- credit, Yoav Bornstein, University of Haifa, released
– credit, Yoav Bornstein, University of Haifa, released
In 2021 GNN reported that a man diving off the Israeli coast discovered a sword from the Crusader period.
All locked up in shells and sand, it looked like it could have been forged in mythical Atlantis, and even half-buried on the seabed, diver Shlomi Katzin couldn’t have mistaken its shape.
Now, incredibly, Katzin has found another sword—equally barnacled—while swimming not far from where he found the first one. Quite the thrust of luck.
The sword, which is believed to date back to the 12th century, was transferred to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and to researchers from the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa, where Katzin is a student of maritime archeology.
Once there, the experts hoping to examine it got the idea to use a CT scanner at a nearby hospital. With it, they could directly image what remained of the sword beneath the barnacles without risking damage to the artifact.
The scan results found that little of the iron blade still existed, and that it likely wasn’t produced in the Levant—but rather in Europe, making it and the sword from 2021 all but certain to have belonged to soldiers on campaign in the Holy Hand, perhaps during one of the Crusades.
Launched between the 10th and 13th centuries, Europeans made three ultimately-unsuccessful attempts to capture the Holy Land from the Arabs who controlled it.
– released by Nir Distelfeld/Israel Antiquities Authority
Katzin was swimming in an area known to contain historic shipwrecks when he spotted a group of people with metal detectors. Thinking them to be looters, he chased with away and happened to notice the sword at the same time, sticking vertically out of the sand.
He then contacted Professor Debbie Zwickel at Haifa Univ. who got special permission from the IAA to remove the sword to prevent looting or further damage from the environment.
“This is an extremely rare find that sheds light on the Crusader presence on the country’s coasts,” Professor Zwickel said.
“Only a handful of similar swords from the Crusader period are known in Israel to date, and this discovery contributes greatly to our understanding of the use of naval anchorages and the lives of warriors during this period.”
Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2021 that while the Muslim armies during the time of the Crusades built fortifications on the coasts, only the Europeans were known to have traveled by sea.
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A fisherman holding two Juan Fernandez spiny lobsters - CC 3.0. Serpantus (wikicommons)
A fisherman holding two Juan Fernandez spiny lobsters – CC 3.0. Serpantus (wikicommons)
Just days before he left office, former Chilean President Gabriel Boric signed into law protections for the remote Juan Fernández Archipelago and a gargantuan swath of the surrounding sea.
The protections connect the archipelago with the existing Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks, and total 386,000 square miles, an area the size of Venezuela amounting to 50% of Chile’s territorial waters.
This huge marine protected area, home to whales, dolphins, turtles, spiny lobsters, octopus, a vast underwater mountain chain, sea turtles, numerous sea birds, and the Juan Fernández fur seal, is now the third-largest piece of conserved seascape in the world.
Under several administrations, Chile has been a strong supporter of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework since its inception. Around 180,000 square miles of ocean was already protected in this area, and the islanders of Juan Fernández joined with national and international NGOs to campaign for broader protections.
“This commitment reflects the heart of our community,” stated Pablo Manríquez Angulo, mayor of the archipelago’s Robinson Crusoe Island. “Expanding marine protections is not only about conserving biodiversity, it’s about safeguarding our culture, our traditions, and the future of our children.”
In 11th of March this year, Boric left office suffering from consistent low approval ratings throughout his tenure. The creation of the new united marine park around Juan Fernández Archipelago is a strong political legacy to leave behind.
“The community of Juan Fernández, President Gabriel Boric and the Chilean government are to be hugely congratulated for this legal designation,” said Dan Crockett, Executive Director of Blue Marine Foundation, who helped advance the new park protections.
“As the world advances towards 2030, fully protected areas of this scale are critically important.”
