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This Week’s Inspiring Horoscopes From Rob Brezsny’s ‘Free Will Astrology’

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Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)

Here is your weekly horoscope…

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week beginning April 23, 2021
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Some traditional Buddhist monks sit on city streets in Asia with a “begging bowl” in front of them. It’s a clay or iron container they use to solicit money and food from passers-by who want to support them. Contemporary American poet Mariannne Boruch regards the begging bowl as a metaphor that helps her generate new poems. She adopts the attitude of the empty vessel, awaiting life’s instructions and inspiration to guide her creative inquiry. This enables her to “avoid too much self-obsession and navel-gazing” and be receptive—”with no agenda besides the usual wonder and puzzlement.” I recommend the begging bowl approach to you as you launch the next phase of your journey, Taurus.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Gemini-born Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is today regarded as an innovative and influential painter. But his early years provided few hints that he would ultimately become renowned. As a teenager, he attended naval preparatory school, and later he joined the French navy. At age 23, he became a stockbroker. Although he also began dabbling as a painter at that time, it wasn’t until the stock market crashed 11 years later that he made the decision to be a full-time painter. Is there a Gauguin-like turning point in your future, Gemini? If so, its early signs might show themselves soon. This pivot won’t be as dramatic or stressful as Gauguin’s, but I bet it will be quite galvanizing.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):
A research team found that some people pray for things they are reasonably sure God wouldn’t approve of. In a sense, they’re trying to trick the Creator into giving them goodies they’re not supposed to get. Do you ever do that? Try to bamboozle life into offering you blessings you’re not sure you deserve? The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to dare such ploys. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll succeed, but the chances are much better than usual that you will. The universe is pretty relaxed and generous toward you right now.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In 2013, the New Zealand government decided to rectify the fact that its two main islands had never been assigned formal names. At that time, it gave both an English and Māori-language moniker for each: North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island, or Te Waipounamu. In the spirit of correcting for oversights and neglect, and in accordance with current astrological omens, is there any action you’d like to take to make yourself more official or professional or established? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to do so.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Author Grant Morrison observes that our heads are “big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there!” That’s why it’s so unfortunate, he says, if we fill up our “magical cabinet” with “little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over.” In accordance with astrological potentials, Virgo, I exhort you to dispose of as many of those sad trinkets and little broken things as you can. Make lots of room to hold expansive visions and marvelous dreams and wondrous possibilities. It’s time to think bigger and feel wilder.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Libran author bell hooks (who doesn’t capitalize her name) has a nuanced perspective on the nature of our pain. She writes, “Contrary to what we may have been taught, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us, but need not scar us for life.” She acknowledges that unnecessary and unchosen suffering does indeed “mark us.” But we have the power to reshape and transform how it marks us. I think her wisdom will be useful for you to wield in the coming weeks. You now have extra power to reshape and transform the marks of your old pain. You probably won’t make it disappear entirely, but you can find new ways to make it serve you, teach you, and ennoble you.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
I love people who inspire me to surprise myself. I’m appreciative when an ally provides me with a friendly shock that moves me to question my habitual ways of thinking or doing things. I feel lucky when a person I like offers a compassionate critique that nudges me out of a rut I’ve been in. Here’s a secret: I don’t always wait around passively hoping events like these will happen. Now and then I actively seek them out. I encourage them. I ask for them. In the coming weeks, Scorpio, I invite you to be like me in this regard.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
“Where did last year’s lessons go?” asks Gillian Welch in her song “I Dream a Highway.” Now I’m posing the same question to you—just in time for the Remember Last Year’s Lessons Phase of your cycle. In my astrological opinion, it’s crucial for you to recollect and ruminate deeply on the breakdowns and breakthroughs you experienced in 2020; on every spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence you weathered; on all the scary trials you endured and all the sacred trails you trod.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn painter Henri Matisse had a revolutionary influence on 20th-century art, in part because of his raucous use of color. Early in his career he belonged to the movement known as Fauvism, derived from the French term for “wild beasts.” During his final years, he invented a new genre very different from his previous work: large collages of brightly colored cut-out paper. The subject matter, according to critic Jed Perl, included “jungles, goddesses, oceans, and the heavens,” and “ravishing signs and symbols” extracted from the depths of “Matisse’s luminosity.” I offer him as a role model for you, Capricorn, because I think it’s a perfect time to be, as Perl describes Matisse, both “a hard-nosed problem-solver and a feverish dreamer.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
“The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity, but distrust it.’” Aquarian philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that, and now I’m proposing that you use it as your motto in the coming weeks, even if you’re not a natural philosopher. Why? Because I suspect you’ll thrive by uncomplicating your life. You’ll enhance your well-being if you put greater trust in your instinctual nature and avoid getting lost in convoluted thoughts. On the other hand, it’s important not to plunge so deeply into minimalism that you become shallow, careless, or unimaginative.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
In ancient Greek comic theater, there was a stock character known as the eiron. He was a crafty underdog who outwitted and triumphed over boastful egotists by pretending to be naive. Might I interest you in borrowing from that technique in the coming weeks? I think you’re most likely to be successful if you approach victory indirectly or sideways—and don’t get bogged down trying to forcefully coax skeptics and resisters. Be cagey, understated, and strategic, Pisces. Let everyone think they’re smart and strong if it helps ensure that your vision of how things should be will win out in the end.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Blogger Emma Elsworthy wrote her “Self-Care List.” I’ll tell you a few of her 57 action items, in hopes of inspiring you to create your own list. The coming weeks will be a perfect phase to upgrade your focus on doing what makes you feel healthy and holy. Here are Elsworthy’s ideas: Get in the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. Organize your room. Clean your mirror and laptop. Lie in the sunshine. Become the person you would ideally fall in love with. Walk with a straight posture. Stretch your body. Challenge yourself to not judge or ridicule anyone for a whole day. Have a luxurious shower with your favorite music playing. Remember your dreams. Fantasize about the life you would lead if failure didn’t exist.

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

(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)

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Watch This Historic First: Astronauts Successfully Launched Using Recycled Rocket – to International Space Station

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NASA

A four-astronaut team launched by NASA and Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX made history by becoming the first humans propelled into space by an entirely reused rocket booster.

NASA

SpaceX has previously reused boosters multiple times since 2017, but they only transported cargo.

‘Crew-2’ astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide, and Thomas Pesquet were launched into space by the same Falcon 9 rocket booster that sent four of their colleagues to the International Space Station (ISS) in November during the Crew-1 mission.

The international crew, including the first French commander and an astronaut from Japan’s JAXA space agency, lifted off early Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and are now orbiting in the Crew Dragon spacecraft to begin a six-month science mission on the space station.

During Crew Dragon’s flight, SpaceX will command the spacecraft from its mission control center in Hawthorne, California, and NASA teams will monitor space station operations throughout the flight in Houston.

