on Tuesday at 4.30pm when he saw the historic Scottish castle frosted with snow.
Fog and clouds parted above the building which is on a steep hill, so the 55 year-old took a picture, using a long exposure.
“It looks like something out of Harry Potter,” said the college lecturer, who said it had been quite foggy all day.
Stirling Castle is one of the largest and most important castles in Scotland. The ancient complex located in Stirling sits atop Castle Hill, a massive volcanic rock surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. With such a strong defensive position it became strategic for guarding what was, until the 1890s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth, and marks the meeting point between the Lowlands and Highlands.
It became a royal residence and a powerful stronghold during the Wars of Independence—which were civil wars among the Scots—as well as a struggle between Scotland and England, during which the castle changed hands eight times in 50 years.
The new photograph is so mythical-looking that many people have told the father-of-two that his photo looks computer-generated. But Smith is still humble.
Page from an 18th-century copy of the Dhātupāṭha of Pāṇini – SWNS
Page from an 18th-century copy of the Dhātupāṭha of Pāṇini – SWNS
A 27-year-old PhD scholar finally cracked the riddle which has defeated Sanskrit experts since the 5th Century BC—by decoding a rule taught by “the father of linguistics” Pāṇini.
The discovery makes it possible to ‘derive’ any Sanskrit word—to construct millions of grammatically correct words including ‘mantra’ and ‘guru’—using Pāṇini’s revered ‘language machine’ which is widely considered to be one of the great intellectual achievements in history.
Leading Sanskrit scholars have described the discovery as ‘revolutionary’—and it now means that Pāṇini’s grammar can be taught to computers for the first time.
Six months before Indian-born Rishi Rajpopat finally decoded the 2,500 year old algorithm, his supervisor at Cambridge, Sanskrit Professor Vincenzo Vergiani, gave him some prescient advice: “If the solution is complicated, you are probably wrong.”
“I had a eureka moment in Cambridge,” said Dr. Rajpopat. “After nine months trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere.
“So I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating.
“Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense.”
Pāṇini’s system—4,000 rules detailed in his greatest work, the Aṣṭādhyāyī which is thought to have been written around 500 BC—is meant to work like a machine. Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process.
However, until now, there had been a huge problem. Scientists say that, often, two or more of Pāṇini’s rules are simultaneously applicable at the same step, leaving scholars to agonize over which one to choose.
Solving so-called ‘rule conflicts’, which affect millions of Sanskrit words including certain forms of ‘mantra’ and ‘guru’, requires an algorithm.
Thought to have lived in a region in what is now north-west Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan, Pāṇini taught a ‘metarule’ to help decide which rule should be applied in the event of a conflict.
But for the last 2,500 years, scholars have misinterpreted the metarule meaning that they often ended up with a grammatically incorrect result. Furthermore, in an attempt to fix the issue, many researchers laboriously developed hundreds of other metarules.
But Dr. Rajpopat showed in a paper published this week that those are not just incapable of solving the problem at hand, they all produced too many exceptions—and are completely unnecessary. He explained that Pāṇini’s ‘language machine’ is ‘self-sufficient’.
“Pāṇini had an extraordinary mind and he built a machine unrivaled in human history,” said Rajpopat, who started his PhD work at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 2017. “The more we fiddle with Pāṇini’s grammar, the more it eludes us.”
Dr. Rishi Rajpopat – Cambridge / SWNS
Traditionally, scientists have interpreted Pāṇini’s metarule as meaning: in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar’s serial order wins.
Rajpopat rejects this, arguing instead that Pāṇini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively. Pāṇini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side. Employing this interpretation, Rajpopat found Pāṇini’s language machine produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.
“Over the next few weeks I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep and would spend hours in the library including in the middle of the night to check what I’d found and solve related problems. That work took another two-and-a-half years.”
Prof. Vergiani heralded the news, saying, “My student Rishi has cracked it. He has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem which has perplexed scholars for centuries.”
“This discovery will revolutionize the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise.”
