Quote of the Day: “The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.” – Burton Hills
Photo by: Kateryna Hliznitsova 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?
Happy 75th Birthday to Sissy Spacek. She won an Academy Award for her starring role in the 1980 biographical film Coal Miner’s Daughter, about country music singer Loretta Lynn, for which she performed all the vocals. Born in Quitman, Texas, she initially gained fame for her breakthrough performance in the 1976 Stephen King-inspired horror film Carrie. She also earned Oscar nominations for her roles in five films, Carrie, Missing, The River, Crimes of the Heart, and In the Bedroom. WATCH her break down her most iconic roles… (1949)
From India comes the story of a tribal community who gained ownership of a lush bamboo forest and used it to brighten the futures of the otherwise poverty-stricken inhabitants.
According to a monumental piece of legislation passed in 2006, any indigenous community can apply for ownership of federally-owned land on which they have a traditional claim. Called the Forest Rights Act, its effectiveness has been spotty, since many indigenous forest dwellers are unaware that it exists, and few are willing to litigate on their behalf.
But for the dwellers of Pachgaon in the Indian state of Maharashtra, three years of persistent inquiries and form-filing rewarded them with ownership over a 2,500-acre bamboo forest which they have turned into a community silviculture business that takes care of the whole community.
It also stymied migration to the urban centers of Gujurat and Karnataka, keeping community members in the region of their ancestors, while making a not-insignificant profit of around $41,000 a year for the village.
“The day we got the papers was a festival,” says Vinod Ramswaroop Tekam, a 35-year-old villager. “We were overwhelmed that we had won this right, that our [nonviolent protest] had paid off. We were now 100% assured that the forest was really ours.”
At a depot on the outskirts of Pachgaon, stacks of bamboo lie neatly cut and sorted into various sizes. Across Asia, bamboo is used in construction for scaffolding and aiding the correct setting of concrete. Because of this, hundreds of thousands of long sections are needed every day, and can generate a land owner millions of rupees.
The village’s bamboo business made a profit of 34 million rupees in the last 10 years, or $400,000, according to a special feature in the Guardian.
Not too dissimilar to a Western co-op, a village assembly called a gram sabha runs the bamboo lumber business. There are no foremen or CEOs, just one person designated to handle the paperwork.
The bamboo thrives even throughout the difficult monsoon years, when villagers from Pachgaon would often watch their crops flooded and destroyed in the rains, and, left thusly destitute, migrate to cities to perform odd jobs for low pay.
ALSO CHECK OUT: Indebted Indian Laborer Finds Life-Changing $100,000 Diamond
The profits made are spread through the gram sabha and address things like higher education for the community’s children, infrastructural improvements, and the acquisition of neighboring land to expand the business.
When the monsoons come and the bamboo cutting ceases, profits are used to pay villagers to perform work like digging drainage ditches and filling potholes.
MORE INDIAN SUCCESS STORIES: Inspired by Avatar and His Asthma, Indian Man Creates ‘Biosphere’ to Connect Adjacent Land to National Park
“It’s simple,” says Gajanan Themke, 43, a worker-manager at the gram sabha. “If we don’t create jobs, people will migrate. More people in the village means better work and better execution of work.”
The dream of the gram sabha and Pachgaon is simple: keep the next generation here and keep their traditions alive.
SHARE This Indigenous Empowerment In Rural India With Your Friends…
Stories of personal triumphs don’t always start with success—they often start with setbacks and failure. For an obese New Yorker, it was being told in front of everyone that he was too big to get on a roller coaster.
39-year-old Brian Clegg says he has struggled with his weight his whole life.
At his heaviest, he weighed 409 lbs. and endured significant pain just walking around. Describing himself as a “stress eater,” he would often relegate meal times to a bag of fast food or sugary snacks.
But years of suffering from the consequences of overeating, a poor diet, and a sedentary life couldn’t compare to the disappointment he felt last year on a trip to Coney Island when he was told he couldn’t get on a roller coaster because of his massive size.
