Woman Travels 130K Miles to Bow Down Before Every Korean War Memorial And Thank Vets for Their Service

LOOK: ‘Wear the Cap, Donate the Gown’—Student Helps Donate Thousands of Graduation Gowns to Hospitals in Need

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May 25, 2020

Electric Face Mask-Technion Press Office Released — Photo by Technion Press Office

Israeli researchers have come up with a brilliant new prototype for a self-cleaning face mask which can kill pathogens—such as COVID-19—simply by drawing power from a smartphone charger.

Scientists from the Technion Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering in Haifa—one of Israel’s leading scientific research institutions—say the mask can use an electrical current from any standard 2-amp mobile phone charger to heat up a carbon fiber layer inside the mask and kill off any dangerous viruses that may have accumulated on its surface.

Since announcing the success of their innovative device this week, a Technion spokesperson told reporters that the researchers have already filed a patent application for the mask with the aim of making it commercially available in the United States for just $1.

That being said, the team has not yet commented on whether the mask will be made available in Europe.

However, conservationists hope the mask will help to alleviate the large amounts of medical waste currently being generated by disposable face masks and other single-use personal protective equipment (PPE).

Not only that, the reusable masks are expected to relieve mask shortages in US regions that have been hit hardest by the novel coronavirus.

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

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Belgian Man Strikes Up Friendship With Owl Family After They Discover Mutual Love of Television

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WATCH: This Hacker Built a Vending Machine for Crows as an Ingenious Response to a Cocktail Party Argument

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May 25, 2020

Eagle Owls and Jos Baart-Vroege Vogels Twitter — Photo by Vroege Vogels / Twitter

A Belgian man has managed to strike up a friendship with an unlikely new family living outside his window.

When Jos Baart initially heard noises coming from the planter outside his 3rd-story apartment window two months ago, he assumed that he was being visited by pesky pigeons.

To his surprise, Baart arrived home one day just in time to see an enormous Eurasian eagle owl taking flight from his balcony. Upon investigating his planter a little closer, he was shocked to find three fluffy baby owls staring back at him.

Eurasian eagle owls hold the Guinness World Record for being the largest owl in the world with a wingspan of about 1.5 meters (roughly 5 feet). The three baby owls in Baart’s planter are expected to reach full maturity after four months of nesting—but until then, they have found a great amount of entertainment in watching television with Baart.

In an interview with Dutch television show Vroege Vogels—or Early Birds in English—Baart says that the chicks will often watch his television from the window for hours at a time.

Although the mother is still relatively wary of Baart, the chicks have been more than happy to spend their afternoons around their human neighbor.

The feeling is mutual, too—Baart told the Dutch reporters that he hopes the owls will return again next year.

“Yeah, bring them on!” he exclaimed. “As long as they’re not pigeons.”

(WATCH the endearing news coverage below)

We could hardly believe it when we got a message from Jos Baart telling us that Europe's biggest owl, the Eurasian eagle-owl, had made a nest in a planter in front of his window. Not only that, she had also hatched three giant chicks!#vroegevogels #springwatch #owl pic.twitter.com/gz1odkFLYC
— Vroege Vogels (@VroegeVogels) May 18, 2020

Birds Of A Feather Flock Together—So Be Sure And Share This Sweet Story With Your Friends On Social Media…

Maasai Nature Conservancy Asks For Help To Fight Pandemic—And 100,000 People Answer

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LOOK: People Are Installing Portable Hand-Washing Sinks for the Homeless in Cities Across the US

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May 24, 2020

Massai anti-poachers Nashulai Conservancy nashulaiDOTcom — Nashulai Conservancy – nashulai.com

The rolling plains of the Maasai Mara in Kenya are home to the famous red-cloaked Maasai people as well as some of the most charismatic animals on earth.

When it became clear COVID-19 would destroy the tourism industry of the Maasai living in the breathtaking Nashulai Nature Conservancy, the tribe petitioned Avaaz, a website connecting local people-powered movements, to try and organize a response call for help.

As a result, 100,000 people raised money to help pay the rangers’ salaries, ensuring that the critical Nashulai elephant migration corridor remained safe from poachers. The money was also enough to secure sanitation and medical supplies and food for the Maasai community there, so they could survive the COVID-19 storm.

