Most of us haven’t experienced what Lilliana Labecki has experienced during our first sixteen years of life. Labecki, despite her young age, has already traveled to over 20 countries and all seven continents. She has skied in Antarctica, climbed Kilimanjaro, and went to the peaks of mountains in Peru and Nepal. Not only that; she has also been able to found her own nonprofit organization, and she has been able to spearhead six humanitarian expeditions to remote corners of the world. Amazing girl.

Since Lilliana was in kindergarten, she’d been telling her father, Mike Libecki—an accomplished mountaineer, expeditionist, and National Geographic Explorer—that she wanted to ski with penguins. Once Lilliana turned nine, Mike decided it was time they start training. Together, near their home in Utah, the father-daughter duo practiced backcountry skiing and avalanche and crevasse training. When she was 11, they went on a three-week ski expedition in Antarctica. “It’s a big deal,” says her father. “Sixty-mile-an-hour winds, crevasses, roped up, harness, real deal—not just dad-daughter, but she has to be a partner out there.” 

[...]

[Labecki] found her passion on an expedition to Tanzania in 2015, when she was 12. After summiting Kilimanjaro, Lilliana, her dad, and the rest of the team worked on a give-back project for rural communities in Boma Ng’ombe, Tanzania. They helped build two schools, two churches, and an orphanage and provided shoes and socks, solar power, and computers. The experience was moving for Lilliana, and she wanted to do more.

And that is how her nonprofit organization called Joyineering was born.

When they returned stateside, Mike created a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, with Lilliana as the president, Mike as vice president, and Lilliana’s grandmother, aunt, and uncles as board members. The Joyineering Fund was born. “Joyineering is the act of bringing joy to our Mother Earth in all possible ways,” says Lilliana.

Since its founding, the fund has raised more than $500,000 for its projects. The organization raises money through donations, grant applications, and sponsorships from companies like Clif Bar, Dell Computers, GoalZero, and more. 

The Libecki family, along with a crew from sponsoring companies, ventures to underserved, remote communities to provide basic necessities that much of the world takes for granted—shoes, socks, clean water, electricity, and education. “I know I may not be able to make the biggest difference in the world and change the world,” says Lilliana, “but I might be able to change their world.”

More of this heartwarming story over at Outside Online.

(Image Credit: Mike Libecki)

The Wyoming Valley West School District, one of the poorest districts in the state as measured by per-pupil spending, sent an alarming letter to about 40 families. The letter informed parents that if they don’t settle their children’s lunch debts, their children could be taken away from their homes and placed in foster care.

When officials there noticed that families owed the district around $22,000 in breakfast and lunch debt, they tried to get their money back.

"By mail, email, robo calls, personal calls and letters," said Joseph Mazur, the president of the district's board of education.

But, Mazur said, nothing worked.

That's when district officials sent out the now-infamous letter to about 40 families deemed to be the worst offenders in having overdue cafeteria bills — those were children with a meal debt of $10 or more.

"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch," said the letter signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District. "This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child's right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care."

Some county officials criticized the threat of being placed into foster care. They stated that foster-care placement should not be used as a scare tactic to collect money. It should only be mentioned when the children are abused or in danger.

Bill Vinsko, a lawyer in Northeastern, Pa. who used to work in local government, said while the area's weak tax base does put a strain on schools, many households are also struggling to get by on low wage jobs.

"And then they get a letter saying their kids might be taken away from them, it's petrifying for them," Vinsko said. "That is really scary for parents who are trying to work for the best interest of their kids."

What are your thoughts on this one? Do you think the school district have gone too far?

More details of the story on NPR.

(Image Credit: Free-Photos/ Pixabay)

A new study published on Monday in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer suggests that a germ-free childhood followed by infections later in life can trigger childhood leukemia. The paper found out that acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common type of childhood cancer, is caused by a two-step process.

The first step is a genetic mutation before birth that predisposes a child to the risk of developing this form of leukemia. The second step is exposure to certain infections later in childhood, after clean early childhoods that limited exposure to infections.

More specifically, children who grew up in cleaner households during their first year and interacted less with other children are more likely to develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the paper says.

[...]

… "The research strongly suggests that (this cancer) has a clear biological cause, and is triggered by a variety of infections in predisposed children whose immune systems have not been properly primed."

[...]

