A new book and accompanying documentary compiles fascinating and recently-collected evidence on the wide variety of work Paleolithic women got up to.
Lady Sapiens: the Woman in Prehistory focuses on a period called the Upper Paleolithic, or about 10,000 to 40,000 BCE, and examines etchings and archeological findings from Peru, Germany, the U.S, and Italy.
Lead author Jennifer Kerner shows that women were not just foraging but also hunting; they were not only caring for children but were also building shelters and traps‚ and making art.
The opening of the documentary focuses on a site in Wilamaya Patjxa, Peru, where a young woman, not even 20 years of age, was placed in a grave alongside hunting tools which included projectile points, hide scrapers, and a flint knife—the Paleolithic equivalent to the most modern Hoyt archery tackle.
It’s not such a surprise that women were involved in a greater variety of tasks than has previously been suggested: Living off the land is anything but “simple” and can be challenging even in the richest of environments. Cooperation between all the people of a community—where both sexes were taking on vital tasks—would have helped lead to human flourishing.
A further ten sites examined around eight-to-twelve thousand years ago in North America yielded similar grave goods, adding a cross-cultural element to the theory of ‘Woman: The Hunter’. There’s substantial evidence that female and male hunters were taking on small game hunting for both aquatic and terrestrial animals, similar to the Martu people in Australia—where women carry their children around while hunting for goanna, a large lizard.
“She [a prehistoric woman] could hunt,” Thomas Cirotteau, one of documentary makers, told the Guardian. “She had a very important economic role. She could do art, and the link between men and women could be very respectful and full of tenderness,” he said.
The upcoming documentary uses video game-style graphics by Ubisoft to colorize a Paleolithic world filled with women and men working side-by-side, paralleled by the researchers working side-by-side in the present day to uncover the details of their lives.
The whole documentary is currently available in French with English subtitles.
(WATCH the film below.)
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“Muddy” Mildred Wilson is at it again. The 83-year old with two Tough Mudder races to her name just crushed a third one, becoming the oldest person ever to finish the famous 5K.
The Tough Muddle 5K in Missouri, Wilson’s home state, was honored to feature the octogenarian for the third time—in this event, she was raising money to drill a fresh water well in a rural African village.
GNN has reported on Wilson’s races before: In 2021, when she completed her second 5K, she dedicated it to her late husband Farrell, who was able to see her cross the finish line for her first race in 2019.
“I had watched [her son] do the World’s Toughest Mudder in Vegas,” Mildred said in 2019, according to local news reports. “He asked me last fall if I would like to do one. I said yes, but, if I do it, I want to be able to really do it. Not just be out there.”
Now she’s doing it because her son, Danny Wilson, who first inspired her to start doing the Tough Mudders, and is the leader of the youth group working to raise money to drill wells in Africa.
“I will get muddy so others can drink clean water. I would love for you to help me make the vision a reality!!!” Mildred wrote on the GoFundMe page.
Tough Mudder
The village in question has a single water hole, about the same color as the Tough Mudder ponds that Wilson must crawl through early on in the 5K. If it doesn’t rain, her son explains in a video, the villagers must travel over a literal mountain range to find the next one.
Spring is fully waking up the woodlands of the Northern Hemisphere, which means under apple, elm, and sycamore trees—one might find themselves a tasty treat.
Black morel mushrooms, in the world of edible fungus, are highly prized and are for North Americans what the boletus is for the Europeans. However, before long one might be able to find them in a store, as a Danish biologist has found a way to reliably cultivate morels indoors, something that’s never been done before.
As production is at about 20 pounds per square yard per year, a commercially grown morel would still be highly coveted, and demand a large price—but probably not the $230 per kilogram they go for today. Yet the work at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and the University of Copenhagen that’s gone in to produce this mycocultural breakthrough has been going on for four decades, so suddenly that the seemingly-small amount seems celebratory.
The universities, in a video presentation, detail that the controlled cultivation is so well-developed that commercial production can commence as soon as automation of the process can be sorted out.
The brains behind the breakthrough are a pair of biologists and identical twins: Jacob and Karsten Kirk, who first took up the project in 1986 when they looked to continue improving on an existing American patent for cultivating morels.
“[W]e have made exciting trips for black morels to relevant locations, mainly in Denmark, but also in Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and France, almost every spring,” the Kirk brothers write on their website, The Danish Morel Project. “In addition, we have obtained a good number of fruit bodies, mainly from Turkey.”
