Quote of the Day: “The most important thing is to enjoy your life — to be happy. It’s all that matters.” – Audrey Hepburn
Photo by: Helena Lopes
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?
2,221 years ago today, the Decree of Memphis, proclaiming the rule of the King of Ptolemaic Egypt, Ptolemy V, was carved in three languages on black sandstone blocks around the kingdom. The top two scripts were Egyptian hieroglyphics and Demotic, but the bottom third was ancient Greek. The block today is known as the “Rosetta Stone” and was instrumental to scholarly efforts to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics on the walls and sides of countless temples, coffins, and other objects, opening fully the window onto the great civilization’s long history. READ more about this famous object… (196 BCE)
A cruelty-free way of making foie gras has been devised by scientists that includes no unnatural additives or additional ingredients.
In fact, it helps reduce the amount of biological waste during the butchering process, keeping it out of landfills where it produces climate-warming greenhouse gases.
Traditionally made foie gras, or fatty duck liver, has been the subject of protests by animal welfare activists as its production involves force-feeding the birds.
Several countries and regions have laws against production. For example, foie gras has been banned in Switzerland since 1978, and, even where it is legal, some retailers have ceased selling it.
“Everything in our process is controlled, which is a positive thing,” said Professor Thomas Vilgis. “We never considered adding anything additional to the foie gras, because we wanted pure duck—nothing else.”
Professor Vilgis, himself a lover of foie gras, wondered if there was a more ethical way to enjoy the dish. The answer is yes—and he patented the recipe which has described in the scientific journal Physics of Fluids.
The authors and Vilgis explain that foie gras is distinct from regular fowl liver thanks to its high fat content, and that they were able to achieve similar fat content, taste, mouthfeel, and texture by altering the liver tissue after a duck was processed by the butcher.
It was important to the research team not to add external ingredients or additives to the foie gras, but it turned out the perfect additive was actually being manufactured by the liver itself: lipases.
These enzymes help digest fat in the body, mimicking the activities that occur naturally in the duck’s daily life. When used to treat duck liver and duck fat, it replicated the delicacy right there in the laboratory.
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“At the end of the process, it allows the fat to recrystallise into the large crystals which form aggregates like the ones we see in the original foie gras,” said Vilgis.
He described the recipe as “extremely simple and elegant.” The liver and fat are harvested from the duck or goose, the fat is treated with lipases, both are mixed and sterilised, and it’s good to go.
“We could really see that the influence of these large fat particles,” said Vilgis. “At the beginning of the ‘bite,’ these large clusters have a high resistance, creating a similar mouthfeel of elasticity without being too rubbery as after the collagen or gelatin addition.”
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Professor Vilgis has already filed a patent for the recipe, and he hopes to partner with companies interested in helping scale up the production. He also wants to work with sensory scientists who can help refine the taste and smell of the foie gras.
“It was always a dream to make foie gras more accessible and better for animal welfare.”
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Fluorescent chambers inside South Dakota’s Wind Cave has given scientists a pathway into theorizing how life could exist on one of Jupiter’s moons.
In a cool, NASA-funded experiment, scientists shined an ultraviolet (UV) light around the rocks inside Wind Cave and found that chemicals fossilised within the rocks shine in brilliant hues of pink, blue, and green.
The goal is using the fluorescent features to understand how the caves formed and how life is supported in extreme environments, but the data may also reveal how life could persist underground on worlds such as on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
The team explained that the chemistry in the cave is likely similar to places such as Europa.
“The purpose of this project as a whole is to try to better understand the chemistry taking place underground that’s telling us about how life can be supported,” said Astrobiologist Professor Joshua Sebree, of the University of Northern Iowa.
As Sebree and his team began to venture hundreds of feet underground to investigate minerals and lifeforms in the cold, dark conditions, they used black lights to look at the minerals in the rocks within new areas of Wind Cave.
Sebree says that, under the black light, certain areas of the caves seemed to transform into something otherworldly as portions of the surrounding rocks shone in different colors thanks to impurities lodged within the Earth millions of years ago. The hues corresponded with different concentrations and types of organic or inorganic compounds.
