The Lesson: American winemaking is a racket. A few companies use public money to control all wine imports into our country, while artificially creating wines with additives to control shelf life, de-foaming agents, stabilizing agents, coloring agents, agents that affect the body of the wine, and even sugar additives. It’s not only that mass produced American wines are making us sick, they aren’t really even wine. Dry Farm Wines is a purveyor of natural wines that are zero sugar, low alcohol, additive free, and grown with regenerative agriculture methods free of pesticides—you know, the way the Romans did it.
Notable Excerpt: “Natural wines are grown in pretty small quantities by very small family farms. There’s not a lot of money in making wine this way because you can’t make it in great enough volumes. Back to the consolidated industry, you’ve got these giant wine companies [that] make millions and millions and millions of cases of wine. They don’t want you to know that, so they hide behind thousands of brands and labels to trick you. They want to feature a farmhouse or an animal on the label or a chateau to have you believe that you’re drinking [wine] from this place, when, in fact, most of these wines are made in giant wine factories located in the Central Valley of California.
The Guest: Todd White is founder of Dry Farm Wines, a distribution company that delivers boxes of wine from dozens of natural winemakers while ensuring the quality control with their own natural wine standard consisting of lower alcohol, zero sugar, organic or biodynamic farming, keto and vegan-friendly, additives-free, and less sulfites. Listeners interested can go to dryfarmwines.com/chriskresser to receive an extra bottle with their first order.
The Podcast: Revolution Health Radio is a deeply varied, topical podcast on functional medicine and ancestral health. It features interviews with experts in disciplines as varied as sleep and cancer to farming and strength-training.
The Host: Chris Kresser MD is a pioneer in the field of functional medicine, a discipline of working with patients to correct tendencies of exercise, sleep, nutrition, and lifestyle factors to tackle America’s growing health epidemic. He is the co-director of the California Center for Functional Medicine, and the author of New York Times bestseller The Paleo Cure, as well as Unconventional Medicine.
(HEAR the podcast by pressing play below.)
Featured image: Dry Farm Wines
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Sid Mosdell from New Zealand wikimedia cc license Prosthemadera_novaeseelandiae_-Waikawa,_Marlborough,_New_Zealand-8_(2)
Tūī; Sid Mosdel, CC license
Just ten minutes beyond the center of Wellington lies a wild paradise, where the birdsong of as many as 40 species ring out above hikers.
The massive urban forest of Zealandia is helping prove that if you restore native forest in cities, native species will come back, and for a place with as unique an ecology as New Zealand, that’s all the more important.
The park, described as an eco-sanctuary, is delightful on its own, but it’s having a halo effect on bird communities in suburban, and even urban areas of the nation’s capital.
Opened in 1999, native birds have since increased during annual counts by 50%, while for some species that aren’t rare but shy away from cities, those figures are much higher. The numbers of kākā had increased by 250%, kererū by 186%, and tūī by 121% (the Māori accents denote a long vowel, i.e. “too-ee.”)
“In the 1990s seeing a tūī in suburban Wellington was a big deal, let alone a kākā,” Adam Ellis, a keen birdwatcher in Wellington, told the Guardian, reporting on the news. “Zealandia … created such a change in bird life that birds like tūī became a common garden bird.”
It’s a species of least-concern, but it’s a true tragedy not to have the tūī flitting about backyards. Its beautiful blue-green plumage with a funny white bow-tie is magnificent to behold, and their cacophony is allegedly charming.
A new model
The Zealandia model drove researchers to investigate whether native tree density in and around cities resulted in an increase in native bird species. To get an answer, they examined 25 urban forest projects totaling 72 years of work. They found that the longer the reforestation work, the greater the diversity of native species.
Furthermore, populations of invasive predators like weasels, cats, possums, and rats, which were logically thought to be a reducer of population, had no affect in areas reforested with native tree species.
However it’s far from just birds that enjoy Zealandia. Visitors can also see freshwater mussel colonies, frogs, the eponymous New Zealand eel species, and the wētā, a giant cricket. Additionally, lucky hikers may also see a tuatara. It may look like a lizard, but it’s one of the planet’s truly unique species, as it evolved back in the Triassic Period, and is the only surviving member of its species, which split away from snakes and lizards before the age of the dinosaurs.