This year Brian made it his mission to shed the weight, and has since lost 135 lbs. in 11 months, mostly by cutting out sugar and fast food, and starting an exercise program at the gym even though it was just 5 minutes per day.
“I couldn’t live life,” said the native of New Windsor, NY.
“I had things that I wanted to accomplish but I was wondering how long I was going to live. I started going to the gym three times a week,” he told SWNS. “I was only able to do the StairMaster for five minutes on level one.”
ALSO CHECK OUT: How Self-Compassion Can Help People Achieve Weight Loss Goals Despite Setbacks–and Resume Dieting Faster
In the last 11 months, Clegg has gone from wearing XXXXXL shirts to XXL, from a 52-inch waist to just 42 inches, and from 5 minutes at level 1 to one hour on level 10 on the StairMaster.
He was even able to fulfill his dream of getting on a roller coaster at Coney Island in October 2024.
SIMILAR SUCCESS STORIES: Disney Superfan Lost 230-lbs So He Could Play Prince Charming and Go on The Rides
“I have gone on a roller coaster for the first time, climbed mountains, and skyscrapers and I go on lots of walks.”
Clegg says he feels “energized and happy” and that he hopes to inspire others who are struggling with their weight.
SHARE This Story With Your Friends Making New Year’s Resolutions To Slim Down…
From Greece comes the discovery of the first-ever portrait of the last-ever Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Phalaiologos.
Discovered at a monastery Constantine’s brothers once patronized, it dates to the 15th-century fall of the great empire and offers a vision of the man painted according to his likeness, rather than according to Imperial custom.
Located in Aigialeia in the Achaea region of Western Greece, Constantine grew up in or near a town called Mystras, south of the monastery, which he governed for 5 years until he took the throne in the year 1449.
In a statement, the Greek Ministry of Culture said that as a portrait, it is not idealistic or standardized.
“It is an authentic portrait, which accurately reflects the physiognomic characteristics of the last Byzantine emperor. He is an earthly figure, a mature man, with a slender face and personalized features, who exudes calmness and kindness,” it reads.
The statement describes further how his raiment would have likely been purple with gold embroidery and decorated with medals, on which are depicted double-headed eagles with a crown between their heads—insignia of the members of the Palaiologos family.
LOOK INTO THE FACE OF HISTORY: Face of Real St. Nicholas Reconstructed with 3D Tech Shows He Did Look Like Santa Claus
The Phalaiologos household produced rulers of Byzantium for around 200 years, and Constantine the XI was not only the last of its house to rule in Constantinople, but also the last Byzantine royal of any house to rule, as Constantine disappeared from history during the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
MORE HISTORIC PAINTINGS DISCOVERED: Decorative Throne Room Unearthed May Have Belonged to an Ancient Peruvian Queen
This makes the portrait exceptionally rare even among imperial Byzantine frescoes, as Constantine XI’s time on the throne spanned a mere 4 years.
The preservationists who first identified the antique frescoes found Constantine’s portrait as a base layer and hidden from sight.
SHARE This Enlightening Discovery Of This Brief Historical Figure…
One of the least respected but most important ecosystems on Earth are seagrass meadows, and a pioneering robotic solution is helping marine scientists restore these underwater gardens.
The ReefGen Grasshopper can plant dozens of seagrass seeds per minute. Not only is this faster than a human diver, but much safer as well.
It works by injecting a tiny slurry of sediment wrapped around the seagrass seed into the seafloor. After covering a growing plot of four seeds, the robot ‘hops’ about 30 centimeters away and starts again.
Despite covering a minuscule portion of the seafloor, seagrass meadows are estimated to hold 35-times more carbon than terrestrial forests—amounting to around 18% of the total carbon stock of the world’s oceans.
