Max drew 99 animals to mark David Attenborough birthday – By Samantha Evans-Browning
Max with his 99 animal drawings to mark Sir David Attenborough’s birthday Credit: Samantha Evans-Browning
A little Welsh boy has drawn 99 animals to celebrate Sir David Attenborough’s 99th Birthday which just passed this week.
Spanning across eight A3 sheets of paper, the giant birthday card took Max Evans-Browning 4 days and a lot of research to find each and every animal Attenborough has ever expressed a fondness for.
Max’s mom Samantha shared a picture of her son and his artwork on Facebook, asking for anyone willing to listen to share it in the hopes that it arrives on the desktop of the famous British conservationist.
Born 99 years the Tuesday before last, Sir David Attenborough became the most famous advocate and voice for nature and conservation the Western world has ever known.
Offering the British media an interview in the days leading up to his quasi-centennial, Sir David acknowledged that he felt there wasn’t much time left for him on the Earth, and that he saved his greatest work for last.
Ocean is a documentary covering the salty, watery world all around us. In the interview Attenborough said that his 60-year career as a conservationist has convinced him that the world’s oceans should be the highest conservation priority for humanity, and that if we “save the oceans, we save the planet.”
A regular animal lover, five-year-old Max “watches animals, reads animals… and knows the most rare animals” said his mom, who added that his bedroom walls in their Pembrokeshire home are covered in animals.
“He will say ‘I know that, it’s a pangolin’ and I’m like, ‘what, I don’t even know what that is.'”
“Thank you in advance and Mr. Attenborough, if you ever see this… Happy Birthday from Max Evans-Browning, age 5 from Pembrokeshire,” his birthday card read.
Already receiving hundreds of shares, GNN will wait and see if the young man’s virtual well-wishes arrive at their destination.
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Quote of the Day: “A soul is like electricity. We don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.” – Ray Charles
Photo by: cdd20
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George Lucas ain 2009 - credit Nicolas Genin CC 3.0.
Happy Birthday to director-screenwriter George Lucas who turns 80. Receiving 5 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) for his 1973 debut film American Graffiti proved that he could write and direct, and producing the groundbreaking science fiction franchise Star Warsproved he could create a cultural phenomenon worth billions of dollars. He also dreamed up Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford in the blockbuster 1980’s trilogy that opened with Raiders of the Lost Ark. READ about his surprising background… (1944)
There’s an old saying, often ignored in modern Western medicine, that an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
Establishing a new broad-spectrum, 20-year testing program for its younger generation, Poland has passed this Franklinian test of medical wisdom whose value has been recognized since the days of ancient China.
The new initiative, called Moje Zdrowie (My Health), includes a basic testing package of blood work, glucose levels, creatinine, lipid profile, thyroid hormones, and urinalysis every five years from age 20 to 40 in order to ensure that any disease, or the precursor state that may develop into a disease, is identified as soon as possibile.
Available for free at all healthcare centers in the country, it will be carried out with a questionnaire on medical and family history, lifestyle factors, and mental health.
“For decades, we have been accustomed to periodic preventive examinations of children and adolescents,” said health minister Izabela Leszczyna, announcing the new program. “Very often, however, adults forget to take the same care of themselves.”
“That is why we are introducing regular health checkups for adults—to help build the habit of routine screenings and encourage people to take better care of their own health,” she added.
Chronic diseases like obesity, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypothyroidism, etc. will place a burden worth several hundred thousand dollars per person on any national health system. At the same time, following 50 years of cancer research and innovation in testing and treatment, we know that virtually all cancers will have substantially lower mortality rates when identified in their earliest stages.
A simple test battery combined with risk factor questionnaire can help identify those in a population who are likely to develop these diseases, saving the society millions in lives and dollars.
Notes from Poland writes that the new initiative has been welcomed by medical professionals, who say it addresses key shortcomings in the previous program which failed to help patients follow-up on test results and recommendations.
In the case of Poland, the country is experiencing a shortage of nurses and other attendant staff, at a rate of 6.3 per 100,000 inhabitants—almost 3 less than the OECD average. Notes from Poland adds that even if the number of doctors meets the standard, within the next 15 years that number will fall as many enter retirement.
This also coincides with the highest rate of engagement with the medical system the country has ever recorded, at a time when it spends about 4% less than the EU-wide average on medical infrastructure.