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“It has been an incredible year for NASA and our Commercial Crew Program, with three crewed launches to the space station since last May,” said NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “This is another important milestone for NASA, SpaceX, and our international partners at ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA. It will be an exciting moment to see our crews greet one another on station for our first crew handover under the Commercial Crew Program.”

The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, plans to dock autonomously to the forward port of the ISS about 5:10 a.m. Saturday.

Elon Musk, Chief Engineer at SpaceX, said, “I’m really proud of the SpaceX team and honored to be partnered with NASA and helping JAXA and ESA as well. We’re thrilled to be a part of advancing human spaceflight.”

RELATED: She Came to the US to Study With Only $300 in Her Pocket — Now She’s a NASA Director For the Mars Rover

NASA points out this commercial partnership with Musk’s company has several firsts, including:

  • First commercial crew mission to fly two international partners
  • First commercial crew handover between astronauts on the space station as Crew-1
  • First reuse of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket on a crew mission
  • First time two commercial crew spacecraft will be docked to station at the same time.

NASA Television, the NASA App, and their website are providing ongoing live coverage through docking, hatch opening, and the ceremony to welcome the crew aboard the orbital outpost.

Crew-2 will join the ISS inhabitants Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, as well as Soichi Noguchi of JAXA and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-1 astronauts Walker, Hopkins, Glover, and Noguchi return a few days later.

When Aki Hoshide joins astronaut Noguchi during the commercial crew handover period, it will mark the first time two JAXA astronauts are on station at the same time.

Crew-2 also is the first commercial crew mission to fly an ESA astronaut. Pesquet is the first of three ESA crew members assigned to fly to station on commercial crew spacecraft, kicking off a continuous stay of ESA astronauts on the space station for about a year and a half – in total – for the first time in more than 20 years.

“We know he cannot wait to start working,” ESA said of their French commander.

WATCH the astronauts in their nifty modern spacesuits board and lift off on their historic mission, with Frenchman Thomas Pesquet expressing his excitement…

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Common Human Antibiotic Can Heal Coral Diseases – 95% Success Rate With Amoxicillin

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Joshua Voss PhD –FAU Harbor Branch, Coral Reef and Health Ecology Lab

Diseases continue to be a major threat to coral reef health, but a new study by Florida researchers reveals how a common antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections in humans is showing great promise.

Joshua Voss PhD –FAU Harbor Branch, Coral Reef and Health Ecology Lab

A recent outbreak of an infectious disease called stony coral tissue loss has affected 20 different stony coral species. First discovered in 2014 in Miami-Dade County, the disease has spread throughout Florida’s Coral Reef and into parts of the Caribbean.

In treating disease-affected Montastraea cavernosa coral colonies (the Great Star Coral widely found in the Atlantic), the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute of Florida Atlantic University found that an amoxicillin treatment had a 95 percent success rate at healing individual disease lesions.

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Though, it did not necessarily prevent treated colonies from developing new lesions over time, preserving M. cavernosa colonies is important due to its role as a dominant reef builder in Florida’s Coral Reef.

“There are three possible scenarios that may explain the appearance of new lesions in the amoxicillin treated lesions of the corals that had healed in our study,” said Erin N. Shilling, M.S., the study‘s author.

“It’s possible that the causative agent of stony coral tissue loss disease is still present in the environment and is re-infecting quiesced colonies. It also could be that the duration and dose of this antibiotic intervention was sufficient to arrest stony coral tissue loss, but insufficient at eliminating its pathogens from other areas of the coral colony.”

RELATED: Seaweed-Eating Giant Crabs Could Help Save Florida Coral Reefs – And They’re Lovingly Named ‘The Reef Goats’

“Success in treating stony coral tissue loss disease with antibiotics may benefit from using approaches typically successful against bacterial infections in humans—for example using a strong initial dose of antibiotics followed by a regimen of smaller supplementary doses over time,” said Joshua Voss, Ph.D., senior author, an associate research professor at FAU Harbor Branch and executive director of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology.

“Further efforts are needed to optimize dosing and delivery methods for antibiotic treatments…and scale up intervention treatments effectively.”

CHECK OUT: Scientists Make History With Discovery That Will Help Save America’s Great Coral Reef

The study was conducted approximately 2 kilometers offshore from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in Broward County. Colonies were monitored periodically over 11 months..

This research is a collaboration that includes the Disease Advisory Committee (DAC) organized by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and NOAA, of which Voss and Shilling are members.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, was funded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation.

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“I’m an optimist because I know how sad, how challenging, how miserable, how unfair, how unkind life can be—and I think a pessimist is somebody who finds this out new every morning.” – Peter Ustinov

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Quote of the Day: “I’m an optimist because I know how sad, how challenging, how miserable, how unfair, how unkind life can be—and I think a pessimist is somebody who finds this out new every morning.” – Peter Ustinov

Photo: by Emma Simpson

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?

Orphaned Polar Bear That Loved to Hug Arctic Workers Gets New Life

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Judy Cole
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Andrey Gorban/Royev Ruchey Zoo
Andrey Gorban/Royev Ruchey Zoo

When Arctic gold miners discovered a lost and helpless bear cub whose mother had died, it didn’t take long for her to melt their hearts.

As the orphaned cub grew to trust the men, the furry guest soon felt like a friend to the  workers on remote Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. She even loved bear hugs.

Andrey Gorban/Royev Ruchey Zoo

But with the crew scheduled to leave the base when their work contract came to an end, the vulnerable bear would be left to fend for herself. Between the threat from other predators and her lack of adequate hunting skills, she wouldn’t manage to survive without help.

Fearing they’d only delayed the inevitable, the miners hoped the large store of refuse they’d left behind would be enough to sustain their beloved pal until they could organize a rescue mission for her.

Having had no means of outside contact while at the base, the men reached out Moscow Zoo for guidance at their earliest opportunity.

“All we knew was that the cub’s mother died and that it was months ago when it discovered the base attracted by the smell of food,” Andrey Gorban, director of Royev Ruchey Zoo in Krasnoyarsk told the Siberian Times.

Andrey Gorban/Royev Ruchey Zoo

Following protocol, Gorban contacted Russian wildlife authorities to determine a course of action. After deciding the cub was incapable of being on her own, a rescue party was sent to bring her to the zoo.

MORE: Feeling Stressed? Use This Gorgeous Polar Bear Live Stream to Find Your Zen

“For right or wrong, they fed the endangered animal and through that tamed it,” Gorban explained. “The shift workers saved its life, the cub had no chance to survive.”

RELATED: Watch This Friendly Encounter Between a Polar Bear and Sled Dog 

So, while it was technically against the law for the miners to care for the bear, all things considered, at least this now-not-so-little cub is receiving the help she needs, and is being cared for in the way that suits her circumstances.

