If they don’t grow in right, most people will treat their wisdom teeth as bio-baggage, useful only for preventing money from burning a hole in one’s pocket due to the surgical costs of removing them.
But an astounding new discovery has found that this third set of molars contain a unique form of human stem cell that can be harvested and used to regrow bone, heart tissue, and even neurons.
It’s an exciting field full of promise, full of potential benefits, but substantial amounts of further research and evidence is needed to truly understand what these four extra teeth could do for us in the long term beyond tearing up almonds and salad.
For starters, wisdom teeth contain a soft center of tissue called dental pulp that keeps the tooth alive. This pulp contains immature cells which a team of scientists at the University of the Basque Country in Spain have transformed into several different kinds of cells.
Dr. Gaskon Ibarretxe, an associate professor in the Cell Biology and Histology Department at the university, led a recent study that turned pulp cells into electrically excitable pseudo-neurons that demonstrated “essentially electrical activity” in concert with proper neurons.
They could help treat damaged brain circuitry from any number of conditions or trauma.
According to Earth.com, pulp-derived stem cells have some interesting and unique properties, including the capacity to build mineralized tissue faster than bone marrow-derived stem cells. Scientists have used dental‑pulp secretions to improve heart ejection fractions in mice with heart failure, and in vitro, these cells seem to lay down layers of collagen and calcium in neat, orderly sheets, making them potentially attractive for joint cartilage repair.
From the logistics and cost standpoint, they’re an ideal source of stem cells. Bone marrow cells require painful injections that sometimes can’t involve anesthesia, while embryonic or placental stem cells without ethical concerns require someone to decide to have a baby.
By contrast, almost all humans are born with wisdom teeth, and they’re often removed in the teenage years when little DNA damage has taken place inside the dental pulp; making them exceptionally malleable and safer.
Earth.com claims 10 million wisdom teeth are removed every year, but the process of sending them to a biobank could be very simple. A kit—offered by a company like Stemodontics—could be bought and shipped to a dentist’s office ahead of the procedure. The tooth is put in a vial, placed on dry ice, and rushed to a lab where the pulp would be extracted and preserved as a potentially life-changing form of cellular insurance.
No donor cells means no risks of rejection, which means no waiting list for finding a matching donor; the dental-pulp cells would be available as soon as they’re needed. If covered by a dental insurance plan, their storage could result in tens of thousands of dollars saved down the line if some of these treatments prove executable and effective.
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Honeyeater Bird in spotted gum blossom tree – Credit: Mick Roderick from BirdLife Australia
Honeyeater Bird in spotted gum blossom tree – Credit: Mick Roderick from BirdLife Australia
Recent wet season rainfall along the east coast of Australia has shattered hundred-year records, but as the floodwaters recede, a feast of epic proportions seems ready to explode among the hills and valleys.
Soaking up all that water, New South Wales’ various eucalypt tree species are preparing for a mass blossoming that may all but guarantee a critically-endangered bird species’ survival.
There are some 800 different eucalypt tree species in Australia, and the regent honeyeater feeds on the nectar of several which are set to blossom during the animal’s breeding season—a perfect confluence of events that should dramatically help the beautiful yellow and black bird.
Regions including the Mid-North Coast and Hunter Valley are seeing buds on their red gum, ironbark, grey gum, white box, swamp mahogany, and spotted gum trees, and BirdLife Australia told ABC News down under that hundreds of honeyeaters and other birds are already enjoying the bonanza in places where the buds have turned to blossoms.
“To know that so many trees will be flowering from a breeding season, right through summer and winter… is significant for a critically endangered species that relies almost exclusively on nectar,” Mick Roderick, BirdLife Australia’s regent honeyeater recovery adviser, told the outlet.
Scarlet honeyeaters are among nectar-feeding birds which benefit from strong blossom seasons – credit, supplied by Mick Roderick
Dean Nicolle, an expert on eucalypt species, told ABC that the trees are highly adapted to extreme levels of moisture seen in Australian weather patterns.
“Some species are very tolerant of flooding and waterlogged soils and are much more drought sensitive, while other species are much more drought tolerant,” he said. “The species described [in the Hunter], like spotted gums and ironbarks… can take up as much water as they want, grow lots of leaves and then flower heavily.”
Hunter Valley beekeeper Col Wilson – credit Supplied Col Wilson
It’s not just honeyeaters that will enjoy the blossoming bounty, but honey makers as well: bees.
While the honeyeaters suffered through a drought that reduced their food supply following heavy rains between 2021 and 2022, beekeepers in the Hunter Valley had a varroa mite epidemic to add to the drought. Many reported substantially reduced honey harvests—but not this year.
Hunter Valley beekeeper of 45 years, Col Wilson, told ABC News that many beekeepers had suffered over the last few years, and that they are set for a season to remember, both for honey production and bee reproduction.
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Quote of the Day: “Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse.” – Harper Lee
Photo by: Andrej Lisakov for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Sultan Mehmet köprüsü bridge - credit Mehrdad85 CC 2.0.
