The world’s largest floating office building opens in the Netherlands, where unsurprisingly it will host the offices of the Global Center on Adaptation.
Anchored in the harbor of Rijnhaven in Rotterdam, both office and organization will make a fighting partnership in the attempts to lessen the impact of climate change on our society, particularly in a country that’s below the level of the sea.
Floating Office Rotterdam, or FOR, was recently inaugurated by King Willem-Alexander, and former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who heads the team taking up residence in the 4,500 square-meter (48,500 square-foot), three-floor office space.
Built of prefabricated timbers arranged atop 15 custom built concrete pontoons, the upper floors feature wrap around terraces to enjoy the view of the city.
An overhanging roof shades the interior from the sun. Powering FOR is an 800 square-meter array of solar panels hooked up to batteries ashore.
It also uses the northerly waters of the Dutch harbor as a heat sink to regulate temperatures in the offices without using climate control. Finally the offices are fully recyclable after the materials are no longer safe for continued use.
Powerhouse Company
“We designed our floating office to reflect the values of its inhabitants: the Global Center on Adaptation,” writes Powerhouse Company, the architects of the FOR.
“This Rotterdam-based NGO… aims at promoting planning, investment, and technology to mitigate climate change.
“The carbon-neutral building is designed to be climate resilient and will float if sea levels rise due to climate change. Our climate-resilient office is both an illustration of the center’s mission and sets an example for how to build sustainable floating structures.”
The Global Center on Adaptation has a lease in the building for ten years, after which it will move to another tenant.
Quote of the Day: “Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight—things that have nothing to do with reason.” – Vivienne Westwood (turned 80 years old this year)
Photo: by Martin Adams
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?
A company that GNN began supporting in 2017 when they were making fashion-forward scarves that filter the air at the level of N95 or higher, has gone above and beyond, producing a new single-use mask that closes the lifecycle loop for every wearer concerned about the environment—especially since the pandemic has created so much landfill waste.
The company, G95 (formerly Bioscarf) is so committed to sustainability, they began developing a special version of their filtration material after seeing the damage that discarded PPE was doing to our oceans since the pandemic began.
Everything related to the newly developed Oceanshield mask—from the ear loops to the nose bridge—is made entirely using plant-based PLA materials which is 100% biodegradable. This includes the bags they ship in, the individual wrappers for each product, and the G95 filtration technology built-in. And they provide KN95- and FFP2-certified filtration.
But how they’re “going beyond” is the best part. When you are done with the mask, instead of throwing it away, simply put it in the envelope that it arrived in, and mail it back to the company for free—and they will recycle them into new masks!
If any of the masks do happen to reach the landfill or waterway, because they are 100% made out of plant-based materials, they will fully biodegrade in approximately 90 days.
“Lab-tested & certified!” says the company’s founder, Carlton Solle, talking with GNN. “It’s the world’s first single-use mask made using 100% plant-based materials.”
And they will give you a $1.00 store credit for every Oceanshield mask that you return for responsible disposal.
Also, because Carlton and his co-founder, wife Hazel Solle, are serious about preventing masks from ending up polluting the ocean, you can send them used masks from ANY other manufacturers and receive a 25¢ in G95 store credit for each one shipped back.
Insane brilliance, right?
How to close the lifecycle loop
When you receive your shipment, carefully open it by using the tear strip on the back. Keep your bag because you’ll need it to mail back your used masks. At the end of each day, simply put your used mask into the bag, together with the wrapper it came in.
When you have used up all of the masks, put them into the bag, place the enclosed mailing return sticker over the old sticker on the front of the bag. Be sure to fill out the enclosed card with your contact information and write in how many masks you are returning to receive the store credit mentioned earlier.
“We’ve spent years developing these, and are really passionate about it,” says Solle. “Given the state of things, it will be a real game-changer.”
Their founding story is as good as the product
During a business trip to China, Carlton Solle became ill, most likely due to complications related to air pollution. As an alternative to wearing an ugly mask to protect himself, he turned to fashion. Back in Atlanta, his wife Hazel came up with the idea to design a product that would work both as a scarf and also a filter. (You might have seen the photo of our GNN founder wearing one during the wildfires in California when the air was so bad.)
For people traveling outside the US, these masks are FFP2 rated, and they have been submitted for FFP2 and CE registrations, so you can use them all around the world. Some European airlines may insist on FFP2-rated masks for boarding passengers.
The company, G95, is currently shipping their products within 1-2 days for FREE—using USPS Priority Mail in the US—and they now ship international orders over $100 FREE via UPS.
Discount code for GNN readers gives 20% off
If you enter the code GNN20 at checkout you will get a 20% discount on any order over $100.
The G95 website has a number of products that filter with their G95 technology, which they say is “like N95 on steroids.” Their hoodies and pullovers are designed to turn up to filter nose and mouth, and their gaiters and masks can be washed 50 times and still retain an N95 rating. They also have an informative FAQs page here.