(MEET the polar bear cub in the Daily Mail video below.)

SHARE This Polar Bear’s Story With Pals on Social Media…

North Carolina-based writer Judy Cole has a new rom-com murder mystery debuting at Amazon: And Jilly Came Tumbling After (from Red Sky Presents).

Wisdom and Loneliness May Be Shaped by Healthy Gut Microbes, Researchers Believe

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Photo by Curtis Clark, CC

The evolving science of wisdom rests on the idea that wisdom’s defined traits correspond to distinct regions of the brain, and that greater wisdom translates into greater happiness and life satisfaction while being less wise results in opposite, negative consequences.

Scientists have found in multiple studies that persons deemed to be wiser are less prone to feel lonely while those who are lonelier also tend to be less wise.

In a new study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine take the connection between wisdom, loneliness, and biology further, reporting that wisdom and loneliness appear to influence—and/or be influenced by—microbial diversity of the gut.

The human gut microbiota is comprised of trillions of microbes—bacteria, viruses, fungi—that reside within the digestive tract. Researchers have known for a while about the “gut-brain axis,” which is a complex network that links intestinal function to the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain.

This two-way communication system is regulated by neural activity, hormones, and the immune system; alterations can result in disruptions to stress response and behaviors, said the authors, from emotional arousal to higher-order cognitive abilities, such as decision-making.

Past studies have associated gut microbiota with mental health disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, as well as personality and psychological traits regarded as key, biologically based components of wisdom.

Recent research has connected the gut microbiome to social behavior, including findings that people with larger social networks tend to have more diverse gut microbiotas.

The new Frontiers in Psychiatry study involved 187 participants, ages 28 to 97, who completed validated self-report-based measures of loneliness, wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement. The gut microbiota was analyzed using fecal samples.

Microbial gut diversity was measured in two ways: alpha-diversity, referring to the ecological richness of microbial species within each individual and beta-diversity, referring to the differences in the microbial community composition between individuals.

MORE: Gut Bacteria Could Guard Against—and Even Reverse—Parkinson’s Disease, Says ‘Exciting’ New Study

“We found that lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of wisdom, compassion, social support, and engagement were associated with greater phylogenetic richness and diversity of the gut microbiome,” said first author Tanya T. Nguyen, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The authors said that the mechanisms that may link loneliness, compassion, and wisdom with gut microbial diversity are not known, but observed that reduced microbial diversity typically represents worse physical and mental health, and is associated with a variety of diseases, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and major depressive disorder.

A more diverse gut microbiota may be less susceptible to invasion by outside pathogens, which could contribute to and help promote better resilience and stability of the community.

RELATED: Is Your Gut Out of Whack? 10 Things You Can Learn With a Home Test Kit

“It is possible that loneliness may result in decreased stability of the gut microbiome and, consequently, reduced resistance and resilience to stress-related disruptions, leading to downstream physiological effects, such as systemic inflammation,” the authors wrote.

“Bacterial communities with low alpha-diversity may not manifest overt disease, but they may be less than optimal for preventing disease. Thus, lonely people may be more susceptible to developing different diseases.”

The relationship between loneliness and microbial diversity was particularly strong in older adults, suggesting that older adults may be especially vulnerable to health-related consequences of loneliness, which is consistent with prior research.

CHECK OUT: New Research Shows That Gut Microbes May ‘Significantly’ Slow the Progression of ALS

Conversely, the researchers said that social support, compassion, and wisdom might confer protection against loneliness-related instability of the gut microbiome. Healthy, diverse gut microflora may buffer the negative effects of chronic stress or help shape social behaviors that promote either wisdom or loneliness. They noted that animal studies suggest that gut microbiota may influence social behaviors and interactions, though the hypothesis has not been tested in humans.

The complexity of the topic and study limitations, such as the absence of data about individuals’ social networks, diet, and degree of objective social isolation versus subjective reports of loneliness, argue for larger, longer studies, wrote the authors.

READ: Managing Your Gut Bacteria Shown to Alleviate Anxiety, Says New Research

“Loneliness may lead to changes in the gut microbiome or, reciprocally, alterations of the gut milieu may predispose an individual to become lonely,” said Dilip V. Jeste, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and senior author of the paper. “We need to investigate much more thoroughly to better understand the phenomenon of the gut-brain axis.”

We’ll be sure to share research updates about the fascinating potential links between what’s going on in the gut and what’s going on in the mind as they come in.

Source: University of California – San Diego; Featured image: Curtis Clark, CC license

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Drinking This Juice Could Help Promote Healthy Aging, Scientists Find

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k15

Drinking a certain root vegetable juice promotes a mix of mouth bacteria associated with healthier blood vessels and brain function, according to a new study of people aged 70-80.

Certain foods including lettuce, spinach, and celery are rich in inorganic nitrate, and many oral bacteria play a role in turning nitrate to nitric oxide, which helps to regulate blood vessels and neurotransmission, or chemical messages in the brain.

Older people tend to have lower nitric oxide production, and this is associated with poorer vascular (blood vessel) and cognitive (brain) health.

In a new University of Exeter study, 26 healthy older people took part in two 10-day supplementation periods: one with nitrate-rich beetroot juice and another with nitrate-free placebo juice, which they drank twice a day.

k15

The results, published in Redox Biology, showed higher levels of bacteria associated with good vascular and cognitive health, and lower levels of bacteria linked to disease and inflammation.

Systolic blood pressure dropped on average by five points (mmHg) after drinking the beetroot juice.

“We are really excited about these findings, which have important implications for healthy ageing,” said lead author Professor Anni Vanhatalo, of the University of Exeter.

“Previous studies have compared the oral bacteria of young and older people, and healthy people compared to those with diseases, but ours is the first to test nitrate-rich diet in this way.

“Our findings suggest that adding nitrate-rich foods to the diet—in this case via beetroot juice—for just ten days can substantially alter the oral microbiome (mix of bacteria) for the better.

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“Maintaining this healthy oral microbiome in the long term might slow down the negative vascular and cognitive changes associated with ageing.”

“Our participants were healthy, active older people with generally good blood pressure,” Professor Vanhatalo stressed. “Dietary nitrate reduced their blood pressure on average, and we are keen to find out whether the same would happen in other age groups and among people in poorer health.

“We are working with colleagues in the University of Exeter Medical School to investigate interactions between the oral bacteria and cognition to better understand the how diet could be used to delay cognitive decline in older age.”

RELATED: Older People Became Younger, With ‘Meaningful’ Mental And Physical Improvement Since 1990, Says Study

Much research has been conducted into the benefits of a healthy gut microbiome, but far less is known about the oral microbial community, which plays a crucial role in “activating” the nitrate from a vegetable-rich diet.