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Quote of the Day: “The well-being and hopes of the peoples of the world can never be served until peace—as well as freedom, honor and self-respect—is secure.” – Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize-winning diplomat
Photo by: Curated Lifestyle for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
51 years ago today, the Biological Weapons Convention, (BWC) entered into force. It’s considered to have established a strong global norm against biological weapons reflected in the treaty’s preamble, which states that the use of biological weapons would be “repugnant to the conscience of mankind.” It is also demonstrated by the fact that not a single state today declares to possess or seek biological weapons, or asserts that their use in war is legitimate, and today, only Israel, Chad, Eritrea, and 5 small island nations have not signed the agreement. READ more about the BWC… (1979)
Australian researchers have developed and tested the world’s first quantum battery.
Their prototype is far from anything that will be a perspective power source in an EV or storage facility, but the experiment revealed some important directions for future research.
A theoretical concept since 2013, the prototype was charged wirelessly with a laser, one of the special properties that quantum mechanics in battery technology promises if it can be properly understood and harnessed.
Lead researcher Dr. James Quach of CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency which led the study on the device, said it’s the first quantum battery ever made that performs a full charge-discharge cycle.
Dr. Quach explained that in society today, the larger the battery, the longer the charge time.
“That’s why your mobile phone takes about 30 minutes to charge and your electric car takes overnight to charge,” he said, adding that in contrast, “quantum batteries have this really peculiar property where the larger they are, the less time they take to charge.”
Less time really is an almost worthless descriptor in this case, because the prototype created by CSIRO was fully charged within a few quadrillionths of a second.
The problem is that the discharge rate was a few nanoseconds, which despite being 6 orders of magnitude longer, could be of no use to anyone now. Quach provided some interesting relative comparisons to help mere mortals conceptualize why this could be a world-changing innovation if improved.
If it takes 30 minutes to fully charge a mobile phone, and it too had a discharge rate equal to 6 orders of magnitude, that means it wouldn’t need to be recharged even after a decade of use.
“What we need to do next is… to increase the storage time,” Quach said, touching on this point. “You want your battery to hold charge longer than a few nanoseconds if you want to be able to talk to someone on a mobile phone.”
Additionally, the prototype doesn’t hold enough voltage to power anything substantial.
While this might all sound rather pointless, another, non-involved expert in the development of quantum batteries, University of Queensland Professor Andrew White, told the Guardian that the experiment was a huge success in getting the technology off the drawing board and into the real world for the first time.
People would be far more likely to adopt EVs if they could be fully-charged in few seconds, even if their range was severely reduced.
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Devon Champenoy (left) holding the Boy Scouts Honor Medal with the scout leader whose life he saved - credit, supplied to GNN
Devon Champenoy (left) holding the Boy Scouts Honor Medal with the scout leader whose life he saved – credit, supplied to GNN
A teenage Texan has earned a commendation given fewer than 300 times in the history of the Boy Scouts after saving his scout leader from drowning in rapids.
Devon Champenoy was one of several teen scouts from Houston rafting down class 3 rapids at a summer camp in Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Scout leader David Lemley was at the stern, and on a particularly rough patch, lost his balance and fell into the water. Climbing back in, he can be heard in a video from his helmet camera laughing and saying how fun it was in the hot summer day.
When further down the river Lemley fell in again, however, fun was the farthest thing from his mind.
His foot was stuck under the seat of the raft while his head and torso were underwater. Splayed out across the side of the raft, unable to move, his opportunities to breathe came only when the water level happened to be low enough that his head emerged.
Meanwhile, his helmet bought him vital time as his head bounced off rocks as the raft surged down river.
Taking a deep breath and steadying himself, Champenoy, just 13 years old at the time, clambered across and released Lemley’s foot before kayakers helped complete the rescue.
“I have no doubt that if Devon hadn’t released my foot I was going to die,” Lemley told KHOU 11 News.
“It took a while for me to take in the fact that this happened and I saved a life,” Champenoy said in the same interview, admitting he just acted on instinct.
Lemley’s foot had been broken in the ordeal, and Champenoy had to take the role of pilot as there were still 20 minutes of rapids to get through. He kept everyone calm and focused until the job was finished.
The Honor Medal plaque his mother plans to hang in the living room – credit, supplied to GNN
When all was said and done, Devon, having been recommended by his Scout Leader, was awarded the Honor Medal with Crossed Palms for unusual heroism demonstrated in the course of saving a life. Fewer than 300 of these medals have been awarded in the more than 100-year history of the Boy Scouts of America.