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One of Australia’s most biodiverse offshore islands enjoys the company to two palm trees that despite appearing quite similar are actually different species.
That this happened: that two species evolved from a common ancestor despite no geographical separation, means biologists have confirmed that “sympatric” evolution is possible on Earth.
To explain exactly what that means, here’s Dr. Vincent Savolainen from Imperial College London’s Department of Life Sciences.
“Imagine a few humans on an island for 100 million years, no-one would think they would evolve into a different species, but actually plants do,” he told ABC News Australia about the palm trees on Lord Howe Island, 600 miles off the northern coast of New South Wales.
“Although they are not geographically isolated, they become reproductively isolated because of the flowering time difference which is due to some interaction they have in the soil with microbes.”
This is in direct opposition to the conditions that led Charles Darwin to develop the concept of natural selection. When he was exploring the Galapagos, his breakthrough that species evolve through exposure to different environments came after collecting various specimens of finches on the archipelago’s islands.
The finches were slightly different in relation to the challenges and opportunities available on each island. In contrast, Howea belmoreana and its cousin, Howea forsteriana, evolved divergently, side by side, isolated for over 1 million years on Lord Howe Island; something Darwin thought as being an “unlikely” scenario for evolution to occur.
Having never seen a human footfall until about 1700, when whalers began using it as a storehouse, the island eventually saw use as a nursery for these palm trees, with H. forsteriana becoming particularly well-liked by Queen Victoria.
Called Kentia Palms, Professor Savolainen is part of a study team examining how it is that these palms found enough evolutionary elbow room on the small island to speciate into unique trees.
The study’s conclusion and working hypothesis is that a common ancestor arrived from Australia about 1 million years ago and gradually spread across the island. Over time, the palms developed different flowering periods based on whether they grew on sand or basalt.
The key is that each of these substrates house different mycorrhizal fungi, and that the interactions with these soil microbes caused the speciation.
“What we are discovering is the plants and the fungi can make a specific partnership that allows them to survive stressful conditions,” Professor Savolainen said. Rather than challenging Darwin’s work, the discovery has demonstrated that environmental conditions can drive speciation even in the absence of geographical separation.
In other words, it’s in update to Darwin’s theory.
Lord Howe Island is in some respects akin to the Galapagos or Madagascar: unique islands where evolution drives remarkable diversity of life. Recently cured of a terrible infestation of rats and mice, this UNESCO Natural Heritage Site is cloaked in endemic foliage found nowhere else on Earth.
“What is unfolding is an ecological renaissance, since the rodents have gone, the catchphrase is: ‘I’ve never seen that before’,” Hank Bower from the Lord Howe Island board told the Sydney Morning Herald, in 2022.
Back in the 1950s, the island government made the decision to cap visitors at any given time to 400 people, a decision that has been retained now that the island’s reputation for unspoiled wilderness has been restored.
WATCH the story below from ABC News…
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A man has turned a 1970s private jet into a tiny home and listed it on Airbnb.
Aviation enthusiasts are sure to love the original cockpit maintained as it was from the days it flew oil executives to and from countries and meetings.
credit Tamir Ali via SWNS
The unique home is complete with two bedrooms, sleeps two adults and two children, and has a fully functioning kitchen, a bathroom with a shower, and outdoor seating area.
The passion project belongs to Airbnb host and antique car renovator Tamir Ali, who acquired ‘half’ of a 1970s Hawker jet in December 2023, from an acquittance who deals in oddities.
After being decommissioned in the 80s, it was cut in half and had the wings removed for ease of transport.
Ali spent seven months and nearly $120,000 transforming the jet into a rental property in Gwynedd, Wales.
“It’s awesome—when people walk in they say it’s much bigger than it seems on the outside,” said Ali. “It’s a unique experience, not many people get to sit in the cockpit of 70’s private jet.”
The interior of the fuselage – credit Tamir Ali via SWNSThe interior of the attached cabin – credit Tamir Ali via SWNS
The restoration and renovation process included replacing the carpets with wooden floors, rewiring the electrics, and getting a custom-made door fitted. Ali then secured a location for the plane in Dolgellau and fitted a 16ft by 9ft cabin onto it to make enough space for a double bed, kitchen, and bathroom.
Reflecting on the project, Ali said that in his work restoring cars he’s always brushed up with “eccentric people—people who deal with the weird and wonderful.”