ReefGen’s founder Tom Chi dreamed up the idea after watching the degradation of coral reefs on his home island in Hawaii. The first iteration of the robot set coral ‘plugs’ onto existing reefs to help regrow them, but the technology was prohibitively expensive for wide-scale use.
Now however, broader selections of off-the-shelf parts have driven down the costs of manufacturing and maintaining underwater robots, according to Chris Oakes, CEO of ReefGen.
“Manual planting works, but robots are really good when things are dull, dirty, dangerous, or distant—the four Ds,” Oakes told CNN, adding that at the moment, Grasshopper is piloted with a controller by a human on the surface.
“Right now, we’re focused on the planting, the biology, and the mechanical aspects, once we’re confident that that’s all designed the right way, we will overlay more semi-autonomous features like navigation, so you don’t actually have to pilot it,” he said.
STORIES LIKE THIS: Scientists Work to Turn the Tide of Oyster and Seagrass Decline in Chesapeake Bay, Often by Hand
ReefGen has been able to not only expand into restoration of seagrass meadows, but also see its robots used in oceans around the world. This July, Grasshopper planted 25,000 seeds in Wales. In October, ReefGen teamed up with the University of North Carolina (UNC) Institute of Marine Sciences to test various seed replanting methods out on the state’s declining seagrass meadows.
MORE GOOD IDEAS FROM ROBOTICS: Chinese Doctor Removes Patient’s Lung Tumor Using Robot from 3,000 Miles Away
Oakes says that as cool and “flashy” as a robotic solution might seem, the most important factor in its success will be the long-term monitoring of the fields it’s replanting. Are they growing to maturity, are the seedlings dying off before then, will they live long enough to seed and germinate fields of their own, how do fields it plants compare to fields planted by hand?
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Quote of the Day: “Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.” – Janice Maeditere
Photo by: Curated Lifestyle 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?
85 years ago today, beginning in the year of his election, Pope Pious XII gave a Christmas Eve radio broadcast with a passionate plea for peace on Earth, while denouncing the ideologies that had led to the outbreak of the Second World War. While mentioning none in particular, the targets of his statements were clear. He continued to use his position of high influence over faith and morals to renew calls for peace and reconciliation every Christmas Eve until the end of the war, not least among Italian Catholics in a country that was aligning itself with Germany. READ more… (1939)
Meet the little buggie that’s going to take the nation Down Under, up and over.
This is the ‘Roo-ver’, Australia’s first major contribution to robotic space exploration as the first Lunar rover ever launched by the prosperous country.
A consortium of 21 different private firms, universities, and small startups has been contracted by the Australian government to design, test, and build Roo-ver, while 8,000 submissions were received regarding the future robot’s name.
It pays homage to the country’s iconic animal as the country of settlers, criminals, and prospectors now lends its pickaxe to establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon.
The Australian Government has invested AUD$42 million into the mission and NASA has agreed to take the robot to the Moon.
Roo-ver’s primary mission objective will be to collect samples of the ashy mixture of dust and rock, known as regolith, that makes up the Lunar soil. The intention is to analyze the regolith for signs of water or oxygen, the necessities of life.
Through the Artemis Accords, and the parallel vision offered by the International Lunar Research Station project (ILRS), nearly all space-capable and space-faring nations have signaled their intention to create a semi-permanent human presence on the Moon, but that will require in-situ material harvesting of at least water if not air.
JAPAN GOT TO THE MOON: Spacefaring Japan May Become the 5th Country to Land on the Moon This Month
Warwick Penrose, a member of the ELO2 consortium that aims to build the Roo-ver, didn’t mince words about the intentions of Australians in this endeavor, nor of the realities of future objectives for the consortium and humanity at large.
“If we’re going to get to Mars and put humans on Mars, we need to build a Moon base,” he said. “We have to try and establish life on the Moon. The only way we’re going to get to Mars is build a rocket that gets from the Moon to Mars.”
Launching a rocket from Earth requires a substantial portion of the ship’s fuel to be used to exit the atmosphere, launching from the Moon would remove this requirement which affects weight, size, shape, and supply calculations.