37 years ago today, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, also known as the Second Bosphorus Bridge was completed over the famous stretch of water that divided Asia and Europe in the Classical Age. The bridge is named after the 15th-century Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who conquered the Byzantine capital, Constantinople (Istanbul), in 1453. It is a gravity-anchored suspension bridge, with a 1,510 meter deck hanging on double vertical steel cables. READ more about this crazy construction… (1988)
Two meteor showers are visible in the late July skies, and they happen to peak at the same evening in a rare case of perfect timing.
Especially visible in the Southern Hemisphere, but also visible farther south in the Northern Hemisphere, the α-Capricornids and the Southern δ-Aquariids will light up the night of July 30th-31st with a combined total of 30 shooting stars per hour.
Better still, the event will take place during the waxing crescent Moon, so moonlight won’t obscure the view. The Moon will set in the evening, and the night sky will be perfectly dark.
In order to find them, look for the constellations they take their names from. Valerie from Space Tourism Guide generally recommends finding Capricorn first, as it’s easier to find in the south-southeastern sky. Once you find Capricorn, the much more active Southern δ-Aquariids, radiating from the constellation Aquarius, can be spotted slightly more eastward.
Aquarius is difficult to find, but because there are far more shooting stars appearing to originate there, it will be easier to find that way. With the two radiating points occurring nearby, you likely won’t know which meteors belong to which shower.
Starwalk describes the α-Capricornids as slower and noticeably bright, so perhaps that can be a clue.
One thing to keep in mind when trying to see this rare double shower is that the further north one lives on the Earth, the closer the meteors will be to the horizon. For those in the northern United States, a clear horizon line will be necessary, unobscured by trees, hills, or cities.
The further south one travels, the higher in the sky the meteor showers will be.
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Credit - Giulia Squillace and Getty for Unsplash +
credit – Giulia Squillace and Getty for Unsplash +
Getting in fights, texting too much in class, skipping school—they are the kinds of stories that the parents of most high schools will have heard of before, and know the ending of.
But at Morse High School in Maine, detention is enforced with an altogether different approach—a hike.
Misbehaving students can, of course, choose normal detention, but ever since school counselor Leslie Trundy started offering hiking detentions, the children overwhelmingly pick that.
“Playing video games in class,” said Wyatt Wells; “Yelled at a teacher,” said Nicholas Tanguay; “Probably, like, skipping class,” said Elsie Nelson-Walling.
They trundled along behind Trundy who got the idea for hiking detention from an outdoor education conference she attended last fall.
Parenting experts will likely always be split between those who favor sternness and discipline and those who favor forgiveness and freedom. Both methods have their celebrity flag carriers and innumerable examples of success and failure.
Unsurprisingly then, some parents have prevented their kids from attending Trundy’s hiking detention, believing that it misses the point of punishment. Trundy herself isn’t making any claims yet, but some of her students seem to be getting the point.
Nicholas Tanguay, who yelled at his teacher, says that the walking, heavy breathing, and sense of accomplishment were together a focusing and calming influence that day, and without admitting he felt his mental health improved, said that he believed it’s true that nature and walking can improve a person’s mentality.
Sona Kipoy wasn’t in detention, Smith reports, but just came along in order to “find herself.”
“So you can just find yourself, yeah, I guess finding yourself in a forest is easier than in the city,” Kipoy, a child of immigrants from the Democratic Reb. of the Congo, said.
Trundy said she’s eager to start the program next year, and see if any of her attendees this year prove to be role models for future freshmen.
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Paleontology may be entering another great era of discovery: characterized by serial misidentification in decades past.
For an example one need look no further than the newly-dubbed “Dragon Prince of Mongolia,” a small tyrannosaurid from the earlier days of the lineage’s evolution.
It had been sitting in the drawers of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences since the 1970s, having been labeled an Alectrosaurus.
University of Calgary Professor Darla Zelenitsky, the lead author of the paper describing the new animal, foresees many new discoveries coming out of museum collections in the same manner.
“It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognized,” Zelenitsky said in an interview with AFP.
It was Ph.D. student Jared Voris who first recognized something was wrong with the labeling when he found the two partially-complete fossil skeletons in the drawers.
The new species has been named Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, or Dragon Prince of Mongolia. It is a “prince” rather than a “rex” (king) because of its smaller, fleet-footed build. Weighing around the same as a show jumping horse, the animal represents not only an earlier stage of Tyrannosaurid evolution, but also a diversification in the lineage that reflects the connectivity between North America and Eurasia at the time the animal lived.
About one-eighth the size of Tyrannosaurus rex, K. mongoliensis lived 86 million years ago under the shadows of larger predatory therapods.
Described by Professor Zelenitsky as “really messy,” the understood history of T. rex was muddled by missing links between Asia and North America. In their study presentingK. mongoliensis, the authors use it as a link to explain how Tyrannosaurids evolved across the two continents.
By the time of the Cretaceous period, the Earth’s continents largely resembled those we know of today. Then as now, a land bridge connects Asia and North America via the Bering Strait, and an early group of Tyrannosaurids migrated across to North America and began to diversify.