“I know a chap in Essex, who said he had something that was up my street. It was looking a bit worse for wear, the nose cone was hanging off and there was no door,” said Ali, according to SWNS. “There was lots of mold and moss inside, but I immediately envisioned what I wanted it to be.”
Available for £170 per night, “it’s a very, very cool experience.” The pet friendly property has only been on Airbnb for three weeks, but is already at 70% occupancy.
“The feedback so far has been good, people seem to love it.”
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A boy who couldn’t wear shoes until the age of 13 due to a childhood injury that left his feet deformed has had a life-changing surgery.
Courtesy of the floating medical charity that is Mercy Ships, 14-year-old Tera can now wear sneakers for the first time in his life and play football with his friends.
From a fishing village near Manakara, Madagascar, Tera’s family was unable to pay for any significant treatment after he accidentally tipped over a pot of boiling water onto his left leg when he was 1.
He suffered third degree burns that fused his leg to his ankle. Even though he recovered without medical intervention, the way his ankle healed limited his movement.
With no means to pay for hospital care, his family had previously sought out three traditional healers, each offering their own remedies, but nothing seemed to work. His mother then learned that the international hospital charity Mercy Ships had docked Africa Mercy in Madagascar.
One young woman even became a nurse having previously been treated on Mercy Ships and left eager to pursue a career in medicine.
When volunteers from Mercy Ships spoke to Tera’s mother about free surgery on board, she wrapped Tera’s baby brother on her back and embarked on a two-day journey with her children to the ship.
Tera received an appointment on African Mercy and underwent surgery to release the burn contracture on June 27th, 2024. He can now wear shoes for the first time since he was an infant.
“He should have a normal functioning ankle now, which means he will be able wear a normal shoe and play like any other child,” said Dr. Venter, the physician who performed the surgery.
“Before, I was barefoot in the streets even though it was so hot,” Tera told Mercy Ships’ press team, according to SWNS. “I am happy because my friends do not make fun of me anymore. We all play together now.”
Due to his injury, Tera could not play his favorite position as a goalkeeper, but since the surgery, not only has Tera been making up for lost games on the pitch, he’s also been able to go fishing with his dad.
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Quote of the Day: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now.” – Rami Shapiro
Photo by: Paola Chaaya
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?
Mehmet I in the city of Karaman - credit, Nedim Ardoğa CC BY-SA 4.0 (Copy)
748 years ago today, the ruler of a large Turkish beylik in southern Anatolia, Mehmet I of Karaman, issued a decree which read: “From now on nobody in the palace, in the divan, council and on walks speak no language other than Turkish.” It was the first time a modern Turkish state of any kind elevated their own ancestral language above the positions of Arabic and Persian, the lingue franca of the Islamic world. READ a tad more about this historic event… (1277)
Dairy cows in Australia – Photo by Geraldine Lewa on Unsplash
Australian dairies are breeding heat-tolerant cows and seeing big returns on hot days that are making the global industry stand up and take notice.
Ever feel like wolfing down a big meal when it’s 85°F out with 80% humidity? If you recoil at the thought, that’s one thing you have in common with a dairy cow.
Australian dairy farmers can lose between 25% and 40% of their herd’s milk yield during the summer months.
Against this financial heartbreak, farmers are putting their heads and herds together and diving into the science of genetics to help create the cattle of the future, using the Heat-Tolerance Australian Breeding Value or ABV for short.
The history of genetic exploitation in animal agriculture isn’t exactly a textbook on animal welfare: quite the opposite in fact. In this case, Dr. Thuy Nguyen, who pioneered the ABV, said it improves the animals’ lives because it allows them to tolerate hot and humid conditions more easily.
Key to Dr. Nguyen’s method, created over 4 years of data collection, was using the right measurement: not core body temperature, surprisingly, but rather a reduction in the animal’s social milieu on hot days.
Dairy cattle on Trevor Parrish’s Kangaroo Valley farm tend to become lethargic when it gets too stifling, eating less, or not at all. They crowd together for some reason, making it even hotter to their senses. Even if they do this under shade, they proceed to pee and defecate in the same spot, over and over again, increasing humidity yet further.
Parrish was one of the first farmers in Australia’s dairy industry to use the ABV, and while the first breeding bull he examined had a value substantially under 100 (heat intolerant) another pair each had values far in excess of 100—showing him which ones to breed with.
Developed in 2017, ABC News Australia reports that the ABV has received substantial industry use and financial support, expanding its footprint to include multiple Australian states, and even receiving acclaim internationally.