Gristhorpe Cliff Tops - credit, John Fielding CC BY-SA 2.0.
Gristhorpe Cliff Tops – credit, John Fielding CC BY-SA 2.0.
Last week GNN reported on the completion of the Cross-Texas Trail that would allow Americans to enjoy the full breadth of natural beauty in the Lone Star State.
For Brits, or for those who like their hiking a little more moist, there is the just-finished King Charles III England Coast Path, a 2,689-mile-long trail along the entire coast of England.
In the works for 18 years, it’s the first trail anywhere in the world that follows the entire perimeter of a nation’s coastline.
It was recently inaugurated by the King himself, whose smile was impossible to mistake for anything other than giddy excitement as he hiked a stretch of newly-completed trail along the famous chalk sea cliffs known as the Seven Sisters.
He was joined by Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, which oversaw the creation of the trail project going back to the tenure of Gordon Brown.
Juniper said the path “is a testament to how public enjoyment, conservation, heritage, history and community can come together, helping make life better for millions of people.”
A sign for the King Charles III England Coast Path – John A, CC0
An intrepid hiker could very well have done the entire coast of England from Loch Ryan to the Tyne before, but some sections would have required walking along roads, and rambling across others.
Now, 1,000 miles of path have been newly built, intelligently connected, or renovated, which include new boardwalks and bridges as well. Only two sections are broken: one that requires a ferry to cross the Mersey, and another in south Devon where the River Erme must be forded—part of the adventure, argues Neil Constable, who led the project for Natural England.
“It is brilliant—the best thing I’ll do in my working life,” Constable told the BBC.
Quite the statement, but there’s something incredibly special, fulfilling, perhaps spiritual, and ‘just,’ in there being—at any point in the country—a road that leads to the coast, a path that forks at the sea, where whether you turn left or right, one knows they can walk for as long as they want.
Total completion of the King Charles III England Coast Path is predicted for the end of this year, but it will be undergoing maintenance and attention for years to come, as the 2009 Coastal Access Law that mandated the trail’s creation has inbuilt provisions if parts of the seaside route should become unpassable due to rising seas or torrential rains.
The Sussex coast, credit Tim Broadbent, unsplash
Called a “rollback,” where it was necessary to negotiate the trail across private land, all agreements were made with the clause that a could necessitate the trail being moved further inland under climate and weather conditions.
The law also secured public access to many areas that were off limits, including sand dunes, cliff tops, and across salt marsh.
The BBC reached out to a nature-use advocacy group known as the Ramblers, which had been fighting for the creation of such a route since the Second World War. Their description of it was “transformational.”
The trail opens the tantalizing possibility for a route along the entire coast of the island of Britain, which would extend the trail to some 9,000 miles. Scotland already enshrined access to walking along its coasts through the Right to Roam legislation in 2012, but any such infrastructure is lacking.
Michael Coyne in his coffee shop - credit, Red White and Brew Coffeehouse
Michael Coyne in his coffee shop – credit, Red White and Brew Coffeehouse
An autistic barista who had a day’s worth of tips stolen from his coffee shop was left “speechless” after his community rallied to his side.
Michael Coyne knows most of the people who get a coffee from his shop, Red White and Brew, and so the theft of his tips felt extremely personal.
Covering the costs of a recent move to a larger location in Warwick, Rhode Island, the shop currently operates at a loss, and the tip jar is Coyne’s only source of free cash flow.
Coyne has autism, ADHD, and bi-polar disorder. He was fostered by Sheila Coyne when he was 10 years old, who later adopted him. Red White and Brew was opened by Sheila with her retirement savings as a way to guarantee her son fulfilling employment, and despite its first year running smack dab into enforced business closures resulting from COVID-19, the shop was a success.
The store employs workers—and sells products made by—people with mental disabilities, and quickly became a part of the community fabric.
“He was really interested in food service, and I thought, what better way to connect him to a community than a coffee shop?” Sheila told The Washington Post’s Sydney Page. “To me, it just made sense.”