This would have either been K. mongoliensis or another, unknown relative. Following the diversification, a population then crossed back into Asia which led to two subgroups of Tyrannosaurids, one that was very large and contained individuals like Tarbosaurus bataar, also found in Mongolia; and another one that was much smaller and contained members like “Pinocchio rex,”which was around the same size as K. mongoliensis.
One member of the large group then crossed over to North America again, and by 66 million years ago had become Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest predatory land animals to ever live.
The enigmacursor skeleton being cleaned – credit, the Trustees of the London Natural History Museum, released.
More mislabeling
On June 25th, just a week after the paper announcing the K. mongoliensis discovery, the Natural History Museum of London released a statement explaining that a new species of ‘mystery’ dinosaur that used to dash along North American riverbanks, had been identified after the museum bought a fossilized specimen.
Following years of study beginning in 2021, the skeleton that had been bought as a Nanosaurus was actually found to be nothing of the sort. After careful examination, it has been renamed Enigmacursor, for “mystery runner.”
It had been found on private land and put up for auction as a Nanosaurus, basically a species that was first found in 1877, never well-documented, and which acted like a “wastebin taxon.” A wastebin taxon in biology refers to a genus or subfamily into which lazy or perplexed biologists in the past have placed species they weren’t able to properly identify.
The name “Nanosaurus” or ‘tiny lizard,’ is the sort of broad description that lends itself to that practice.
“It just goes to show how much paleontology has changed in the past 150 years,” said Professor Susannah Maidment who co-led the examination into Enigmacursor. “When Nanosaurus was named in 1877, there weren’t that many named dinosaurs so the few characteristics that its fossils preserved would have been unique.”
“Now, however, we have found hundreds of small dinosaurs from all over the world and know that the fossils of Nanosaurus just aren’t that useful, let alone enough to name a species with. As a result, it made sense to put them to one side and name Enigmacursor as a new species instead.”
Living on floodplains and sandy riverbanks during the Late Jurassic, between 152 and 145 million years ago, Enigmacursor relied on its speed to avoid larger predators and to catch food. It was given the species name mollyborthwickae in honor of the woman whose donation allowed the museum to purchase it.
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TWA 7 is blocked in this image by the black circle, while the planet glows in orange - credit, NASA, ESA, CSA, Anne-Marie Lagrange (CNRS, UGA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA / Webb)
TWA 7 is blocked in this image by the black circle, while the planet glows in orange – credit, NASA, ESA, CSA, Anne-Marie Lagrange (CNRS, UGA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA / Webb)
Since its debut in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has dazzled viewers with its infrared images of galaxies, nebulae, stars, and even our own solar system’s planets.
Now, the most expensive telescope ever made has unveiled a new trick—a coronagraph, which allows it to block the light of a star and see what small objects are orbiting it. In this case, it performed the first direct photographing of an exoplanet in human history; probably.
The image found a faint source of infrared light in a disk of debris orbiting TWA 7, a red dwarf star around 111 light years from Earth. With the outstanding chance of the object being a background galaxy at more than 0%, the researchers can’t say for certain it’s a planet, but they suspect very much that it is—around the size of Saturn and sitting at a comfortable 120° Fahrenheit.
Though astronomers have detected well over 5,000 exoplanets so far, each one has been done through indirect methods, such as the “transit method.” The transit method sees an astronomer train a telescope on a star, and monitor for predictable drops in the level of light from the star that would indicate a planet orbiting it. The transit method can also work through measurements of gravity since passing planets’ gravitational fields can cause their host stars to “wobble.”
By contrast, the coronagraph will be much more straight forward, and TWA 7 b will likely be the first of many that the Webb telescope will discover.
One can think of the coronagraph as an on-demand eclipse service. The instrument positions a disk inside the lens of the imaging device to perfectly eliminate the star’s light from entering the sensor within a degree of micrometers. With the pollution of the star’s light gone, small things—in this case an exoplanet—can be seen.
“Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disk, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass,” Anne-Marie Lagrange, lead author of the study and an astrophysicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said in a statement released by NASA on the discovery.
The source is located in a gap in one of three dust rings that were discovered around TWA 7 by previous ground-based observations. The object’s brightness, color, distance from the star, and position within the ring are consistent with theoretical predictions for a young, cold, Saturn-mass planet that is expected to be sculpting the surrounding debris disk.
These visible rings or gaps are thought to be created by planets that have formed around the star, but such a planet has yet to be directly detected within a debris disk. If TWA 7 b is confirmed to be such, it would mark a major moment in astronomy.
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Quote of the Day: “To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.” – John Dewey
Photo by: Jordan Madrid
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?
54 years ago today, Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon, and Freddie Mercury performed their first show together as Queen at Surrey College, England. It was Mercury who suggested the band’s name, and the art school student illustrated their logo which combined the members’ zodiac signs and appeared on all the Queen LPs.WATCHa short bio with great concert footage… (1971)
Photo of Freddie Mercury statue on Lake Geneva, Switzerland by S Werner, CC license
Queen’s third LP in 1974 produced their first US hit, Killer Queen, but it was the next album, Night at the Opera that solidified them as one of the top pop-rock bands with songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and You’re My Best Friend. Other hits include Somebody to Love, Another One Bites the Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and the stadium anthems We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions.
