(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Good New Roundup for 10/11/23: Palate Cleanser [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-11 Good morning, gnusies! I know there is a lot of STUFF going on out there that can and does wear on the soul, so allow me to serve up some news to counter all of that: news about redressing issues, fixing what was broken, learning about our past, our world, and our selves, and provide hope that the tomorrows yet to come will be better. So pull up a chair, relax, and enjoy. Have some music. x YouTube Video Massachusetts Innovators Aim to Turn Ocean Plastic into Fuel–Right Onboard the Ship Chemical engineers are pioneering a process to equip diesel ships with the onboard capacity to turn collected plastic garbage into fuel. The result has been dubbed “blue diesel” and would save time, money, and emissions in both the trips necessary for ocean-cleaning vessels to reach the mainland to offload and in running fuel use. ... Professor Nikolaos Kazantzis and Michael Timko at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts took a lot of inspiration and perseverance in their work of developing blue diesel from the fact that the chemical bonds of plastic and those of fossil fuels are essentially the same. “Our research team is modeling a specialized reactor that converts harvested waste plastic using an innovative chemical process called hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL),” Kazantzis told Cambridge press last year. “This compresses the plastic at high temperature and high pressure into “blue diesel” (the name emphasizes its marine origins).” ... Team member and fifth-year Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Belden said that the technology would also be exceptionally useful on rivers, since they would require less fuel to navigate on, and since the overwhelming majority of plastic in the ocean enters it via major river systems. Okay, who had ninja bumblebees on their bingo card? Not me, that’s who. Bumblebees are Hitting Back at Asian Hornets With Top-Tier Combat Skills, Reveals Research Buff-tailed bumblebees drop to the ground when hornets attack—carrying the pests down with them, according to the findings. Hornets lose their grip as they drop, or the bee raises its sting and fights until the hornet gives up. “Stunned” scientists at University of Exeter witnessed 120 attacks that took the same course, with the bee triumphing each time. The invasive pests, also known as yellow-legged hornets, have already invaded large portions of mainland Europe and parts of east Asia and have for the first time been spotted in the US. Sightings in the UK and mainland Europe are at an all-time high this year—but people are fighting back, fearing for pollinators such as bees. It’s been a long and winding road (will be) river getting here, but it’s happening. IT’S HAPPENING! Largest Dam Removal in History Begins Restoring Salmon and California Tribal Way of Life After 20 years of advocacy and legal challenges, the largest dam removal in history is returning the Klamath River in California to its natural state. In partnership with tribal nations, the demolition of four hydroelectric dams will allow wild salmon from the Pacific to run upstream and spawn again as they haven’t done for 100 years. This week, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation began preparing a stretch of the river to flow freely for the first time in a century. ... “It fills my heart to know that salmon will migrate through this river reach on their way to spawn in the upper basin,” said Yurok Vice Chairman Frankie Myers. “For the last century, we have watched the dams suffocate the life out of the river (and) I would like to thank the KRRC and the Shasta Indian Nation for the opportunity to help our salmon runs and our river recover for our children and the next generations.” ... The Klamath dam removal project broke ground in June 2023, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued the approval that allowed construction crews to get to work on the deconstruction of Copco No. 2 dam, due to be fully removed by the end of September. Iron Gate, JC Boyle and Copco No. 1 dams will be deconstructed next year in what is considered the largest salmon restoration project in history. More options, more access. New Oxford Malaria Vaccine is ‘Huge Advance’ to Protect Children From Deadly Killer A new vaccine from Oxford, called R21, has been shown to be not only effective for the prevention of malaria in children, but also easier to make with a lower price tag—so will help protect a greater number of African countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially recommended the R21/Matrix-M vaccine this week—the second malaria vaccine in two years, following the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, which received a WHO recommendation in 2021. Both vaccines are shown to be safe and effective in preventing malaria in children, the deadly disease that killed 619,000 people in 2021 alone. ... “As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Demand for the RTS,S vaccine far exceeds supply, so this