Healing Through Food

A bit behind, but time to start playing catch-up! A quick content warning here, as the story references survivors of sexual violence.

In Kosovo, tens of thousands of people are finding their way to recovery after the Serbia-Kosovo war in the 1990s. Because of cultural stigmas surrounding abuse, survivors have had difficulty finding work or supporting themselves economically. In the city of Gjakova, an NGO is finding a new way to move forward.

Medica Gjakova is a store that sells organic produce and products made locally by survivors of war violence. These folks are able to sell products that they're making from home, giving them the opportunity to earn an income without having to find work outside of the home. They are supporting themselves and their families, while building a business.

Working with one's hands and making something useful is a kind of therapy in itself. By finding a different way to turn that work into a way of earning a living, people are moving toward in their healing. It's amazing to think of how something as simple as a homemade cheese can lead to recovery and economic freedom.

Behold the Power of His Noodly Appendage!

Today, friends, we're talking about food. Glorious food! Etc. and so forth. Specifically, a beef noodle soup from China:

Man, now I'm hungry. At any rate, this is the kind of regional dish that has the benefit of being both satisfying and cheap, making it ideal for folks with few resources. Recently, it's also become a symbol of a bigger program taking shape in China.

Government officials in Gansu province have announced a plan to teach 15,000 impoverish people how to make the hand-stretched noodles used in the dish from scratch. The idea is that those people will then be able to take those skills to get work in existing noodle shops (of which there are 4,000 in Gansu province alone) or take the next step of opening their own noodle shop.

It's a strong sign of optimism and belief in their people that the government is putting such a program in place, as it indicates a willingness to give people tools to help them live better lives. There are other programs in place or being proposed as well, including driving tourism to more impoverished provinces and opening villages to film and TV studios for filming.

Poverty isn't an easy problem to solve, and to believe otherwise is to oversimplify the factors involved. However, giving people new skills that they can use to help improve their station is never a bad thing. And besides, who can say no to a good bowl of noodle soup?

Under the Sea?

Day three of Camp Pollyanna looks at the bottom of the sea, and showing just how AWESOME it is. The Schmidt Ocean Institute, working with Dr. Mandy Joye and her research team out of the University of Georgia, has been exploring hydrothermal vents and cold seep environments in the Gulf of California. The Institute, using state of the art technology and ships named after characters in The NeverEnding Story, have captured some of the most diverse and vibrant places in the world.

The deep-sea cameras have taken amazing images, showing mineral towers that are teeming with different kinds of life, including, potentially, creatures we've never seen before. And these things are huge! Up to 23 meters (75 feet) tall and 10 meters (32 feet) wide, and venting superheated fluids, these towers allowed scientists to use new kinds of samplers to draw fluids and volatile substances back to their remotely operated vehicle, SuBastian. (Told you - all of the names are like that.)

But what does it look like? Let me show you:

(Look, it's SuBastian hard at work!)

The more we learn about our world, the more awesome we find it to be. No matter how long we study, there's always going to be more to discover in our world. It's just so neat I can't stand it!

Go! Discover! But first...

Robots: Activate

Day two of Camp Nanowrimo/Project: Pollyanna! Hope everyone had a good night's rest and all that jazz.

Do you remember Power Wheels? Being a child of the 1980's, I remember seeing those commercials and being insanely jealous of the kids riding around in a car. Like an ADULT. I mean, look at this!

How could you not want one?

Apparently, they're still around, and a high school robotics team decided to take one to the next level (but not in a "make it go 60mph and jump over flaming tires" way). Meet Cillian Jackson, a 2-year-old in Minnesota who, due to genetic wonkiness, is unable to walk. He had been primarily carried by his parents or pushed in a stroller, but that left him with minimal control over his movement. There were options for motorized wheelchairs, but they were out of his parents' budget. However, they had another idea.

Inspired by a group called Go Baby Go, Cillian's parents approached the local high school with a Power Wheel and a proposal - can you make this into something Cillian can use to get around?

The answer, of course, was yes. By dint of hard work and serious hacking skills(z), the team hacked the Power Wheel to make it easier to use and hold Cillian in place securely. This involved re-wiring, installing new pieces, and writing code to change the steering mechanics.

The result? A child able to move about freely and explore, and a group of high school students who get first-hand experience in seeing their skills make the world a better place in a real, tangible way. Sounds like a pretty solid project to me!

Happy Camp Nanowrimo! *confetti*

Hello all! Long time, no chat. The world's not in the greatest of states right now, I know, but it's time to bring a bit of light to the darkness again. At least, that's what I'm aiming to do. Bring on the positivity!