Zealandia is a beautiful place, but it takes a lot of hard work to maintain it. Nine kilometers of predator-proof fencing surrounds the park, and 500 volunteers keep trails and water ways in order, and ensure that invasive species don’t propagate.
“When you see birds in your backyard that no one else has, it makes you want to do something for them,” Gini Letham, its lead ranger told the Guardian.
“One of our main missions is to connect people with nature—it’s not necessarily coming here for a bush walk, but it’s also about looking after nature in their own backyard and spreading it past just the sanctuary.”
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Quote of the Day: “Studying the imagination is the most exciting and accurate way to heal the terminal divide between the sciences and the humanities.” – Stephen T. Asma
Photo by: Denisse Leon
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Prostate cancer cells by National Institutes of Health
In a “bugs as drugs” approach, medical researchers in England are using living bacterial magnets to guide viruses engineered to attack cancer tumors.
This process, which has several years of work behind it, has been shown to be able to successfully attack prostate and breast cancers, and has been awarded the Roger Griffin prize for cancer drug discovery.
Known as an “oncolytic virus,” it naturally occurs in nature, but can be modified to improve its efficacy and limit its virality. It causes cancer cells to burst open and die, and so many researchers are keen to harness this near-readymade solution. However, like all other viruses, they also attract the host’s immune system, meaning if they don’t reach their target fast enough, they can get vaporized by immune cells.
Oncologists have successfully used a kind of fat cell known as a liposome to coat and transport intravenous oncolytic viruses, which allows them to be taken up more quickly into tumorous areas.
Now, researchers at the Sheffield group, funded by Cancer Research UK, have also found they can guide the viruses quicker if they’re coated with magnetized particles. Believe it or not, engineers can make magnets fifty one-billionths of a meter, to arm the oncolytic viruses with. But there’s actually a much cheaper and easier way of doing this.
“These microscopic magnets, they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers,” Dr. Faith Howard, a project leader at the Sheffield Group, told the Guardian.
To date their research has focused on animal trials, and now the project needs to be able to manufacture enough supplies to complete a long human trial before the experimental “bugs as drugs” procedure can be proven to work.
Electric cars could be made with plastic from old clunkers, according to new research.
Bumpers, carpets, mats, seating, seals, and door casings have been turned into graphene, which is the world’s lightest material.
Invented by British scientists almost two decades ago, it is set to revolutionize the automative industry.
The metal will increase vehicles’ strength while reducing weight, improving fuel efficiency, and creating rust-free paint.
It will make self-driving cars safer with sensors just one atom thick, enabling detection of obstacles even in difficult weather conditions.
The U.S. team collaborated with Ford using a state-of-the-art technique called flash Joule heating.
“Ford sent us 10 pounds of mixed plastic waste from a vehicle shredding facility,” project leader Professor James Tour, of Rice University, Houston, said. “It was muddy and wet. We flashed it, we sent the graphene back to Ford, they put it into new foam composites and it did everything it was supposed to do.
“Then they sent us the new composites and we flashed those and turned them back into graphene. It’s a great example of circular recycling.”
The recycling breakthrough could also reduce landfill waste from over 1.4 billion passenger cars used globally.
Ford has been using up to 60 lbs of polyurethane foam in its vehicles, with about 2 lbs being graphene-reinforced since 2018.
“When we got the graphene back from Rice, we incorporated it into our foam in very small quantities and saw significant improvement,” co-author Dr Alper Kiziltas, a sustainability expert at the motor giant, said. “It exceeded our expectations in providing both excellent mechanical and physical properties for our applications.”
The company first introduced it into under-the-hood components. In 2020 it added a graphene-reinforced engine cover. It’s also expected to boost hard plastics.
A new way
“Our collaborative discovery with Rice will become even more relevant as Ford transitions to electric vehicles,” co-author Dr Deborah Mielewski, also from Ford, said.
“When you take away the noise generated by the internal combustion engine, you can hear everything else in and outside the vehicle that much more clearly.”
“It’s much more critical to be able to mitigate noise. “So we desperately need foam materials that are better noise and vibration absorbers.
“This is exactly where graphene can provide amazing noise mitigation using extremely low levels.”
