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At 93, Dr Charles Eugster cuts a dapper figure in his navy suit and matching silk handkerchief and tie. But he looks just as good in the Lycra gym suit he has on underneath, ready to spring into action like a nonagenarian superhero. This former dentist took up bodybuilding just six years ago, aged 87, yet looks very at home surrounded by the whirring fitness machines. His reasons for picking up weights in his 80s are simple. "The idea is to turn the heads of the sexy young 70-year-old girls on the beach," he says. He now works out three to four times a week, often for two hours at a time, with his regime varying depending on his goals. Sometimes this involves a "heavy session of muscle building or rowing on the lake". And his vigorous training has clearly paid off. At a recent championship he achieved 57 dips, 61 chin-ups, 50 push-ups and 48 abdominal crunches, each in 45 seconds. Dr Eugster is no stranger to competitions. Since starting his bodybuilding training he has won several world titles for fitness and picked up many rowing medals. For 30 years while working long hours as a dentist he didn't manage to exercise regularly and began to realise his body wasn't what he wished it to be. "I'm extremely vain and I noticed I was getting fat," he said. "In my opinion anybody can do it. But obviously it is like trading in your old car for a new one. Ageing has become something for me, an enormous pleasure, a delight, a joy."
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Left on their own, some deforested areas can rebound surprisingly fast with minimal help from humans, sequestering loads of atmospheric carbon as they grow. New research from an international team of scientists, recently published in the journal Nature, finds that 830,000 square miles of deforested land in humid tropical regions–an area larger than Mexico–could regrow naturally if left on its own. Five countries–Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, and Mexico–account for 52 percent of the estimated potential regrowth. That would boost biodiversity, improve water quality and availability, and suck up 23.4 gigatons of carbon over the next three decades. "A rainforest can spring up in one to three years," said Matthew Fagan, a conservation scientist and ... coauthor of the paper. "In five years, you can have a completely closed canopy that's 20 feet high. I have walked in rainforests 80 feet high that are 10 to 15 years old. It just blows your mind." That sort of regrowth isn't a given, though. First of all, humans would have to stop using the land for intensive agriculture–think big yields thanks to fertilizers and other chemicals–or raising hoards of cattle, the sheer weight of which compacts the soil and makes it hard for new plants to take root. A global goal known as the Bonn Challenge aims to restore 1.3 million square miles of degraded and deforested land by 2030. More than 70 governments and organizations from 60 countries ... have signed on.
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In Sudan ... civilians have endured 16 months of a violent civil war. Last week, talks to end the war began in Switzerland, but only one of the two warring factions showed up. By the weekend, however, each side had taken a critical step. The armed group attending the talks agreed to enable the delivery of emergency aid to parts of the East African country where hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation. About the same time, and seemingly independently, the other faction opened a vital border crossing for the same purpose. The mutual acknowledgment of the need to protect innocent life may have opened a door to solving one of the world's gravest crises. "These constructive decisions by both parties will enable the entry of aid needed to stop the famine, address food insecurity and respond to immense humanitarian needs," international mediators in Geneva said in a joint statement. Recent trends in conflict resolution, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, have shown that protecting innocent civilians from harm "can have an impact on the success of peace negotiations and agreements, as well as on the chances for post-conflict reconciliation." Humanitarian gestures, the ICRC observed, helped the Colombian government build trust with guerrilla factions and strengthen compliance with a 2016 peace accord. More recently, two armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a mutual pledge in March to respect and protect civilians caught in the vast African country's fragmented wars.
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"I can do things by myself more instead of having my dad or my mom do them," says Deven Doutis. Deven's teacher, Amy Wolfe, sensed students were entering higher grades with more needs than in past years. Some couldn't open a water bottle, for instance, or navigate minor conflicts with their peers. So when Ms. Wolfe heard about a program called Let Grow, she decided to pilot it within select classrooms. The program's premise is simple: When children gain independence, they grow into more confident and capable people. In a commentary piece published by The Journal of Pediatrics last year, researchers pointed to evidence showing a correlation between children's dwindling independence and increasing mental health problems over several decades. "We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people's mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause," the authors wrote. In Ms. Wolfe's classroom each month, students chose an independent activity, loosely tied to a theme, and completed it by themselves. Then they reported back to their classmates and teacher about the experience. There were no grades or critiques. If Ms. Wolfe asked any probing questions, it was to suss out how her students felt after, say, baking a cake or pulling weeds. Her hope is that their newfound confidence carries into the academic realm.
