OGN Friday

Editor OGN Daily
1 day ago
3 min read

Wrapping up the week with a smorgasbord of tasty news nuggets.

Illustration of the original Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio — Credit: Ohio History Connection

Only in Ohio

Two thousand years ago, members of the Hopewell Culture - a group of Indigenous tribes that lived in what is now Ohio and other parts of the Midwest - began building a series of massive mounds and enclosures that exemplified their engineering skills and advanced knowledge of the cosmos. When Europeans arrived and eventually industrialized the region, many of these earthworks were destroyed or closed to visitors. But for the first time in over a century, the site is once again accessible to the public, and it’s helping bring the structures the widespread recognition they deserve. Constructed with only simple hand tools, the 20-acre circle and 50-acre octagon are part of the largest connected geometric earthworks ever built, including lunar alignments. “They figured out the complicated rhythms of the sun and moon and aligned their sacred earthworks to those rhythms as a way of connecting their ceremonies with the cosmos,” says the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks website.

Check Yourself

Following the deaths of her mother and grandmother from breast cancer, Leslie Holton made it her mission to help women do better breast self-exams. Two decades later, she's achieved her goal, working with University of Connecticut engineering seniors to create a virtual reality tool that reproduces the feeling of finding a tumor. The students are passionate about careers in women's health, Holton told The Washington Post, and she's thrilled that these "really, really smart" students are the future of STEM.

Dr Simon Opher, MP — Dr Simon Opher | YouTube/Stroud Times

Football Prescription

Football tickets will be made available on prescription to help treat symptoms of depression, under a pilot scheme in Gloucestershire, south west England. The initiative is part of a move Dr Opher, a local Member of Parliament, to offer social prescribing to patients with mild or moderate depression, instead of antidepressants. "Football clubs are in the centre of our communities and it's a way of getting people who perhaps are a bit socially isolated back into the community and back chatting to people," said Dr Opher.

Working Around Cuts

President Trump’s dismantling of USAID has led to dire warnings of millions of potential lives lost. There are, however, some silver linings: Congressional Republicans rescued PEPFAR, an HIV/AIDS program that has saved 25 million people since 2003, from the fiscal chopping block. And organizations like the World Health Organization and the Gates Foundation are exploring ways to cover other previously funded efforts, such as statistical health surveys that form the backbone of development work.

Russ Miller - known as the 'River Cowboy' - in his canoe — Credit: Mike Wilkinson

Hats Off to River Cowboy

Every year, the U.S. discards nearly 300 million tires, and while most are reused or recycled, millions are unaccounted for - 1 million in Kentucky alone - and they can end up in waterways like the Red River. That’s where Russ Miller - now known as the 'River Cowboy' - and his wife have lived for decades, both enjoying kayaking in the scenic waterways, and cleaning them up. After seeing a tire speared to a tree “like an olive on a toothpick,” he realized it would be there forever (or at least thousands of years) unless someone did something. So that’s what he did, clearing an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tires from Kentucky’s waterways.

Watchdog Bites

An advert by giant UK high street retailer Marks & Spencer has been banned for featuring an “irresponsible” image of a model who appeared “unhealthily thin”. OGN won't publish the image, but it is good to know that the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the advert must not appear again in its current form and M&S must ensure all its images “did not portray models as being unhealthily thin”.

"The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose." Garrison Keillor

On This Day

25 July 1446: Foundation stone is laid for King's College Chapel in Cambridge by King Henry VI, one of England's finest medieval buildings (main structure completed in 1515).