Keanu Reeves became the perfect travel companion when a plane was forced to land 2 hours away from its destination with dozens of passengers stranded in Bakersfield. Hear our Good News Guru tell the fun story on the radio in Los Angeles—during the April 12, 2019 Ellen K. Morning Show on KOST-103.5.
These five teenage boys are being praised as “hometown heroes” after they came to the rescue of an old man last month.
The young men from Caldwell, Idaho had been in the car on their way to play some basketball when they saw an elderly man fall to the ground.
Isaac Hernandez, who had been behind the wheel at the time, says that when he saw the man hit the sidewalk, he immediately pumped the brakes so he and his friends could go and check on the senior.
Upon helping him back to his feet and asking if he was okay, the teens insisted on helping him back to his house. After they had successfully escorted him inside, the young men cleaned up his wounds with some napkins and rubbing alcohol.
Though the teens did not know it at the time, their good deed had been captured on camera by Erika Tovar.
She had also been driving past the elderly man when she saw him fall in the rearview mirror. After she had turned her car around to check on him, however, she saw that the boys were already rushing to his side – so she snapped some photos of the exchange and posted them to Facebook, praising them for their kindness.
Since the photos have been shared hundreds of times, local Caldwell businesses have showered the boys with gifts, food, and presents as a thank you for their kindness.
But the five young men say that they were simply trying to do the right thing.
“We didn’t do it for the attention, we just did it out of the kindness of our hearts,” Hernandez told KTVB. “I think it makes us all feel good because we are out here helping other people… and we don’t expect anything in return.”
However, the boys say that they have now developed a firm friendship with the man they helped, José Garcia. In the weeks following their first encounter, the boys have been paying regular visits to the senior at his apartment – and they plan on visiting much more in the future.
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Millions of acres of degraded landscapes can be brought back to life thanks to these drones.
A tech company called BioCarbon Engineering has been using the flying robots to plant trees on a massive scale. The drones, which were developed by an ex-NASA engineer, are designed to fire off pre-germinated seed pods into the ground.
The drones have been shown to plant trees exponentially faster than locals being forced to plant them by hand, and the method is far cheaper than traditional planting methods.
BioCarbon has been working with conservational nonprofit Worldview International Foundation in order to replant mangrove saplings in Myanmar. Since the drones began their work in September, the saplings have grown to be 20 inches tall, which offers exciting new evidence that the drones can be deployed on a much larger scale.
“We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions,” BioCarbon engineering co-founder Irina Fedorenko told Fast Company. “We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.”
Over the course of the last seven years, Worldview has worked with Myanmar communities to plant over 6 million trees – but now with the help of the drones, they hope to plant another 4 million trees by the end of the year.
Representatives estimate that with two local workers being trained to operate a fleet of ten drones, they could plant up to 400,000 trees per day. Assuming the project continues to show success, then the drones could soon help to resuscitate degraded landscapes around the world.
(WATCH the launch video below) – Photo by BioCarbon Engineering
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Thousands of people have come together in order to support a 20-year-old woman who has been supporting her five younger siblings since their parents died.
Samantha Rodriguez is the oldest of her brothers and sisters, ranging in age from 5 to 17. Since both of their parents died from cancer within the last five years, she has taken charge of their family.
The Rodriguez kids moved to Orange County, Florida in order to live with their grandmother, and though it has been tough taking care of her siblings, Sam said that she was not about to let them be sent into the foster care system.
“I knew what I had to do,” Sam told CNN. “I learned so much from my mom. I was like her sidekick. I learned what it meant to raise a family.”
Upon hearing about the Rodriguez family’s circumstances in December, however, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department felt compelled to give the kids a break from their hardships.
The officers orchestrated a surprise Christmas party for the youngsters at the police station. When the kids walked through the doors of the facility, they were shocked to see dozens of gift-wrapped presents waiting for them under a Christmas tree.
The police department posted a video of their heartwarming surprise to social media, and their inbox quickly became flooded with messages from readers who wanted to help the family – and the police lieutenant remembered that the Rodriguez kids had arrived in an Uber because they didn’t have a car.
Four months later, Samantha was invited back to the police station for a “meeting” with the officers she had met at Christmastime. The officers then told her that a group of anonymous donors had contacted the station in order to help Sam and her family – and they had rallied together in order to get Sam a brand new car.