“The combined efforts in this area resulted in the isolation of mycelium [spores] from as many as 347 different fruit bodies up to May 2021,” they say. From all these different genetic individuals, they identified a few that were suitable for mass production.
One of the major problems with growing wild mushrooms is that it’s not as simple as putting down roots which produce growth. The mycelium, which are kind of like roots, act in different ways. When it’s time to fruit for example, a part of the fungal lifeform called a sclerotium will either re-burrow and form a new mycelium complex, or emerge to form the fruiting body.
It’s very easy, Smithsonian details, to force a sclerotium to make more mycelium, but it’s very difficult to make it form a mushroom fruit.
Therefore just about only one morel specimen collected, variant 195, responded to the conditions of temperature and humidity consistently to create a fruiting body when the Kirks wanted it.
Beyond that, little is known about how these two fungimancers managed to crack this centuries-old mystery, as their method is strictly kept secret, and under patent law.
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Quote of the Day: “They can be proud to be Mexican, proud of their heritage, and that they have a peaceful, inclusive, vibrant country playing a role in the world.” – Enrique Peña Nieto, 57th President (Happy Cinco de Mayo!)
Photo: by Ivan Diaz
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A view of Io captured by the Galileo spacecraft. (Image credit- NASA_JPL-Caltech) Io moon jupiter
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Rutgers
Scientists have long wondered how Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, has meandering ridges as grand as any that can be seen in movies like Dune.
Now, a Rutgers research study has provided a new explanation of how dunes can form even on a surface as icy and roiling as Io’s.
The research is based on a study of the physical processes controlling grain motion coupled with an analysis of images from the 14-year mission of NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which allowed the creation of the first detailed maps of Jupiter’s moons. The new study is expected to expand our scientific understanding of the geological features on these planet-like worlds.
“Our studies point to the possibility of Io as a new ‘dune world,’” said first author George McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher in Rutgers’ Earth and Planetary Sciences Department. “We have proposed, and quantitatively tested, a mechanism by which sand grains can move, and in turn dunes could be forming there.”
Current scientific understanding dictates that dunes, by their nature, are hills or ridges of sand piled up by the wind. And scientists in previous studies of Io, while describing its surface as containing some dune-like features, concluded the ridges could not be dunes since the forces from winds on Io are weak due to the moon’s low-density atmosphere.
Io captured by the Galileo spacecraft/ NASA; JPL-Caltech
“This work tells us that the environments in which dunes are found are considerably more varied than the classical, endless desert landscapes on parts of Earth or on the fictional planet Arrakis in ‘Dune,’” McDonald said.
The Galileo mission, which lasted from 1989 – 2003, logged so many scientific firsts that researchers to this day are still studying the data it collected. One of the major insights gleaned from the data was the high extent of volcanic activity on Io – so much so that its volcanoes repeatedly and rapidly resurface the little world.
Io’s surface is a mix of black solidified lava flows and sand, flowing “effusive” lava streams, and “snows” of sulfur dioxide. The scientists used mathematical equations to simulate the forces on a single grain of basalt or frost and calculate its path. When lava flows into sulfur dioxide beneath the moon’s surface, its venting is “dense and fast moving enough to move grains on Io and possibly enable the formation of large-scale features like dunes,” McDonald said.
Once the researchers devised a mechanism by which the dunes could form, they looked to photos of Io’s surface taken by the Galileo spacecraft for more proof. The spacing of the crests and the height-to-width ratios they observed were consistent with trends for dunes seen on Earth and other planets.
“Work like this really allows us to understand how the cosmos works,” said Lujendra Ojha, a co-author and an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “In the end, in planetary science, that is what we are trying to do.”
Following last week’s rescue mission, a baby eagle is now safely tucked up inside its nest on the cliffs of Catalina Island.
The California-born eaglet was accidentally kicked out of the nest by an adult eagle while sleeping.
This eaglet, along with the others being raised on the island, are part of a 40-year reintroduction program. And a rescue squad was soon called in to help it.
“It’s about an hour hike from the nearest road,” wildlife biologist Peter Sharpe told ABC. From there, it took another thirty minutes to help the eaglet back where it belonged. “I… checked its legs and its wings to make sure there wasn’t any obvious breaks. Internal injuries, I can’t say, but they’re pretty resilient,” said Sharpe.
(WATCH the ABC and Explore.org video of the rescue below.)