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When Garner entered the gates at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, he didn't know what to expect. The maximum security facility has been dubbed "America's Bloodiest Prison" and its brutal conditions have made headlines for decades. It wasn't until five years later that Garner would get his chance to show everyone he wasn't the hardened criminal they thought he was. When the prison warden, Burl Cain, decided to start the nation's first prison hospice program, Garner volunteered. In helping dying inmates, Garner believed he could claw back some meaning to the life he had nearly squandered. For the next 25 years, he cared for his fellow inmates, prisoners in need of help and compassion at the end of their lives. The Angola program started by Cain, with the help of Garner and others, has since become a model. Today at least 75 of the more than 1,200 state and federal penal institutions nationwide have implemented formal hospice programs. The volunteers [in Angola] were issued hospice T-shirts that allowed them free movement through the prison. The primary rule of the hospice program was that no one would die alone. When death was imminent, the hospice volunteers conducted a vigil round-the-clock. The program used medications ... for the palliative care of patients, though the inmate volunteers were not allowed to administer them. The hospice volunteers ... functioned as confidants, giving dying inmates a last chance to get something off their chest.
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Microplastics – solid plastic particles up to five millimeters in size that are not biodegradable – are pretty much everywhere. They have been detected in over 1,500 different marine animal species. They also find their way into our bodies via the water cycle and the food chain. In fact, the average person consumes up to five grams of microplastics per week. The European Union has now banned intentionally added microplastics. This applies to plastic glitter or polyethylene particles used as abrasives in scrubs, shower gel and toothpaste (these have been banned in the US since the 2015 Microbead-Free Waters Act). Under the terms of the ban, some products, such as plastic glitter found in creams or eye shadow, have been granted a transitional period to give manufacturers a chance to develop new designs. LUSH and The Body Shop are among the companies that have long been offering natural alternatives, using ground nuts, bamboo, sea salt and sugar. Beiersdorf AG ... has not used microbeads for exfoliation purposes since 2015. Instead, it has used, for example, cellulose particles or shredded apricot kernels. Since the end of 2019, all Beiersdorf wash-off products have been free of microplastics. Before the EU ban, Germany stopped providing public funding for artificial turf pitches with granules containing a high proportion of microplastic. As a result, the country already has hundreds of pitches that are filled with cork and sand instead of microplastics.
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For millennia, humans have used dried natural sponges to clean up, to paint and as vessels to consume fluids like water or honey. Whether synthetic or natural, sponges are great at ensnaring tiny particles in their many pores. And, as scientists around the world are beginning to show, sponges' cavity-filled forms mean they could provide a solution to one of our era's biggest scourges: microplastic pollution. In August, researchers in China published a study describing their development of a synthetic sponge that makes short work of microscopic plastic debris. In tests, the researchers show that when a specially prepared plastic-filled solution is pushed through one of their sponges, the sponge can remove both microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics from the liquid. Optimal conditions allowed the researchers to remove as much as 90 percent of the microplastics. The plastic-gobbling sponges are made mostly from starch and gelatin. Looking a bit like large white marshmallows, the biodegradable sponges are so light that balancing one atop a flower leaves the plant's petals upright and unyielding, which the researchers suggest ought to make them cheap and easy to transport. The sponges, if ever produced at an industrial scale ... could be used in wastewater treatment plants to filter microplastics out of the water or in food production facilities to decontaminate water. It would also be possible to use microplastic-trapping sponges like this in washing machines.
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When Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz opened their San Francisco restaurant The Perennial in 2016, they had big ambitions: They wanted it to be the first carbon-neutral restaurant in the world, and they succeeded. From the recycled floor tiles and reclaimed lumber to the aquaponic herb garden and compostable paper menus, the culinary duo designed every part of the diner with the climate in mind. "We shifted the menus, reduced food waste, switched to renewable energy, started composting and bought carbon offsets," Myint says. They were motivated by the knowledge that agriculture and food systems contribute nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The Perennial's menu championed sourdough loaves baked with perennial Kernza grains, and the chefs bought their steaks from regenerative ranches associated with the Marin Carbon Project, the country's foremost center for regenerative farming. The more Myint learned about regenerative agriculture, the more he became convinced that this was the global solution he needed to champion. "It became clear to me that this is the future of food, similar to the way renewable energy is the future of energy," he says. "The whole food system needs to gradually transition." Zero Foodprint is asking restaurant customers and other participating businesses to give one percent of their sales to a pool that funds regenerative agriculture. More than 80 businesses have signed up.