When he recently found that the $20 in tips he had accumulated throughout the day had suddenly been snatched, he was deeply upset.
The day after, the chief of the Warwick Police Department came by for a brew, and after hearing about the theft quickly brought over the materials for a new tip jar with a lid. He told the Coynes he would investigate.
Sheila decided to make a Facebook video announcing the theft and warning people to stay alert. Commenters were infuriated to hear someone would do something like it, among whom was the Mayor of Warwick, Frank Picozzi.
“Red White and Brew is a very special place … run by wonderful people,” he wrote in a post sharing Sheila’s video. “I’ve come to know Michael very well and believe me, it’s not the money that’s bothering him, he’s hurt.”
The following day, people streamed into the coffee shop, each one leaving a tip in the jar—including one woman who left $100 after telling Michael that her own son is autistic, and that the barista inspires her to believe he can have a decent life as a working adult.
The next day was exactly the same. The mayor came too, and soon Michael had been given $900 in tips.
“That was the most special part,” Sheila said. “It was truly just one person after another, leading with such kindness and grace that it renewed my love for humans and humanity.”
Michael admitted the gesture left him speechless.
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With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Happy Birthday to Sir Elton John, who turns 79 years old today. Growing up in London, the singer-songwriter learned to play piano at age three. In his 5-decade career, Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling musical artists in the world. WATCH a 70th birthday video tribute… (1947)
Researchers in Sweden recently found that seniors were able to offset a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease by consuming more meat.
The study authors say that their findings suggest that conventional dietary advice may be unfavorable to a subgroup of the population who carry the APOE gene.
Now infamous, APOE is a gene that confers a greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In Sweden, around 30% of the population are carriers of the gene combinations APOE 3/4 or APOE 4/4, and among Swedish Alzheimer’s patients, 70% carry one of these two combinations.
When the Swedish Food Agency presented an overview of research on the link between diet and dementia last year, more research was requested to assess a possible link between meat consumption and the development of dementia.
“This study tested the hypothesis that people with APOE 3/4 and 4/4 would have a reduced risk of cognitive decline and dementia with higher meat intake, based on the fact that APOE4 is the evolutionarily oldest variant of the APOE gene and may have arisen during a period when our evolutionary ancestors ate a more animal-based diet,” lead author Dr. Jakob Norgren at the Karolinska Institute in Solna said in a press release about the study.
The research, published in JAMA Network Open, followed more than 2,100 Swedes for up to 15 years, all of whom were aged 60 or older and had no diagnosis of dementia at the start of the study period. The association between self-reported diet and cognitive health measures was analyzed, adjusting for age, sex, education, and lifestyle factors.
Among those who ate less meat, the group with APOE 3/4 and 4/4 had more than twice the risk of dementia than people without the gene variants.
However, the increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia in the risk groups was not seen in the top 20% of participants who consumed the most meat (included red meat).
Their average consumption was estimated at around 870 grams of meat per week, standardized to a daily energy intake of 2,000 calories.
Additionally, the 20% of participants who ate the second most meat per week on average had similar, albeit less robust scores for dementia, cognition, and memory, suggesting that at least at this higher level, there was a dose-dependent response: a strong suggestion that the results were more than just an observational coincidence.
“Those who ate more meat overall had significantly slower cognitive decline and a lower risk of dementia, but only if they had the APOE 3/4 or 4/4 gene variants,” said Dr. Norgren. “For those who are aware that they belong to this genetic risk group, the findings offer hope; the risk may be modifiable through lifestyle changes.”
The study also found that the type of meat consumed is important.
“A lower proportion of processed meat in total meat consumption was associated with a lower risk of dementia regardless of APOE genotype,” said study co-author Dr. Sara Garcia-Ptacek said.
The research team also found a “significant” reduction in the chances of an early death in carriers of APOE 3/4 and 4/4 who ate higher quantities of unprocessed meat.
The researchers pointed out that the research was observational, and needs to be followed up with intervention studies that can better demonstrate causal relationships.
“Clinical trials are now needed to develop dietary recommendations tailored to APOE genotype,” said Dr. Norgren.
