Art & Good News 11-11-2023
Weekly roundup for November 11th, 2023 with art and uplifting stories
Starting with some art…
This week I have nursery rhymes on the brain. So my question to you is this, did you have a favorite nursery rhyme when you were a kid? Personally, my favorite was not officially a nursery rhyme but an old song my mother would play for us. It is called “Swinging on a Star”, there are two versions I always loved one was by Frank Sinatra, and the other is by Bing Crosby
Now to the Good News…
The floating desalination machines powered by the waves
A Canadian company, Oneka, has created a desalination machine that runs fully mechanically with no electricity. Desalination is when you separate the salt from salt water in order to make drinking water, and as the world population grows desalination will become more important to our drinking supply. The thing you need to be careful of is brine which is too high of a concentration of salt in the water that creates dead zones. Oneka solves this by mixing the brine from the desalination in with water that isn’t sent through the filter and will typically be only 25% saltier, which avoids the dead zones that can be created by strait brine. Oneka’s largest machines can produce 13,000 gallons of drinkable water daily which can have huge impacts on avoiding water scarcity. However, we all need to think twice about our over all water consumption it is a valuable resource that shouldn’t be wasted.
Can concrete dust help to fight climate change? This Irish startup is trying it out on US farmland
A company from Ireland is testing a new way to sequester carbon in the midwest. They have developed an enhanced weathering technology with the goal of permanently removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the air. They get leftover or extra concrete from construction sites grind it into dust and spread it over farmland. The milled concrete, due to the process used, has the potential to pull even more carbon out of the air than other methods or similar processes. If the test in the midwest is successful the company plans to expand, and their estimates are that over a hundred million tons of CO2 yearly. If a process like this pans out it could be a game changer in the fight against climate change.
Gene therapy gives deaf children hope for hearing and healing
A gene therapy study conducted at Fudan University in Shanghai has resulted in an amazing breakthrough in restoring hearing for those born deaf. This particular gene therapy is specifically designed to treat deafness that is caused by a deficiency in the gene that creates the protein otoferlin. However, the success of this study is expected to spur further study of other hereditary causes. This is wonderful news about the possibilities of gene therapy and what it can do to improve peoples lives.