Sanskrit is an ancient and classical Indo-European language from South Asia. It is the sacred language of Hinduism, but also the medium through which much of India’s greatest science, philosophy, poetry, and other secular literature have been communicated for centuries.
While only spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people today, Sanskrit has influenced many other languages and cultures around the world.
Rajpopat, who was born in Mumbai and learned Sanskrit in high school, explained, “Some of the most ancient wisdom of India has been produced in Sanskrit and we still don’t fully understand what our ancestors achieved.
“I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride, and hope that they too can achieve great things.”
He said that a major implication of his discovery is that now we have the algorithm that runs Pāṇini’s grammar, we could potentially teach this grammar to computers.
“Computer scientists working on Natural language processing gave up on rule-based approaches over 50 years ago. So teaching computers how to combine the speaker’s intention with Pāṇini’s rule-based grammar to produce human speech would be a major milestone in the history of human interaction with machines, as well as in India’s intellectual history.”
IT’S NO MYSTERY That You Should Share This Breakthrough on Social Media…
Monumental U.S. legislation sparked by the exploitation depicted in the TV series Tiger King was passed this week by the U.S. Senate to ban public contact with lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, and cougars.
The Big Cat Public Safety Act, which will prohibit keeping big cat species as pets, along with the practice of ‘cub petting’. It also makes it illegal for members of the public to have close contact with the animals, including bottle-feeding or handing any cubs.
The bipartisan legislation was passed in the Senate by unanimous consent. It was already passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, so now goes to the White House to be signed into law by President Biden, who has expressed support.
The legislation was sponsored and championed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Rep. Michael Quigley, D-Ill., and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.
“We’ve been fighting for this moment for years because so many so-called ‘Tiger Kings’ have been breeding tigers and other big cats to use them for profit,” said Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society. “It’s the beginning of the end of the big cat crisis in the U.S.”
Keeping big cats as pets is not only inhumane but it’s also a serious public safety issue. In the last 30 years there have been more than 400 incidents involving captive big cats that resulted in hundreds being injured and 24 deaths to adults and children.
“These beautiful but powerful predators deserve to live in the wild, not be kept in captivity for people’s entertainment,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I’m thrilled that, after a groundswell of public and bipartisan support, this bill I’ve long advocated for will become law.”
The legislation would limit ownership of these animals to zoos, universities, and sanctuaries, such as the Black Beauty Ranch in Texas run by the Humane Society as a home for big cats that were languishing after being used by the cub-petting industry.
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Quote of the Day: “You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go and see what happens.” – Mandy Hale
Photo by: Ben White
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A man who was paralyzed from the neck down has made an incredible recovery and is back in the gym just six months after becoming ill with a potentially deadly immune disorder.
Actor Cody Hively was just 27 when he received a diagnosis for a severe form of the Guillain-Barre syndrome, a lethal condition in around 1 of 20 patients.
Guillain-Barre syndrome is an immune disorders that causes the immune system to attack the patient’s nerves.
Hively spent three months in a hospital receiving intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), a treatment for patients with antibody deficiencies.
But he is now back in the gym, just six months after falling ill and after having to learn how to walk again.
It began in mid-January 2022 with numbness and tingling in the feet, and progressed to complete numbness up to the shoulders.
In early February Hively was hospitalized, where he became completely paralyzed two weeks later.
“Every day the doctors said the same thing, this could stop tomorrow, or it could just keep getting worse,” said Hively
The symptoms were so severe that he was only able to nod his head slightly and nurses had to use an alphabet board to talk to him. He had to be intubated because he was unable to breathe or swallow properly.
“It was really disturbing,” he recalled. “I was a prisoner to my own body, minutes turned into days turned into weeks turned into months. My whole body felt like it was on fire.”
Fortunately for a physically active young man with his whole life ahead of him, the treatment was successful, and sensation gradually returned to his body. He was moved to an in-patient rehabilitation clinic on March 17th, where he began recovery.
Hively had to re-learn to use most of his muscles and underwent four hours of physical therapy a day, but by early-July was able to walk short distances with some help.