Project Pollyanna is go!

Now, I had planned to do a new Illumination post, highlighting a positive news story, but then I realized it's April Fools' Day. Not the greatest day for finding a trustworthy news story. So instead, let me tell you about something awesome.

Nathan Pyle is a web cartoonist who has created a lovely and thought-provoking series called Strange Planet. It's got a lot in common with the "humans are the aliens" idea, where humans are really, frankly, just weird. Nathan takes that idea and runs with it, showing aliens doing all the things humans do.

Enjoy, my friends!

Where's My Cow?

In Indonesia, and it has been for tens of thousands of years. Welcome to this week's Illumination! And yes, those of us in the US have a lot going on after yesterday's election, with a ton of firsts and a whole lot of work ahead, but you can get news about that pretty much everywhere.

Here? Here, we're going to talk about cave paintings. Archaeologists in Indonesia have finally been able to put a date to some figurative cave paintings found there, and discovered that it may be the oldest yet discovered at 40,000 years.

By "figurative," experts mean art that intends to represent something - in this case, a cow with horns. There is geometric artwork that dates older than this painting, but it isn't representative of a specific thing or person the way we would recognize it today.

The best part, to me, is finding that the style of drawing is something familiar across multiple continents. At some point, everyone's ancestors decided to try their hand at drawing what they saw, and decorating the space in which they lived. It says something about what it means to be human, I think.

Walking On Sunshine

And a happy Halloween/Samhain/end of October, everyone! To end the month of Illuminations, let's talk about getting back on our feet.

Injuries to the spinal cord have been seen as major, life-changing issues that can't be overcome. There have been some limited successes in specific situations, but not many and not often.

Cue scientists and EES. The technique is still in process and has a ways to go, but it represents a huge leap forward in treating spinal-cord injuries. In the small study done earlier this year, several of the patients were able to move - and walk - with assistance after as little as a few days' treatment. The treatments, which involve implanting electrodes that allow electrical impulses to bypass the injured portions of the spinal cord, have proven to be effective in animals, but they've been difficult to get just right for humans. The combination of the treatment itself and the additional knowledge of the human nervous system researchers developed are going to lead to bigger and better things across the board.

And on that note, that is day 31 of the month of Illuminations! This has been an eye-opening, exciting, exhausting month, and I think I've got a better handle on how I want to move forward and what I can offer. November starts the month of craziness that is NaNoWriMo, which will be its own kind of entertaining, but I want to keep doing the Illuminations - just not every day. I'm committing to two Illuminations a week, and hope to have some kind of Nano update at least once a week for November.

At any rate, thanks for reading.

Books, Glorious Books!

A tip of the hat to Ainy Rainwater for directing this my way - super helpful, especially as I'm fighting either a bad cold or a light flu at the moment. Thank you!

So, lo these many moons ago, I spent a summer in college working in the school library as we did some year-end cleaning and organizing. Part of this job involved spending a day with the rest of the student employees and full-time librarians moving several bookcases' worth of books from the tower down to the main floor. No elevator up there, of course, so we used mail bins to pass handfuls of books down a human chain down the stairs and onto a cart. It worked, though man were those things heavy.

Today's Illumination involves a similar process with a lot more people. October Books in England was moving to a new location, as the rent of their existing storefront was skyrocketing (as they do). They decided the best thing they could do was buy their own location, which they were able to do through donations, crowdfunding, and microloans. The next step was moving the stock to the new location without costing a lot of money or shutting down for a long time.

On Sunday, they put out a call for volunteers, and were nearly overwhelmed with help. All together, more than 200 people formed a human chain to pass books out of the old store, down the street, and into the new location. The best part is that passersby would ask what was happening, then join in.

People working together to help a bookstore stay in business and moving stock by hand? I'm a sucker for people helping people read.

It Belongs In a Museum!

"It," in this case, means a sign of a hopeful new beginning. Tonight's Illumination is about an aspect of conflict I don't think many of us consider.

Syria has been living through years of internal battle and civil war, but finally, finally, there are some signs of improvement. Damascus, an important and ancient city, is currently restored to peace, and city officials are taking a moment to show the people of the city their optimism. Something that had happened early in the fighting was that the national museums were closed and artifacts either moved or hidden, hoping to keep them safe.

While not everything survived unscathed, Sunday the Syrian National Museum reopened its doors and allowed the people to see their past once again. Many artifacts were recovered, having been smuggled out of the country or looted by the Islamic State. More work remains to be done, but in the meantime, the city of Damascus is reminding people that they're still here. They have not been, and will not be, destroyed.

