All News - Page 434 of 1733 - Good News Network
Home Blog Page 434

Design Students Use Art to Reimagine Plastic Recycling – Creating Lamps, Seat Covers, and More

By
Andy Corbley
-
Bethany Voak, Expanded Polystyrene [Photo_ courtesy PriestmanGoode_Royal College of Art]Bethany Voak
Yuke Liu, Tracing/PriestmanGoode; Royal College of Art

London design students were given a challenge: take plastic that will most likely end up in the landfill, and turn it into a new raw material using as little energy as possible.

Part of a competition from the London Royal College of Art, the students excelled, turning plastic into train car-seat covers, sound insulation, art pieces, lamps, and more.

A partnership between the London-based industrial design firm PriestmanGoode and the College’s MA in textiles program, the competition was called Precious Waste, highlighting the remaining usefulness in so many of the materials we throw away.

“The students were free to consider how their new materials, surface finishes, or textures could be used in different environments, whether in retail spaces, restaurants, hotels, or transport environments,” the presentation website reads.

“The students tackled the brief in the most difficult times with great enthusiasm and passion, addressing one of the biggest challenges of our time and creating beautifully handcrafted solutions.”

First place went to Bethany Voak, a young woman who not only repurposed polystyrene foam, but re-molded it, allowing for a change in color, texture, and consistency that could be used for many different purposes, whether as the most avant garde art piece, or as a drywall replacement.

Even though it’s 100% recyclable, polystyrene, the hard white plastic used to pack televisions and the like, is rarely recycled in Voak’s home country of the UK; a pity as polystyrene also endures in the environment longer than any other common plastic.

Bethany Voak, Expanded Polystyrene/riestmanGoode; Royal College of Art

During her work, she discovered an organic molecule that turns the rigid yet spongy foam into a moldable material that can take dyes, and become hard—opening up a huge array of potential uses.

RELATED: Guy is Giving Free Food to Anyone in Bali Who Brings Plastic – And He’s Recycled 500 Tons in First Year

Second place went to Henrietta Dent, who unwound plastic produce nets like the kinds which hold a pound of onions, with nothing more than her hands and a bit of heat. The resulting material is stronger by virtue of its woven nature, and can be used to create cushion covers for the seats on, for example, the London underground.

Henrietta Dent, Recrafting Value/PriestmanGoode; Royal College of Art

Other entries included Christina Pei Fen, who cut up individual fruit nets with scissors before using a hot iron to quickly press them into a single sheet, which can have color and ephemeral consistency.

MORE: 20,000 Pounds of Trash Removed From Pacific Garbage Patch: ‘Holy mother of god. It worked!’

Lianyi Chen, another runner up, 3D-printed and laser cut a polystyrene material along design specifications created by visualizing sound waves. The resulting stringy material, she says, can be used as sound insulation, stuffing for toys, or as a 3D-printing filament.

Yuke Liu, Tracing [Photo- courtesy PriestmanGoode:Royal College of Art]
Another entry, aiming to tackle the plastic incense packaging at Buddhist temples, created an app that tracks the donation of this plastic packaging every time one goes for prayer.

At the end the trash is turned into a lamp in the appearance of a lotus flower.

DON’T WASTE Great Stories; Share This One…

Fashion Designer Makes Shoes that Grow into Apple Trees, Instead of Growing Landfills

By
Andy Corbley
-
Johnny Footwear

The legend of Johnny Appleseed: the man who walked about Ontario and the northern United States spreading apple pips, takes root in a new pair of kicks that biodegrade and grow an apple tree when they are discarded.

Tackling plastic pollution is the principle purpose behind the new shoe, but they also help the environment a little bit by aiding in reforestation.

33-year-old Toronto resident Luc Houle is working to bring “Johnny,” the brand name of the shoe, to market through Kickstarter, which is currently just $1,000 shy of his $55,000 target.

Johnnys are simple canvas everyday shoes made without plastic, utilizing Fair Trade biodegradable materials instead.

Cushiony, lightweight, and water-resistant, Johnnys won’t biodegrade off of your feet, but after the years wear then down and the decision to move on to new kicks arrives, they can be buried, as hidden within the sole is an apple seed encased in fertilizer.

The materials which the shoe is made from contain naturally-occurring compounds which attract microorganisms to feed on and break down the shoe over three years.

Even if you don’t get around to burying them, they will still biodegrade if thrown in a landfill.

Johnny Footwear

When the campaign is successful ($109 will get you a pair and a tree planted in your name), Houle hopes to have them available to a wide range of people by August of next year.

RELATED: Ralph Lauren Gives Competitors New Way to Dye Cotton, Uses 90% Less Chemicals, 40% Less Energy and Half the Water

“The nice thing about this project is that because it’s a biodegradable sneaker that grows into a tree, we can kind of help number one, offset people’s carbon footprint, but we’re also helping eliminate plastics,” Houle told Blog Toronto. “And the more people we can reach with that the more of an impact we can have.”

(WATCH the City News video for this story below.)

WALK This Apparel Straight Over to Your Besties; Share This Story…

Farmers Tempt Endangered Cranes Back – By Switching to Grow Their Favorite Food

By
Andy Corbley
-
Cranes by J.M. Garg, CC license
J.M. Garg, CC license

Cranes in Cambodia are getting a helping hand from an unlikely source, as rice farmers sign up to take a pay cut in the name of conservation.

By switching to grow native rice crops, and leaving a small piece of their harvest behind for rare eastern sarus cranes, the farmers are providing a safe haven for the world’s tallest flying bird.

Mostly white, but with a brilliantly colored head—as red as a male mallard’s is green—the eastern sarus crane can reach just under 6-feet (176 cm) tall. Antigone antigone sharpii is Critically Endangered according to the IUCN, with maybe 200 individuals remaining across the wetlands of Southeast Asia. In the last 2 years, fewer and fewer have arrived in farmer Khean Khoay’s rice paddy.