“I’m a person who enjoys being physical and active, so I’m used to working for things like this,” said Hively. “When I began walking it felt like I was alive again, each week I would make progress even if it was a couple of extra steps.”
By August, he was back in the gym, admitting that he didn’t think he was going to be that 1 in 20; he never lost hope.
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During the first COVID-19 lockdowns in England the late army captain, 99-year-old Sir Tom Moore, attempted to raise money for NHS Charities Together by walking across his garden 100 times.
Now, believing that people need more positive and hopeful news in their life, his family is following in his footsteps by launching a Christmas campaign that invites anyone to share stories of individual moments of kindness they’ve received throughout their life.
By putting together “A Gift of Kindness” campaign, the family hopes “to celebrate the everyday acts of kindness that so often cost nothing to the giver, but mean so much to the receiver.”
On the front page of their website is a message board that gives the opportunity for people to share a fond memory of a good deed or say thank you to someone who has done something nice for them.
“My late father Captain Sir Tom, lived a long and fulfilled life that was brimming with joy, deep sorrow, love, loss, hope, positivity and kindness,” said Sir Tom’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore.
“He truly believed in the fundamental goodness of humanity. With that in mind, A Gift of Kindness is a place to relate your kindness stories, to share joy and hope with others by recalling any small gift of kindness towards you, or someone you know, and how that felt.”
Moore’s humble intra-garden rally in 2020 captured the imagination of the nation, ultimately raising over £38.9 million for Britain’s National Health Service, while earning him a knighthood in the process.
Anyone can give the gift of kindness this Christmas. In the face of adversity and turmoil in the midst of the pandemic, Captain Tom Moore said “above all…be kind”.
One poster shared a story of seeing two YouTube influencers working in a public place, but took a break to help a woman carry a baby carriage up some stairs while everyone else ignored her.
Another story came from a pair of young parents who received an umbrella from a passing stranger during a storm whilst sheltering under an awning. But here’s one story GNN especially liked, particularly because of the narration.
“I was inspired by reading all the lovely stories [on the message board] and so helped a couple of our neighbours this morning by lending them de-icer as their windscreens were frosted over and they were running late. I must have got carried away though as there was nothing left for my husband’s car and he’d just gone out and bought the new bottle of de-icer. Luckily he loves the neighbours so I’m sure I’ll be forgiven!”
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Across the whole history of paleontology, which has identified more than 700 species of dinosaurs, there’s never been one found with aquatic features—until now.
Natovenator or “swimming hunter” was a foot-long, streamlined, distant cousin of Velociraptor with a slender neck and a mouth filled with sharp teeth, leading to one scientist to call it a “Cretaceous cormorant.”
If dinosaurs weren’t real, their biological forms would have certainly shown up in fantasy stories as monsters or aliens.
They were the largest land animals in Earth’s history, and evolution took them on an extraordinary roller coaster ride of long necks, bony shields and protrusions, bone club tails, the invention of feathers and flight, bite forces that could crush a car, and more besides.
Yet for all this staggering diversity, it seemed at one point that dinosaurs had been content never to get their feet wet, as no swimming or diving adaptations had ever been discovered in the fossil record.
Then, in 2017, Halszkaraptor escuilliei, a feathered theropod dinosaur was discovered in Mongolia which appeared to have some adaptations for swimming. That fossil had comparatively similar features to certain waterfowl, or even crocodilians, and a theory emerged that it could have been semi-aquatic.
Then, a team from Seoul National University discovered another fossil at a famous dinosaur hotbed called Hermiin Tsav in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia.
“We realized that this was something special, because it was beautifully preserved with a nice skull and an extremely long neck,” said paleontologist Sung-jin Lee, who along with colleagues gave it the name Natovenator polydontus, or the many-toothed swimming hunter.
Comparisons with Halszkaraptor led to fierce debate over the potential of a swimming dinosaur, which led to a deep scrutiny over the Natovenator find. In the end, the team was convinced, and for the first time in the fossil record, the dinosaurs took the plunge.