Yes, Wrestling

GeekGirlCon has come and gone, which means I stand a chance of relaxing after a weekend full of good times, awesome people and stuff, and so much walking. And conveniently, tonight is the airing of the Illumination I want to discuss!

So, I enjoy professional wrestling. (I'll wait while some of y'all laugh. I get it.) Something that has always been a problem has been how women appeared in wrestling shows - basically, if they did appear, then it was as arm candy (or worse). There were a few women who wrestled, but not frequently, and not particularly well.

Cut to tonight, and Evolution. This is a pay-per-view, meaning it's one of the big shows during the year, and this time every wrestler in the ring is a woman. There are several different types of matches, including a battle royale which requires multiple wrestlers in the ring at the start of the match and people are only eliminated by being tossed over the top rope. Essentially, these are matches of the type that women don't normally get. And there are enough women in the WWE (past and present - they brought back some folks who had retired) to fill out the entire card.

It may not be the first thing most people think of when it comes to positive news, but gender equality and providing opportunities for everyone is generally a pretty awesome thing.

Chill ALL THE THINGS!

I'm starting this before the clock strikes midnight and before I've gone to sleep, so it's Saturday's Illumination. Remember how we discussed Egyptian blue and how it can be used to keep buildings cool?

Engineers at University of Colorado Boulder and University of Wyoming have taken another step in the War on Heat. They've managed to demonstrate a practical way to manufacture a metamaterial (debuted last year) in sufficient quantities to use it to cool homes and businesses. The way the devices are made, the cooling is extremely efficient, requiring very little by way of electricity.

Personally, I've always been a fan of being too cold than too hot, so bring on the air conditioning, especially if you can do it in a responsible and non-damaging way.

Technically, I Haven't Missed a Day

I realize it's after midnight my time, but I haven't been to bed yet, so it's still Friday. That's my story, at any rate. And I have an Illumination for everyone!

Now, those who know me know that the US military holds a spot close to my heart, as my father was a career member of the Air Force, and most of the men in my family have served at one time or another. Many of them were deployed to different combat areas around the world, and that sort of action takes a toll, both physically and mentally. In general, humans aren't built to handle that kind of violence and come out unscathed.

Lately, the Wounded Warrior project, which has been helping veterans and their families for several years, have doubled down on mental health support. They're working with hospitals and clinics around the country to provide intensive, clinical support for those in need, particularly those impacted by PTSD. This is the definition of an underserved population, so it warms my heart to see the Project identify the need and work to fill it. The link above includes an interview with a veteran who explicitly states that without the intensive care provided with the Wounded Warrior Project's help, he would probably not be here today.

And now for something completely different.

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Particularly, in this case, if you are a bacterium, and the Greek is bearing iron. Today's Illumination comes to us from the world of medicine, as scientists have developed a new antibiotic that manages to trick bacteria into absorbing it.

Essentially, the body's defense against infection is to create an iron-poor environment. This medication hitches a ride with iron, which the bacteria absorbs. Then, the caller is inside the house! And doctors have another way of fighting infection.

New antibiotics are needed, as germs have a bad habit of becoming tolerant of the ones we have. Having new ways of delivering them is certainly a step in the right direction.

Robots!

There are few things that make me happier than robots - couldn't tell you why, they just do. So you combine robots with young folk doing awesome in the world, and you've got an Illumination!

Today, we're talking about Daniela Saez (warning: autoplay video in Spanish with English subtitles). She's an engineering student who's been fascinated by robots since she was a kid. Due to a lack of resources in her school, her early robotic education was found online or from other students, as the school couldn't afford an instructor. That was enough for Daniela to put together a robotic sensor for the blind that allows people with vision problems to walk without a cane (sensors indicate the distance between the person's foot and an obstacle), as well as identifying the color of objects. It's been presented in several places around the world, as well as in Daniela's native Chile.

Her next big project is a robotic arm prosthetic for a girl who lost the majority of her arm (up to the shoulder). She has a prototype, and is working with the patient and others to secure funding to make it a reality. Above-the-elbow prosthetic devices aren't common and have significant issues in design and development, but Daniela is taking it all in stride. She wants to help people, so she's just going to do what she can. With robots.

I Refuse to Make a Banana Joke

Even I have my standards. Sometimes. Tonight's Illumination goes back to one of the common themes this month - food. Specifically, this time, fresh fruits and veggies, which are frequently thrown out due to spoilage, causing major food waste and contributing to food insecurity worldwide.