In the village of Koh Chamkar, in Cambodia, Khoay tends his rice paddy on the fringes of the Mekong delta, the spillway of the longest river in Southeast Asia, and one of the most fertile agricultural areas in the region. Khoay is one of 16 farmers in the village, lying on the edge of the protected area of Anlung Pring, where farming is practised in accordance with an agreement made with NatureLife—a Cambodian conservation society funded by the IUCN Netherlands and BirdLife International.

The eastern sarus cranes stalk the embankments of the fields where they pluck rice grains before harvest season.

To encourage the migratory bird to return year after year to the safe and protected paddies, NatureLife pays a 10-year lease on the farmer’s land upfront, which is equivalent to around 30% more than net income on it, to grow native short-grain wild rice varietals which the cranes prefer.

RELATED: After Using Tools, Crows are Happier and Behave More Optimistically: ‘The pleasure of accomplishment’

Currently 42 acres of farmed land in Koh Chamkar has been turned over to native rice cultivation, which yields about half as much as jasmine rice.

“We are aware of the yield limitations but we don’t mind as we are keeping [half] the rice for the cranes,” Bou Vorsak, CEO of NatureLife Cambodia, told The Guardian.

The agreement also stipulates that the farmers are not to sell off their land under the lease period, and use only natural pesticides and fertilizers. In return they are sold rice seed at subsidized prices, as well as organic farming supplies and instruction from NatureLife’s partners. If all the conditions are met, NatureLife will pay market rate for the 5% of rice left to the birds with money received from the Cambodian environmental ministry.

This year, the 16 farmers from last season have increased to 40, and another farming village of Chress has joined the program. Together they are providing around 84 acres of protected farmland for the cranes.

MORE: Giant Eagle-Owl Unseen For 150 Years Just Caught on Camera

“I only recall seeing this strange, tall bird with a red head,” farmer Tom Ke told The Guardian. “I have now started to pay more attention to them. With more food available for them, I hope they won’t become extinct.”

With NatureLife’s long term vision of bringing 2,600 acres of farmland around the Anlung Pring protected area, come what may there will be substantial food always available for the migrating cranes, and that’s hopeful for the species.

LET Hope Soar; Share This Good News…

“Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.” – Christian D. Larson

By
Good News Network
-
By Johannes Plenio

Quote of the Day: “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.” – Christian D. Larson

Photo: by Johannes Plenio

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?

 

After Their Flights Were Canceled, They Spent 24 Hours Falling in Love

By
Judy Cole
-
Jennifer Powell
Jennifer Powell

Sometimes you have to miss a connection to make a connection—and if that’s not a wise old adage yet, it should be. For two waylaid airline passengers stuck in wintry weather at a Toronto airport in 2003, their canceled flights turned into a layover of love at first sight.

Little did Jennifer Lowther, then 29, realize she was about to meet her “knight in shining armor.” All she knew that morning as she hunkered down in tears was that she was about to miss her best friend’s wedding.

The nuptials, at which Jennifer was supposed to serve as master of ceremonies, was set to take place in her hometown of Winnipeg the following day—but with the snow closing in and no flights going out, it looked as if the cause was lost.

Enter 34-year-old Chris Powell, a veteran business traveler for whom scheduling snafus were just part of the game. Waiting out the delay in the airport lounge, Chris noticed Jennifer’s distress.

Winning her over with his dry wit, Jennifer was soon sitting with a group of other stranded souls sharing their stories, venting their frustrations, and imbibing an adult beverage or two as the day passed.

Although romance was the last thing on his mind, Chris felt an instant rapport with the woman he’d found crying into her breakfast—and Jennifer felt it as well.

The waiting vigil became an impromptu party, with Chris and Jennifer serving as the de facto host and hostess. Sharing banter and making jokes helped everyone pass the time. Even though they’d just met, others who later joined the group assumed they were a couple.

Meanwhile, the two travelers who’d just met were beginning to feel like they’d known one another forever.

Jennifer Powell

So, when 4 o’clock rolled around and the last flight to Winnipeg was canceled, unable to bear Jennifer’s devastation, Chris was determined to move heaven and earth to make sure his newfound soulmate would be there when her best friend tied the knot.

There weren’t any flights to her destination, so what were the alternatives?

Chris was booked on a 9 p.m. flight to Vancouver. If Jennifer went there as well—even though it was out of her way by two hours—would she be able to backtrack to Winnipeg in time to make the wedding? With a stopover the following morning in Edmonton, it would be cutting it close, but if all went according to plan, it was doable.

MORE: He Saved a Stranger From Drowning in India, Now They’re Married in the Netherlands

At 9 o’clock that night, the pair boarded the Vancouver-bound plane. They even managed to get seats together. From there, the romance really took off—with a kiss “right out of the movies.”

“We actually kissed the whole way to Vancouver, just sort of like enamored with each other,” Jennifer told CNN Travel.

Once in Vancouver, the exhausted travelers crashed with one of Chris’s friends. After a few short hours of sleep, Jennifer had to be on her way again—but not before she and Chris swapped their contact info and made plans to meet up when they were both back in Toronto.

LOOK: Flood Waters Couldn’t Stop This Australian Miracle Wedding From Happening

With a 1 p.m. touchdown in Winnipeg, Jennifer had a scant hour to make it to the church on time, but fellow passengers on the flight who’d been regaled with her herculean exploits thus far cleared the aisles for her and cheered her on as she sped off the plane.

Dashing to her parents’ car, with barely enough time to make herself presentable, her dad somehow managed to drop her off just at the stroke of two. Both Jennifer and the bride, who feared her best friend was about to miss her big day, were overcome with emotion.