Note: We've summarized a handful of stories about the power of regenerative agriculture practices to reverse and heal global ecological destruction. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
Gardening and community gardens can be ways for immigrant and refugee communities to supplement their pantries by growing their own food, especially culturally appropriate food that is not readily found in grocery stores. It also helps people send literal roots down into a new place while maintaining a connection with their homeland. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) has created a new heritage garden on its roof with donated seeds, cuttings, and plants from local Arab American community members around Dearborn, Michigan. These include plants with a connection to the Arab world, but also plants from Michigan that have become meaningful to the Arab American community here. Accompanying the plants in the garden are oral histories of those community members about what gardening means to them, collected by the museum's community historian. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Phimmasone Kym Owens ... said, â€Why don't I create a garden for refugees?'" In 2021, Owens reached out to Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County. They formed a partnership to create an innovative refugee-to-refugee community garden program ... and to work with refugees and grow culturally appropriate vegetables. "What sold this as being different is giving autonomy to the clients," Owens said. "So we had a vote. They voted [for] Freedom Garden. And that's a name that says it all. The fact that they chose Freedom Garden says exactly what you know, being a refugee, what you want."
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When a Manhattan parking garage collapsed in April this year, rescuers were reluctant to stay in the damaged building, fearing further danger. So they used a combination of flying drones and a doglike walking robot to inspect the damage, look for survivors and make sure the site was safe for human rescuers to return. Soon, rescuers may be able to call on a much more sophisticated robotic search-and-rescue response. Researchers are developing teams of flying, walking and rolling robots that can cooperate to explore areas that no one robot could navigate on its own. And they are giving robots the ability to communicate with one another and make many of their own decisions independent of their human controller. Such teams of robots could be useful in other challenging environments like caves or mines where it can be difficult for rescuers to find and reach survivors. In cities, collapsed buildings and underground sites such as subways or utility tunnels often have hazardous areas where human rescuers can't be sure of the dangers. As robots become better, teams of them may one day be able to go into a hazardous disaster site, locate survivors and report back to their human operators with a minimum of supervision. "More work ... needs to be done," [roboticist Viktor] Orekhov says. "But at the same time, we've seen the ability of the teams advanced so rapidly that even now, with their current capabilities, they're able to make a significant difference in real-life environments."
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Stuck indoors during the peak of COVID lockdown, science journalist Rachel Nuwer found herself at a professional crossroads. She had already published a nonfiction book on the dark world of wildlife trafficking and was looking for her next subject. A moment of clarity came at a surprising time. She and her partner, at home with nothing much to do, ingested MDMA. MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, is illegal. It is listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the U.S. federal government (the same group as marijuana and psilocybin, or magic mushrooms). A growing body of academic research has suggested potential benefits of MDMA beyond the recreational ecstasy some partygoers are familiar with. One study found that MDMA-enhanced therapy dramatically reduced PTSD symptoms. Another showed that psychedelics like MDMA could reopen so-called critical periods of time when brains are especially impressionable and open to learning. A scientific case study profiled a former white supremacist who reformed his extremist views after taking MDMA. Nuwer experienced similar clarity while on the drug. Her new book, "I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World," is the result of her epiphany. She explores the history and potential of the so-called love drug.
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A Paraguayan father of two with no arms or legs found the strength and determination to raise both his girls, despite his limitations, when their mother abandoned them. Pablo Acuña was born with a limb deformity, causing his arms and legs to not grow properly. Yet he's a happy, grateful man who lives in the city of Son Pedro del Parana, Paraguay. At 63 years old, he's a proud father of two daughters in their twenties, whom he has raised since they were babies with the help of his mother, Ignacia del Valle. Although Pablo has suffered from his condition since his birth, he said it has never affected him. Apart from not being able to attend high school and having his parents take care of him, he had a pretty normal childhood. His youngest daughter, Elida, 26, sings his praises for providing a "very nice" childhood despite him not having arms and legs. "I was raised by my dad and grandmother," Elida said. "My dad is incredible. He is a very wonderful person, he is always seen with a smile; never have I seen him depressed." Since Pablo cannot walk, he has used a wooden wheelbarrow as a sitting and sleeping platform for decades. He is known locally as "El Hombre Carretilla," or "The Wheelbarrow Man." According to Elida, Pablo's greatest wish is to own his home. Elida [said] that her family, who "lives for rent," is desperately saving to this end. Since her grandmother turned 93, Elida has returned to the family home ... to help take care of her father.
