(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Good News Roundup for Valentine's Day 2023 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-14 Study: 100K green jobs created since U.S. adopted climate law This item could have gone into the “Good News for the Environment” section, but I put it here because the creation of 100K green jobs is great political news, too. From NNY360: Between last August, when President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill became law, and the end of January, companies have announced more than 100,000 clean energy jobs in the U.S., according to an analysis released Monday by the nonprofit advocacy group Climate Power. The group monitored press clippings and company announcements to estimate private-sector jobs across a range of sectors that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - including electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, wind and solar energy and home energy efficiency. The group says its figure is likely a lowball estimate because it relied on public reports. And Future Crunch provides further info from Bloomberg (which is behind a paywall): Over 90 new clean energy projects in 31 states have been announced since the law was signed, representing a total of nearly $90 billion in new investment. NC Democratic Party...shakes up party leadership Removing entrenched, moribund Dem party leadership that’s failing to win elections is a step that more states need to take. Florida Dems, are you paying attention?? This encouraging story was also covered in a diary on Sunday by CarolinaForward. From WRAL News (Raleigh/Durham): North Carolina Democrats sent a message to the state party’s establishment: the party needs better leaders. Members of the North Carolina Democratic Party on Saturday ousted their sitting chair, first vice chair, and second vice chair, voting instead to elect new candidates to the top four leadership positions The overhaul comes three months after the party failed to win a single statewide race in the midterm elections. And two months after Meredith Cuomo, who had served as the party’s executive director since 2019, announced her resignation. The party’s executive committee elected campaign organizer Anderson Clayton, 25, to replace incumbent chair Bobbie Richardson, who sought a second term after being elected in 2021. The victory for Clayton, who chairs the Person County Democratic Party, is considered a major upset. Richardson, 73, campaigned for reelection with the support of the party’s top elected officials, including Gov. Roy Cooper, Attorney General Josh Stein and U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, among others. Nonetheless, Richardson became the first sitting party chair in at least a decade to lose a reelection bid. * * * * * 🍿 Repellent Republicans Rushing toward Ruin 🍿 Nothing from me today about the increasingly boring orange boor. He’s a much too easy target. Let’s look at some of the other clowns in the center ring. McConnell slams Scott over plan to sunset Medicare, Social Security This has been covered extensively on DKos, but repetition is good, especially if we’re repeating schadenfreudelicious items like this. From The Washington Post: In recent days, President Biden has been hammering Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for his plan that would require Congress to reauthorize even popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare every five years to keep them operating. On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined in the criticism, suggesting that provisions in Scott’s plan could hurt him in his bid for reelection next year in Florida, a state with the greatest share of seniors in the nation. “That’s not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan,” McConnell told longtime Kentucky radio host Terry Meiners when asked about the provision calling for the sunsetting of Social Security and Medicare every five years. “The Republican plan, as I pointed out last fall, if we were to [become] the majority, there were no plans to raise taxes on half the American people or to sunset Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell said. “So it’s clearly the Rick Scott plan. It is not the Republican plan. And that’s the view of the speaker of the House as well.” Meanwhile, Ron Johnson is galloping ahead anyway: US Sen. Ron Johnson stands by Medicare, Social Security remarks after being called out by President Joe Biden From Wisconsin Public Radio: A day after he was called out by President Joe Biden, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson reiterated his support for taking annual votes on funding Medicare and Social Security, calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" in the process. The back-and-forth followed Biden's State of the Union Address Tuesday night when he attacked Republicans for endangering the programs, prompting many GOP lawmakers to heckle the president. It also reinforced Johnson's status as a political lightning rod in Wisconsin, a state where he was narrowly reelected to the U.S. Senate just three months ago, and where if he seeks another term, it would be six years before he's on the ballot again. The exchange between Biden and Republicans this week was reminiscent of one that took place last August during the final months of Johnson's 2022 Senate campaign. Under federal law, Medicare and Social Security are known as "mandatory spending," meaning their funding is automatically renewed each year. Johnson called for changing that, arguing their funding should be voted on each year by Congress along with the rest of the budget. Oooh, looky here! 