Released Granite rock is placed in the Piankatank River to create oyster reef. (Patrick Bloodgood_ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Granite rocks being placed in the Piankatank River to form an oyster reef/ Patrick Bloodgood; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Biologists working to restore the Chesapeake Bay oyster populations are claiming the biggest success in human history, as whole reefs of oysters return to more than 400 acres of estuarine ecosystem.
Nowhere is this success more highlighted than along the Piankatank River, where The Nature Conservancy Virginia Chesapeake Bay Program has taken the first steps to restoring what used to be 7,000 acres of oyster reefs.
The Piankatank is what’s known as a “trap estuary,” where nutrient quality and calm waters mean oysters can flourish without their larvae being washed out into the bay. It’s just one of several major tributaries that flow into the bay which are experiencing a renaissance in oyster life.
To date, four of six out of Virginia’s major tributaries have met their oyster restoration goals. Director of the Conservancy’s bay program called it “the largest completed oyster restoration project on the planet” when he spoke to The Virginia Mercury.
“Water quality and fish is really what it boils down to,” said Director Andy Lacatell. “Oysters improve water quality, and they provide habitat for fish and crabs and other critters that are both recreationally and commercially important.”
In 2014, biological plummeting in the Chesapeake, the nation’s largest estuary, saw the six watershed states, the EPA, and the Chesapeake Bay Commission come together to form the Bay Watershed Agreement, which would aim to restore oyster populations in the 10 major feeder rivers by 2025.
In VA, the Great Wicomico, Piankatank, and Lafayette rivers have all been restored as per the plan, with only the Lynnhaven and lower York rivers remaining. State Governor Ralph Northam voluntarily added the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River to Virginia’s list last year.
The Virginia Marine Resources Commission has been responsible for most of the reef-building, which included 100 acres just last year. The Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences is also a major participant in oyster restoration, creating “oyster castles” in other rivers like the Rappahannock and the Elizabeth, and helping the bivalves reach the more advanced ages of 5-7 years—when the animal’s fecundity becomes greatest.
Experts believe that the methods currently being employed, such as using concrete debris to create the base for oysters to cling on to, and the rate at which reefs are being restored, will see the state meet its 2025 targets. That’s good news indeed.
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Ohio State University’s colleges of medicine and engineering have partnered with Siemens to create a new MRI machine that overcomes key limitations of the existing machine.
Their new new design opens up the use of the MRI to those with implants, with obesity, and other circumstances that prohibit the machine’s use.
Critical for achieving accurate diagnoses, a Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI) has several critical limitations. For those with implants like pacemakers, the MRI cannot be used. Existing machines can’t see inside human lungs, they expose patients—especially repeat patients with chronic conditions—to significant amounts of radiation. They’re expensive to install and run, and for those in the highest echelons of the body-mass index, they can’t fit into the opening.
The 0.55T MAGENTOM Free.Max solves all five of these drawbacks, thanks to the work of Orlando Simonetti, a research director of cardiovascular magnetic resonance at OSU, and Rizwan Ahmad, assistant professor of biomedical engineering.
The secret behind the design is a lower resonance level. MRIs typically have magnetic field strengths of 1.5 or 3.0 Tesla; the Free.Max is much lower at 0.55 Tesla.
1: It can image the lungs
Imaging lungs is typically done with or in conjunction with nuclear imaging or X-ray CT scans, dosing the patient in radiation.
“The air in the lungs cancels out the MRI signal at higher field strength; however, at lower field, there’s potential to see lung tissue more clearly with the MRI,” Simonetti told his university press. “We were looking for ways to improve the quality of images in these patients, and lower magnetic field strength could offer an advantage.”
This will be key for patients with cystic fibrosis pulmonary hypertension, heart failure, and even COVID-19.
2: It’s cheaper
Having a strength of 1.5 or 3.0, like the currently available MRI machines, means they are expensive to build, buy, install, and operate.
This often excludes the possibility of having an MRI machine in most outpatient facilities, and some hospitals—especially in lower income or rural areas. A 2018 study found that only 1% of rural Canadian hospitals even had an MRI machine.
A medical imaging company quotes a price of a modern high-powered MRI at anywhere from $150,000 to $1 million, with a daily operating energy expenditure of 10x the normal American household’s energy consumption.
3: It can image hearts with implants
“Many of our patients have pacemakers or defibrillators and while many of those devices are now safe for MR scanning, the metal in them can distort the magnetic field and corrupt the image quality,” said Simonetti.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that low-field MRI will play an important role in the future and will become more mainstream.”