It’s all hopeful news, and a good reminder to try and ensure rich and varied diets for ourselves—diet that perhaps includes a little more beetroot juice than we might otherwise think to drink?

Source: University of Exeter

BRIGHTEN Your Friends’ News Feeds With This Fresh Research…

Check Out This Interactive Map Showing All the Conservation Land Near You in the U.S.

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Andy Corbley
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The United States has been at the forefront of land conservation for generations. Now an interactive map has compiled data on all conserved American land near you, from the smallest playground to the largest park, that neatly summarizes that success.

It uses data sets on conservation projects completed using money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), one of the country’s most important pieces of conservation legislation, and by far the most important when it comes to funding.

LWCF

Over the decades, 150,000 grants from the LWCF have been used in every state and almost every county to ensure Americans have access to nature, that our natural resources are protected or sustainably harvested, that our wildlife species have chances to thrive or recover when threatened, and that major cities are not bereft of playgrounds, gardens, and more.

This interactive map, constructed for the LWCF by the non-profit Trust for Public Land, takes the data on all these projects and puts them into one tool for the public to browse.

Viewers can search projects by state, or by department, as the LWCF gives grants to the NPS, the BLM, FWS, and the Forest Service.

MORE: 700 Acres of Massive 1,000-Year-old Redwoods Are Being Turned into a Public Park

A report by Fast Company details that the data on all those projects has never been put in one place before, and has remained largely fragmented.

In 2019-20 a series of government measures sought to permanently authorize the LWCF, rather than do so every few years as is normal in funding legislation, a move which passed and was signed into law as part of the Great American Outdoors Act, described at the time as “the most consequential dedicated funding [bill],” in the nation’s conservation history.

RELATED: Swiss Businessman is Contributing $1 Billion Towards Protecting 30% of the Planet

The LWCF doesn’t use taxpayer dollars, and instead relies on a percentage of national revenues from offshore oil and natural gas extraction to fund the projects. It’s the largest source of public lands funding, and has played a large role in the creation of the U.S.’s public lands catalogue, totaling one tenth of the world’s protected areas.

SHARE This Great Tool With Others Who Love Public Lands…

To Replace Lithium Batteries For Grid Storage ‘Gravitricity’ Uses Gravity

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Andy Corbley
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Gravitricity
Gravitricity

A company that uses gravity to create a ‘giant battery’ has just completed a successful test in Scotland, paving the way for its commercial-scale roll out.

The firm is called Gravitricity, and their device, which has a 25-year lifespan, could help prevent the mining of rare earth minerals in the creation of lithium-ion batteries, while providing a cost-effective alternative for renewable storage.

Costing £1 million ($1,385 million) to build a 15-meter (49-foot) tower with a 25-ton weight, Gravitricity say the prototype can generate 250 kilowatt hours, and deliver electricity in less than a second when demand occurs.

The device has been designed to go in old mine shafts rather than up in the air, and “These tests confirm our modeling and show that gravity energy storage is a serious contender in the global energy storage market,” said company managing director Charlie Blair.

The technology relies on sending excess power from renewables, such as wind power, into cable pulleys that slowly hoist a heavy weight up the tower, storing potential gravitational energy that is released back into the system as electricity when the weights are lowered.

Gravitricity

The company is already in “advanced discussions” with mine owners in Britain, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Czech Republic over possible locations for initial European projects.

“If this technology is one that really makes a difference it’s going to make a difference globally, Blair told BBC Scotland. “It’s going to keep the lights on in Africa, as they build the grid, just as much as it will in Europe.”

MORE: Biodegradable Algae Solar Panels Clean The Air While Growing Green Energy

Global renewable storage markets are huge, being valued by Bloomberg at more than $600 billion. While releasing no emissions, renewable energies can’t store electricity they’ve generated, and ingenious methods for addressing this problem utilize all kinds of materials and strategies.

GNN reported last year on a pair of startups from Britain and Sweden that use the phase change of matter, i.e. going from a solid to a liquid to a gas, to store and then again to release energy, one which stores air in liquid form before converting it back to gas, the other using molten aluminum.

Other innovators are recycling batteries from EVs, and now Gravitricity utilizes potential gravitational energy.

While all these methods seem eclectic and disunified, they are exactly the kind of thing a dynamic and important market like renewables storage should be seeing.

RELATED: Aptera Solar-Powered Car With ‘1,000-Mile’ Range Gets 7,000 Preorders for Delivery in 2021

With each firm that succeeds and each firm that fails, the sector learns valuable lessons, speeding the process towards developing a Model-T-like breakthrough.

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“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Soren Kierkegaard

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Quote of the Day: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Soren Kierkegaard

Photo: by Clay Banks

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?

Son Sells Thousands of Cheesesteaks to Give Mom Last Dream Trip to See the Egyptian Pyramids

By
Judy Cole
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Dustin Vitale
Dustin Vitale

How many sandwiches does it take to make a pyramid? Three. How many sandwiches does it take to bring your mom on a trip to see the pyramids? Considerably more.

Still, that didn’t stop one devoted son from raising enough bread—and cheesesteak—to make it happen.

Gloria Walker always dreamed of traveling to Giza to see the pyramids, but more than that, she wanted to take her family along. Sadly, Walker was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. Between the cost of travel—an estimated $10,000—and the limitations of her illness, that trip of a lifetime didn’t appear likely in the 56-year-old’s future.

But her son Dustin Vitale was determined to turn his mom’s dream into a reality. He just needed to figure out a way to make it happen.

26-year-old Vitale has three passions—teaching history at First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter School, his family—and cheesesteak. (After all, we’re talking Philly, right?)

Vitale admits to scarfing down the delicacy Philadelphia’s so famously known for at least two or three times a week. So what better way than making and selling his favorite sandwich—using his mom’s recipe, of course—to raise the money?

With sale days starting at 4 a.m. to bake homemade rolls, the entire family has been pitching in: Dustin and his wife Hailey share griddle duty; his stepfather is in charge of prep. Dustin’s dad, stepmom, sister, and brother, along with some steadfast friends, have all been working to meet the goal.

They’ve been at it since February.

Vitale began to chronicle the team efforts for Instagram, soon gathering a growing circle of cheesesteak-loving supporters.

“We didn’t know how long the hype was going to last, so we decided to just keep telling everyone and see how many we get,” Vitale told the Philadelphia Enquirer. “We ended up doing 94 in one day and we were like just blown away.”

Along the way, they made a fan of award-winning Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov, who gave Vitale and his crew a five-star Instagram thumbs-up both for their heart and for their cooking.

After that, demand exploded. Without a commercial kitchen, however, Vitale was hard-pressed to keep up with it. That’s when a local food truck owner stepped in with an offer to let the cheesesteak fundraisers work out of his mobile cooking facility.