second vaccine is a vital additional tool to protect more children faster, and to bring us closer to our vision of a malaria-free future.” ... At least 28 African countries plan to introduce one of the malaria vaccines as part of their national immunization programs—with the Vaccine Alliance Gavi providing technical and financial support to this effort in 18 countries. The RTS,S vaccine will be rolled out in some African countries in early 2024, with R21 becoming available to countries in the middle of next year. Good news local(ish) to me! Being that I am in Cleveland, Ohio. I’d never heard about this site before now, and I grew up close enough to Cahokia Mounds to go on field trips there. This site appears to have been built by a much more egalitarian culture than that of Cahokia. Little Known Ancient Site in Ohio Crowned by UNESCO–for Incredible Alignment with Moon and Sun The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks recently became the 25th property from the United States to have the honor of a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, a selection of buildings, locations, cities, and landscapes that tell a significant part of the story of humanity. Built between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago, they are described as “complex masterpieces of landscape architecture and are exceptional among ancient monuments worldwide in their enormous scale, geometric precision, and astronomical alignments.” “The huge squares, circles, and octagons, which are geometrically precise and align perfectly with the cycles of the sun and moon, were built by dispersed communities of American Indians who periodically gathered at these special places to worship and stay connected to one another,” reads an explainer on Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks’ official website. ... Of the site’s truly interesting features is its collection of Native American artifacts that have origins from all over the North American continent, including seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, shark teeth from the mid-Atlantic, obsidian from the Pacific Northwest, and silver and copper from modern-day Canada. ... At Hopewell, even those interred with obvious honorific funeral rights seemed to wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and do just as much labor as everyone else. Their ceremonies at the mounds, perfectly aligned to movements of the sun, and even more complex movements of the moon, carried on for hundreds of years until about 400 CE when the mounds remained, but the ceremonies stopped. I love living in the future. I can only imagine what current research discoveries will lead to. This summary did not do the topic justice by any means; please go read about just how amazing this is at the link Scientists Are 3D-Printing Stem Cells that Can Be Implanted as Brain Tissue An exciting advance from Oxford Univ. has raised the prospect of tailoring stem cells quickly to treat brain injuries in humans in the future, by essentially 3D printing brain cells. In experiments, the implanted cells integrated into the animals’ brains both structurally and functionally. The innovative study, published in the journal Nature Communications, marks the first time neural cells have been 3D printed to mimic the architecture of the cerebral cortex. ... In this latest study, researchers used 3D printing techniques to create a two-layered brain tissue using human neural stem cells. When implanted into the brains of mice, these cells encouragingly showed convincing structural and functional integration with the host tissue, despite the species difference. The cells were then dipped in a solution to generate two ‘bioinks’, which were then printed to produce a two-layered structure that was maintained for weeks. Seagrass, coral, and oysters, oh my! 10,000 Native Oysters Released on Homemade Reef off England’s Coast to Filter Pollutants, Block Storms The Wild Oysters Project in the UK just released 10,000 oysters to live wild, undisturbed lives off the northeast coast of England near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Oysters are a vital part of marine ecosystem health because of the amount of water they can filter every day in search of simple sustenance. A single oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day, or over 100 liters, cleaning out nitrogen and other pollutants. Their reefs also form natural and important breakwaters that reduce storm impacts on the shore. ... “Native oysters are ecosystem engineers, which means they change and improve the environment around them,” said Matt Uttley, restoration project manager at the Blue Marine Foundation, according to a press release from the Zoological Society of London. “Native oysters create a structurally complex three-dimensional habitat, which supports an abundance of other marine life and is intrinsically linked with ecosystem biodiversity.” ... Wild Oysters Project has so far released more than 1 billion oyster larvae, and they maintain restoration reef sites in 6 marinas around England. That’s it for me! Play us out! 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