4: It can cut down on radiation exposure from X-rays
Children with congenital heart disease often undergo MRI-guided, X-ray heart catheterizations several times in their lives, and the lower field strength of the Free.Max means that these children, like patients with lung disease, aren’t overdosed with harmful radiation from too many X-rays.
Beyond these four big improvements, the Free.Max also has the largest opening (31 inches) of any MRI machine, expanding its use to more obese patients—and easing the burden for claustrophobic folks. A win-win-win-win for all.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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Quote of the Day: “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.” – Michelle Obama
Photo by: Tyler Nix
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Backyard bee conservation is all the buzz these days, with people planting native pollinator gardens, installing bee houses, and participating in citizen science endeavors to monitor local bee populations.
And for good reason—in North America, a quarter of our native bee species are at risk of extinction. That’s not good for the bees, and it isn’t good for us. Bees pollinate 35 percent of our global food supply, and many of the wild plants our ecosystems depend on. Simply put, a world without bees would be a shadow of its former ecological self.
Enter No Mow May, a movement that began in the United Kingdom and is now rapidly spreading throughout the United States, thanks to Bee City USA, a 10-year-old initiative of the Xerces Society, a nonprofit that labors to conserve invertebrates, and thus, biodiversity. No Mow May’s popularity lies in its simplicity: Just give bees a leg up during the crucial springtime by crossing a chore off your list and letting your lawn grow for the month of May. This lets “lawn flowers,” such as dandelions, clover, and violets, bloom at a time when bee food is scarce.
“If you don’t mow your lawn for three to four weeks, you’re going to see increases in flowers, which translates to increases in abundance and biodiversity of bees,” explains Dr. Israel Del Toro, an assistant professor at Lawrence University and one of the originators of the US No Mow May movement.
As a conservation photographer who recently began documenting No Mow May’s spread in my home state of Wisconsin, I’ve learned some important lessons about participating in No Mow May. Here’s how to do it right—for the bees, for your lawn, and for you.
How to make No Mow May a positive experience for everyone
Bernt Rostad, CC license
Lawns grow fast and long in the spring; here in Wisconsin, some No Mow May participants’ lawns topped out at almost a foot tall! Not everyone will appreciate your long grass or your carpet of dandelions, which some see as counter to long-held notions of the “prim and proper” American lawn. To avoid misunderstandings, “talk to your neighbor; talk to your community; get the word out about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and generally you’ll find a lot of good allies,” says Del Toro.
Yard signs are also helpful for informing others that your wild lawn means that you’re helping the bees and are not a neglectful homeowner. Many communities that adopt No Mow May, such as Appleton, Wisconsin, and Edina, Minnesota, provide free yard signs. You can also obtain free, print-at-home yard signage from the Xerces Society.
Be mindful of grass height rules. In many communities, grass height is limited to eight or 10 inches, but those that have adopted No Mow May will suspend enforcement of these restrictions for the month. If this is the case in your community, make sure to cut your grass at the end of the month. Mike Wiza, mayor of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, told me that No Mow May went well in his community—in part, because residents were prompt about cutting their grass by the end of May. If they hadn’t, Wiza says, it could have caused “all sorts of problems.”
Robert; CC license
Unsure whether your community has adopted No Mow May? Call your city or homeowners association to determine what rules are in place. If your community hasn’t adopted No Mow May, but you still want to participate, try laying off the mower until your grass reaches your community’s maximum allowed grass height. This will allow flowers to bloom for at least a little while.
You can also encourage your community to adopt No Mow May. As mayor Wiza put it, “I don’t always have the ideas. My job is to show [the community] how we can do it and clear obstacles out of their way. No Mow May wasn’t my idea; it [came from] members of the community.”
If you face resistance from your community, Del Toro suggests reminding naysayers that “No Mow May is a completely opt-in movement.” Meaning folks who covet a perfectly manicured lawn can keep theirs but then agree not to “stand in the way of people that want to think a little about biodiversity in their yard.”
Dandelions, really?
Shannondtaylor19, CC license
We know—dandelions, despite being pretty and edible, are non-native and invasive. So why promote a movement that encourages their growth?
The basic answer? “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Sure, it’d be great to turn your entire neighborhood into a bee paradise of native plants, but that can take quite a bit of time and money. And despite younger generations’ embrace of the eco bona fides of no-lawn life, most homeowners will want at least some lawn. So why not find ways to make them more ecologically beneficial?
