Quote of the Day: “Judge nothing; you will be happy. Forgive everything; you will be happier. Love everything; you will be happiest.” – Sri Chinmoy (born 91 years ago today)
Photo by: Irudayam, CC license
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It’s World Photography Day—and we couldn’t find any exposures this cool to celebrate with.
From old school entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. to rock staples like The Kinks and Todd Rundgren – this guy has a knack for jumping into the artwork of his favorite album covers.
Illustrator Wayne Honath, also known as Wayno, is a cartoonist and photographer whose hobbies include posing with LPs from his record collection.
In every one of his “Record Head” photos, Wayno perfectly frames himself so that it looks like his body belongs to the face of the artist on the album.
Despite our never having seen images like this, Wayno informed us that it was not an original idea—though his own choices for Record Head poses are praiseworthy.
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“People have been doing things like this forever, it’s certainly not a new idea on my part!” he told Good News Network. “A Canadian artist I know … set up a Record Heads Facebook group, and I decided to participate.”
“I looked through my own record collection to find suitable covers to photograph and I did all of the photos on my phone, using a small phone tripod.”
Since he’s dedicated himself to illustrating for Bizarro, the online comic series, he hasn’t had time for any new Record Head photo shoots, but you can see all 46 of his images here in this Wayno Illustration Facebook album.
“I had to cut back because (now) I have a daily deadline, so my creative energies are primarily to the comic,” he told GNN. “I still have some album covers set aside for future record head photos, but I don’t know when I’ll ever get to them. I’ll only do them when I have time to make them as good as the ones I’ve done in the past.
These Will Have Your Friends Spinning: Be Sure And Share the Fun – Photos by © Wayno
A woman said she owes her life to a rescue dog who sensed her breast cancer and wouldn’t keep its nose out of her right armpit.
Lucy Giles thought her beloved Brody was initially just craving some attention.
The 45-year-old had welcomed the gentle giant into her life a year ago, after her partner had spent six months in the hospital on life-support with the Covid virus.
When he returned home, and as part of his recovery, the pair decided to add to the family of pets that they love doting on.
They adopted Brody—whose Newfoundland breed is well-known for lifesaving due to their swimming abilities and intelligence—from a family who could no longer look after him.
Lucy, of Oxon, said he started to “sniff and nuzzle” at her right armpit.
“It was mostly when I was sat down, so either watching TV or sitting down for a rest and always in the same spot on my right side.”
“At first, I thought it was him wanting a bit of fuss and attention but I decided that I should perhaps take notice as it was just my right side he would do this.”
She examined herself and, sure enough, felt a lump there—and soon after was diagnosed with breast cancer.
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“It was the same day my nan had died from bowel cancer the year previously and I was with her when she died.”
Giles underwent six rounds of chemotherapy followed by a lumpectomy and radiotherapy afterwards.
She said she has a brilliant support network of family and friends who take her to appointments and help by “just being there”, along with Brody of course.
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“Perhaps he came into our lives for a reason.”
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For all the grief carbon dioxide gets down here on Earth, its detection for the first time ever in the atmosphere of an exoplanet has scientists elated.
The finding, produced by the James Webb Space Telescope, offers evidence that in the future Webb will be able to measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets—and zero in on those most likely to contain life.
This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provided important insights into the composition and formation of the planet,
WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of Jupiter (about the same as Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. Its extreme puffiness is related in part to its high temperature (about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or 900 degrees Celsius).
Unlike the cooler, more compact gas giants in our solar system, WASP-39 b orbits very close to its star, completing one circuit in just over four Earth-days.
Previous observations from other telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, revealed the presence of water vapor, sodium, and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere. Webb’s unmatched infrared sensitivity has now confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on this planet as well.
“As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” said Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and member of the JWST who worked with the investigation. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences.”
The research team used one of Webb’s four peerless instruments, known as the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).
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In the resulting spectrum of the exoplanet’s atmosphere, a small reading between 4.1 and 4.6 microns presented the first clear, detailed evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside the solar system.
Access to this part of the spectrum is crucial for measuring abundances of gases like water and methane, as well as carbon dioxide, which are thought to exist in many different types of exoplanets.
“Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” said Mike Line of Arizona State University, another member of this research team.
“By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet. In the coming decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insight into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our own solar system.”
It’s also entirely fundamental to life’s processes on Earth at both higher and foundational orders—an inescapable constant in our bodies, ecosystems, and technology.
