Today's good news nuggets from around the globe.
A conservation group funding the restoration of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral has come up with a unique way to get people invested in the building's restoration. Through a crowdfunding campaign, donors can "adopt" some of the cathedral's most famous residents, like its grotesques, gargoyles, saints and paintings, by donating to their specific restoration. Some of the cathedral's grotesques are so famous, they've acquired nicknames - like Stryga, pictured above. While various saints have already reached their goals, there are plenty of these fantastic beasts that need a little more love. And if you're wondering what the difference is between a gargoyle and a grotesque, the former drain rainwater, while the latter are simply statues.
‘Insanely cheap energy’: In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in a single year alone. This is all thanks to the rapid radical reduction in the price of PV solar that's a story about Chinese industrial might backed by American capital, fanned by European political sensibilities and made possible largely thanks to the pioneering work of an Australian research team. Long may it continue!
How do you create a farm when there isn't enough space? Think up - in the Euclidean sense. Plenty, an agricultural startup, is planning an indoor vertical farm in Compton to help bring more jobs and loads of fresh fruits and veggies to the California city. The company says it will condense 700 acres of farmland into a 95,000-square-foot warehouse. Not only is such a setup a great solution for crowded urban areas, it's also better for the environment as the vertical crops use less water and energy and don't require pesticides. They already have one vertical farm up (literally) and running in San Francisco.
Hats off to the ingenuity of Paso Pacifico, a US-based conservation group working in Central America to protect the olive ridley sea turtle. Though it's the most abundant sea turtle, its eggs are prime real estate for poachers, who destroy an estimated 90 percent of the sea turtle nests along Central American beaches. Scientists at Paso Pacifico have developed a clever trick to catch these criminals: decoy eggs fitted with a GPS transmitter and a SIM card, so they can track them down and combat trafficking. That's good news for olive ridley sea turtles.
Resembling a concept model for a starship, the Orbital 02, purportedly the "world's most powerful" tidal turbine is nearing completion. It's another innovative solution for generating renewable energy. Designed and built by Orbital Marine Power, the 02 is currently en route to its final location off Scotland's Orkney Islands. It consists of a 239 foot (73m) floating superstructure that supports two 1 MW turbines and, once operational, the turbines will kick out nearly 2 megawatts of power. That's enough to power at least 2,000 homes in the UK every year.
One of the original supermodels, Helena Christensen, completely nails today's vibe for women everywhere by saying: ‘We don’t need to look beautiful for anyone else - just ourselves.'
Dive in Deeper
The wonders of nature...
Amazing rainstorm timelapse shows an incredible tsunami tumbling from the heavens.