Mercury (whose real last name was Bulsara and was of Indian Parsi descent) died of AIDS a few years after his final concert in 1989, and his operatic rock legacy was portrayed in the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody.
MORE Good News on this Day:
Vermont became the first American state to abolish slavery (1777)
North and South Vietnam united after being divided since 1954 (1976)
45 helium balloons and a lawn chair lifted Larry Walters to 16,000 feet (1982)
Michael Jackson became the first artist to have five number-one singles from one album when ‘Dirty Diana’, ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘Man in the Mirror’ went to the top of the US charts from the LP ‘Bad’ (1988)
Vicente Fox was elected President of México, the first from an opposition party, ending the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 71-year reign (2000)
Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon (2002)
India’s high court decriminalized homosexuality striking down a 150-year colonial ban against gay sex between consenting adults (2009)
102 years ago today, Wisława Szymborska was born in Poland. This poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature penned over a dozen poetry books that won numerous prizes from cultural organizations and civic ones. Her wit and irony belied her Communist education and upbringing, and though her body of work remained small by the time she had died in 2012, it was not for want of trying—rather only for the presence of “a trash can” in her house.
Wisława Szymborska on a stamp in Serbia
In the New York Times Book Review, Stanislaw Baranczak, who translated many of her poems into English wrote, “The typical lyrical situation on which a Szymborska poem is founded is the confrontation between the directly stated or implied opinion on an issue and the question that raises doubt about its validity. The opinion not only reflects some widely shared belief or is representative of some widespread mind-set, but also, as a rule, has a certain doctrinaire ring to it: the philosophy behind it is usually speculative, anti-empirical, prone to hasty generalizations, collectivist, dogmatic and intolerant.”
The below are select stanzas from a translated work dated to 2001 from her poem The End and the Beginning. (1923)
After every war someone has to clean up.
Someone has to drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone has to glaze a window, rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war.
We’ll need the bridges back, and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Happy 36th birthday to the soccer forward and previously-highest-paid women’s athlete, Alex Morgan. As of publication, she has won 224 caps for the US Women’s National Team, and has scored 123 goals. While her career has never seen her stay at the same club for more than 3 seasons, her time with the USWNT has been a prosperous one indeed, earning her two World Cup wins, international publicity as one of the leading faces of the women’s game, and a spot on the cover of FIFA 2016 alongside Lionel Messi.
Playing with New York, Seattle, Portland, Orlando, and San Diego in the US, Morgan also made several moves to play overseas including to the feminine champions Olympic Lyonnais, and London’s Tottenham Hotspur. Neither move lasted more than a single season, but Morgan was instrumental in Lyon’s victory in the French Cup that year by scoring 7 goals in between the quarter and semi-finals.
As a leader of the USWNT at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, Morgan scored five goals in the opening group game against Thailand to equal the World Cup single-game goals record set by Michelle Akers in 1991. Morgan also registered three assists in the game. The team’s 13–0 scoreline set a new record for margin of victory in a World Cup match.
In that edition of the tournament final, she won a penalty that was converted by teammate Megan Rapinoe to win the fourth FIFA Women’s World Cup for the USA.
Off the field, Morgan teamed with Simon & Schuster to write a middle-grade book series about four soccer players: The Kicks. The first book in the series, Saving the Team, debuted at number seven on The New York Times Best Seller list in May 2013. (1989)
Happy 78th Birthday to Larry David, head writer and co-creator of Seinfeld. Starting with a history degree from the University of Maryland, the Brooklyn-raised comedian went on to Seinfeld fame and later wrote and starred in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. That show’s seventh season featured the cast of Seinfeld returning in a story arc involving Larry’s attempt to organize a Seinfeld reunion TV special.
CC-David Shankbone
David’s work on Seinfeld won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series. Formerly a comedian himself, he went into television, including for SNL. He has been nominated for 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He was voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders as the 23rd greatest comedy star ever in a 2004 British poll to select “The Comedian’s Comedian.”
As legendary as Seinfeld was, Curb was, in another way, on another level. Up until the fifth season, every episode was based on a very undetailed outline of activities, in which the actors would improvise the dialogue and choices in the scenes where details were lacking based on the story outline, direction, and their creativity.
David has said that his character in the show, a fictionalized version of himself, is what he would be like in real life if he lacked social awareness and sensitivity. The character’s numerous and frequent social faux pas, misunderstandings, and ironic coincidences are the basis of much of the show’s comedy and have led to the entry into the American pop culture lexicon of the expression “Larry David moment”, meaning an inadvertently created socially awkward situation. WATCH the Top 10 Cringe-Worthy Moments from Curb… (1947)
On this day in 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by U.S. President Johnson outlawing all segregation on the basis of race. The legislation, first proposed by President Kennedy, would protect constitutional rights and outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, and racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations.
And on this day 20 years ago, Live 8 Concerts rocked 10 cities, including London, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome, and Moscow, designed to put pressure on G8 countries to address poverty and debt in Africa.