The acclaim arises from Dr. Nguyen and Parrish being the first among their professions in the world to a heat-tolerance marker for commercial breeding strategies, and now the US, Italy, and Spain are all investigating similar strategies.
“The US tested our ABV and found that it works in their conditions so it’s great to see it make waves globally,” Dr. Nguyen told a special report series called Land Line from ABC
“To me it made a lot of sense to have a look into it and try and use bulls that were [more] heat tolerant so it would help the next generation moving forward,” Parrish told the same program. “I would totally encourage other farmers to use [the ABV]. It’s not getting any cooler.”
WATCH the special report below…
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Antarctica was in the news this week in a surprising way: it was gaining ice, rather than losing it.
While Antarctic ice sheet loss has averaged around 147 gigatons per year for the period between 2010 and 2020, a remarkable reversal occurred at the opening of this decade.
Writing in China Earth Sciences, researchers at Tongji University, led by Dr. Wei Wang and Professor Yunzhong Shen, reported that East Antarctica’s Wilkes Land and Queen Mary Land region recorded 108 gigatons of average ice sheet mass gain per year from 2021 to 2023.
1 gigaton is equivalent to 1 billion tons, and 108 gigatons is the equivalent weight of 1.5 million of America’s flagship aircraft carriers, to use a silly bit of context to aid the reader in their imaginings.
Using data from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On) missions, which take measurements of the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field that reflect large amounts of ice gain or loss, the team found that four glacier basins, called Totten, Moscow University, Denman, and Vincennes had gained, not lost, a significant enough quantity of ice to influence a reduction in the rate of sea-level rise.
Driven by unusually-high precipitation levels, the amount is predicted to offset 0.3 millimeters of sea level rise per year—or roughly one quarter of the total rise seen during the twenty-teens.
This graph shows the shift in ice mass between 2021 and 2023 – credit Science China Press
Given that we’re in 2025, the scientists admit they don’t know if the trend in re-freezing continued or reversed. Given that the amount of precipitation was unusual, the scientists caution against assuming the trend will simply continue.
Data from the research period extended into 2024 and showed mass loss. However, almost all reductions were proceeded by gains, and all gains by reductions, based on the influence of the seasons.
Trend lines had the ice sheet increasing in size by the end of the final downturn without recording the subsequent upturn, which, if it were smaller than the previous year, would indicate the trend was already reversing.
Melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is the single largest contributor to sea level rise along with the Greenland Ice Sheet. Together they hold most of the world’s fresh water.
Advocates for action to prevent the worst effects of climate change often portray the situation as being imminent, with little if any time left to act. The southern continent has offered a surprise that, literally speaking, the worst effects of climate change actually can be delayed and reversed.
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Pair of European orchard bees (Osmia cornuta) GNU Free license
Pair of European orchard bees (Osmia cornuta) GNU Free license
If you happen to be on a ramble in southern Britain next year, you may see a solitary orangish bee flitting between rising flowers as early as late February.
Such days used to be too cold for Osmia cornuta, known as the European orchard bee, a regular pollinator in orchards on the mainland. However, rising global temperatures have allowed this powerhouse pollinator to find the English meadows fit for purpose.
O. cornuta will emerge in early to mid-March and begin feeding on the nectar of the earliest flowering plants like scilla, a genus of bulb-forming perennial flowers, often called squills and known for their early spring blooming of star-shaped blue, purple, white, or pink blossoms.
Though not a honeybee, it is utilized as a commercial pollinator, and deployed in almond, cherry, and apple orchards. A solitary species, the orchard bee lays a single egg in a nest dug into rotting wood. Inside, it will stash pollen for the baby bee to eat, and then seal up the hole to protect it.
If wood isn’t available, it will happily use masonry or house walls, cracked window frames, drainage pipes, and other nooks and crannies in anthropogenic locales.
Though some might interpret its arrival in Great Britain as a negative because of the warming climate, a warming climate is also blamed for reducing pollinator species, so presumably the arrival of native European pollinator will help keep England’s meadows and verges the flowerful sights they are boasted to be.
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(left) Artemisia annua - credit, Kristian Peters, CC 3.0. BY(right) Ephedra viridis - credit, Dcrjsr CC BY 3.0.
(left) Artemisia annua – credit, Kristian Peters, CC 3.0. BY(right) Ephedra viridis – credit, Dcrjsr CC BY 3.0.