“Since the prevalence of APOE4 is about twice as high in the Nordic countries as in the Mediterranean countries, we are particularly well suited to conduct research on tailored dietary recommendations for this risk group.”
Dietary research is difficult to conduct. It’s difficult for people to remember how much of what they ate day in and day out, but keeping them isolated in a metabolic ward for 15 years would obviously be impossible.
Almost all dietary research ever conducted involved gathering observations—not the “gold standard” of scientific research. That includes almost all research that has shown that higher consumption of meat is linked with increased risk factors for various diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and others.
Whatever those studies might have shown with these relationships, it’s 100% the case that the process of aging is both characterized by and driven by loss of muscle mass and the resulting increase in morbidity. The maintenance of muscle mass in old age is found to reduce morbidity and slow the aging process. High protein diets, such as 1 gram protein per kilogram of bodyweight, support muscle maintenance in old age.
Dementia is also part of the aging process, and so maintaining lean muscle mass—for which a protein-rich diet is a must—may indeed be more than just a correlative finding, which it currently is. More meat, it might be argued, equals more muscle mass, equals slower aging, equals reduced risk of dementia.
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A Boomer uses the phone to call a Zoomer - credit, Volunteers of America
A Boomer uses the phone to call a Zoomer – credit, Volunteers of America
The new payphone outside a coffee shop on a Boston University campus is a strange sight: with its canary yellow box and the sticker pasted across the top reading “Call a Boomer.”
But what passersby can’t see and don’t know is that over 2,000 miles away in Reno, Nevada, another payphone box sits in a common area at a senior housing community.
Its sticker, in contrast, says “Call a Zoomer.”
The experiment, created by Matter Neuroscience, was designed to bridge generational divides and address loneliness in the two groups experiencing the highest levels of social isolation: young adults and seniors.
If a Zoomer picks up the phone outside of Pavement Coffee House, it automatically calls the phone in the recreation area at the Volunteers of America affordable senior housing community.
If a Boomer in the recreation area picks up the phone, it automatically dials the box on the street outside the coffee shop. Two phones, two generations, instant connection.
Matter styles itself as an emotional fitness club, “backed by science and supported by community.” The purchasing of two old payphones on Facebook Marketplace was just the most recent kind of experiment the ‘club’ has undertaken, which also included the same experiment, but with “call a democrat/republican” stickers on them.
In a video that garnered 18 million views on the page’s Instagram, April the Boomer picks up the phone and connects with Charlotte the Zoomer.
She asks if the Zoomer has any life advice to share—a reverse of traditional roles one might think. The generational g-force of that reversal only deepened when Charlotte replied that she thinks people should just get off their phones and spend more time outside to meet people like them.
If stereotyping is a fault in our stars, the example of April and Charlotte perhaps goes to show how much each generation has to learn and share with one another.
It also goes to show what a bloody good idea Matter Neuroscience had.
LISTEN to the conversation, and watch Matter explain their experiment…
Hedgelayers taking part in hedgelaying challenge at the start of Hedgefest - credit, CPRE, released
Hedgelayers taking part in hedgelaying challenge at the start of Hedgefest – credit, CPRE, released
From England’s South Downs National Park, one can trace a series of traditional hedgerows off into the distance farther than it’s possible to see.
This mega hedge runs all the way across the county of Hampshire, to New Forest National Park, some 15 miles in length.
The Hampshire Hedge, as it’s called, has been three years in the making, as volunteers and experts at making traditional hedges have come together to build an unbroken line of hedgerows connecting the two parks and their wildlife.
Far more than just a fence or barrier, it’s been shown that hedgerows are vital habitat corridors, even as slim as they are. From mice to hedgehogs, insects and birds, they offer a narrow sanctuary to 2,000 species over the course of a year, all of which them the hedges like a natural highway.
The Hampshire Hedge project was put together by the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s (CPRE) “Hedgerows Heroes” program, and was supported by various conservation nonprofits and the UK’s National Lottery Heritage Fund.
“Hedgerows are a defining feature of Test Valley’s landscape and play a vital role in supporting wildlife, tackling climate change and keeping our countryside thriving,” Alison Johnston, a councilwoman responsible for countryside affairs at Test Valley Borough Council, were the hedgerow is located.