Graphene will also replace lithium ion batteries, currently a very heavy component of electric vehicles.
The study in Communications Engineering reused the graphene to make enhanced polyurethane for new vehicles.
Tests showed the infused foam’s tensile strength and low-frequency noise absorption increased by 34 and 25 percent, respectively, with less than 0.1 percent by weight.
And when that new car is old, the foam can be flashed into graphene again. Plastic in vehicles has increased by an estimated 75 percent in just six years.
“In Europe, cars come back to the manufacturer, which is allowed to landfill only 5% of a vehicle. That means they must recycle 95%, and it’s just overwhelming,” prof. Tour said.
The US shreds up to 15 million vehicles each year, with more than 27 million shredded globally. Much ends up being incinerated.
“We have hundreds of different combinations of plastic resin, filler and reinforcements on vehicles that make the materials impossible to separate,” Dr Mielewski said. “Every application has a specific loading/mixture that most economically meets the requirements.”
Engineered plastics cannot be recycled. Traditional recycling methods are expensive because they require the separation of different types.
“These aren’t recyclables like plastic bottles, so they can’t melt and reshape them,” Prof Tour explained. “So, when Ford researchers spotted our paper on flash Joule heating plastic into graphene, they reached out.”
Flash Joule heating was developed by his lab two years ago. It packs mixed ground plastic and a coke additive, for conductivity, between electrodes in a tube.
The chemical cocktail is blasted with high voltage. The sudden, intense heat reaches nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit vaporizing other elements, leaving behind graphene.
It offers significant environmental benefits. The process does not require solvents and uses a minimum of energy.
In experiments, the team ground shredder ‘fluff’ from end-of-life F-150 pick-up trucks without washing or pre-sorting the components.
Powder heated between 10 to 16 seconds in low current produced a highly carbonized plastic accounting for about 30 percent of the initial bulk.
The rest was outgassed or recovered as hydrocarbon-rich waxes and oils. Lead author Kevin Wyss, a graduate student, believes this could also be recycled.
The carbonized plastic was then subjected to high-current flashing, converting 85 percent of it into graphene while outgassing hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, silicon, and trace metal impurities.
Analyses showed it produced graphene with a substantial reduction in energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use when compared to other methods, even including the energy required to reduce the plastic shredder fluff to powder.
Graphene was discovered in 2004 by Prof Andre Geim and Prof Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester. It later won them the Nobel Prize for physics.
It is tougher than diamond, but stretches like rubber. It is virtually invisible, conducts electricity and heat better than any copper wire, and weighs next to nothing.
In coming decades, the astonishing material is expected to change almost every aspect of our lives.
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A new poll suggests ‘Summer Fridays’ are the key to feeling happier at work.
59% of 2,000 working adults say their jobs offer ‘Summer Fridays’—allowing them a short day, or a day off, occasionally on Fridays during the season.
Over eight in 10 employees say they benefit from this perk because it makes them feel much happier at work (85%).
The survey, commissioned by Wisetail and conducted by OnePoll, delved into the impact weather may have on productivity—finding that 73% believe it directly impacts how they work.
Respondents claimed that cool temperatures (28%) and clear blue skies (27%) are associated with being the most productive at work, coinciding with 43% who believe they do their best work in the spring.
It’s no surprise, then, that 65% prefer working outside when the weather is nice—from getting work done in local cafés (53%) to rooftops (48%) and patios (48%).
Employees shared what weather factors can make them have a bad day at their jobs—with conditions like heavy rain (25%) and freezing temperatures (25%) being the root cause of unproductive workdays. Meanwhile, 22% associate snow with having a bad day at work.
Overall, 68% said the motivation to learn or absorb information at work drops when the weather is poor.
Nearly as many (67%) will turn the brightness of their computer screens down if it’s gray or darker outside and 64% said they have to take frequent breaks away from their computer screens when there’s overcast.
Poor weather conditions are enough for 63% to believe it’s excusable for them to take more time completing their work tasks.
Time is also a factor in people’s productivity. In order to have the “best day” at work, the average person needs to wake up at 7:30 a.m, while rising an hour later at 8:30 a.m. would be considered the “worst” way to start off the day.
Sixty-four percent noted that daylight saving had affected their productivity in the past, with a majority (85%) saying they feel unproductive when the clock changes.