Hundreds of millions of people saw the Bob Geldof-produced events in person, on TV, or online. As a result, five days later, the G8 leaders pledged to double levels of aid to poor nations from $25 to $50 billion by the year 2010. Included in the all-star line-ups were Pink Floyd, (reunited with former bassist/vocalist/lyricist Roger Waters for the first time in over 24 years), U2, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Chris Martin, Dave Matthews, Stevie Wonder, Will Smith, and Robin Williams–covering Queen’s We Will Rock You. DVD sets are available online. (2005)
45 years ago today, the comedy film Airplane! premiered.
Written and directed by David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams, it won Golden Globe nominations and starred Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, and Peter Graves. A perfect parody of the disaster film genre—particularly the drama Airport 1975—Airplane! is a fast-paced slapstick comedy, with visual and verbal puns, gags, and obscure humor.
The film’s reputation has grown substantially since its release, and was marked for preservation by the United States National Film Registry at the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The plot revolves around civilians trying to land a jet plane after an in-flight meal causes food poisoning and the pilots are incapacitated. The above photo shows the plane’s autopilot, a large inflatable pilot doll named “Otto”, which might be able to get them to Chicago, but cannot land the plane. WATCH a few scenes… (1980)
There is no shortage of people in the world who see a burning building that isn’t theirs and choose not to risk their lives to help: Tomasz Zareba is not one of those bystanders.
The Dublin truck driver helped save a man from a harrowing fall when the second-story window was his only escape route—and he earned the gratitude of the fire brigade for his timely intervention.
It happened on Monday that the interior of a building in the center of the Irish capital was consumed in flames by the time that Mr. Zareba, who is originally from Poland, was driving by in his semi-truck.
“I saw the flames coming up from the window and one guy was lying on the [sidewalk]. He had blood on his face, and I think he might have broken both his legs when he jumped from the building,” he told the BBC.
“Another guy was screaming from the window. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do because he had flames behind him, and the long drop below him.”
A video posted on Instagram showed that Zareba reversed his truck and got as close to the window as possible to allow the man to leap onto the rooftop of the trailer. (NOTE:You have to click on the video a couple times to see the life-saving leap captured by user @ThisIsDublin…)
“I waited another 20 minutes because the road was blocked and then the fireman came over and said, ‘Grand job buddy, thanks for that’ and I went on to finish my deliveries for the day.”
Mr. Tomasz Zareba
Zareba works as a deliveries driver for Eurospar, a continent-wide grocery chain, whose Ireland-based subsidiary told BBC they were thrilled to see one of their drivers display such a commitment to their community.
Girls at the US Space and Rocket Center’s Space Camp / Nichelle Nichols as Lt Uhura on Star Trek
Girls at the US Space and Rocket Center’s Space Camp / Nichelle Nichols as Lt Uhura on Star Trek
Alabama will be the site of a new training camp for the next generation of female astronauts—funded and named in honor of one of the profession’s great pioneers.
Okay, maybe not exactly, because the Nichelle Nichols Space Camp honors someone who pioneered an idea rather than a profession—an idea that color barriers didn’t exist in outer space.
Passing away in 2022, African American actress Nichelle Nichols was the first black woman to star in a primetime American TV show when she took the role of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on Star Trek. As a bridge officer, it wasn’t just that she had plenty of screen time in the show, but she was one of the highest ranking characters according to the show’s plotline.
As Whoopi Goldberg later put it “I just saw a Black woman on television; and she ain’t no maid!”
Indeed there was nothing typical nor token about Nichols’ character. Uhura was a polyglot, translator, and communications expert high up in the chain of command, and her portrayal resulted in a generation of African American women watching someone who looked like them explore space.
To that end, she became something of a space influencer—with few impacts likely to be greater than this new weekend-long experience for young women aged 14 to 18 at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Organized by the Nichelle Nichols Foundation, the Space Camp will be organized around two structures: the first being the internationally-recognized excellence of the Space and Rocket Center program which mirrors astronaut training done by NASA, and the second being an additional structure of activities to mirror the finest concepts contained within the Star Trek canon.
These include coursework on the concept of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” the bedrock of philosophy from the show’s Vulcan aliens, and a series of mission scenarios similar to those undertaken aboard the Enterprise, specifically a first contact scenario, which was the responsibility of Uhura in the show.
The camp is a fitting legacy for the recently-deceased actress, who was the direct inspiration for Sally Ride, the first female American astronaut, along with so many others who had encountered Nichols during her STEM advocacy work with NASA.
All of that might not have happened if it weren’t for a chance conversation with none other than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nichols, according to multiple sources, planned to leave Star Trek in 1967 after its first season, but changed her mind after talking to Dr. King, who explained it was his favorite show along with his three children, and that her character signified a future of greater racial harmony and cooperation.
The casting was totally open, Dr. King pointed out—if she didn’t play Uhura, they didn’t need another black woman—they could replace her with anyone, even an alien.
Nichols took up the mantle of barrier-breaker onboard the Enterprise, thanks to creator-director Gene Roddenberry. In the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk kiss, which became one of the first scripted interracial kiss scenes in American cinematography. But there’s more.
The original intent was to film a scene that ended in a kiss, and one which ended without, and then allow the network to decide which one to air. Nichols and William Shatner agreed, it has since been learned, to flub every non-kiss take, and thereby force the network’s hand to include the kiss.