WATCH: Travel 2,000 Light-Years in 60 Seconds With New Video From NASA’s Webb Telescope
With a great demand for Webb’s unparalleled capabilities among scientists, Line and Rustamkulov are part of the “Early Science Release Team” whose job is to make robust and foundational observations with Webb and release them as swiftly as possible to the astronomy community.
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Droughts aren’t all bad. Sometimes the receding of rivers reveals amazing things, such as the tracks of a meat-eating giant that roamed Cretaceous-Era Texas 113 million years ago.
Prints mostly left by the Acrocanthosaurus—a theropod that stood 15 feet and weighed 7 tons have emerged in recent weeks as the Paluxy River has dried up almost entirely in most parts of Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas.
Dinosaur Valley State Park is rather unique, says Paleontologist Timothy Rose. Visitors are given buckets with glass bottoms and encouraged to roll their pantlegs up, kick off their shoes, and go have a look through the bucket at the tracks which were known to science before the recent drought.
However what the drought did do is reveal dozens more tracks than anyone knew existed.
Arcocanthosaurus was a big impressive dinosaur that would have looked like T-Rex, only a bit smaller, with three toes instead of two, and an array of impressive spines on its back.
READ ALSO: 100 Million-Year-Old Footprints of Giant Dinosaur Found at Restaurant in China
Definite Acrocanthosaurus fossils have been found in the Twin Mountains Formation of northern Texas, the Antlers Formation of southern Oklahoma, and the Cloverly Formation of north-central Wyoming and possibly even the Arundel Formation in Maryland.
Rose, speaking to Australian news at the time, explained the tracks show the animals moving around slowly, perhaps hunting, perhaps not, but the lack of any fast or leaping movements is clear.
TAKE an intimate look at the tracks in the video below…
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Quote of the Day: “We create ourselves by what we choose to notice.” – Margaret Wheatley
Photo by: Warren Wong
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Scientists in Australia have achieved the first-ever offseason coral spawning in the history of coral breeding and restoration sciences.
The breakthrough dramatically expands the capacity to grow corals in captivity to then use to restore the Great Barrier Reef, since it allows the scientists to spawn coral 50% more often than in nature.
At the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, coral colonies are kept in captivity with the hopes of one day transplanting them to the biggest reef on earth. Out on the GBR, coral spawning happens only twice a year, between October and December.
At the Institute’s Townsville lab, coral have now reproduced in the middle of winter, thanks to artificial moonlight and controlled temperatures which convinced the 43 lab corals the time was right, despite being 6-months ahead of schedule.
“We’re going to have a lot of opportunities to advance coral reproductive biology,” senior aquarist Lonidas Koukoumaftsis told ABC Australia. “Normally we can only explore this once a year in the summer period.”
Corals, guided by seasonal warming, moon phases and tides, release egg and sperm into the water around the same time to create new corals. In the Institute’s National Sea Simulator (SeaSim) some corals were subjected to artificial conditions for the purpose of seeing if they could spawn during another period before eventually being transplanted back to the coral.
“At the moment we only have about two times a year we can generate these juvenile corals and then plant them on the reef,” said Koukoumaftsis “Possibly in the future we can increase that ability to restore the reef.”
READ ALSO: Parts of the Great Barrier Reef Show Highest Coral Cover in 36 Years
The natural coral spawning on the GBR, which takes place normally under the cover of darkness, yet with the help of a full moon, is one of the planet’s most incredible natural phenomena.
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A all-female Lebanese dance troupe promised to hypnotize the judges on America’s Got Talent: a bold call before performing for someone as notoriously spikey as Simon Cowell.
The “Mayyas” lined up in single file after answering some questions, before proceeding to do just that; wowing the judges and winning a Golden Buzzer from Sophia Vergara.
“It was the most creative dance I’ve ever seen,” the latter said when it was all over.
The Mayyas, which means “proud walk of the lioness” in Arabic, carried out what was essentially a giant illusion with their synchronized movements.
“Seeing the Mayyas in America’s Got Talent is the most beautiful feeling I’ve ever felt,” Nadim Cherfam, founder of the Mayyas, says in a video. “Lebanon is not considered a place where you can build a career out of dancing. It’s hard. Really hard. [And] it’s harder for women.”
Winning the Golden Buzzer means the Mayyas are placed in the Live rounds of the show, and have a chance at making the finals.