👀 Another MAGA Rep whose claims about their background don’t add up. MAGA Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna Claimed Jewish Heritage. Her Family Says That’s Not True. From The New Republic: Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna may have fabricated her Jewish heritage, according to a new report by The Washington Post. The freshman MAGA Republican seems to inhabit a space usually reserved for serial fabulist George Santos. In addition to potentially lying about her religious background, Luna appears to have embellished other parts of her personal history. Luna is Mexican on her mother’s side and Mexican and German on her father’s side. She has repeatedly said while campaigning and in an interview with Jewish Insider that she has Ashkenazi roots and her father was a Messianic Jew, or a Jewish person who believes Jesus was the Messiah. But several family members told the Post that not only did Luna’s father have no ties to Judaism, but his father served in the Nazi army in Germany as a young man. ✂️ Luna’s claim that she was “raised as a Messianic Jew by her father” directly contradicts another refrain of hers: that her mother raised her alone with “no family to rely on.” Other family members have also said that Luna was always with them and supported by an extended family network growing up. Luna served in the Air Force from 2009 to 2014, during which time the people who knew her described her as apolitical or even liberal. She expressed support for Barack Obama and said her heritage was Middle Eastern, Jewish, or Eastern European. In 2015, she registered to vote in Florida and checked her race as “White, not of Hispanic origin.” That same year, she filed a petition in Washington state to change her last name to Luna, her mother’s family name, from Mayerhofer. She joined the conservative group Turning Point USA in 2018, working for less than a year as their Hispanic engagement director. When she launched her campaign for Congress, she had fully embraced her Hispanic heritage, even changing the pronunciation of her first name to “Ah-na” from “Ann-a,” which surprised some of her friends and family members. And as Shower Cap pointed out on Friday, the Rs can’t even figure out to raise money from their grassroots supporters: We learned Republican fundraising platform WinRed lost millions of dollars, and I confess I’m staggered, contemplating the raw nitwittery necessary to fuck up a business model where people hand you money expecting literally nothing in return. How in God’s name do you break your brain hard enough to lose money taking donations? It’s something bowls can do. * * * * * The media misbehaving Two recent DKos diaries highlight some egregious burying of good economic news. Here’s our own Goodie on Saturday Feb. 4: Wall Street economists expected the US economy to add 185,000 jobs in January...and instead it added 517,000. Oh, and the unemployment rate fell to a 53-year low. Shocking. Astonishing. Remarkable. We're running out of adjectives to describe how stunning this jobs report was. ✂️ Friday’s jaw-dropping jobs report should force a bunch of economists and pundits into the corner to think about what they’ve done. “The economy is further away from recession than ever,” wrote Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds. “This is one of the days where economists don’t pick up the phone because they simply do not know what to say.” And Greg Dworkin on the APR weighed in on the same day: How do you report good news? Why, adding the “good, but ...” part every time. “Interest rates at the fastest pace in decades are not yet having the desired impact.” The desired impact is for you to lose your job, I guess. Until then, there’s clearly more to do. And then there’s The Balloon. The unbearable lightness of the Balloon coverage Jon Allsop is clearly enjoying himself here. From The Columbia Journalism Review: * * * * * Good news from my corner of the world Happy 164th birthday to the state of Oregon! It was founded on Valentine’s Day in 1859. I think we need to steal Virginia’s tourism motto — “ Oregon is for lovers!” Here’s some good local news to celebrate our birthday, with the bonus goodness of also celebrating Black Oregonians during Black History Month. A Portland high school student has Oregon governor’s ear on environmental justice From The Oregonian: Portlander Danny Cage attends his first meeting as Environmental Justice Council commissioner in November 2022 in Salem, Ore. Cage, a senior in high school, was appointed to represent young Oregonians on the recently revamped council. [Danny] Cage, now a senior at Grant [High Schppl], became the state’s youngest environmental justice commissioner – and a fresh voice on a group that advises the governor and the state’s natural resource agencies how to identify and help communities around the state that experience disproportionate environmental harms from such things as wildfires, diesel pollution and nitrate-laced drinking water. “I was sitting in a room with people who have been the directors of an agency or of a nonprofit, who have their master’s or doctorate degrees, when I’m an 18-year-old high school student who has none of that professional experience,” said Cage. “But I also knew that my voice matters, just as much, if not more, because of my personal experience.” Ben Duncan, a senior member of the Environmental Justice Council, describes Cage as dynamic, engaged and committed to supporting young people. ✂️ ...he watched his own Black community and others suffer the disproportionate impacts of extreme heat and air pollution. Cage remembers riding the bus across Portland during the heat wave in 2021 through neighborhoods without many trees – where many of his friends live – and neighborhoods in the leafier, more well-off areas. He didn’t need researchers to confirm his findings that the neighborhoods on the outskirts with poorer residents and fewer trees were hotter. He felt the difference on his own skin, he said. Black Athletes in the Wine Industry Team Up in Support of The Roots Fund From the Chosen Family Wines website: In honor of Black History Month, Black Athletes in the wine space have joined together to support diversity and inclusion in the wine industry. Channing Frye and Chosen Family Wines invited fellow Black athletes to come together in support of The Roots Fund, a nonprofit that provides resources – including financial support, educational scholarships, wine education, mentorship, and job placement – to BIPOC scholars interested in the wine industry. In addition to Channing Frye and Chosen Family Wines Partner Kevin Love, the current roster of Black Athletes pledging their support to The Roots Fund include: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Klay Thompson, CJ McCollum, Isiah Thomas, Josh Hart and Charles Woodson. Chosen Family Wines, Wade Cellars, McCollum Heritage 91, and Charles Woodson’s Intercept Wines will all be donating 10% of online wine sales in February to The Roots Fund. Participating athletes are making a variety of additional contributions: from generous cash donations, to signed bottles of wine, to memorabilia to be auctioned off at the second annual The Roots Fund Charity Auction Gala on Sunday, March 5th at Tribeca Rooftop in NYC. ✂️ “For us at Chosen, wine is not just about putting juice in a bottle.” Says Channing Frye, “It’s about bringing a group of people together – and that includes anyone and everyone. That’s why for Black History Month, I’ve asked my fellow athlete brothers and sisters who have all been working on inclusivity in the wine space to come together as a team to amplify our voices and impact as we support an amazing nonprofit making impactful changes every day: The Roots Fund.”