Now almost entirely completed, the third-year of hedge laying was celebrated at Broadlands estate at a party called “Hedgefest” that also celebrated CPRE’s 100th anniversary as an organization.
“It was fantastic to see so many people come together at Hedgefest to share skills, celebrate progress and show what partnership working can achieve.”
Like a highway connecting the two national parks, it should go a long way towards promoting habitat connectivity, a challenging goal when considering the population density in southern England.
“The CPRE’s project of joining the two National Parks, the New Forest and the South Downs with these hedgerows is just such an inspiring idea,” said Vanessa Rowlands, Chair of the South Downs National Park Authority.
“We’ve always wanted to have a closer link with the New Forest, and we can do it physically and environmentally for the wildlife. So we’re really excited about it!”
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The annual Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace has reported that global terrorist attacks fell 22% last year, and deaths from said attacks fell 28%.
They both fall to numbers not seen since 2007.
2025 registered the single biggest annual reduction in attacks and incidents since 2020-2021. The trend reflects the stabilization of several key geographical areas, and reductions in attacks and deaths in 81 countries worldwide.
Terrorism, defined more narrowly as stateless, transnational perpetrators of violence for political or religious ends, is now concentrated in Africa’s Sahel, and Sub-Saharan region.
The report follows a year (2025) in which several areas that had previously been affected by terrorism saw significant strides towards peace and stability.
Turkey improved by 4 places, and many places in the last decade; a result of the end of a 40-year conflict between the government in Ankara and the Communist Kurdish guerilla movement, the PKK. The group’s founder and leader Abdullah Öcalan ordered the organization to dissolve, admitting it had come as far as possible by means of violence.
Afghanistan continues its improvement from last year’s report when it dropped out of the top 10 worst-affected countries for the first time since the American occupation began in 2002.
Iraq improved 3 positions, coinciding with an ongoing socio-economic improvement in the country after 4 decades of war which the UN’s chief coordinator in the country described as “unrecognizable and remarkable.”
Tunisia, which has suffered from an ongoing terrorist insurgency in the country’s southwestern mountains, majorly improved, with an incidence rating similar to the Netherlands, Austria, and Canada.
Libya, once a failed state, continues its efforts at stabilization, and improved another 4 positions, level with Italy—an outstanding achievement.
Algeria, Oman, Bangladesh, and Jordan all improved substantially. The Ivory Coast improved 11 positions, and is now safer from a terrorist point of view than almost any Western country.
70% of all deaths resulting from terrorist attacks occurred in just 5 countries: Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, DR Congo, and Pakistan. Even still, Burkina Faso and Niger experienced 900 fewer deaths from terrorism compared with last year.
Regarding Pakistan, terrorism there is half driven by conflict with the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant group of ethnic Balochs in the country’s southwestern desert regions.
The conflict is more reminiscent of the UK’s struggle against the Irish Republican Army than the US’s hunt for al-Qaeda. The BLA have a clear political objective of breaking their region away from Islamabad, and wage terrorist warfare in attempt to achieve it. The BLA have never attacked targets outside Pakistan.
2025 was also notable for only one attack that resulted in more than 100 deaths, a major reduction in what the report labeled “large-scale” terrorist attacks.
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Quote of the Day: “Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.” – Thomas Aquinas
Photo by: Aaron Burden
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Peyton Manning in 2013 during a Pro Bowl game - credit military photo
Happy 50th Birthday to Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. Nicknamed “the Sheriff” he spent 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and 4 with the Denver Broncos, recording 11 playoff appearances, 8 division titles, 3 AFC Championship Games, 2 Super Bowl appearances, and 1 championship title in Super Bowl XLI with the Colts, and another Super Bowl appearance (and victory) with the Broncos in his final season as a professional. At the time, he became the first starting quarterback to win the Super Bowl for more than one franchise. READ more about Manning… (1976)
Ethan and Desmond Hua - credit, Hope Uniforms Program website
Ethan and Desmond Hua – credit, Hope Uniforms Program website
Two San Francisco area teens are providing a valuable service for low-income families in their community by collecting and redistributing donated school uniforms.