About 3,000 people live inside the boundaries of the 6,000-acre conservancy, with another 5,000 living in surrounding communities in traditional Maasai villages where they rely mostly on their cattle for food and money.

In 2016, Nelson Ole Reiyia and Margaret Koshal Reiyia placed a project on Avaaz to turn their home into a Nature Conservancy. “Avaazers” around the world chipped in with hearts and wallets to launch the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy, an innovative way to help the Maasai maintain their traditional way of live in a harmonious way with the land.

The Conservancy created a way to bring outside capital into the community through offering safaris and camping, as well as cultural homestays and other events.

These community programs brought increasing opportunities for education, established greater food and market security, and needed sanitation facilities.

The Maasai are famous warriors, and the conservancy established a mighty force against poachers. Professional rangers and young warriors called “moran” who are trained in bush practices, now serves as “The Warriors for Wildlife Protection”, monitoring the animal populations and protecting against poaching.

The Modern Maasai Facing COVID-19

COVID-19 has put much of this in danger. The tourist infrastructure, which 90% of all the Nashulai Maasai depend on for income, has completely collapsed.

The community library has been repurposed as a storehouse for medical equipment—and rationing of food supplies like cornmeal and cooking oil has begun.

With help from Avaaz they’ve been able to pay the rangers’ salaries, and import much needed medical and sanitary supplies.

MORE: Thousands of Young Adults Are Volunteering to Catch COVID-19 to Save Others in the Future

“We’ve worked hard to create this unique conservancy, and we want it to be there for the people in their deepest moment of need,” writes Nelson Ole Reiyia on the Nashulai website.

Generous persons can still donate to their COVID-combating activities directly on the website, which are tax deductible contributions for the U.S. and Canada.

WATCH the video…

SHARE the Community Support on Social Media to Help the Maasai…

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

Optimistic COVID-19 Statistics For Vast Numbers of US States Reported For May

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May 24, 2020

Some good news for those of us during this pandemic who are looking for things to get back to normal: The CDC reports large decreases in mortality rates—and hospitalizations— during April and May throughout most of the United States.

In a White House press briefing on Friday, coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx provided some optimism when she shared these graphs and charts based on data from the Centers for Disease Control.

There has been a dramatic decline in COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, and an increase in testing—especially in high-burden states like New York.

Nationwide, there has been more than a 50% decline in new hospitalizations.

Across the country, the US is below the baseline for normal influenza-like symptoms normally reported in emergency rooms nationwide.

In the week ending May 16, compared to March 28, the vast majority of the U.S. have reported a reductions of the number of cases for influenza-like illness, with the green being the most desirable, after reports coming in from states and counties alike.

Compare that picture to this one in March, where you can see the prevalence of states recording a high number of cases for influenza-like symptoms during the week ending March 28:

Regarding testing, Dr. Birx said, “all of the 50 states have reached 2% testing” of the population, which was the desired number for the CDC, with many of the states over 4%.

“We are encouraged by the progress that many of the governors and states have made in their testing of their population.” The federal government has encouraged 100% of testing in local nursing homes, she added.

Regarding testing positive for the tests done in the nose, “You can see a dramatic decline across the states, and New York City just six weeks ago at 40%, is now at 10%.”

Below, you can see the decrease across various age ranges for visits to doctors after influenza-like symptoms during the week ending May 9.

“42 states are now have less than 10 percent test positive,” reports Birx.

The top three states with the largest percent testing positive, “so you can make decisions about social distancing,” including playing sports and engaging in other gatherings, are Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Also Nebraska, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all higher than average for numbers of testing positive—but, they are all under 20%.

Four weeks ago, half of the United States was over 20%, so many regions have shown vast improvement.

Watch the press briefing from MSN, here.

SHARE the Optimistic COVID Trends With Friends on Social Media…

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

World’s Most Endangered Primate Population Triples After 17 Years of Careful Conservation

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MORE: Hawaii’s State Bird Soars Back From Brink of Extinction After Only 30 Birds Left on Islands

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May 24, 2020

Hainan Gibbon-CC Eric Kilby via Wikipedia COmmons — File photo by Eric Kilby, CC

A brighter future lies ahead for the critically-endangered Hainan gibbons of Hainan Island thanks to decades of steady conservation work.

The small tropical island off the coast of China is the only place this charismatic primate is found, and their numbers have increased from just 10 individuals in 1970 to 30 in 2020.