MORE: Girl Surprised With Pet Dragon After Surviving Cancer and Making-a-Wish – ‘It’s a Marvel of Engineering’

Over the course of six weeks, the group raised $18,000—enough for Vitale to take the family to Egypt with money to spare. They’re set to go Giza gazing later this year.

While the winning grilling gig turned out to be a game-changer for his mom, Vitale has no plans to switch professional hats as a result. “So many people say, ‘Are you going to jump into this and open up a shop?’” Vitale told the Enquirer. “I could never. I love doing this on the side. My heart and passion is teaching and for the students.”

It seems that passion is as intrinsic to Vitale’s character as cheesesteak is to Philly. That’s why as a devoted son whose mom means the world to him, there’s nothing on this earth—or beyond—he wouldn’t do to see her happy.

RELATED: Chef Drives 6 Hours to Vermont to Cook Her Favorite Meal—Soothing a Customer In Her Final Days

“If she would have asked to go to the moon,” he told CBS News, “I would have made that happen, as well.”

Somehow, we believe it.

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North Carolina-based writer Judy Cole has a new rom-com murder mystery debuting at Amazon: And Jilly Came Tumbling After (from Red Sky Presents).

Rail Worker Who Saved Child From a Train Now Donates Half His Reward Money to Boy’s Family (Watch the Rescue)

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Good News Network
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After saving the life of a little boy who fell on the tracks, an Indian railway employee went viral for his kindness on the Internet.

Now he’s being praised once again—this time for giving the boy’s family money the Ministry of Railways gave him as a reward.

Though he has his own family to take care of, when 30-year-oldMayur Shelke was given ₹50,000 ($660) from the Ministry in a special ceremony, he decided he’d donate a good portion towards the education of the very child he saved.

“I’ll give half of the amount, given to me as token of appreciation, for that child’s welfare & education,” Shelke told Asian News International.

“I came to know that his family isn’t financially strong. So I decided this.”

As news of Shelke’s newest act of selflessness spread, his name once again began trending on social media, with many praising his kindness and good spirit.

Earlier this week, Shelke saw the 6-year-old fall into the path of an oncoming train and instinct took over. “I ran towards the child but also thought that I might be in danger too. Still, I thought I should save him,” Shelke told Asian News International. “The woman (with the child) was visually impaired. She could do nothing.”

MORE: Police Officer Pulls Man From Wheelchair Stuck On Tracks Within Seconds Of Speeding Train – WATCH

A new father himself, Shelke felt impelled to act. “The child who [slipped and fell] is someone’s precious child, too,” he told Times Now News.

“My child is the apple of my eye, so must that boy in peril have been to his parents. I just felt something stir within me and I rushed without thinking twice.”

It’s an old saying, but it feels particularly true when thinking of Shelke and his selfless deeds—true heroes really don’t wear capes.

(WATCH the BBC’s footage of the daring rescue below.)

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Scientists Create World’s First Truly Biodegradable Single-use Plastic That ‘Eats Itself’ in Just 2 Weeks

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Ivan Jayapurna, a UC Berkeley materials science and engineering graduate student, preparing a sample film of a new biodegradable plastic. (Credit- Adam Lau_UC Berkeley)
Ivan Jayapurna preparing a sample film of a new biodegradable plastic. Adam Lau/UC Berkeley

Despite our efforts to sort and recycle, less than 9% of plastic gets recycled in the U.S., and most ends up in landfill or the environment.

Biodegradable plastic bags and containers could help, but if they’re not properly sorted, they can contaminate otherwise recyclable #1 and #2 plastics. What’s worse, most biodegradable plastics take months to break down, and when they finally do, they form microplastics, tiny bits of plastic that can end up in oceans and animals’ bodies, including our own.

Now, scientists at the the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have designed an enzyme-activated compostable plastic that could diminish microplastics pollution, and holds great promise for plastics upcycling.

The material can be broken down to its building blocks—small individual molecules called monomers—and then reformed into a new compostable plastic product.

“In the wild, enzymes are what nature uses to break things down—and even when we die, enzymes cause our bodies to decompose naturally. So for this study, we asked ourselves, ‘How can enzymes biodegrade plastic so it’s part of nature?” said senior author Ting Xu , who holds titles of faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, and professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley.

At Berkeley Lab, Xu is leading an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers from universities and national labs around the country to tackle the mounting problem of plastic landfill posed by both single-use and so-called biodegradable plastics.

Most biodegradable plastics in use today are usually made of polylactic acid (PLA), a vegetable-based plastic material blended with cornstarch. There is also polycaprolactone (PCL), a biodegradable polyester that is widely used for biomedical applications such as tissue engineering.

But the problem with conventional biodegradable plastic is that they’re indistinguishable from single-use plastics such as plastic film, so a good chunk of these materials ends up in landfills. And even if a biodegradable plastic container gets deposited at an organic waste facility, it can’t break down as fast as the lunch salad it once contained, so it ends up contaminating organic waste, said co-author Corinne Scown at the Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area.

MORE: Biodegradable Food Wrap Created From Algae and Cinnamon Compound is the Packaging Solution We Needed

Another problem with biodegradable plastics is that they aren’t as strong as regular plastic. That’s why you can’t carry heavy items in a standard green compost bag. The tradeoff is that biodegradable plastics can break down over time, but still, Xu said, they only break down into microplastics, which are still plastic, just a lot smaller.

So Xu and her team decided to take a different approach—by “nanoconfining” enzymes into plastics.

Putting enzymes to work

The plastic breaks down after just 3  days (right) in standard compost and entirely after 2 weeks. UC Berkeley

In a series of experiments, reported in the journal Nature, Xu and co-authors embedded trace amounts of commercial enzymes Burkholderia cepacian lipase (BC-lipase) and proteinase K within the PLA and PCL plastic materials. The scientists also added an enzyme protectant called four-monomer random heteropolymer, or RHP, to help disperse the enzymes a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) apart.

READ: Sir David Attenborough Backs This New Tech That Can Recycle All Plastics

In a stunning result, the scientists discovered that ordinary household tap water or standard soil composts converted the enzyme-embedded plastic material into its small-molecule building blocks called monomers, and eliminated microplastics in just a few days or weeks.

They also learned that BC-lipase is something of a finicky “eater.” Before a lipase can convert a polymer chain into monomers, it must first catch the end of a polymer chain. By controlling when the lipase finds the chain end, it is possible to ensure the materials don’t degrade until being triggered by hot water or compost soil, Xu explained.

In addition, they found that this strategy only works when BC-lipase is nanodispersed — in this case, just 0.02 percent by weight in the PCL block, rather than randomly tossed in and blended.