WATCH the performance on the troupe’s Instagram…
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There’re 3D-printed homes, and there’re prefabricated homes. Take the best of both technologies, throw in a groundbreaking use for discarded plastic, and you have a genius idea.
Born in Culver City, the startup Azure is mostly using recycled plastic water and drink bottles to create homes that are 90% complete by the time they leave the factory.
By blending the manufacturing speed of 3D-printing with the assembly speed and modular possibilities given by prefabrication, Azure’s houses are a game changer for sustainability in the housing industry.
The startup says it can build homes 70% faster and 30% cheaper than “traditional home construction methods” by 3D printing the floor, roof, and walls of its models inside its factory.
Practically all that’s left to be done at the build site is to connect the prefab panels to each other, and to the foundation, and connect the utilities.
In April, Azure unveiled what it called the world’s first 3D-printed building with recycled plastic materials. It was a small addition, meant to be marketed as a gym or outdoor office, and priced at $25,000, while the larger “accessory dwelling unit” (ADU) or what is essentially a one-bed one-bath comes in at $40,000.
A rush of pre-orders for the ADU has left Azure’s Culver City factory backed up for 3-months as it waits for the rest of the equipment it needs to begin mass producing the houses.
RELATED: The ‘World’s Longest’ 3D-Printed Concrete Bridge Erected in The Netherlands
At the moment the company has a number of partners who provide plastic waste recycled from industry, but it hopes to shift more towards plastic waste generated by consumers.
By December Azure hopes to have 14 of their print-prefab houses arranged in a community in partnership with an LA real estate company, and by 2024 be able to manufacture bigger ADUs.
Once the concept is firmly established and revenue is stable, they also want to turn their technology towards helping to end the homelessness epidemic of California.
“3D printing is a more efficient way of building and it should only get better as we develop the processes, technology, and materials further,” Co-founder Ross Maguire told Business Insider. “I can only see it becoming more and more prominent in [construction] as we move forward.”
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Quote of the Day: “If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.” – Gloria Steinem
Photo by: Peppe Ragusa
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Some old tech was able to make a new connection for a little English girl who got to speak with an orbiting astronaut after her dad hailed him on a Ham radio.
It was August 2nd when Isabella Payne had just settled down for her “beauty sleep.” But her father, Matthew, knew that since they shared a passion for space and radio communications, a brief opportunity to hail American astronaut Kjell Lindgren was not to be missed.
Dragging Isabella out of bed, the pair ran to the radio bench.
“I was like ‘Why are you doing this to me? I need my beauty sleep,'” Isabella told CNN on Wednesday.
Aboard the International Space Station, a Ham radio station is maintained so that astronauts can occasionally talk with people on the ground—usually schools—through classic radio communications.
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Such exchanges are typically brief, with operators giving over their radio’s unique callsign, a name and location, a thank you and a goodbye. However when Lindgren, who just happened to be passing over Kent that night, heard Isabella’s name and age, his voice changed from routine to joyful.
The astronaut took to Twitter and said it might have been his favorite contact so far.
I've had a lot of fun using the #ARISS amateur radio station #NA1SS on the @Space_Station to talk with ham radio operators all over the world. I've even (unofficially) worked stations on all continents! But this may be my favorite contact so far. Thanks Isabella and @m0lmk! https://t.co/Z2pWUbEZZr
— Kjell Lindgren (@astro_kjell) August 2, 2022
“I was elated when I heard his voice,” Isabella told CNN. “I thought it was a dream.”
Isabella shares her father’s passion for space and radio, and watches every launch and spacewalk from her usual position on his knee at the radio desk.
They’ve shared that special bond all their life, even when Mr. Payne helped a school radio British astronaut Tim Peake aboard the ISS in 2016, when little Isabella was just 2-years-old—she maintained the front-knee seat for the event.
Her dream is to become a communications specialist with a space agency so she can replicate her exchange with Lindgren as many times as she’d like.
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Even though the English government recently announced a ban on garden hose watering in the west of the country, Peter Harden has kept right on hosing worry-free.
That’s because Harden has been storing rainwater in large catch thanks for almost 50 years, and with 6,000 liters (1,500 gallons) of water available to him, his paddock is the greenest on the block.
An 82-year-old retired teacher, Peter Harden has lived in his bungalow for 52 years, and said he installed his first rainwater catch tanks after a famous English drought in 1976.
