A formerly homeless man with a severely deformed hands has been able to rebuild his life after discovering a new way to communicate, thanks to a novel hexagonal smartphone keyboard made in Switzerland.
Russ Miller, 36, from Ohio, was first diagnosed with the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis when he was just 26. The condition attacks the body’s joints, making it progressively more difficult for him to do everyday tasks.
“My hands are deformed. They’re not shaped properly and I can’t bend them like everyone else can. Recently my thumb has stopped working, so I can’t bend it,” said Miller in a letter to the company. “I can no longer use normal computer keyboards and it’s hard for me to even hold a pen anymore.”
Russ’ condition led to a downward spiral which resulted in him living on the streets in Florida for 4 years—but in 2018, he started trying to turn his life around.
“I was trying to get help and get myself out of my situation. I had a phone, but I struggled typing on keyboards… So I started looking for alternative smartphone keyboards that might enable me to type again. I found Typewise by accident.”
Russ attributes Typewise smartphone keyboard with enabling him to “get his life back” by empowering him to communicate with people, and therefore get help, get an apartment and even get a job:
“I was able to communicate a lot better than talking, because my voice is kind of monotone so people don’t understand me very well. And because I was able to start typing on my phone again, I was able to use social media to reach out to an organization that helps people with disabilities.”
It’s the hexagonal layout of the keyboard that Russ finds a whole lot easier. “I can move my fingers around and not mess up as often.”
Typewise
“Now I have a part-time job where I take care of dogs and cats; Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can’t work full time, because of my physical issues but at least I have something to do and something to look forward to.”
The company making the smartphone app, which has a popularity rating of 4.5 stars, had been unaware that their unique keyboard design could help people with reduced dexterity, until they received Russ’s letter.
“We’re just a small start-up from Switzerland so we were really quite surprised when Russ contacted us to say how much Typewise had helped turn his life around,” said Typewise co-founder, Janis Bernecker. We never thought we could have such a profound impact on someone’s life, especially someone on another continent.”
The free app for Android and iPhones has over a million users and boasts on its website about its privacy features (‘your keystrokes don’t leave your phone’), along with superior accuracy (4x fewer typos) and a ‘supercharged AI autocorrect’.
But, the positive review from Russ might be the thing they are most proud of now.
“It’s incredibly fulfilling for us to hear Russ’ inspirational story and we wanted to share it because there could be other people like Russ who Typewise could also help.”
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With summer barbecue season well underway in the Northern Hemisphere, many of us are wondering if those citronella candles are even working to keep away the biting bugs.
By Aedes Albopictus, public domain
Science tells us that mosquitoes are peculiar insects that can’t be generalized as much as we would wish, which is why, at the end of your BBQ, some of the guests might be more bitten up than others.
While we are happy to sweep all of the wretched bloodsuckers under the same moniker of ‘mosquito,’ different species of mosquitoes have different methods of locating their host.
A fact sheet for mozzies is imperative, therefore, to minimize the annoyance these insects can bring.
Mosquitoes are CO2-seekers
All mosquitoes use CO2 from human and animal breath as a guide to the location of a potential host.
Ada McVean writing for Canada’s McGill Office for Science and Society, explains the surprisingly complicated way in which mosquitoes try and find their target in a recent article. According to McVean, if you’ve ever seen a mosquito zigzag in the air, that’s the sign they’ve just lost the CO2 scent, and are trying to find it again. Once it brings them to the general position, they use visual features to look for signs of heat, and odors to provide them with the exact position.
They can also find you through sweet-scented deodorant, body wash, shampoo, and other products—but they’ve been sucking our blood for millions of years so don’t need them.
Blood types
Most of us will have had a conversation or been in a situation at least once, wherein one person expresses their annoyance of mosquitoes which seem to be leaving someone else alone. It could be that the bitten person has a particular blood type which mosquitoes prefer.
Many studies have been conducted looking to see if a human’s blood type has some relation to their vulnerability to mosquitoes, and many of them seem to suggest that different species prefer different blood types.
A Sri Lankan study from 2019 found that 30% of starved female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the majority preferred O-type blood, compared to 25% for AB, and 20% for B. This species is famed for its spread of diseases like Dengue, Chikungunya, and Yellow Fever.
Another study however found that it was a combination of blood type, and a genetic feature some humans possess that cause them to secret substances related to their blood type onto their skin, which brought the mosquitoes, in this case a malaria spreader called Anopheles gambiae, to the host.
If someone with an O or B blood type were a secretor, their chance was 15-20% higher for an unpleasant visit, whereas A nonsecretors were landed on more than if they were a secretor, showing the complexity of the human-mosquito feeding methods.
Prevention measures
Physical measures are the principal ones that should be employed, long sleeves, high socks, etc., but it’s also something most people don’t want to do in the heat of summer.
Some modern outdoor wear has mosquito repellent infused into the threading, which has been scientifically-shown to work. However the treatment fades overtime, and there are question marks in Canada about the safety of placing such chemicals like permethrin next to your skin, especially for children. Craghoppers, the English outdoor brand, even recommends throwing away any treated clothes after a set number of washes.
