Do you live in an urban setting? If so, consider planting a rooftop garden. Besides the decorative benefit, roof plantings can provide fresh food, contact with nature and beauty, habitats or corridors for wildlife, noise absorption, recreational opportunities, cooling mechanisms, hydrological advantages and less pollution. What’s more, large-scale adoption could even have ecological benefits. Nine good reasons to […]
Amy Purdy is a hot topic you may well have heard of. She’s an athlete, author, model, entrepreneur, dancer, inspirational and motivational speaker and actress. So, she’s talented. Yes, but she’s not just talented, she’s a survivor, someone who redefines what is possible. At the age of 19, Amy became ill with bacterial meningitis, a serious infection […]
Did you know it’s possible to grow plants in sand and gravel with nutrients but without soil? It’s called hydroponics, and it is one of the many important projects happening in Azraq refugee camp, located in Jordan on hot desert terrain, where over 53,000 displaced people of the Syrian civil war are sheltered. With funding from the World Food Programme, the […]
Pneumonia kills as many as 940,000 children under the age of five every year and is a major cause of infant mortality, particularly in less-developed countries, according to UNICEF. But now a new alliance between UNICEF and Spanish “la Caixa” Foundation, one of the largest private charities in the world, aims to “save the lives of thousands […]
According to Global Witness, “2015 was the worst year on record for killings of land and environmental defenders – people struggling to protect their land, forests and rivers through peaceful actions, against mounting odds.” Yet courageous people are fighting to the death, literally, to retain or recover indigenous land and defend the environment. One of them […]
A life after hate is possible. People do exist who used to hate but now promote tolerance, diversity and mutual understanding. They include a skinhead and convicted felon; a former organizer for the White Aryan Resistance and manager of a racist rock band; and a skinhead leader, Neo-Nazi recruiter and convicted kidnapper. These three former members […]
Hurricane Harvey hit southern Texas full force on August 25th, developing from a tropical wave and tropical storm before reaching hurricane status. It crossed the Windward Islands, Suriname, Guyana, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as Texas and Louisiana. Of course many people in the United States remember Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, which did a […]
What good is a car without pedals or a steering wheel? One such car was built so Rodrigo Hubner Mendes could drive it. How? By using only his mind. That’s because Mendes is paralyzed. He drove the F1 car using brain commands. A helmet captured his brainwaves and translated them to steer the car. He became the first […]