“The walls just looked completely blank and devoid of anything interesting,” Sabree told his university press.
“But then, when we turned on the black lights, what used to be just a plain brown wall turned into a bright layer of fluorescent mineral that indicated where a pool of water used to be 10,000 or 20,000 years ago.”
The team collected the fluorescence spectra, which they say is like a fingerprint of the chemical makeup, from different surfaces using a portable spectrometer. That meant they could take the information with them while leaving the cave intact.
One of the team, Anna Van Der Weide, is using data collected during the fieldwork to build a publicly accessible inventory of spectra to help provide an additional layer of information to the traditional cave map and paint a more complete picture of its history and formation.
Wind Cave was just one of their destinations. In other caves across the United States, they mapped the rock formations, passages, streams and organisms they found. In the chilly Mystery Cave in Minnesota, they had to bury the spectrometer’s batteries in handwarmers to keep them from dying.
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In other locations, the team had to squeeze through spaces less than a foot wide for hundreds of feet, sometimes losing a shoe in the process. But their efforts have revealed a wealth of information.
In Wind Cave, the team found that manganese-rich waters had carved out the cave and produced the striped zebra calcites within, which glowed pink under black light. The calcites grew underground, fed by the manganese-rich water.
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Sebree believes that when the rocks shattered, since calcite is weaker than the limestone also comprising the cave, the calcite worked to expand the cave too.
Sebree now plans to investigate how similar, mineral-rich water may support life in the far reaches of the solar system. Scientists have previously predicted that the most likely place to look for signs of life on other worlds will be underground, since there, microbes would be sheltered from solar wind and other harmful effects of living with a minimal or negligable atmosphere.
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A new type of golf ball with a special “water-loving” coating could answer the prayers of thousands of golfers.
The coating helps average out the speed of a rolling ball, slowing it on faster dry greens and speeding it up on sluggish, wet courses, says the American inventor.
Thomas J. Kennedy III, a polymer chemist, is due to present his findings at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Diego, California, and explained that the coating works by soaking up water molecules without interfering with the ball’s aerodynamics.
“I was thinking about a way to help golfers and the game of golf overall by improving the putting process so that having a good round was not a matter of chance but a matter of skill,” said Kennedy III.
Mr. Kennedy, owner of Massachusetts-based Chemical Innovative Solutions Inc., has previously developed state-of-the-art golf balls that optimised long-distance performance in the air. But with his new project, he focused on the interaction between the ball and the grass.
“Golf in many ways is a surface interaction game, with the putter imparting spin rates on the ball, as well as the grass affecting how fast or slow the ball rolls toward the hole.”
Wet weather causes the fairways, rough, and putting greens to become soft and sometimes soggy, slowing the roll of the golf ball. But hot and dry weather causes the fairways and especially putting greens to allow for much greater roll of the golf ball, known in the game as “fast” conditions.
Kennedy III explained that the coating increases the surface energy of the ball, the opposite of what hot wax does when applied to a car windscreen. On dry grass, the coating draws up water to slow down the ball. But on wet grass, the coating helps release the green’s grip on the ball.
Kennedy says the new coating wouldn’t be considered cheating—it would simply shift the focus of the golfer from judging conditions to better judging his strokes.
“The United States Golf Association has set standards for golf balls,” Kennedy said. “There’s a size limit, a weight limit, a symmetry constraint, and there’s even a standard for overall distance travelled.”
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“But within that box, there’s a lot of latitude to do different things that change the playability of golf balls while staying within the confines of the USGA and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews rules.”
To test the coating’s effect on fast and slow greens, Kennedy used a Stimpmeter—a V-shaped metal rod that applies a known velocity to the ball so that the distance it travels on a dry or wet green can be measured and compared.
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His experiments revealed that the coated golf balls had a “more consistent” speed on both dry and wet simulated greens compared to uncoated ones.
In a strange and unrelated parallel, Kennedy says the coating could also be applied to solar panels to improve their performance.
“It may sound counterintuitive, but the hydrophilic nature of the coating keeps solar panels cleaner by allowing water to soak the surface and wash away sun-blocking dust and debris.”