INDIA GOT TO THE MOON: India Becomes Fourth Nation to Touch Down on the Moon In Mission to Study its South Pole
Roo-ver will hopefully be taking his big leap into the final frontier later this decade.
“This really deepens Australia’s ability to showcase what we lead the world in, and that is remote operations,” Australian Space Industry head Enrico Palermo told ABC News AU.
SHARE This Cute Little Joey With A Huge Mission…
Despite the width of the globe and the interminable delivery time of standard mail separating them, a pair of pen pals managed to write a foundation for love that has lasted 30 years.
Alena and Chad Benson first wrote to each other in 1986 with no idea it would blossom into a life-long love story.
Alena was 17 years old when she wrote a series of letters from her Singapore home to several people overseas—including Benson from Devon, in England. She was connected with this young man through the International Youth Service, once the world’s largest organization for pen pal communications, which sadly closed down in 2008.
Their letters continued through the 1980s and the two even started exchanging cassette tapes of each other chatting, with more than 100 tapes eventually being sent between them.
Speaking of the first letter, Alena said she sent “it for the fun of it, not thinking that I was going to get a reply.”
For seven years mail carriers brought Chad and Alena’s letters back and forth between Singapore and England, until Alena decided to take a big step.
“I was 23 and I was traveling around Asia so I said to my parents ‘I have been writing to this boy from England and I want to go and visit him.’ My parents didn’t stop me because they knew I loved traveling and I was quite adventurous.”
Chad says when he saw her for the first time in Heathrow Airport he thought “Wow is she my pen pal?”
During Alena’s 19 days in the UK, they realized that their connection was deeper than a mere friendship, and when Alena returned to Singapore they started calling each other almost every day.
But given WhatsApp hadn’t been invented yet, Chad’s phone bill went up to £350 a month and Alena’s reached £450.
“I paid the bill so my parents didn’t know how much it was—I didn’t tell them,” Alena admitted. “But for Chad, he had to tell his parents because the bill went to the parent’s name and his parents started panicking and they were like ‘how are we going to pay this bill Chad?'”
PEN PAL PIECES: Pen Pals Finally Get to Meet in Person–68 Years After They Began Writing Letters Back and Forth
Chad admitted to British news, that he paid the bill; somehow. Then it was Chad’s turn to visit Alena—in February 1994.
At this point their relationship took a major turn. He then decided to propose to her while on holiday despite the initial resistance from Alena’s parents.
“My parents were not accepting, I either had to get married, or forget everything and get back to Singapore. I made the choice to marry him anyway,” she said. “I came to a stage where I realized that we have so much history together and I couldn’t just let it go.
It was, as may perhaps be imagined, Alena’s mother who eventually realized the seriousness in her daughter’s heart and consented to the union.
SIMILAR STORIES OF LOVE: Two Hikers on the Camino Del Santiago Find Lasting Love After Facing Uncertain Futures
Alena then moved to the UK in 1995, and they tied the knot in Kingsbridge with a budget of $2,500. They raised a family of three kids, now all in their 20s.
“She is my best friend,” said Chad now 56. “We do everything together. She is an amazing woman.”
SHARE This Charming Story Of Love And Letters With Your Friends…
Fred Rogers, known to generations as the caring and gentle host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, has left an indelible mark on countless lives.
As a last minute holiday gift, consider a new posthumous book of quotes entitled This Beautiful Day, which contains 365 reflections drawn from his vast recorded legacy inviting readers to explore themes of kindness, community, and self-acceptance.
Whether navigating the ups and downs or seeking a moment of quiet motivation, every page is an invitation to generosity, compassion, and gratitude in Fred’s warm voice, reminding us of inherent daily delights.
Rogers saw the potential and possibility of media to help children explore the world around them, with special emphasis on their social-emotional learning. His impact is still felt today in the hearts and minds of young people and adults who continue to be nurtured and inspired by his timeless wisdom.