“While there are evolving variables to the explanation and reason behind productivity and nice weather, we can correlate better weather with a more positive outlook on the day and overall better mood,” said Kyle Reichelt, product manager at Wisetail. “We also know that better moods lead to increased motivation and self-confidence, which all contributes to efficiency levels in productivity.”
Aside from the workplace, the weather seems to play a role in people’s daily lives. The average respondent said they get seven migraines or headaches per year influenced by the weather.
Nearly two in three (63%) said they have struggled with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) before—a behavioral disorder where cold, gray weather affects Vitamin D and dopamine levels.
Of those who experience this condition, 80% said it affects the quality of work they put in at their jobs.
“Increasing workplace productivity starts with learning which task management tricks work best for you,” continued Reichelt. “While we can’t control the weather, we can control how we tackle our day and adjust for different weather conditions knowing how they affect us.
“Focusing on one task at a time, taking regular breaks, time-blocks on your schedule, and initiating small goals with small objectives are all tricks you might try. Also, try waking up a bit earlier. As noted in the poll, many find that waking up before 7:30 a.m. affects productivity and energy throughout the day.”
“Further, assigning yourself your most challenging tasks that require intense focus at the peak clear-minded time of the day leads to increased productivity and efficiency.”
So a monk and a bishop walk into a bar… If someone had to sum up the friendship of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, maybe that’s how it would begin.
A documentary to be streamed live on Facebook on June 2nd celebrates the incredible friendship of these two global icons. Called Mission: JOY, it’s a tour-de-force about creating happiness in one’s life, no matter the conditions.
Throughout the film, these renowned spiritual leaders share the ways in which they’ve harnessed ancient wisdom and perseverance to find, seek, and maintain joy—even in the face of great adversity and during troubled times like the ones in which we are now living.
An Academy Award-winning documentary team shot and produced Mission: Joy, which took place in the final years of the Archbishop’s life, and offers an unparalleled glimpse into the teasing and laughter the pair shared for years.
The hope is not only to show people how to create joy, but that the benefits of joy a many-fold for both physical and mental health. Berkeley is working with the film to carry out The Big Joy Project, a large citizen science experiment that prescribes certain acts of joy depending on the person, to see how much it can enrich the public health.
Quote of the Day: “A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a fixed quantity of traits.” – Carl Rogers
Photo by: Joshua Fuller
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Australian researchers have discovered the key immunological changes that support the remission of peanut allergy in children, paving the way for new, more targeted treatments.
The research showed for the first-time specific gene networks are rewired to drive the transition from peanut allergy to clinical remission following a combination treatment of a probiotic and peanut oral immunotherapy.
Led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and the Telethon Kids Institute, the study found that this network reprogramming essentially shuts down the allergic immune response that was responsible for causing a food allergy.
Lead researcher, Murdoch Children’s Professor Mimi Tang, said this was the first study to map the complex gene to gene communication and connectivity underlying clinical remission of peanut allergy.
“The immunological changes leading to remission of peanut allergy were largely unknown,” she said. Previous studies had mostly focused on examining the levels of gene expression, without also exploring how genes interact with each other. But genes don’t work in isolation; instead, biological responses are controlled by large numbers of genes communicating with each other, so it made sense to look at these interactions more closely.
“What we found was profound differences in network connectivity patterns between children who were allergic and those who were in remission. These same changes were also seen when we compared gene networks before and after immunotherapy in the children who achieved remission following immunotherapy.”
The randomized controlled trial involved 62 peanut allergic children from Melbourne, aged 1-10 years, who received a combination treatment of a probiotic and oral immunotherapy (the gradual introduction of the allergenic food) or a placebo. Following 18 months of treatment, 74 percent taking the combination treatment achieved remission compared with 4 percent in the placebo group.
The peanut oral immunotherapy that was used in combination with the probiotic in the trial was PRT120, a lead candidate from Prota Therapeutics, an Australian biotech company focused on bringing its novel allergy immunotherapy treatment for children with life-threatening peanut allergies to market.
The team led by Professor Tang also recently showed in a separate trial that two treatments—the combination probiotic and peanut oral immunotherapy treatment and the peanut oral immunotherapy alone—were highly effective at inducing remission and desensitization. About half of the treated children achieved remission, which allowed them to stop treatment and safely eat peanut freely.