While dandelions have become the poster child for No Mow May, other plants—including native species—may also be lurking in your lawn. “It’s not just dandelions,” says Dr. Claudio Gratton, a professor and entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There are a lot of other plants that are going to be there.” In Massachusetts, scientists found 63 plant species in herbicide-free lawns, a whopping 30 percent of which were native to the state. Common blue violets, a native plant species frequently observed in that study, not only attract bees but are also an important host plant for fritillary butterflies. In Wisconsin, common blue violets were found in 95 percent of No Mow May lawns but only 20 percent of mowed parks.
Most of us probably delighted in dandelions as children but have been conditioned to hate them as adults, steeped as we are in American lawn culture. No Mow May often brings into stark relief “this crazy fascination that we have in North America with the prototypical American lawn,” says Gratton. “This perfect, golf-course-putting-green-style, every-blade-in-its-perfect-place environment with no other flowers—[No Mow May] forces us to think about our relationship with nature, the way we have squeezed nature to suit our aesthetic needs, and its consequences for all the other biodiversity out there that plays really important roles in our lives as well.”
The bottom line is that “weedy” lawns—even those with some non-native plants—have the potential to support native bees. For example, in the Massachusetts study noted above, 111 bee species were found in the herbicide-free lawns, which represented more than a quarter of the bee species known in the state. In Kentucky, 37 species of bees were found feeding on dandelions and clover alone.
Think beyond No Mow May
While No Mow May is a great step, experts warn that backyard bee conservation efforts cannot stop there. “It’s accessible—everyone can do it; you have agency and are a participant in conservation,” stresses Gratton. However, “the risk is that folks might think this is sufficient.”
Many communities, beyond giving residents a good excuse to stash away their mowers, are using No Mow May to educate residents about the many other aspects of bee conservation. Organizers in Appleton, Wisconsin, for instance, provided residents with information on reducing chemical use, planting native plants, and creating nesting habitat for bees—which can be as simple as leaving brush piles—”where we typically find bumblebee colonies,” according to Del Toro—in corners of your yard. In my community of Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, the city is gifting free pollinator-friendly native plants to children of participating households this year in an effort to increase native plant populations, and to get the whole family involved too.
So, embrace the No Mow May movement—tell your neighbors about it, and if your community hasn’t already, ask it to adopt the movement. And when June rolls around, start asking what else you can do (or not do) to help bees all year long.
Anne Readel is a photographer, writer, and lawyer with a Ph.D. in conservation biology. Her work has been published by the New York Times, Audubon, and Better Homes & Gardens, among others. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
(This article was originally published in Sierra magazine.)
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Could thinking about chronic pain differently succeed in dispelling it when all other treatments have failed? While statements like “mind over matter” or “it’s all in your head” may sound dismissive, there’s some truth to them.
A new neurological recalibrating processes is experiencing a flood of professional interest—as it could help treat patients with chronic pain without the use of opioids.
The treatment involves combating a psychological phenomenon called “catastrophizing,” whereby a patient, frightened by future outbreaks of pain, will prevail “danger messages” throughout their physiology, perpetuating pain responses.
Arguably the most common occurrence in catastrophizing is when an individual refrains—long after an injury has healed—from performing a certain action. That fear of reproducing the pain means the brain can never re-calibrate and understand the action is now safe to perform.
Officially the method is called “pain reprocessing-therapy” (PRT), and trials investigating it are going on at Spaulding Rehabilitation Network’s Outpatient Center in Medford, Massachusetts, the Univ. of Maryland, Duke, and Cornell Medical College.
“You can have very real, debilitating pain without any biomedical injury in your body because of changes in the pain processing pathways,” Dr. Yoni Ashar, a psychologist at Cornell and coauthor of a successful trial on PRT, tells National Geographic.
In the Cornell trial, 66% of treated patients with chronic pain had theirs alleviated, which held true even after the extended follow-up period.
As Ashar explains, the primary organ of pain in the body is the brain—so it makes sense to start there, especially if there’s no obvious evidence of a physical injury or disease that would cause pain centers to send pain signals.
“At Duke we’re now identifying patients before surgery … It’s been phenomenal,” said Padma Gulur, director of the pain management strategy program at the Duke University Health System.
“I can look at the score and have a great sense that when we invest the resources for preventive, proactive measures for this person, their outcome will be far different than it would have been.”
20% of Americans suffer from some degree of chronic pain, and with few options outside of medication available, there’s a risk of opioid addiction. With PRT, there might finally be a safe alternative available to everyone.