The progress has been slow due to limited quality habitat and a slow rate of birth inherent in the species, but things have improved dramatically from when the conservation project began in 2003, and just 13 wild gibbons were left on the island living in two family groups.

The males’ fur is jet black with white cheek patches while the females flush bright orange when they reach maturity. Their small faces and curious eyes make for a soft countenance as they gaze down on the rare passerby from the treetops.

“They are really intelligent animals. When they look at you, it feels like they are trying to communicate,” Philip Lo Yik-fui told South China Morning Post. Lo is a senior conservation officer at Kadoorie Conservation China which has been the driving force behind the conservation project.

In 2016, a tourist website called Tropical Hainan claimed the Hainan gibbon was the world’s rarest mammal, and that it has survived this long only due to a spooky tale wherein one day a hunter shot one of the last few gibbons on the island and his whole family died of a mysterious disease. After this, hunting gibbons was believed to be unlucky.

Working Together For Gibbons

The two family groups were found living high in the mountains in Hainan’s sprawling Bawangling Nature Reserve. Their habitat was far from ideal, as it lacked the figs and lychee fruit trees that make up a sizable chunk of gibbon-diets.

Since then, Kadoorie has planted 80,000 fig and lychee trees to link existing habitat patches with the fruiting trees to encourage isolated populations to meet and interact.

According to SCMP, Lo says that the goal is to try and get the numbers of gibbons above 50, the mark when they would no longer be critically endangered, but simply “endangered” as designated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List.

“Our biggest goal now is to help expand the gibbons’ territory so the whole species won’t be wiped out if natural disasters occur,” Lo added.

CHECK OUT: Humpback Whale Population Bounces Back From Near-Extinction—From Just 450, to Over 25,000

He said that local forest authorities who were at first cold to the idea of intervention by the Hong Kong conservationists, have now thrown their support behind the project. In January of last year the Forestry Department of Hainan established the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park to further secure gibbon habitat.

The 19 species of gibbon on the island have been hunted in the past, but former hunters are being utilized for their knowledge of the forests and of the behavior of the animals and given jobs as conservationists.

“We try and instill a sense of pride in the locals, and the ex-hunters are really satisfied with their work now,” Lo said. “That is the main point of conservation work, it’s just as much about the people. And now people who were on opposing sides are teammates working together to protect the gibbons.”

SHARE This Amazing Conservation News With Your Friends On Social Media…

New Plant-Based Bottles and Cups Backed by Coca-Cola And Dannon Can Degrade in a Year

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LOOK: Scuba Diving Group Swamped With Orders for Its Face Masks Made From Recycled Ocean Plastic

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May 24, 2020

Carlsberg Bottle-Avantium Released — Photo by Avantium

Have you ever gone to a public event and seen the trash cans filled to burst with plastic bottles and experienced a little anxiety over the knowledge that a large amount of it will end up in landfills?

Now, major food and beverage companies are getting behind a new startup of “plant plastics” that could spell the end of this problem once and for all.

The Guardian recently hailed an innovation out of The Netherlands as possibly marking “the end of plastic.” And the biochemical startup Avantium has weathered through COVID-19 slow-downs well, partially because the potential of its plant-based plastic to solve ocean and landfill pollution is so promising.

The Dutch company is partnering with the ‘biggest fish’ in the sea of bottling companies—Coca-Cola. Food company Danone which sells 24.6 billion in food products every year (as Dannon in the U.S.) has also come on board. They two giants have invested in construction of a world-leading bioplastics plant in The Netherlands.

Carlsberg, the 173-year-old multinational brewing company, has already thrown its support behind Avantium’s design of bottles made from plant sugars.

Trials have shown that Avantium’s design is durable enough to contain carbonated drinks. When placed in a composter they will biodegrade over the course of one year, and over three when left in the natural environment.

“This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled—but would also degrade in nature,” Tom Van Aken tells The Guardian. Van Aken is the CEO of Avantium and plans to announce additional partnerships in support of its project this summer.

The bio-refinery will break down waste from corn, wheat, and beets and create 5,000 metric tons of plant-plastic in the first year.

Products packaged in Avantium’s plant plastics could be on the shelves in 2023, with high expectations of increased market demand to come quite soon after.