Dating to around 71 million years ago, many of the animal’s features would have worked well under water. A long slender neck would have given it a long range bite, and a mouth full of thin sharp teeth would, like modern aquatic predators such as latern fish and sharks, been the perfect weapon for snagging slippery fish.
Larger theropods have been theorized as being capable of wading into shallow water in search of prey, and certain research done on Spinosaurus has shown it may have used the water as a hunting ground, but these were still terrestrial animals and did not show signs of things like swimming or diving.
Writing more complexly, Smithsonian Magazine explains how Natovenator had a streamlined, downward-curving rib cage, similar to modern day penguins and auks, but a feature absent in every currently-identified dinosaur. This would have given it a streamlined profile underwater, allowing it to dive deep or swim fast, in theory.
The close relationship between Natovenator and Halzszkaraptor leads to the tantalizing prospect that, since the feathered theropod dinosaurs evolved into modern birds, there may be a whole lineage of dinos that evolved into modern waterfowl.
End of year bonuses are always a welcomed sight, but these smiles bear witness to an extraordinary act of corporate generosity.
Ruppert Landscaping gave bonuses of between $7,000 to $200,000 to all employees with a tenure of over one-year, “as a thanks for the role they’ve played in the company’s growth and development.”
A total of 1,200 workers, excluding those in top leadership positions, received the enormous thank you presents which added up to be $28 million.
The company says normal end of year bonuses were not deducted or altered by the gifts, which were announced at staff meetings, nor were any of the other benefits which include 401(K) matching, health insurance, paid time off, and holidays.
“Everyone receiving this bonus was instrumental in helping create the value that we’ve been able to realize,” said CEO Craig Ruppert. “This bonus is money that is well-deserved and a way for us to acknowledge the value of our teams’ contributions and the essential role that they will play in our company’s future.”
The company’s history dates to the 1970s when Craig Ruppert, then a teenager, began cutting his neighbors’ yards to earn money. From those early and humble beginnings, the company has grown dramatically and now includes a talented management team with projects that have grown in scale and complexity.
Residential lawns turned into developments, parks, and corporate campuses, while the focus on hustle and efficiency expanded to include horticultural knowledge and technical specialization. Today, the company serves commercial clients in over nine states from 30 locations, and continues its tradition of charitable giving at the local level.
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Quote of the Day: “If you’re lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.” – Carrie Ann Moss
Photo by: Seb Mooze
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As part of a debt-for-nature refinancing program, the island nation of Barbados is set to unlock $50 million in funding for conservation of its entire marine ecosystem.
Barbados committed at last year’s COP to protect 30% of its territorial waters but lacks the funds to do so. The Nature Conservancy announced it will work with partners to buy a piece of Barbados’ national debt and refinance it to facilitate this goal.
It’s a program known in the conservation world as “Blue Bonds.” The Nature Conservancy’s Blue Bonds for Ocean Conservation strategy essentially finds nations which have a lot of debt, low tax revenue, and important territorial waters, and recruits financier partners to buy outstanding debt from the previous holders and re-negotiate terms with more favorable interest rates provided the nation spends the savings on ocean conservation.
Today, the island nation of the Seychelles has established protections over a marine environment in an area equivalent to twice the size of Great Britain, or 158,000 square miles, thanks to a Nature Conservancy Blue Bond finance arrangement in 2016.
“We believe that innovative debt transactions coupled with science and marine planning, like our Blue Bonds for Ocean Conservation strategy, can achieve protection and improved management of more than 4 million square kilometers of the planet’s ocean—a 15% increase in the current amount of global marine protection,” said Jennifer Morris, CEO of The Nature Conservancy in a statement.
A large piece of the territorial waters of the world are controlled by small island nations like the Seychelles, or Barbados whose seascapes are 430-times the size of its landscape.
However these countries often can’t afford to implement conservation at an ecosystem scale, the kind that’s needed to protect ocean biodiversity.