The Space Camp costs $2,000 to attend, but financial assistance and scholarships are available for eligible participants.
WATCH a promotional video of the camp below…
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Tawnya Shimizu, a nurse who saved a man's life on the roadside - credit, supplied to the media
Tawnya Shimizu, a nurse who saved a man’s life on the roadside – credit, Shimizu supplied to the media
From Ottawa comes the story of a runner who woke up in the hospital with a burning question: who saved his life?
Tommy Chan went for a five kilometer run on May 20th, but he doesn’t remember anything several days either side of that. All he knows is what the doctors told him: he suffered post-run cardiac arrest.
A bit of detective work revealed at least where he was when he collapsed: a running app called Strava told him he finished his 5K around Bronson and Carling at 7:50 p.m. A smartwatch that is attached to the app to track his heart rate has a telling lapse just after that time.
Paramedics, meanwhile, told him that they had responded to a call about a man suffering cardiac arrest near that location around one hour later. He had been resuscitated with a defibrillator, but not before bystander CPR was administered; deep bruising and a broken rib being two souvenirs of the kindness of strangers.
Rewinding to May 20th, and Tawnya Shimizu was on a walk with her daughter when she saw a commotion just next to her car. A man, it appeared, had collapsed.
“I could hear the 9-1-1 operator giving directions on CPR and counting out the timing,” she told CBC News Ottawa. “So my daughter was immediately like, ‘Mommy, you’re a nurse. You need to help!'”
Rushing over and entering “work mode” she introduced herself to the crowd and the operator, and began to administer CPR, a lifesaving procedure that stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
First responders arrived, used the defibrillator, and rushed Chan to the hospital, leaving Shimizu in a heap of adrenaline that subsided while her curiosity rose in tandem. She was wondering what would happen to him.
Chan, weeks later, posted a account of the event online with the header “Did you save my life?” and the word made it back to Shimizu, who was able to get in touch with Chan, learn that he had in fact survived, and even plan to meet together in the coming days.
“The biggest thank you,” Chan told CBC when asked what he would say. “I don’t know what else to say. Like, I can’t believe you were at the right place at the right time. So I don’t know how I can never repay you.”
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Don Tomas waving with thanks - credit, Beryenis Lopez
Don Tomas waving with thanks – credit, Beryenis Lopez
For anyone who suggests that social media has been a net-negative for society, tell them to spend 3 hours reading GoFundMe stories.
GNN has reported on literally dozens of these internet crowdfunding efforts that have changed people’s lives, and the latest one comes from the sizzling South Florida summer heat.
Don Tomas is a local ice cream seller who pushes a cart because he can’t afford a van. Recently, a resident in a community Tomas frequents saw him pushing his cart down a divided highway miles from anywhere, and decided to just hand over some money as a thank you gesture for that work ethic.
Captured on TikTok, this simple gesture of kindness went viral, garnering 20,000 shares, 6,700 comments, and close to a million likes.
“I always get ice cream from him, omgg I didn’t know he walks that far there’s no way,” said one commenter.
“He’s a beloved part of our community, and he deserves to have better conditions. I’ve created this GoFundMe in hopes we can raise enough money to give to him for transportation and maybe a new ice cream trailer.”
The fundraiser has amassed $30,000 of its $35,000 goal.
“Despite his age and everything going on around us, Mr. Don Tomas maintains a hard-working man!”
SWEETEN Social Media Up With This Story Of Kindness Towards Our Fellow Man…
Quote of the Day: “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” – Henry Melvill
Photo by: Jacek Dylag
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?
122 years ago today, the starting pistol rang out for the first Tour de France, the most prestigious cycling competition today. Set up and sponsored by the newspaper L’Auto, ancestor of the current daily, L’Équipe, it ran from the 1st to 19th of July in six stages over 2,428 km (1,509 miles) and was won by Maurice Garin. Of the three Grand Tours of European cycling, with the other being the Giro d’Italia, and the Vuelta a España, the Tour de France had by far the longest stages. READ how the first event went… (1903)
A coalition of Japanese researchers and institutes have established that a pathway exists through which humble vitamin C can actually regenerate skin cells.
As we age, our skin naturally becomes thinner and more fragile due to a decline in cell production. The researchers found that vitamin C works throughout our life to counteract this aging process.
Using a 3D human skin model, they showed that C boosts thickness in the epidermal skin layer by activating genes linked to cell growth through DNA demethylation. These findings suggest that vitamin C may help prevent age-related skin thinning and support healthier, stronger skin in aging individuals.
The epidermis is the outermost layer of skin, and also the most susceptible to thinning during aging. As our first line of defense against pathogens, this loss of protective strength is problematic.
About 90% of the cells in the epidermis are keratinocytes, which originate from deeper layers of the epidermis and migrate upward, ultimately forming the skin’s protective barrier. To combat aging’s impact on skin, numerous studies have emphasized the benefits of vitamin C, a vitamin well known for its role in skin health and antioxidant properties.
Research led by Dr. Akihito Ishigami, Vice President of the Division of Biology and Medical Sciences at Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontology, has found that vitamin C helps thicken the skin by directly activating genes that control skin cell growth and development.