While the world still struggles to come up with a breakthrough malaria medication, mosquito netting has been saving thousands of lives in the tropics for years, and while the mosquitoes in the U.S. aren’t carrying malaria, the net is still a proven technology.
After it was developed by the U.S. Army in 1946, DEET was registered for use by the general public in 1957.
According to the EPA, every year an estimated one-third of the U.S. population use DEET to protect themselves and their families from mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile Virus, the Zika virus or malaria and tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
As the world’s most thoroughly studied insect repellent, DEET, has been shown to be remarkably safe. (Here is a 2020 study offering more evidence.)
The authors of a 2002 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine wrote, “This repellent has been subjected to more scientific and toxicological scrutiny than any other repellent substance,” continuing, “DEET has a remarkable safety profile after 40 years of use and nearly 8 billion human applications,” concluding, “When applied with common sense, DEET-based repellents can be expected to provide a safe as well as long-lasting repellent effect.”
Most of the concerns can be attributed to people using products with too high a concentration of the chemical, or using it in an improper way. Concerns about rare DEET side-effects, including skin irritation, breathing difficulty, burning eyes, headaches, or
seizures, were reported after, in some cases, the chemical was ingested or applied in very large quantities.
While the CDC doesn’t make any recommendations for use or concentration of DEET in a given product, Canada’s government recommends against using a product that has more than 30% concentration, and with a ceiling of 10% for children 12 and under. As a precaution, manufacturers advise that DEET products should not be used on damaged skin, and that preparations be washed off after they are no longer needed or between applications.
Still not convinced? Here are some alternatives.
Alternative repellents
Icaridin, also known as picaridin, is a good alternative to DEET and provides equivalent protection for up to 7 hours.
It has broad efficacy against various insects such as mosquitos, ticks, gnats, flies and fleas, and is almost colorless and odorless. A study performed in 2010 showed that a spray or cream at the 20% concentration provided 12 hours of protection against ticks.
The compound was developed by the German chemical company Bayer and later evaluated and recommended as a repellent by Consumer Reports. Commercial products containing icaridin include Cutter Advanced, Skin So Soft Bug Guard Plus, and Autan.
The authors of the study pointed out that natural insect repellents based on essential oils tend to be entirely untested, something repellent shoppers should take note of.
“There are no published data describing the repellency of oils of canola, goldenseal, patchouli, rhodiumwood, sage, sweet birch, tansy, tea tree, or vetivert to mosquitoes, for example, nor has the repellency of glycerin, lecithin, menthol, extracts of barberry, chamomile, goldenseal, or myrrh to any pest or vector species been shown in scientific studies,” they write. “Of the 26 oils incorporated in the products we tested, only geranium, lavender, and peppermint oils, at the 100% concentration, repelled A. aegypti for (more than) 1 hour.”
Some products with soybean oil are marketed as insect repellents, but the soybean oil likely has nothing to do with the products’ success and is instead attributable to the other chemicals inside these products, such as geranium oil.
Sweet lemony-scented citronella candles or incense coils are often sold as insect repellent smokescreens. Citronella candles and diffusers have been shown to work with minimal protection, especially outside, but linalool and geraniol, two plant oils often included within citronella candles, were found to fare much better.
In short, buy a product that has all three for a pleasantly-smelling, and actually functional mosquito repellent, and if one can find an oil diffuser instead of a candle, even better.
Some products like bug zappers and others which play high-frequency sounds that supposedly disrupt mosquitoes could be summarized in this snippet from a study which thusly investigated: “We are not aware of any scientific study showing that mosquitoes can be repelled by sound waves and therefore we consider these devices as the modern equivalent of snake oil.”
Quote of the Day: “What you think of yourself is much more important than what others think of you.” – Seneca
Photo: by yulia pantiukhina
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?
This story was submitted to GNN by one of our readers. If you have an interesting story of kindness or positivity, be sure and send it to us for review.
More than three years ago at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, Lawson Lundberg was born prematurely. After spending several weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, doctors expected the boy to have significant delays in cognitive development.
By Sara Lundberg
Despite not hearing more than two words during the first two years of his life, Lawson’s mother, Sara, witnessed a sudden change.
“He seemed leaps-and-bounds ahead, learning shapes without us having to teach him, learning words we don’t even remember saying around him.”
“Earlier this year, during the ice storm, we were without power for a few days and during that time he learned the names of countries and their capitals. It was then that we figured out he had somehow learned phonics on his own, which blew us away.”
Now, at 3-years-old, Lawson knows every flag, country, and capitol in the world. While other kids were learning to walk, Lawson was naming all 50 states and 195 countries! His vocabulary is ever-growing and his interest in learning is unique—so much so, that his parents had his IQ tested professionally.
The tyke scored 151. For reference, Albert Einstein’s IQ was estimated at between 160 and 180, but much later in life.
Lawson’s parents signed up their son to join the national intelligence organization Mensa, ranking him among the group’s youngest members. An IQ of 130 is required to join, and at 3 years old Lawson is far ahead of that pace and not done yet.
– Sara Lundberg
“About 21% of the IQ test, he didn’t get any of the questions wrong, so they ran out of questions to ask him,” Sara told GNN. “Normally once you get a few wrong they move on, but they weren’t able to move on until they ran out, which is not normal by any means.”
