Greg Dale's glass memorial for his grandparents, Maynard and Claudia.
If you don’t want to memorialize family members with headstones in crowded cemeteries, this creative couple from Seattle has taken a much more artistic approach—and their creations are breathtaking.
Greg and Christina Dale specialize in turning the cremated ashes of people’s loved ones into swirling, colorful glass sculptures and pendants—and already 50,000 of their memorials have helped families to grieve and remember.
Greg first got the idea for the unique labor of love after he and his wife were forced to consider funeral arrangements for his father.
“I almost lost my father to a surgery,” Greg told Good News Network. “We were going over options if I lost him and the idea for our amazing business was hatched.
“Getting shot out into space, fireworks, and becoming part of a reef are great ideas we went over,” he added. “But I realized everyone is looking for help healing, and I thought beautiful glass art would help.”
Although Greg’s father apparently made it through the surgery, he did end up using his grandparents’ ashes to make a memorial of his own—a fitting start to the Dales’ work.
Greg’s memorial for his grandparents, Maynard and Claudia.
Since launching their Artful Ashes business back in 2012, they have made more than 50,000 glass memorials, sculptures, and pendants for mourners.
“I took my mom to one of her favorite places on her birthday.” –Artful Ashes customer LeAnn
Clients are only required to send the Dales one tablespoon of ashes for the artists to handcraft a memorial within four weeks.
“I love my heart! I take it everywhere! Mom came to Christmas Eve service with us!” –Artful Ashes customer Kerri
The creations cost up to $185 apiece—but some of the glowing testimonials that the Dales have received on their memorials have proven to be priceless.
“Hello Greg and Christina, I graduated to grandma!!! Thanks to your beautiful art, my mother got to be part of our first grandson (her great grandson). Thank you.” –Artful Ashes customer Tamara
If you want to order a memorial of your own or check out more of the Dales’ stunning work, be sure and check out the Artful Ashes website or Facebook page.
“My husband totally surprised me with this gift. Thank you so much for the care you took in bringing my mom and stepdad home to me this Christmas. It’s beautiful.” –Artful Ashes customer Terri
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Boyan Slat is the young engineer responsible for the organization that recently collected two shipping containers of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for the first time in history—and now, the Dutch conservationist is setting his sights on the very source of most of that water pollution.
Slat already has his oceanic cleanup vessels deployed along the path of key ocean currents, allowing vast amounts of plastic waste to drive themselves toward his devices before being hoovered up and moved to shore for recycling. He has also confirmed they are capturing even microplastics that are one millimeter in size.
But, simultaneously, he is also tackling a related issue—a facet that is just as critical to the overall plastic pollution problem: the world’s most littered rivers.
Slat and his organization, The Ocean Cleanup, began targeting river pollution after their research revealed that 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for depositing 80% of all the trash that is currently swirling in the ocean.
By “turning off the taps” and catching the plastic along the river’s course, the much more difficult task of capturing it in the ocean can be mostly avoided.
Enter Slat’s latest creation, The Interceptor: an efficient solar-powered barge that gobbles up plastic river garbage.
The Interceptor – The Ocean Cleanup
Prepare the Interceptor
The Interceptor collects trash by extending a water-permeable barrier halfway across the river. A conveyor belt at the front of the Interceptor then scoops the plastic out of the water and deposits it onto a shuttle that moves across the length of the barge and deposits the trash into one of 6 dumpsters which can be remotely monitored by an onshore crew.
Once full, the dumpsters—which sit on a separate barge—can be removed by another boat and brought ashore for recycling.
At top performance, the Interceptor can extract 220,000 pounds (100,000 kilograms) of trash per day, and with several Interceptors placed along key or narrower parts of the river, minimal amounts of garbage are ever likely to reach the ocean.
Interceptor 002 at work in Klang, Malaysia. Was amazing to see it in reality! pic.twitter.com/7xXoYojgzX
Slat’s goal is to have Interceptors in all 1,000 of the worst polluting rivers by 2025. The Interceptor is scalable and easily manufactured, allowing it to be more widely available in poorer countries where pollution is at its worst because waste disposal is far less developed than in most Western countries.
Currently, The Ocean Cleanup has Interceptors in the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur—which is among the 50 worst rivers for pollution—and the Cengkareng Drain in Jakarta.
The Ocean Cleanup will help anyone looking to lobby their local governments for implementation of the Interceptor in their own rivers, which readers can explore by visiting the “Nominate your River” section of the organization’s website, which also describes how you can become an operator, and where the 1,000 worst rivers are in the world.
If you DONATE $50 to keep the Interceptors and ships operating, you are guaranteed to receive one of the first recycled products, to be announced later this year, from the Pacific Garbage Patch.