Barbados is home to four species of nesting turtles: green turtles, loggerheads, hawksbill, and leatherbacks, and has the second-largest hawksbill turtle-breeding population in the Caribbean. It also has rich coral reefs that support large tourism and fishing sectors.
In 2021, this Blue Bond program from the Nature Conservancy helped Belize move toward their commitment of protecting 30% of their territorial waters which include the Belize Barrier Reef, one of the largest barrier reefs on Earth.
Take a look at what’s being protected…
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Comparison of a human and Neanderthal mandible, with the mysterious jawbone in the middle – SWNS
A re-examination of a hominid jawbone found over 100 years ago in Spain may have just back-dated the presence of humans in Europe by an additional 25,000 years.
Found in 1887 near a quarry in Banyoles, the bone was thought to belong to a neanderthal, who were known to inhabit the area before Homo sapiens.
The oldest confirmed modern human remains in Europe, identified using DNA, are from 44,000 years ago from a cave in Bulgaria, but recent advances in 3D morphometric computer modeling has given scientists like Brian Keeling new tools to examine previous finds.
“The mandible has been studied throughout the past century and was long considered to be a neanderthal based on its age and location, and the fact that it lacks one of the diagnostic features of Homo sapiens: a chin,” said Keeling, a Binghamton University graduate student.
“Our results found something quite surprising—Banyoles shared no distinct neanderthal traits and did not overlap with neanderthals in its overall shape.”
The Banyoles jawbone appeared to match best with Homo sapiens in the expression of its features, and its overall shape, although identification has been a challenge complicated by some traits that are shared across earlier human species.
“If Banyoles is really a member of our species, this prehistoric human would represent the earliest H. sapiens ever documented in Europe,” said Keeling.
Homo sapien remains from Romania that had Neanderthal ancestors back beyond 4 to 6 generations were too different for Banyoles to be considered one of these hybrid individuals.
Consequently scientists ruled it down to two options for the Banyoles mandible – a member of a previously unknown Homo sapien population that lived alongside neanderthals, or a hybrid between this undiscovered Homo sapiens group and a non-neanderthal unidentified human species.
“We were confronted with results that were telling us Banyoles is not a neanderthal, but the fact that it does not have a chin made us think twice about assigning it to Homo sapiens,” said Rolf Quam, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University. “The presence of a chin has long been considered a hallmark of our own species.”
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The manager of a Minnesota liquor store was surprised to come back from lunch yesterday to find his counterhelp walking around in her socks.
That’s because security camera footage revealed she had just given her favorite shoes—a pair of purple retro Jordans, to a homeless man she saw strapping boxes to his feet.
Brooklyn Center Liquor employee Ta Leia Thomas, known locally as “Ace” said the split-second act of kindness “was an easy decision.”
“He said nobody would ever give me shoes like that,” Thomas told CBS. “And I said, well, I’m not everybody.”
“I was always taught to help others. You never know what their problem is, or what they are going through.”
Manager Tom Agnes said that even before the generous act, he wished he had 12 Aces on his team, such is her work ethic and joyful connection with customers. Agnes bought her a fresh pair of kicks before her shift was over, after which he shared the security camera footage on social media.
Thomas has been overwhelmed by the comments of love and appreciation, which quickly grew all the more intense after Agnes and a few friends in the industry came together to raise $450 for Thomas to buy another pair of purple Jordans—the color of her favorite Minnesota team, the Vikings.
As it turns out, through becoming a little bit more attentive to Ace’s life, Agnes learned that she is the sole caretaker of her mother, who sleeps in Ace’s bed while Ace sleeps on the floor. In the end he just gave her the cash rather than the shoes to buy a second bed.
WATCH the act of kindness on CBS…
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Luna the dog is pictured being rescued from the cliff after seven days. Credit: CTV news, Submitted.
Luna the dog is pictured being rescued from the cliff after seven days. Credit: CTV news, Submitted.
A small army of community volunteers worked over a week to locate and rescue a lost dog on Vancouver Island.