Needless to say, Sam was stunned. The lieutenant even escorted her to the dealership to help her pick up the car and get it insured.
“It really didn’t sink in until a couple of days after,” she told CNN. “Everything I plan now for the kids is so much easier. I don’t have to call for a ride.
“I’m very grateful for it,” she added. All these people reminded me that I’m not alone.”
The kindness hasn’t stopped there, either. Since Sam’s story has been shared across social media throughout the week, a GoFundMe page for the Rodriguez family has already raised over $11,000 in one day.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by the Rodriguez family
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Reprinted with permission from World At Large, a news website of nature, science, health, and travel.
It has been 127 years since California condors were seen in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest – but that’s about to change thanks to this exciting new initiative.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is planning to introduce a small group of condors to northern California, northwest Nevada and across the state of Oregon as a means of developing a stable, non-essential population in the wild.
The California condor, which is the largest land bird in North America, was placed on the endangered species list on March 11th, 1967. Due to the species suffering from lead poisoning, a severe population bottleneck, and a loss of genetic diversity, all remaining wild condors were captured. By 1987, the condor existed only in captivity.
Thankfully, conservationists have slowly been reintroducing the exquisite bird back into the wild. As of December 2017, there were 290 California condors in the wild, divided among the four release areas: Central California (90 condors); southern California (80 condors); northern Arizona and southern Utah (82 condors); and the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir release site in Baja California (38 condors). At the same time, there were only 463 condors in the world.
However, there hasn’t been a specimen in the proposed northwest area since 1892, and a considerable distance lies between the experimental population and currently existing groups of condors.
Based on section 10 of the Endangered Species Act, an animal must be entirely separated from existing wild populations in order to be reintroduced into a part of its historic range where it is currently absent.
But such efforts are an ideal way to increase species resiliency since separated populations reduce the risk of certain events threatening the species’ existence.
There are frequent ongoing releases of captive California condors into each of the wild populations. Plenty of hard work is put into these reintroduction efforts by the breeding centers, and releases are carefully coordinated among the different sites in order to ensure a healthy age structure, sex ratio, and distribution of founder genomes.
If commissioned and approved, this more recent reintroduction effort would likely start with small groups of breeding pairs, varying in size based on captive-bred numbers, to be released annually into Redwood National Park and allowed to spread north and east as the population grows.
The page on the FWS website is open until early June for public commenting, and members of the public are free to use the organization’s post office and electronic mailing addresses for input.
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LISTEN to this cool story on the radio below from The Good News Guru (our GNN founder), or READ the FULL story below…
Dozens of airline passengers were left stranded at a California airport last week after a mechanical issue forced their plane to make an emergency landing, but the jilted travelers were soothed and entertained by a very special passenger: Keanu Reeves.
We already learned last year that Reeves is a secret charity hero. For 15 years, he’s played a blockbuster role for kids with cancer, raising funds and making personal visits after his sister’s diagnosis of leukemia.
Until his connection to the foundation was leaked in 2018, he had done it all anonymously—but he didn’t hide his face on the flight last week, which left dozens grounded in Bakersfield, California two hours north of their LA destination.
Throughout the airplane ride, Reeves had reportedly been very amiable and talkative with airline employees. He had “enthusiastically” been talking about his new project and agreeing to take pictures with eager fans before the plane was forced to make its landing.
Rather than using his celebrity resources to flee the airport in private, the Canadian actor worked with airline staffers to arrange for a fleet of vans to escort every single one of the passengers to their exact destinations.
That time when your flight out from #GDC almost crashes and you have to emergency land in a remote airport but at least Keanu Reeves is having as bad a day as you are. pic.twitter.com/XSPa1wlNuO
Reeves himself hopped into one of the vans and spent the next two hours entertaining his fellow travelers, playing California country music on his phone while reading aloud fun-facts about Bakersfield. (See the video below.)
“Its population is around 380,000,” he read in a bemused tone, “making it the ninth most populous city in California.”
After playing tunes by Bakersfield Sound, the passengers were dropped off one by one, with Reeves bidding them a cheerful and fond farewell, sending them on their way.
keanu got stranded somewhere in california and had to take a bus instead of a plane and some guy filmed the entire experience and i am BEGGING yall to watch this pic.twitter.com/I1TmLOEYiK
This is not the first time that the John Wick actor has made headlines for being a cool, down-to-earth guy. Recently it was revealed that when two women, who were in awe of the film star, broke onto his property, rather than calling the police, Reeves invited them in for a beer.