Among the selected quotes, you’ll find the following gems.
“I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger: I like you just the way you are.”
“Many adults feel that they are falling short in one, if not all, of the “assignments” of their lives. They often feel they are failures. Well, people are not failures when they’re doing the best they can… Our performance doesn’t have to be measured against anyone else’s—just against our own abilities to cope.”
“There’s the good guy and the bad guy in all of us, but knowing that doesn’t ever need to overwhelm us. Whatever we adults can do to help ourselves—and anybody else—discover that that’s true can really make a difference in this life.”
“The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.”
The moving introduction by LeVar Burton, an actor and lifelong advocate for literacy and learning, honors his old friend.
Burton’s role as the host of Reading Rainbow inspired generations of young readers. He writes “we met for the first time at a PBS function in Washington, DC, during the summer of 1983 or 1984, very early on in the production of Reading Rainbow.
“I remember being eager to meet the man behind what I was convinced was a television persona he’d created in Mr. Rogers. I was sure it was an act. It became immediately clear to me that Fred was not playing a character on TV; he was showing up as his authentic self in every episode.”
The book is part of the Day by Day series from Hachette Book Group, a collection of books designed to help infuse some meaning and intention into the simple habit of starting your day with a quote.
SHARE This Last-Minute Gift Idea With Your Friends Who Need A Bit Of Compassionate Wisdom…
A Christian radio station in Atlanta hatched a plan for a heartwarming reunion between a mother and her soldier son 2,000 miles away.
Jessica Rivera took advantage of the annual Christmas Wish program from the Georgia FM station, 104.7 The Fish Atlanta, to ask all the listeners to write holiday cards to her son who is stationed far away at Travis Air Force Base in California.
It was the first holiday she wouldn’t be near her 21-year-old, Logan—but the devoted mom hadn’t counted on a Christmas miracle.
Airman Logan Rivera has been on the West Coast since January, and Jessica was under the impression she’d be a guest on the live broadcast to thank listeners on-air for their Christmas card kindness. What she doesn’t know was that there was a much bigger surprise in store.
Behind the scenes, the radio station worked closely with the staff and officers at the Air Force Base, who generously granted Logan leave and assisted in coordinating his flight back home. Logan arrived in Atlanta early Thursday morning in uniform, just in time to reunite with his mother during the live broadcast with host Beth Bacall.
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could hand deliver them to your son?” asked Bacall, as her son was creeping up behind her.
“Oh my God,” she squealed, repeating it over and over during the long embrace.
Logan told the host he wanted to focus not on his service, but on his mother’s devotion, so the radio show’s partner, Chick-fil-A Atlanta, gifted her with a year’s worth of free meals at Chick-fil-A.
Host Bacall said the event was “a testament to the true spirit of Christmas: bringing people together.”
Watch the heartwarming moment that took place at the McDonough restaurant…
SPREAD THE LOVE By Sharing The Kindness On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “I love the excitement, the childlike spirit of innocence that goes along with Christmas.” – Hillary Scott
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?
Happy 81st Birthday to the comedian, writer, voice actor, musician, and producer Harry Shearer. At 7-years-old he was already working in show business, having won a role on the Jack Benny show in Los Angeles. By the end of his 6-year stretch as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live (1979-1985), he co-created the beloved satirical ‘rockumentary’ This Is Spinal Tap, a cult classic that he starred in and co-wrote. SEE MORE… (1943)
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– Happy Holidays from The GNN Team!
Just in time for the holidays, a new version of the so-called “Christmas tree cluster” shows a green-tinged image of young stars that resembles the grumpy Grinch character.
The Grinchy Christmas tree cluster, named NGC 2264, is a group of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old—1,000 times older.)
It’s about 2,500 light-years from Earth, and astro-photographer Michael Clow captured optical data (in the green and violet range) from his telescope in Arizona last month.