Murdoch Children’s Dr Sarah Ashley said while oral immunotherapy could successfully induce desensitization and remission, desensitization often waned after treatment ended or even during ongoing maintenance dosing.
“Certain changes in the allergen-specific immune cells, called Th2 cells, are critical to achieving lasting remission,” she said. Th2 cells are essential for generating allergen-specific antibodies and the development of food allergy. We found that the Th2 signalling that drives allergy is ‘turned off’ in children in remission.”
Food allergy is a global public health concern, affecting 10 percent of infants and 5-8 percent of children.
Telethon Kids Institute’s Dr Anya Jones said because there was no cure for food allergies, management relied on avoidance of the allergenic food, resulting in reduced quality of life.
“Understanding the complex immune processes that support remission will provide greater insight into key drivers of treatment success and potentially identify novel targets for more effective treatments that deliver long-term solutions for patients,” she explained.
More than a third of the world’s population lives in drylands, areas that experience significant water shortages. Now scientists have developed a solution that could help people in these areas access clean drinking water.
The team at The University of Texas at Austin developed a low-cost gel film made of abundant materials that can pull water from the air in even the driest climates. The materials that facilitate this reaction cost a mere $2 per kilogram, and a single kilogram can produce more than six liters of water per day in areas with less than 15% relative humidity and thirteen liters in areas with up to 30% relative humidity.
The research builds on previous breakthroughs from the team, including the ability to pull water out of the atmosphere and the application of that technology to create self-watering soil. However, these technologies were designed for relatively high-humidity environments.
“This new work is about practical solutions that people can use to get water in the hottest, driest places on Earth,” said Guihua Yu, professor of materials science and mechanical engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. “This could allow millions of people without consistent access to drinking water to have simple, water generating devices at home that they can easily operate.”
The researchers used renewable cellulose and a common kitchen ingredient, konjac gum, as a main hydrophilic (attracted to water) skeleton. The open-pore structure of gum speeds the moisture-capturing process. Another designed component, thermo-responsive cellulose with hydrophobic (resistant to water) interaction when heated, helps release the collected water immediately so that overall energy input to produce water is minimized.
Other attempts at pulling water from desert air are typically energy-intensive and do not produce much. And although six liters does not sound like much, the researchers say that creating thicker films or absorbent beds or arrays with optimization could drastically increase the amount of water they yield.
A simple method
The reaction itself is a simple one, the researchers said, which reduces the challenges of scaling it up and achieving mass usage.
“This is not something you need an advanced degree to use,” said Youhong “Nancy” Guo, the lead author on the paper and a former doctoral student in Yu’s lab, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s straightforward enough that anyone can make it at home if they have the materials.”
The film is flexible and can be molded into a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on the need of the user. Making the film requires only the gel precursor, which includes all the relevant ingredients poured into a mold.
“The gel takes 2 minutes to set simply. Then, it just needs to be freeze-dried, and it can be peeled off the mold and used immediately after that,” said Weixin Guan, a doctoral student on Yu’s team and a lead researcher of the work.
One look at this Hobbit hole-like winery in the country of Georgia and you’ll fall in love with green architecture.
Built three years ago in the Kakheti region, the Shilda Winery consists of three artificial caves that gently rise up from the ground, bringing the rows of grapes with them.
The 2.5 yard-spacing of the vineyard rows have translated into a striped grid that makes up the building, expressed by a series of arching beams that literally raises the vineyard up from the ground.
Over the top run the rows of grapes, and behind in the distance are the Caucasus Mountains, ensuring that the buildings perfectly blend into the background.
Inside the three hillock houses are a storage area, a tasting room and wine center, and a restaurant/bar.
For example, the building’s openings face north to avoid the majority of the day’s sun exposure, while the mass from the soils helps to cool the building at a basic level. This also naturally keeps the wine stored inside at optimal temperatures.
Founded in 2015 among the castles and churches of Kakheti, Shilda Winery is situated in the principal region of viniculture in Georgia, and offers more than 20 varieties of wine. Cheers to that.
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crossrail project released Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)
Ben Hall/RSPB Images
Multi-billion dollar civic engineering projects tend not to be good news for wildlife, but upon the completion of a new English underground railway line, the upturned earth was used to rebuild a coastal habitat for birds in Essex.
