Wrapping up the week with an upbeat collection of good news nuggets.
Boogie Power
Glasgow nightclub SWG3 has switched on a system that creates renewable energy from the body heat on its dance floor. Dancers' heat is piped via a carrier fluid to 200m (650ft) bore holes that can be charged like a thermal battery. The energy then travels back to the heat pumps, is upgraded to a suitable temperature and emitted back into SWG3. The owners say this will enable them to completely disconnect the venue's gas boilers, reducing its carbon emissions by about 70 tonnes of CO2 a year.
Plastic Fishermen
In Indonesia, small-time fishermen are being paid as part-time ocean cleanup crews, as the archipelago seeks to tidy their seas and raise awareness among stakeholders at the same time. If a fisherman can collect 4 kilograms of trash per day, the government will pay out around $10 for it, which is slightly more than they would get if they spent their day catching fish to sell at market prices. That's a good start but, as one of the world's largest contributors of ocean going plastic waste, Indonesia is looking to shake off that reputation by also spending $1 billion over the next 3 years to reduce plastic entering the oceans from their shores by 70 percent.
Britain's Lost Apples
Community orchards are booming, thanks in part to renewed interest in living off the land during the Covid lockdowns. People are clubbing together to plant fruit trees on local green spaces, from village greens to schools. This new generation of orchards is keeping old traditions alive and reviving Britain's "lost" apples.
The Appalachian Apple Hunter: 80-year-old man searches high and low for nearly extinct heirloom apple trees – many the last of their kind – and reintroduces them to the world. Remarkably, he’s located and reintroduced 1200 so far. Read on...
Smashing Success
NASA says its recent attempt to deflect the path of an asteroid was a smashing success. Scientists have now confirmed the orbit of a 160m-wide (520ft) space rock known as Dimorphos was altered when the Dart probe struck it head on last month. The impact also led to the asteroid now having a 6,000 mile dusty debris trail. The mission was conceived to test a potential strategy to defend the Earth against threatening objects. "This mission shows that Nasa is trying to be ready for whatever the Universe throws at us," said agency administrator Bill Nelson. "I believe that Nasa has proven that we are serious as a defender of the planet," he added.
Efflorescence
The state of being flowery, or a flowery appearance.
Unique Design
Architecture studio MAD Architects has completed a sinuous concrete stadium embedded into the ground and covered in grass roofs in Quzhou, China. Conceived as "a piece of land art", the stadium will seat 30,000 people. Its interior, described by MAD Architects as "crater-like," has undulating seating that was designed to follow that of the surrounding landscape. It is "the largest earth-sheltered complex in the world," said the architects.
Is the World's Most Beautiful Green Building a Winery? A British firm called X-architecture has built an extraordinary winery in Kakheti, Georgia, called Shilda - mostly underground, it fits rather naturally into the landscape. Have a look...
Quote of the Day
“It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Eliot
On this Day
14 October 1964: Baptist minister and social activist Martin Luther King, Jr., was named the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, cited for his work involving civil rights and social justice.
Research shows that humans first domesticated donkeys in East Africa, about 3,000 years before we started domesticating horses. Read on...
Mood Booster
The Grease Megamix Movie Mashup.