Note: After reading this article, one man spearheaded a campaign which enabled this amazing dad to buy his own home. Explore more stories like this in our inspiring disabled persons articles archive.
Food costs, especially in times of inflation, can be exorbitant. Likewise, getting to a brick-and-mortar grocery store may well be logistically impossible due to health and/or mobility concerns. It's also true having limited access to food may be detrimental not merely because a person lacks basic sustenance, but also because certain medications work only when taken with food. Without it, those drugs may cease to work as effectively, if at all. Founded in 2016 in Copenhagen by five entrepreneurs, the team at Too Good To Go is trying to curb food insecurity around the globe by fighting food waste. On its website, Too Good To Go (TGTG) reports 2.8 billion tons of food is wasted every year. The app, available on iOS and Android, features a number of partner businesses–bakeries, supermarkets, and restaurants–nearest a user's location that are giving away so-called "Surprise Bags" of unsold food. Rather than perfectly good food wasting away in a waste basket somewhere, TGTG users can stop by said businesses and pick up the food for themselves. The app's UI is similar to those of on-demand food delivery services like ... DoorDash, UberEats, and Postmates. Users are able to see which places are available, what they may get, and then sign up to pick up the items at a designated time. To date, TGTG boasts 4.2 million users and 9,790 businesses on its platform. Earlier this month, the company ... announced they are carbon neutral and have saved 100 million bags in the last seven years.
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When someone is pregnant and they're incarcerated, separation after they give birth is almost immediate. At a women's prison outside Columbia, S.C., a project is underway to help reconnect a few mothers with their children through the creation of lullabies. Ashley [is] incarcerated at the Graham Camille Griffin Correctional Institution, and she's taking part in the prison's pilot songwriting program, working with graduate students from the University of South Carolina School of Music. Together, the grad students and the mothers chart out lyrics, workshop the melodies and collaborate on the layers of musicality needed to get the lullabies just right for a vocalist with the university. Ashley has five children, including her most recent. She says the hardest part of this is being away from them as she counts down the days till her parole or release. And she says the good graces of the students is not lost on those serving out their sentences. "It's - yeah, they could be volunteering anywhere else, like an elementary or something," [said Ashley]. "But they took their time to come to a prison. And even though we are here for crimes and we are sitting here being punished and everything, we're still human, and we still have families that care about us. And everybody makes mistakes, and we're here paying for our mistakes. So any mother out there that has kids, and they're your world, let them know it."
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The recent launch of a new mobile phone service introduced significant new privacy protections into the mobile phone system. This exciting new approach highlights the failure of the existing mobile phone infrastructure to protect privacy, and points the way forward for a wide variety of technologies. Today's cellphones are generally a privacy disaster. Partly that's the result of the two companies that control the operating system software on the vast majority of the world's pocket computers. In order for your carrier to route calls and data to your phone, the network needs to constantly know which cell tower your phone is near. And when you make a call or use data, the provider can see where that traffic is going. Cell carriers track and store this accidental byproduct of the technology in order to record people's location history and network activity for marketing purposes and, in certain circumstances, for sharing with law enforcement. The new phone service, called Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP), uses encryption techniques to deliberately blind itself so that it can't know that the user of a mobile device is you, or what data you are sending from that phone. You connect to the PGPP service for payment, and that's all. With PGPP's approach, the carrier simply does not have the data to turn over to anyone. It cannot be sold, leaked, or hacked, let alone offered to overreaching law enforcement agencies. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and their smaller competitors could be offering such a privacy-protecting service, but don't want to.
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Joost Bakker believes a house can be more than a place to live: it can be a self-sustaining weapon against the climate crisis. A new Australian documentary explores his bold blueprint. Bakker – a multi-disciplinary designer, no-waste advocate and the film's eponymous protagonist – has long been something of a provocateur. In 2020, the Dutch-born, Australian-raised designer's two decades of high-concept sustainability projects came to a head when he hit go on the construction of Future Food System. Erected in one of the busiest areas of Melbourne, the off-grid, three-storey house and urban farm produced all of its own power and food. Even the cooking gas was generated from human and food waste. "We can have it all," Bakker [says]. "We can have houses covered with biology, plants, ecosystems and waterfalls. It's not necessary for us to be destroying the planet or killing each other with materials that are making us sick. The infrastructure is already there. It's just about reimagining our suburbs and reimagining our buildings." Shadowing Bakker throughout the project from set-up to pack-down, was film-maker Nick Batzias ... who squeezes plenty of action into the pacy 90-minute documentary. The bulk of the film focuses on the building's green-thinking initiatives. Steam from the showers is used to grow mushrooms; the foundation-less building is anchored by self-watering garden beds filled with 35 tonnes of soil.