READ: This Romantic Husband and Wife Broke the Record for World’s Oldest Married Couple

While her ex-boyfriend was at the ceremony and she’d toyed with the idea of making another go of it, Jennifer says she realized while she’d only just met him, that her destiny and her future belonged not with someone from her past, but with Chris.

Three months later, they were engaged. They married in 2004.

Jenifer Powell

This storybook tale has an especially poignant twist since Jennifer, who’d been treated for cervical cancer at age 19, was told she’d never be able to conceive. And, just as he’d never really thought about getting married before he met Jennifer, Chris hadn’t really planned on being a dad, either.

When the couple learned she was pregnant with their first child, it came as a surprise to both of them—but a happy one.

RELATED: Love in the Time of Corona: An American Traveler Survives Italian Lockdown, and Finds True Love

The birth of their son Spencer was followed by that of his sister Lauren a few years later. The children, now in their teens, share a special bond with their parents forged in part during a nine-month round-the-world trip the family embarked on five years ago that took them to such far-off sites as Sri Lanka and Argentina.

Jennifer Powell

While Chris and Jennifer might have met under circumstances straight out of a Hallmark made for TV movie, after 18 years, it looks as if they’ve still got a firm foothold on their happily ever after. Although both have changed and matured through the years, they say humor and being willing to go the extra mile for one another are still the defining factors of their marriage.

And no matter what force brought them together for their airport “meet-cute” that day, they’re both grateful.

“It was—I don’t know, cosmic alignment, call it what you will; call it kismet—but it was amazing,” Chris told CNN. “I’m lucky it happened to me. Thanks, fate! So far, so good.”

SHARE This Story of True Love…

Washington, DC Sewage Plant Spins Human Sewage into Fertilizer Gold

By
Andy Corbley
-
Marc Schaefer
Marc Schaefer

In Washington D.C., a sophisticated sewage treatment plant is turning the capital’s waste into a form of capital: living capital that is fertilizing the gardens of farms of the Mid-Atlantic region and saving vast quantities of resources.

Described by the workers’ there as a “resource recovery plant,” D.C. Water run a biogas plant and high-quality fertilizer production in the course of their dirty duty to ensure the city’s waste finds a safe endpoint.

The nation’s capital is exceptional at producing waste from the toilet bowls of the 2.2 million people who live, work, and commute through the city and its suburbs.

Reporting by Lina Zeldovich reveals that rather than trucking it all to a landfill, D.C. Water extract an awful lot of value from the capital crap, by looking at it as a resource to send through the world’s largest advanced wastewater treatment plant, which uses a “thermal hydrolysis process” in which it is sterilized, broken down, and shipped off for processing into “Bloom,” a nitrogen-rich, slow-release fertilizer product. 

The other “Black Gold”

At their facility in southwest Washington, huge aeration tanks percolate the poo of everyone from tourists to the President. After it’s all fed into enormous pressure cookers where, under the gravity of six earth atmospheres and 300°F, the vast black sludge is rendered harmless.

CHECK OUT: Dutch Guy Famous for Cleaning Up Pacific Garbage Patch is Now Clearing the World’s Rivers Too

Next this “Black Gold,” as Zeldovich described it, is pumped into massive bacterial-rich tanks where microbes breakdown large molecules like fats, proteins, and carbs into smaller components, shrinking the overall tonnage of sewage to 450 tons per day down from 1,100 at the start of the process.

This mass-micro-munching also produces methane, which when fed into an onsite turbine, generates a whopping 10 megawatts of green energy which can power 8,000 nearby homes. The 450 tons of remaining waste from the D.C. feces are sent into another room where conveyor belts ring out excess fluid before feeding it through large rollers which squash it into small congregate chunks.

D.C. Water sends this to another company called Homestead Gardens for drying, aging, and packaging before it’s sold as Bloom.

MORE: Whale Feces Represents One of the Greatest Allies Against Climate Change—Even More Than Trees

“I grow everything with it, squashes, tomatoes, eggplants,” Bill Brower, one of the plant’s engineers, tells Zeldovich. “Everything grows great and tastes great,” he adds.

“And I’m not the only one who thinks so. We’ve heard from a lot of people that they’ve got the best response they’ve ever seen from the plants. Particularly with leafy greens because that nitrogen boost does well with leafy plants. And the plants seem to have fewer diseases and fewer pests around—probably because Bloom helps build healthy soils.”

MORE: Student Invents Toilet That Converts Poop into Energy – And Pays in Digital Currency if You Help to Fill it!

While farms around the country are facing nutrient depletion in soils from over-farming, turning to synthetic fertilizers to make up the difference, introducing more such thermal hydrolysis plants could truly revolutionize the way humans look at their feces—as a way of restoring the country’s soils rather than polluting them. As Mike Rowe would say, it only takes a person who’s willing to get their hands dirty.

CONVERT Those Feeds Into Troves of Good News; Share This Story…

Thousands of Bees Make It Out Alive After Being Buried by Volcanic Ash for 50 Days

By
Andy Corbley
-
Sputniktilt, CC license
Sputniktilt, CC license

For everything we hear about bees these days, it’s hard to believe that they and their hives are capable of surviving a volcanic eruption.

But rescuers uncovering beehives under ash from the September eruptions on La Palma in the Canary Islands recovered not one, not two, but five beehives and all their buzzing residents after digging them up 50 days after being buried.

Amazingly the bees had survived by creating propolis, a resinous material which they used to seal up the holes in their hive, protecting them from the choking ash.

Safely inside, they kept themselves sustained by eating their winter honey stores, which the beekeepers had, conveniently for them, not collected.

During spring each of the hives could house 30,000 to 40,000 individual bees, providing a huge service for pollination on the islands.