They recommended he get tested again in a few years to get a more accurate look at his IQ because the test for older kids has an unlimited number of questions.
Now, Lawson has picked up a paintbrush and ‘made it his mission’ to earn money for the charity. He’s raised $525 from family friends, but now they’re offering to send the boy’s paintings—which consist of the exact shapes of states or countries—to strangers who donate on the family’s donation page at March of Dimes.
Email Sara if you donate and would like a painting shipped as a personal thanks from Lawson: [email protected].
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week beginning July 30, 2021
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Leo poet Renée Ashley articulates a perspective I recommend you adopt. She writes, “I’m drawn to what flutters nebulously at the edges, at the corner of my eye—just outside my certain sight. I want to share in what I am routinely denied, or only suspect exists. I long for a glimpse of what is beginning to occur.” With her thoughts as inspiration, I advise you to be hungry for what you don’t know and haven’t perceived. Expand your curiosity so that it becomes wildly insatiable in its quest to uncover budding questions and raw truths at the peripheries of your awareness.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person,” declared Virgo actor Greta Garbo (1905–1990). “It is not right that you should tell them,” she concluded. “You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.” I presume Greta was being melodramatic. My attitude is the opposite of hers. If you find allies who listen well and who respect your vulnerability, you should relish telling them the secrets of your heart. To do so enriches you, deepens you, and adds soulful new meanings to your primary mysteries. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to seek this wise pleasure in abundance.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Now is a fantastic time to seek out effervescent socializing and convivial gatherings and festive celebrations. If you surround yourself with lively people, you’ll absorb the exact influences you need. May I suggest you host a fun event? If you do, you could send out invitations that include the following allures: “At my get-together, the featured flavors will be strawberry chocolate and impossibly delicious. There’ll be magic vibrations and mysterious mood-enhancers. Liberating conversations will be strongly encouraged. Unpredictable revelations will be honored. If possible, please unload your fears and anxieties in a random parking lot before arriving.”
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Scorpio author Andrew Sean Greer writes, “As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.” I think that’s a vivid metaphor for one of your chief tasks in the coming weeks, Scorpio: how to carefully nurture delicate, beautiful things as you coax them to ripen in ways that will bring out their sturdiness and resilience. I believe you now have an extra capacity for wielding love to help things bloom.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Suggested experiments to try soon: 1. Remember a past moment when you were touched with the sudden realization that you and a person you’d recently met were destined to fall in love. 2. Remember a past moment when you kissed someone for the first time. 3. Remember a past moment when someone told you they loved you for the first time or when you told someone you loved them for the first time. 4. Allow the feelings from the first three experiments to permeate your life for five days. See through the eyes of the person you were during those previous breakthroughs. Treat the whole world as expansively and expectantly as you did during those times.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn poet Kenneth Rexroth was shirtless as he strolled along a rural road. To his delightful amazement, a fritillary butterfly landed on his shoulder, fluttered away, landed again, fluttered away—performed this dance numerous times. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Later he wrote, “I feel my flesh / Has suddenly become sweet / With a metamorphosis / Kept secret even from myself.” In the coming days, I’m expecting at least one comparable experience for you. Here’s your homework: What sweet metamorphoses may be underway within you—perhaps not yet having reached your conscious awareness?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
“Each time we don’t say what we want to say, we’re dying.” Aquarian artist and singer Yoko Ono said that. I will add a further nuance: Each time we’re not aware of the feeling or experience or situation we want, we’re dying. And these will be key themes now that you’ve entered the “I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I KNOW HOW TO ASK FOR IT” phase of your cycle. The most healing and vivifying thing you can do during the next six weeks is to be precise about your desires.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
In 1829, Piscean author Victor Hugo began work on his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He had other projects, though, and by September 1830, he had made scant progress on Hunchback. Growing impatient, his publisher demanded that he finish the manuscript by February 1831. In response, Hugo virtually barricaded himself in his room to compel himself to meet the deadline. He even locked his clothes in a closet to prevent himself from going out. For the next five months, he wore only a gray shawl as he toiled nonstop. His stratagem worked! I recommend you consider trying a somewhat less rigorous trick to enforce your self-discipline in the coming weeks. There’s no need to barricade yourself in your fortress. But I hope you will have fun taking stringent measures.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
What does it mean to *feel real*? Some people have a hard time doing that. They have such false ideas about who they are that they rarely feel real. Others are so distracted by trivial longings that they never have the luxury of settling into the exquisite at-home-ness of feeling real. For those fortunate enough to regularly experience this treasured blessing, feeling real isn’t a vague concept. It’s a vivid sensation of being conscious in one’s body. When we feel real, we respond spontaneously, enjoy playing, and exult in the privilege of being alive. After studying your astrological potentials, Aries, I suspect that you now have an enhanced capacity to feel real.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
When she was a child, author Valerie Andrews visited her secret sanctuary at sunset every day for seven years. She lay on the ground among birch trees and aromatic privet plants, feeling “the steady rhythmic heartbeat of the earth” as she basked in the fading light. I’d love for you to enjoy the revitalizing power of such a shrine. The decisions you have to make will become clear as you commune with what Andrews calls “a rootlike umbilicus to the dark core of the land.” Do you know of such a place? If not, I suggest you find or create one.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
I suspect that your immediate future will be a patchwork of evocative fragments. You may be both annoyed and entertained by a series of flashing attractions, or an array of pretty baubles, or a hubbub of tasks that all seem at least mildly worth doing. Chances are good that they will ultimately knit together into a crazy-quilt unity; they will weave into a pattern that makes unexpected sense. In the spirit of the spicy variety, I offer three quotes that may not seem useful to you yet, but will soon. 1. “Isn’t it possible that to desire a thing, to truly desire it, is a form of having it?” – Galway Kinnell 2. “It is not half so important to know as to feel.” — Rachel Carson 3. “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.” — Pema Chödrön
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
A Tumblr blogger named Cece writes, “The fact that you can soak bread in sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla, then butter a pan and fry said bread to make a meal is really liberating.” I agree. And I share this with you in the hope of encouraging you to indulge in other commonplace actions that will make you feel spacious and uninhibited. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll thrive on doing day-to-day details that excite your lust for life. Enjoying the little things to the utmost will be an excellent strategy for success.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
A new partnership with police in Colorado is putting smiles on the faces of motorists who might not have the money to fix a broken part on their vehicle.