(WATCH the video explaining the brilliance of the Interceptor below)
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Despite how Benjamin’s dyslexia has always made it hard for him to read and write, he has always had a knack for memorizing and copying patterns at an incredible speed.
His mother Melanie Russo says that his heightened sense of spatial awareness is part of what makes solving Rubik’s cubes so easy for the youngster. In fact, he can finish just one side of a Rubik’s cube in about one second.
“Dyslexia is not my disability,” reads one of the printed notecards in Benjamin’s Rubik’s cube video. “Dyslexia is my SUPERPOWER.”
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” – Marcus Aurelius
Image: by HaPe Gera, CC license on Flickr – adjusted levels
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California’s housing crisis is hitting especially lower-income communities harder than ever, as rent prices continue to rise stemming from the endless injections of big-tech money into areas like San Francisco and Oakland.
According to The Guardian, the number of homeless encampments within the city of Oakland outnumbers the square kilometers that make up that city—but at the corner of 37th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, this community of housed and unhoused citizens are creating reasons for people to change their attitudes toward the often embattled encampments.
“37MLK” was just a vacant Oakland lot of overgrown weeds squared away by tattered chain link fencing in the northwest part of town where Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, a local resident, walked on her way to work.
“Every single day for the past decade I lived here, I walked on my way to work past this vacant lot, this eyesore, this blight that was never put to good use to the community,” the 32-year-old told The Guardian. “Meanwhile, you would see the tents grow just a half a block down there. You see people literally sleeping on the side of the street, on the side of freeways.”
Today, 37MLK has become far more than a homeless encampment; it is a homeless sanctuary.
There’s a solar shower, a garden that grows food and flowers, a communal kitchen and dining table, camping toilets and a pump-operated sink, all of which are maintained and kept clean by the campers in the community—mostly homeless black women.
The little community feels protected inside the fencing—and the walkways between tents are lined with solar-powered lights and mini white picket fences. The women also keep chickens, which provide eggs and help keep insect and rodent populations under control.
Echeverría-Fenn and other housed neighbors do their part to take care of the community by providing the services which 37MLK cannot provide for themselves, such as trash and waste disposal.
“…there are the allegations that homeless people are dirty or don’t keep the space clean,” Echeverría-Fenn said. “There’s only one reason why we’re clean and other encampments are dirty: we have actual access to trash facilities and we have access to running water that other encampments don’t.”
While the police have been called twice in the community’s history, among the residents there’s a sense of collective responsibility, with regular meetings held to discuss cleanliness and to remind everyone that noise or blight complaints could lead to the dismantling of their quiet and peaceful way of life.
Creativity and Urgency
Oakland city council members recognize the role that camps like 37MLK may play in the tackling the homelessness epidemic now, while the much-needed affordable housing is erected.
Recently $600,000 was allocated to a pilot project based on the 37MLK model in an Oakland district.
“These are spaces that people may need to stay in for two to five years, not a matter of months,” Nikki Fortunato Bas, the local lawmaker heading up the project told The Guardian. “And we need to be able to house them in a way that’s healthy and safe and dignified.”
“The homelessness and housing affordability crisis has grown to an extent that we can no longer ignore it,” Bas said. “You juxtapose that…with stories like 37MLK being an incredibly creative and inspiring and successful story of unsheltered older black women. I think we have to draw from the human resilience and creativity we’re seeing from people who are in deep crisis and respond with that same level from government, respond with that same level of creativity and urgency.”
Readers who live in the city of Oakland can follow 37MLK on Facebook, where posts report semi-frequently about goings-on in the community and how local housed residents can help if they feel inspired to. Often this involves visiting and just saying hello, while perhaps taking a bag of garbage with you when you leave.
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Anxiety disorders are the most common type of psychiatric illness, yet researchers know very little about factors associated with recovery.
However, Canadian researchers were heartened to report earlier this week that there is hope on the horizon for people suffering from anxiety.
The study from the University of Toronto investigated three levels of recovery in a large, representative sample of more than 2,000 Canadians with a history of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
The study reports that 72% of Canadians with a history of GAD have been free of the mental health condition for at least one year. Overall, 40% were in a state of excellent mental health, and almost 60% had no other mental illness or addiction issues, such as suicidal thoughts, substance dependence, a major depressive disorder or a bipolar disorder, in the past year.
The definition of excellent mental health sets a very high bar. To be defined in excellent mental health, respondents had to achieve three things: 1) almost daily happiness or life satisfaction in the past month, 2) high levels of social and psychological well-being in the past month, and 3) freedom from generalized anxiety disorder and depressive disorders, suicidal thoughts and substance dependence for at least the preceding full year.