The Oceanshield is available now and sold in packs of 30 for $79 USD via the G95 website.
SHARE the Phenomenal Deal With Anyone Who Needs a Single-Use Mask… (And, Spread the Word on Social Media!)
A team of investigators has succeeded in restoring brain trauma by hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
This is the first time in the scientific world that non-drug therapy has been proven effective in preventing the core biological processes responsible for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Using a specific protocol of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), cerebral blood flow (CBF) improved/increased in elderly patients by 16-23%, alleviating vascular dysfunction and amyloid burden.
The study from Tel Aviv University, part of a comprehensive research program directed toward aging and accompanying ailments as a reversible disease, holds promise for a new strategic approach to the prevention of Alzheimer’s by addressing not only the symptoms or targeting biomarkers, but rather the core pathology and biology responsible for the development of the disease.
Hyperbaric medicine is a form of therapy that requires patients to be kept in special chambers in which the atmospheric pressure is much higher than that normally experienced at sea level.
In addition, they breathe air composed of 100% oxygen.
Hyperbaric medicine is considered safe and already serves to treat an extensive list of medical conditions. In recent years, scientific evidence has indicated that unique protocols of hyperbaric therapy are capable of inducing repair of damage brain tissue and renewed growth of blood vessels and nerve cells in the brain.
The first stage of the study, published in Agingjournal, was carried out on an animal model, in the course of which it was proven conclusively through examination of brain tissues that a certain therapeutic protocol brings about an improvement in vascular function and the creation of new blood vessels.
It also prevents the deposit of new amyloid plaques on the brain cells and even leads to the removal of existing amyloid plaque deposits. Amyloids are non-soluble proteins. Deposits of such proteins in the brain are connected with severe degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
At the next stage, the effects of the treatment were examined for people above the age of 65 with cognitive decline, with an emphasis on memory loss, a stage preceding Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The therapy included a series of 60 session of HBOT unique in pressure chambers over a period of 90 days.
The effects on the brain were evaluated by high resolution perfusion MRI. The hyperbaric treatment protocol gave rise to: increased blood flow in the range of 16%-23%; significant improved in memory by 16.5% on average, significant improvement in attention and information processing speed.
Dr. Ronit Shapira said, “The combination of an animal model from which we could learn the pathology of the disease, together with existing and available therapy, raises the hope that we will now be able to fight one of the greatest challenges to the western world.
“According to our findings, hyperbaric therapy given at a young age is likely to prevent this severe disease entirely.”
An early Bronze Age log coffin containing the remains of a man buried with an axe thought to date from 4,000 years ago has been discovered accidentally on a golf course.
The discovery of the coffin and its contents sparked a rescue mission funded by a £70,000 ($97,000) grant from Historic England and supported by a team of staff and students from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology working nearby who offered their assistance.
The coffin, which is three meters long and one meter wide, was specially protected to ensure the delicate structure did not crumble after it was exposed to the sun and air.
It was made from hollowing out a tree trunk, and plants were used to cushion the body, then a gravel mound was raised over the grave; practices that were only afforded to people with a high status within Bronze Age society.
The remarkable find was made by chance during works to a pond at Tetney Golf Club in July 2018, during a spell of hot weather. The golf club’s owner, Mark Casswell, was put in contact with the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Historic England.
Following a year of cold storage while being assessed, it was moved to York Archaeological Trust where it has been undergoing preservation work.
According to the archaeologists, the axe seems more a symbol of authority than a practical tool, while the coffin gives an insight into how social hierarchy was marked out in the early Bronze Age.
So far, yew or juniper leaves have been found within the coffin and further work is planned to discover more about how plants were used in this burial practice, and the time of year the burial took place.
The axe is extremely rare, there’s thought to be only 12 known from Britain, especially because the wooden shaft survives as well as the stone head.
The log-coffin was originally created by carving a large, single, fast-growing oak tree.
It used ‘split timber’ construction technique, where the tree trunk was split lengthways first to create a half or slightly larger log for carving, rather than hollowing out a whole tree from scratch. It probably had a lid, of which part survives.
There are around 65 early Bronze Age log coffins known from Britain as it is rare for them to survive, given they are made of wood. In this case a deep layer of silt aided its preservation. However, once the coffin was exposed it was a race to prevent its rapid deterioration.
Tim Allen, of Historic England, said, “The man buried at Tetney lived in a very different world to ours but like ours, it was a changing environment, rising sea levels and coastal flooding ultimately covered his grave and burial mound in a deep layer of silt that aided its preservation.
Mark Casswell, owner of Tetney Golf Club, added, “My family farmed here for years before we opened the Golf Course and I’d never have imagined that there was a whole other world buried under the fields.