“C seems to influence the structure and function of epidermis, especially by controlling the growth of epidermal cells. In this study, we investigated whether it promotes cell proliferation and differentiation via epigenetic changes,” explains Dr. Ishigami, according to a release from his university.
To investigate how vitamin C affects skin regeneration, the team used human epidermal equivalents, which are laboratory-grown models that closely mimic real human skin. In this model, skin cells are exposed to air on the surface while being nourished from underneath by a liquid nutrient medium, replicating the way human skin receives nutrients from underlying blood vessels while remaining exposed to the external environment.
The liquid medium contained concentrations of C comparable to those typically transported from the bloodstream into the epidermis. On assessing its effect, they found that vitamin C influenced a thicker epidermal cell layer without significantly affecting the stratum corneum (the outer layer composed of dead cells) on day seven.
By day 14, the inner layer was even thicker, and the outer layer was found to be thinner, suggesting that vitamin C promotes the formation and division of keratinocytes. Treated samples showed increased cell proliferation, demonstrated by a higher number of Ki-67-positive cells—a protein marker present in the nucleus of actively dividing cells.
Importantly, the study revealed that C helps skin cells grow by reactivating genes associated with cell proliferation. It does so by promoting the removal of methyl groups from DNA, in a process known as DNA demethylation.
When DNA is methylated, methyl groups attach to cytosine bases, which can prevent the DNA from being transcribed or read, thereby suppressing gene activity. Conversely, by promoting DNA demethylation, vitamin C promotes gene expression and helps cells to grow, multiply, and differentiate.
DNA methylation is one of the most consequential processes in human aging, and one of the ways that scientists can measure someone’s true biological age, independent of their chronological age.
Vitamin C is an interesting topic in the field of nutrition. Many doctors and registered dieticians will encourage people to try and get all their minerals and vitamins from food, but research has shown that today in America, an orange contains about one-eighth of the vitamin A of an orange grown in the 1950s. There are reasons to suspect similar declines to be measured in vitamin C.
Other research has shown that vitamin C is 30% less abundant in American produce now than it was 70 years ago. There are also nine types of vitamin C, and foods rich in one variety may not be rich in another.
Vitamin C recommendations can range from 90 milligrams per day for a man, to 120 for a breastfeeding mother. However, these are the minimal requirements to stave off known diseases, and optimal health, such as the skin regeneration found in the study, may require substantially more.
Additionally, depending on how the food is prepared, vitamin C absorption may not be the measurable content of the food item itself. Among commonly consumed produce, bell and chili peppers contain the most amount of vitamin C per calorie. One analysis didn’t have oranges in the top 50 items, and lemons only just made it into the ranking.
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A southern Italian hamlet referred to as a ghost town is now attracting thousands of tourists by commissioning artists to paint more than 140 murals on the sites of shops and homes.
It seems fitting that the birthplace of so many of the world’s great artists should leverage painting as a means of recovery—why should Rome and Florence have all the beauty?
Stornara, in the Puglia region has suffered from a fate befalling many towns in Italy. A generation experiencing rising standards of living had fewer children, and those children, now grown up, are moving to the cities, leaving the small towns “crumbling” in their absence.
Local artist Lino Lombardi grew frustrated to see his hometown crumbling around him and became determined to make it a destination worth visiting.
In 2017 he created Stramurales, an annual street art festival that sees artists from around the world come to paint murals in the town. Six of the now 140 vibrant murals were created at the first festival in 2018, and now thousands of people visit every year.
Revenue through tourism has increased by 25% since 2020, and eight new businesses have opened, including two restaurants, three B&Bs, and an art-supplies shop. More importantly than a temporary tourist-season boom, the town’s population has stopped declining and begun to grow again as young families move back, locals say.
– credit Luciano Magaldi Sardella via SWNS
“Suddenly there were loads of people turning up with cameras and guidebooks,” remembered Antonio Maglione, who had been on the brink of closing a cafe he owns in the town. “I had to quickly learn to say ‘welcome’ in five different languages.”
“The murals saved my business, but more than that, they saved our community.”
That sense of provincial entrapment is powerful in Italy, and 45-year-old Rita Gensano spared no mercy for her home when speaking with Britain’s Southwest News Service about returning in 2017 to look after her parents, having previously lived in Turin for 20 years.
“When I first returned it felt like a sacrifice, it was like walking into a ghost town,” said Gensano, now a local tour guide. “I had left it full of life and laughter but when I returned it felt like it was dying.”
“But actually it has become something extraordinary which I have been fortunate to be a part of.”
Other struggling towns have appealed for help from organizers following Stornara’s success.
“Our community has painted itself back to life, one wall at a time,” Lombardi, 57, told SWNS. “At first people thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t just watch the town fade away.”
– credit Luciano Magaldi Sardella via SWNS
“I started looking at the walls as blank canvasses which could be turned into something beautiful. We never planned to be a case study, but if our experience can help other communities that’s even more meaningful.”
The 140-plus paintings spread throughout the town’s streets and historic squares are inspired by Stornara’s agricultural past, migration, and the townsfolk, among other themes.