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Kennedy has provisional patents for the use of the hydrophilic coating on golf balls and solar panels, and believes the balls could be in regular use within “a few months.”
“The game of golf has been around since the 15th century, however, there’s always a new way to look at something as technology evolves,” he said. “Innovation and invention know no bounds!”
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From Phoebe Weston at the Guardian comes the story of the Herculean effort to clean up Switzerland’s waterways, an effort that has transformed the unique European country into one that enjoys the cleanest urban swimming spots on the continent.
In the 1960s, water quality in the form of sewage treatment investment received the smallest share of attention, and rivers and lakes like the famous one at Geneva were covered in algal mats, off-colored foam, and dead fish.
A typhoid outbreak at Zermatt in 1963 led to several deaths, and hundreds fell ill. It was found that raw sewage was the cause of the epidemic, and an outcry from the public led to massive investments in sewage treatment and pollution control.
That was then. Now, as Weston’s photography testifies, the “Blue Gold” of Switzerland’s waterways are the envy of their neighbors, and people of all ages and at all hours flood the beaches to enjoy a swim, even in the nippy early spring.
“Very high water quality is important to the population,” says Michael Mattle, head of wastewater technology at the engineering company Holinger. “We take a lot of care not to pollute water on its way through Switzerland.”
According to one source, in 1965, only 14% of the population of Switzerland was connected to a wastewater treatment plant. Today it’s 98%, and the government spends €191 on water purification per citizen, compared to just €98 in the UK, for example.
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Since 2016, the Swiss federal government has also been working on a massive pollution control effort for drugs and medications flushed down the toilet when they’re excreted by the body. They include, as Weston details, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, diabetes medication, and even antibiotics.
Wastewater treatment plants basically work like a human stomach, utilizing bacteria to digest and remove organic matter from water. Alternatively, the treatment for these pollutant drugs requires flushing the water through activated charcoal which can remove 80% of the total pollutant load. What’s left are the famous PFAS compounds referred to as “forever chemicals” by the media.
MORE SEWAGE CONTROL STORIES: Washington, DC Sewage Plant Spins Human Sewage into Fertilizer Gold
That 20%, operators at the wastewater plants say, should be the focus of regulatory legislation, not treatment infrastructure.
Weston also reports that the EU, and Switzerland’s near neighbors, are visiting to learn about and hopefully replicate the country’s success, with the EU considering new legislation that would require any sewage treatment plants that serve areas of more than 10,000 people to treat for the pollutant pharmaceuticals mentioned above.
CLEAN-UP Your Friends’ News Feeds With This Inspiring Victory Over Dirty Water…
Quote of the Day: “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” – Winnie The Pooh (A.A. Milne)
Photo by: Sketchplanations (CC BY-NC 4.0 – cropped)
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?
50 years ago today, the Biological Weapons Convention, (BWC) entered into force. It’s considered to have established a strong global norm against biological weapons reflected in the treaty’s preamble, which states that the use of biological weapons would be “repugnant to the conscience of mankind”. It is also demonstrated by the fact that not a single state today declares to possess or seek biological weapons, or asserts that their use in war is legitimate, and today, only Israel, Chad, Eritrea, and 5 small island nations have not signed the agreement. READ more about the BWC… (1979)
Archaeology was recently sent into raptures when, for the first time since Tutankhamon was found, a pharaoh’s tomb was discovered and confirmed as such.
And despite that happening just one month ago, and ‘King Tut’ being found 103 years before that, archaeologists have confirmed that they have found yet another pharaoh’s tomb.
The banner year that started when Thutmose II’s final resting place was identified in February near the Valley of the Kings has continued as another royal sepulcher has been found—this time in the Mount Anubis necropolis in Abydos.
However, this king’s name hasn’t been identified yet. According to the Smithsonian the tomb dates to the Middle Kingdom’s Second Intermediate Period, which spanned roughly 1630 to 1540 BCE.
Professor Mohamed Abdel Badie from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated that studies conducted on the newly found tomb in Abydos indicate that it belonged to one of the kings whose reign predated King Senebkay, whose tomb was discovered in Abydos by the mission in 2014.