According to the Calgary Herald, some of the rescuers suffered a sting or two, but of course they didn’t hold it against the bees.

One of the six hives buried didn’t make it, which scientists suspect was determined by the proximity of the hive to the volcano—the closer the hive, the less harmful the ash that fell.

MORE: Bee Expert Finds 800,000 Wild Honeybees Thriving in Ancient English Forest, Now Naturalists are Buzzing With Hope

Propolis is a known antibiotic, which bees use to regularly disinfect the hive, especially after a visit by a bear, monkey, or other animal whose fur can contain parasites.

RELATED: French Beekeeper Invents a Trap to Take on Asian Hornets Decimating Bee Populations in Europe

Humans have consumed propolis for millennia, and it’s still sold today as a natural cold remedy and immune support supplement.

(WATCH the Mother Nature video for this story below.)

BUZZ the Good News Over to Those Social Feeds…

“Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” – Dean Karnazes

By
Good News Network
-

Quote of the Day: “Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” – Dean Karnazes

Photo: by Sven Vahaja

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?

 

Guy Turns Old Tires Into Beautiful Cozy Beds For 6,000 Stray Dogs And Cats in Brazil

By
Judy Cole
-
Caminhas Pets - FB
Amarildo Silva Filho, Caminhas Pets/Facebook

Although common sense dictates it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, nowhere is it written that they can’t do so with a touch of panache. And if the beds they lie in are a boost to the environment and give comfort to homeless pets? So much the better.

That’s just what Brazilian artist, environmentalist, and animal lover Amarildo Silva Filho was inspired to do after coming across a pile of used tires in his neighborhood a few years ago.

Where some saw trash, Silva Filho saw an opportunity for upcycling treasure that wound up making a world of difference to stray cats and dogs.

After collecting the tires and giving them a thorough cleaning, Silva Filho put his artistic vision to work fashioning personalized pet beds.

Once the custom paint jobs were complete, with the addition of hand-sewn mattresses, the colorful comfy cots were ready to be distributed to local shelters.

RELATED: A Starving Stray Puppy Upended our Mundane, Retired Lives: Finding Purpose After Finding Yiuka

Silva Filho’s recycled masterpieces proved so popular, a niche market of eco-conscious pet owners sprang up as well.

Amarildo Silva Filho, Caminhas Pets/Facebook

To meet the growing demand, he launched Caminhas Pets—and has since gone on to hand-craft more than 6,000 pet beds.

To prepare each tire, he cleans them, cuts off the tops with a jigsaw, covers the hole at the bottom with plywood, and then sews his own cushions to make them cozy. He paints and stencils each one with bright colors.

Amarildo Silva Filho, Caminhas Pets/Facebook

While retail sales have helped sustain his efforts, the majority of Silva Filho’s creations have gone to animals in need.

“The only way to do a great job is to love what you do,” he was quoted as saying by My Modern Met.

MORE: Istanbul Improves the Lives of Thousands of Stray Cats with Elaborate Outdoor Cat Houses

Amarildo Silva Filho, Caminhas Pets/Facebook

From what Amarildo’s accomplished so far, it’s clear he loves what he does quite a lot—and that’s great news for every one of the animals he’s helped.

(WATCH a video to see how he makes them…)

RAISE Your Paws For This Great Story—Share It With Chums…

Once Biologically Dead, London’s River Thames Rebounds – With Seahorses and Seals

By
Andy Corbley
-
Pietro De Grandi
Pietro De Grandi

Once declared biologically dead, the Thames River flows as much with life as with water these days, and the first report on its health in 60 years is enough to make a Londoner cheer.

Perhaps 115 species of fish live in the river—providing food for not one, not two, but three species of shark which swim above a river bottom where seahorses and eels can be found.

The “State of the Thames” report highlights the gradual work in reduction of pressure on life in the river over the last 60 years, when pollution and sewage decimated it. Short and long-term phosphorus concentrations have fallen, while dissolved oxygen has increased.

“This report has enabled us to really look at how far the Thames has come on its journey to recovery since it was declared biologically dead, and in some cases, set baselines to build from in the future,” said Zoological Society London (ZSL) program lead for wetland recovery, Alison Debney.

ZSL has been working to restore the Thames as a tidal and estuarine ecosystem since 2003, and one of the best ways the look at progress is how river’s estuary is doing—specifically in the populations of the system’s top predators, grey and harbor seals.

CHECK OUT: Nothing Restores a River or Local Economy Like Removing a Dam

These furry, fish-seeking mammals have increased in numbers, indicating growing fish stocks despite competition from tope, starry smooth hound, and spurdog sharks.

Annual counts of both species of seal have taken place on the Thames Estuary every year since 2013 except during 2020, and they’ve increased from 797 harbor seals to 932, and from 2,866 grey seals to 3,243.

ZSL

“As top predators, (seals) are a great indicator of ecological health, so they tell us how the Thames is doing,” said conservation biologist Thea Cox, to the BBC. “People think the Thames is dead because it is brown, but the Thames is full of life—the water quality has improved so much.”

RELATED: See the Strange, Beautiful Landscapes Below the Foliage and Buildings Revealed by Lasers

It’s not just swimming things that are flourishing in the Thames, but flapping ones as well.

Several areas of the Thames are protected as native and migratory bird sanctuaries, and as a result the number of wading birds, for example the avocet, has doubled across a period from 1993 to 2017.

Additionally, the future is bright for the river, as while some measurements of life in the Thames are worsening, the report details a new “super sewer” that will divert 95% of all sewage from the waterway.

MORE: World’s Longest Wildlife Bridge Could Cross the Mississippi, So ‘Buffalo Can Roam’

“The new sewer, which is due to be complete in 2025, is designed to capture more than 95 per cent of the sewage spills that enter the River from London’s Victorian sewer system,” stated Liz Wood-Griffiths, Head of Consents at Tideway. “It will have a significant impact on the water quality, making it a much healthier environment for wildlife to survive and flourish.”