“It’s amazing how well preserved the axe is with its handle still there like it was made yesterday. We’ll have a nice photograph of it up on the Clubhouse wall, all those years that people have been living here working the land, it’s certainly something to think about while you’re playing your way round the course.”
Meet the man and jackdaw who have an adorable bond after a chance roadside encounter, and now even go on bicycle rides together.
55-year-old Michael Smith spotted an injured baby jackdaw lying on the roadside as he cycled home one evening in May.
He scooped up the tiny bird, now named Patch, and took him home where he made him a little nest and fed him scrambled eggs.
Now recovered, and about 16 weeks old, Patch has spread his wings, but comes back to his rescuer when Michael calls.
Bird and man have such a close relationship that Patch gives his friend little beaky kisses and hitches lifts on his bike rides and walks.
Patch has been a celebrity guest at a wedding, and Michael loves him so much he even slept rough one night when his feathered friend didn’t come out of a tree.
Michael, an ex-builder from Malvern in Worcestershire, said, “I love nature and animals, so I couldn’t leave him injured in the hedgerow.
“He’s like my best friend now, and I spend as much time with him as possible. When I’m without him I’m thinking about him, and when I see him again he does a little joyful squark that is different from his normal screech. He’s the best pet and everyone loves him. He is the talk of the town, and if I’m without him everyone’s asking after him.”
Michael suspected Patch, who he thinks is a boy, had been attacked by another animal when he found him with a mangled wing.
After living in an old pigeon box Michael got from a friend, and tucking into scrambled and boiled eggs, bread and milk, Patch took four weeks to recover use of his wing.
Michael still feeds Patch mealworms, and fruit like cherries and grapes, but the now-recovered bird catches moths, wasps, and flies for himself.
Patch lives in an aviary that Michael built in the garden, but comes in for play dates and occasional sleepovers in the house Michael shares with his mother 78-year-old mother Mary.
Michael said, “People call me the bird whisperer, or bird-man of Malvern. It came quite naturally to me. And I remembered all these tales I’ve heard about people rescuing birds and forming a bond.”
“He sits on my shoulder and puts his little beak to my face or gently nibbles my ear. He lets me stroke him under his breast and his feathers on his back all quiver. And he lets me rub his beak. He’s so much fun.
“I was quite well known around here but I’m even more so now: it’s a lovely thing to be known for,” said Michael.
When out walking, he hops down to play in puddles, and once enjoyed paddling in a stream on a Malvern hills excursion.
“Having him is such a lovely thing to happen.”
(MEET Mike and Patch in the video below.)
ADD a Little Croak to Social Media and Share This Sweet Story…
If you’re the mayor of a rustic 800 year-old town with just 1,000 people, how can you stop the town from fading away as young people move to the major cities? How about you sell all the empty properties for one euro?
44 towns in Italy are currently listed under the €1.00 House Project, which serves the triple-purpose of saving old abandoned real estate from condemnation, repopulating historic towns with dwindling populations, and allowing young people a super-easy entrance into the real estate market for the purposes of investment or starting a family.
These towns are the kinds of places that we Americans could never believe could be abandoned, and that delight us with their antiquity.
The €1.00 House Project allows mayors of small towns to put their empty properties up for sale for just one euro. Housing agreements are for three years typically, and struck with a deposit of €5,000 euro from the buyer to ensure the property will be restored.
A detailed plan of the restoration, be it for the purpose of a restaurant, a B&B, or a normal home, must be agreed upon, and at least semi-permanent residence is encouraged, reports CNN, who took a look a Maenza in Lazio.
Here are some other towns looking for fresh oxygen.
Pignone – La Spezia – Liguria
Pignone/Davide Papalini, CC license
The beautiful town of Pignone, or “feather,” is located in the La Spezia Province of southeast Liguria, near the Cinque Terre National Park, made famous by Rick Steves.
“Ancient is the history of Pignone that dates back to some finds in the Bronze Age,” writes the listing on the €1.00 House Project website. “The village is without walls but the compactness of the houses, leaning against each other, forms a defensive barrier along the canal that crosses it. To enter the village you have to cross a characteristic Romanesque bridge in the form of a “donkey’s back” built around 1500.”
As part of the Valley of Vara, Pignone is the sight of corn, legume, and potato cultivation, the former of which is very important as it goes towards the production of polenta, a regional staple. Every year at the end of summer, a farmer’s festival is held in town attended by hundreds of people to showcase the local products.
Sambuca – Agrigento – Sicily
Sambuca/Mboesch, CC license
A hilly town about 900 feet above sea level, Sambuca is inhabited by around 6,000 people and has the honor of being included in the club of the most beautiful villages in Italy.
Founded by Arabs around 1,000 CE, the city center still carries many of the architectural motifs of the Islamic travelers. It was one of the first towns to offer old houses for €1.00, and it’s famous for sheep cheese, focaccia, and is part of the National Association of Wine Cities.