Enter Apeel. Ignoring the silly name, the company has worked to create a tasteless, colorless, odorless powder that at least doubles the shelf life of produce. In lab circumstances, it's been able to triple the shelf life. The powder is created from the skin, pulp, and seeds of fruits and veggies that have been used in other products (such as tomato skins from a ketchup manufacturer), so it's not a harsh chemical additive and it actually uses food waste from other industries.

Using food waste to create a product that prevents food waste? Reducing the energy and resources needed to transport and store produce? Sounds like a great plan all around.

Rice For Everyone!

Or at least a lot more people. Today's Illumination comes to us from Dubai by way of China. Scientists have been experimenting with strains of rice plants that are salt-tolerant, specifically for areas where fresh water is too precious to use in the quantities needed to grow rice. In January, the project began the practical research and planted several of the strains in parts of the desert in the United Arab Emirates.

Not only did the rice grow and thrive, but it yielded more than twice the amount of food as the average rice production. The researchers plan on rolling out a bigger test next year, eventually building up to covering 10% of the desert in rice fields. This is the kind of thing that can go a long way toward solving food insecurity while not forcing countries in the Middle East to rely completely on other parts of the world.

A Spot On A Bench

Good evening, all! Tonight's Illumination takes something that a lot of us have benefited from and takes it to the next logical step.

In Zimbabwe, one of the psychiatrists in the country has spent the last few years building up a program to provide mental health assistant to those who wouldn't normally be able to access it. There aren't many mental health professionals in Zimbabwe, or in most of Africa, so the doctor decided to make use of the resources available - grandmothers.

Dr. Chibanda trains the grandmothers - volunteers from the community - in evidence-based therapy, but they also use methods and language rooted in the culture and society of their patients. You know how much better you feel after having a good, long talk with someone close to you, where you talk about your problems and get some advice on how to move forward? That's essentially the basis of this program. It's been scientifically vetted and proven to provide results, and the program has been exported to other nations, including the US.

Mental health care is a problem around the world, between the stigma associated with seeking help and the costs related to treatment. Having another approach that manages to assist in both these areas can lighten the load for those of us who need the help.

Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin Song

Today's Illumination may be imagined as the light in a jack-o-lantern, it being the season of pumpkin everything and such. We have a small sampling of how people near me celebrate Halloween and lend a hand at the same time.

Now, I've never been much for haunted houses, but this zombie wedding might be an exception for me. Not only is it a display for the neighborhood (started as one for the grandkids), but this year people are taking the opportunity to collect donations of food and coats for a local shelter. Most of the other events on that page have similar requests, showing that people are aware of ways they can lend a hand to those in need.

The small comforts, the little things, the tiny gestures that most of us don't think about - these are the things that add to the light in the world. Don't give up, friends, and remember that every bit of light helps.

See Me

Immigration. It's a tough subject to discuss these days, especially in the States. There are difficult attitudes to overcome, particularly if you are an immigrant who happens to not be white or a native English speaker. The news frequently presents a specific image of these immigrants, and it generally isn't flattering.

Fortunately, in today's Illumination, a new exhibit in the Moving Walls series presents a different image of immigration. The exhibit focuses on the family ties and individual acts of bravery and self-sacrifice that immigrants and refugees experience, and shows these people as they want to be seen. The link above has examples of the art and photography produced by the people taking part in the exhibit, and it's stunning.

It shouldn't be such a bright spot, to see people as individuals with personalities and histories, families and dreams and hopes, rather than simply a group of "the other." At the same time, anything that reminds society that we need to treat each other with respect can only lead to better things.

I'm One with the Warrior Inside

In today's Illumination, there's a major city in India that has taken the differing abilities of their people into account when celebrating a major religious and social festival. In Kolkata, a committee organizing the celebration of Durga Puja in the southern part of the city decided that this festival needed to be more inclusive. The celebration reveres the goddess Durga, a warrior and protective mother goddess in the Hindu religion, and is seen as a time for joy and thanksgiving.

Artists worked for months to create a bust of the goddess covered in screws and nails, allowing those with vision problems to feel the face of the goddess they can't see. Artists also did extensive work with bamboo and thread, weaving mantras and other important phrases in Braille into panels around the pandal (the temporary building built explicitly for this festival). Visitors are encouraged to touch, breaking all the rules of major religious events.

In another pandal nearby, devotees with wheelchairs or other mobility aids are able to worship at special counters set at an appropriate height. Durga Puja is one of the major festivals in the Hindu religion, and these organizers are working to allow all their worshipers to take part, regardless of their physical abilities. To me, this is one of the purposes of religion - to bring people together. I think the committee in Kolkata is setting a fine example in that regard.