“A resilient future for both people and wildlife will depend on protecting remaining natural habitats, reconnecting and restoring habitats, and innovating new ways to maximize opportunities for wildlife in the urban environment,” Debney concluded.

LET Positivity Flow Like a River—Share This Hopeful Story…

Airless Tires: These Puncture-Proof Michelin Marvels Are Even Made From 47% Recycled Resources

By
Andy Corbley
-
Michelin
Michelin

Innovation has pretty much finished with car tires right, I mean, what’s left to change? How about the whole “air” part?

Michelin’s attempt to tackle tire trash around the world saw them roll out puncture-proof “airless” tires, which they say should help reduce the 18% of all world tires that are discarded early due to punctures.

In September, an interesting showpiece at the Munich Auto Show was tire giant’s new concept for an airless tire that is immune to the punctures that render many useless.

Discarded tires are a huge worldwide waste problem—the U.S. produces 260 million discarded tires per year, many of which end up in landfills or on the sides of the freeway where they release harmful gases and microplastic pollutants as they break down.

Michelin’s Unique Puncture Proof Tire System or “UPTIS” is designed using 46% recycled material, and made from a plastic matrix laced with glass fibers that provide a flexible outer layer with a stiffer inner one.

MORE: Bike Tires That Need No Air Are Made From NASA Rover Tech –But Soon Will Be Available to Any Cyclist

“The truly distinctive structure of the Michelin UPTIS prototype, or its ‘weirdness’ as we have often heard it called, really attracted the attention of many visitors and left a lasting impression on them,” stated Cyrille Roget, Michelin Group Technical and Scientific Communications Director.

Michelin

“It was an exceptional experience for us, and our greatest satisfaction came at the end of the demonstration when our passengers, who were admittedly a little wary at first, said they felt no difference compared with conventional tires.”

RELATED: The Best Selling Car in All of Europe is Electric – And Hertz Just Bought 100,000 Teslas For its New Fleet

This isn’t just a European “green” plan to satisfy politicians, the internal spokes of the tire can be tuned to exquisite detail, New Atlas reports, to improve handling or comfort.

Michelin believes airless tires will improve everyone’s lives. With tires less susceptible to wear from the roads, maintenance costs for company’s vehicle fleets will be less expensive, while inexperienced car owners won’t accidentally ruin their rubbers by driving them while they are over- or under-inflated.

No current price has been suggested, and even though they’ve been in development since 2005, they aren’t likely to be available for another 24-36 months. In another 30 years, Michelin hope to manufacture only airless tires, with 100% recycled material.

(WATCH the airless tire test-drive below.)

PUMP Up the News Feeds With the Good News…

Thrilled Astronomers in Chile Are First to Photograph a Moon-forming Disc Around an Exoplanet

By
Good News Network
-
moon exoplanet released ALMA (ESO_NAOJ_NRAO)_Benisty et al.
Wide and close-up views of a moon-forming disc as seen with ALMA/ ALMA (ESO_NAOJ_NRAO)_Benisty et al.

Using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array), astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

“Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satellites could be forming,” says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the University of Chile, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disc is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time,” she adds.

The disc in question, called a circumplanetary disc, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a “moon-forming” disc around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disc apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection—until now.

In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disc has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.

MORE: To Unravel Earliest History of Our Solar System, NASA’s Lucy Mission Launches Toward Asteroid Swarms Tomorrow

But the results are not only key to finding out how moons arise. “These new observations are also extremely important to prove theories of planet formation that could not be tested until now,” says Jaehan Bae, a researcher from the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and author on the study.

Planets form in dusty discs around young stars, carving out cavities as they gobble up material from this circumstellar disc to grow. In this process, a planet can acquire its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet by regulating the amount of material falling onto it. At the same time, the gas and dust in the circumplanetary disc can come together into progressively larger bodies through multiple collisions, ultimately leading to the birth of moons.

Widefield image of the sky around PDS 70/ESO Digitized Sky Survey 2; Davide De Martin

But astronomers do not yet fully understand the details of these processes. “In short, it is still unclear when, where, and how planets and moons form,” explains Stefano Facchini, a Research Fellow involved in the research at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which is an ALMA partner.

“More than 4000 exoplanets have been found until now, but all of them were detected in mature systems. PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which form a system reminiscent of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, are the only two exoplanets detected so far that are still in the process of being formed,” explains Miriam Keppler, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and one of the co-authors of the study.

The dwarf star PDS 70 in the constellation Centaurus/ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope

“This system therefore offers us a unique opportunity to observe and study the processes of planet and satellite formation,” Facchini adds.

PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets making up the system, were first discovered using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and their unique nature means they have been observed with other telescopes and instruments many times since.

The latest high resolution ALMA observations have now allowed astronomers to gain further insights into the system. In addition to confirming the detection of the circumplanetary disc around PDS 70c and studying its size and mass, they found that PDS 70b does not show clear evidence of such a disc, indicating that it was starved of dust material from its birth environment by PDS 70c.

RELATED: A Mathematician Just Made a Musical Album Entirely Composed of Black Hole Wavelengths – Listen

An even deeper understanding of the planetary system will be achieved with ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert. “The ELT will be key for this research since, with its much higher resolution, we will be able to map the system in great detail,” says co-author Richard Teague, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics partnership between Harvard & Smithsonian.

In particular, by using the ELT’s Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), the team will be able to look at the gas motions surrounding PDS 70c to get a full 3D picture of the system.

SHARE This Far Out News With Your Pals…

“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” – James Thurber

By
Good News Network
-

Quote of the Day: “All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” – James Thurber

Photo: by Emma Simpson

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?