The mastiff-retriever named Luna chased an animal out of the yard of Highlands area resident Saryta Schaerer, before getting lost and falling down a steep slope onto a two foot-wide ledge.
Rescuers and neighbors kept up the search for days, but with no luck.
“It was terrible because it was getting colder and she always sleeps next to me or my daughter,” said Schaerer.
Across a body of water from where Luna had gotten stuck, local resident Ron Cheeke picked up her trail after he heard her cries for help. He notifed ROAM, a local pet rescue organization, before going out on a boat to try and locate the source of the barking.
“I used a pot and pan, and every time I banged on the pot and pan the dog barked back,” Cheeke told CTV News on Monday.
That’s when ROAM arrived and finally got to Luna. They pulled her up with a harness and reunited the dog with her owner.
Local news reports that the rescue team were almost as happy to do the work as Schaerer was to see her dog again.
“Your dog’s out there, it’s just a matter of time until we get her,” said ROAM volunteer Andy Carswell, speaking hypothetically to anyone who loses a pet. “Sometimes they come back in an hour, sometimes it’s a day, sometimes its seven, like Luna,” he said. “Just don’t give up, have faith.”
WATCH CTV coverage of the rescue below…
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Quote of the Day: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – Malala Yousafzai
Photo by: Éric Deschaintre (cropped)
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A woman who needed help fostering a blind dog named Beau ended up finding both it, and a forever home for him after the help she found fell in love with the dog over video calls.
Samantha Hillstrom thought her own blind dog Finn could use the companionship of little Beau, a Pomeranian poodle mix who was rescued from an Iowa puppy mill. Now Hillstrom believes that Beau was brought to her by Finn, who died just 36 hours after the new pooch arrived.
It’s a touching story: Beau was set, along with his brothers and sisters, to be euthanized after there wasn’t enough demand for adoption. A New Jersey resident named Jennifer decided to save two from this fate, and took them into her home for foster care.
Jennifer learned that blind dogs sometimes use medium sized plastic rings called “halos” which provide a safe, circular bumper in front of their heads to help them avoid collisions.
Hillstrom explained that she lived in a neighboring town to Jennifer, and saw on social media that the foster mom was looking for a halo for Beau.
“I had a blind dog as well, I said I would be happy to share tips with her on how to take care of one,” said Hillstrom. “Jen and I sat on the phone Facetiming for hours, talking, getting to know each other. She was holding Nelson, now known as Beau and I was holding Finn and by the end of our conversation I just said ‘I have to apply for this dog.'”
– SWNS
On December 1st, after six weeks of waiting, Hillstrom welcomed Beau into her home, who learned very quickly how to use his halo, and made a dear friend out of Finn, who sadly passed away not two days after Beau arrived, as if passing a torch.
“If I were never Finn’s mom and I never learned how to take care of a blind dog, I never would have been able to take care of Beau,” said Hillstrom. “It’s a tragic, heart-breaking story and I can’t believe my dog just died but I do believe these things happen as they’re supposed to and it is a wild part of the story.”
Beau is learning how to recognize Samantha’s commands, map the apartment and make sure he knows how to get around effectively.
Hillstrom said the pair have changed her life in a way she never thought possible.
The fusion chamber. credit - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Copy)
The fusion chamber. credit – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Today the U.S. Department of Energy announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion where more energy was gained from the process that was needed to heat atoms to temperatures hotter than the sun.
The electricity generated was only enough to boil 10 kettles of water, British fusion energy experts told CNN in anticipation of the release, but who nevertheless described it as “a true breakthrough moment which is tremendously exciting.”
Nuclear fusion is a potential new energy source with increasingly real potential to solve the West’s energy needs. It replicates the process of melding two atomic nuclei together which happens at the center of our sun, a function of physics which releases intense amounts of energy as heat through escaping neutrons.
Theoretically, it has the potential to generate enough energy to power a household for a human lifetime on a single glass of seawater, remarks MIT’s fusion company. It produces no emissions, and unlike nuclear fission, the currently-used method of nuclear power, generates no radioactive waste.