“We were so encouraged to learn that even among those whose anxiety disorders had lasted a decade or longer, half had been in remission from GAD for the past year and one-quarter had achieved excellent mental health and well-being,” says Esme Fuller-Thomson, lead author of the study. Fuller-Thomson is director of the University of Toronto’s Institute for Life Course and Aging.
“This research provides a very hopeful message for individuals struggling with anxiety, their families and health professionals. Our findings suggest that full recovery is possible, even among those who have suffered for many years with the disorder,” she says.
Individuals who had at least one person in their lives who provided them with a sense of emotional security and wellbeing were three times more likely to be in excellent mental health than those without a confidant.
“For those with anxiety disorders, the social support that extends from a confidant can foster a sense of belonging and self-worth which may promote recovery,” says co-author Kandace Ryckman, a recent graduate of University of Toronto’s Masters of Public Health.
In addition, those who turned to their religious or spiritual beliefs to cope with everyday difficulties had 36% higher odds of excellent mental health than those who did not use spiritual coping. “Other researchers have also found a strong link between recovery from mental illness and belief in a higher power,” reports Fuller-Thomson.
The researchers found that poor physical health, functional limitations, insomnia and a history of depression were impediments to excellent mental health in the sample.
“Health professionals who are treating individuals with anxiety disorders need to consider their patients’ physical health problems and social isolation in their treatment plans,” says Ryckman.
The researchers examined a nationally representative sample of 2,128 Canadian community-dwelling adults who had a generalized anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. The data was drawn from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health and the research was published online ahead of press this week in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Reprinted from the University of Toronto
Multiply The Good News By Sharing It With Your Friends On Social Media – File photo by Practical Cures, CC
Thousands of Australians are being heartened by these striking photos of greenery and plant life growing out of an area that was left charred and blackened by the bushfires last month.
The pictures were taken by Australian photographer Murray Lowe in the Kulnura area of the Central Coast in New South Wales.
“Ventured out into the fire grounds today to capture some images of how the Aussie bush responds to fire, and the way it regenerates itself and comes back to life,” Lowe wrote in a Facebook post. “Even without any rain, life bursts through the burnt bark from the heart of the trees and the life cycle begins again.
“It’s so heartening to see the bush coming back to life again,” he added.
One Facebook user thanked Lowe for the photos, saying: “I think everyone is so happy to see your beautiful photos showing something positive after weeks of heartache—it gives us hope.”
Another commenter wrote: “Thank you for sharing these Mr Lowe! It’s so nice after all the tragedy to see the new growth in our bush.”
Since Lowe posted the photos to social media earlier this week, they have been shared more than 39,000 times.
“I did not, in my wildest dreams, anticipate the overwhelming response to my photos that I’ve seen,” he wrote in an update. “It’s both humbling, and heart-warming.”
Lowe is not the only one shining a light on the landscape’s recovery; Koala Hospital Port Macquarie posted their own pictures of the steadily returning greenery in Port Macquarie, New South Wales.
Fewer and fewer people are dying from cancer in the United States every year, with 2017 showing the largest single-year drop in cancer mortality ever reported.
The cancer death rate declined by 29% from 1991 to 2017, including a whopping 2.2% drop from 2016 to 2017.
Overall cancer death rates dropped by an average of 1.5% per year during the most recent decade of data (2008-2017), continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s and resulting in the 29% drop in cancer mortality in that time.
The drop translates to approximately 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred had mortality rates remained at their peak. Continuing declines in cancer mortality contrast with a stable trend for all other causes of death combined, reflecting a slowing decline for heart disease, stabilizing rates for cerebrovascular disease, and an increasing trend for accidents and Alzheimer disease.
The steady 26-year decline in overall cancer mortality is driven by long-term drops in death rates for the four major cancers—lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate, although recent trends are mixed.
The pace of mortality reductions for lung cancer—the leading cause of cancer death—accelerated in recent years (from 2% per year to 4% overall) spurring the record one-year drop in overall cancer mortality. In contrast, progress slowed for colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers.
The news comes from Cancer Statistics 2020, the latest edition of the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer rates and trends. The article appears early online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and is accompanied by a consumer version, Cancer Facts & Figures 2020.
Lung cancer death rates have dropped by 51% (since 1990) in men and by 26% (since 2002) in women, with the most rapid progress in recent years. For example, reductions in mortality accelerated from 3% per year during 2008-2013 to 5% per year during 2013-2017 in men and from 2% to almost 4% in women. However, lung cancer still accounts for almost one-quarter of all cancer deaths, more than breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers combined.
The most rapid declines in mortality occurred for melanoma of the skin, on the heels of breakthrough treatments approved in 2011 that pushed one-year survival for patients diagnosed with metastatic disease from 42% during 2008-2010 to 55% during 2013-2015.