Scientists in San Diego are working alongside Native Americans to plumb the genetic depths of medicinal plants in the name of potentially commercializing them as medicines.
Researchers from the renowned Salk Institute for Biological Studies work extensively at the Medicinal Plants Nursery in the San Diego Botanic Garden, growing and studying native California plants traditionally used to treat any malady under the Sun.
Those who know something of American medical history will know that Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for Polio. He leant his name and reputation to an institute, which today carries on the work of developing cutting edge medicines and making breakthrough discoveries in the field of aging and plant biology.
However, in this case, the sophisticated Salk laboratories are being trained on rudimentary pharmaceutical development strategies, namely those to do with medicinal herbs.
“We have co-evolved with all of these medicinal plants,” said Salk Institute biologist Dr. Todd Michael. “I mean, they make these things probably to protect themselves, but also maybe because they make their mammal counterparts happy.”
Some specimens which Dr. Michael and his colleague Dr. Ben Neiman are focusing on include ephedra, which has a history of being used to treat syphilis, weight loss, allergies, asthma, and headaches; artemisia, used to treat malaria; and yerba santa, which Salk biologists are investigating for its potential foundation in a neurological drug for Alzheimer’s disease.
In the case of the latter two, Native Americans have used them traditionally as medicine, and they are collaborating with Salk in studying them for the depth of their medicinal properties.
KFMB, CBS 8 San Diego reports that the work done by Salk is attracting national attention, with nurseries and institutes around the country sending cuttings, seeds, and plants to further their efforts.
Dr. Neiman says that the goal of translating the work into clinical trials and commercial pharmaceutical products is a “circular ecosystem” in economic terms, since the more drugs that can be developed, the more that tribal nations in and around San Diego County, and the natural landscape where these plants thrive, can be rewarded and protected.
Quote of the Day: “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” – Robin Williams
Photo by: Getty Images for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Reggia di Caserta, Naples - credit CC 3.0. Carlo Pelagalli
325 years ago today, Luigi Vanvitelli, one of the most influential architects of 18th century Italy, was born. His birthday is a fitting day to celebrate the construction of his most famous design: The Bourbon Palace of Caserta in Naples, the largest former royal palace in the world and a structure which UNESCO describes as “the swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque.” Caserta aside, Vanvitelli helped design and build several other iconic monuments and structures, including the royal palace of Milan, the Lanzaretto in Ancona, and the facade of the Palazzo Poli, the building which serves as a backdrop to the Trevi Fountain in Rome, a project on which Vanvitelli also worked—as an apprentice under its designer Nicola Salvi. READ about the Caserta Palace… (1700)
Maya Merhige – by Chris Merhige for Swim Across America
Maya Merhige – by Chris Merhige for Swim Across America
New Zealand’s Cook Strait is considered one of the most dangerous stretches of open water in the world. Strong winds can produce violent storms, massive waves, and unpredictable currents. Jellyfish litter the surface. Sharks lurk in the depths below.
And yet, 17-year-old Maya Merhige was determined to cross it. The California teen is hoping to become the youngest person ever to complete the famous Oceans Seven—the most daunting open-water swims across the world.
The Berkeley native swam across the English Channel last summer and has also crossed the Catalina Channel near Los Angeles and the Moloka’i Channel in Hawaii.
In April, she took on the Cook Strait, which also required facing one of her greatest fears—jellyfish.
“Even when I was getting in the water, I was already like: ‘I’m so scared. I don’t want to see jellyfish,’” Maya told CNN. “The entire time I was just fighting myself mentally to kind of get over that fear.”
The Cook Strait separates the North and South islands of New Zealand. Marathon swimming guidelines only allowed Maya to wear a swimsuit – not a wetsuit – for her attempt, leaving her more exposed to those fearsome jellyfish and some frigid water temperatures that peaked near 60 degrees. And to make matters worse, ocean currents made her swim twice the distance of the actual Strait, turning the 13.67-mile swim into a 27-mile marathon.
Confirming her fear, every few strokes, Maya would get stung, the welts piling up on her arms, face, nose, and lips. The currents kept swirling. She had to stop every 30 minutes to eat too, with the exertion of the task requiring a regular calorie intake.
But she persisted. She saw a few shooting stars light up the New Zealand sky above her, sparking hope as the destination grew closer.