However, other experts warn that more specifics needs to be confirmed and emphasize that hygiene and safety are still crucial.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, known as ALL, is a form of blood cancer that is most often diagnosed in children ages zero to 4 years old, though older children and adults can also be diagnosed. It develops quickly, over days or weeks, building up in the blood and spreads to other parts of the body, including the lymph nodes, liver and nervous system. The main form of treatment is chemotherapy.

Find out more about this interesting study over at CNN.

(Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures/ Pixabay)

Florence Parly, the French Defence Minister, announced on Monday that the French submarine Minerve has been found. 

The Minerve submarine had been missing for over 50 years ever since it disappeared along with 52 sailors aboard, near the port of Toulon, on the French south coast, in January 1968. Previous attempts to search for the submarine have been unsuccessful.

Ms Parly announced the new recovery effort earlier this year, following fresh requests from bereaved families to find their loved ones.

"We have just found the Minerva," Ms Parly tweeted (in French). "It's a success, a relief and a technical feat. I think of the families who have been waiting for this moment so long."

[...]

The missing submarine was found 45km (30 miles) from Toulon 2,370m (7,800ft) under the surface, AFP reports.

It was one in a string of a deadly disasters involving military submarines around the world during the 1960s.

(Image Credit: AFP)

I believe most of us have tried ordering food via food apps like Uber Eats, Postmates, and Caviar. For food app users like us, we find this type of service more convenient. We can have food on our hands with just a few taps from our fingers. We need only to wait for it. But what’s it like for the delivery men who deliver food on our hands? Andy Newman of the New York Times investigated this, by being a deliveryman himself for a few days.

For a few days this spring, I was one of them. Not a good one, but a deliveryman nevertheless. I learned up close how the high-tech era of on-demand everything is transforming some of the lowest-tech, lowest-status, low-wage occupations — creating both new opportunities and new forms of exploitation. 

[...]

Mindless as the job may seem, it is often like a game of real-life speed chess played across the treacherous grid of the city, as riders juggle orders from competing apps and scramble for elusive bonuses.

And there are risks. Nearly a third of delivery cyclists missed work because of on-the-job injuries last year, one survey found, and at least four delivery riders or bike messengers have been killed in crashes with cars this year. Riders on electric bikes face fines and confiscation, though that may change.

“The whole thing is like gambling,” said Werner Zhanay, 23, who delivers for Postmates and Caviar. “You have to be at a spot. You have to hope that there are orders there and then — do you stay at that spot?”

Find out more about Newman’s experience over at the site.

(Image Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times)

“Come storm our shelter,” wrote the OKC Animal Welfare on their Facebook post on Friday. “We have great animals ready to protect you from the Area 51 aliens. Adoption isn’t that far out of this world!” they continued. They even showed their dogs wearing tinfoil hats on the post.

The shelter has 150 dogs, 54 cats, two pigs and one hamster available for adoption, according to its website.

The event organizer started the [Area 51] event as a joke. Now, more than 1.8 million have signed up for the September 20 event, which jokingly encourages participants to storm Area 51, long believed by conspiracy theorists to be a holding site for extraterrestrial life.

[...]

Still, the Air Force told CBS News it was aware of the post and called it "dangerous." It's unclear if anyone will actually show up to the event, but they may feel safer with a tinfoil-wearing pet by their side.

(Image Credit: OKC Animal Welfare/ Facebook)

The Philippine fast food Jollibee is the 24th largest fast food chain globally (coffee chains included), by number of branches, and the fifth among companies not from the U.S. It boasts 1,150 outlets in its home country and some 234 overseas outlets in 15 territories. It also has the bigger share of the Philippine market, even with its two biggest competitors combined. But like every business empire, Jollibee had its humble beginnings. So, how did this fast food start?

This food and beverage empire was born in 1975 – and at the time served only ice cream. It was the brainchild of company founder and chairman Tony Tan Caktiong (generally referred to by his staff as Sir Tony in a sign of respect), the third child of seven in an impoverished family who moved to the Philippines from Fujian province in China. His father opened a small Buddhist restaurant in the southern Philippine city of Davao when Tan was a child.

[...]

People started asking for hot food, so he began providing hamburgers and sandwiches, and soon they were more popular than the ice cream. Neither of the original branches is still operating – but several of the original employees still work for the company.

The Jollibee name was introduced in 1978, first as Jolibe; it was changed to the current spelling so that it could be more easily associated with the words “jolly” and “bee” – and so that, thanks to the non-standard spelling, it could be easily trademarked.