This progress is likewise reflected in the overall melanoma death rate, which dropped by 7% per year during 2013-2017 in people ages 20 to 64, compared to declines during 2006-2010 (prior to FDA approval of ipilimumab and vemurafenib) of 2%-3% per year in those ages 20 to 49 and 1% per year in those ages 50 to 64. Even more striking are the mortality declines of 5% to 6% in individuals 65 and older, among whom rates were previously increasing.
Highlights from the report:
The death rate for breast cancer dropped by 40% from 1989 to 2017.
The death rate for prostate cancer dropped by 52% from 1993 to 2017.
The death rate for colorectal cancer dropped by 53% from 1980 to 2017 among males and by 57% from 1969 to 2017 among females.
Decades-long rapid increases in liver cancer mortality appear to be abating in both men and women.
Progress for hematopoietic and lymphoid malignancies (leukemias and lymphomas) has been especially rapid due to improvements in treatment protocols, including the development of targeted therapies. The 5-year relative survival rate for chronic myeloid leukemia increased from 22% in the mid-1970s to 70% for those diagnosed during 2009 through 2015, and most patients treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors now experience nearly normal life expectancy.
The overall cancer incidence rate in men declined rapidly from 2007 to 2014, but stabilized through 2016, reflecting slowing declines for colorectal cancer and stabilizing rates for prostate cancer.
Cancer survival has improved since the mid-1970s for all of the most common cancers except cervical and uterine cancers. Stagnant survival rates for these cancers largely reflect a lack of major treatment advances for patients with recurrent and metastatic disease.
“The accelerated drops in lung cancer mortality as well as in melanoma that we’re seeing are likely due at least in part to advances in cancer treatment over the past decade, such as immunotherapy,” said William G. Cance, M.D., chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. “They are a profound reminder of how rapidly this area of research is expanding, and now leading to real hope for cancer patients.”
At just 7 years old, this boy was inspired to become the youngest yoga teachers in the United States—and one of the youngest in the world after he saw how the ancient discipline helped his mom recover from chemotherapy.
Now 14 years old, Tabay Atkins teaches three classes a week and holds seven different yoga teacher certifications.
The young yogi was devastated to watch his 40-year-old mother Sahel Anvarinejad struggle as she underwent chemo and even shaved his head in solidarity when she lost her hair.
But when he saw how yoga helped her to walk and find joy in life once more, he was determined to help others find the same healing on the mat.
“My mom beat cancer and two weeks later, she was introduced to yoga,” says Tabay. “She was able to walk on her own and things that used to stress her out didn’t matter as much as they did before.
“That’s when I decided to be a yoga teacher,” he continued. “I wanted to teach yoga so I could heal people the way yoga had healed my mom.”
SWNS
Sahel was diagnosed with stage 3 non-hodgkin lymphoma in April 2012. She says: “I had gone to the doctor for almost a year complaining of flu-like, cold-like symptoms,” says Sahel. “By April, I could barely breathe. My neck became so big that my parents took me to the emergency room. The tumors were the size of softballs.
“Doctors told me if I had waited til the next morning to come to hospital, I wouldn’t have made it.”
Sahel underwent intensive chemotherapy treatment and spent almost all her time in a hospital bed.
“I was in such bad shape. I was basically living at the hospital,” recalls Sahel. “Tabay couldn’t be around me a lot, all we had were quick visits.
“It was really hard because I had everything you could imagine—blood clots, blood transfusion, bone marrow biopsy, and staph infection. But I am a single mom and all I kept thinking about was Tabay. He was 6 years old, I didn’t want to die.”
SWNS
When Sahel lost her long hair as a side effect of the chemotherapy, her devoted son even shaved his head in solidarity with his sick mom.
“He came and surprised me with a shaved head to support me,” says Sahel. “He was so sweet.”
In September 2012, doctors told Sahel she was cancer-free. After being broken down by the chemo, however, Sahel worried about how she would build up her strength.
“I had been very active, I did pilates five times a week and I went to the gym—but before my diagnosis, I judged yoga,” says Sahel. “I assumed it was for people who wanted to sit in a dark room with their eyes closed. I thought: ‘No thanks, I’ll get a workout.’”
But Sahel’s mind changed when an acquaintance, who had supported her during her cancer journey, turned out to be a yoga teacher starting a teacher-training course.
“I walked into the gym and she was sitting in the lobby with eight other people who had been doing yoga together and they had huge manuals in their laps,” Sahel remembered.
“She told me she was starting a 200-hour teacher training course. I laughed. I had barely done yoga in my life. I couldn’t walk or bend my knees. I was still bald with no eyelashes, no eyebrows, no hair. She just said: ‘This is meant to be’.”