An Advance Auto Parts store has gifted the Denver Police Department with 100 gift cards worth $25 each to hand out to drivers who are normally pulled over by cops and given a warning or ticket to pay a fine.
“Now, when they pull over a motorist for, say, a bad headlight or a defective taillight, they’ll have the option to give a $25 gift card to help the motorist get it fixed–and get them back on the road and stay safe,” a representative of Advance Auto Parts explained.
Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen says officers have already issued the cards, and are enjoying the smiles it puts on drivers’ faces.
“Advance Auto Parts’ donation not only helps us get greater compliance with the motoring public, but it also helps us build and strengthen relationships with our community.”
WATCH the announcement below…
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A real-life Indiana Jones believes he may have found the secret location of the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant—under a house in Staffordshire.
Kate Murphy – SWNS
Historian and anthropologist David Adkins is convinced that priceless treasures, which were taken from Jerusalem in 1307, were stashed beneath Sinai Park House in Burton-on-Trent.
He claims to have uncovered links between the property and the Knights Templar who concealed the mythical Ark and Grail centuries ago.
David is now hoping to search the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the 14th century house to prove the Holy Grail was hidden there.
“I’ve been researching it for 34 years, so I’ve really got a complete history of the place and looked into archives that no one had touched before,” said the 50-year-old.
“There are so many pointers that when Knights Templar left La Rochelle in 1307 we know they had a treasure. There are theories about Oak Island in Nova Scotia and Roslyn Chapel in Scotland but it has never been found.”
“Sinai House is the most obvious place once you get inside the mind of a medieval Templar,” he says. “The name Sinai really shouts at you from the pages of history because you have got no other ancient house with that name.”
The two key points for Adkins is the labyrinth of natural tunnels and caves and the timing of when Burton Abbey monks took possession of that house—at the same time as the Templars were trying to conceal that hoard.
“A geologist once told me that there were caverns as big as Westminster Abbey beneath the house,” he told the Express.
In 1880, a dig took place in the Sinai House tunnels and archaeologists reached half-a-mile underground before being ‘forced back by fumes’. The cellar’s stone archway has remained bricked up since.
The opening was sealed with bricks – SWNS
“We know there is really strong evidence they brought manuscripts and gold from the Temple of Solomon in 1307. I think they adapted the tunnels to conceal whatever they brought from Jerusalem.”
David said the family living in Sinai House at the time left in the early 1300s, and Burton Abbey then took over the property, which was hidden by Needham Forest atop a hill that drops into the Trent Valley.
Kate Murphy, the current owner has now given David permission to search the vast caverns under her home in a bid to solve the mystery. The researcher, who previously made headlines when he tracked down a 10,000-year-old skull known as ‘Greta’, wants to start his search with a geophysical scan.
Murphy, 56, bought the house in 1994 for £50,000. It is nationally designated as a Grade II historical building— which means it is of ‘special interest warranting every effort to preserve’ it.
“It’s a hugely important site and I first saw it with my late husband David in 1990 because we liked timber framed houses.
“I’m totally wedded to the idea that there is something there,” she told SWNS. “I think the theory is very good, well researched and I’m very impressed by David’s work.”
“I’m very excited about it and it’s not cynicism about the story that I think it is unlikely something will be found – that is because of the inaccessibility of the tunnels.
“There is plenty more evidence in the house like the wall paintings of the tabernacle that there is something going on.
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Quote of the Day: “There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech.” – Charles Spurgeon
Photo: by Tony Detroit
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?
A wildlife fan who set up a camera in a bird box to film a family of blue tits was stunned when the videos attracted 41 million hits in one month.
43-year-old John Chadwick started live-streaming footage of the birds with their chicks so his family could watch their progress before they flew the nest.
But just weeks after uploading the videos to YouTube, he racked up millions of views from around the world.
John said: “It’s gone a little bit bonkers. I only wanted to show my neighbors, friends, nieces, and nephews what the birds were up to. I had no idea the films would attract such interest.
“To think that literally tens of millions of people have been avidly watching the birds from around the world is just incredible and quite overwhelming.”
