A National Guard veteran who walked more than 7,000 miles to raise money for military families returned home to a hero’s welcome in Louisville, Ky.
Troy Yocum, 32, said he started the Hike for Heroes after hearing from a veteran buddy that he was depressed because he’d lost his a job and home after deployment.
The walk, which he undertook with his wife and dog, raised $500,000 so far, for the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation.
Visit their Facebook page at: Facebook.com/HikeForHeroes.org
A National Guard veteran who walked more than 7,000 miles to raise money for military families returned home to a hero’s welcome in Louisville, Ky.
Troy Yocum, 32, said he started the Hike for Heroes after hearing from a veteran buddy that he was depressed because he’d lost his a job and home after deployment.
The walk, which he undertook with his wife and dog, raised $500,000 so far, for the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation.
Visit their Facebook page at: Facebook.com/HikeForHeroes.org
As a Hollywood actor, Josh Duhamel proves that he hasn’t forgotten about his little hometown of Minot.
He asked his girlfriend, Fergie, to bring her band, the Black Eyed Peas, to North Dakota to perform a benefit concert on Labor Day weekend.
A soldout crowd of 12,000 paid for tickets priced at $100, and all those funds will go to a recovery fund for victims of local flooding that damaged 4100 houses and hundreds of businesses.
Don Ray of Myrtle Beach was among those long-term unemployed. But now he has an encouraging story to tell. Ray had been looking for full-time employment for more than a year, sending out scores of resumes and knocking on countless doors, until he was hired for a sales job at the hhgregg store last week.
Ray said he believes that what put him in position to snag the South Carolina job was simple persistence.
While we all know eating healthy foods and exercising are the basic tenets of wellness, some of the scientific research points to unexpected activities that could boost your health.
RealBuzz.com came up with a list of 10 surprising things that can make you feel better, including taking photographs, housework, dirt and beer.
A poodle named Ted has saved a man’s life after a fire broke out in a Utah home.
When paramedics tried to catch the poodle to bring him outside, he headed downstairs instead.
He then waited until they caught up with him, before leading them to the 19-year-old man who was sleeping in the basement.
To combat excessive radiation levels in the agricultural regions surrounding the Fukashima nuclear plant, monks at a Japanese Buddhist temple began growing and distributing sunflowers, which are known to absorb radiation.
The project has blossomed throughout the country with hundreds of thousands of flowers in bloom, spurring deeper connections between people in Fukushima and the rest of the country.
To combat excessive radiation levels in the agricultural regions surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant, monks at a Japanese Buddhist temple began growing and distributing sunflowers, which are known to absorb radiation.
The project has blossomed throughout the country with hundreds of thousands of flowers in bloom, spurring deeper connections between people in Fukushima and the rest of the country.
Dolphins in one western Australian population have been observed holding a large conch shell in their beaks and using it to shake a fish into their mouths — and the behavior may be spreading.
Researchers believe the activity might be spreading.
Absent but still the star of the show, comedian Jerry Lewis helped the 2011 Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon raise more than $61 million over the weekend, the amount Lewis was hoping for.
An annual event that stretched over 21 hours on Sunday honored his efforts during the past 45 years to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disorder through medical research, the organization said on Monday.
For patient Robert Valderzak, last month’s earthquake was a blessing in disguise. In June, the 75-year-old lost his hearing when he fell. He has been in the VA hospital since then.
But, following the earthquake which measured 5.8, the man who sat in silence for months, sat up in his bed and announced to his kids that his hearing had returned: “I can hear everything, people in the hallway.”
For patient Robert Valderzak, last month’s earthquake was a blessing in disguise. In June, the 75-year-old lost his hearing when he fell. He has been in the VA hospital since then.
But, following the earthquake which measured 5.8, the man who sat in silence for months, sat up in his bed and announced to his kids that his hearing had returned: “I can hear everything, people in the hallway.”
In New Zealand, a knitting circle formed for prisoners is churning out hats, slippers and scarves to donate to those in their community in need.
“The knitting does great things for the men’s self worth as well,” reports 3-News.
“It’s productive, you can see what you’ve produced, it goes to Women’s Refuge so it goes to a good cause,” says an incarcerated wool-spinner.
(READ the story from New Zealand’s 3-News)
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Life may give you plenty of opportunities to gripe, but knowing the right way to complain and get a positive result in return can be tricky in most everyday situations.
By being assertive when an issue arises, instead of whining, you can complain effectively, says Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., author of A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness
Researchers say they found a common cause behind the mysterious and deadly affliction of ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that could lead to an effective treatment.
