A girl named Jyoti, from the small Indian village of Daraut, now says she wants to be a police officer like her grandfather. Such ambition is thanks to a residential school for marginalized girls.
In her second year at the school, she has the chance to learn, study, practice art and sports, things she couldn’t do at home.
12-year-old Cody Green always admired the strength and courage of the U.S. Marines. Last month, it was the Marines admiring the strength and courage of Cody.
To honor his undaunted optimism and long-time struggle with leukemia, during which he beat the cancer into remission three times, the Indiana fifth-grader was made an honorary Marine.
But that wasn’t enough for Sergeant Mark Dolfini who took it upon himself to drive over to Riley Hospital for Children where the boy was bed-ridden.
He made the decision to stand guard in his dress uniform at Cody’s hospital door all night long, for eight hours straight. It was the night before Cody passed.
Within the exotic world of macroscopic quantum effects, where fluids flow uphill, wires conduct without electrical resistance and magnets levitate, there is an even stranger family of “unconventional” phenomena.
Studying such effects holds enormous promise for the development of such technologies as ultrasensitive microscopes and quantum computation.
When Derek Amato crashed headfirst into the hard bottom of a pool, he was scared about what he might have done to his brain. But amazingly, the accident brought Amato an unexpected gift: it turned him into a musical savant.
Amato now plays the piano like a virtuoso, making up melodies from the patterns of black and white blocks that stream across his brain in endless succession.
While rare, there are at least 30 others around the world who have developed musical abilities after some sort of brain trauma. The condition is called Acquired Savant Syndrome.
(WATCH the video below, or READ the story from MSNBC)
When Derek Amato crashed headfirst into the hard bottom of a pool, he was scared about what he might have done to his brain. But amazingly, the accident brought Amato an unexpected gift: it turned him into a musical savant.
Amato now plays the piano like a virtuoso, making up melodies from the patterns of black and white blocks that stream across his brain in endless succession.
For their their senior project, six Marquette University engineering students chose to design and manufacture a device that would help a physically-challenged 11-year-old girl to feed herself.
Without the device, Kailyn Pieper has to bring her mouth right down to the table when eating in the school cafeteria with her friends. Without the device, she was dipping her face into the plate.
(WATCH the inspiring video or READ the story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Thanks to Nancy Peske for sending the link!
Four decades after “a scared 19-year-old kid” rolled over the Golden Gate Bridge on his way to combat in Vietnam, and after promising his wife every anniversary that they’d visit San Francisco, Larry and Barbara Richardson, who have built a 150-foot replica of the Golden Gate Bridge on their Kansas farm, finally came face to face with the iconic landmark.
As the Arab Spring has darkened, the Obama administration has built a solid alliance with the prosperous and successful Muslim democracy of Turkey, which is a beacon for the region. The country is a role model for Arabs because it shows that democracy brings dignity, not chaos or extremism.
At the the World Economic Forum this week, the “Turkish model” was held up as a source for inspiration, a Muslim country whose economy has grown an annual average of 5.3 percent since 2002 and gross domestic product more than tripled.
A new seed capital fund committed to finding and investing in high-potential East African “pre-revenue” startups was launched Wednesday in Kenya.
Bringing to the table years of seasoned experience in Africa’s tech scene, the new Savannah Fund aims to find and invest in early stage, web and mobile startups addressing the Sub-Saharan Africa market, offering in the region of $25,000 to $500,000.
The announcement comes the same week a leading UN information and technology agency stated their intention to deliver broadband to 80% of African citizens by 2020.
There’s more good news on the MBA jobs front. A new survey of business schools by the MBA Career Services Council released June 7 shows that the recovery in the job market has spread well beyond the top-ranked schools.
The survey findings show that 51% of responding B-schools report an increase in on-campus recruiting for full-time jobs, while 69% of respondents report an increase in full-time job postings.
A farm dog in the west African country of Ghana is being praised as a hero hound this week after saving the life of an abandoned two-week-old baby.
The regional director of health in Ghana told the Ghana News Agency that the dog apparently found the baby under a bridge in the northern part of the country. Rather than abandon (or eat) the vulnerable tot, the dog curled up next to him for the night, refusing to leave his side.
Massachusetts Transit workers took time from their busy rush hour jobs to make sure a little girl’s stuffed animal was rescued from a crushing blow by commuter trains Wednesday.
Michelle Carey-Brown’s 3-year-old daughter Riley saw her beloved stuffed animal bunny, Nummy, fall into the pit between the platform and the train. A MBTA worker who has grandkids herself recognized the importance to the child and wanted to help.
She radioed the oncoming train to stop while they retrieved the plush toy as commuters looked on with compassion.
(READ the story from CBS-Boston)
A little boy in China’s Guangdong province is lucky to be alive after falling through an opening in a fourth-story window ledge, where he dangled by his neck until a brave neighbor came to his rescue.
The man climbed through a window and clung to the grate on the building’s facade until he could push up on the child’s feet.
The heart-stopping scene was caught on video, and featured on a Sina news station.
A little boy in China’s Guangdong province is lucky to be alive after falling through an opening in a fourth-story window ledge, where he dangled by his neck until a brave neighbor came to his rescue.
The man climbed through a window and clung to the grate on the building’s facade until he could push up on the child’s feet.
The heart-stopping scene was caught on video, and featured on a Sina news station.
Two Siberian tiger cubs abandoned in Russia by their mother have found an unusual wet nurse — a wrinkled, sand-colored Shar Pei dog named Cleopatra, a zoo worker said Wednesday.
Officials at the Oktyabrsky resort zoo found the dog, which had recently birthed her own pups, at a local dog training club. She nurses and grooms the cubs as if they were her own.
(SEE the cute photo at NBC)
A groundbreaking regional plan was signed yesterday by Central African countries to strengthen law enforcement and better combat poaching of elephants and other species. The plan was adopted by the ten member states of Central African Forest Commission, known as COMIFAC, as escalating rates of wildlife crime plague the region.
The countries pledged to undertake unprecedented levels of cooperation with law enforcement agencies, such as the police, customs and the judiciary, to tackle the issue.
A groundbreaking regional plan was signed yesterday by Central African countries to strengthen law enforcement and better combat poaching of elephants and other species. The plan was adopted by the ten member states of Central African Forest Commission, known as COMIFAC, as escalating rates of wildlife crime plague the region.
The countries pledged to undertake unprecedented levels of cooperation with law enforcement agencies, such as the police, customs and the judiciary, to tackle the issue.
Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest levels since records began, according to data recently released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.
Using satellite imagery during the twelve months ending last July, the institute said 2,478 sq miles of Amazon forest had been cut (6,418 sq km) – the smallest area since annual measurements started in 1988
The data continues an encouraging trend. Since the peak deforestation year of 2004, the rates of clearance have fallen by almost 75%.
(READ the full story in the Guardian)
An important political revolution is quietly unfolding in California. Citizens passed a voting reform measure on gerrymandering that promises to profoundly alter the election landscape — for the better.
Proposition 20 changes the way legislative and congressional districts are drawn, removing the function from the grasp of politicians whose gerrymandering creates safe districts for the one party in power.
The new law, backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, relies instead on an independent citizens commission).
(READ an updated story in the LA Times)
A trucker was heartbroken when he realized that his 9-month old Yorkie must have jumped out of the vehicle at a rest stop in Missouri.
When he called local animal officials and they drove to the location, they found the pup waiting patiently for his traveling buddy to return.
Just in time, too. A family was getting ready to adopt the terrier when the officers arrived.