✂️ The Roots Fund is a non-profit organization focused on securing the pathway for the BIPOC community in wine. Built to create financial support for education, mentorship, and job placement opportunities, The Roots Fund is out “doing the work,” to create inclusivity for communities of color in the wine industry. Since its foundation in 2020, they have raised over $1 million and created 155 scholarships that will bring years of change and equity into the wine industry. For more information and to learn how you can help, visit www.therootsfund.org. Travel Oregon: 6 must-visit Black history spots in Oregon Travel Oregon is the state’s tourism department. It’s good to see them celebrating Black History Month. To read more about the sites mentioned, click on the link to open the article. From Travel Oregon: When the state of Oregon was founded in 1859, it was illegal for a Black person to even be in the state. Even after most of those exclusionary laws were repealed, racist terminology in the Oregon constitution remained until 2002. Even today, the population of Black folks in Oregon is only around 3%. But even with all of the barriers in place, Black history throughout the state runs deep. On a recent Black-history bus tour — a special event organized by the Oregon Black Pioneers — my eyes were opened to the complex and powerful stories stemming from Oregon’s Black residents… You can experience some of the highlights of that tour and must-visit Black-history spots — plus support nearby Black-owned businesses — all over Oregon. Here are some of those sites. Heritage and Black Explorers in Astoria A Mountain Named for a Blacksmith in Jacksonville Memorials for a Lynching Victim and Miners in Coos Bay Black Rodeo Stars and Loggers in Eastern Oregon Walking Tour Through Eugene’s First Black Neighborhood Black Musicians in Portland * * * * * Musical break For those of you lucky enough to be spending today with the love of your life, here’s my vote for one of the most beautiful love songs ever written. Thank you, Sir Paul. x YouTube Video * * * * * Good news from around the nation Sending Help Instead of the Police in Albuquerque Rresponding to mental health crises with trained crisis responders instead of armed police is a great example of compassion in action. And it works. From The New Yorker: Albuquerque Community Safety has fifty-four full-time crisis responders, who now field most of the calls related to mental-health and homelessness that previously would have gone to police officers or other first responders. The department was created in 2020, during the national reckoning over police violence sparked by the killing of George Floyd, and began operating a year later. Between a quarter and a half of people killed by police in the U.S. are in the midst of a mental-health crisis. Removing cops from such situations has special significance in Albuquerque, where a pattern of excessive force by police officers, particularly in dealing with people with mental illness, has persisted for decades. The Albuquerque Police Department has been in a consent decree with the Department of Justice since 2014, longer than nearly any other law-enforcement agency. ✂️ The department ranks its incoming calls. Suicidal ideations are high; an unsheltered-individual call, lower. But most of the calls that are sent to A.C.S. would be considered less urgent for police. Cops might take several hours to respond, or not at all. A.C.S. responders might be there in minutes. They now take nearly fifteen hundred 911 calls a month, about three per cent of the million-plus that Albuquerque receives a year. To date, A.C.S. has responded to more than twenty thousand calls. Less than one per cent have required eventual police involvement. Similar efforts exist in many cities, including CAHOOTS, in Eugene, Oregon, a three-decade-old program that pioneered alternative first response, and STAR, in Denver, one of many pilot programs which have cropped up since 2020. A.C.S. is the first to be an independent city-funded department reporting directly to the mayor, resulting in funding, staffing, and a caseload capacity far greater than those of other programs. Alex Vitale, the coördinator of Brooklyn College’s Policing and Social Justice Project, told me that A.C.S., which also runs violence-prevention, street-outreach, and community-assistance programs, shows how alternative approaches can address “just the huge range of things that we were told that only armed police could deal with.” He added, “That is just not true.” Unique Nonprofit to Provide ‘Basic Income’ to California Homeless in 12-Month Study Funded by Google Since every other “study” of the results of giving people basic income has concluded that it works, I have no doubt this study will add to that evidence. I think it’s time we moved from doing studies to making policy. From Good News Network: A privately-funded program to provide basic income to 100 California homeless people aims to study how the cash—plus one-on-one social support—can be potentially life-changing. ‘Miracle Money: California’ is being funded primarily by a $1.15Mil donation from Google.org and is being evaluated through a randomized control trial led by researchers at the University of Southern California. The pilot, organized by Miracle Messages, will distribute $750 each month for 12 months to 100 individuals experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, San Francisco, and Oakland. In addition, each participant will be matched 1:1 with a caring trained volunteer phone buddy for weekly calls