SWNS
Sahel admitted that at times, she didn’t think she would complete the course but Tabay was by her side.
“There were so many times that I wanted to leave,” she said.
“Tabay was by my side the whole time, I didn’t have anyone to watch him. The training was two and half months long and in those months, I was able to walk again.
Tabay now has seven yoga teacher certifications, including aerial yoga, restorative yoga, and yoga for those on the autism spectrum.
The youngster splits his time between teaching three classes a week either at his mom’s studio Care4Yoga in San Clemente, California, or in resorts and schools in Maui, Hawaii. Additionally, he has taught yoga classes all over the world, including in the UK, France, Australia, Mexico, and New York.
SWNS
“At my mom’s yoga studio, I teach some donation-based classes where I donate all the money we make to helping people who have cancer,” says Tabay.
He added that some students are shocked to walk into class and learn that their teacher is a 14-year-old.
“Sometimes they ask me where the teacher is,” says Tabay. “At the beginning, they often don’t think it’s going to be a good class. But my sixth grade English teacher took one of my classes—she has been doing yoga for 19 years—and she said my class is the best she ever took.
“A lot of students leave crying after class because it’s such an amazing experience.”
Tabay also taught yoga at a school in San Francisco for children on the autism spectrum.
“The school staff called my mom and warned us that sometimes these kids can get violent, they can’t have their eyes closed, they can’t make contact with other students.
SWNS
“I still wanted to teach them and in class, the students were all doing meditation with their eyes closed and they were doing partner poses with each other.
“The staff were shocked,” he added. “It just goes to show you that everyone is capable.”
“Once my students try the food they are shocked, because it tastes like the real thing.”
Tabay and Sahel start each day by practicing yoga for an hour together. The youngster, who graduated high school earlier this year with a 4.0 GPA, says that yoga helped him concentrate on his school work.
Tabay is also a vegan cook and teaches vegan cookery with his mom in Hawaii and California. He now plans on growing up to be a full-time yoga instructor and vegan chef.
“I want to continue inspiring as many people as I can to live healthier,” says Tabay.
Quote of the Day: “Relax. Give life a chance to flow in its own way, unassisted by your mind and effort. Stop directing the river’s flow.” – Mooji
Photo: by Sonja und Jens, CC license on Flickr – cropped
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A team of engineers has developed a mineral-coated sand that can soak up toxic metals like lead and cadmium from water.
Along with its ability to destroy organic pollutants like bisphenol A, this material could help cities tap into stormwater—an abundant, but underused water source.
The researchers from UC Berkeley knew that the naturally occurring minerals they coated onto sand could react with organic contaminants like pesticides in stormwater. However, the ability of the coated sand to also remove harmful metals during filtration could unlock urban water supplies that had been written off.
Cities with Mediterranean climates, like Los Angeles, could store stormwater underground during wet winters, where it could serve as an inexpensive, local supply during the dry season. But this resource has gone mostly untapped because stormwater picks up toxic chemicals as it runs through streets and gutters.
“The pollutants that hold back the potential of this water source rarely come one at a time,” said study lead author Joe Charbonnet, who conducted this research as a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering. “It makes sense that we fight back with a treatment technology that has these impressive double abilities to take out both toxic metals and organics. We suspected that the mineral-coated sand was special, but the way it continues to impress us with multiple capabilities is rather extraordinary.”
Cities often discard stormwater as pollution because it picks up contamination like lead particles left behind from decades of leaded gasoline emissions or pesticides from lawns. Exposure to these chemicals is associated with slow neurological development in children and some types of cancer.
However, researchers say that their coated sand material could be installed in rain gardens in places like parking lots where stormwater can be collected and cleaned. They estimate that this material could remove metals from stormwater for over a decade in a typical infiltration system, which would convey runoff into underground aquifers.
The researchers see this material turning pollution into a solution for strained water supplies, particularly in parched cities that pay to import water.
“Rainwater used to percolate into the soil and recharge aquifers,” said David Sedlak, professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-author of the paper. “That changed when we covered city landscapes with hard surfaces like roads and buildings. As water-stressed cities try to figure out how to get urban stormwater back into the ground, we have serious concerns about the quality of that water. Our coated sands can remove not one, but two major classes of contaminants that threaten groundwater quality during stormwater infiltration.”
To make the filtration media, the scientists coated sand particles with manganese oxide, a naturally-occurring nontoxic mineral commonly found in soil.
Work has already begun to investigate how well this material performs at large scales. Researchers have deployed large test columns of the mineral-coated sands to treat stormwater at sites in Los Angeles and Sonoma, California.