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MIT researchers have developed a portable desalination unit, weighing less than 10 kilograms, that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water.
The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button.
Unlike other portable desalination units that require water to pass through filters, this device utilizes electrical power to remove particles from drinking water. Eliminating the need for replacement filters greatly reduces the long-term maintenance requirements.
This could enable the unit to be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, such as communities on small islands or aboard seafaring cargo ships. It could also be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term military operations.
“This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on. We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean, that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me,” says senior author Jongyoon Han, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).
Filter-free technology
Commercially available portable desalination units typically require high-pressure pumps to push water through filters, which are very difficult to miniaturize without compromising the energy-efficiency of the device, explains Yoon.
Instead, their unit relies on a technique called ion concentration polarization (ICP), which was pioneered by Han’s group more than 10 years ago. Rather than filtering water, the ICP process applies an electrical field to membranes placed above and below a channel of water. The membranes repel positively or negatively charged particles — including salt molecules, bacteria, and viruses — as they flow past. The charged particles are funneled into a second stream of water that is eventually discharged.
The process removes both dissolved and suspended solids, allowing clean water to pass through the channel. Since it only requires a low-pressure pump, ICP uses less energy than other techniques.
But ICP does not always remove all the salts floating in the middle of the channel. So the researchers incorporated a second process, known as electrodialysis, to remove remaining salt ions.
Yoon and Kang used machine learning to find the ideal combination of ICP and electrodialysis modules. The optimal setup includes a two-stage ICP process, with water flowing through six modules in the first stage then through three in the second stage, followed by a single electrodialysis process. This minimized energy usage while ensuring the process remains self-cleaning.
“While it is true that some charged particles could be captured on the ion exchange membrane, if they get trapped, we just reverse the polarity of the electric field and the charged particles can be easily removed,” Yoon explains.
They shrunk and stacked the ICP and electrodialysis modules to improve their energy efficiency and enable them to fit inside a portable device. The researchers designed the device for nonexperts, with just one button to launch the automatic desalination and purification process. Once the salinity level and the number of particles decrease to specific thresholds, the device notifies the user that the water is drinkable.
The researchers also created a smartphone app that can control the unit wirelessly and report real-time data on power consumption and water salinity.
Beach tests
After running lab experiments using water with different salinity and turbidity (cloudiness) levels, they field-tested the device at Boston’s Carson Beach.
Yoon and Kwon set the box near the shore and tossed the feed tube into the water. In about half an hour, the device had filled a plastic drinking cup with clear, drinkable water.
“It was successful even in its first run, which was quite exciting and surprising. But I think the main reason we were successful is the accumulation of all these little advances that we made along the way,” Han says.
The resulting water exceeded World Health Organization quality guidelines, and the unit reduced the amount of suspended solids by at least a factor of 10. Their prototype generates drinking water at a rate of 0.3 liters per hour, and requires only 20 watts of power per liter.
“Right now, we are pushing our research to scale up that production rate,” Yoon says.
One of the biggest challenges of designing the portable system was engineering an intuitive device that could be used by anyone, Han says.
Yoon hopes to make the device more user-friendly and improve its energy efficiency and production rate through a startup he plans to launch to commercialize the technology.
In the lab, Han wants to apply the lessons he’s learned over the past decade to water-quality issues that go beyond desalination, such as rapidly detecting contaminants in drinking water.
“This is definitely an exciting project, and I am proud of the progress we have made so far, but there is still a lot of work to do,” he says.
anchovies cc license wikimedia commons Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA
Cliff from Arlington, Virginia; CC license
It’s not size of the fish but the motion of the ocean, as they say. Marine biologists have proved this idiom true in the strongest possible terms.
When the tiny and humble anchovy mates, it does so in such numbers and with such vigor that it causes the ocean to shake and mix—in the same way as a powerful storm.
Discovered at a coastal inlet in northern Spain, fourteen days of anchovy spawning behavior was found to increase subsurface ocean turbulence by 10-100 times, equivalent to storms, and even a rough tide.
The finding took place during calm weather, when the opportunity to pinpoint the source of the ocean turbulence was at its best.
Beyond humor, the relevance of this discovery is two-fold. The first major point is that all this turbulence created during the fishy baby-making helps to facilitate the mixing of the layers of the ocean—with deep cooler waters blending with shallow warmer waters, this enhances the oxygen and nutrients of both.