The new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, too (from the red, purple, blue, and white ranges).
The wispy green clouds in a conical shape have resembled an evergreen tree, thus the nickname of Christmas tree cluster. But with this latest view, people are loving the image because it conjures the Grinch quite readily.
It’s a festive example of pareidolia—seeing figures in the clouds or in faces staring back from the knotty pine walls of a cabin decorated for Christmas.
DON’T STEAL CHRISTMAS: Share The Grinchy Fun With Friends On Social Media…
ANOTHER SPACE ODDITY: Spiders From Mars? Phenomenon Evokes David Bowie Song in Photos Taken Near South Pole of Red Planet
A former addict who started a nonprofit to foster pets when their owners are seeking substance abuse treatment was named the 2024 CNN Hero of the Year.
Stephen Knight will receive over $100,000 to continue his life-changing work.
His Texas organization Dogs Matter covers pet care expenses for the foster family and provides post-release services to help human participants succeed with their sobriety.
Accepting the award, Knight said: “This means everything. I represent so much here: I represent the recovery community, the dog rescue community…This is going to be able to take us to the next level.”
In 2011, at the age of 51, Stephen had lost everything to meth addiction—his family, his job, his home, and nearly his life.
HIV positive, and living out of his car, Knight entered rehab at the behest of his mother—but it was a face-to-face meeting with a little dog that changed his life.
CNN described it this way: “After months of treatment, and at a delicate time in his recovery, a friend showed up at his door in tears. She had relapsed, and in her arms was her beloved dog, Jayde.
“Knight’s friend said no one would take Jayde, and she asked Knight for a ride to a shelter so she could surrender her.”
Knight told CNN, “I looked at Jayde, and we looked at each other.”
“It was one of the most spiritual moments, like ‘I think we might need each other here.’”
Knight realized that some addicts were delaying or forgoing treatment because they could not find suitable housing for their pets—and in 2015 Dogs Matter became a registered nonprofit.
As Knight approaches 14 years sober, his organization has helped more than 1,200 dogs and their owners.
“This means everything. I represent so much here. I represent the recovery community (and) the dog rescue community,” he said during his surprise win at the 2024 CNN awards gala in early December (see below). “This is going to be able to take us to the next level.”
The public can donate via GoFundMe to any of the 5 semi-finalist winners through January 5, 2025, thanks to a partnership with the Elevate Prize Foundation which will match every contribution dollar for dollar, up to $50,000 per hero. So far, over $120,000 has been raised (and the amount will double for the Heroes).
Watch Stephen’s story below—and find more information on the four other Heroes, at CNNHeroes.com.
SHARE THE HEARTWARMING STORY With Pet Lovers On Social Media…
By Brad Aronson, author of the book HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act At a Time
The official Santa Tracker that has been delighting families worldwide for seven decades got its unlikely start when a child accidentally called the telephone number of a top-secret Pentagon hotline responsible for alerting the military of any attack on North America.
In December 1955, one year after President Eisenhower established the hotline, the red phone rang at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). The country was in the middle of the Cold War, tensions were high, and the number was for emergency use only.
When Commanding Officer Colonel Harry Shoup answered, he heard a squeaky voice asking, “Is this Santa Claus?”
Shoup thought it was a prank and responded accordingly, until the boy started crying.
Realizing it wasn’t a joke, Shoup, a father of four, played Santa and then spoke to the mom, who told him the number was in a holiday ad for the Sears department store. The number printed in the advertisement was one digit off from what Sears intended to print.
Who knows if Shoup saw the humor at the time, but the ad said: “Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time, day or night…Kiddies be sure to dial the correct number.”
The kids kept calling and Shoup put two airmen on phone duty to answer the phone as Santa.
“It got to be a big joke at the command center,” Shoup’s daughter Terri Van Keuren said. “You know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls’.”