 

 

 

Vending Machines Are Now ‘Giving Machines’ Where People Can Donate Chickens, Blankets, Boots, or Basketballs

By
Good News Network
-

Employing the common and easily understood method of the vending machine—these Giving Machines allow passersby in American cities to make a charitable donation to a fellow citizen through local and global causes.

Catering to impulsive givers to indulge their altruistic impulses, they can use the vending machine to purchase anything from a single goat or two chickens to providing a household cleaning kit, polio vaccines, or even a day at Yankee Stadium for an orphaned teen.

When donors make their purchase via credit card, the Giving Machine dispenses a postcard featuring an image and description of their donation.

Of the 10 cities with vending machines nationwide, one of them will be located at Rockefeller Center in New York City, just south of its famed Christmas tree. The machine will kickoff on Tuesday, Nov. 30—the day known as “Giving Tuesday”—with speeches from people at UNICEF, WaterAid, the UNHCR, CARE, the Mariano Rivera Foundation, and other charities.

The first Giving Machine ever installed opened in 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the sponsoring organization, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is headquartered.

POPULAR: After Senior Had No Candy For Trick-or-Treaters the Kids Returned With Gifts for Her

The Utah pilot program was impressive, yielding donations totaling more than a half million dollars. One year later, the response was even stronger, with more than $2.3 million donated through a total of 92,190 Giving Machine transactions.

In 2019, the program expanded, and donations topped $6.2 million—with two locations outside the United States that year: in the Philippine capitol and in London.

After being halted in 2020 due to COVID, the Giving Machines are back, in ten different U.S. cities—with the sponsoring Church covering all administrative costs for this campaign so that 100 percent of each donation goes to each charity.

LOOK: Keanu Reeves Gifts His 4 Stuntmen With $20,000 Rolex Watches Engraved With Fun Messages

Giving Machine

The machines launch on the following dates in these cities and will remain operational throughout the Christmas season:

• Las Vegas, Nevada– Currently active in downtown Summerlin Mall
• Nashville, Tennessee– Currently active at 18 Bridgestone Arena
• Honolulu, Hawaii– Currently active in the Pearlridge Center
• Orem, Utah– University Place Mall on November 23, 2021
• Salt Lake City, Utah– City Creek Center on November 24, 2021
• Oakland, California– Temple Hill on November 27, 2021
• Gilbert, Arizona– Water Tower Plaza on November 29, 2021
• Denver, Colorado– Writer Square on November 30, 2021
• Kansas City, Missouri– Crown Center on November 30, 2021
• New York City, New York– Rockefeller Plaza on November 30, 2021

The Giving Machines will feature over two dozen choices for charity initiatives with items to purchase, including:

Meal for a Family
Warm Blanket
Five Sleeping Mats
Solar Lantern
Winter Clothing
One Tent
One Pair of Gloves
One Dozen Pairs of Socks
Two Winter Scarves
Winter Boots
Weekly Metro Card
Two Basketballs
One Month of Meals
Emergency WASH Kit
Polio Vaccines for 100 Kids
Five Menstrual Care Kits
Rainwater Storage Tank
Water Pump
Install a Well
Two Chickens
One Goat
Household Cleaning Kit
One Laptop
A Day at Yankee Stadium
WaterAid
Portable Vaccine Carrier
Spiritual Care of Seniors
Protect a Health Care Worker
Passover Meal for Two People

All through organizations like UNICEF, USA,The Mariano Rivera Foundation, USA for UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, and The Actors Fund, a safety net for performing arts and entertainment professionals over their lifespan.

RELATED: Remarkable 10-Year-old Inspires the World to Donate Half a Million Books For Kids: ‘A Catalyst’ For Kindness

In 2019, a total of 255,814 items were purchased from ten Giving Machine locations around the world. The top five purchased items were:

  1. Three chickens (31,006 transactions)
  2. 100 polio vaccines (15,132 transactions)
  3. Take-home meals for a child (12,623 transactions)
  4. One sheep (10,187 transactions)
  5. Box of fresh produce (9,730 transactions)

The annual #LightTheWorld holiday initiative by the nonprofit Latter-day Saint Charities is “an invitation to all to make the most of the Christmas season by giving, one person at a time — in homes, in communities, and around the globe.”

DONATE This Brilliant Inspiration on Social Media to Toast #GivingTuesday…

Couple Answers Loneliness With Organized Walks And Games in London – And Hundreds Show Up

By
Good News Network
-
Talk the Walk / Alexandru Ciobotaru

A couple in their 30s were absolutely done with the constant isolation, following more than a year of COVID, and they decided to launch a community initiative this summer.

Talk the Walk / Alexandru Ciobotaru

Jake Williams and Charlotte Sinclair started Talk the Walk, which seeks to promote people getting together, exploring London on foot, and getting to know each other.

The number one mission was to have fun—even if only a few people showed up for the free events. That’s what they expected when they started in September on Meetup.com.

Suddenly they were getting hundreds of people RSVPing with enthusiasm.

“Our services are really in demand,” Jake told GNN.

200-300 people of various ages now regularly attend each event, which opens with the playing of icebreaker games. The couple designed the games to be easy for introverts, too, with “fun questions” breaking the nervousness.

They pick interesting landmarks to visit, with the first locations chosen being Hampstead Heath, King’s Cross, and the Regent’s Canal. Attendees are even surprised with an offer of chocolate.

LOOK: Man Inspires Town During Lockdown—Spelling Out Messages with Rubber Duckies in Front Yard

“I have a megaphone now, thank God,” Jake told My London. “I’ve done some crazy things in my time working from home to stop loneliness, like dog sitting for people and joining gyms just so I can have more conversations with people.”