The new bird sanctuary instantly became one of the richest in Britain’s coastline for avocets, spoonbills, black-tailed godwits, and other wading birds.
The Elizabeth Crossrail is a high-speed line that runs from Reading to the west of London, through the capital, to Shenfield near the east coast. During the $24 million (£19 million) project, seven million metric tons of soil was dug up to make thirteen underground railway tunnels, half of which were transported by boat to the eastern shore of the country.
The earth was taken to a place called Wallasea Island, once just a tiny peninsula of the wild Essex coastline, consisting of salt marshes, coastal lagoons, muddy flatlands, and other features, but several times during the Medieval period and after it was drained to make sheep pasture or farmland.
Farming often is not as profitable now as it was then, and as the defensive seawall was in need of repairs, the farmer that used to own the land sold it to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
“Massive amounts of soil were dug up from below the streets of London during tunneling needed to create the Elizabeth line,” said Rachel Fancy, site manager of RSPB Wallasea Island. “That material was given to the RSPB, allowing us to create our Jubilee Marsh, the cornerstone of our new reserve.”
Jubilee is the appropriate name in this case. Bird-friendly journalists from the Guardian, reporting on the state of Wallasea Island, now note the diversity of species and the rich numbers.
Hen and marsh harriers have appeared in winter while wigeon, teal, plover, yellow wagtail, lapwings, blackbirds, oystercatchers, and skylarks were all recorded in what reporters called a “nature lover’s paradise.”
It took 1,500 trips by canal to bring the dirt to Wallasea. Once there it was transported via conveyor belt to a dump, where tipper trucks slowly deposited it along the shoreline to create a steady sloping terrain up from the sea, protecting it from rising levels.
After the manicuring and landscaping was finished, the seawall was strategically breached in three separate places at low tide, which, once it rose again, gently partitioned the landscape into the various landscape features seen today, as opposed to turning it into a big muddy lake if the wall had been breached all at once at high tide.
In its first year, Wallasea Nature Reserve hosted 150 breeding pairs of avocets, which is endangered-in-Britain, instantly making it one of the bird’s strongholds.
“We are really proud that Jubilee Marsh is helping to combat the threats from climate change and coastal flooding,” Mark Wild, Crossrail’s chief executive, told the Guardian.
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Quote of the Day: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” – Robert Schuller
Photo by: Javier Allegue Barros
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The Lesson: Many major chronic health disturbances like depression and inadequate sleep are treated in the west with self-serving temporary crutches like prescription drugs. When Yona Shtern was taking over the helm of a publicly-traded wellness wearable company, his normal understanding that he could create value for investors flipped after having the first good night of sleep he could remember using their product. Now, he sees his powers of growing a business directly correlates to the number of people whose lives and health he can improve—veterans, prison guards, caretakers, and it’s giving him new purpose.
Notable Excerpt: “I wasn’t able to sleep at night, quite frankly. I became a believer because I became a user, and then something really unforeseen happened to me. I was maybe in the chair for two weeks when I started getting LinkedIn messages from people saying they had tried the product and that it had changed their lives, and if there was any way they could help us out. I felt I had a responsibility to get this into the hands of more people, and figure out a way to change people’s lives.”
The Guest: Yona is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully scaled disruptive businesses in technology and consumer goods. He was CEO of Arrive (digital parking), CEO of Beyond the Rack (e-commerce marketplace) and Board Member at Swap.com (resale marketplace). Today, Yona is the Chairman and CEO of Hapbee – a publicly-traded company whose wearable wellness technology is on a mission to improve the lives of 10 million people.
Yona was also Start Up Canada’s Entrepreneur of The Year in 2014 and is a frequent speaker to management students at McGill University (his alma mater), Yale and at many start-up and business conferences.
The Product: Hapbee is the next generation of wearable wellness technology. Hapbee is a chemical free solution to help with sleep, performance, and mood, all without side-effects. Unlike other wearables that simply monitor your health, Hapbee gives you the power to actively change it. You can decide when you need to be more focused, relaxed, energized, or even sleepy.