and texts—and scores of volunteers are already participating from around the world. ✂️ The precursor, Miracle Money, first launched amid the pandemic in December 2020 as one of the first basic income pilots in the US to include social support. In its proof of concept study from the Bay Area, 66% of unhoused recipients (6 of 9) were able to secure stable housing as a result of $500 a month for 6 months. Recipients overwhelmingly used their funds toward food, housing, transportation, savings, storage, child care, medications, debt reduction, unexpected family emergencies, and other essentials. ✂️ “20 years ago the idea of providing ‘housing first’ to people experiencing homelessness and mental illness was not widely accepted; today ‘housing first’ is national policy based on rigorous research including a randomized control trial that demonstrated the model worked,” explains USC Professor Ben Henwood, PhD, MSW. Black Americans Re-Embrace the Outdoors After Generations of Exclusion Also see the link to “Black and Unapologetic in Nature” in Hot Lynx below. From Yes! Magazine: The consistency with which [lynching and shooting of Black people] occurred in natural spaces, especially in the South, maintains lasting effects on how African Americans engage with the outdoors. Systematic barriers, such as socioeconomic status, access to transportation, and Jim Crow laws, further compounded to exclude African Americans from natural spaces. NPS ranger Rebekah Smith “At some point, we got kind of pushed out of these spaces,” says National Park Service ranger Rebekah Smith, age 31, who is Black and grew up enjoying the outdoors in Georgia. She now works as a ranger at the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Smith is driven to uncover untold stories to reinvigorate Black Americans’ love for the outdoors. It’s part of a larger effort for current generations to reclaim their rightful place and sense of belonging in natural spaces. “It’s time for us to go back and reconnect,” Smith says. ✂️ In August of 2022, Smith led a program titled “Black People Don’t Do That.” In it, she explained the ways racism shaped so many of our outdoor spaces. The talk was part of an event hosted by Outdoor Afro, an organization that “celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature.” Rewriting the Story of Race in Appalachia It’s great news every time Black Americans are given a platform to tell their stories, especially in parts of the nation where those stories are largely unknown. From Yes! Magazine: Enkeshi El-Amin, left, and Angela Dennis, right, host the Black in Appalachia podcast out of East Tennessee PBS Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin, a researcher, lecturer, and cultural worker at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and William Isom, director of the Black in Appalachia project at East Tennessee PBS, were searching for the project to collaborate on that would help share their passion and research on the Black Appalachian experience. So, in 2019, when PRX—the Public Radio Exchange—began accepting applications for podcast pitches, Isom and podcast producer Chris Smith approached El-Amin about pitching a Black in Appalachia podcast. “Hell, yeah, I’ll be interested in doing it,” El-Amin told 100 Days in Appalachia during an Instagram Live discussion about the project. The pitch was the first in the PRX challenge, which typically serves public radio creators, to come from a PBS station. The pitch was selected, giving the team access to training and funding that led to the July 2020 launch. ✂️ The Black in Appalachia podcast, which El-Amin co-hosts with journalist and literary activist Angela Dennis, narrates the Black experience in Appalachia and the long history of Black communities in the region—narratives that they say are often overlooked or ignored in mainstream (read White-run) media. * * * * * Good news from around the world The EU commits to its own “green deal” From Optimist Daily: The European Union will invest more than $270 billion in its own “green deal” in order to keep up with the United States and China. Many observers interpreted the move as a direct response to the Biden administration’s hefty round of green subsidies, which were included in the Inflation Reduction Act. The announcement was made last week by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who dubbed the bundle of initiatives The Green Deal Industrial Plan. ✂️ According to the European Commission, the Green Deal Industrial Plan will focus on simplifying regulation to help get proposed green projects up and running faster, accelerating access to investment and funding, developing programs to train skilled workers in specific industries, and strengthening trade agreements to secure raw earth materials needed for the net-zero transition. The initiative is also meant to assist the EU in meeting its 2050 carbon neutrality objective. This includes a progress check in which member countries would collectively lower greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030. France a step closer to adding abortion rights to constitution May this amendment pass, and may it cause a worldwide movement to do the same! From RFI: The French Senate has voted to include the right to abortion in the constitution, allowing the process to continue, though the path to a constitutional amendment is long. After much debate, the Senate voted on Wednesday in favour of including the right to abortion in the constitution. With 166 votes for and 152 against, the chamber approved a bill introduced by lawmakers in the National Assembly from the hard-left France Unbowed, with support from the presidential majority. ✂️ The Senate's text is an amendment to Article 34, which guarantees fundamental public rights. The formulation uses the term “freedom for a woman to end her pregnancy”. The National Assembly’s text is an amendment to Article 66, which guarantees individual freedoms, and would guarantee the “right to voluntarily end a pregnancy”. ✂️ The text is now being sent back to the National Assembly for approval. Both houses must agree on the text, before it is put to a referendum to eventually become part of the constitution. If it eventually passes, France would become the first country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right. ‘I see