Credit: Chris Merhige
After 14 hours, eight minutes, and 36 seconds in the water, Maya finally stepped onto dry land again, completing her fourth of the famed ‘Oceans Seven’.
One of the motivating factors that propelled her along the way was an ongoing charity fundraiser she created. Maya survived a benign pancreatic tumor in 2023 and one of her close friends is also a cancer survivor. Thus, she has linked her swims to the nonprofit group Swim Across America, already raising over the years the huge sum of $150,000 for pediatric cancer research.
“Swimming the Cook Strait was a hard, but incredible experience,” Maya said on the Swim Across America site. “The jellyfish stings, unpredictable currents and wind presented unique challenges, but knowing that my efforts contribute to cancer research kept me motivated.”
She also got some support from her father, Chris, Kelly Gentry, her coach, and her godparents, who all followed nearby in a boat.
Now, Maya, who will graduate from high school this year and start college in the fall, will turn her attention to the remaining three Oceans Seven challenges—including the Strait of Gibraltar separating Spain and Morocco, the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, and the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan. If she can complete them all by January 2028, she’ll become the youngest person to have ever done it.
The milestone is about so much more than personal glory. It maintains Maya’s connection with nature, provides support for kids fighting cancer, and fuels a number of other adventures along the way.
“One of the main reasons that I would like to complete the Oceans Seven is because of the opportunities that it gives me to explore the world and meet such cool groups of people. I love how different each swim is, and how they all come with different challenges and highlights,” she told SwimTrek.
“I am constantly learning more about myself and the world. Also, all of the swims are in incredible places that I would be lucky to have the opportunity to visit. The Oceans Seven is just more inspiration to push my limits, try new things, and explore around the world!”
SHARE THE INSPIRATION With Swim-Lovers On Social Media…
Fuel Cell recycling uses sound waves to remove PFAS – Credit: University of Leicester
Fuel Cell recycling uses sound waves to remove PFAS – Credit: University of Leicester
A new technique that uses sound waves to separate materials for recycling could help prevent potentially harmful chemicals leaching into the environment.
Researchers at the University of Leicester in England have achieved a major milestone in fuel cell recycling, developing a technique to efficiently separate valuable catalyst materials from the fluorinated polymer membranes (PFAS)—often referred to as ‘forever chemicals’.
The new method addresses critical environmental challenges posed by PFAS which are known to contaminate drinking water and have serious health implications.
Fuel cells and water electrolyzers are essential components of hydrogen-powered systems that power cars, trains and buses, and they depend on catalyst-coated membranes (CCMs) containing precious platinum group metals.
However, the strong adhesion between catalyst layers and PFAS membranes has made recycling difficult. The new scalable method uses organic solvent soaking and ‘ultra-sonication’ to effectively separate these materials. (Watch the process in a video below…)
“This method is simple and scalable,” said Dr. Jake Yang, working in the University’s chemistry department, in a media release. “We can now separate PFAS membranes from precious metals without harsh chemicals—revolutionizing how we recycle fuel cells.”
“Fuel cells have been heralded for a long time as the breakthrough technology for clean energy but the high cost of platinum group metals has been seen as a limitation. A circular economy in these metals will bring this breakthrough technology one step closer to reality.”
Building on this success, a follow-up study introduced a continuous delamination process, using a custom-made blade sonotrode that uses high frequency ultrasound to split the membranes and accelerate recycling. The process creates bubbles that collapse when subjected to high pressure, meaning the precious catalysts can be separated in seconds at room temperature.
The innovative process, invented in collaboration with the Johnson Matthey company, is both sustainable and economically viable, paving the way for widespread adoption.
“The development of high-intensity ultrasound to separate catalyst-loaded membranes is a game-changer in how we approach fuel cell recycling,” said Ross Gordon, Principal Research Scientist at Johnson Matthey.
As fuel cell demand continues to grow, this breakthrough contributes to the circular economy by enabling efficient recycling of clean energy components to address future environmental challenges before they become overwhelming.
CCTV footage captured the hilarious scene as a shop owner struggled to wrangle kittens into their cage—scooping up each one while another was escaping every time.
Shared by a pet store in Chongqing, China, on April 30, 2025, the video shows the worker battling to transfer five tiny kittens from their carriers into the cage.
Like a wacky ‘Keystone Cops’ scene, the situation quickly spirals into chaos, with each kitten trying to make a break for it.
Every time he manages to get one cat inside, another darts out, creating a funny, seemingly endless cycle of escape and capture.