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Quote of the Day: “Baseball is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.” ― Michael Chabon
Photo: by Joel Olives, CC license via Flickr
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These music boxes may be small, but they are having a huge impact on the families who use them.
The Music Memory Box was created as a means of using photographs, objects, and music to help people with dementia to remember their past.
The box is programmed to play certain songs that are associated with the various possessions and photos. When one of the objects is placed in the center of the box, a sensor triggers box’s speakers so that it plays the song that corresponds with the object.
28-year-old designer Chloe Meineck says that her great-grandmother’s experience with dementia served as the inspiration for the box. Whenever Meineck when to visit the senior at her nursing home, the woman always failed to recognize her. Upon hearing certain songs, however, Meineck’s great-grandmother would suddenly begin to recall heartfelt stories from her past.
Meineck developed the first box in 2011 when she was taking a 3D-printing course at the University of Brighton. After graduating from school one year later, she designed several dozen prototypes to send to families for testing – and they apparently had remarkable results.
74-year-old Monica Garrity told SWNS that she and her husband Steve, who has dementia, began using the box in 2017 as a means of helping him to remember events from their marriage – and they’ve been regularly using the box ever since.
“We have been able to connect again, it is wonderful,” says Monica. “He doesn’t usually communicate with me but when the music plays, he hums along and even holds out his hand to grab mine. It takes us back to when we got married.”
In addition to receiving dozens of awards for her design, Meineck recently held a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund the manufacturing of the first batch of Music Memory Boxes.
Within two weeks, she was able to raise the necessary funds – and she is now preparing to send out the first batch of pre-ordered boxes.
(WATCH the boxes in action in the heartwarming video below)
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This Saturday, music stores around the world will be abuzz with special events and releases for Record Store Day 2019 – so here are some of the key highlights.
In addition to the plethora of albums that will be released this weekend, one of the more notable new releases is an album of live performances recorded on the popular “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast.
All of the proceeds generated from the album sales will be donated to Musicians On Call, a charity that uses music to help heal hospital patients.
Additionally, the record – which features intimate garage performances from artists including Aimee Mann, Nick Lowe, and Jason Isbell – is the first album to be released under the official new Record Store Day record label.
Other Record Store Day vinyl releases include new tunes, live sets, raw recordings, collaborations, and new EPs from artists across all genres, only some of which include Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Greta Van Fleet, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Miley Cyrus, Motorhead, Prince, and Weezer.
Additionally, Pearl Jam was nominated as the official ambassadors for Record Store Day – and they were delighted.
“Independent record stores are hugely important to me, and have been ever since I was 12 years old. Before I even really knew what they were, there was a certain feeling of ‘this is a dream come true,’ and it’s a wonderland and there’s so much to learn in here… and it’s still that way,” says Mike McCready, guitarist and a founding member of Pearl Jam.
“Support every independent record store that you can. They’re really a good part of society. Know if you love music, this is the place to find it. And it helps people who work here and that’s important, too. And it kind of takes an effort, you have to look for something that you want; you have to talk to people. I had to talk to people to figure out which Aerosmith record to get first or anything back in the day. It’s a place to learn. It’s a place to have fun. And it’s a place to discover new music.”
To find a participating record store near you, check out the event’s online store locator for a complete list.
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When this 18-year-old girl found that she had nowhere to pray in her new city, her neighbors were quick to open their hearts – and their doors.
Atul, as her friends call her, is an exchange student who recently moved from Malaysia to Arcata, California so she could attend the public charter school Northcoast Preparatory Academy (NPA).
Because Atul is also a Muslim, she is required to pray five times per day. Though the teen has been happy in Arcata, she quickly found that the city was not equipped with the prayer rooms that she was accustomed to in Malaysia.
“In my country, they are everywhere, as my country is a majority Muslim country,” said Atul.
Shortly after she began raising awareness for her plight in the city, however, several schools and organizations offered up their facilities for her to use as prayer rooms.
The assistant manager of local bookstore Tin Can Mailman even offered up two of their spare rooms for Atul to use for prayer.
“I was so touched by the kind-hearted support I found,” Atul said in a school statement. “Tin Can Mailman gave me two spaces: they explained that one of the spaces might sometimes not be available if there are books on the floor, and in that case, I could always use the other room.”