He noted that it is much larger than other previously known tombs attributed to the Abydos Dynasty, which was located in the southern part of the Middle Kingdom and which was eventually overtaken by invasions from the north conducted by the “Hyskos,” a western Asian people who brought new culture, technology, and on occasion, strife and turmoil to the timeless ancient lands along the Nile.
“The king’s name was originally recorded in painted scenes on plastered brickwork that decorated the underground entrance to the limestone burial chamber,” Josef Wegner, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania who led the excavation, tells Live Science. “However, the hieroglyphic texts were damaged by ancient tomb robbers, and not enough survives to read the king’s name.”
It’s possible that sophisticated AI programs could decipher enough of what’s left behind, but the challenge remains that not much is known about the Abydos Dynasty, so there is little to base any guesses or assumptions on.
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Physically, the tomb was located 20 feet underground in a limestone chamber lined with mud-brick vaults. Very few possessions interred with the numerous dead, most of whom were children, had been left by tomb robbers, but pottery fragments and amphorae indicate that the king was connected to a large local production center of brick and ceramic kilns.
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A pioneer in utilizing drones for agriculture, a man with the same condition as Steven Hawking has built a flourishing business in just 4 years.
Drones have plenty of use on the farm, and Kyle Albertson has developed services for surveying, crop spraying, and more. Diagnosed with congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) at just 9 months old, Albertson has never let it get in his way.
Growing up in Indiana with farms as far as the eye could see, riding tractors and combines were activities that he always enjoyed. As a young man he joined both 4H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) and worked hard to develop a goal-oriented mindset to fuel his sense of independence, and the belief that he could do something dramatic with his career.
“It’s a shock to some people that I can do the things I do,” Albertson said. “It’s just old habit to me.”
Graduating from Purdue University in 2021 with a degree in agribusiness, he launched his business Albertson Drone Service LLC. the same year. Drone photography had emerged in his years at university as a hobby, but he found that farmers were really interested in aerial photography, and would pay well for drone-operated pesticide deployment.
His business has doubled its revenue in the most recent fiscal quarter compared to its first year, as well as the number of clients it maintains, and the acreage it covers.
MORE INDIVIDUALS LIKE ALBERTSON:
The as-yet short journey has nonetheless gone a long way in fostering that independent streak, and speaking with WRTV, Albertson noted that he has a driver’s license and cruises around country roads in “a modified van with a joystick.”
When asked if he had any inspiration for readers, he decided to offer an entrepreneurial perspective, rather than anything to do with his CMD—as good a piece of evidence as any that he has done what all disabled people strive to do: not let their condition define them.
“If you think you can do it and it’s a good business action, give it a shot,” said Albertson.
WATCH the story below…
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Diplomatic channels between the UK and Russia have maintained a centuries-old tradition of grave tending for the fallen of wars long past, proving that there are notions in international relations that transcend even the sternest political policies.
What’s more, news reports say that there is no communication between the nations over maintaining the graves of the other’s fallen soldiers, but various lines of evidence suggest that the Russians have continued to do so even without payment or special request from the British government.
Over the past 200 years, Great Britain and Russia have been allies and enemies, friend and foe, cousins and colleagues.
There are 663 fallen British soldiers behind the borders of the Russian Federation: casualties of operations long forgotten, in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Vladivostok. Typically, the UK’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission relies on a mixture of Russian Federation military and paid contractors to take care of these graves and ensure they are clean and the gardens are maintained.
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, efforts by the West to isolate the aggressor nation led to various long-standing agreements being cast into geopolitical limbo.
The Guardian reports, however, that though communication with these contractors and military personnel has ceased, pictures from civilians have shown that even during the last 3 years of the war, British soldiers’ graveyards have been maintained, leading authorities in the UK who tend to 671 Red Army graves in Britain to continue as they have done for so long.
“We haven’t seen the graves but we think they are still being maintained,” said Gareth Hardware, the Commission’s area director for the UK and northern countries. “We are maintaining their graves in our cemeteries.”