The keen gardener noticed droughts in the UK were getting more intense and became inspired to take precautions by he and his wife’s holidays to Europe.
“Our holidays abroad in Europe over 50 years frequently included cultural visits to ancient Greek and Roman towns,” said Harden. “We were always impressed by the huge number of domestic underground cisterns that the Romans et al. pre-built to catch rainwater for very dry summers.”
READ MORE: Farmer Thrives by Growing Gluten-free Grain Needing No Water During Drought
“With this experience in mind, I gradually increased the number and size of my rainwater catch tanks until about 15 years ago when I had nine 375 liter capacity tanks fed directly by rainwater from the bungalow’s guttering.”
But why such dedication? Peter lives in one of the driest areas in the UK. The clay beneath his property in Ingoldsby, Lincolnshire, does hold water, but as soon as the UK gets a drought the clay starts to crack.
Now the region is experiencing its worst drought in 26 years, and to protect municipal water reserves, a hose pipe ban has been introduced in parts of the West Country.
“We live in an area with one of the lowest mean rainfalls in the country. We get a circa of 22 inches per year,” said Harden, who about eight years ago supplemented his 9 catch tanks with two more, 1,000 liter (250 gallon) intermediate bulk containers, before adding another pair just recently.
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The bulk water containers sit at the bottom of the garden and are filled directly by garden hose from some of the 375-liter catch tanks.
“Using an electrically-powered submersible water pump, I pump water through a garden hose from one of the tanks through a spray attached to the garden hose,” he explained.
“As the level of water falls in the one tank it levels out in the other tanks through gravity feed through the interconnected pipes.
“Three of my original 375-liter tanks have since become unserviceable and I am waiting to replace them. I also am trying to buy two more 1,000 liter bulk containers to increase my water storage volume.”
Not slowing down, he says he aims to store 9,000 liters soon.
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Imagine being able to generate electricity by harnessing moisture in the air around you with just everyday items like sea salt and a piece of fabric.
That’s just what a team of researchers from Singapore has shown, having developed a moisture-driven battery made of a thin layer of fabric, sea salt, carbon ink, and a special water-absorbing gel.
About 0.3 millimeters in thickness, the moisture-driven electricity generation device, or MEG, is built upon the ability of different materials to generate electricity from the interaction with moisture in the air, and could potentially fit a wide range of real-world applications, including wearable electronics like health monitors, electronic skin sensors, and information storage devices.
Such devices have already been developed, but face major challenges with balancing and maintaining moisture content between where it shouldn’t be and where it needs to be.
Now, a research team led by Assistant Professor Tan Swee Ching from the National University of Singapore’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering have devised a novel MEG device that can perpetually maintain a difference in water content and generate electrical output for hundreds of hours.
The team’s MEG device consists of a thin layer of fabric which was coated with carbon nanoparticles. In their study, the team used a commercially available fabric made of wood pulp and polyester.
One region of the fabric is coated with a hygroscopic ionic hydrogel, and this region is known as the wet region. Made using sea salt, the special water-absorbing gel can absorb more than six times its original weight, and it is used to harvest moisture from the air.
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“Sea salt was chosen as the water-absorbing compound due to its non-toxic properties and its potential to provide a sustainable option for desalination plants to dispose of the generated sea salt and brine,” shared Assistant Professor Tan.
The other end of the fabric is the dry region which does not contain a hygroscopic ionic hydrogel layer. This is to ensure that this region is kept dry and water is confined to the wet region.
Once the MEG device is assembled, electricity is generated when the ions of sea salt are separated as water is absorbed in the wet region. Free ions with a positive charge are absorbed by the carbon nanoparticles which are negatively charged. This causes changes to the surface of the fabric, generating an electric field across it.
Using a unique design of wet-dry regions, the team showed they could sustain electrical output even when the wet region was saturated with water. After being left in an open humid environment for 30 days, water was still maintained in the wet region demonstrating the effectiveness of the device in sustaining electrical output.
“With this unique asymmetric structure, the electric performance of our MEG device is significantly improved in comparison with prior MEG technologies, thus making it possible to power many common electronic devices, such as health monitors and wearable electronics,” explained Tan.
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The MEG device has immediate applications due to its ease of scalability and commercially available raw materials. One of the most immediate applications is for use as a portable power source for the portable-powering of electronics directly by ambient humidity.