By “biostreaming” the unique magnetic signatures of popular ingredients like caffeine or melatonin through the device, you can safely activate their effects without any unwanted side effects.
The Podcast: Livin’ Good Currency explores the relationship of time to our lives. It gives a simple, straight-forward formula that anyone can use to be present in the moment—and features a co-host who knows better than anyone the value of time (see below). How do you want to spend your life? This hour can inspire you, along with upcoming guests, to be sure you are ‘Livin’ Good Currency’ and never get caught running out of time.
The Hosts: Good News Network fans will know Tony (Anthony) Samadani as the co-owner of GNN and its Chief of Strategic Partnerships. Co-host Tobias Tubbs was handed a double life sentence without the possibility of parole for a crime he didn’t commit. Behind bars, he used his own version of the Livin’ Good Currency formula to inspire young men in prison to turn their hours into honors. An expert in conflict resolution, spirituality, and philosophy, Tobias is a master gardener who employs ex-felons to grow their Good Currency by planting crops and feeding neighborhoods.
“The ceremony was to celebrate their love and recovery journey,” Lucia Almanza, a Public Relations Associate at SAHS, said. “Their small, intimate wedding day was shared with staff, volunteers and our closest friends. The event included a beautiful walk down the aisle, bubbles, music and cake, of course!”
A mini wedding chapel was also built for the occasion.
SWNS
“A couple of days before we had some volunteers who constructed Peanut and Cashew,” she added. “Their very own chapel in their own time, complete with a bubble machine for added fun for the dogs.”
Lucia explained that Peanut and Chestnut are both available individually for adoption at the SAHS, but staff are hoping they get to continue their honeymoon together forever.
SWNS
The San Antonio Humane Society is a non-profit, no-kill organization that was founded in 1952.
Gen Z are turning to the likes of TikTok and Instagram to learn new hobbies such as creating portraits of pets, roller-skating, and bubble nails—a fingernail art technique.
A poll of 1,500 18-25-year-olds found 72 percent have been inspired to take up a new interest as a direct result of watching clips on popular social media channels.
Of those with a hobby, 53 percent spend at least four hours a week watching them on their smartphones.
Videos of hobbies, and content such as tie-dying and ghost-hunting, have a loyal following among young adults as do ‘how-to’ clips featuring meditation, photography, and extreme make-up.
It also emerged four in 10 have gone behind the camera themselves to share their hobbies on social media.
The poll was commissioned to mark the launch of the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, whose spokesperson Annika Bizon, said, “After two years of various lockdowns where our creativity could have been stifled, it’s no surprise we’ve seen an increase in awesome and unconventional hobbies coming from this generation.
“This audience craves expression, turning to social media outlets like never before, to watch, create and share their content.”
Of those who post their own content relating to their hobby on social media, 86 percent said it has been well received.
So much so, they’ve seen their number of followers increase by 21 percent.
Key motivators for sharing include showing off their new skills (26 percent), personal enjoyment (25 percent), and connecting with others (24 percent), while 23 percent do it to learn new things.
A fifth said it took them three months to perfect their hobby content, to ensure followers would like it.
On average, content creators spend an average of four hours a week filming and editing to ensure it’s up to scratch.
As a result of their popularity online, 48 percent have even turned their social media accounts into a business venture.
27-year-old Sophie Taylor from Norfolk, whose hobby is pet portraiture, has done just this. She said, “When everyone started to get a furry friend, I turned my artistic flare towards drawing pets.
“Straight away, friends and family asked me to illustrate their pets and it took off into an online business that I could easily manage through my smartphone.”
SWNS
Another Gen Zer who has managed to make a living from their interest is 22-year-old Angel My Linh, a specialist nail artist from Southeast London. She said, “My content has really taken off through the growing community of followers and I was recently asked to design nails for major artists Tems and Megan Thee Stallion, which is amazing.”
Of those polled, four in 10 described their interests as ‘awesome’, while 32 percent think they are ‘underrated’.
Almost a fifth of those polled, via OnePoll, think their interest makes them feel ‘liberated’ and 37 percent said it makes them feel ‘proud’.