The sound engineer, who has toured with Aerosmith and the Beatles’ Ringo Starr, bought the bird box on a whim during lockdown.
He installed it on a willow tree in the back garden of his home in Leicester in March, and within hours two blue tits moved in and they had five chicks.
John said: “Within a day the birds moved in, and I wanted to know what was going on inside.
“I’d learnt how to livestream to help my local pub do their open mic, and over lockdown in February I bought a bird box camera.
“I started to livestream and do a highlights video every day—on the first day 100 people watched it.
“It showed things like the chicks being fed in the nests as the parents carried in caterpillars.
“Daily highlights continued, and about three days before the chicks fledged, I hit 100 subscribers.
“After three months of doing three hours editing a night of 15 hours of daily footage, I had 2,000 subscribers.
“I decided to put a final video together and keep it as short as possible—showing the birds going into the nests, the eggs hatching, and the chicks fledging.
“I put that up on June 7 and by Thursday 100,000 people had watched it, and by Saturday I had five million views.
“I went to a barbecue on Saturday afternoon and when I came back I had two million more In the first week I had done 10 million and now more than 41 million. It is just bizarre.”
John’s videos are mostly watched by people in America and India, with UK audiences accounting for just five per cent of his total views.
And despite the huge global success of the films, John is unlikely to make enough for a nest egg of his own.
He said: “My personal challenge to myself was to cross the threshold to get monetized, and then recoup the £150 I paid for the camera and £90 for the hard drive—it is due any day.
“Some people say they find it quite relaxing and some people are genuinely fascinated.”
In the first ever measurement of another planet’s core, seismography conducted over several Martian years have revealed the liquid metal core is softer than expected—more like a Mars-mellow than a Mars Bar.
While the recently arrived Perseverance rover has been hoovering up much of the Mars-related attention, a trio of recently published papers that measured the depth and composition of the crust, mantle, and iron-nickel core of the Red Planet—made by the 2018 NASA InSight lander—is looking to steal the limelight.
Using the same techniques in Earth seismography, geo-planetary scientists looked at data gained from InSight’s extremely sensitive seismometer to measure a series of “marsquakes.” The data they recovered help paint a picture of the progression of Mars from a planet that once had loads of liquid water and a stable atmosphere thanks to its magnetic field, to a world of frigid temperatures and rust.
There were challenges, and in what National Geographic described as a major analytical feat, it’s worth mentioning what needed overcoming.
On Earth, seismography is done with thousands of instruments placed in different areas. InSight has one.
With no plate tectonics to speak of, earthquakes on Mars are extremely faint and the strongest ever recorded would barely be noticed by humans—even if they were standing mere miles from the epicenter.
Given the lack of additional instruments and the faintness of the tremors, the seismometer on InSight needed to be extremely sensitive, such that it would also pick up readings from the wind, as well as the creaks coming from minute molecular changes in the metal of the lander itself as it heats up and cools down every Martian day.
The most seismically active region on Mars was half a planet away from the lander, and the planet’s core blocked any readings that might have reached InSight.
A big softy
Insight Lander; NASA/Caltech
Through all this, the team managed to get dimensions of the planet’s core, the upper mantle, and the Martian crust—all to within a few miles of accuracy.
“As a seismologist, you probably have one chance in your life to find a core for a planet,” says InSight member Simon Stähler, a seismologist at the research university ETH Zurich, in an interview with National Geographic.
Their principle resources were P-waves and S-waves, the same two tremor types that scientists measure on Earth and on the Moon. P-waves move a bit like wind on water, pushing things down, while S-waves vibrate and wriggle side-to-side, dislodging particles as they move.
These two waves move through different kinds of matter, giving a sort of “length and height” level of granularity. P-waves can move through solids, liquids, and gasses, while S-waves can move only through solids. Because the P-waves can go through a solid mantle into a liquid core, measuring their readings in a way similar to sonar gives you an idea of the depth of the core, while measuring the return speed of the S-wave gives you a depth at which the core begins, since it can’t pass through liquid, and returns surface-bound.
By measuring a set of P-wave, S-wave, and then a fainter delayed S-wave a few hundred seconds later, the team determined that the Martian core is around 1,830 kilometers wide, slightly bigger than anticipated. This means that unlike Earth, which has an upper mantle and lower mantle, Mars has only one—about 500 kilometers deep.
“We inferred a mean core density of 5.7 to 6.3 grams per cubic centimeter, which requires a substantial complement of light elements dissolved in the iron-nickel core,” write the authors, which published a paper on each planetary layer, in the journal Science.
What it means
Estimated to contain carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur, this softer-than-expected core and single-layer lithosphere could shed light on the creation and disappearance of the Martian magnetosphere which took place 3.7 billion years ago.
With a smaller lithosphere and a more porous core, convection currents would have created the potential for rapid cooling of the interior which National Geographic hypothesize as the genesis for the Martian magnetosphere.
The loss of the magnetosphere would have caused the original Martian atmosphere to dissipate, so understanding what planetary components might have led to that is key to understanding why Mars lost all her water and became a cold rusty desert.