By connecting three pieces of the power-generating fabric together and placing them into a 3D printed case that was the size of a standard AA battery, the voltage of the assembled device was tested to reach as high as 1.96V—higher than a commercial AA battery of about 1.5V—and enough to power small electronic devices such as an alarm clock.
The scalability of the NUS invention, the convenience of obtaining commercially available raw materials as well as the low fabrication cost of about SIN$0.15 per square meter make the MEG device suitable for mass production.
“Our device shows excellent scalability at a low fabrication cost. Compared to other MEG structures and devices, our invention is simpler and easier for scaling-up integrations and connections. We believe it holds vast promise for commercialization,” said Tan.
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With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on—and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured some incredible new images of the planet.
“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emerita of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the observations of Jupiter with Thierry Fouchet, of the Paris Observatory.
“It’s really remarkable that we can see details on Jupiter together with its rings, tiny satellites, and even galaxies in one image,” she said.
The two images come from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet.
In the wide-field view (above), Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.
“This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” Fouchet said.
In the standalone view of Jupiter below, created from a composite of several images from Webb, dreamy auroras extend to altitudes high above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter.
Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum using three filters.
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The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud.
The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.
“The brightness here indicates high altitude, so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” said Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.” By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover.
LOOK: Webb Telescope Captures Images That Move a NASA Scientist ‘to Tears’
Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into processed images. Together, the researchers have already begun analyzing Webb data to log new science about our solar system’s largest planet—and more clues to its inner life.
Webb is an international mission led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). Learn more at NASA Blogs.
WATCH more images in the Reuters video below… (Note: GNN is not affiliated with any of their ads.)
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Quote of the Day: “Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.” – Abraham H. Maslow
Photo by: Debby Hudson
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Dogs cry “happy tears” when their owners come home, according to a study inspired by a scientist whose own pup welled up with joy whenever they reunited.
It’s well known that dogs have tear ducts designed to flush dirt from their eyes, but the process had never been linked with emotion—until now.
Professor Takefumi Kikusui decided to investigate after his poodle had puppies and he noticed the dog’s face changed when it nursed the babies. It had tears in its eyes.
That gave him the idea that oxytocin might be causing the watery flood—and dogs, like humans, may produce tears when they are flooded with emotion.
Oxytocin is known as the maternal or “love hormone” and he knew from earlier observations that oxytocin is released in both dogs and their owners during interactions. So, he decided to run an experiment to see if it brought dogs to tears.
Prof. Kikusui, of Azabu University in Japan, used a standard test to measure dogs’ baseline tear volume before reuniting with their owners. They found the volume indeed went up by 10% when the animals got back together with their favorite human. It did not increase when it was a person they didn’t know well.
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When they added oxytocin to the dogs’ eyes, their tear volume also went up. That finding supports the idea that the release of oxytocin plays a role in tear production when dogs and their people get back together.
“We had never heard of the discovery that animals shed tears in joyful situations, such as reuniting with their owners, and we were all excited that this would be a world first!” said Kikusui, whose study was published this week in the journal Current Biology.
RELATED: Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Heads? Scientists Look at What’s Going On in Their Minds
The Japanese team hasn’t yet tested whether dogs produce tears in response to negative emotions. They also are wondering if dogs make tears when they reunite with other dogs.
For now, they say it seems to have clear implications for the dog-human bond. They have posited that perhaps there was an evolutionary driving force behind the process, because teary-eyed dogs may forge a stronger connection between people and their dogs—a relationship that goes back tens of thousands of years.
RELATED: Vast Majority of Dog Owners Believe They Can Read Their Pooch’s Mind
“It is possible that the dogs that show teary eyes during interaction with the owner would be cared for by the owner more,” says Kikusui.
Deep in the heart of the Scottish highlands, deer hunters are fueling conservation from the sale of hunted venison.
Cairngorms National Park is 1,748 square miles of pristine and unique habitat, through which tens of thousands of red deer roam without natural predators.
Every year thousands of are culled by deer stalkers to protect over-feeding on the vegetation in the delicate natural ecosystem. Now, one of the organizations responsible for managing the park is taking those culled animals and turning them into commercial venison to help fund their work.
Saving the Cairngorms “one sausage at a time,” has become a bit of a rallying cry for Cairngorms Connect, who are responsible for protecting and restoring around 239 square miles of the park’s finest features.