There’s regular theater, hiking on the nearby mountain, and a short drive to the beach. Literally what’s not to love?
Oyace – Aosta – Valle D’Aosta
Oyace/ Patafisiki, CC license
Located in one of the lesser-known regions of Italy, Oyace is a tiny little mountain hamlet that offers perspective home buyers a totally different kind of Italy.
“The mayor Stefania Clos is eager to repopulate her mountain village, where 200 people currently reside,” reads the listing on the website. “From Roman times, the town of Oyace has its main economic resource in the breeding of livestock and [is] an excellent producer of Fontina.”
A hearth and stove in Oyace gives the strong-legged homeowner access to the highest massifs in Europe, for trekking, stargazing, camping, skiing, and more.
Romana – Sassasri – Sardinia
Romana/Gianni Careddu, CC license
Surrounded by karst rock landscapes and evidence of prehistoric civilizations, Romana is not your average island town. Instead a house in Romana, with its muraled streets and walls will make one feel part of a very old way of life.
Numerous nearby churches lie carved into the walls of cliffs or established in caves, while the agropastoral life which dominated this elevated volcanic plain means that amazing local meat and cheese is available for cheap.
“For those who love nature and immersion in ancient history, Sardinia and the municipality of Romana are the right place to plan your dream 1 Euro House Project,” writes the website. “We must not forget that you are only a 45-minute drive away from the most beautiful sea in Sardinia.”
BUILD Up the Idea of New Opportunities in Chums’ Feeds…
Quote of the Day: “I’m a believer in belief. Faith is something that works—it causes people to do things, it has results. It’s an intangible, indefinable, very real thing.” – Tommy Lee Jones (turns 75 today)
Photo: by Jay Mullings
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?
As city officials wrangle under the pressure to reduce urban violence and deal with demands from police unions, homeowners’ associations, and gun lobbyists, residents in some of the most violent neighborhoods in the country have opted instead to pull up a chair, and have a sit down.
One such movement has been the 21 Days of Peace event in Minneapolis, a place where, even before the death of George Floyd, sometimes saw 11 homicides a month.
Here, community and church congregation members are simply seating themselves in lawn chairs on street corners in the most dangerous neighborhoods, and acting as “violence interrupters”—and police statistics show it’s working.
Compared to last summer, in June 2021 homicide numbers took a dive during the 21 Days of Peace, and continued to stay low in the following months, along with incidents of rape and aggravated assault.
“Our group asked the Minneapolis Police Department to identify the most dangerous spots in our neighborhood, the 4th Precinct, and then we went there, pulled out our chairs and sat down,” write Louis King and Jerry McAfee, in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
King is president and chief executive of Summit Academy OIC in Minneapolis, and McAfee is pastor of the city’s New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, but both are part of this new wave of violence interrupters.
“Too many leaders are responding by adopting a Nixonian ‘tough on crime’ stance—which usually translates into over-policing and under-supporting these communities,” they wrote. “The people sitting on these corners in their chairs are members of the community. We know our young people, and they know us.”
Similar movements of violence interruption have broken out with success in Nashville, where the groups Gideon’s Army and West Nashville Dream Center are working through community outreach to rebuild trust and using successful de-escalation to decrease crime by 40%, while arrests plummeted.
AP reports that in the areas where the Dream Center operates, crime has fallen 40%, giving a totally new perspective to police departments that for years had adopted tough-on-crime policies.
“We thought that was going to make it safer, and what we ended up doing was breaking down trust in those communities,” said police Lt. Jason Picanzo, who works with West Nashville Dream Center. Now, he says, it is the community that has made these neighborhoods safer.
Back in Minneapolis, King and McAfee believe that the moral bastion of the Black Church gives them a unique advantage over the police forces. They site similar examples in Baltimore where church groups are doing more for underserved communities, and at the same time reducing violence.
“We draw on the power of congregation—of family, of friends, and of community to try to interrupt the violence. And our faith gives us the courage to put ourselves in harm’s way,” they wrote.
It’s a strong gesture to unfold and lawn chair and simply sit where many people fear even to drive. Violence of any kind, whether it involves us or not, is a difficult situation to risk being caught up in, but desperate times also call on our ‘better angels’—and these Minnesotans are stretching their wings.
“We’re not declaring victory, by any means. But as elected officials look for answers to end the violence, they would be wise to pull up a chair and take a look at what’s working.”
An abandoned airport in Taiwan has been chosen as the stage for an exciting project in landscape architecture, blending green spaces with sensory experiences to create a refuge in one of the island’s biggest and most crowded cities.
The Phase Shift Park in Taichung will include 200 different plant species, and 10,000 trees to shade residents from humidity, but the real spectacle will be 12 urban landscape installations, corresponding with the philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Principle of the 12 Senses’.