Lastly, by mapping in detail the Martian crust, which consists of either two or three layers at a depth between 24 and 72 kilometers, the team found that radioactive, heat-producing elements were 13-21 times more plentiful than elsewhere, which could help form a working theory on why Martian volcanoes appear where they do on a planet that has no plate tectonic forces which would normally create them.
The Red Planet is revealing its secrets to us, forming a case study of planetary geosciences in conditions totally unlike those on Earth, and expanding our capabilities of understanding the most interesting heavenly bodies—planets.
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In a drive to soak up some of the 527 million small electrical items owned by UK homes, many of which would be thrown in the trash, a new campaign to repair, recycle, or ethically scrap electricals is underway in Glasgow.
The Recycle your Electricals campaign is utilizing local resources like mend and repair stores, conscious consumers, and state campaigns to get devices into the hands of those that need them, and valuable materials out of the machines that don’t.
Run by the non-profit Material Focus, and relying on support from the Glasgow city council and the Remade Network, The Recycle your Electricals campaign is already seeing a huge response.
With a focus on repairing, donating, recycling, and reselling, it’s essentially a massive reshuffle of the distribution of electrical goods.
“For too long, consumers have been blamed for not reusing and repairing enough when the facilities don’t exist for people to make better choices,” said Sophie Unwin, Director of Remade Network, who are contributing their Tech Drop service which allows people to bring anything with a battery or plug that will fit into a carrier bag to one of their locations, giving residents the option of “ethical binning,” with Remade sort out the details.
This has allowed them to donate 1,000 desktop PCs, sourced from government offices, to households that have no access to the internet through 50 local charity groups. The social enterprise has so far diverted 250 tons of CO2.
No wee problem
Material Focus estimates that the cost of the materials contained within unwanted electricals amounts to around £17 billion ($24 billion). A lot of these have to be dug out of the earth at extreme costs to companies—and to the climate in the form of CO2.
“This project is vital to ensuring that we make good use of our old electricals,” said Scott Butler, Executive Director of Material Focus. “Whether they are re-used or recycled—these items contain valuable materials that will otherwise be lost forever. Our research has shown that in the UK we are hoarding over 527 million small electrical items, an average of 20 per household.”
Along with funding from Glasgow City Council, Remade Network and Material Focus receive money through a UK scheme called WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) which sets parameters to which manufacturers can design products in order to ensure they can be recycled.
Any non-compliance is punished with a tax that goes to a fund which groups like Remade and Material Focus draw from.
Material Focus’ recycling locator has over 2,500 points where people can take their old e-waste, a service which 127,000 people have already used.
E-waste is a growing problem worldwide, but that’s perhaps because there’s been no large-scale solution for it.
Receiving old electronics, harvesting them for components, and selling them to manufacturers for cheap is a great way to keep rare minerals in the ground, and prices down at the shops.
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Building on substantial evidence of crow consciousness, a German university has proven some crows can learn to recognize ‘zero’ as a counting unit.
While that sounds ridiculous, zero is not nothing, rather it’s one of the most complex mathematical concepts devised—that something can and should represent nothing, not only as the base value, but as a placeholder.
The work comes from the University of Tübingen in Germany, where professor Andreas Nieder works with carrion crows to perform intelligence tests.
“The conception of “nothing” as number “zero” is celebrated as one of the greatest achievements in mathematics,” wrote Nieder in his paper. “We show that crows can grasp the empty set as a null numerical quantity that is mentally represented next to number one.”
Exactly how this breakthrough was made is straightforward and did not involve birds watching Sesame Street.
The crows were shown two sets of dots on a screen and were taught to indicate if the two screens had the same values. There could be between zero and four dots. Exactly as with 1, 2, 3, and 4—when the screens showed no dots, neurons in the crow’s brain demonstrated it was understanding this was a numeric value, but that it was a numeric value that contained nothing.
Sometimes the crows made mistakes, often by thinking zero was in fact one, but it was rare they thought zero represented more than two.
Counting Crows
It took human civilization at least until the 20th century BCE to firmly establish the empty or base value. At some point between the Akkadians and Old Babylonians, there was a symbol to represent a number was missing from a column, for example the 0 in 1,025 doesn’t mean the number is 26, it just means there are no hundreds in this number.
As early as 1,770 the Egyptians were making hieroglyphs with the base value “nfr” from which began counting and distances. The ponderous Greeks never managed to capture the concept into their counting, language, or philosophy, meaning that as well as occasionally being smarter than a first grader, these “Counting Crows” were smarter in some ways than the Classical Greeks.
Nieder contributed greatly to the current theory of animal consciousness, which is that it’s possible this highest level of thought isn’t necessarily bound to the presence of the cerebral cortex, a cranial region found only in primates, apes, and hominids.
In an older experiment he trained two crows to peck at panels following a flash of blue light or red light, but Nieder made the task more difficult by changing the rules constantly, which required the crows to zoom out and look at the task as a whole, rather than simply assigning physical motions to a reward.
He would change which light was assigned to which panel, and he would sometimes change the rules before the flash, and sometimes after the flash, constantly interrupting the birds’ base instructions.
“These results suggest that the neural foundations that allow sensory consciousness arose either before the emergence of mammals or independently in at least the avian lineage and do not necessarily require a cerebral cortex,” wrote Nieder and the other authors in their corresponding paper published in Science.