“As a 200-year project, Cairngorms Connect needs local people to be at the heat of the habitat restoration vision,” Jack Ward, deer stalker with Cairngorms Connect, said.
“At a time when people are becoming more conscious of their consumer habits, venison provides an exciting opportunity to involve new audiences in our habitat restoration vision.”
As part of its work, Cairngorms Connect is looking to grow new patches of native Caledonian woodland to replace the 99% of this unique habitat that has been historically lost.
Rampant grazing by the red deer threatens the project, and with no natural predators, the population, as so many are across America, have to be controlled.
The partnership is now selling official Cairngorms Connect Venison, using meat produced during its deer management.
Cairngorms Connect partners, the organization writes, have seen the positive impact of deer management—there are more young trees visible on the forest edge, and the slow march of native woodland is now visible on the slopes of the Cairngorms.
Necessary deer management also produces venison which they believe should represent an accessible and environmentally-sustainable source of high quality and sustainable protein.
Press and Journal reports that the venison sausages are a big hit among birdwatchers from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, (RSPB) which, like Cairngorms Connect, manages a part of the park.
SEE ALSO: Fungi Species New to Science Discovered in Scottish Highlands
“The venison has been really popular with visitors to the RSPB Loch Garten Nature Centre,” said Fergus Cumberland, visitor operations manager for RSPB Scotland, “And what better way to restore a habitat than one sausage at a time?”
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Archeologists found a perfectly preserved 1,500 year old arrow inside a Norwegian glacier.
It was a team of seven people from a glacier archeology program who discovered the arrow, dated to between 300 and 600 CE, in the Jotunheimen Mountains on August 17.
It was found during a survey of the reindeer hunting site, and was “really well preserved,” even when compared to other arrows from the ice.
“The arrows melting out of the ice are a very important new source material to archeology,” said Lars Pilø, who co-directs the glacier archeology program at the Department of Cultural Heritage.
“Due to their preservation, we can learn we at lot more about the past, such as how advances their bow-and-arrow technology really was. The age of the arrow can be assessed by the shape of the arrowhead and the arrow shaft, which both point to AD 300-600.”
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Glaciers and other perennial ice sheets are gold mines for artifacts, as the items are preserved and often appear like they were made recently.
The Glacier Archeology program at the Department operates under Innlandet County Council, who established back in 2006 that rising temperatures are leading to increased melting of mountain ice in Innlandet.
RELATED: Legendary Spanish Galleon Shipwreck Discovered After Vanishing 300 Years Ago
2006 was the year of the first ‘big melt’ in 2006, an unusually warm summer in the area.
“The degree of preservation is linked to time of exposure, the micro-environment where it was found, and the pressure of snow and ice has impacted where the arrow lay.”
THAW Out The Bad News On Social Media With This Cool Discovery…
Quote of the Day: “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” – Albert Schweitzer
Photo by: Karolina Kołodziejczak
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A Georgian woman is thanking her stars that it was nothing less than a group of buff high schooler football players who just happened to be passing by her when she needed help.
Together they leant their strength to pry open the jammed door of the woman’s wrecked car, which allowed the rescuers to access the badly injured driver.
The Rome City Football Team was out in force that morning, with teammates Treyvon Adams, 16, Antwion Carey, 16, Cesar Parker, 16, Messiah Daniels, Tyson Brown, 17, and Alto Moore, 16, all heading to school together in Adam’s car, or with their mom in the case of Caesar.
As soon as they saw the wrecked car they leapt into action.
“We just ran as fast we (could) to the lady and check on her to see if she was alright,” Adams told CNN. “We were seeing she was in pain, she was screaming and asking us to help her.”
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The car was totaled, and badly bent out of shape. Without thinking, the teens managed to pry the passenger door open, but realized only afterwards that it was the other door that had to be removed for her to be reached.
“We used all our muscles,” Adams said. “We’re pretty big people, we’re strong. We play football, so we lift weights a lot, but (the door) was just extremely bent and broke.” It all happened in about a minute.
But when it was over, the teens had freed the woman from the vehicle and carried on their way back to class after checking on the driver of the other car in the collision.
Adams admitted that the team had been getting a lot of love and recognition for their act, which teachers said they deserved, and the school has helped drive.
In a post on Twitter, the school’s football team wrote, “PROUD of our MEN!” in reference to the story.
At the end of the day, like all great rescuers, the teens admitted that while the recognition was nice, it was something anyone would do.
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