[...]

In its early years Jollibee faced perhaps the biggest challenge in its corporate history: both McDonald’s and KFC entered the Philippine market in the early 1980s. Instead of having their usual effect of sweeping aside local competition, in Jollibee they found a competitor more attuned to the local market, and one with a particularly determined founder.

Learn more about the story of this fast food chain over at the South China Morning Post.

(Image Credit: Jansen Romero)

(Image Credit: Jollibee)

A 22-year-old woman named De’Erica Cooks was arrested this week and accused of aggravated assault as she attacked another woman who refused to give her a slice of pizza. The woman was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill and is being held on a $1,500 bond.

According to the St. Augustine Record, Cooks became angry after the unidentified woman said "no" to her request for a slice. An offense report says Cooks told the woman "I'm going to cut you" with a steak knife in her hand, and then tried to attack her.

The report adds that a male bystander was able to take the knife away from Cooks, but she soon found another one.

According to the report, Cooks stated that she doesn’t remember much of what happened during her fit of rage.

I guess pizza is that appealing for her.

(Image Credit: marckbass8/ Pixabay)

A tiny but growing number of online hobbyists have been buying used, but undeveloped, film rolls. People who sell mystery film often don’t set out to trade in the stuff — these are usually picked up by coincidence.

There are many tragic reasons why these rolls could have been forgotten about – divorce, death, dementia – and many mundane ones: film processing is expensive and it’s easy to set aside a half-used roll to be finished later and simply forget about it. Used film can sell from £1 to £100 on eBay, and more and more people are gathering online to celebrate their hobby. Over the past three years the subscribers to the Forgotten Film forum on the discussion website Reddit have jumped from 822 to more than 3,000 people. The most popular post of all is an image from the 1950s of a person in an anorak framed forebodingly in front of the Niagara Falls – the film was found inside a camera in an antique store.

But where did the interest in buying mystery film come from? It may be related to a boom on “mystery boxes” sold on Ebay. Popular YouTubers in 2017 started buying these boxes which contained random items and opened them in front of a camera.

In this environment, sellers are taking a chance by listing mystery film rolls, while buyers are excitedly purchasing a portion of the past.

But why would some people buy random film rolls and develop what’s inside them? Levi Bettwieser, a 33-year-old video producer from Idaho, answers this question.

...“There’s always a feeling of overall excitement that you might get something amazing, something historically viable. Or you might get more cat photos.”... “Part of the reason I’m doing it is because I like the idea of being the first person to ever see these images; even the photographer has never seen them.”

Check out the full story on The Guardian.

(Image Credit: 15299/ Pixabay)

The hum is a sound that only, according to some estimates, two percent of people can hear. The scientific world has no known explanation for this noise. For some of the 2%, it sounds like an engine idling. For others, it sounds like a low-frequency rumble. But almost all of those who can hear it can agree on one thing: it is a persistent, maddening noise. 

Since it was first reported in Bristol, England, in 1970, this elusive phenomenon has plagued thousands of people across the globe, slowly eroding their sanity. One of them is Steve Kohlhase, an industrial-facilities mechanical engineer living in Brookfield, Connecticut. In Garret Harkawik’s short documentary Doom Vibrations, Kohlhase describes the noise: “Your ears are ringing real bad. If it’s a bad day, it feels like your brain is being squeezed. It’s nauseating.” Kohlhase says his dog, too, seems to suffer from the noise; once Kohlhase started hearing it, the canine became lethargic, and has never recovered.

[...]

“I think most people view the hum as a fringe belief,” Harkawik [stated], “because it’s so subjective—people say they hear something that most people can’t hear. But when you look at the vast number of people who say they hear it, it’s obvious that there’s something going on.”

Know more about this story on The Atlantic.

(Video Credit: The Atlantic/ YouTube)

You’ve heard it right. On this small community of Christians, there is no crime, no debt, and no homelessness.

Houses there are surrounded by acres of forest. On a warm day, they can swim in a lake, with no worries of their mortgage, as it is paid. Evenings are spent at a communal barbecue, where the community sing songs around the fire.

People chat and read books. No one is glued to a phone and children don’t fight over the Xbox because no one has a computer or TV.

In a lot of ways, this can be a person’s ideal utopia.

The women are dressed modestly – scarves cover their hair while their long skirts and shirts look like sackcloth. 

The lives of the 300 people here are not their own because they’re serving a higher being: Jesus. 