This 15-year-old girl had only been volunteering at her local animal shelter for a few days when she was suddenly reunited with her childhood cat named Spunky.
Hannah Rountree had not seen Spunky since he disappeared from her home in Roseburg, Oregon during a family vacation three years ago.
In the days following his disappearance, Hannah would often cry over her missing feline friend—and as more and more time went by, she and her family assumed the worst.
Now 15 years old, Hannah started volunteering at the Saving Grace Pet Adoption center back in December. As fate would have it, it was only her second day on the job when she noticed a cat who looked shockingly like Spunky.
The feline had been found on the side of a highway back in September. After he was put up for adoption, he was taken home by a couple only to be brought back to the shelter a few weeks later because he didn’t want to catch mice.
Since Hannah brought him back home, she says he has quickly become comfortable with his old stomping grounds once more—although this time, she made sure to get him microchipped.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by KMTR
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There may be no current pharmaceutical treatments or cures for dyslexia, but scientists have designed a new kind of lamp that could be a game-changer for people with the learning disorder.
Although the cause of dyslexia is still a bit of a mystery, researchers have found that the disorder may be caused by a person being born with two dominant eyes rather than one.
Because both eyes are vying to process information, written letters and words can become blurred or mirrored, which makes reading and writing particularly difficult for people with dyslexia.
That’s why a team of French researchers developed the Lexilife lamp as a tool for helping dyslexics to read and write.
The LED lamp is designed to pulse and modulate at customizable speeds that clear up the visual symptoms of dyslexia.
The Lexilife team tested the light’s efficiency on 300 people with dyslexia—and 90% of participants said that they could “effortlessly read a text illuminated by the lamp.”
The device is currently being sold in Europe for €549 along with a free 30-day trial, and it will soon be made available in the United States.
The Lexilife developers also admit that although the price is steep, they hope to bring down production costs by funding additional research on the lamp’s capabilities and the causes of dyslexia.
“Jean-Baptiste Fontes, founder of Lexilife, decided to share [the lamp] with as many people as possible,” reads the Lexilife website. “Manufacturing costs and selling prices are still high, but the more it is known and adopted, the more accessible it will be.”
(WATCH the lamp in action below) – Photo by Lexilife
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Some people might dislike flying because of the food or lack of leg room—for others, it might be the danger of succumbing to a sudden medical emergency.
Unfortunately for a Chinese man on a 13-hour flight from Guangzhou to New York back in November, that was exactly what he was dealing with.
The unidentified man, who had a history of prostate enlargement, was in severe pain aboard the Boeing 787 on China Southern Flight CZ399 when a quick-thinking doctor stepped in to save the day.
Dr. Zhang Hong was later hailed as a hero after his actions ended up saving the patient from a possibly life-threatening bladder complication.
The plane was still 6 hours away from its destination when Dr. Hong was forced to construct a catheter out of a straw, a syringe, and the plastic tube of an oxygen mask so he could suck 800 milliliters of urine out of the patient’s bladder over the course of 37 harrowing minutes.
“If we had not dealt with the situation in time, the patient’s life would have been at risk,” Dr. Hong, who is head of vascular surgery at the First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, told The South China Morning Post.
In the end, Hong downplayed his actions, remarking on how saving lives is in his instincts and so the extreme nature of the intervention never crossed his mind. His first priority was simply figuring out how to draw out the urine and ease the pain of the man who he described as being “hardly able to bear it anymore”.
(WATCH the incredible video below) – Photo by China Southern Airlines
Respect! A #doctor on a flight from Guangzhou to New York uses a makeshift device to suck urine out of an old man’s body when the man is found to be in danger of breaking his #bladder due to inability to urinate. 2 doctors on board help solve the crisis. https://t.co/zQwXU2mOqJpic.twitter.com/hZJPVXeaqw
With wildfires continuing to blaze throughout southern Australia, the situation may be dire—but in the wake of tragedy, there is always a slew of people, celebrities, religious groups, and organizations rallying to offer support.
This week, teams of Muslims from the Australian Islamic Center began cooking meals for exhausted firefighters across East Gippsland. The group also distributed several truckloads worth of food, emergency supplies, and resources across the region.
In the very same area, chefs from the Sikh Volunteers Australia set up their own mobile kitchen so they could feed firefighters and bushfire evacuees.
On the international front, Canada and the United States have collectively deployed more than 200 volunteer firefighters over the course of the last month to help contain the blazes as part of an international coalition to combat wildfires.
As a means of helping animals that have been rescued from the fires, needleworkers from around the world have crafted thousands of mittens, jumpers, blankets, and nests for Australian wildlife organizations—and they have raised almost $5 million in donations for wildlife hospitals.
Furthermore, the family of Steve Irwin has already treated hundreds of animals rescued from the wildfires at their hospital in Queensland.