this as atonement’ Journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda publishes at least ten anti-war articles on the publication’s website. This is an inspiring antidote to the media cowardice on constant display in the U.S. See also the DKos diary on this by Charles Jay. From Meduza: On the evening of February 11, at least ten articles discussing the invasion of Ukraine, the treatment in prison of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, and other actions by Russian authorities, briefly appeared on the website of pro-Kremlin publication Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP). Headlines of the now deleted articles included: “Crimea is Ukraine. Russia must return the peninsula.” “Russia has become a victim of occupation by the Putin regime” “The Russian Federation committed crimes in Bucha, Izyum, and Hostomel” “Peace does not come because of Putin: Zelensky signed an order banning talks with Putin personally” “Torturing Navalny: how Russian prisons treat political prisoners” At least some of the articles opened with the words: “This material is not approved by the editors of Komsomolskaya Pravda, it is aimed at exposing the lies of the Kremlin regime, headed by the bloody dictator Putin and his gang of cynical thieves among the authorities, who have committed genocide against the peaceful nation of Ukraine.” ✂️ All the articles were posted by KP news editor Vladimir Romanenko. Vladimir Romanenko Prodolzheniye Sleduyet, an independent online news outlet associated Novaya Gazeta, published an explanation by Romanenko, in which he says that he is 24 years old and is against the war, but that he had to take the job at KP in September 2022, because he needed money. Romanenko said that he posted the articles as a protest to mark the anniversary of the start of the war, and that he copied the materials into the Internet Archive himself so that they could be found after they were deleted from the KP website. Why Wall Street Should Like Latin America’s Left This is a Latin American corollary to the truism that Dem administrations in the U.S. create better economic conditions than the Rs do. Analysis by Eduardo Porter in Bloomberg, published in the Washington Post: Here we go again. In many quarters, the surge of the left across Latin America seems to be inspiring tired, kneejerk reactions… Investors in financial markets ... are freaking out over Gabriel Boric’s agenda in Chile. They fret about Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plans for Brazil. They are wringing their hands over the “ business-averse” economic policies of Gustavo Petro in Colombia. ✂️ But as they clutch their pearls, muttering darkly about Latin Americans’ Bolshevik affinities, the movers and shakers of global capital markets must acknowledge an uncomfortable fact: Many of the leftist governments of recent vintage across the region have been decent stewards of their economies, certainly no worse than their ideological foes on the right. In fact, the Latin American left does a better job than the right delivering on one of Wall Street’s favorite metrics: stock market returns. ✂️ ...the masters of global finance would do well to consider how the causes of the left — battling poverty and inequality, investing in public education and social services like housing for the poor — ultimately improve societies in a way that can enhance their stability, productive capacity and purchasing power, the kind of things that power economies and drive stock prices up. * * * * * Good news in medicine MIT Develops AI that Predicts Lung Cancer Risk up to 6 Years in Advance, Like Finding a ‘Needle in a Haystack’ This is what AI does best. Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have developed a new AI deep learning model that can predict lung cancer risk up to six years in advance through a single low-dose CT scan. Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the world—resulting in more deaths than the next three cancers combined. It is also extremely difficult for humans to find the disease early by looking at scans. Current lung cancer prediction models require a combination of demographic information, clinical risk factors, and radiologic annotations, whereas the model called ‘Sybil’ is designed to use a single low dose chest scan to predict the risk of lung cancers occurring 1-6 years after a screening. ✂️ ...working with a diverse set of scans from two hospitals and the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, the study showed Sybil was able to forecast both short-term and long-term lung cancer risk, earning C-indices scores ranging from 0.75 to 0.80. Values over 0.8 indicate a strong model. When predicting cancer risk one year in advance, the model was even more successful: they obtained between 0.86 to 0.94 on a ROC-AUC probability curve (considered excellent for AUC values with 1.00 being the highest possible score). Simple tweak to cancer treatment reduces relapse risk by 28% It’s always very good news when a simple tweak can save lives. From Freethink: By splitting colon cancer patients’ chemotherapy into two parts — one delivered before surgery and one after it — European researchers reduced their risk of recurrence by 28% compared to patients who received all of their chemo after surgery. ✂️ If the cancer is caught and treated before it has a chance to spread, the five-year survival rate for patients is 90%. However, beating the disease once often isn’t enough — 30-40% of people treated for colon cancer experience a recurrence. The trial: Past studies with other types of cancer have suggested that delivering chemo before surgery can lead to better outcomes, so Cancer Research UK funded the FOxTROT trial to see if the approach could help prevent recurrence in colon cancer patients. More than 1,000 patients with colon cancer that hadn’t spread beyond nearby tissues and lymph nodes enrolled in the trial. Nearly 700 received 6 weeks of chemotherapy before surgery and 18 weeks of it after. The rest received the full 24 weeks of chemo after surgery. The results: The FOxTROT team followed up with participants for 2 years after treatment and discovered that the risk of recurrence during that time was 28% lower for the patients who’d had their surgery flanked by chemo. Vortex ultrasound tool breaks down blood clots in the brain This is just amazing. From Physics World: Ultrasound tornado: Researchers have developed a new tool that uses vortex ultrasound to break down blood clots in the brain. Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is a clot in the veins that drain blood away from the brain, and is one of the most common causes of stroke in young people. Early diagnosis and anticoagulant therapy can minimize the damage and mortality associated with CVST, but current treatments fail in some 20–40% of cases. To improve clinical outcomes, a research team headed up at North Carolina State University and Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a novel vortex ultrasound tool designed to break down blood clots in the brain. The device, which the team describe in Research, eliminated clots faster than existing techniques, and could restore blood flow through a completely blocked in vitro model of CVST in just 8 min. In a technique known as sonothrombolysis, ultrasound is used to cavitate microbubbles surrounding a clot, causing it to break down. Compared with conventional anticoagulant or thrombolytic drugs that dissolve the blood clot, sonothrombolysis has potential to remarkably reduce the required treatment time. Previous strategies, however, have not been clinically effective when treating large, completely occluded veins or arteries. What’s different about this new approach is that instead of using conventional planar ultrasound, the team has developed a novel vortex transducer that creates a helical wavefront, in which the ultrasound swirls tornado-style as it moves forward. This vortex ultrasound induces a shear stress parallel to the clot’s front surface, which mechanically disrupts the clot fibrin networks layer by layer to dissolve the clot more efficiently. The shear stress also loosens the clot structure, improving the delivery of microbubbles and any thrombolytic agents. * * * * * Good news in science Toroidal propellers: A noise-killing game changer in air and water Quieter and more efficient = win/win. From New Atlas: MIT's super-quiet, 3D-printed toroidal propellers fitted to a commercial drone for testing One key issue with multicopter props is their annoying noise, which is often described as "whiny," because much of it sits right in the same frequency range as a baby's cries. Humans tend to be most sensitive to sounds between around 100 Hz and 5 kHz. This makes evolutionary sense; it's where we hear vowel sounds that are key to verbal communication. But it's a key issue if multicopters are going to fulfill their potential and fill our skies with fast, cheap, clean aerial delivery services. Residents and lawmakers don't want to add more annoying noises to urban life. A team working on a silent, ion-propelled plane at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory found itself wondering whether prop noise in multirotors could be mitigated with differently-shaped propellers. ✂️ "We came up with this initial concept of using a toroidal shape, this annular wing shape, to hopefully make a quieter propeller," [Dr. Thomas] Sebastian continues. "I had an intern of mine, who was just absolutely phenomenal, run with the idea. He took the concept and created a bunch of iterations using 3D printers." Within a few attempts, the team indeed found a design that reduced not only overall noise levels at a given thrust level, but particularly noise in the 1-5 kHz range. Indeed, they sound more like a rushing breeze than a propeller, making a much less intrusive sound. ✂️ The team analyzed these weird-looking toroidal props to see whether there would be a thrust efficiency penalty. Apparently not: the team's best-performing B160 design was not only quieter at a given thrust level than the best standard propeller they tested, it also produced more thrust at a given power level – pretty remarkable given that standard props have more than a century of development behind them and these toroids are at a very early stage, with plenty of optimization yet to come. Oldest Stone Tools Ever Found Were Not Made by Human Hands, Study Suggests I love how much evidence is piling up that we humans aren’t as unique as we think we are. From Science Alert: Archaeologists have revealed what could be the oldest stone tools ever found, and they think someone other than our closest Homo ancestors may have made them. Unearthed in 2016 at Nyayanga, Kenya, on the banks of Lake Victoria, the ancient implements fit with the design of the Oldowan toolkit, the name given to the earliest kinds of stone tools made by human-like hands. According to dating estimates, the newly discovered tools were made between 2.6 and 3 million years ago, before being buried for eons in silt and sand. In total, 330 artifacts were found among 1,776 fossilized animal bones that showed signs of butchery. Before this, the oldest known Oldowan tools dated to 2.6 million years ago. While the age of the newfound tools may be further refined, their creation coincides with a time when ancestors of Homo sapiens roamed alongside other early humans, signaling a huge technological milestone for their creators – whomever they might have been. ✂️ Along with the bones and tools, the team, led by anthropologist Thomas Plummer at City University of New York, found two teeth – an upper and lower left molar, one fractured in half, the other nearly complete – which the researchers identified as Paranthropus, a distant cousin of humans. Carbon isotope analysis of the molar tooth enamel suggested the early humans from which they came ate a lot of plant foods, as well as devouring meat scavenged from animal carcasses. One of the teeth was found in close association with the Oldowan artifacts, leading the researchers to suggest that perhaps these hominins made or were at least using the stone tools, not our more direct ancestors from the Homogenus. * * * * * Good news for the environment Europe: “Any fears of a coal rebound are now dead” This sure sounds like the final nail being hammered into coal’s coffin. From Energy Monitor: While the share of coal-fired power generation increased in EU countries last year, it did so by much less than some expected. In 2022, coal-fired power generation increased by 1.5 percentage points compared with 2021, accounting for 16% of electricity generation in the EU, shows Ember’s European Electricity Review 2023, published today. “The [energy crisis] shocks of 2022 only caused a minor ripple in coal power and a huge wave of support for renewables,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s head of data insights and lead author of the report, in a press release. “Any fears of a coal rebound [in Europe] are now dead.