They must ask permission to start ‘courting’ a person who has caught their eye, no one can divorce and they can’t choose their jobs or have any possessions.

Most people have never heard of the Bruderhof, unsurprising as there are just 3,000 members of the small Christian sect in the world, spread across the UK (there’s another in Nonington, Kent, and a small one in Peckham, south London), the US, Germany, Australia and Paraguay. 

‘We have a different vision for our society,’ says Bernard Hibbs, 38, the community’s outreach director who has let in TV cameras for the first time. 

Can you live like this?

(Image Credit: BBC/ CTVC/ Danny Burrows)

Bleasdale Church of England Primary, a school believed to be the smallest in England, will close down after it was left with only two pupils. The school will be shutting off its doors on Tuesday as one of the pupils will be leaving it to go to secondary school.

Following a public consultation earlier this year, the Lancashire County Council pronounced that the school is “no longer financially viable.”

Over the past five years, pupil numbers have fallen from 16 to two.

The school has been open for a good 180 years.

(Image Credit: Google/ Independent)

We use batteries frequently — from our smartphones, to our wristwatches, to our laptops, and to our cars.

Most of our batteries are lithium-ion ones. People are alarmed that since the demand for this type of battery is high, this might lead to shortages of lithium in the world. This is why scientists look for an alternative for lithium-ion batteries, in the form of sodium-ion batteries. Sodium is cheap and abundant, which makes it a good alternative.

However, there’s a catch: Sodium-ion batteries have a much shorter lifespan than lithium-ion ones. But why do this type of battery decay quickly? Or in general, why do batteries decay in the first place? Scientists may have found the reason.

… UC Santa Barbara computational materials scientist Chris Van de Walle and colleagues have uncovered a reason for this loss of capacity in sodium batteries: the unintended presence of hydrogen, which leads to degradation of the battery electrode…

Professor Peelaers, now at the University of Kansas, described the key findings: “We quickly realized that hydrogen can very easily penetrate the material, and that its presence enables the manganese atoms to break loose from the manganese-oxide backbone that holds the material together. This removal of manganese is irreversible and leads to a decrease in capacity and, ultimately, degradation of the battery.”

[...]

… Now that its detrimental impact has been flagged, measures can be taken during fabrication and encapsulation of the batteries to suppress incorporation of hydrogen, which should lead to better performance.”

In fact, the researchers suspect that even the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries may suffer from the ill effects of unintended hydrogen incorporation. Whether this causes fewer problems because fabrication methods are further advanced in this mature materials system, or because there is a fundamental reason for the lithium batteries to be more resistant to hydrogen is not clear at present, and will be an area of future research.

(Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures/ Pixabay)

FaceApp has been a popular app these days for its ability to make people on photos look older in their photos. The question is, is the app accurate in creating “elderly” versions of people? The Sun put FaceApp’s accuracy to the test by “lining it up against old and new pics of A-List celebs.”

Here are the photos and see for yourself. For me, it is pretty accurate it scares me.

Is it accurate for you?

(Image Credit: The Sun)

Yes, you’ve heard it correctly. It isn’t just one study, but a number of studies. Researchers have identified correlations between Trump’s election and “worsening cardiovascular health, sleep problems, anxiety and stress, especially among Latinos in the United States.”

A study published Friday using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the risk of premature birth was higher than expected among Latina women following Trump’s election. The new study is particularly powerful, experts say, because unlike ailments such as depression or stress that can be hard to quantify, births come with hard data.

[...]

Complications such as low birth weight and premature birth have been shown to rise with the stress of natural disasters, racism and domestic violence. Friday’s study, however, is unusual in its suggestion that politics can be a risk factor for poor pregnancy outcomes.

More than two years after Trump’s election, researchers say they now have enough data to begin to analyze its consequences on American society and health. Political scientists have tried to measure President Trump’s effect on partisanship and discourse. Social scientists are studying whether Trump has changed people’s feelings or predispositions about racism, incivility and bullying. Public health experts have focused on health effects of Trump’s presidency among populations such as youths, women and LGBT communities.

Some of the research has been inconclusive, but the evidence is growing for a possible “Trump effect” on the health of Hispanics. And Trump’s intensifying rhetoric, such as telling minority members of Congress to “go back” to countries they came from, has given the scientists’ work more urgency.

See the full story at The Washington Post.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: MIH83/ Pixabay)