A number of Hollywood A-listers and famous folk from all walks of life have also contributed to wildfire relief efforts. For starters, an online fundraiser created by Australian comedian Celeste Barber has raised a whopping $30 million in just one week—which is roughly $10,000 in donations per minute.
Australian actress Nicole Kidman made an Instagram post earlier this week stating that she had donated $500,000 to Rural Fire Services, while pop star Pink donated an additional $500,000 to local firefighting departments as well.
Australian tennis player Ashleigh Barty, who is ranked number one in the world in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association, has announced that if she wins the Brisbane International tournament, she will be donating every cent of the $382,000 prize money to the Red Cross.
The Australian children’s entertainment group The Wiggles have reunited for the first time since 2012 so they can play two shows in New South Wales and donate all of the concert proceeds to wildfire relief. The concerts, which reportedly sold out in five minutes, will take place on January 17th and 18th.
OG Wiggles reunion show to raise some much-needed funds for bushfire relief. ALL proceeds from the show will be going to the Australian Red Cross and WIRES.
While there have been dozens of other individual stories of compassion and charity on the home front as well, these headlines have all proven that the world is standing behind Australia until the last of the bushfires have been extinguished.
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Quote of the Day: “When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well.” – Dalai Lama
Photo: by Giallo, public domain
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This exciting new study has measured just how much decommissioning coal-fired power plants help to save lives and improve crop yields by the millions.
The findings of the new University of California San Diego study published this week in Nature Sustainability use the U.S. transition in recent years from coal towards natural gas for electric power generation to study the local impacts of coal-fired unit shutdowns.
While the shift from coal to natural gas has reduced carbon dioxide emissions overall, it has also changed local pollution levels at hundreds of areas around the country.
In particular, the burning of coal creates particulate matter and ozone in the lower atmosphere—often experienced as “smog” —which can affect humans, plants and regional climate. These pollutants (aerosols, ozone, and other compounds) from coal burning can wreak havoc on human health when inhaled, and also have damaging effects on plant life. They also alter local climate by blocking incoming sunlight.
Study author Jennifer Burney, associate professor of environmental science at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, combined data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on electric power generation with satellite and surface measurements from the EPA as well as NASA to gauge changes in local pollution before and after coal-fired unit shut-downs.
She also studied changes in county-level mortality rates and crop yields using data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Burney found that between 2005 and 2016, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 26,610 lives and 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat in their immediate vicinities. The inverse calculation, estimating the damages caused by coal plants left in operation over that same time period, suggests they contributed to 329,417 premature deaths and the loss of 10.2 billion bushels of crops, roughly equivalent to half of year’s typical production in the U.S.
“The deaths are assumed to be NOT necessarily workers, but rather among the full population nearby that is exposed to pollution from plants as they operate (importantly, these numbers don’t count coal miner exposures, as those are often in locations far away from the plants that burn the coal),” Burney told World at Large.
“One of the difficult characteristics of air pollution-related deaths is that they are often not obviously due to pollution—it affects cardiovascular, respiratory, and other pathways, and deaths are usually just coded as such.”
These findings suggest that switching to more modern forms of energy production could have unforeseen or additional advantages for public welfare than just a decrease in CO2 emissions.
Burney added that although there are considerable benefits of decommissioning older coal-fired units, the newer natural gas units are not entirely benign. Natural gas units are associated with increased pollution levels; although different than the pollutant mix from coal-fired units, and more research is required to fully understand their impacts.
“Policymakers often think about greenhouse gas emissions as a separate problem from air pollution, but the same processes that cause climate change also produce these aerosols, ozone, and other compounds that cause important damages,” Burney concludes. “This study provides a more robust accounting for the full suite of emissions associated with electric power production. If we understand the real costs of things like coal better, and who is bearing those costs, it could potentially lead to more effective mitigation and formation of new coalitions of beneficiaries across sectors.”
It has been a little more than 13 years since beloved television host and wildlife advocate Steve Irwin passed away—but his family is continuing to save thousands of Australia’s most vulnerable animals.
The Irwin family has carried on Steve’s legacy by treating thousands of animals that have been rescued from the bushfires at their Australian Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland.
Collectively, Steve’s widow Terri and his two kids Robert and Bindi have treated more than 90,000 animals at the zoo’s 24/7 medical unit since they opened 16 years ago—and since the wildfires has caused their patient intake rate to skyrocket, the hospital is busier than ever.
Robert recently posted a photo of their record-breaking animal patient to his Instagram page, saying: “This is patient number 90,000 that the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital has treated. ‘Ollie’ the orphaned platypus is receiving round the clock care until he can be released back to the wild.