Multiply The Good News By Sharing It With Your Friends On Social Media…

“I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.” – Adlai Stevenson

Quote of the Day

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May 24, 2020

Quote of the Day: “I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.” – Adlai E. Stevenson II

Photo: by Siora Photography, public domain

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?

White Storks Have Hatched The First Wild Chicks Born in England in 600 Years

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May 23, 2020

White Stork Project-pair on nest-Photo Credit Brad Albrecht — Photo Credit Brad Albrecht

The babies brought by these storks weren’t delivered in blankets.

The White Stork Project was delighted to announce last week that wild storks in West Sussex have hatched their very own babies—and it is believed to be the first time in England since the 1400s.

On a private estate used for stork conservation called the Knepp site, five eggs appeared in a nest high up in an oak tree. After 33 days of incubation, and much tending by the pair of storks, the first chick hatched on May 6.

White Stork Project Officer Lucy Groves watched as eggshell was removed from the nest and the parents were seen regurgitating food for the new chicks to eat.

This is the same pair that attempted to breed at Knepp last year without success. The female is a ringed bird from the project, which came to Knepp in 2016 from Poland. The male, however, has no identifying ring, so this is likely to be one of the twenty or so vagrant storks which visit the UK each year.

“The parents have been working hard and are doing a fantastic job, especially after their failed attempt last year,” said Groves excitedly. “It is incredible to have the first white stork chicks hatch in the wild for hundreds of years here at Knepp.”

There are two other breeding pairs on the property with six eggs having hatched in two of the nests.

“These are early days for the chicks, and we will be monitoring them closely, but we have great hopes for them.”

Photo Credit Brad Albrecht / White Stork Project

A total of three private estates have constructed 6-acre predator-proof pens where storks have been introduced.

166 rehabilitated wild-fledged white storks from Poland, as well as a small number of others from northern France, have been released into these pens over the course of the last three years, in order to establish local breeding populations, based on the successful approach used to restore white stork populations in Europe over the last 50 years.

WATCH: Videos Show Penguins Going On Adorable ‘Field Trip’ Around Their Aquarium During Shutdowns

The co-owner of the Knepp estate, Isabella Tree, said that when she hears the clattering sound coming from the tops of their oak trees “it feels like a sound from the Middle Ages has come back to life.”

“We watch them walking through the long grass on their long legs, kicking up insects and deftly catching them in their long beaks as they go – there’s no other bird that does that in the UK.”

Lucy says, especially now, the birth brings hope: “This stunning species has really captured people’s imagination during the period of lockdown and it’s been great hearing about the joy and hope they have brought to people.”

It is an exciting first step toward reestablishing 20 wild pairs of these majestic birds at each of the three locations—bringing them back into the south of England once again.

WATCH a new video from the project…

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Research Says That the Simple Act of Planning a Trip Can Help Boost Your Mental Health

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LOOK: Rather Than Slip into Depression, Man Quits Job, Sells Possessions, and Travels the World With a Ferret

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May 23, 2020

victory beach confidence sunset-cc-Hernán Piñera — By Hernán Piñera, CC license

Studies from Cornwall University have found that people who plan a trip in advance experience better feelings about their social situation, economic means, their state of health, and life in general.

It goes without saying that planning a trip in this moment would surely be difficult. There’s a strong chance no one but Italians will be under the Tuscan sun this spring or summer, according to the Italian Minister for Culture and Tourism.

However, that’s no reason to put off your vacation planning this year, as it could likely give you a significant mental boost during these turbulent times. Back in 2014, University of Cornwall researchers Amit Kumar and Matthew Killingsworth published a paper on how experiences provide more satisfaction than material goods.

The paper focused on an often overlooked aspect of an otherwise commonly researched field—experiential versus material consumption and the psychological effects of both before the consumption takes place.

The study found that delayed gratitude, especially as it relates to travel, was more pleasurable than both immediate consumption and delayed consumption of material goods and services. Another 2002 paper reinforced this idea when it found that UK citizens were happier when they had a holiday trip planned.

“It appears that those who are waiting to go on a holiday are much happier with their life as a whole, experience less negative or unpleasant feelings and thus enjoy an overall net positive effect from pleasant feelings. The holiday-taking group is also happier with their family, economic situation, and health domains compared to the non-holiday-taking group,” reads the study’s abstract.