The teenager says that the offers of support and hospitality have also reaffirmed her faith in humanity, which later prompted her to make a video about her new prayer rooms on Youtube as a thank you to the contributors.
“I was scared at first because I was still wondering ‘What is it like to be a Muslim in America?’” said Atul. “But with my community support, I know that even if we have many differences such as in religion and faith, we still can be connected as human beings. We will never be disconnected as long as we are being kind-hearted to each other.”
(WATCH Atul’s thank you video below)
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In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers are using “powerful” new gene-editing technology to pinpoint the weaknesses in cancer cells.
If surgery or localized therapy is not an option, then patients are generally forced to undergo chemotherapy and radiation as a means of attacking cancer cells.
Unfortunately, that also means that patients have to endure all of the debilitating side effects and potential health risks that come with it.
Thankfully, scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Open Targets have developed a groundbreaking new road map that identifies and pinpoints the weakest genetic points of different cancer cells.
In a study that was published in Nature this week, the team used CRISPR technology to disrupt every gene in over 300 cancer models from 30 cancer types and discover thousands of key genes essential for cancer’s survival. The team then developed a new system to prioritize and rank 600 drug targets that show the most promise for development into treatments.
The team focused on common cancers, such as lung, colon and breast, and cancers of particular unmet clinical need, such as lung, ovarian and pancreatic, where new treatments are urgently needed.
However, the team also managed to discover a new genetic weakness called Werner syndrome RecQ helicase, which is common in many stomach and colon cancers – and this discovery could lead to the first treatments capable of targeting the gene and treating the cancers.
CRISPR Screen photo by Wellcome Sanger Institute / Genome Research Limited
The results accelerate the development of targeted cancer treatments and bring researchers one step closer to producing the Cancer Dependency Map, a detailed rulebook of precision cancer treatments to help more patients receive effective therapies.
“The Cancer Dependency Map is a huge effort to identify all the weaknesses that exist in different cancers so we can use this information to empower the next generation of precision cancer treatments,” said Dr. Mathew Garnett, co-lead author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Open Targets.
“This tool will be freely available for scientists across the world to understand what makes a cancer a cancer, and how we might target different types of cancers much more effectively than we do today.”
Scientists and pharmaceutical companies are exploring new targeted therapies that selectively kill cancer cells, leaving healthy tissue unharmed. Currently, producing new effective treatments is very difficult; it costs approximately $1-2 billion to develop a single drug, but around 90% of drugs fail during development. Therefore, selecting a good drug target at the beginning of the process can be seen as the most important part of drug discovery.
Dr Francesco Iorio, co-first author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Open Targets, said: “To give a new drug the best chance of succeeding in the very final phases of clinical trials, it is crucial to select the best and most promising drug target at the beginning of the drug development process.
“For the first time, in a data-driven way, we provide guidance at a genome-scale on which new therapeutic targets should be put forward for the development of new anti-cancer drugs,” he added.
Professor Karen Vousden, Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist, said: “What makes this research so powerful, is the scale. CRISPR provides a unique tool to accelerate discovery of oncology drug targets, and this study is a salient leap in a positive direction.”
(WATCH the explanatory video below)
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No one is happy about missing their bus – but if young Thomas Daniel had successfully made it onto his school bus last week, he would have never met Officer Lynema.
Lynema, who is with the Grand Rapids Police Department in Michigan, says that he saw the 9-year-old boy chasing after a school bus early in the morning.
Lynema asked Thomas if he wanted a ride to school, which the youngster gratefully accepted (with his mom’s permission).
On the way to school, Thomas invited Lynema to his birthday party that evening. The boy also said that he was worried none of his classmates would show up for the party because he is often bullied in school.
When Lynema attended the party later in the day, he was heartbroken to discover that he and Thomas’s siblings were the only people who had shown up for the party – and the youngster didn’t even have a cake.
The next day, Lynema rallied his fellow police officers and returned to Thomas’s house to throw him a second birthday party.
After Thomas got back from school, he was shocked to come home and find presents, a Krispy Kreme donut cake, and a singing quartet waiting to surprise him – all courtesy of Lynema and his colleagues.
Thomas later said that it was the “best birthday ever.”
The police department posted photos of the youngster and his new friends in hopes that it would inspire other people to take action against bullying.