Taichung’s air isn’t actually that bad, as most neighborhoods are labeled as “good” on the World Air Quality Index, however sitting just beneath of the Tropic of Cancer, and warmed by the Kuro-Shio, one of the largest marine currents on Earth, the hot, humid, and sticky air can be stifling in the summertime, holding water vapor and toxic particulates from car exhaust down near the ground.
The trees were chosen to offer maximum shade, and are built alongside winding lanes going from north to south, and through unique installations that play on Steiner’s senses of speech, taste, hearing, equilibrium, thinking, vision, movement, ego, touch, warmth, smell, and life.
Passing through the park, there’s a lake designed specifically to create lifelike echoes, and a field of flowers cultivated specifically to envelope it with an intoxicating curtain of perfumes.
Designed by French architecture firm Mosbach Paysagistes, the topography was carefully designed to maximize water permeation during the wet monsoon season. Underneath the soil lies complex flood control and irrigation measures that will ideally allow the rains to refuel the trees year-round.
The sound of dragonfly wings shoo mosquitoes away, Mosbach Paysagistes
The concept art and preliminary images show a futuristic landscape rather than a natural oasis.
Humidifiers within the park, Mosbach Paysagistes
It will do as much to bring tourists to the city as offer shelter, fresh air, and a play space for local residents.
Steiner believed that the world was essentially an indivisible entity, and that it’s our consciousness which divides it into split realms of sensory experience.
Solar panels power air-purifying technology within the park, Mosbach Paysagistes
It’s a fascinating guide with which to experience something like a park, and one which speaks to the breadth of our potential to connect with nature even in somewhere as dense as the urban center of Taichung.
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At age 6, Chad Keller already knew he wanted to be an astronaut, but his vision wasn’t sharp enough to pass the military requirements to become a fighter pilot.
Instead, never losing sight of his dream, Keller pursued a degree in aerospace engineering, hoping to someday make it into space.
On September 11, 2001 the 29-year-old U.S. Department of Defense and National Reconnaissance Office satellite propulsion specialist was on his way home to California after attending a series of launch meetings at the Pentagon.
At 9:37 a.m., the plane he was on—American Airlines Flight 77—crashed into the Pentagon.
Keller’s life ended that day, but thanks to the efforts of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, close to 20 years on, his space mission dreams were finally made a reality.
A former Navy SEAL platoon commander, Cassidy spent two tours in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11. He began training to become an astronaut in 2004 at the end of his second deployment.
Cassidy’s NASA career highlights include crewing aboard the Endeavor shuttle in 2009, two tours on the International Space station, and 10 spacewalks.
NASA
According to Cassidy, NASA allows astronauts to bring a selection of small personal keepsakes—such as photos, patches, or pins—along with them on their missions. For his first two space outings, Cassidy concentrated on mementos from his family but for his final mission in 2020, he wanted to share the unique and meaningful opportunity with someone who’d truly appreciate it.
After reading about Chad Keller’s lifelong passion for space travel at New York City’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Cassidy knew he’d found a kindred spirit.
Cassidy reached out to Keller’s father, Richard, with a proposition: He was heading into space soon and wondered if Chad would like to tag along. Richard’s answer was a resounding, “Yes!”
On April 2020, when Cassidy and the rest of his crew lifted off, pins from Chad’s days at Boeing and the University of Colorado, a program from his memorial service, a snapshot of Chad and his wife Lisa, and some of his ashes went with him.
To round out the collection, Cassidy also brought commemorative items from the 9/11 Museum.
NASA
Over the course of the mission, with a stunning backdrop of the Earth behind them, Cassidy photographed each item from his inventory in the space station’s observatory cupola.
NASA
Along with documenting moments in history, he also sent out messages of hope to the people on the planet below.
“With each item that I pull out, I always pause for a second to think a little bit about the story to that particular item,” Cassidy told CNN. “It’s kind of special to think about the story and the path, the journey of that object from the hands that it was in to my hands to this window.”
In the 20 years since Chad Keller’s passing, his family had a mission of their own—to scatter his ashes at the places that held the greatest meaning to him. Thanks to Cassidy, they were finally able to send them to the one place he’d always most wanted to go—space.
Now retired from NASA, Cassidy is currently overseeing the construction of the National Medal of Honor Museum and Medal of Honor Leadership Institute in Arlington, Texas, and the National Medal of Honor Monument in Washington, D.C.
While Cassidy and the Kellers have yet to meet in person, the bond they forged in bringing Chad’s dream to life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of tragedy; one told from a perspective that’s both humbling and hopeful.
“The world would be a better place if every human being got five minutes to look out that window of the space station,” Cassidy told CNN. “It made me more appreciative for everything that Earth offers to us. Friendships, connections, and shared experiences are all that much more meaningful to me now.”
And that is a take-away that’s universal.