The discovery could also help in developing treatments for other, more common neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s, said Dr. Teepu Siddique, a neuroscientist with Northwestern University whose pioneering work on ALS over more than a quarter century fueled the research team’s work.
College football star Mark Herzlich was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in his left leg in 2009. But, the 2008 ACC Defensive Player of the Year beat the disease, and came back to play his senior season at Boston College in 2010.
After being passed over in the NFL draft this past April, the New York Giants took a chance on Herzlich, bringing him to training camp as an undrafted free agent.
Now, that the Giants have officially hired him to join the team, he is the feel-good story of the summer.
A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the ‘wind lens’ could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.
Some major wind projects are already projecting costs significantly lower than coal power — $80 per MWh for wind versus $90 per MWh for coal — and that is without government subsidies using today’s wind turbine technology.
Imagine if a breakthrough came along that potentially tripled the energy output of those turbines. Well, such a breakthrough has already been achieved and deployed by Japanese researchers looking for an alternative to the dangerous nuclear power plants there.
A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the ‘wind lens’ could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.
Some major wind projects are already projecting costs significantly lower than coal power — $80 per MWh for wind versus $90 per MWh for coal — and that is without government subsidies using today’s wind turbine technology.
Imagine if a breakthrough came along that potentially tripled the energy output of those turbines. Well, such a breakthrough has already been achieved and deployed by Japanese researchers looking for an alternative to the dangerous nuclear power plants there.
The United State military, the nation’s largest energy consumer, is embracing conservation and sustainability as a way not only to save energy but to maintain national security and keep more troops out of harm’s way.
Defense officials expect to trim at least $1.6 billion in expenses after investing $780 million in new energy-savings projects between 2004 and 2011.
A renewed focus on energy efficiency within the Obama administration has prompted the Defense Department to set a more aggressive emission-reduction target than any other federal agency: 34 percent by 2020, instead of the 28 percent goal set for the federal government as a whole. Many of the projects that will help the agency achieve that goal already are under way.
“The volatility of the oil market in recent years and how that drives your budget has made us realize that we need to become less dependent on oil,” said Joe Sikes, the Defense Department’s director for facilities energy.
“Delivering fuel to the front, is very dangerous,” said Sikes. “Truck convoys are prime target for attacks, so if you have fewer convoys it probably makes it safer to fight the war.”
Sikes oversees a $120-million-a-year conservation program focused on making all 300,000 buildings on military bases in the United States and beyond waste less energy. Project activities include insulating buildings, equipping them with solar panels and installing electric meters to track energy consumption. All buildings, which come in every size and shape, will have meters by 2012.
Earlier this year, the Army announced that it would lease 4,000 electric vehicles over the next three years for passenger transport, security patrols and delivery services at its bases nationwide. The Army is also in the early stages of testing hybrid military logistics vehicles for possible purchase — all part of an effort to dramatically reduce its dependency on oil.
Similar initiatives can be found across all branches of the U.S. military.
In March, the U.S. Air Force flew, for the first time, an A-10 Thunderbolt II military jet on a blend of biomass and conventional fuel. On Earth Day next year, it will be the Navy’s turn to demonstrate its commitment to alternative fuel technology. That day, a so-called Green Hornet F/A-18 jet powered by fuel made from the camelina sativa plant mixed with regular jet fuel will take off from the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, southeast of Washington.
As has been the case before, the military can be a trailblazer for the private sector. The nation’s Defense Energy Support Center recently signed an agreement with the Air Transport Association of America, which represents all major commercial airlines, to promote commercialization of environmentally friendlier aviation fuels. The airline industry and the Defense Department together consume more than 1.5 million barrels of jet fuel daily, which means such collaboration, if successful, could have a major impact on fossil-fuel emissions.
“By combining our talents and experience, we are better positioned to explore cooperative market engagement for fuel,” said James May, the association’s president and chief executive, in a statement March 19. The collaboration would help improve the financial prospects for alternative fuels and accelerate fuel certification efforts, he added.
The Defense Department is also continuing to serve as a test bed for new technology. The agency is inviting private companies to demonstrate their new energy technology on a military base and is funding the projects with $30 million from its conservation budget. A couple of projects are already under way — one energy data management project and one focused on innovative photovoltaic (solar) buildings.
“We provide that initial market for these companies, and in some cases it will help our mission, too,” Sikes said.
(Source: the US Department of State)
