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Good News Roundup 1-26-23: Past, Present, Future [1]
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Date: 2023-01-26
Drumroll, please — only nothing so simple as just a drumroll.
x YouTube Video
Who doesn’t love a good tale about dinosaurs?
Paleontologists in India Have Hit on an Epic Find: Hundreds of Bowling Ball-Sized Titanosaur Eggs Located at the Lameta Formation, a sedimentary geological bed, the nests, or clutches, were spaced closely, with each housing about one to 20 eggs or eggshells. The intact eggs ranged in sizes from circular to sub-circular, and in diameter from six inches to 6.7 inches, according to new research from scientists at the University of Delhi. ... The group’s research has indeed found that titanosaurs nested in ways close to today’s birds, laying their eggs and placing their nests in close proximity as a colony. But considering the sheer size of titanosaurs—the largest known dinosaurs, they could measure up to 100 feet in length—these intimate clutches would have precluded mindful parenting. Newborns, it seems, were left to fend for themselves. “Closely spaced nests would not have allowed them to visit the nests to maneuver and incubate the eggs or feed the hatchlings,” paleontologist and the study’s co-writer Guntupalli Prasad told CNN, “as the parents would step on the eggs and trample them.” ... Some of the latest dinosaur clutches were found in a shallow pit and others amid vegetation. Their eggs and eggshells were preserved in sandy limestone and calcereous sandstone, well enough that scientists were able to pick up protein fragments. To shed further light on the early life of titanosaurs, Dhiman said the team plans to scan the surviving eggs with 3D-computed tomology “to see whether any of them preserve embryonic skeletons.”
x Matthew has cerebral palsy.
Ever since he was young, he dreamed of going to Harvard.
This is the exact moment he found out he got in.pic.twitter.com/vFQX1CP9LR — Goodable (@Goodable) January 19, 2023
[Text:
@Goodable
Matthew has cerebral palsy.
Ever since he was young, he'd dreamed of going to Harvard
This is the exact moment he found out he got in.]
Proof positive that we can repair what we’ve broken.
Once Biologically Dead, the River Mersey in England is “Best Environmental Story in Europe” Splitting The Beatles’ home city of Liverpool in two, a recent survey found 37 different species of fish, more than two-and-a-half-times as many as were found in the previous survey 20 years ago. Five different species of sharks were also found, along with huge eels and sea scorpions. ‘Holiday species’ as one local fishermen called them, like turbot, smelt, and cod, have also been caught. ... “Over the last 30 years, there’s been this tremendous regeneration, this renewal of the River Mersey that started slowly but is now picking up pace. I still think we’re right at the beginning of something special,” said Mike Duddy at the Mersey Rivers Trust, who spoke to the Wirral Globe about the restoration. ... Humpback whales were recently seen in Liverpool Bay for the first time since 1938, while the Mersey itself has also welcomed back otters, salmon, octopus, porpoises, and seals. The Trust is currently compiling a species list, and is holding a competition with local fishermen to see how many can be recorded. Duddy expects to raise the count of 37 fish species to 50 next year.
One of the most amazing and hopeful things that come out of this progressively more interconnected and global community we live in is the fantastic stuff that results from the intersections of human cultures — a furthering of cooperative and interactive understanding of who we are as individuals, different communities and as part of a unified whole.
Take one of the cornerstones of any group of people — food:
x Did you know that one of the world’s most popular foods didn’t even exist 50 years ago?
This is the story of Chicken Tikka masala.
How it was made, where it came from, and why it's an example of multiculturalism at its best.
A Delicious Thread. pic.twitter.com/yMnGzzI4ZG — Goodable (@Goodable) January 23, 2023
[Text:
@Goodable
Did you know that one of the world's most popular foods didn't even exist 50 years ago?
This is the story of Chicken Tikka masala.
How it was made, where it came from, and why it's an example of multiculturalism at its best.
A Delicious Thread.]