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had prompted fears of a coal rebound in European power generation, as an alternative to suddenly scarce and expensive natural gas. Energy security took centre stage in the face of Russia’s energy blackmail of Europe. The EU also recognised that its Russian oil and gas imports were directly fuelling the Kremlin’s military spend. Wind Turbine Giant Says It Has a Solution That Will Keep Blades Out of Landfills Fingers crossed for the pilot project to be a success! From Energy Now: Wind turbines face an unsustainable dilemma: after decades of producing renewable energy, their seemingly indestructible blades often end up in garbage dumps, left to remain for years.Now, Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world’s largest producer of wind turbines, says it has developed a chemical solution that allows the blades — made with durable epoxy resin — to be broken down and recycled. “This signals a new era for the wind industry,” Vestas said in a statement. If it’s implemented at scale, the technology can be used on both old blades sitting in landfills and those in active wind farms, the company added. It’s a potential solution for what could be a massive sustainability problem for the wind industry. Industry body Wind Europe has previously estimated that about 25,000 metric tons of blades a year will be decommissioned by 2025, rising to 52,000 tons a year by 2030. The group has called on European authorities to ban blades from going into landfills. ✂️ Vestas’s process is the result of joint initiative including Denmark’s Aarhus University and US-based Olin Corp. The company now plans to move it from the lab to a pilot project for two years, before rolling it out on a commercial scale. Its cost hasn’t been disclosed. Floating PV reduces water evaporation in Brazilian reservoir by 60% Generating clean electricity and saving water with the same installation? Yes, please! From PV Magazine: Scientists from State University of Ponta Grossa in Brazil and the University of Louisiana in the United States have jointly investigated the impact of floating solar on the water evaporation rate in reservoirs. They used a 130 kW solar system on the Passaúna reservoir in the Brazilian state of Paraná as a case study. The reservoir spans 8.5 square kilometers and has an average depth of 6.5 meters. Its total volume is 69.3 cubic hectometers (hm3). ✂️ The reservoir borders the cities of Curitiba, Araucária, and Campo Largo, and supplies 20% of the water consumed by the population of the metropolitan region of Curitiba, Paraná. The researchers used the Penmam-Monteith method recommended by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to measure the rate of water evaporation. They found that 4.47 million cubic meters (m3) of water evaporated from the reservoir in the space of a year, equivalent to 10.4% of the water volume consumed annually by the local population. The team calculated that the floating solar system reduced water evaporation with an efficiency of 60.20%. ✂️ The results indicate that a 5 MW system could save about 16,000 m3 of water per year, which is equivalent to the water consumed by 196 people in the region per year. The electricity produced by the system could also cover the consumption of 2,563 inhabitants in the state of Paraná, assuming a per capita consumption of 1.95 kWh. * * * * * Musical break x YouTube Video * * * * * Good news for and about animals Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal. Rosy gets a two-fer this time, because she found two irresistible doggy items. Lost Texas Dog Finds Her Way to Former Shelter and Rings Rescue's Doorbell for Help From People: In January, a rescue dog named Bailey, who had recently been adopted from Texas' Animal Rescue League of El Paso, went missing from her new home. Bailey's pet parent contacted the Animal Rescue League of El Paso to inform the shelter about the dog's disappearance. To help find the canine, the shelter posted about Bailey on social media. ✂️ According to KFOX14, it didn't take long before the rescue's followers started to report sightings of Bailey, but it turned out that the shelter wouldn't need them. Early on Jan. 31, Bailey surprised the Animal Rescue League of El Paso by coming to them. The dog showed up at the shelter and rang the doorbell looking for help. "Bailey is now safe. To all those who searched, spotted, called, hoped - we thank you. As we know, dogs are incredible. Bailey made her own way back to ARL and rang our ring doorbell at 1:15 am, saying she wanted in. Staff rushed to the shelter and put Bailey in her run," the rescue posted with a photo of Bailey taken by the facility's doorbell camera. Loretta Hyde, the founder of Animal Rescue League of El Paso, told KFOX14 that she was amazed that the dog found her way back to the shelter, especially considering her new home is 10 miles away. Rosy sends a 🎩 to OHD for the tweet below, published in Sunday’s TOTW. She’s eager to claim this sweet pooch as her cousin, since they have exactly the same coloring. x I know we all see Ukrainians with cats… but FINALLY!… there’s a dog video! And what a beautiful video it is! That dogs so happy! 