Ensuring it's a sunny Saturday with today's global round up of positive news.
Evening-Wear Leotards
Even before the Paris Olympics has started, Team USA has already broken a record – for the highest number of crystals adorning its gymnasts' leotards. Some of the athletes' looks at this year's competition will feature more than 10,000 glistening crystals. Jeanne Diaz, lead designer at the leotards' manufacturer GK Elite, told The New York Times that the designs had been inspired by the host city's reputation as the "fashion capital of the world". "They're really evening-wear looks," she said. And they come with that kind of price tag too; at market value, one of these leotards would be worth about $5,000. And, sticking to a sporting theme...
Podium For The Planet
SailGP is the waterborne version of Formula 1, just replace cars on racetracks with boats on the ocean. But the international sailing competition, which consists of various grands prix around the globe, differs from every other sport in a major way: It awards two winning teams at the end of the season - one for being the fastest, and the other for being the most sustainable. SailGP’s Impact League, described as the “podium for the planet,” tracks the steps teams take toward reducing their overall carbon footprint. This season’s champion is the Emirates Great Britain team, reports NBC News, which installed solar panels that powered not only its own base, but also those of other countries.
Moon Cave
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It’s quite timely then, that researchers just confirmed the location of a moon cave that could be a future base for lunar explorers - and it’s not far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in 1969. In a new study, scientists wrote that the underground cavity, measuring at least tens of yards deep, is “a promising site for a lunar base, as it offers shelter from the harsh surface environment and could support long-term human exploration of the moon.” Co-author Lorenzo Bruzzone added in a statement: “These caves had been hypothesized for over 50 years, but this is the first time ever that we have demonstrated their existence.”
BigPicture Winner
This winning photograph by Shane Gross was selected for the 2024 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition, the California Academy of Sciences’s annual contest. Every summer’s day in the lakes of Vancouver Island, hundreds of western toad tadpoles (Anaxyrus boreas) wriggle their way from the relatively safe depths of the water into the sunlit shallows, where their algae dinner awaits. The veteran underwater photographer had heard of the tadpoles’ migration and was amazed by the numbers he witnessed.
Sleeping When Awake
For the first time, scientists have discovered that a small region of our brain shuts down to take microsecond-long naps while we're awake. What's more, these same areas 'flicker' awake while we're asleep. These new findings could offer pivotal insights into neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, which are linked to sleep dysregulation. Until now, sleeping and awake states have been defined by overall brain wave patterns - alpha, beta and theta waves when we're awake, delta when we're not - so these 'flicker' anomalies challenge what we've so far understood about these distinct states.
Sickle Cell
Giving vitamin D supplementation to children and adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD) "significantly" improves their bone health and functional capacity, according to new research outlined in the European Journal of Pediatrics. Doctors have found that many young people with the disease, an inherited blood disorder that affects the hemoglobin, have vitamin D deficiencies.
"Tears of joy are like the summer raindrops pierced by sunbeams." Hosea Ballou
On This Day
20 July 1969: The Eagle lunar landing module, carrying U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (“Buzz”) Aldrin, landed on the Moon, and several hours later Armstrong became the first person to set foot on its surface.
Today's Articles
Magic Mushrooms: An environmental toxicologist finds way of using fungi to transform ugly, polluted brownfield sites into thriving meadows.
Coffee Supercharges Trees: Forests with a caffeine habit recover four times quicker, ecologists say.
Mood Boosting Video
Not Always Easy: How to heave a 5 ton body out of a bath tub.