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[Pamela] McGhee and her neighbors are participating in a pilot program to build zero-waste systems for Detroit. It's something they say the city sorely needs. For decades, Detroit was home to one of the country's largest waste incinerators. East Side residents formed Breathe Free Detroit, one of several groups behind a successful campaign to shut down the incinerator; the plant closed in 2019. Now, that same group is working with the city to develop a composting system. Many ... see a direct line between composting and recycling and improving their community health. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste is the most common material found in landfills and sent to incinerators in the U.S., comprising 24% of landfill materials and 22% of combusted municipal solid waste. But Detroit organizers didn't have much experience with communitywide composting, so when they began developing a program, they turned to an unlikely mentor more than 8,000 miles away: the Mother Earth Foundation in the Philippines. Over the past 20 years, the organization has earned a reputation for training low-income communities, government agencies, civic organizations, and businesses in zero-waste practices. The two groups organized monthly calls, in which Mother Earth Foundation organizers offered advice based on their experiences setting up community composting systems. Members of Mother Earth Foundation and community organizers in Detroit plan to visit each other's cities early next year.
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A study published in Nature in February 2020 entitled "Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires" discovered an interesting way to harvest energy from the environment, creating the potential for another clean power generating system that is self-sustaining. According to the authors, "Thin-film devices made from nanometre-scale protein wires harvested from the microbe Geobacter sulfurreducens can generate continuous electric power in the ambient environment. The devices produce a sustained voltage of around 0.5 volts across a 7-micrometre-thick film, with a current density of around 17 microamperes per square centimetre. We find the driving force behind this energy generation to be a self-maintained moisture gradient that forms within the film when the film is exposed to the humidity that is naturally present in air." The study also mentions that "connecting several devices linearly scales up the voltage and current to power electronics" and that their results "demonstrate the feasibility of a continuous energy-harvesting strategy that is less restricted by location or environmental conditions than other sustainable approaches." One of the electrical engineers, Jun Yao, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, stated that they are "literally making electricity out of thin air." They are calling it the "Air-gen" and it generates clean energy 24/7, thanks to the electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by Geobacter.
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Suicides across the active duty U.S. military decreased over the past 18 months, driven by sharp drops in the Air Force and Marine Corps last year and a similar decline among Army soldiers during the first six months of this year, according to a new Pentagon report. The numbers show a dramatic reversal of what has been a fairly steady increase in recent years. The shift follows increased attention by senior military leaders and an array of new programs aimed at addressing what has been a persistent problem in all the services. The numbers provide a glimmer of hope that some of the recent changes – which range from required counseling visits to stress relief education and recreational outings – may be working. According to the data, the number of suicides in the Air Force and Marine Corp dropped by more than 30 percent in 2021 compared with 2020, and the Navy saw a 10 percent decline. The Army saw a similar 30 percent decrease during the first six months of this year, compared with the same time period last year. The National Guard and the Reserves both saw a small dip in suicides, from 121 in 2020 to 119 in 2021. And there were also fewer Guard deaths in the first half of 2022, compared with last year. The Guard has worked over the last year to reduce suicides through outreach and other changes, including policies to destigmatize getting mental health help and a program that provides firearms locks for service members who keep weapons at home.
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Those debating the future of Twitter and other social-media platforms have largely fallen into two opposing camps. One supports individuals' absolute freedom of speech; the other holds that speech must be modulated through content moderation, and by tweaking the ways in which information spreads. Both sides are peddling an equally dismal vision. My purpose here is to point out a logical third option. In this approach, a platform would require users to form groups through free association, and then to post only through those groups. This simple, powerful notion could help us escape the dilemma of supporting online speech. Platforms like Facebook and Reddit have similar structures–groups and subreddits–but those are for people who share notifications and invitations to view and post in certain places. The groups I'm talking about, sometimes called "mediators of individual data" or "data trusts," are different: Members would share both good and bad consequences with one another, just like a group shares the benefits and responsibilities of a loan in microlending. This mechanism has emerged naturally ... on the software-development platform GitHub. Whatever its size, each group will be self-governing. Some will have a process in place for reviewing items before they are posted. Others will let members post as they see fit. It will be a repeat of the old story of people building societal institutions and dealing with unavoidable trade-offs, but people will be doing this on their own terms.
Note: This was written by Jaron Lanier, who is widely considered to be the "Father of Virtual Reality." Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
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