There was a giant board used to track airplanes and on Christmas Eve some of the staff added a sleigh with reindeer on it. When Shoup saw it, they apologized and offered to remove it, but he thought the sleigh was great.
“And next thing you know, Dad had called a radio station and said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’.
The radio stations started calling him every hour asking, ‘Where’s Santa now?’
That’s how NORAD’s Santa tracking tradition began, and it’s grown annually for 69 years. They started issuing a press release on Christmas Eve that appeared in media around the country announcing that they were tracking a red sleigh that was inbound from the North Pole. In the 1960s, NORAD mailed vinyl records to radio stations with prerecorded updates on Santa’s progress. In the 1970s, they broadcasted updates on TV.
XMAS TRADITIONS CONFIRMED:
• Face of Real St. Nicholas Reconstructed with 3D Tech Shows He Did Look Like Santa Claus
• The Original Secret Santa Started it All by Paying Back Kindness Shown While He was Homeless
Every year, more than 1,250 volunteers—both military and civilian—answered the flood of calls and emails to the Santa Tracker from around the world. Volunteering has become a family tradition, and, in some cases, three generations have been participating. Shoup’s daughter Terri is among them.
The Santa Tracking website is available in nine languages, and on Christmas Eve (December 24), you can telephone NORAD for updates directly at +1 (877) HI-NORAD.
Truly in the 21st century now, they even have a free app and families can use Amazon’s Alexa service to ask for updates.
Colonel Shoup, who died in 2009, served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War; he received a Soldier’s Medal for saving the life of another airman.
He also kept letters that kids had sent to him about Santa inside his locked briefcase—and his daughter believes it may have been the thing he was proudest of.
SPREAD THE WHIMSY In Time For Christmas Eve By Sharing This On Social Media…
For more positivity check out Brad Aronson’s book HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act At a Time.
Tens of millions of people worldwide affected by infertility due to fallopian tube obstruction may soon benefit from a tiny robotic screw capable of clearing the pathway.
Researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) developed the innovative solution using a magnetically driven robotic microscrew to treat fallopian tube blockages.
“This new technology offers a potentially less invasive alternative to the traditional surgical methods currently used to clear tubal obstructions—which often involve the use of conventional catheters and guidewires,” said author Haifeng Xu in the study published in AIP Advances.
The microrobot is made from nonmagnetic photosensitive resin, coated with a thin iron layer to give it magnetic properties. By applying an external magnetic field, the robot rotates, generating translational motion that enables it to navigate through a glass channel made to simulate a fallopian tube.
The robot successfully clears the cell cluster obstruction placed in the channel, mimicking a typical blockage in the female reproductive system. This magnetic control provides precise navigation through the delicate and narrow structures of the fallopian tube.
The design of the microrobot is another key innovation for the team working in SIAT’s Magnetic Soft Microrobots Lab. It has a screw-shaped body with a helical structure, a cylindrical central tube, and a disk-shaped tail.
The helix-shaped structure is crucial for propulsion, while the disk-shaped tail helps stabilize the robot’s motion. As the screw rotates, it generates a vortex field that helps push fragmented debris toward the tail, clearing the blockage more effectively.
In tests, the microrobot demonstrated both effectiveness and efficiency in clearing the simulated blockage, with the vortex created by the rotating screw propelling debris away from the obstruction.
Looking to the future, the research team plans to make the microrobot smaller and more advanced. They also aim to test the robot in isolated organ models and incorporate in vivo imaging systems to track the microrobot’s movement and position in real time.
The team also envisions expanding the robot’s applications in surgery, including automatic control systems that could enhance the efficiency of blockage removal and other medical procedures.
AMAZING BODY: First Remarkable Mapping of Limb Development Shows Stages of Creating the Human Hand Masterpiece
“The ultimate goal is to provide a more effective, minimally invasive solution for patients suffering from infertility,” said Xu.
SHARE THE AMAZING INNOVATION On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.” – Audre Lorde
Photo by: hillary peralta (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?