“For me, roller-skating has always been a passion, so I took to social platforms like TikTok to share my moves, tips, and tricks, including dance routines,” 27-year-old DeVante Walters from London said. “Above all else, it is so important to connect with others, through inspiring them to join in, discover their inner talents and have fun with it.”
iyo Zamorano tree cc license wikimedia commons 1600px-_El_Gran_Abuelo_._Alerce_Milenario_de_3.500_años_aprox
Alerce Milenario; Yiyo Zamorano, CC license
In 1993, a cypress tree stump in Chile was confirmed by tree-ring-counting as 3,622 years old—showing the capacity of these slow-growing relatives of sequoia to endure through centuries.
However, another scientist recently found that a living individual, known as the “millennium cypress” or “great-grandfather” could be more than 5,000 years old—which would make it the oldest tree on Earth by a nearly half a millennium.
Science has long known that Alerce Milenario is old, but one man in particular knew that estimates were probably on the young side, since bore devices used to extract the wood needed to count the rings don’t go far enough into the four-meter-thick trunk of this Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides) tree.
Dr. Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean scientist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, took a core sample of the tree, located in Alerce Costero National Park and used a combination of computer simulation and randomization to create different growth scenarios of the tree based on growth patterns and climate data.
“This method tells us that 80% of all possible growth trajectories give us an age of this living tree greater than 5,000 years,” Barichivich said. “There is only a 20% chance that the tree is younger.”
That would make it the oldest single tree by a couple hundred years, beating out a 4,853- year-old bristlecone pine tree in Great Basin National Park in Nevada called Methuselah.
Cypress trees can live very long indeed, and the sixth oldest tree in the world is a bald cypress found in South Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp.
Old trees are extremely important to forest ecosystems, but ancient trees like Alerce Milenario are even more so.
Their seeds contain a DIY manual for adapting to and surviving all kinds of disasters and harsh conditions, all contained within the genetic code. Scientists have shown recently how the number of ancient trees within an ecosystem is directly correlated with its resiliency—making them valuable indeed.
A new study has shown that one hug from a romantic partner is enough to lower a woman’s stress hormone levels.
We are social animals, evolved from extremely social apes who spend hours touching each other. Luckily though, we don’t have to spend hours grooming one another in order to relax after a work day, a stressful test, or an unforeseen problem—it only takes a hug from a loved one.
Behind the finding is the release of oxytocin during a hug. Known as the love hormone, it reduces circulating cortisol, buffering the stress response.
Men, interestingly enough, did not show a statistically-significant reduction in cortisol levels, but the researchers caution that this doesn’t mean it’s not there.
“The effect could simply be smaller and was just undetected,” senior study author Julian Packheiser, a postdoctoral researcher with the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, told CNN.
It could have been the social setting of the institute trial. Being placed in strange conditions may have brought out underlying social pressures for men to appear hard and strong.
The benefits of hugging aren’t all touchy-feely either. The study authors point out in their introduction that embracing has been shown to reduce blood pressure, and is also associated with decreases in inflammation as well as with increased subjective well-being, as well as a resilience towards infection and an accelerated recovery from viruses.
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A talented artist has been brightening up her city’s streets for four years—turning rundown and neglected buildings into a rainbow of colors.
Tash Frootko has transformed 25 houses in Gloucester so far, painting her way into residents’ hearts.
The huge project, finally unveiled this week, marks a milestone in her mission to inject color into the English city she lives in, which she believes has garnered quite a negative opinion over the years.
“I see Gloucester as a huge blank canvas… and see potential in everything,” says the the 42-year-old, who has lived in the riverside city for the past two decades.
“Rows of Victorian terraced houses look sublime when painted in bold and vivid colors. It brings them back to life after being allowed to become drab and soulless.”
“People will now refer to this area of the city as the Rainbow Square—and it’s the most colorful square in the country,” she said.
Three adjoining streets of the Square are connected by two murals by local artists Zoe Power and Eloise Henderson-Figueroa.
“The artwork is evolving as now we have huge pieces of artworks linking the rows of colorful terraced houses,” said Frootko.
Rainbow Square mural painted in Gloucester – SWNS
“The response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive. All generations and cultures are enjoying what I do and asking me to continue on and transform run down parts of the city that people tend to make a negative opinion on.”
“It is such an honor to improve the look of the city for its residents and visitors. Everyone deserves to live in a wonderful environment and to love where they live.”
Watch the video from SWNS News Service…
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