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Quote of the Day: “Though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that…” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Photo: by Lina Trochez
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?
A true visionary is someone who recognizes opportunities where others do not. If you’re keen enough to spot it, the next new trend might pop up almost anywhere—even in a bag of chips. (You just have to be careful not to eat your fortune before you find your fame.)
13-year-old Rylee Stuart was plowing through a packet of Doritos when she happened on a chip that looked like a puffed-up triangular pillow. The Queensland teen was about to pop it into her mouth, but noting its unique shape, thought better of scarfing down the inflated morsel.
Instead, Rylee posted her unusual find to TikTok, asking her followers for feedback on how to best eat it. Their advice? Put the puffy chip on eBay to see what price it might fetch. With a starting bid of $0.99, that’s just what the enterprising Aussie teen did.
Fast forward, and thanks to a dose of social media magic, Rylee’s funky TikTok entry has chalked up 6 million views and counting.
Meanwhile, prior to the listing being taken down, the eBay auction for the “one of a kind” culinary oddity topped out in the neighborhood of $100,000. But not before its Internet notoriety caught the attention of Doritos Chief Marketing Officer Vandita Pandey.
In recognition of her “boldness and entrepreneurial spirit,” Rylee’s crunchy bite of zeitgeist earned her a cool $20,000 award from the corporation’s head honchos.
“It’s been a whirlwind couple of days for Rylee and her family and we’ve loved following her story,” Pandey told 9News. “We’ve been so impressed with Rylee’s boldness and entrepreneurial spirit, so we wanted to make sure the Stuart family were rewarded for their creativity and love for Doritos.”
Now that the funky snack zeppelin has gone viral, Rylee’s dad has been teasing his daughter that he’s contesting ownership of the golden ticket.
“Dad is saying that since he bought the packet, it’s his chip,” a gleeful Rylee told 9News. “But I ate the packet and found it, so I believe it is mine.”
Since it’s commonly held that possession is nine-tenths of the law, we won’t be disputing her claim. One thing’s sure, however: Rylee’s eagle-eyed chip-scouting ability combined with the talent to make it meme-worthy gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “cashing in your chips.”
The Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 left a mark on the world in the form of the Shinkansen high-speed train, a feat which this year’s repeat hosts look to match with a vision of the future of civic planning.
While enduring some criticism for going through with the games during COVID-19, Tokyo has presented the world with the first hydrogen-powered Olympics, complete with an entire fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, a hydrogen-powered pair of stadiums, a hotel, and Olympic village.
Hydrogen power, not to be confused with hydro-electric power, is foreseen by some as the obvious renewable energy of the future. As the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen fuel-cells produce no emissions of any kind except for water, which can be used to irrigate agriculture or gardens.
Like most renewables technologies, hydrogen power has had its fair share of growing pains, but with help from Tokyo’s Research Center for a Hydrogen Energy-Based Society (ReHES), established by the city government in the lead-up to the games, these problems can be surmounted.
“With their immense reach and visibility, the Olympic Games are a great opportunity to demonstrate technologies which can help tackle today’s challenges, such as climate change,” says Marie Sallois, Director for Sustainability at the International Olympic Committee.
“Tokyo 2020’s showcasing of hydrogen is just one example of how these Games will contribute to this goal.”
Starting in 2017, Japan became the first nation-state to adopt a national hydrogen strategy, and increased their hydrogen power R&D to around $300 million to fund 2018 and 2019. As part of this push they built one of the largest hydrogen fuel plants in the world in the town of Namie in Fukushima.
There, 10,000 kilowatts of clean energy produce 900 metric tons of hydrogen per year: Helping power a fleet of 500 hydrogen cars, 100 hydrogen buses, and even hydrogen forklifts. 35 refueling stations have been built around the city.
At the intersection between the Tokyo Bay and heritage zones, the International Olympic Village is the first full-scale hydrogen infrastructure in Tokyo.
As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?
A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.
Writing in the latest issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science at Yale, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.
This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.
“At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior,” said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale.” But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form.”
In the study, Crair’s team, led by Yale graduate students Xinxin Ge and Kathy Zhang, explored the origins of these waves of activity. Imaging the brains of mice soon after birth but before their eyes opened, the Yale team found that these retinal waves flow in a pattern that mimics the activity that would occur if the animal were moving forward through the environment.
“This early dream-like activity makes evolutionary sense because it allows a mouse to anticipate what it will experience after opening its eyes, and be prepared to respond immediately to environmental threats,” Crair noted.
They found that blocking the function of starburst amacrine cells, which are cells in the retina that release neurotransmitters, prevents the waves from flowing in the direction that mimics forward motion. This in turn impairs the development of the mouse’s ability to respond to visual motion after birth.
Intriguingly, within the adult retina of the mouse these same cells play a crucial role in a more sophisticated motion detection circuit that allows them to respond to environmental cues.
Mice, of course, differ from humans in their ability to quickly navigate their environment soon after birth. However, human babies are also able to immediately detect objects and identify motion, such as a finger moving across their field of vision, suggesting that their visual system was also primed before birth.