The Journey Begins with You

“Our future-mindedness can be a source of joy if we know good things are coming, and travel is an especially good thing to have to look forward to,” Killingsworth told Nat Geo.

Planning a trip can be especially exciting because we often know just enough about where we’re going and what we’re going to do to begin imagining specific pleasurable details of the places—like the sensation of the sun or the smell of campfire smoke in the forest—but there are also enough absent details to leave us wondering about the novelty of different moments.

WATCH: Video Takes You On a Tour of Some of the Most Magnificent Libraries in the World

“In a sense, we start to ‘consume’ a trip as soon as we start thinking about it,” Killingsworth says. “When we imagine eating gelato in a piazza in Rome or going water skiing with friends we don’t see as much as we’d like, we get to experience a version of those events in our mind.”

Travel Planning Therapy

If you’re the kind of person who likes to plan a trip, there are a lot of reasons why starting right now could be very rewarding beyond the above mentioned improvements in mental health.

While COVID-19 presents a challenge both in terms of the danger it poses to health and the restrictions to travelers in popular tourist countries like Germany, Greece, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan and more, it provides an opportunity to visit a farther flung destination such as Bora Bora, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Oman, or the beaches of Argentina.
For those looking to spend their holiday in nature, there’s added incentive as one will be away from COVID-19 danger and able to enjoy the outdoors, which many citizens in places like the UK, Italy, and the U.S. have been unable to do because of the lockdowns.
Being stuck in our houses and neighborhoods for weeks without end, planning a trip can simply give us something else to talk about!
Many countries in more exotic and unstable regions of the world rely heavily on the money from tourism to sustain communities. Traveling just after this pandemic and spending money will help local markets recover from the economic destitution forecast by the UN.

I have traveled to 14 countries as diverse as Nicaragua, China, and Namibia, and am currently living abroad in Italy as a contributing writer for GNN, and I can pass on some suggestions for planning a trip.

I heard once that when an Australian Aborigine takes a “walkabout” it’s as much about experiencing the land as it is about finding the sense of one’s self, and that the two are inextricably linked in some way.

LOOK: When Grandma Confesses She Has Never Seen the Ocean, Grandson Takes Her On Epic Cross-Country Trip

I like to keep in mind the towns and parks I would pass by on a journey whenever I plan a trip, picking destinations that connect over land, because I genuinely believe that the places in between is where magical things happen.

Once I have the principle destinations and activities in mind, I pull out my trusty world atlas and look at what kind of climate and terrain exists in the spaces between. After I experience the joy of feeling the pages of an atlas or a map and moving my fingers along the routes and places I want to go—which helps me feel closer to the destinations—I open Google Maps, zoom in until I can see the names of individual businesses, and I do a ‘walkabout’ along the route I’ve chosen, taking notes of all the little interesting things I see along the way.

If it begins to get stressful, file the idea away on a word document for later. You might plan an itinerary and be really excited about it without embarking for years. I planned a trip to Ecuador, Peru, and Chile for the summer of 2017, and I’m still excited about one day using it.

Start Planning A Trip With Your Friends By Showing This Encouraging Study To Social Media…

Indigenous Group in Brazil Wins Decades-Long Battle Against Illegal Loggers in the Amazon

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May 23, 2020

A victory in a decades-long court battle provided relief for a special part of the Amazon rainforest and for the Ashaninka indigenous people who live there, as their 1990s lawsuit against illegal logging interests finally ended with a public statement of apology and a $3 million award for compensation.

Forestry companies and their legal teams acknowledged the “enormous importance of the Ashaninka people as guardians of the forest, zealous in the preservation of the environment,” in their official apology which claimed regret “for all the ills caused.”

Francisco Piyãko, part of Ashaninka leadership said, “These resources come to enhance existing actions, to generate sustainability for our people, our land, so that it helps to strengthen us to continue the broader project of environmental protection and maintenance of our ways of life.”

Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies suggested that the Attorney General, Augusto Aras, believes this case could be a turning point in environmental and indigenous peoples lawsuits.

“What we did here was to comply with the Constitution, understanding that the indigenous people have sacred rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta,” Aras said in a statement. “You have the right to have a decent life, materially speaking, to choose your own destiny, to take part in political decisions, with respect to isolated communities.”