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be,” Carl Sagan wrote. If we can simply remember that we’re part of something larger than ourselves, then whether we’re earthbound or breaking the bonds of gravity, in the here and now or part of what’s come before, all of us are sailing among the stars.
On a farm where cows freely relieve themselves as they graze, the accumulation and spread of waste often contaminates local soil and waterways. This can be controlled by confining the cows in barns, but in these close quarters their urine and feces combine to create ammonia, an indirect greenhouse gas. In an article published on September 13 in the journal Current Biology, researchers show that cows can be potty-trained, enabling waste to be collected and treated, thereby cleaning up the barn, reducing air pollution, and creating more open, animal-friendly farms.
“It’s usually assumed that cattle are not capable of controlling defecation or urination,” says co-author Jan Langbein, an animal psychologist at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Germany, but he and his team questioned this thinking. “Cattle, like many other animals or farm animals are quite clever and they can learn a lot. Why shouldn’t they be able to learn how to use a toilet?”
To potty-train the calves, a process they dubbed MooLoo training, the research team with scientists from FBN, FLI (Germany) and the University of Auckland (New Zealand) worked backward. They started off by rewarding the calves when they urinated in the latrine, and then they allowed the calves to approach the latrines from outside when they needed to urinate.
The ammonia produced in cow waste doesn’t directly contribute to climate change, but when it is leached into the soil, microbes convert it into nitrous oxide, the third-most important greenhouse gas after methane and carbon dioxide. Agriculture is the largest source of ammonia emissions, with livestock farming making up over half of that contribution.
“You have to try to include the animals in the process and train the animals to follow what they should learn,” says Langbein. “We guessed it should be possible to train the animals, but to what extent we didn’t know.”
To encourage latrine use, the researchers wanted the calves to associate urination outside the latrine with an unpleasant experience. “As a punishment we first used in-ear headphones and we played a very nasty sound whenever they urinated outside,” says Langbein. “We thought this would punish the animals—not too aversively—but they didn’t care. Ultimately, a splash of water worked well as a gentle deterrent.”
FBN
Over the course of a few weeks, the research team successfully trained 11 out of the 16 calves in the experiment—which has been published in Current Biology.
Remarkably, the calves showed a level of performance comparable to that of children and superior to that of very young children.
Langbein is optimistic that with more training that this success rate can be further improved.
“After ten, fifteen, twenty years of researching with cattle, we know that animals have a personality, and they handle different things in a different way. They are not all the same.”
Now that the researchers know how to potty-train cows, they want to transfer their results into real cattle housing and to outdoor systems. Langbein hopes that “in a few years all cows will go to a toilet,” he says.
Out between Mars and Jupiter in the solar system’s asteroid belt, there’s a lump of iron and nickel called 16 Psyche that has a value of $10,000 quadrillion: that’s 70,000-times more than the entire world economy.
With measurements of its density paired with its 140 mile-diameter, recent telescopic surveys with different spectrums of UV light have confirmed the asteroid to be around 90% iron, adding the last value in the equation to give 16 Psyche its whopping price tag.
Sitting 230 million miles from Earth, it offers a much different kind of value to scientists, namely to study one of the largest entirely-metal objects in the solar system, one which scientists believe could be a protoplanet that was disrupted during natural formation.
It’s now the subject of a 2022 NASA mission that will send an orbiter on a 3.5 year-mission to study a new type of world made of metal.
The orbiter will try to determine whether it’s simply a mass of iron and nickel, or indeed a planet’s core, as well as its age, and whether it can contain lighter elements found in Earth’s high-pressure core.
“We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” said Dr. Tracy Becker, an expert on 16 Psyche from the Southwest Research Institute.
“Earth has a metal core, a mantle and crust. It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.”
Becker, who published a UV-light observation study of the asteroid last year, considers it a chance “to understand what really makes up a planet and to potentially see the inside of a planet.”
But how is it that so much heavy metal should congregate outside of a festival ground in Germany?
Vice President of Arizona State University’s interplanetary initiative, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, spoke with NASA on a radio program in early July to explain.
“It’s not the Death Star,” says Elkins-Tanton. “It turns out that we know this from meteorites; that the most primitive material, the building blocks of planets [are] little bits of metal and little bits of rock all mixed together.”
“And when you put all that material clumped together into a [a tiny planet] they’re heated up by early short lived radioisotopes,” she said.
This melting forces the metal down, as it’s denser than the comparatively porous rocky material present on the asteroid or planet, forming the metallic core.
“We’ve got a big clump of metal, our core, inside of the Earth,” said Elkins-Tanton. “There’s one inside of the Moon, amazingly, inside of Mars, inside of Mercury, inside of Venus, but we never, ever get to see them. So Psyche gives us, we think, a way to see the core of a planetesimal, maybe the only way humans will ever see a core if our ideas are right.”