The second is that this precise behavior has been dismissed as a potential ocean mixer, so the finding corrects the scientific record. Called “biomixing,” its impact was observed to be strongest near the coast, where scientists fished up the anchovy eggs with small nets to confirm where spawning was taking place.
“We believe that biological mixing was intense in our observations because the bay is highly stratified,” Dr. Bieito Fernández Castro, the University of Southampton research fellow who led the study, said in a news release. “The temperature and other properties vary significantly at different depths.”
Anchovies mate through spawning—where the females release eggs and the males release sperm to fertilize them. This is done in what could be described as a competitive event, stimulating the fish to act with speed and aggression, and thus swirling the ocean.
(WATCH just how many sardines can travel together in the video below.)
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Quote of the Day: “I am an optimist… I choose to be. There is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy.” – Tom Hiddleston
Photo by: Tyler Nix
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An underwater photographer has captured this picture of a large jellyfish under a paddleboarder.
The image was taken by photographer and film-maker Lewis Jefferies off Falmouth in Cornwall It features Lewis’s partner, Sammy, paddleboarding above a compass jellyfish with the sunshine beaming from behind her.
“The jellyfish make great subjects to photograph and are quite handy because they don’t move very fast, ” 33-year-old Lewis said, ”so once you find one, you can experiment with lots of different angles.
“I’d had a shot like this in mind for a while with my partner on a paddleboard above the waterline and some marine life below.
“The conditions were amazing and there was a lovely sunset—which gave me the ingredients I needed to create something quite interesting.
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“Credit has to go to Sammy for paddling out to the right spot at the right moment.”
This amazing shot, called A Peaceful Coexistence, was captured last July in Falmouth Bay.
It won Lewis first place in the British Waters Living Together category of the national competition Underwater Photographer of the Year 2022.
Lewis, who is originally from Exmouth in Devon, has photographed for a range of organizations, including WWF-UK, Project Seagrass, and Cornwall Wildlife Trust.
He said, “We have such a wealth of marine life in our British waters, and I really hope this image will inspire others to experience and cherish the wonders we have right on our doorstep.”
The Lesson: Sheetal Sheth grew up in the middle of a 1st generation immigrant story, but as the years went by, and Indian culture became more understood in America, even as she was ready to have her first child it hadn’t existed traditional culture, food, festivals, religion; it wasn’t just normal. Sheth is of the opinion that it’s seeing Indian or any kind of brown person, in all aspects of life that breaks down stigmatization and othering in society.
Notable Excerpt: “I’ve never been attracted to the bright shiny things. I love people, I love connecting, there’s nothing I love more than meeting someone new and getting inside their brain. I’m obsessed with psychology, people, why they do things, so that’s why I (started acting). To me it’s about connecting and being able to share stories, because I really do believe that when you meet someone, whether it’s in person or on your television, or through a song or a book, is when you can change minds or hearts.”
The Guest: Acclaimed actress, writer, and children’s book author, Sheetal Sheth is a first-generation Indian American, with her parents immigrating from Gujurat. Sheetal’s breakout role came in Albert Brooks’ “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” and she is known for her performances in a wide range of memorable roles in film and on television. As an author, she’s written Always Anjali, and Bravo Anjali,a pair of children’s books featuring a South Asian protagonist.
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.
A ‘Pac-Man’ protein that gobbles up plastic and breaks it down could open the door to eliminating billions of tons of landfill waste.
The enzyme destroys PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is ubiquitous in food and drink packaging, textiles, and polyester carpet fibers.
It offers hope for solving global pollution by supercharging recycling on a large scale. Major industries would be able to recover and reuse products at the molecular level.
“The possibilities are endless across industries to leverage this leading-edge recycling process,” said Professor Hal Alper, of The University of Texas at Austin. “Through these more sustainable enzyme approaches, we can begin to envision a true circular plastics economy.”
PET makes up 12 percent of all global waste. Like all plastics, it’s made up of long string-like molecules.
The enzyme reduces them into smaller parts—chemicals which can then be reassembled.
In some cases, the plastics can be fully broken down in as little as 24 hours.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, generated novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase that allows bacteria to degrade PET.
The computer identified those that would be most effective at less than 122 degrees-F (50-C), making it both portable and affordable.
Prof. Alper and his colleagues analyzed dozens of discarded plastic items including containers, water bottles and polyester fibers and fabrics—all made from PET.
Experiments proved the effectiveness of the enzyme named FAST-PETase (functional, active, stable and tolerant PETase), and a paper was published last week describing the enzyme in the journal Nature.