“No kid should get bullied, and no kid should worry if anyone will come to the party,” wrote the police department Facebook page. “Next year Thomas Daniel, make sure you drop us that invite a little sooner. We wouldn’t want to miss it!”
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Photo: by Joel Olives, CC license via Flickr
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Most students are eager to leave school on Friday so they can go back to their homes for the weekend – but not at West Side High School.
Every Friday evening after classes are over, hundreds of students continue to flood the hallways of the Newark, New Jersey school.
The students spend their evenings at the school as a means of seeking solace and safety from the violence and gang activity on the streets. Principal Akbar Cook says that since he first launched the after-school Lights On program four years ago, it has had a dramatic impact on the livelihood and wellbeing of the students.
Volunteers and community role models with the Lights On program host dozens of different activities and clubs throughout the evenings. When school is out for the summer, the program is hosted at the school three nights a week. The staffers even serve up free hot meals to keep the youngsters fed during their stay.
In addition to running Lights On, Principal Cook recently installed a laundry room facility inside of the school so homeless and underprivileged students could have a place to do their laundry.
Since opening the laundry room last year, the principal says that student attendance has improved by 10%.
“I haven’t lost any more kids to gun violence since the start of the school year,” Cook proudly told WABC.
In a historic feat by @EHTelescope & @NSF, a black hole image has been captured for the 1st time. Several of our missions observed the same black hole using different light wavelengths and collected data to understand the black hole's environment. Details: https://t.co/WOjLdY76vepic.twitter.com/4PhH1bfHxc
There are a lot of clichés that get thrown around when talking about big scientific discoveries. Words like “breakthrough” or “game changing” are often used. They grab people’s attention, but it’s fairly rare that they apply.
Today’s announcement of the first image ever taken of a black hole (more precisely, of its shadow) truly rises up to that standard.
By definition, nothing not even light, can escape the gravitational grasp of a black hole. This, however, is only true if you get too close, and the boundary between what can and cannot get away is called the event horizon.
This dark portrait of the event horizon was obtained of the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87 for short) by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an international collaboration whose support includes the National Science Foundation. This achievement is certainly a breakthrough, and we at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory congratulate and applaud the hundreds of scientists, engineers, and others who worked on the Event Horizon Telescope to obtain this extraordinary result.
As is well documented in today’s announcement, it took a remarkable effort and coordination from scientists and organizations around the world to even have a chance to make this happen. The result being heralded stems from an observing campaign during April 2017, when this global network of radio dishes observed M87 together.
While Chandra can’t see the shadow itself, its field of view is much larger than the EHT’s, so Chandra can view the full length of the jet of high-energy particles launched by the intense gravitational and magnetic fields around the black hole. This jet extends more than 1,000 light years from the center of the galaxy.
As for the investigation of the black hole in M87, Chandra has been on the case for quite some time. M87 is an elliptical galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster, about 60 million light years away from Earth. For years, scientists have known that a supermassive black hole weighing several billion times the mass of the Sun sits at the center of M87.
Surrounding the elliptical galaxy is a reservoir of multimillion-degree gas, which glows brightly in X-ray light. Chandra’s studies of this hot gas have given astronomers insight into the behavior and properties of the giant black hole. For example, astronomers have used Chandra data to discover ripples in the hot gas, which provide evidence for repeated outbursts from the black hole roughly every 6 million years or so.
Scientists will be poring over the new EHT image and the papers that are being published in connection with this result for weeks, months, and even years to come. As they do, they will continue to pull in every resource they can — including famed black hole hunter, the Chandra X-ray Observatory — to learn as much as they can about these exotic and fascinating objects.
For more live-streamed updates on the groundbreaking discovery from the National Science Foundation, click here.
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons)
Photo: by Shawn Harquail, CC license via Flickr, cropped
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These middle school students are being hailed as heroes after they helped to talk a woman out of committing suicide last week.
The 12 young heroes, all of whom are members of the boys volleyball team from Kepler Neighborhood School in Fresno, California, had been jogging through the streets for their training when they saw the woman climb over the edge of a bridge.
Had she let go, she would have fallen 100 feet onto the train tracks below – but luckily, the boys took action.
The team members ran to their coach Elliot Murray, yelling for him to call 911. When he saw the woman hanging from the bridge, he told the boys to run back and do everything in their power to keep her from jumping.