Beginning in 1980, forestry firms started harvesting mature cedar and mahogany trees for the European furniture trade in the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Reserve. The money awarded in the settlement will be paid over 5 years, and will be put mainly towards reforestation projects.

“The case will define hundreds of thousands of cases on massive environmental crimes in Brazil,” Antonio Rodrigo, the attorney for Ashaninka, said according to Latin Post.

(File photo by Nishaan ahmed)

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These ‘Detroit Mower Gang’ Volunteers Have Been Competing to Maintain City’s Old Parks

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LOOK: Photos of 75-Year-Old Volunteer Napping With Cats Hauls in Funds to Run Sanctuary for a Year

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May 23, 2020

Detroit Mower Gang-Facebook — Detroit Mower Gang –Facebook

If someone approached you with a giant wrestling-style leather and gold belt slung over their shoulder that said “Grand Champion – Motown Mowdown” you’d be forgiven for mistaking them for some sort of amateur prize fighter or professional wrestler.

This Grand Champion belt is awarded to whichever volunteer mows the most grass on Detroit’s public playgrounds and parks in a 12-hour competition called the Motown Mowdown.

The Detroit Mower Gang—a group of volunteer grass cutters and playground repairmen—began their annual mow-a-thon on May 16th at the Hammerberg Playfield, an abandoned collection of sports fields, swing sets, and meadows on the city’s west side.

“No one owns this particular park, it just fell through the cracks,” Tom Nardone of Birmingham told Detroit News.

50-year old Nardone, who started the Detroit Mower Gang in 2009, added: “We just try to keep it alive … Without a group, you couldn’t mow this park with a mower in (fewer than) a couple of days.”

A Man and his Mower

A decade ago the city was close to filing for bankruptcy, and city hall announced that, of the 300 parks in Detroit, they only had funding to care for 72 of them. That year, Nardone purchased a lawn tractor on Craigslist and took it to a park on 8-Mile road. He started a Facebook Group to see if any neighbors would volunteer their time to help mow with him—and the rest is heartwarming history.

At Hammerberg Playfield last Saturday, gang members repaired broken swing sets and mowed the derelict fields before splitting up to tackle 10 other abandoned playgrounds and parks.

28-year-old Hannah VanEckoute, the reigning, defending, undisputed Motown Mowdown Champion of the World, arrived with her Dixie Chopper with her husband Gage for their fourth year with the gang.

“The reaction from people when they see what we’ve done is always so special,” said VanEckoute. “Sometimes the grass is so tall kids can’t even get into it and then the smile on their faces as we leave is such a great accomplishment.”

The work of the Detroit Mower Gang has allowed the city to slowly catch up to its park workload. Last year they formed a nonprofit called Enemies of Debris and hosted a “trash fishing” event where volunteers pulled trash out of the Detroit River with their fishing rods. As hard as he works, it’s Nardone’s hope that city hall will one day put him and his gang out of business.

“We could start a bowling league or something,” he joked.

Clean Up Negativity By Sharing This Inspiring Story With Your Friends On Social Media…

“There are some natures too noble to curb and too lofty to bend.” – Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abba

Quote of the Day

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May 23, 2020

boy running in ocean wave joy freedom-pubdomain-Shane Stagner — Credit: Shane Stagner

Quote of the Day: “There are some natures too noble to curb—and too lofty to bend.” –Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abba Alcott

Photo: by Shane Stagner, public domain

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?

‘Wear the Cap, Donate the Gown’: Student Helps Donate Thousands of Graduation Gowns to Hospitals in Need

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May 22, 2020

Medical Grad Student-Gowns 4 Good Website — Photo by Gowns 4 Good

As graduation day came for Nathaniel Moore, a physician’s assistant at the University of Vermont, Burlington, he wondered why his graduation gown couldn’t be repurposed as a piece of personal protective equipment for his colleagues at the hospital where he worked.

“The image of my colleagues on the front line and at other medical facilities that lack the appropriate PPE and wearing trash bags with no sleeves and no protection under the waist, that just struck me,” 30-year-old Moore told Reuters.

Attempting to help other frontline health workers, Moore started Gowns 4 Good, a charity which has been donating gowns to hospital facilities that lack the necessary PPE to safely operate during the coronavirus outbreaks.

The slogan “Wear the Cap, Donate the Gown” has since been used to decorate many virtual graduation caps across the country to raise awareness for Gowns 4 Good.