Tree cover along Fort Lauderdale's New River - credit Tamanoeconomico CC 4.0. BY-SA
Tree cover along Fort Lauderdale’s New River – credit Tamanoeconomico CC 4.0. BY-SA
In a creative use of big data, a survey has found that of the 3,119 US counties, 1,836 experienced growth and expansion of tree cover, with a high concentration among prairie and Mid-West areas.
Additionally, among counties that had thinning forests, the mean tree loss was lower than the mean increase among counties that saw expanding forests; in other words, when measured by county, the US has seen net forest growth over the last 2 decades.
Tree cover in human civilization performs several functions. Woods, however small, have the effect of increasing biodiversity in the area, of retaining soil and preventing erosion and runoff into waterways, shading and reducing average air temperatures, offering the obvious recreation opportunities, and helping to calm people.
Lawn Starter published an analysis of tree cover data county by county which found that increases in tree cover weren’t limited to rural areas. For example, Lea County, New Mexico, is one of the 25 largest counties in the Lower 48 by land area, and it experienced a 1,600% increase in forest canopy—the highest registered in the analysis.
However 14 of the 25 most populated US counties also gained tree cover, including Kings County, New York, Broward County, Florida, and Wayne County, Michigan—home to Brooklyn, Fort Lauderdale, and Detroit, respectively.
Both Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County also gained canopy—and significant amounts of it.
The counties containing prairie urban centers like Boise, Omaha, Lincoln, and Wichita all gained forest cover. Denver, Indianapolis, Seattle, Columbus, Philadelphia, and Nashville also gained some forest cover.
The analysis was conducted between 2000 and 2020, and found a mean increase of 8.15% across all counties that gained forest cover. That’s a major positive for living in a changing climate, since reforestation gains throughout the 20th century have insulated the southeastern region of the United States from increases in average temperatures seen in other regions, GNN reported last year.
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Krizanac training to hold a tennis - credit, Lisa Burth, courtesy
Krizanac training to hold a tennis – credit, Lisa Burth, courtesy
When 29-year-old Luka Kriszanac arrived back at University of Penn. Medicine and got to see his surgery team, it was all smiles and handshakes.
That’s more remarkable than it sounds, since the surgery he underwent was a “vascularized composite allotransplantation,” or in layman’s terms, a double hand transplant.
He is one of five people who have undergone this procedure at Penn Medicine—the center of the world’s most advanced knowledge base on the transplantation of the human hand.
An undiagnosed case of strep throat turned into a deadly sepsis infection when Kriszanac was just a 12-year-old boy in Switzerland, and not only were both his legs amputated, but also his hands.
“Regaining hands after 17 years, I don’t think there is a bigger dream than that,” he told CBS News, adding he wants that the family of the donor to know “they changed not just my life but my family’s life forever, and for that, we are deeply grateful.”
After learning about U. Penn’s hand transplant program, Kriszanac began working with a team to evaluate his suitability for a transplant in 2018. L. Scott Levin, Chair Emeritus of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and professor of plastic surgery and Benjamin Chang, associate chief of plastic surgery, would play the leading roles in the surgery team following the years’ long wait for a donor.
“You do 1,001 activities every day with your hands. Prosthetics cannot simulate or replace that. Our team is very proud of the many things we’ve done as ‘firsts,’” Levin, who has participated in several successful transplantations, told U. Penn press.
“The first child. The first transatlantic vascularized composite allotransplantation. The first in a patient with no lower extremities. The first woman to have hand transplants who later gave birth to a baby.”
Running into a delay from the government restrictions on hospital activities during the pandemic, the wait continued into the 2020s, until finally in 2024, the Gift of Life program connected Kriszanac, Levin, and Chang, with a suitable donor.
That’s harder than it sounds, since not only do the hands have to have a similar genetic and blood profile to the recipient to prevent rejection, they have to be of a similar muscle and bone density, of a similar skin color, and from a donor of a similar age.
Last autumn in the middle of the night, a 10-hour marathon surgery began with one team focusing on preparing Kriszanac, and another addressing the deceased donor who was also there in the operating theater.
Waking up around lunchtime, Kriszanac was astonished with the results, and today through rehabilitation work, is able to prop his head on his hands at a desk, use a finger to push up his glasses, type on a smartphone, hold a cup or a ball, pick up food and eat it, and even feel hot and cold temperatures.
Despite this, Kriszanac will be in contact with U. Penn likely for the rest of his life, such is the length of rehab and risk of complications. It means that the Swiss man has a unique relationship with these professionals across the Atlantic, even after moving back to Zurich with his family.
“When we take this on, we are their doctors and caregivers forever,” says Levin, reflecting on the relationships the hand transplant team builds with their patients. “If they have a problem with rejection or another medical problem, we’re the first to hear about it, and we spring into action. And everybody on every team has that level of commitment, from transplant to nutrition, to coordinators to nurses and therapists.”
Returning to Philadelphia for the first time in June, the air was one of gratitude and joy.
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Written and directed by David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams, it won Golden Globe nominations and starred Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, and Peter Graves. A perfect parody of the disaster film genre—particularly the drama Airport 1975—