“The cemetery looks very well maintained. Someone is taking care of it, even in these difficult times,” an amateur Russian historian, considered by the Commission as a credible source, wrote in a blog post last summer after visiting Arkhangelsk.
The Guardian continued saying that a British diplomat in Moscow visited Murmansk on Remembrance Day last year with a Russian counterpart and reported back that the cemetery there was in good condition.
The same is true for Germany and Russia, who for very obvious reasons have much larger burial enclaves for the other, with graves totaling more than half a million for each.
“We still recover Red Army soldiers in Germany each year and will provide them a proper grave in Germany,” said Dirk Backen, general secretary of the German war graves commission. 600,000 Soviet soldiers lie in German lands, while the 760,000 Germans who fell on Russian soil during the world wars are also having their cemeteries maintained.
The honored dead aren’t the only remaining connections either. Space-bound cooperation remains open between the West and Russia. Since the war in Ukraine began, several Russian cosmonauts have ridden to the International Space Station and worked alongside NASA, ESA, and JAXA astronauts in maintaining the international platform.
Last week, GNN reported that two NASA astronauts stranded on the ISS were finally being allowed to return home. The team that was to be their relief included Kirill Peskov, a Tuvan Russian cosmonaut, whose trip would have involved him arriving in the US, receiving a briefing from NASA mission control, and riding a US-made SpaceX Dragon capsule to the ISS—all massive security breaches if done in any other government department.
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Last March, NASA’s Crew 8 spacecraft arrived at the ISS, and their arrival was recorded with a video of a pile-on group hug in microgravity. Arriving with them was Roscosmos’ Alexander Grebenkin.
In the video, Crew 8 mission commander Matthew Dominic is mobbed by NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, but also Belarussian Soyuz 24 mission flight engineer Marina Vasilevskaya.
Dominic then moves to greet Soyuz 24 mission commander Oleg Kononenko, while the rest of his crew follow behind hugging those wearing the red white and blue and the white blue and red.
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Astronauts have a unique way of seeing the world, figuratively and literally. Looking down on our home from low-Earth orbit day after day, they realize (and they all say they do) that space is an incredibly harsh environment, and everything we humans have and need is concentrated on this single planet with no alternative.
As regards US-Russia relations, you can see in the video what they think of the current tensions, and perhaps we should all take a leaf out of their books.
WATCH the micrograv group hug below…
SHARE This Awesome Reminder That Peaceful Coexistence Is Always Possible…
A portrait of a stately West African leader painted by famed Austrian artist Gustav Klimt has reappeared in public after being lost before World War II.
Nearly a hundred years have passed since it was last seen, and is now exhibited at Wienerroither & Kohlbacher Gallery in Vienna, with a price tag of €15 million.
The portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona—a representative of the Ga people in West Africa, comprising parts of modern-day Ghana, was painted by Klimt in 1897, sold by the artist’s estate in 1923, and lost by 1938.
An art historian who had been searching for the work for 2 decades verified its authenticity for W&K Galleries with the help of a well-faded stamp on the back of the canvas. A wealthy Austrian Jewish family who had converted Klimt’s studio into a villa acquired the painting in 1928 for an exhibition.
That was the last time and place it was seen, for by 1938, the Klein family had abandoned their property and fled the growing anti-semitism in their homeland to Monaco.
“The composition and painterly execution point to Klimt’s turn towards decorative elements, which were to characterize his later work, and are directly linked to his pioneering portraits of the following years,” said Alfred Weidinger, who authenticated the work, in press materials.
MORE GREAT WORKS LOST AND FOUND:
Prince Dowuona traveled to Vienna for a late-colonial sing-and-dance called the Völkerschau which exhibited ethnographic displays from colonized people around the world at an urban zoo. This is where a friend of Klimt’s first found the stately African leader, who was one of 120 Ga people who traveled via steamship to Austria for the Völkerschau, according to Art Net.
It’s believed that both Klimt and his friend Matsch painted Dowuona, but being that this work remained unsigned and in Europe, the client, whoever it was, probably selected the one painted by Matsch.
Klimt’s corpus includes many that have fetched 8-figure sums at auction houses, and one that sold for $108 million of an unknown woman holding a fan. There is currently no plan to auction this work.