CHECK OUT: India Fishermen Divert Their Catch of Ocean Plastic So it Can Be Used to Rebuild Roads

“Nanodispersion puts each enzyme molecule to work—nothing goes to waste,” Xu said.

And that matters when factoring in costs. Industrial enzymes can cost around $10 per kilogram, but this new approach would only add a few cents to the production cost of a kilogram of resin because the amount of enzymes required is so low, and the material has a shelf life of more than 7 months, Scown added.

Looking to the future

Developing a very affordable and easily compostable plastic film could incentivize produce manufacturers to package fresh fruits and vegetables with compostable plastic instead of single-use plastic wrap. And as a result, save organic waste facilities the extra expense of investing in expensive plastic-depackaging machines when they want to accept food waste for anaerobic digestion or composting.

Since their approach could potentially work well with both hard, rigid plastics and soft, flexible plastics, Xu would like to broaden their study to polyolefins, a ubiquitous family of plastics commonly used to manufacture toys and electronic parts.

The team’s truly compostable plastic could be on the shelves soon. They recently filed a patent application through UC Berkeley’s patent office.

RELATED: Mountains of Garbage in Russia are Being Turned into Fashionable Accessories

“When it comes to solving the plastics problem, it’s our environmental responsibility to take up nature on its path. By prescribing a molecular map with enzymes behind the wheel, our study is a good start,” Xu said.

That’s exciting news indeed.

Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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NASA’s Rover Makes Oxygen on Mars for the First Time

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NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The growing list of “firsts” for Perseverance, NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, now includes converting some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen.

A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task on Tuesday.

While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact—isolating and storing oxygen on Mars to help power rockets that could lift astronauts off the planet’s surface.  Such devices also might one day provide breathable air for astronauts themselves.

“This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,” said NASA’s Jim Reuter in a statement. “MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars. Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe. Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.”

To burn its fuel, a rocket must have more oxygen by weight. Getting four astronauts off the Martian surface on a future mission would require approximately 15,000 pounds (7 metric tons) of rocket fuel and 55,000 pounds (25 metric tons) of oxygen.

In contrast, astronauts living and working on Mars would require far less oxygen to breathe. “The astronauts who spend a year on the surface will maybe use one metric ton between them,” Hecht said.

Hauling 25 metric tons of oxygen from Earth to Mars would be an arduous task. Transporting a one-ton oxygen converter—a larger, more powerful descendant of MOXIE that could produce those 25 tons—would be far more economical and practical.

Mars’ atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide. MOXIE works by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. A waste product, carbon monoxide, is emitted into the Martian atmosphere.

MORE: Particle Mystery Deepens As ‘Strong’ New Evidence Hints at ‘5th’ Force in Nature

The conversion process requires high levels of heat to reach a temperature of approximately 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 Celsius). To accommodate this, the MOXIE unit is made with heat-tolerant materials. These include 3D-printed nickel alloy parts, which heat and cool the gases flowing through it, and a lightweight aerogel that helps hold in the heat. A thin gold coating on the outside of MOXIE reflects infrared heat, keeping it from radiating outward and potentially damaging other parts of Perseverance.

In this first operation, MOXIE’s oxygen production was quite modest—about 5 grams, equivalent to about 10 minutes worth of breathable oxygen for an astronaut. MOXIE is designed to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour.

This technology demonstration was designed to ensure the instrument survived the launch from Earth, a nearly seven-month journey through deep space. MOXIE is expected to extract oxygen at least nine more times over the course of a Martian year (nearly two years on Earth).

“MOXIE isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world,” said Trudy Kortes of NASA. It’s the first technology of its kind that will help future missions “live off the land,” using elements of another world’s environment, also known as in-situ resource utilization.

RELATED: NASA Confirmation: Earth is Safe From Asteroid for 100 Years

“It’s taking regolith, the substance you find on the ground, and putting it through a processing plant, making it into a large structure, or taking carbon dioxide—the bulk of the atmosphere—and converting it into oxygen,” she said. “This process allows us to convert these abundant materials into useable things: propellant, breathable air, or, combined with hydrogen, water.”

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Stuck At Home on Earth Day? Here’s How to Connect with Nature Right Where You Are

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Andy Corbley
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Photo by Martin Vickery

This Earth Day, we’re celebrating nature closer to home. And the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is giving us great ways to get to know the place we’re in.

To this end, the FWS has launched a group of articles and activities specifically for those stuck in self-isolation. There are recommendations for famous books on nature by American authors like Henry David Thoreau, activities and hobbies for adults and kids, and citizen science practices for people who want to become intimate with their environment.

“We can find inspiration in the night sky, motivation in birds that migrate thousands of miles to nest in our yards, entertainment in a chorus of spring peepers, and reassurance in a cheerful yellow daffodil signaling the return of spring,” writes the FWS.

LOOK: Himalayan Mountaintops Visible for the First Time in 30 Years as Air Pollution Continues to Plummet in India

Wherever you are, there may never be a better time than now to pick up a new hobby characteristic of tree-huggers, star-gazers, and bird-watchers.

Sharpen your Observation Skills

In his classic work on the changing seasons and their character upon his farm in Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold detailed in the Sand County Almanac about how he observed everything; the chorus of bird song every month; including which were the first birds to begin, which were the last ones to join, and which were the last ones to stop; which way the gophers would look upon exiting their burrows; where the wind blew during each month; and when every bird arrived and departed on their migratory routes.

So perhaps now is a good time to go to your favorite local spot—under a tree, on a bench, wherever there is green—take out a pen, and start recording what you see, hear, and smell. Can you smell trees while they are flowering? Which birds can you hear? Are there insects going about on their own diminutive errands?

RELATED: As Earth’s Ozone Layer Continues to Repair Itself, Scientists Happily Report Good News on Global Wind Trends

There may be a lot more going on than you realize, even in your backyard. Biodiversity is an ecosystem’s most important asset. It ensures rich supplies of food all the way up the food chain, and resistance to diseases which can wipe out ecosystems with weak biodiversity.

Get in touch with this critical aspect of the environment by attempting to make a survey of the biodiversity of your garden or lawn. To do this, make a survey plot by sticking 4-5 sticks or pencils in the ground, and establish a perimeter of rope or string around them. Note every different species of grass and forbs. Grasses are easy to spot; the species name is how we refer to them. Forbs are broad leaf plants like flowers. Note every species of insect too.

Try and make several survey plots and measure the biodiversity across your yard.

Take Up Birding

For younger readers, birdwatching—or birding for short—may seem like a boring pastime for stuffy pensioners; but in reality, it can be a tremendously engaging and meditative hobby that connects you with creatures that, while seeming reserved and uninteresting, are much more than they seem.

LOOK: Dozens of Creatures Thought to Be Extinct Found Alive in ‘Lost City’ in the Jungle

Birding could even be considered the adult version of Pokémon: you have to go out into the world and explore different habitats as you try and catch ‘em all.

