#029 - Best News of Last Week - Feb 28, 2022
🤖 - Today more than ever we need peace and positivity
Any doctor found engaged in conversion therapy — a controversial gender and sexual reorientation practice often slammed as pseudoscience — is liable to be prosecuted for professional misconduct, the National Medical Commission (NMC) told the Madras high court.
2. Our immune systems are remembering COVID-19 and fighting against its variants, study finds
"Can your body recognize the virus when it comes in? (Do) the markers that are on your immune cells... have the capability to even see it at all?"
Dr. Eric Vail, Director of Molecular Pathology at Cedars-Sinai, says a new report in PLOS Computational Biology is reassuring. While researchers did identify variants with the potential to escape our body's immune response, there's good news. Scientists only detected failure up to 15% of the time."
The study found that in the last two years most people's T-cells have developed a memory that will fire up when faced with different variants. Exposure is part of the reason, but Vail says much of the credit goes to vaccines.
3. Laredo, TX Animal Control Officer Recognized for Saving 45 Cats from Fire.
Laredo, Texas Animal Control Officer Jose Aranda, had only been on the job about four months when he faced a fire to save 45 cats. Although Aranda put himself at considerable risk, he decided to enter the building to save the cats. It was an extremely brave decision.
4. Endangered Species List: Stephens' kangaroo rat no longer an endangered species
The Stephens’ kangaroo rat, a nocturnal rodent with populations in parts of Southern California, was reclassified this month from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act, federal wildlife officials said.
The reclassification is being hailed as a conservation success by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Like many Indigenous people of North America, Miali Coley-Sudlovenick fears that her native language is dying. That's why she has taken to the internet to teach Inuktitut, one of the dialects spoken by the Inuit, to her people and anyone else who wants to learn. She believes it is vital to her culture's survival.
"This is the language we identify with as a people, and through colonization and its efforts to make us feel less than who we are, our parents and ancestors lost the ability to speak their own language."
6. 1 year later, Ingenuity helicopter still going strong on Mars
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity was supposed to be a museum piece by now.
"We're still going very strong," Jaakko Karras, Ingenuity deputy operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.Â
"There isn't a single item that we're getting nervous about," he added. "Everything is holding up very, very well."
- Go little rockstar :)
7. 2 year old wakes up mom & saves his entire family from a house fire
If it wasn't for their 2-year-old son Brandon, these parents said they would not be alive today to tell the story.
It was Brandon who somehow got through the flames and ended up checking on his parents. While everyone else in the house remained asleep and the smoke detectors silent, Kayla Dahl woke up hearing Brandon coughing and talking to her.
She said Brandon has woken her up before in the past because he's a bit too hot and simply wanted less layers on. It wasn't until she looked towards the bedroom door that she knew this was a different situation.
That's it for this week. Until next week, stay safe and don’t forget to share this newsletter with your friends :)