This would be the true price tag of 16 Psyche, because even if we could somehow bring back all that iron, the supply-demand laws of economics would bring the price of iron down to levels in the hundredths of a cent.
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Quote of the Day: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning (Men and Women and Other Poems)
Photo: by Steve Halama
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This young Kodiak brown bear in the sand before lying down and appearing to smile for the camera. Wenona Suydam_Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2021
The finalists for the 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards have just been unveiled.
The chosen images, from smiling seal pups to secretive racoons, are quite wonderful.
The competition received more than 7,000 entries from across the globe all in all.
The superconducting magnets which could be a key to powering an efficient nuclear fusion reactor were just turned on in the labs of an American firm.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS_ generated an electrical field of 20 tesla—the most powerful ever created on Earth; 50,000 times-stronger than the magnetosphere—for five hours.
This gave scientists at CFS the confidence to say that a working prototype of their fusion reactor could be ready by 2025; a huge leap forward from a government paper that reckoned on a 2040 arrival time.
Nuclear fusion is perhaps the world’s most dynamic engineering challenge, and the magnets are one method by which humans may be able to make it work. With them, CFS believe the reactors of the future could be small, and dramatically cheaper than the billions Western governments are currently spending on fusion projects.
The goal of any reactor is to create a plasma—the forth state of matter, which is essentially a superheated gas. The heavy isotopes inside a hydrogen atom, deuterium and tritium, are heated inside the reactor to hundreds of millions of degrees until they convert to helium. The energy they give off is converted to electricity.
If such a powerful machine can produce more electricity than it uses, unlimited clean energy can be achieved, which means it doesn’t matter if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, it means coal, oil, and gas can all remain in the ground, that never again would a war be fought over oil resources, and that global climate change could be rapidly scaled back.
In fact, the CFS research and development team boasts that their reactor will be able to turn a glass of water into the electricity usage of one human for their entire lifetime.
But…how
Superconducting magnets make achieving those extreme temperatures much easier. 18 of CFS’ magnets will be arranged like a big metal donut to create pressures in the fusion chamber, known as a tokamak, of up to two-times as much as at the deepest point in the ocean. This immense squeezing causes the immense heat needed for fusion to occur.
“Three years ago we announced a plan to build a 20-tesla magnet, which is what we will need for future fusion machines,” says Bob Mumgaard, CFO of CFS, in a story to the MIT university press.
“We now have a platform that is both scientifically very well-advanced, because of the decades of research on these machines, and also commercially very interesting. What it does is allow us to build devices faster, smaller, and at less cost.”
The magnets are wrapped with 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of superconducting tape made from a barium copper oxide.
This tape has taken decades to develop, and when cooled to -253 °C, which used to take a refrigerator the size of a house, it removes all the natural barriers to superconductivity, and can easily handle nearly all of the 40,000 amps passing through the tokamak at any one time, and very efficiently.
All of this work, and the successful test, means that CFS can begin work on their SPARC, a sort of miniature version of a full-scale nuclear fusion plant. The facility to house the SPARC is already under construction.
(WATCH the MIT video about the magnet and how it works below.)
These stunning drone pictures show a huge field filled with more than 100,000 sunflowers—planted to read the word ‘hope’.
The breathtaking field at Ardross Farm in Scotland spans 1.5 hectares—the size of four football pitches—and recently came into bloom five months after it was planted.
Reverend Douglas Creighton from East Neuk Trinity Church came up with the idea for a sunflower field in a bid to bring people joy during the pandemic.
He asked farmer Claire Pollock to help get it off the ground, and she agreed to planting more than 100,000 sunflowers at the start of May.
The pair hope the maze will bring joy to the local community, with 500 people walking through it when it opened last weekend.
It takes 20 minutes to complete the huge maze, and £2,000 ($2,766) has already been raised for local charities.
SWNS
Reverend Creighton said of the project, “It’s something bright and cheerful for everyone in the community—we sowed a bit of hope and optimism to show it’s not all doom and gloom.
“I even hosted a live planting during lockdown where people joined in on Zoom to watch.
SWNS
Farmer Claire said, “We have always grown wildflowers to help the birds and spread a bit of cheer,” saying it’s been great to do something that would make people smile and get local people involved.
The story of the Southwest suffering under the second-driest period in 1,200 years is being turned into another one, of cooperation and dedication to preserving as much water as possible.
Lake Mead, the site of the Hoover Dam, and the chief water resource of a sprawling series of desert communities and metropolises, is falling.
But revealed in its falling to the lowest levels ever recorded is not only the “bathtub ring” of calcium buildups seen here, but decades of cooperative drought contingency planning and water conservation infrastructure implemented not only through the seven states that rely on the Colorado River Basin and Lake Mead, but Mexico too.