Here’s how to get started. Get yourself a pair of binoculars and a birding app on your phone such as the official Audubon Birding app. It’s free and has tons of resources to help you ID any feathered friends you spot.

Start by learning to recognize the bone and feather structure of different birds. For example, wrens have curled beaks, grosbeaks look like cardinals, nuthatches walk along tree trunks and towhees forage for food on the ground. This will help you narrow down the lists of possible birds. After that, you just have to select the month and region and coloration, and you’ll normally only be left with a few choices of species.

CHECK OUT: Whales Feces Represent One of the Greatest Allies Against Climate Change—Even More Than Trees

You can also get to know the birds in your area by putting out a bird feeder. Bridget McDonald writing for Fish and Wildlife Service describes how to do so thusly.

“Birds are vulnerable to stealthy predators like hawks and house cats, so before you put up a bird feeder, figure out the safest spot for it, ideally near shelter like a shrub, a tree, or a pile of branches on the ground. Make sure it’s also a location you can observe from inside looking out a window.”

If that isn’t enough to peak your interest in birding, this particular study from the University of Exeter found that watching birds is excellent for your mental health.

Enjoy Great Works of Nature Writing and Film

If you don’t feel like turning on the television to watch the exciting new documentary on Jane Goodall, you can always pick up her 1996 bestseller “My Life With the Chimps” about how she became the first woman in the world to study chimps—and how her research ended up transforming the scientific community.

CHECK OUT: Over 1 Million Gardeners Have United to Create Global Network of Greenery That Nourishes Bees and Butterflies

Meanwhile further back in history, no work of 19th century American literature is as widely-distributed across the world as “Walden”, the story of how Henry David Thoreau rejected civilized life for that of the isolated naturalist in a log cabin which he built on Massachusetts’s Walden Pond.

For a more poetic literary escapade, Scottish-American writer John Muir is particularly famous for using his writings to turn the hearts and minds of 19th century America towards their nation’s natural treasures. His magnum opus, “My Summer in the Sierras”—an autobiographical journey across the Sierra Nevadas in California, is built on chapter after chapter of rapturous, nature-inspired poetry.

RELATED: Scientists Use Recycled Sewage Water to Grow 500-Acre Forest in the Middle of Egyptian Desert

As mentioned before, Aldo Leopold, the first American conservationist and author of the aforementioned “A Sand County Almanac”, will connect an American with their sense of stewardship of the land, which Thomas Jefferson described as “nature’s nation”.

If you would rather get up close and personal with the world’s wildlife, Netflix also just announced that they are streaming every episode of their beautiful Our Planet documentary series for free on YouTube.

We have also put together a handy list of zoos and aquariums that have set up livestreams of their animal residents.

Photo by Martin Vickery

Try and Use Nature to Ease Your Worries

Researchers have documented for years how exercise or just being in an outdoor space rich in greenery can ease and reduce symptoms of depression or anxiety.

One 2019 study said only 20 minutes in nature was enough to lower levels of hormones related to stress such as cortisol.

LOOK: City is Converting Highway Pillars into Vertical Gardens to Clean the Air

“Our study shows that for the greatest payoff, in terms of efficiently lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol, you should spend 20 to 30 minutes sitting or walking in a place that provides you with a sense of nature,” says Dr. Mary Carol Hunter, an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the research.

Another massive study of 20,000 people from the UK found that two and a half hours a week in nature was crucial for health and well-being.

So rather than dwelling on the stress of being kept indoors, perhaps it may be more beneficial for you to focus your appreciation on the great outdoors. After all, the nation celebrated its first ever Earth Day in 1970 alongside the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress’s approval of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clear Air Act—and although we may be faced with a different set of environmental dangers in 2021, we can still be spurred to action if we remember that we are all citizens of the same planet Earth.

Want more Earth Day inspiration? Check out our good news article tags for Nature, Gardening, Biodiversity, Conservation, Endangered Species, Parks, or Trees.

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“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas

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Quote of the Day: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas

Photo: by Duy Pham

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?

 

Coating Buildings With This Paint Might Cool Them Down Enough to Reduce the Need for Air Conditioning

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Good News Network
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Ruan Xiulin, Purdue University/Jared Pike
Ruan Xiulin, Purdue University/Jared Pike

In an effort to curb global warming, Purdue University engineers have created the whitest paint yet. Coating buildings with this paint may one day cool them off enough to reduce the need for air conditioning, the researchers say.

In October, the team created an ultra-white paint that pushed limits on how white paint can be. Now they’ve outdone that. The newer paint not only is whiter but also can keep surfaces cooler than the formulation that the researchers had previously demonstrated.

“If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we estimate that you could get a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses,” said Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

The researchers believe that this white may be the closest equivalent of the blackest black, “Vantablack,” which absorbs up to 99.9% of visible light. The new whitest paint formulation reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight—compared with the 95.5% of sunlight reflected by the researchers’ previous ultra-white paint—and sends infrared heat away from a surface at the same time.

Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sunlight and can’t make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.

What makes the whitest paint so white

Two features give the paint its extreme whiteness. One is the paint’s very high concentration of a chemical compound called barium sulfate, which is also used to make photo paper and cosmetics white.

“We looked at various commercial products, basically anything that’s white,” said Xiangyu Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who worked on this project—published in ACS—as a Purdue Ph.D. student in Ruan’s lab. “We found that using barium sulfate, you can theoretically make things really, really reflective, which means that they’re really, really white.”

The second feature is that the barium sulfate particles are all different sizes in the paint. How much each particle scatters light depends on its size, so a wider range of particle sizes allows the paint to scatter more of the light spectrum from the sun.

“A high concentration of particles that are also different sizes gives the paint the broadest spectral scattering, which contributes to the highest reflectance,” said Joseph Peoples, a Purdue Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering.

There is a little bit of room to make the paint whiter, but not much without compromising the paint.

MORE: Biodegradable Food Wrap Created From Algae and Cinnamon Compound is the Packaging Solution We Needed

“Although a higher particle concentration is better for making something white, you can’t increase the concentration too much. The higher the concentration, the easier it is for the paint to break or peel off,” Li said.

How the whitest paint is also the coolest

The paint’s whiteness also means that the paint is the coolest on record. Using high-accuracy temperature reading equipment called thermocouples, the researchers demonstrated outdoors that the paint can keep surfaces 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings at night. It can also cool surfaces 8 degrees Fahrenheit below their surroundings under strong sunlight during noon hours.

The paint’s solar reflectance is so effective, it even worked in the middle of winter. During an outdoor test with an ambient temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit, the paint still managed to lower the sample temperature by 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

This white paint is the result of six years of research building on attempts going back to the 1970s to develop radiative cooling paint as a feasible alternative to traditional air conditioners.