🇺🇦 and so wonderful to keep the Ukrainian company. They must help each-other immensely. pic.twitter.com/rwGI2F37aF — Sytheruk (@Sytheruk) February 11, 2023 Nora thinks that living on Mt. Everest is extremely cool (pun definitely intended!). But given how much she loves heat, she isn’t surprised that a cat living there might be grumpy. Rare Species of Feline Dubbed the ‘Original Grumpy Cat’ Found Living On Mount Everest From Good News Network: Pallas’ cat A DNA analysis confirmed that the rare and little-known Pallas’ cat lives on Mount Everest—three miles above sea level. The discovery was made along Sagarmatha National Park on Mount Everest’s Southern Flank in Nepal after a month-long expedition collecting environmental samples. Scat recovered from the two separate sites located 3.7 miles apart at 16,765 and 17,027 feet (5,110 and 5,190 meters) above sea level confirmed there were Pallas cats in the area. Known as the “original grumpy cat” before the famous internet meme cat was born, Otocolobus manul or Pallas’ cat stands among the most charismatic and unique wild Felidae on Earth. This mountain specialist is found at high elevations across Asia and is a super predator of small mammals. Indeed the analysis of the animal’s scat showed the feline was feeding on pika and mountain weasel, which delighted the scientists as these were also unknown in the national park which is a UNESCO Natural Heritage site. “It is phenomenal to discover proof of this rare and remarkable species at the top of the world,” said Dr. Tracie Seimon, of Wildlife Conservation Society’s Zoological Health Program, and leader of the expedition which occurred in 2019. ✂️ It is notable that Pallas’s cat went undetected in this park until 2019, and the new study demonstrates how conservation genetics and environmental sampling can be utilized as a powerful approach to discover and study elusive species like Pallas’s cat. Rascal totally gets hoarding. He’d hoard 700 poounds of tortilla chips if he could. Woodpeckers hoard over 700 pounds of acorns in Glen Ellen vacation rental From The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa): Owners of a Glen Ellen vacation rental recently discovered that acorn woodpeckers are true hoarders. When exterminator Nick Castro inspected the home for mealworms in December, he cut a hole in a bedroom wall and something unexpected came gushing out. Over 700 pounds of acorns had been stacked 20 to 25 feet high in the home’s chimney, he said. ✂️ The culprit was a pair of acorn woodpeckers, big-eyed birds with clownish faces and red caps often known to squirrel away large amounts of acorns. They had pecked holes in the two-story home’s chimney stack and hidden their cache inside, Castro said. Previous owners had wrapped the house in vinyl after its wood siding was destroyed when the woodpeckers stashed acorns behind the trim, Castro said. But the vinyl proved too tough for the woodpeckers and, instead, they dropped their oak nuts down the chimney stack. ✂️ Acorn woodpeckers, found in oak and mixed oak-evergreen forests on the West Coast and in the Southwest, typically drill small holes in a dead tree, harvest the nuts in the fall and store them in the holes to eat during winter. … The birds’ atypical hiding place could be them adapting to an ever-changing landscape, according to Scott Jennings, an avian ecologist with Marin County nonprofit environmental advocacy group Audubon Canyon Ranch. When infrastructure is built on their natural habitats, he said, they’ll adapt to those changes. Acorn woodpecker And although the day is already past, Rascal wants to say that it’s not too late to acknowledge that Sunday was Superb Owl Sunday! So here’s his candidate for Superb Owl 2023, the Snowy Owl: * * * * * Art break Pentagon Reverses Ruling on the Release of Art Made by Guantanamo Bay Detainees Art news that’s also good news for human rights. From Good News Network: In a rare moment of beauty at Guantánamo Bay, detainees managed to win themselves the rights to own and control their own artwork. Khalid Qasim, Large Sailboat on the Ocean, 2017, paint over gravel mixed with glue A recent Pentagon ruling reversed a previous decision that blocked Guantánamo Bay prisoners from exhibiting paintings that were made during their imprisonment. Now, outgoing inmates will be allowed to take a “practicable quantity of their art” with them, paintings and sketches they made during the Art from Guantánamo project. Twenty of 34 who participated are now slated for release. The original decision came after a collection of 36 paintings called “Ode to the Sea” were exhibited at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice back in 2017. Many were available for purchase through the detainees’ lawyers. Last October, seven previous detainees and 1 current inmate published a letter calling on President Biden to allow them possession and distribution of their art. “Art from Guantánamo became part of our lives and of who we are,” the prisoners jointly wrote. “It was born from the ordeal we lived through. Each painting holds moments of our lives, secrets, tears, pain, and hope. Our artworks are parts of ourselves. We are still not free while parts of us are still imprisoned at Guantánamo.” ✂️ “Blue Mosque” by Ghaled Al-Bihani “Painting makes me feel as if I am embracing the universe…,” wrote Ghaleb Al-Bihani, a Yemeni imprisoned without charge for 15 years before being released in 2017 to Oman, where he now teaches painting. “I also see things around me as if they were paintings, which gives me the sense of a beautiful life.” * * * * * Hot lynx www.theatlantic.com/… The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Atlantic took this from their archives and republished it last week. It’s indispensable if you want to understand the totality of systemic racism. nonprofitquarterly.org/… Safety Net Hospitals: Why BIPOC Wealth Creation is Needed to Achieve Health. An illuminating article from Nonprofit Quarterly about the role that safety net hospitals in majority-BIPOC communities could play in “addressing wealth-based health inequities.” www.yesmagazine.org/… Black and Unapologetic in Nature​​​​​​. ​An inspiring excerpt from Nature Swagger, a new book about “Black people reclaiming their place in the natural world.” www.goodgoodgood.co/… 'Deinfluencing' Explained: Why TikTok is Over Overconsumption. A welcome new counter-trend to TikTok “influencers” driving senseless shopping. www.theatlantic.com/… Go Ahead and Ban My Book. Margaret Atwood takes on a Virginia school board ban on The Handmaid’s Tale. Probably needless to add, her screed is a thing of beauty. * * * * * Wherever is herd… A tip of the hat to 2thanks for creating this handy info sheet for all Gnusies new and old! Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week: Closing music x YouTube Video ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd. ❤️💙 RESIST, PERSIST, REBUILD, REJOICE! 💙❤️ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/14/2151074/-Good-News-Roundup-for-Valentine-s-Day-2023 Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/