It was in 2007 that the seven states of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, as well as many tribes, and Mexico all agreed on a framework for use of the mighty Colorado River and Lake Mead, but in the face of the current 22-year drought, which led the federal government last Monday to declare the first ever shortage of water from Lake Mead, something more had to be done.
After years of tough negotiations, each state agreed to share the burden of future potential water shortages, pursuant to the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan. As Lake Mead is expected to drop below a depth of 1,075 feet next year, the first round of water cuts will come into effect in the states of Nevada and Arizona, and for Mexico. At 1,045 feet, it would be California’s turn to take a cut.
“We haven’t had litigation. If you look at any other river basin, they have litigation going like crazy,” Patricia Aaron, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, told the Christian Science Monitor. “Everybody is in this together. It gives me a lot of hope and a lot of confidence. There are a lot of dedicated, smart people working on this problem.”
Mexico for their part led the way in a bilateral contingency plan in 2017. Under current agreements Mexico is delivered at minimum 1.5 million acre feet of the total volume of the Colorado River ever year.
“We knew it was the correct thing to do,” CSM also heard from Roberto Salmon, former- Mexican commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission. “We are all trying to save the [Colorado River] basin. The livelihood of millions of people depends on it, including Mexico.”
Not waiting around
Several states have already invested millions into ensuring that when a water shortage in the Colorado or Lake Mead did arrive, they wouldn’t be caught out.
In Nevada for example, Las Vegas recently described a seven-billion gallon reduction in water use from Lake Mead as having “little impact.” This is a result of sophisticated water recycling that sends spent water back to Lake Mead, as well as the use of ornamental desert foliage for public parks and real estate.
In California, which draws about three times as much water as Mexico, water authorities built up reserves during the wet years of 2017 and 2019, while implementing additional storm drain and wastewater recovery methods to boost supply. The 19 million people living in Southern California now use 40% less water than they did in 1990, CSM reports.
Arizona has also “banked” water in Lake Mead, pre-delivering a 50% store of its yearly share through savings accumulated over a decade of diversifying its supply, for example by drawing on the Salt and Verde Rivers. Phoenix, which has exploded in size over the past two decades, has also reduced its water consumption by 30%.
South of the border, Mexico’s agreement to be first on the chopping block for cuts from Lake Mead was penned alongside promises from California, Nevada, and Arizona to invest $31.5 million in conservation and infrastructure projects in the Mexicali Valley which will save 200,000 acre feet of water per year.
This U.S. citizen is accustomed to feeling there was no plan in the aftermath of natural disasters or dangerous natural phenomena, but in the deserts of the Southwest that is certainly not the case, and the inter-cooperation between state, tribe, city, and nation is something to behold.
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The folds and ripples at the front of a moth’s forewings are a sophisticated defense system against the echolocation of hunting bats in the darkness, a new study reveals.
Moths have developed several forms of sonic decoys to throw hunting bats off their scent, but a thorough examination done at the University of Bristol has shown the decoys developed on the forewing tips have a unique success rate.
Bats create ultrasonic clicks with their mouth that bounce off of objects in the dark and return to be picked up by their hyperdeveloped auditory organs, giving them a picture of the world around them.
Luna moths have been known to develop long gown-like hindwings with screwed-up tips. It’s been shown that these hindwings are very strong reflectors of sound, such that it’s actually more likely a bat would end up attacking the decoy rather than the vulnerable body of the moth.
Some large silkmoths though, like the Atlas moth or the ailanthus silkmoth have rippled and folded tips on their forewings, which have been revealed as the superior method of defense.
“We noticed that on many of the larger silkmoths, the forewing tips are actually folded and rippled, in a way not to dissimilar to the hindwing decoys we looked at earlier,” said Thomas Neil, a bioacoustics researcher at School for Biological Sciences, Bristol U.
He and his colleague Marc Holdereid bombarded the wings of an Atlas moth with different frequencies of ultrasonic sound from over 10,000 directions to test how well they might reflect the clicks from a hungry bat.
The results, published in Current Biology, were that forewing folds and ripples bounced off incoming sound, releasing it back into the environment in 180 degrees around the wing.
This made them more reflective of sound, and therefore a better sonic defense, even than the hindwing decoys used by the Luna moths.
The folds reflected the sound by sending it into a series of ninety-degree angles within the fold, which the ripples acted as hemispheric reflectors of sound like a bowl or an amphitheater.
Another benefit of the decoys being in the forewings is that they are rigid in structure, and so any bat attacks would likely knock a moth off its flight path, rather than damage the wing.
Another fascinating detail of this fascinating evolutionary defense system is that it may have evolved independently more than four times across the entire Saturniidae genus, and 36 of the 72 species Neil and Holdereid examined had either folded or rippled forewings, yet never together with a wing decoy.
Quote of the Day: “What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the color.” – John Lubbock
Photo: by Dave Beasley
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?