Ruan’s lab had considered over 100 different materials, narrowed them down to 10 and tested about 50 different formulations for each material. Their previous ultra-white paint was a formulation made of calcium carbonate, an earth-abundant compound commonly found in rocks and seashells.

RELATED: MIT Scientists Spin Some Music Out of Spider Webs – And it Sounds Otherworldly (Listen)

The researchers showed in their study that like commercial paint, their barium sulfate-based paint can potentially handle outdoor conditions. The technique that the researchers used to create the paint also is compatible with the commercial paint fabrication process.

Source: Xiulin Ruan, Purdue University

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The Moment an Indian Rail Worker Saves a Child at the Last Second From Oncoming Train

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Judy Cole
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A small boy is holding his mother’s hand as they make their way across a railway platform. Weighed down by a heavy burden on her back and hampered by limited vision, she loses her grip. The child tumbles onto the tracks just as an approaching train barrels toward the station.

But in the blink of an eye, a hero swoops in, scoops the child to safety, hoists himself onto the platform a split-second before the locomotive thunders past, and a tragedy is averted.

If you’re thinking the man who saved the day in this scenario might be Clark Kent’s alter-ego, think again because this was a series of events that recently played out in real life at India’s Vangani station about 60 miles out of Mumbai.

When railway worker Mayur Shelke saw the 6-year-old boy fall into the path of the oncoming train, instinct took over. “I ran towards the child but also thought that I might be in danger too. Still, I thought I should save him,” Shelke told Asian News International. “The woman (with the child) was visually impaired. She could do nothing.”

A new father himself, Shelke felt impelled to act. “The child who [slipped and fell] is someone’s precious child, too,” he told Times Now News. “My child is the apple of my eye, so must that boy in peril have been to his parents. I just felt something stir within me and I rushed without thinking twice.”

The entire remarkable incident might have gone unremarked—except that the whole thing was caught on CCTV. (Shelke reports he hadn’t even mentioned it at home fearing he’d be scolded for putting himself in harm’s way.) In a matter of days, the viral video took the Internet by storm.

The railway employee’s quick reflexes and willingness to act in the face of grave personal danger quickly earned him much well-deserved praise. After being feted in a congratulatory ceremony, Shelke was awarded a ₹50,000 ($660) honorarium by the Ministry of Railways.

He was also gifted with a motorbike courtesy of Jawa Motorcycles as a token of their esteem. “Mayur Shelke’s courage has the Jawa Motorcycles family in awe,” tweeted company CEO Anupam Thareja. “Humbled by his act of exemplary bravery, truly the stuff of legends.”

MORE: Police Officer Pulls Man From Wheelchair Stuck On Tracks Within Seconds Of Speeding Train – WATCH

One of the country’s leading industrialists, Anand Mahindra, CEO of the Mumbai-based global conglomerate Mahindra Group was likewise impressed. “Mayur Shelke didn’t have a costume or cape, but he showed more courage than the bravest movie Superhero,” Mahindra tweeted.

“In difficult times, Mayur has shown us that we just have to look around us for everyday people who show us the way to a better world.”

(WATCH the BBC’s footage of the daring rescue below.)

DON’T DALLY—Share This Amazing Rescue Story With Friends on Social Media…

North Carolina-based writer Judy Cole has a new rom-com murder mystery debuting at Amazon: And Jilly Came Tumbling After (from Red Sky Presents).

Spectacular Super Pink Moon Set to Rise Next Week—Here’s How to Photograph It in the Night Sky

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Good News Network
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You’ll want to set aside a little moon-gazing time this Monday evening—as April 26 is set to be the night of the Super Pink Moon.

The best time to see it is as it’s appearing over the eastern horizon. At that point the Moon will appear a deep tangerine, then a steady gold, then pure white as it climbs ever higher in the sky. This is because of Rayleigh scattering—the same phenomenon that causes sunsets to take on reddish tints.

Contrary to its name, this month’s full Moon won’t actually look pink. According to Farmer’s Almanac, it actually gets its name from the North American wildflower Phlox Subulata, also known as creeping phlox or moss phlox, which blooms in spring.

Other traditional names include Sucker Moon, Breaking Ice Moon, Egg Moon, Wildcat Moon, and Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs.

Supermoons are typically about seven percent bigger and around 15 percent brighter than a regular full Moon. And this month’s is special, being one of only two such supermoons for 2021 (the next is in May).

But is the Moon actually closer to us when it’s on the horizon? Is that why it looks so huge? According to NASA, the answer is no. It’s just an illusion.

MORE: Mind-Bending Pictures of the Moon With Inverted Colors Show Where Magma Once Flowed

If you do to want to try taking one of those spectacular photos where the Moon looks ginormous as it rises up above the mountains, a calm ocean, or a prairie field, here’s a NASA-certified tip: “Photographers can simulate the Moon illusion by taking pictures of the Moon low on the horizon using a long lens, with buildings, mountains or trees in the frame.”

Illusion or not, look out at the rising Pink Moon this Monday and you’re sure to see a beautiful, if fleeting sight.

BRIGHTEN Your Friends’ News Feeds with the Good Lunar News…

Trading Old Cars for Electric Bikes: France Proposes Handsome Financial Incentives

By
Andy Corbley
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Himiway Bikes

The French government is planning to give citizens who want to trade in their old cars a  $3,000 grant (€2,500) towards the purchase of an electric bike.

Himiway Bikes

The notion has been approved by lawmakers at the National Assembly in a preliminary vote and is part of a more ambitious round of emissions cuts planned for 2040, at which point the French government hopes to have reduced them 40% compared with 1990 levels.

The French Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB) told Reuters that, if adopted, France will become the first country to offer such a trade—all in an effort to reduce the number of cars on the road, especially the ones that produce more emissions.

RELATED: These Emissions-Free Cargo Vehicles From Germany Could be the Future of Urban Delivery

Electric bikes add power to each rotation of the gears, propelling the cyclist further with less effort than a traditional one, but a good e-bike can also achieve speeds of 20 mph without so much as a single pedal turn simply by using the throttle, making them ideal for city commutes.

The decision by France was hailed by green lobbying and cycling groups, who see bikes as a major solution to combat vehicle emissions. Modern EU and UK emissions standards on cars, especially those registered in major cities, are extremely strict, meaning older models carry an emissions burden much larger than their share of the total percentage of vehicles on the road.

Cycling Industries Europe, a trade association, welcomed the move, with their chief executive saying: “We are seeing a welcome increase in stand-alone incentives for bicycle purchases, but the French Assembly has made it clear—e-bikes and cargo bikes are to be supported as vehicle replacements.

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“Every government needs to recognize that it is the cycling industries of Europe that are leading the world in the change to e-mobility.”

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