SHARE This Latest Masterwork To Reappear From Europe’s Past…
Quote of the Day: “We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid adding suffering to the pain.” – Pema Chödrön
Photo by: Jesus Fodulla
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?
Happy Birthday to Sarah Jessica Parker who turns 60 today. The producer, entrepreneur, and actress portrayed Carrie Bradshaw—one of the greatest TV girlfriends in history—on the HBO hit series Sex and the City. Over six seasons, her performances won her two Emmys, four Golden Globes, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Lately, she’s become a fashion designer for her own brand, SJP shoes and handbags. WATCH AN INTERVIEW and Learn More… (1965)
Thanks to a little love in a ‘Buy Canadian’ Reddit room, a small condiment business thinks they’ve found the secret ingredient to success: patriotism.
Aki’s Fine Foods has been manufacturing Indo-African sauces and chutneys out of Pickering, Ontario, for 38 years, but owner Shenul Williams says she’s never seen anything like the sales numbers being put up this year.
After the province’s lockdown orders during the Pandemic sent many of Williams’ key grocery store buyers out of business, it seemed like she was going to follow suit, and the company started originally by her parents wouldn’t make it to the third generation.
Realizing that her mother could lose her business if something didn’t happen, Willams’ daughter Aliza Welch posted a call for help in a Reddit room called Buy Canadian.
“My mom owns a Canadian-made Indo-African sauce company that has been in business for 38 years. It is truly amazing and has been struggling since COVID,” Welch wrote.
“With so much interest in buying from small Canadian companies, I figured I would share her products as an alternative. Your support would change her life. All products have a maple leaf!”
That ‘support’ saw sales on Aki’s Fine Foods‘ website increase 4,000%.
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Williams said the impact is “saving my business.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can remember one little note. This lady said, ‘Keep it up.’ You know, make Canadian. ‘We want Canadian.'”
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Gary Sands, senior vice president of public policy and advocacy for the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, said “he’s never seen anything” like the reorganization of Canadian producers and vendors toward buying, sourcing, and selling local in the wake of US President Trump’s newly imposed 25% import tariffs.
Speaking with CBC, Sands said that Williams’ newfound success is just one manifestation of this all-consuming and rapid business trend sweeping the Great White North.
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For a critically endangered species of penguin, a recent decision to remove fishing competition from its hunting and breeding grounds may prove to be the key to saving it.
In the rich waters of South Africa’s cape and Atlantic coastlines, 6 key breeding colonies of the African penguin are now no-go zones for commercial sardine and anchovy harvesting, according to a recent court order.
Less than 10,000 breeding pairs of this penguin survive, and conservation groups hailed the court’s decision that will protect the colony’s feeding areas for at least a decade.
“This order of court is a historic victory in the ongoing battle to save the critically endangered African Penguin from extinction in the wild,” said BirdLife South Africa, one of the groups that had called for the protection.
The protected areas include Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years. Dassen Island, further up South Africa’s Atlantic coast, and the Stony Point Nature Reserve, make up two of the other 6 areas in total where penguin protections are kicking in.
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The court’s decision followed weeks of “exceptionally hard work and negotiations between the conservation NGOs and the commercial sardine and anchovy fishing industry,” according to SANCCOB, one of those very NGOs.
“This case has been first and foremost about improving the chances of conserving Africa’s only penguin species, but the outcome of these closures will also benefit other marine predator species, such as cape gannets, cape cormorants, and other socio-economically important fish that also eat sardine and anchovy, as well as the livelihoods of many who derive benefits from marine ecosystems,” said BirdLife’s Dr. Alistair McInnes.
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A New York hospital has declared a patient cured of sickle-cell anemia, a debilitating genetic disorder that mostly affects individuals of African heritage.
Considered to be cured, other genetic treatments have proven successful in reducing or ending the bouts of pain and occasional surgeries that plague the lives of those who suffer from the disease.
Cohen Children’s Medical Center said their patient Sebastien Beauzile, 21, is the first New Yorker to have received the breakthrough Lyfgenia treatment, according to the New York Post.