With millions of young American students graduating from university every year, the ingenious donation scheme could potentially end the PPE demand for gowns in just a few days.

“Graduation gowns are more effective than other PPE alternatives given their length, sleeves, and easy zippered access,” reads the organization’s website. “To carry out this mission of protecting healthcare workers by upcycling graduation gowns, the Gowns4Good initiative was formed in April 2020.”

Medical facilities across the country have already submitted thousands of gown requests from the charity. Thus far, Moore has managed to collect 7,000 from private donors and another 2,700 from corporate partners Graduation Source and Cooper Cap and Gown.

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

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More and More Farmers Are Using Garlicky Supplements to Curb Major Environmental Enemy: Cow Gas

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May 22, 2020

three-cows-Dave_A-CC-Flickr — Dave, CC license

While passing gas is usually considered a simple social passé for humans, cow burps are notorious for producing much more than a foul smell—they produce a gas that is terrible for the environment.

Thankfully, a new garlic-based dietary supplement given to cows has been shown in two different studies to reduce the methane content in cow belches by 30%–38%, which could help reduce the 2.6% of American greenhouse gas volume produced from cattle ranching.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) that traps heat in the atmosphere 25 times more effectively than CO2, according to the EPA and the IPCC.

Unlike CO2, which represents more than 80% of America’s GHGs, methane only stays in the atmosphere for 12 years, which means the supplements would take only a few years to begin having a measurable effect.

Mootral, the Switzerland-based company, will likely be celebrating their supplement’s success as they are set to be the first company on earth to be awarded carbon credits for methane reduction in cows. Both studies of the supplement have shown no adverse effects, both in the health of the animal and the flavor of the milk and meat.

The start-up came as a result of examining garlic’s antimicrobial effect on the human diet, and discovered they benefit cows. Cows produce methane when food in their chambered stomachs is broken down by microbes. The garlic supplement mixed with citrus “pellets” reduces the amount of microbes present, thereby making the belching less potent.

Chipping Away

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) executive summary of America’s GHG inventory from 1990 to 2016, agriculture as a whole accounted for 10% of America’s emissions, with 2.52% coming from enteric fermentation—the fermentation of feed in the stomachs of cows.

If every cow in America (a little over 100 million animals) and all 30 million horses for that matter, were in theory given the Mootral supplement and it corresponded with the previously-observed decrease of 30% in the animal’s methane emissions, merely 1.66% of GHGs in America could be attributed to animal agriculture.

CHECK OUT: Kroger Buys and Redirects Dairy Farmers’ Excess Milk, Sending 50,000 Gallons Per Month to Food Banks

Such a drop would see enteric fermentation fall from the largest source of methane emissions in the US to around the levels produced by landfills.

Mootral CEO Thomas Hafner has a realistic view of how reducing these small amounts of methane from cows and other livestock through cultural changes will be almost impossible.

“…even though we see a move towards non-dairy alternatives, and people going to non-animal protein sources, populations in other parts of the world are progressing from a cereal-based diet into an animal protein-rich diet. Whatever we lose on one side, we’re going to gain on the other, if not more. What we provide is a solution to reduce the impact of that down the line.”

Multiply The Good News By Sharing It With Your Friends On Social Media — Representative feature photo by Dave_A, CC

Church Opens Up Its Doors to Muslim Worshippers So They Can Have a Place to Pray During Quarantine

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WATCH: These Israelis Are Forging Peace on the Beach, Bringing Palestinians to the Ocean for Their Very First Visits

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May 22, 2020

In a heartening display of inter-faith compassion, a German church has opened its doors to Muslims with no place to attend Friday prayers during Ramadan.

Although the nation suspended religious services back in March as a means of curbing the COVID-19 outbreaks, they recently started allowing worshippers to gather in groups of up to 50 people at a time.

The Dar Assalam mosque in the Neukölln district of Berlin typically hosts up to 1,000 worshippers at a time during the month of fasting, but due to the new social restrictions, hundreds of German Muslims have been struggling to find a place of prayer.

Thankfully, the nearby Martha evangelical church—located just one mile away from the mosque—offered to open its doors to host the Friday prayers.

The church has now reportedly been offering two different prayer services for the Islamic worshippers, one in German and one in Arabic. Worshippers have also been required to wear masks and maintain six feet of distance during the prayers.

