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Good News Roundup: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 [1]

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Date: 2023-02-08

To start us off, some music:

x YouTube Video

Many of you know that I’m all for more options, all the options! for a speedier transition to renewable energy. There isn’t, and won’t be, a one-size-fits-all solution. This one I can see working well for Australia and African coastal areas, as well as in the Middle East (along with the usual suspects).

In some ways, it’s really cool to be watching the spaghetti-at-wall period of technological development.

Researchers Can Now Make Clean Hydrogen Fuel By Pulling it Directly From Seawater—No Filtering Required An international chemical engineering team, led by the University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao and Associate Professor Yao Zheng, were motivated by the fact that the only thing emitted by hydrogen fuel is water. “We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 percent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyzer,” said Professor Qiao. “We used seawater as a feedstock without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desolation, purification, or alkalization,” said Associate Professor Zheng. The team reports that the performance of their seawater with catalysts of cobalt oxide and chromium oxide is close to the performance of expensive platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionized water.

More energy news:



x In Sweden, they're testing wireless parking pads that can charge electric vehicles.



These pads can charge a vehicle in 30 minutes, giving it enough power to travel 100km.



Innovation.



🇸🇪 📶pic.twitter.com/KcyOtwGlEs — Goodable (@Goodable) February 5, 2023

[Text:

@Goodable

In Sweden, they’re testing wireless parking pads that can charge electric vehicles.

These pads can charge a vehicle in 30 minutes, giving it enough power to travel 100 km.

Innovation.]

All opinions and arguments about Thoreau aside (and avoided), investing in local agriculture is a Good Thing ™. It gets filed in the “I got 99 problems and 1 solution” drawer.

New Bank in The Spirit of Walden Will Lend and Invest Only in Local New England Agriculture Encapsulating the spirit of Thoreau, Walden Mutual Bank, newly approved by the FDIC, is reviving the mutual savings bank in order to direct a community’s savings towards supporting local food operations that are trying to grow US agriculture in the right direction. The key difference between Walden and other banks is that normal banks take their clients’ deposits and invest them in projects—some of which might not be aligned with the customer’s morals or principles, such as industrial agriculture, lab-grown meat, or fossil fuel extraction. Walden depositors can rest easy knowing that their money is used only to provide loans for local agriculture operations—like Monadnock Berries, a pick-you-own fruit orchard in Troy, New Hampshire, started by immigrants from the UK in 1995. Other than that, Walden Mutual offers regular banking services such as credit, debit, and savings accounts called the “Grow Local” accounts. The interest rate is competitive and every account receives a summer dividend based on deposit amounts to spend at any number of partner farms, orchards, pastures, or dairies. “We’ve been very pleasantly affirmed by peoples’ response to our message and mission,” Walden Mutual CEO Charley Cummings, told Forbes in an interview.

Given the current socio-political climate, this made me tear up more than a little:

x Want to restore your faith in humanity?



Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Georgia, Britain, Lebanon, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Italy, France, and Croatia have already sent rapid rescue teams to Turkey to help with the rescue efforts.



They didn't hesitate. pic.twitter.com/vEpgq5CTT6 — Goodable (@Goodable) February 6, 2023

[Text:

@Goodable

Want to restore your faith in humanity?

Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Georgia, Britain, Lebanon, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Italy, France, and Croatia have already sent rapid rescue teams to Turkey to help with the rescue efforts.

They didn’t hesitate.]

(The repeat of Switzerland in that list was verbatim. It might have been meant to be the Netherlands — see below.)

It’s amazing how cancer has seemingly suddenly been treatable almost as if it’s a communicable disease rather than a mutational one. (More choices! Better treatment options! Prevention capabilities! Yay!)

Revolutionary Structure for Cancer-Killing Vaccines Could Make Treatments 3x More Effective “It is remarkable, when altering the placement of antigens in two vaccines that are nearly identical from a compositional standpoint, the treatment benefit against tumors is dramatically changed,” said Institute Director Dr. Chad Mirkin [at Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology]. “If your immune cells are soldiers, a traditional vaccine leaves some unarmed; our vaccine arms them all with a powerful weapon with which to kill cancer. “Where and how we position the antigens and adjuvant within a single architecture markedly changes how the immune system recognizes and processes it.” ... The same “rational vaccinology” could be applied in treatments for other diseases, as well. The team invented SNAs, spherical nucleic acids, which allow scientists to pinpoint exactly how many antigens and adjuvants are being delivered to cells. Positioning SNAs in different locations changed the immune system’s ability to remember the invader, and affected whether or not it remembered it long term.

This might have been what one of the iterations of Switzerland in the above tweet was intended to refer to:

x This is the lineup of cars in the Netherlands who are waiting to drop off relief supplies heading to Turkey.#Humanity 🌍 🇹🇷

pic.twitter.com/kyLA8Gc0tw — Goodable (@Goodable) February 6, 2023

[Text:

@Goodable

This is the lineup of cars in the Netherlands who are waiting to drop off relief supplies heading to Turkey.

[Video filmed from car travelling opposite direction of seemingly endless line of cars, vans, and other vehicles 29 seconds long and continuous at end of video]]

Research may have turned up a medically holy grail:

Plant Toxins Fatal to Sugarcane Hailed as the ‘New Weapon’ Antibiotic in Fight Against Bacteria Called albicidin, it belongs to a pathogen that causes a disease in sugarcane called leaf scald, but also seems to attack bacteria in a completely different way than common antibiotics like fluoroquinolones. ... “We could not elicit any resistance towards albicidin in the laboratory,” said Dmitry Ghilarov, one of the researchers in a British-German-Polish group that studied the potential antibiotic at the John Innes Center in Norwich, UK. “That is why we are really excited—because we think it will be very hard for bacteria to evolve resistance against albicidin-derived antibiotics.” … “We believe this is one of the most exciting new antibiotic candidates in many years. It has extremely high effectiveness in small concentrations and is highly potent against pathogenic bacteria—even those resistant to the widely used antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones.” ... Furthermore, the researchers write in their study that inhibitors of DNA gyrase represent an untapped reservoir of potential antibiotic compounds, and building a broad understanding of one will help expand the field outward, potentially turning over new leaves in the development of a whole new class of pharmaceuticals.

That is all of my good news for the time being, so I will sign off with one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the world — according to me — as played by one of my favorite YouTube artists:

x YouTube Video

Have a wonderful rest of the month of February, and I will see you again in the Good News comments section, and next month, bringing you more environmentally friendly and humanitarian and just darn feel-good news from around the world, in March.

Okay I lied:

I was reading the Shade from last night (thanks hpg!) and had to steal this from the comments section because I couldn't not:

x 🇹🇷🇺🇦⚡️A search and rescue group from Ukraine, which consists of approximately 90 people, has already left for Turkey to help in the elimination of the consequences of the earthquake.



More news here 👉 https://t.co/S95ZiWHXi6 pic.twitter.com/YHzlSe61bl — The New Voice of Ukraine (@NewVoiceUkraine) February 7, 2023

aaand that’s all, folks!

[END]
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