Developed by Bluebird Bio., Beauzile received the treatment in December of 2024. Since then, the young man has been seemingly cured of the disease which caused him skin ulcers, back pain, hip pain, joint pain, and severe chest pain.
“Growing up with sickle cell, it’s kind of been over all my life,” Sebastien said, according to Gene Online. “So now that I’m cured, I’d say it’s my new birthday, because now nothing’s going to stop me.”
Part of a genetic mutation that humans developed to protect themselves against the malaria parasite, sickle cell disease occurs when blood cells, through forming sickle shapes, have trouble reaching the heart.
Dr. Jeffrey Lipton, the center’s director for pediatric hematology, predicts Lyfgenia will replace bone marrow transplants as the primary method for addressing sickle cell anemia, and called the treatment “a fix.”
Lygenia takes a sample of the patient’s bone marrow and introduces healthy adult hemoglobin from a donor. Hemoglobin is a protein that helps transport oxygen through the body via red blood cells, and is at the heart of sickle cell disease. Tinkering the two, they are then infused back into the patient’s body, where the donor hemoglobin is gradually coded for rather than the affected hemoglobin of the patient.
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“Sebastien’s recovery has been amazing, and we hope he is just the first of many patients we treat with Lyfgenia,” said Charles Schleien, MD, senior vice president of Cohen Children’s Medical Center.
In January, GNN reported that base editing, another form of gene therapy that, like Lygenia, doesn’t involve the more famous CRISPR technology, was able to seemingly cure 20-year-old Brandon Baptiste, who is now “going to the gym every day, doing cardio and weight lifting.”
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Baptiste became eligible for an experimental trial of base editing called BEACON. By October 2023, after a year of tests to ensure he was physically capable in his diminished state to handle the procedure, it began with a sample of his blood stem cells.
These were then transferred to a separate facility where the base editing would take place. Using chemotherapy, his team then killed off all the diseased blood stem cells in his bone marrow, after which he was ready to receive his own stem cells back in November.
SHARE These Inspiring Stories Of Young Men Whose Lives Are Transformed…
In Italy, a judge has applied a novel legal concept in sentencing two convicted plant smugglers: payment for the damage done to an irreplaceable ecosystem.
Following a trial in the Italian city of Ancona, Andrea Pombietti and Mattia Crescentini were found guilty of trafficking in endangered species; in this case, two rare cactus genera Eriosyce and Copiapoa.
Endemic to the Atacama Desert in Chile, these highly-sought after species survive in the driest climate on Earth, and the two men were found to be in possession of hundreds and for participating in a criminal enterprise that involved Greek and South American entities.
Being that Italy is a member of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), the Ancona court found the two men guilty, but in response to the case put forward by the public prosecutor, sentenced them to pay “moral damages” to an NGO called the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation (ABC), whose resident cacti expert worked alongside authorities to identify the species in Pombietti and Crescentini’s possession.
All were native to the Atacama Desert, and the damages of around $21,500 were paid to ABC for its legal costs and to further its conservation work in the very desert the criminals were exploiting.
A member of ABC said the money would fund cactus research projects to inform conservation strategies.
The Guardian reports that the case is one of the first in the world to order traffickers to pay for conservation in the ecosystems they exploit.
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“Any remedy that looks at a deeper solution that restores the environment is key … as opposed to only looking at one animal that has been killed or one tree that has been cut down,” said Blair Atwebembeire, an environmental lawyer in Uganda, whose work mainly involves the pangolin—the world’s most trafficked animal.
The Guardian spoke with another environmental lawyer, Rika Fajrini, who said that Indonesia primarily prosecutes under criminal, not civil law. As a result, the debt to society is paid to the state, not the animals or ecosystems damaged by the offenders.
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“The Italian case highlights that harm to wildlife is also harm to the environment – one that requires restoration, not just punishment of offenders,” says Fajrini.
Trafficking in animals and plants is the third most lucrative black market in the world, behind drugs and weaponry. Estimated to be worth over $100 billion in terms of money paid, if a fraction of that value was transferred to conservation, the fragile ecosystems and vulnerable species made victim in these schemes could be significantly fortified.
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