Representatives of Dar Assalam say that the events have helped them to double the amount of people attending their services while simultaneously raising valuable funds to support the mosque during the lockdowns.

“It is a great sign of solidarity,” mosque spokesperson Juanita Villamor told Newsweek. “We are just thankful, this is a good chance of inter-religious dialog and it is wonderful that the church is doing this.”

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

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These Specially-Trained Dogs Have Saved 45 Rhinos From Poachers in South Africa—And Counting

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Michael Goonan

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May 22, 2020

Park Officials With Canine Team-South African Wildlife College Facebook — Photo by South African Wildlife College

Everybody knows that dogs are man’s best friend—but these trusty canines in South Africa have also proven themselves to be the best friends of endangered wildlife as well.

The pack of beagles, bloodhoods, and more, has saved the lives of 45 rhinos threatened by poachers since 2018. Now, in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, they and their human friends at the Southern African Wildlife College continue to provide their essential services in the country’s national parks.

Trained to protect wildlife since birth, these hounds began their important work at the age of 18 months. Their efforts have helped law enforcement in the region of Kruger National Park catch an “unprecedented 145 poachers and confiscate 53 guns,” according to National Geographic.

But what is now a well-oiled wildlife protection operation did not start out that way; the story began in 2017, when Theresa Sowry, CEO of the Southern Africa Wildlife College, visited a man named Joe Braman at his rural ranch in Southern Texas.

Braman was a part-time police officer, businessman, and cowboy with no knowledge of the poaching crisis happening half a world a way—but Sowry had heard through the grapevine that Braman trained a special bloodline of dogs that had found great success in helping Texas law enforcement catch escaping prison inmates. She wanted to see for herself whether the pooches could be of help at the southern tip of her continent.

“Just think about it,” Braman mused to NatGeo. “If you spun a globe and threw a dart and it stuck, what’s the odds you’ll find a low-key guy in southern Texas’s coastal bend gettin’ picked to stop the extinction of a species?”

South African National Parks had previously employed anti-poaching teams using individual dogs, but their success was limited. “Kruger was very keen to test free-running dogs,” Sowry explained to the news outlet. “Building a pack dog team is a massive undertaking. You need the right genetics, the right training, and, most importantly, the right mind-set to bring it all together.”

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

Braman grew up raising just these types of dogs with his dad; the father and son team would train groups of 15 or so dogs to follow the scent of animals.

When Braman arrived in South Africa, the plan was simply to asses Kruger National Park’s K9 unit and to train a handful of dogs—but the project quickly expanded to reach a scale that nobody anticipated. After finding that training practices in the country were much different that what he did on his ranch back home, he returned to Texas to train a group of dogs which he could later bring back to Kruger.

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Upon returning with his dogs, Braman didn’t know what to expect—but almost immediately after arriving at the park, the canines managed to catch a group of poachers who had killed a rhino. Since then, there has been a ten-fold increase in successful apprehensions of poachers thanks to the work of the K9 program.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the work of the K9 team continues in earnest. On May 7th, the Southern African Wildlife College celebrated the first birthday of the black and tan hound puppies, born from the original dogs that came from Texas—and in six short months, they’ll be joining the veterans out in the field to continue protecting and serving endangered wildlife.

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World’s Largest Open-Air Gallery Was Painted By People With Learning Disabilities—And It’s Breathtaking

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LOOK: Britain’s Best Gardening Couple Outdo Themselves With Spring Spectacular After Spending Lockdown Tending Their Oasis

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May 22, 2020

A team of artists has transformed a series of drab cement silos into the world’s largest “open-air museum”—and they did it with inclusivity at the forefront of their mission.

Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel first started painting murals on the structures as a means of beautifying the region of Ciudad Real.

As Miguel continued to ramp up his artistic mission, he partnered with an organization that provides work to local people with learning disabilities and special needs.

Since collaborating with the group, Miguel has helped to paint 10 different silos across the region with breathtaking works of art.

His team is now working on transforming the interiors of the silos into a “kind of universal church for everyone: all religions, all genders, and all races.”

(WATCH the Great Big Story video below)

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“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Quote of the Day

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May 22, 2020

Quote of the Day: “The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Photo: by Ben White, public domain

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?

Family Praised for Their Honesty After Finding and Returning Bags Containing $1Million in Cash

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