Talk the Walk / Alexandru Ciobotaru

“I think that it’s hugely impactful for people who have been affected by Covid, by being forced to work from home and having that isolation,” he continued.

“Our focus is to end loneliness and to bring communities back together,” wrote Jake via email.

POPULAR: 10 Best Communities For Well-Being in America (Colorado Nabbed 6 of the Top 10 Spots)

Talk the Walk / Alexandru Ciobotaru

They’ve seen older folks conversing with younger folks, and people becoming friends—so much so, that the strangers are now meeting on their own after becoming acquainted.

Talk the Walk organized their last event for October 23, but told us they will resume shortly.

LOOK: Wisconsin Town Falls in Love With Huge Beach Ball, Playing ‘Where’s Waldo’ and Hiding It on Local Streets

“It’s getting cold here. But we’ll be back once it starts to warm up again 🙂

Nearly 2,000 members in their Meetup community and followers on their Facebook Page are waiting for that day also, but meanwhile, this young couple might serve as your very own inspiration to connect people in your own communities.

SHARE the Idea to Connect Your Isolated Friends on Social Media…

This Cabin’s Flexible Design Can Open To Nature or Enclose into Cozy Space Again (Watch)

By
Andy Corbley
-
Cabin ANNA - Caspar Schols

What’s more cozy than a cabin nestled in nature?

Cabin ANNA – Caspar Schols

Well, one architect wanted even more nature, so he designed a cabin with moving walls that can slide open.

Cabin ANNA, by architect Casper Schols, accomplishes what our zipped jackets do when the weather changes; the walls open wide on rails to allow in the sunshine and scenery.

Delivered pre-assembled or as a flat pack, sliding away the wall on an ANNA cabin, one can have a glass greenhouse for a chilly yet sunny day, or nothing between you and the nature which surrounds you.

For nighttime or cold days, simply push all the components together again, and you have a cozy, insulated traditional cabin.

There are two versions, ANNA Stay and ANNA Meet—the former comes with either an on-grid version with plenty of amenities, or an off-grid version with self-sustaining technologies like a waste-water treatment system, solar panels, and a fire-heating water boiler.

LOOK: Developer Turns Farm Storage into Soaring Yet Affordable Apartments

Cabin ANNA – Caspar Schols

For the construction, only high-quality natural materials are used. The outside is made of sustainable Siberian larch wood. On the inside, birch plywood has been used for high quality and its light color. Most wood is left untreated and sawdust was used for insulation.

Cabin ANNA – Caspar Schols

Both versions come with a fully-equipped kitchen, shower, bathroom, and room for two adults and two kids or three adults. A bathtub is fully integrated under the floor paneling.

Cabin ANNA – Caspar Schols

RELATED: Wes Anderson Designed a Luxury Train Car – and It Looks Like Something Out of His Movies

Schols tells Dezeen that it was actually a garden house he designed and built for his mom that gave him the inspiration to make ANNA. She wanted a place she could paint, play with her kids, garden, and be outside, and so he made her a small structure with two exterior wall panels that moved and two interior ones.

“ANNA Stay has two sliding shells instead of the four in the original Garden House,” Schols told Dezeen. “But the two are longer and cover more area.”

MORE: They’ve Designed a Livable Pontoon Boat Inspired by a Volkswagen Bus

“ANNA is a dynamic home in the shape of an open platform to live with rather than against the elements, by playing with the configuration of the layers of the house,” he writes on the CABIN ANNA website.

Cabin ANNA / Caspar Schols

“Just like the way you dress yourself to suit different weather conditions, occasions, and moods.”

POPULAR: Students Build Solar-Powered Pop-Up Van For Touring in a Brilliant Mobile Home That Has Zero Emissions

If the designer’s aesthetic, ‘let nature be your home,’ resonates with customers, they can contact the company to discuss prices.

(SEE the grand design in action in the video below.)

Expand The View On This Dream Cabin – Share the Pics on Social Media…

Woman Becomes ‘Natural Suppressor’ of HIV as Her Body Completely Clears the Disease – Doctors Find Only Antibodies

By
Andy Corbley
-

Another patient has seemingly recovered fully from a diagnosis of HIV.

The woman in Argentina may have become the first person whose immune system, itself, cured her of the virus. And, though it has been heralded as a miracle, it presents hope to scientists—and patients—that one day we may be able to put the HIV scourge behind us.

The 30-year-old woman dubbed the “Esperanza” Patient (in the tradition of naming HIV-cured patients after their city of residence), may prove a little more special.

“This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it,” Dr. Xu Yu, a viral immunologist at the Ragon Institute in Boston, told NBC. Yu led the exhaustive, no-stone-unturned search for any trace of HIV in the Esperanza Patient, and published the study this month in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The few details released to the public regarding the unique case includes that she was diagnosed in 2013, and has been showing ‘non-existent viral presence’ for 8 years. Then, in 2020 she gave birth to an HIV-negative child. If researchers’ can figure out how her immune system is capable to neutralizing the virus so effectively, it would lead to more effective and basic treatments, and perhaps even a cure.

HIV has been hypothesized as cured in 2 other people, the “London,” and “Berlin” Patients, who were both cured with a stem cell transplant treatment.

The transplanted donor cells had a gene defect called CCR5delta32mutant which results in the absence of one of the critical entry gatekeepers that HIV generally needs to infect cells.

RELATED: First Human Trial of HIV Vaccine Produced Immune Response in 97% of Volunteers

In the case of the Esperanza Patient, she is defined as an ‘elite controller’, with rare odds and an immune system that can suppress the dreaded virus naturally. HIV is difficult to treat and detect, as it is capable of infecting and living dormant in the immune cells, which live the longest, giving it excellent resilience.