The breakthrough was achieved at the National Ignition Facility located in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, where giant lasers bombarded a hydrogen fuel source, likely the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium, with an array of 200 lasers. It produced around 5.6 kilowatt hours of energy.
Last year, GNN reported that this facility achieved a fusion reaction that put the equipment there on the cusp of generating clean energy at a rate greater than its expenditure.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
The press release also said the DoE is currently restarting a broad-based, coordinated fusion energy program in the United States. Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum, they claim, to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization.
Lasers are only one currently-used method of nuclear fusion. Others involve using supermagnets to create pressures many-times greater than at the bottom of our ocean in a machine called a tokamak. Neutrons and alpha particles from the compressed fuel source escape and it the liner of the tokamak chamber, whose energy is collected as heat, used to power turbines and generate electricity.
This method was used to generate 11 megawatts of energy in 5 seconds in the Joint European Torus tokamak in February.
Still others are using plasma, the fourth state of matter, contained within a swirling sphere of liquid lithium, in the case of one Canadian-UK partnership. It’s currently unclear exactly which configuration will produce the conditions for market-scale nuclear fusion.
All these methods are trying to tackle the same problems: can humanity create a system of these incredibly expensive, sophisticated, and energy-hungry machines that won’t cost billions of dollars, and can actually sustain a fusion reaction long enough for it to generate electricity to power buildings.
With today’s announcement those problems remain, but feasibility is always an important step in the road to developing anything.
Football isn’t coming home for England, but the Three Lions are adding a fourth, albeit a small one, for the journey home.
The English National Football team is bringing Dave the Cat home from Qatar with them. The cat began to appear in players’ social media feeds, as the stray had taken to eating with the team and became their unofficial mascot.
That was center-back John Stones explaining the origin story of the little vagabond. Anyone who has visited the Muslim world will know that stray cats are neither rounded up by animal control, nor reviled, bothered, or considered a nuisance.
GNN has reported that in Istanbul, each street and neighborhood will have it own stray(s) and there are even parks for them to live and keep warm in winter.
A member of the traveling support staff for the team was eventually charged with taking Dave to the vet, ensuring he receives vaccinations and that his paperwork is in order to come home to England, where it’s not been revealed which team member will be adopting him.
England were eliminated on penalties to tournament-favorites France, and go home after a powerful showing in the earlier rounds.
WATCH Dave on his way to the vet…
Dave the cat is coming home.
The England #FIFAWorldCup squad have adopted a stray cat in Qatar, who spent time around the players in between matches and has begun its journey to join them in the UK pic.twitter.com/eXMDEfSnIs
On December 10th, teammates and fans of Northwestern State sounded their applause when their new freshmen basketball player scored his first points for the team.
It was an extra special applause for the point guard, since Hansel Emmanuel has only one arm.
A minute later he added to his total with a thunderous dunk in what became a 91-73 win over Louisiana-Monroe, bringing the crowd of 1,600 to their feet.
But this is far from the beginning of Hansel Emmanuel’s story: last year, ESPN was already reporting that college recruiting analysts were interested in the young man from the Dominican Republic.
Playing on a cinderblock wall when he was six, it collapsed under him, crushing his arm and necessitating amputation. But like all champion athletes, he never stopped working, never let anyone feel sorry for him, and soon began to create a major social media following with small clips of him playing street ball.
Emmanual’s father was a professional in the Dominican Republic, and the social media videos caught the attention of one of his father’s former teammates—the head coach at Life Christian Acadmey in Florida. He brought Emmanual over on a scholarship, and soon the one-armed guard won the state championship, bringing interest from college scouts.
That journey began in January of 2021. Now just 23 months later, 19-year-old Emmanual has his first points at the college level. Last Saturday he was 2 of 3 from the field and 1 of 5 from the foul line, along with two rebounds in eight minutes.
“I had to keep going after the layup—that was my first bucket,” Emmanuel said in a quote posted on the Southland Conference school’s website. “I know my family was proud. I had to keep working. You can’t give up.”