The brothers’ work also keeps the clothes out of landfills, where they break down over hundreds of years while releasing methane, a potent, yet short-lived greenhouse gas.
Anyone who’s had to shop for them year-in-year-out will know: children grow like weeds.
A uniform good at the start of school may not even fit them by Spring Break, and for families who live at the hand-to-mouth income level, it’s not always an option to simply continue buying replacements.
Desmond and Ethan Hua got the idea for their nonprofit redistribution service after seeing a boy arrive at Bayside Academy in Sat Mateo wearing shorts on a cold day. Asking their peer why it was he was freezing his knees off, he responded that he didn’t have another pair of pants to last him until laundry day
Understanding as well what a thousand wasted school uniform will do to the country’s emissions footprint, the boys launched HOPE: Help Our Mother Earth, in which they sought to eliminate textile waste by identifying textile want.
“We take in gently used school uniforms from families who no longer need them, and we redistribute them back to families in the community,” Ethan told CBS News San Francisco.
In the family garage, organized plastic chests cover the ground, each one stacked full of neatly folded uniforms for all sizes. The Hua brothers receive requests from students’ families, fulfill the requests if possible from the items they have in stock, and then leave them in collection bins at school offices.
Those collection bins are also where families can leave uniforms that don’t fit their children any more, and can be found across 9 public schools in the San Mateo-Foster City School District that participate in the program.
“It started with our school, and then now the whole program is across our district,” said Bayside Academy principal Maria Demattei. “We are thrilled that we can contribute to that, to our Mother Earth.”
The Hua brothers estimate they’ve saved $140,000 in uniform costs for over 1,400 families, and around 30 tons of methane that would have been emitted if those uniforms had been binned.
“HOPE has saved roughly 13,000 articles of school uniforms getting sent to landfill thrown away by families,” said Ethan, who recently collected the Dr. Cora Clemons Emerging Young Samaritan Award from a local foundation.
WATCH the story here from CBS News…
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Diane Charles in 2001 (left) and Erika Boyera in 1997 (right) - credit, family photos
Diane Charles in 2001 (left) and Erika Boyera in 1997 (right) – credit, family photos
Not exactly news, but a beautiful story comes now from the sandy shores of Tasmania, where 25 years ago, the waves brought a life-long friend to resident Diane Charles.
Rising early, she tells ABC News AU, was her habit back then—to enjoy the peace of the sea and salute other early risers. One such morning in January, Charles discovered something bobbing up and down in the surf.
It was that most famous of curiosities: a bottle, sealed tightly with a message inside.
We’re talking 25 years ago, so when Charles opened it up to find the note written in Spanish, she couldn’t just type it in to Google Translate; and it wasn’t as if there were a big immigrant community in Tasmania either.
The captivating discovery became all the more captivating—because it was a mystery. With the help of her brother who had a Spanish dictionary, she tried to piece together the gist of the letter by picking out individual words, but it was poetic, and they eventually sought a scholar.
“Life has taught me all is possible, receive love and success second to this,” was the literal translation. In the top left corner, however, there was something far more interesting, a name and a fax number.
In 1997, some years before Charles’ fateful discovery on the beach, Erika Boyero from Colombia was bartending aboard a cruise ship sailing around Scandinavia. Oppressed by boredom, she filled several empty alcohol bottles with letters and threw them overboard.
Four years later, one made it to Tasmania, and when Charles sent a letter via fax, Boyero was back at home in Colombia.
“Hey, you received a fax from Australia,” said her father. “I said, ‘What? I don’t know anyone in Australia.'”
“You don’t really think that can happen,” she told ABC News AU. “There are so many millions of people in the world … and when destiny, in this way, shows a person you have to meet in this life, for this reason … it is beautiful.”
That fax led to a 25-year friendship, with the women calling and writing each other routinely to catch up or celebrate milestones like the birth of children or moving house. It ultimately culminated in a visit for the first time this March, when Boyero was on a trip to Kuala Lumpur, and for the first time in her life, the distance to Tasmania seemed small.