“This work really demonstrates the power of bringing together different disciplines, from synthetic biology to chemical engineering to artificial intelligence,” said co-author Andrew Ellington, a professor in the school’s Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology whose team led the development of the machine learning model.
Other alternative industrial processes for breaking down plastic are energy-intensive, but biological solutions such as this require much less.
Research on enzymes for plastic recycling has advanced during the past 15 years. However, until now, no one had been able to figure out how to make enzymes that could operate efficiently at low temperatures to make them both portable and affordable at large industrial scale.
Best of all, the US team have filed a patent and production is being scaled up to prepare for industrial applications.
Cleaning up landfills and greening high waste-producing industries are the most obvious. But another key potential use is environmental remediation. The researchers are looking at a number of ways to use the enzymes in the field to clean up polluted sites.
“When considering environmental clean-up applications, you need an enzyme that can work in the environment at ambient temperature. This requirement is where our tech has a huge advantage in the future,” said Alper.
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In 1945, American GIs stole a birthday cake from a 13-year old Italian girl while they were embattled with Nazi occupiers
77 years later, the Department of Defense found room in the budget to include a replacement birthday cake for Meri Mion at a ceremony held in the city of Vicenza’s Salvi Gardens.
Americans are well-liked in parts of Italy that saw conflict during WWII—they arrived there before all other parts of Europe.
However in 1945, some presumably-hungry soldiers took Meri Mion’s birthday cake, baked by her mom for her special day, while fighting was taking place in the village of San Pietro in Gu.
In a scene like something from a Tom & Jerry cartoon, Meri’s cake was left on the windowsill to cool. Having just been taken out of the warm oven, it was stolen by what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) described as “resourceful” Americans.
“It was a little awkward, but it makes me feel great to give her the cake,” said Sgt. Peter Wallis, who had the honor of presenting the retroactive 13th-birthday treat in a ceremony last week.
“Tomorrow, we will eat that dessert with all my family remembering this wonderful day that I will never forget,” Mion said.
U.S. Department of Defense
For the ceremony, National Archives workers dug up photographs from the battles in and around Vicenza—and as bitter as the fighting was, the photographs depict a fast-growing warmness between the American soldiers and the locals, who would offer bread and wine during pauses in conflict.
The DoD included video of soldiers and onlookers singing Happy Birthday to you and Tanti Auguri a te to Meri Mion—who struggled to wipe away the tears.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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After a young boy’s woodworking project went viral, he seized on his new internet following to raise money—not for himself—but for the children of Ukraine.
The power of a viral social media post never ceases to astound. When Gabriel Clarkie’s proud dad tweeted a link to his son’s hobby, carving wooden bowls and posting them for sale on Instagram, it went viral—and his Insta followers jumped from 6 to 227,000 in just 48 hours.
Lovely twitter people - I don't know how many of you are also #instagram users but I'm looking for a wee favour. I've a 12yr old who loves woodwork. He spends hours on his lathe making bowls and creating chopping boards which he's sells to save up for a mountain bike. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/Ny60rFf1TE
Rather than fulfilling the 20,000 requests for wooden bowls, Clarkie Woodwork—who lives in Cumbria in northern England—announced he would make one single bowl, Gabriel’s Bowl For Ukraine, to be given out in a lottery to anyone who makes a donation to Save The Children Ukraine.
Virality struck once again, and a $6,260 (£5,000) appeal turned into $313,000 (£250,000) success, with nearly 15,000 people donating. Part of the viral bump came when the appeal came to the attention of J.K. Rowling, Nick Offerman, and Stephen Fry, who all passed it along to their unfathomable numbers of followers.
“I never imagined that my tweet would turn into this amazing thing… Somehow, it’s resulted in people donating [over] £250,000 to help children in Ukraine, it’s just incredible!” said Richard Clarkie, Gabriel’s father.
“Gabriel’s Bowl for Ukraine now has a new home—Renuka Chapman, congratulations,” the family wrote on the fundraising page. “We are now at a £245,000!! A truly unbelievable figure and Save the Children would like me to pass on their immense gratitude.”
“When Gabriel rang me to let me know I’d won the bowl, I was completely overwhelmed— I’ve never won a single thing before!” wrote Renuka, according to Save The Children’s report on the event.
“This bowl will be one of my most treasured possessions. It represents hope, compassion, and kindness… It will have pride of place in my home.”
Quote of the Day: “Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others.” – Oprah Winfrey
Photo by: Chris Spiegl
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