Two types of atoms-bosons on the left exhibit bunching while the fermions on the right display anti-bunching – Credit: Sampson Wilcox / MIT
Two types of atoms, bosons on the left exhibit bunching while the fermions on the right display anti-bunching – Credit: Sampson Wilcox / MIT
MIT physicists have captured the first images of individual atoms freely interacting in space. The pictures reveal correlations among the “free-range” particles that until now were predicted but never directly observed. Their findings will help scientists visualize never-before-seen quantum phenomena in real space.
The images were taken using a technique developed by the team that allows a cloud of atoms to move and interact freely until a lattice of light is turned on which briefly freezes the atoms in their tracks. Finely tuned lasers briefly illuminate the suspended atoms, creating a picture of their positions before the atoms naturally dissipate.
The physicists sought to compare different types of atoms, including “bosons,” which bunched up in a quantum phenomenon to form a wave. They also captured atoms known as “fermions” in route to pairing-up in free space — a key mechanism that enables superconductivity.
“We are able to see single atoms in these interesting clouds of atoms and what they are doing in relation to each other, which is beautiful,” says Martin Zwierlein, a Physics Professor at MIT.
Never Seen Before
A single atom is about one-tenth of a nanometer in diameter, which is one-millionth of the thickness of a strand of human hair. Unlike hair, atoms behave and interact according to the rules of quantum mechanics; it is their quantum nature that makes atoms difficult to understand. For example, we cannot simultaneously know precisely where an atom is and how fast it is moving.
Current imaging techniques only allowed you to see the overall shape and structure of a cloud of atoms—like looking at a cloud in the sky, but not being able to see the individual droplets making up the cloud.
The new technique is called “atom-resolved microscopy” and involves first corralling a cloud of atoms in a loose trap formed by a laser beam, then flashing light that freezes the atoms in their positions, while a second laser illuminates the suspended atoms, revealing their individual positions.
“It’s the first time we do it in-situ, where we can suddenly freeze the motion of the atoms when they’re strongly interacting, and see them, one after the other,” Zwierlein told MIT News. “That’s what makes this technique more powerful than what was done before.”
Bunches and pairs
The team applied the imaging technique to directly observe interactions among both bosons and fermions. Photons are an example of a boson, while electrons are a type of fermion. Atoms can be bosons or fermions, depending on their total spin, which is determined by whether the total number of their protons, neutrons, and electrons is even or odd. In general, bosons attract, whereas fermions repel.
Zwierlein and his colleagues first imaged a cloud of bosons made up of sodium atoms. At low temperatures, a cloud of bosons forms what’s known as a Bose-Einstein condensate — a state of matter where all bosons share one and the same quantum state. MIT’s Ketterle was one of the first to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate, of sodium atoms, for which he shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Zwierlein’s group, which published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters, now is able to image the individual sodium atoms within the cloud, to observe their quantum interactions. It has long been predicted that bosons should “bunch” together, having an increased probability to be near each other. This bunching is a direct consequence of their ability to share the same quantum mechanical wave—a wave-like character first predicted by physicist Louis de Broglie, which sparked the beginning of modern quantum mechanics.
“We understand so much more about the world from this wave-like nature,” Zwierlein says. “But it’s really tough to observe these quantum, wave-like effects. However, in our new microscope, we can visualize this wave directly.”
The team also imaged a cloud of two types of lithium atoms. Each type of atom is a fermion, that naturally repels its own kind, but that can strongly interact with other particular fermion types. As they imaged the cloud, the researchers observed that indeed—a coupling that they could directly see for the first time.
“This kind of pairing is the basis of a mathematical construction people came up. But when you see pictures like these, it’s an object that was discovered in the mathematical world,” says study co-author Richard Fletcher, an MIT assistant professor of physics. “So it’s a very nice reminder that physics is about physical things. It’s real.”
Going forward, the physicists will apply their imaging technique to visualize more exotic and less understood phenomena, such as “quantum Hall physics” — situations when interacting electrons display novel correlated behaviors in the presence of a magnetic field.
“That’s where theory gets really hairy — where people start drawing pictures instead of being able to write down a full-fledged theory because they can’t fully solve it,” Zwierlein says. “Now we can verify whether these cartoons of quantum Hall states are actually real. Because they are pretty bizarre states.”
(Edited from media release by Jennifer Chu | MIT News)
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