“Over the last 16 years, the hospital has provided 24/7 wildlife rehabilitation and an incredible animal rescue service,” he added. “We’re so proud of this world-class facility! Thank you for your support—with pressures from drought to bushfires, wildlife need our help now more than ever.”
The Irwins have taken to social media to reassure their concerned followers that they are not in danger of being affected by the wildfires—although they plan to continue taking in as many rescued and injured animals as possible until the fires have been controlled.
Last month, Michael Parker had been out preparing for quail season by helping his beloved dog Soup learn how to smell, flush out, and retrieve the game birds when suddenly, the English setter was distracted by a scent and ran off into the woods next to the orchard where they had been training.
For days, Parker and his wife searched in vain for their family pooch across Montgomery, Alabama, all while posting notices to social media and checking up on their local Humane Society shelter 3 to 4 times a day.
As the couple feared for the worst, Soup was off living like a king in the last place they would have expected: the Kilby Correctional Facility.
Soon after his owner lost him in the forest, Soup was found on the grounds of the prison by Charles Brooks, a plant maintenance supervisor.
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Brooks found Soup lying next to a truck looking scared. He had lost his collar during his adventure in the woods—but after Brooks fed him a biscuit, Soup quickly took a liking to the man.
As Soup followed Brooks all over the facility, he became an instant celebrity with the inmates. They began giving up parts of their dinner to Soup so he could feast on chicken, roast beef, and even peach cobbler. He played basketball in the yard, and tussled with the guard dogs.
Parker finally learned of his dog’s discovery thanks to a phone call from a social media user who had seen Parker’s pleas for help on a Facebook group for missing animals.
“Someone called and said, ‘He’s up at Kilby Prison and they’re taking care of him and want to keep him,’” Parker told the Advertiser. “‘You better go get him before they do.’”
When Parker and Brooks met outside his shop on the prison grounds, Brooks whistled for Soup to join them. The excited pup immediately began jumping all over his owner as he lay on the concrete in tears.
“You absolutely knew that it was his dog,” Brooks told the news outlet. “Me and the dog were inseparable for three days, and he wouldn’t even come to me when that man pulled up.”
Instead, Soup jumped into the passenger seat of the truck and the two rode off together back home.
After a few days, it was clear that Soup missed all his new friends from his adventure; so the Parkers resolved to start bringing their pup back to the correctional facility for regular play dates.
“We’re going to take him to visit the prison,” said Parker’s wife. “And we’re going to take the warden a pecan pie.”
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by WSAV
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Associate Professor Matthew Hill, Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani, and Professor Mainak Majumder with the lithium-sulphur battery design — Photo by Monash University.
Imagine having access to a battery, which has the potential to power your phone for five continuous days, or enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) without needing to “refuel.”
Monash University researchers are on the brink of commercializing the world’s most efficient lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery, which could outperform current market leaders by more than four times, and power Australia and other global markets well into the future.
Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani from Monash University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering led an international research team that developed an ultra-high capacity Li-S battery that has better performance and less environmental impact than current lithium-ion products.
The researchers have an approved filed patent for their manufacturing process, and prototype cells have been successfully fabricated by German R&D partners Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology.
Some of the world’s largest manufacturers of lithium batteries in China and Europe have expressed interest in upscaling production, with further testing to take place in Australia in early 2020.
Professor Mainak Majumder said this development was a breakthrough for Australian industry and could transform the way phones, cars, computers, and solar grids are manufactured in the future.
Associate Professor Matthew Hill, Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani, and Professor Mainak Majumder with the lithium-sulphur battery design — Photo by Monash University.
“Successful fabrication and implementation of Li-S batteries in cars and grids will capture a more significant part of the estimated $213 billion value chain of Australian lithium, and will revolutionize the Australian vehicle market and provide all Australians with a cleaner and more reliable energy market,” said Majumder.
“Our research team has received more than $2.5 million in funding from government and international industry partners to trial this battery technology in cars and grids from this year, which we’re most excited about.”
Using the same materials in standard lithium-ion batteries, researchers reconfigured the design of sulphur cathodes so they could accommodate higher stress loads without a drop in overall capacity or performance.
Inspired by unique bridging architecture first recorded in processing detergent powders in the 1970s, the team engineered a method that created bonds between particles to accommodate stress and deliver a level of stability not seen in any battery to date.
Attractive performance, along with lower manufacturing costs, abundant supply of material, ease of processing and reduced environmental footprint make this new battery design attractive for future real-world applications, according to Associate Professor Matthew Hill.
“This approach not only favors high-performance metrics and long cycle life, but is also simple and extremely low-cost to manufacture, using water-based processes, and can lead to significant reductions in environmentally hazardous waste,” said Hill.