And one I highly suggest clicking through to read.
We pay so much attention to the new kid on the block that we sometimes forget that the things we’ve had for ages still contribute awesome things. Like...a black hole murdering a star. (Seriously — the photos are awesome, and the framing is just :chef’s kiss:)
Hubble Captures Rare Event: Star Eaten By a Black Hole 300 Million Light Years Away Now, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star’s final moments in detail, as it gets gobbled up by a black hole. Although the black hole encounters are violent, they’re known as “tidal disruption events”—and astronomers are using Hubble to find out the details of what happens when a wayward star plunges into the gravitational abyss. The ‘AT2022dsb tidal event’ can’t be photographed up-close with Hubble because the munched-up star is nearly 300 million light-years away. But astronomers used Hubble’s ultraviolet sensitivity to study the light from the shredded star—which include hydrogen, carbon, and more, all forensic clues to the black hole homicide. ... This AT2022dsb stellar snacking event was first caught on March 1, 2022 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN or “Assassin”), a network of ground-based telescopes that surveys the extragalactic sky roughly once a week for violent, variable, and transient events that are shaping our universe. This energetic collision was close enough to Earth and bright enough for the Hubble astronomers to do ultraviolet spectroscopy over a longer than normal period of time. “Typically, these events are hard to observe. You get maybe a few observations at the beginning of the disruption when it’s really bright. Our program is different in that it is designed to look at a few tidal events over a year to see what happens,” said Peter Maksym of the CfA. “We saw this early enough that we could observe it at these very intense black hole accretion stages. We saw the accretion rate drop as it turned to a trickle over time.”
Yet another sign that recovery is possible with effort and patience — we owe it to the planet, and we owe it to ourselves.
x Great News Alert:
For the first time in 45 years, there were zero rhinos poached in India last year.
Single horned rhinos were once on the brink of extinction in India, but thanks to conservation efforts, India now has a population of roughly 2,900 rhinos.
🦏 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/AYKMLvO8Xs — Goodable (@Goodable) January 23, 2023
[Text:
@Goodable
Great News Alert:
For the first time in 45 years, there were no rhinos poached in India last year.
Single horned rhinos were once on the brink of extinction in India, but thanks to conservation efforts, India now has a population of roughly 2,900 rhinos.]
I have personally never dug too much into these — there’s just been too much unknown about them for me to sink my intellectual teeth into — but finding more of them to learn from, and protecting them!, is always a plus.
Over 100 New Nazca Lines Discovered in Peru Designed by Ancient People In a major archaeological discovery, a team of Peruvian and Japanese researchers have discovered 168 new geoglyphs in the ancient Nazca Plain in Peru, near to the enormous glyphs that remain as mysterious as they are famous. Found during 2 years of aerial surveys, their discovery led to the creation of a new archaeological park to protect them. ... The originals measure hundreds of yards, but the new discoveries are smaller. Jorge Olano, head archaeologist for the Nazca Lines research program, said the new geoglyphs averaged between two and six meters (6.56 to 19.7 feet) in length. They were made by removing the black stone of the plain to uncover its white soil below, and line series of ancient trails. ... Believed to have been carved between 100 BCE and 200 CE, they depict humans, camelids such as llamas, alpacas and guanacos, birds, orcas, felines, and snakes, and at times can look almost childish.
The kids will be all right:
x Good News Alert:
Northern Ireland's first children's ambulance launched today.
It will be used to transport children on their way to surgery and special medical treatments, and make their journey easier. pic.twitter.com/SIluFyt0nK — Goodable (@Goodable) January 26, 2023
[Text:
@Goodable
Good News Alert:
Northern Ireland’s first children’s ambulance launched today.
It will be used to transport children on their way to surgery and special medical treatments, and make their journey easier.