Waiting at the airport, Charles felt a bizarre form of anticipation unlike anything she had experienced, but when Boyero appeared through the exit doors, it was like seeing a “long lost friend.”
The first item on the itinerary was a walk on Tatlows beach, where Charles discovered Boyero’s letter, and then a visit to the local Stanley Discovery Museum, where her message had become part of an exhibition.
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After documenting the consumption of tea and coffee by healthcare professionals for a staggering 43 years, the resulting data seems to support what many other studies have found: that coffee is associated with better neurological health.
The strongest effects were seen in participants who drank 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee or 1-2 cups of tea per day. Exceeding this range didn’t seem to extend the benefits any further, but also didn’t register as a detriment to health.
131,821 participants from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) were included in the analysis, which leveraged this world-class data set going back 43 years.
The professional participants were subjected to repeated evaluations of diet, dementia diagnoses, subjective cognitive concerns, and objective cognitive performance, which were tabulated and stored for scientists’ later use. Over the course of the dataset, 11,033 developed dementia.
Individuals who consumed higher amounts of caffeinated coffee had an 18% lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who rarely or never drank it. They also reported lower rates of subjective cognitive decline (7.8% versus 9.5%) and performed better on certain objective cognitive tests, meaning their minds stayed sharper at older ages.
“When searching for possible dementia prevention tools, we thought something as prevalent as coffee may be a promising dietary intervention—and our unique access to high quality data through studies that has been going on for more than 40 years allowed us to follow through on that idea,” said senior author Daniel Wang, MD at Mass General Brigham.
Similar patterns were observed among tea drinkers, while decaffeinated coffee did not show the same associations. This suggests that caffeine may be an important factor behind the observed brain-related benefits, although more research is needed to confirm the underlying mechanisms.
Typically, an 18% association is nothing to write home about. In observational science, effects of 50% or higher are generally needed before scientists will feel comfortable saying they’ve discovered anything definitively.
However, when the sample size and incredible duration of the study are taken into account, such a relatively small association may seem more likely to suggest underlying truth. It helps that many other studies have associated coffee with better health and disease outcomes.
Preventing dementia early is especially important because current treatments are limited and generally provide only modest benefits after symptoms begin.
Coffee and tea contain compounds such as polyphenols and caffeine, which are thought to support brain health. These substances may help reduce inflammation and limit cellular damage, both of which are linked to cognitive decline.
“We also compared people with different genetic predispositions to developing dementia and saw the same results—meaning coffee or caffeine is likely equally beneficial for people with high and low genetic risk of developing dementia,” said lead author Yu Zhang, PhD at Harvard Chan Medical School.
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The memory of entire lives, generations even, were recorded on technology that is rapidly becoming difficult to access, difficult to preserve, or just plain inconvenient to have around.
As VHS tapes, Beta Max, slides and audio film, photos, or negatives, and the personal memories they contain risk being lost to history, so the Nashville Public Library system has introduced the “Memory Lab,” where these media can be digitized, stored without risk of physical damage, and easily shared.
“Memory Lab is more than just technology—it’s a creative space where anyone can reconnect with their history and capture moments that otherwise might have been lost forever,” said the public library in a statement.
Anyone can reserve an appointment to turn to digitize their physical media in the lab, which is equipped with a VHS-to-digital convertor and a state-of-the-art, multifunctional scanner.
Reservations, which span from 15 minutes to 4 hours, are available for free at the Donelson Branch Library, located at 2714 Old Lebanon Pike, Nashville, and interested parties will receive a confirmation email with instructions once a reservation has been made.
A statement from the library says that commercial digitization services might charge $30 per tape and $1 per image, which for a whole photo album or home movie collection could really add up.
The Nashville Public Library and its Memory Lab are also part of a growing national trend at public libraries (DC, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and others) working to bridge the digital divide, and places them among a handful of libraries in the state offering free media digitization, including in Rutherford and Williamson counties.
“We are pleased about the launch of Memory Lab, but the most rewarding part is yet to come—all of the stories, memories, and history that will be given new life and preserved for the next generation.”
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