These elite controllers have an ability to preferentially target these long-lived cells, according to another paper published by Yu in 2020 with “Esperanza” as a participant. The “viral reservoir” dries up, removing HIV’s most effective survival strategy.

“I enjoy being healthy,” the Esperanza patient, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NBC News in a translated email. “I have a healthy family. I don’t have to medicate, and I live as though nothing has happened. This already is a privilege.”

RELATED: New Study of 1,000 Couples Shows HIV Drug Treatment Has Eliminated All Risk of Transmitting HIV Infection

38 million people live with HIV, which over the last two decades has become somewhat treatable with drugs, but the authors state that the more cases like Esperanza that medical science can uncover and study, the more we can begin to understand what it means—and looks like—to cure the disease.

Maybe another reason people are feeling hopeful. The word ‘esperanza’, in Spanish, literally means hope.

SHARE The Miracle News And Uplift Social Media Today…

“The important thing is to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” – Charles Du Bos

By
Good News Network
-

Quote of the Day: “The important thing is to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” – Charles Du Bos

Photo: by Patrick Tomasso

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?

More Than 70% of Older Americans Feel Younger Than They Actually Are – And Are Embracing Aging

By
Good News Network
-

Age is nothing but a number for most older Americans, as 84% said they have embraced aging—and they’re living their best lives.

A survey of 2,000 people 65 and older found nearly three-quarters (72%) of people feel younger than they are, with half saying they feel younger than 50-years-old.

The average person stops caring what others think of their age at 43, and over one-third of those polled said that being able to say what you want is one of the best things about getting older.

As older Americans enjoy their golden years, people cited the best parts of aging as having more time to do what they want (64%) and enjoying retirement (60%).

Another recent poll showed that 45% of Americans aged 50 and older reported having the best sex of their lives as they’ve aged. The survey found that 35% are surprisingly more intimate than ever before.

Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of ClearMatch Medicare, the results showed that 58% of elders are also tapping into their younger selves by using social media to communicate with their family and friends.

RELATED: Six in 10 Americans Agreed They’re More Financially Confident Than They Were Before the Pandemic

“Baby boomers are reinventing what it means to age, and they resent those outdated stereotypes of older adults,” said Keira Krausz, chief marketing officer at ClearMatch Medicare.

“They’re not letting their age interfere with their quality of life because the best years of their lives are still ahead of them.”

84% of older Americans are confident in their understanding of online safety, and reported are aware of online risks.

“Older adults today are well-equipped to utilize technology to choose goods or services they need—the shift to quarantine as a result of COVID has proved that,” said Krausz.

ALSO: More Americans Now Consider Themselves to be ‘Thriving’ Than at Any Point in 13 Years: Gallop

BEST PARTS OF GETTING OLDER

Having more time to do what I want (64%)
Retiring (60%)
Having more time to relax (56%)
Spending time with my family (49%)
Being able to say what I want (36%)

Let us know in the comments if you’ve experienced the same positive attitudes and feelings, and what your secret is…

Courageous Canine Who Lost His Legs–But Not His Hope–is Named 2021 Hero Dog of the Year

By
Good News Network
-
Boone – American Humane, Hero Dog Award

More than a million Americans voted on their favorite ‘Hero Dog’ finalist this year—and after a deliberating VIP panel of dog experts and judges, the winner was crowned at the American Humane Hero Dog Awards gala in Palm Beach, Florida this month.

Boone – American Humane, Hero Dog Award

A four-year-old hound mix named Boone from Butler, Pennsylvania, took home the top prize.

Boone, who survived heartbreaking treatment as a puppy, bested more than 400 other competitors from across the country to win the award. Finalists from 7 categories went head-to-head collecting votes from the public—Law Enforcement / Detection Dogs, Service Dogs, Military Dogs, Search & Rescue Dogs, Shelter Dogs, Guide/Hearing Dogs, and, Therapy Dogs, which was Boone’s category.

Boone’s two back legs had to be amputated after the initial abuse, and he was fostered by a family with a soft spot for special needs pets. “He was calm as calm could be,” said Tanya Diable, his foster mom, who was so moved by the pup that she adopted him two days later.

Boone’s family had him fitted with a wheelchair to improve his mobility, which immediately changed him. Charley Diable said it was the first time he ever wagged his tail—and he’s been a dog on a mission ever since.

“The light bulb just clicked,” says Tanya. “He was amazing after that.”

POPULAR: Heroic Dog Gets Award for Saving Over 100 Koalas From Australia’s Bushfires

The hound’s sweet nature and enthusiasm for life made him perfect for earning a certificate to become a therapy dog. He now goes to children’s hospitals and wherever he is need to help reduce stress in others.

Boone is also an ambassador for the nonprofit Joey’s P.A.W. (Prosthetics and Wheels), which has provided mobility devices to more than 700 dogs in need in Pittsburgh, across the country and globally.

Boone is also helping to erase perceptions around disabled dogs and their adoptability.

RELATED: Italian Dogs Trained as Lifeguards Save 20 Lives Every Year – With New Teams Headed to Germany and US

“The American Humane Hero Dog Awards were created to honor some of the world’s most extraordinary heroes, as well as celebrate the powerful relationship between dogs and people,” said Dr. Robin Ganzert, president and CEO of American Humane, America’s first national humane organization, which holds the Hero Dog Awards annually.

“These courageous canines have gone above and beyond the call of duty, saving lives on the battlefield, comforting the ill and aged, and reminding us of the powerful, age-old bond between animals and people.”

WATCH Boone’s story triumphant below…

LOOK: Six Puppies Are All Determined to Fit Into One Small Bucket – And They Succeed (WATCH)

SHARE the Heartfelt Hero Award With Dog Lovers Around the World…

1...433434435...1,733Page 434 of 1,733
© Copyright 1997–2026 GNN, LLC