“I immediately told the kids, ‘Do everything you can, chant, say ‘Stop, your life is worth it’ – and they just kept on chanting,” Murray told WPVI.
Sure enough, the boys spent the next 10 minutes with the 47-year-old woman, yelling words of encouragement and urging her to climb up from the ledge.
Upon hearing their compassionate chants, the woman finally crossed back over to safety just before police officers arrived on the scene.
The woman was then assigned to a 72-hour mental health evaluation, and though her current circumstances and condition are unknown, Murray is positive that his team members were the reason why she felt compelled to step back from the ledge.
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by WPVI
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Petco has just become the first and only major pet food retailer to remove artificial ingredients in dog and cat foods starting in May 2019.
In celebration of the achievement, Petco also launched Cleaning House, a marketing campaign that will call on pet parents to reconsider what they feed their pets by offering a gritty reminder: “If it doesn’t meet our new standards, you won’t soon find it on Petco shelves.”
“Last year, we put the entire pet industry on notice by introducing new standards for nutrition because we firmly believe it’s the right thing to do for pets,” said Tariq Hassan, Petco Chief Marketing Officer.
“This campaign breathes life into that decision and the journey that lies ahead for Petco,” added Hassan. “It’s a departure from anything we’ve done before, and a direct reflection of our ongoing brand transformation to meet the evolving demands of pet parents.”
The campaign, which will run throughout the company’s fiscal year on Jan 31st, 2020, is designed to reinforce Petco’s industry-leading stance on pet nutrition, while educating pet parents on the new standards and empowering them to act accordingly.
For more information about Petco and its new nutrition standards, you can visit the company’s website.
Through referencing available guidelines provided by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) and the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Petco defines artificial colors, flavors and preservatives as:
Color from artificial sources: any dye, pigment, or other substance that can impart color to a food that is not derived from a natural source.
Artificial flavor: any substance, the function of which is to impart flavor, which is not derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products.
Artificial preservative: chemical substances added to or sprayed on the outside of food to retard spoilage, deterioration, discoloration, or contamination by bacteria and other disease organisms. Does not include preservatives that are derivatives of natural compounds.
(WATCH the promo video below)
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The soil of Northern Ireland has always been reputed to have healing properties – and while it may have previously just been the stuff of local folklore, scientists have found that there is actually some truth to the legends.
Upon analyzing the fabled Irish soil, a team of researchers discovered that it contains a previously unknown strain of bacteria that is effective against four of the top six superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics.
Antibiotic-resistant superbugs could result in over one million European deaths by 2050, according to recent research. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes the problem as “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today”.
Thankfully, the bacteria’s discovery could be a huge breakthrough in fighting antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
The search for replacement antibiotics to combat multi-resistance has prompted researchers to explore new sources, including folk medicines: a field of study known as ethnopharmacology.
The new strain of bacteria, which was named Streptomyces sp. myrophorea, was discovered by a team based out of Swansea University Medical School.
The soil they analyzed originated from an area of Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, which is known as the Boho Highlands. It is an area of alkaline grassland which has long been fabled to have healing properties.
Dr. Gerry Quinn, one of the research team members and a former resident of County Fermanagh, had been aware of the healing traditions of the area for many years.
Traditionally, a small amount of soil was wrapped up in cotton cloth and used to heal many ailments, including toothaches, throat and neck infections. Interestingly enough, this area was previously occupied by the Druids, around 1,500 years ago, and Neolithic people 4,000 years ago.
The main findings of the research were that the newly-identified strain of Streptomyces inhibited the growth of four of the top six multi-resistant pathogens identified by the WHO as being responsible for healthcare-associated infections: Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella pneumonia, and Carbenepenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumanii.
It also inhibited both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, which differ in the structure of their cell wall; usually gram-negative bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics
It is not yet clear which component of the new strain prevents the growth of the pathogens, but the team is already investigating this.
“Our discovery is an important step forward in the fight against antibiotic resistance,” said Professor Paul Dyson of Swansea University Medical School. “Our results show that folklore and traditional medicines are worth investigating in the search for new antibiotics. Scientists, historians and archaeologists can all have something to contribute to this task. It seems that part of the answer to this very modern problem might lie in the wisdom of the past.”
Dr. Quinn added: “We will now concentrate on the purification and identification of these antibiotics. We have also discovered additional antibacterial organisms from the same soil cure which may cover a broader spectrum of multi-resistant pathogens.”