“These brain circuits are self-organized at birth and some of the early teaching is already done,” Crair said. “It’s like dreaming about what you are going to see before you even open your eyes.”
With the state of the pandemic varying across the globe, the new normal looks different depending on where you go.
But no matter your situation, Google Maps has some helpful new tools to help you navigate and explore as safely as possible.
It’s no surprise that transit ridership took a drastic plunge during the early days of the pandemic. While people are returning to public transit—with transit directions on Maps increasing 50% compared to last year in the U.S.—safety remains top of mind.
That’s why Google Maps is expanding transit crowdedness predictions to over 10,000 transit agencies in 100 countries, so you’ll know if your line is likely to have lots of open seats, hit full capacity, or be anywhere in between.
With this information you can decide whether you want to hop on board or wait for another train. Because pandemic or not, no-one likes standing in a jam-packed subway car.
These predictions are made possible through our AI technology, contributions from people using Google Maps, and historical location trends that predict future crowdedness levels for transit lines all over the world.
‘All these predictions were designed with privacy in mind. Google said in a statement: “We apply world-class anonymization technology and differential privacy techniques to Location History data to make sure your data remains secure and private.”
In New York and Sydney, we’re piloting the ability to see live crowdedness information right down to the transit car level.
This feature is powered by data from agencies like Long Island Rail Road and Transport for New South Wales, with more cities coming soon.
So how is transit crowdedness trending across the U.S.? New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington D.C. lead the pack as some of the cities with the most crowded lines.
Nationally, you’re most likely to get a seat at 9 a.m, whereas cars may be standing room only between 7-8 a.m.
In the evening, leaving earlier than rush hour will up your chances of grabbing a seat, with lines being far less crowded at 3 p.m. than they are between 4-5 p.m.
Be intentional with your time
After living through a global pandemic, people have told us that they want to be more intentional about how they spend their time. The new Timeline Insights tab, which is visible only to you, can help you do just that.
If you’re an Android user and you’ve chosen to turn on Location History, you’ll see a new tab in your Timeline (just tap on your profile photo, then Your Timeline to find it) that provides monthly trends about how you’re navigating the world.
You’ll see which modes of transportation you’ve used and the distance and time you’ve driven, flown, biked or walked. You can also see how much time you’re spending at different places—like shops, airports and restaurants—and instantly drill down to see all the places you visited.
Reminisce about past trips and plan future ones when you feel safe
If you’re feeling nostalgic but not quite ready to travel yet, head on over to the Trips in Timeline tab which is now live for everyone on Android.
Use Trips in Timeline to relive parts of past vacations, like which hotels you stayed at during that epic trip to Tokyo or the restaurants you visited on your weekend getaway.
Planning ahead? Export these places to a list and share them with friends who need travel recommendations.
If you want to edit your information, you can easily manage your data—in bulk, in-line, or with auto-delete controls—right from your private Timeline.
Navigating this ever-changing ‘normal’ will take some getting used to, but Google Maps is here to help you get your bearings. Check out a few more helpful tips to help you plan and get around—whether you’re using Google Maps on Android or iOS.
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One of the biggest debates in modern automotive industry, that there are comparative or more greenhouse gasses produced through EVs and hybrid vehicles, looks to finally be settled after the release of a comprehensive review.
Using a life cycle assessment (LCA), the measurement of every ounce of carbon created from the cradle to the grave of the vehicle showed that electric vehicles still had substantially less emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs).
From the moment the concept of the Toyota Prius had its curtain drawn back for the first time, automotive minds have been skeptical that hybrids and electrics (EVs) would be any more green after considering the extreme carbon costs of creating the battery and the fact that the electricity to charge it came from burning the same fossil fuels they were meant to replace.
However in the new LCA from the International Council for Clean Transportation everything, from the mining costs of lithium to make the batteries, to transporting them across the world via container ship, to the end-of-life burden, and even the current and perceived mix of energy generation in a given society, was taken into account across the four dominant car markets: Europe, the U.S., India , and China. Even in the latter two—the biggest burners of coal (often brown coal) and oil for electricity on Earth—it still uses less emissions to drive an EV than an ICV.
“Emissions over the lifetime of average medium-size EVs registered today are already lower than comparable gasoline cars by 66%–69% in Europe, 60%–68% in the United States, 37%–45% in China, and 19%–34% in India,” the summary of the report states.
“Additionally, as the electricity mix continues to decarbonize, the life-cycle emissions gap between EVs and gasoline vehicles increases substantially when considering medium-size cars projected to be registered in 2030.”
Early skeptics of EVs and hybrids did have a reason to suspect just how eco-friendly they were at the turn of the century, for example even with modern battery technology, it’s still a little more carbon-intensive to manufacture an EV or hybrid.
However like all technologies, market innovations make things better, cheaper, and faster. Battery recycling technology for example would not only drive the cost of the EV down, but also the carbon footprint.
A hiccup in the report is that it uses estimates from the International Energy Agency to make projections about the potential energy mix 18 years into the future, which is how long the report assumes a car’s drivable lifespan is.
That’s extremely ballpark, as bureaucrats across the world tend to say a lot more than they do in regards to advancing renewable energy policy, and if a major political power shift occurred in any of these countries, the IEA report wouldn’t be accounting for such policy changes.