[Photos of bright yellow ambulance with a waving teddy bear and reading Children’s Ambulance on left, inside of ambulance with murals of the solar system on the right]]
I have posted before of farms set up to harness solar power in tandem with growing crops — and the advantages of combining the two — before. It’s become more clear than ever that we’re not just in a race to find solutions to climate change, but discovering better solutions, and ones that allow us to maximize outputs while reducing inputs. And doing so profitably. Full speed ahead!
Researchers Harness Sunlight to Produce Both Power and Food—Using Light to Improve Each Harvest At the UC Davis Agricultural Experiment Station, Abou Najm and his team planted three different plots of processing tomatoes, a common central valley California crop, under a canopy of selective red light, another of selective blue, and a third uncovered plot. ... While the filtered light crops resulted in one-third less yield from the reduced sunlight, they produced half as many heat stressed, or “bad” tomatoes as the uncovered plot. When the electricity and water savings are added in, the resulting picture becomes very profitable. GNN has reported before on the recent phenomenon of “agrivoltaics,” a practice of growing shade tolerant crops under solar panel arrays. The shade protects the crops from heat stress, while the plants’ transpiration humidifies the air beneath the panels, cooling them down and increasing their electricity output. ... Another benefit of these panels is that like plants’ leaves, they absorb light from the sun indirectly, unlike the large metal panels typical of arrays and rooftops that need direct sunlight to function.
One of the things that I am so glad to see is the normalization of talking about, and addressing, mental health. While the reasons behind needing to are probably not in the good column, the fact that it is now at least somewhat mainstream to even be talking about it is a huge step forward.
x In California, a teacher set up this mental health check-in chart for her students.
Students can write their names on the back of the post-it notes, and no one sees it except for their teacher.
More like this, please. pic.twitter.com/I91LkGq8vp — Goodable (@Goodable) January 25, 2023
[Text:
@Goodable
In California, a teacher set up this mental health check-in chart for her students. Students can write their names on the back of the post-it notes, and no one sees it except for their teacher. More like this, please. [Picture of Mental Health Check-In poster with the following categories:
I’m Great
I’m Okay
I’m Meh
I’m Struggling
I’m having a hard time & wouldn’t mind a check in
I’m in a really dark place
Directions reading “Grab a post-it. Write your name on the back and place it next to the (covered) that matches your feelings.”]
For all the problems that AIs have saddled humanity with, on multiple levels, they have also presented us with possible solutions to just as many. I could probably do an entire column just on the issues that this one, in particular, could be used to address:
New AI-Powered Farming Robot Trundles About Inspecting 50 Acres of Crops per Day for Pests and Disease Trundling through fields a little like a tumbleweed, the SentiV scouting robot is currently just a prototype, but its designers hope that the high unit cost can be offset with savings on pesticides and fertilizer, as the SentiV can determine exactly which plants need what. ... That’s why a 33-pound robot that moves about on spokes rather than wheels or treads which crush plants could be ideal for farmers looking to reduce labor costs and hours. Placing the GPS coordinates of the field’s boundaries, the SentiV then uses these boundaries as a guide to map the whole field—up to 50 acres in a day, scanning both the underside and topside of plants with a pair of cameras. ... Smart algorithms then look for threats, monitor the plants’ growth, and identify signs that the plant might need more or less water or nutrients. The wheel height is easily adjustable to make sure it passes over a farmer’s crops without damaging them.
I have been binging SciShow videos on YouTube recently. The story about the agricultural AI reminded me of this particular short from Bizarre Beasts — one of SciShow’s sister channels — and the AI-driven underwater robot helping to solve multiple issues concerning the Great Barrier Reef:
x YouTube Video
That’s a wrap for me today, fellow gnusies! If you are in need of more de-stressors, and like science, I highly recommend SciShow and its sister channels including Bizarre Beasts, and the podcast Tangents. Because they have been running for some time, there are plenty to choose from, which I know can be a problem when trying new things to relax to — the fear of running out of new stuff! There is plenty of stuff, I promise. It’s science, after all.
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