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Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.” -- R.J. Palacio
Hello everyone! Kindness makes a meaningful difference in the lives of others, people and animals alike. Although living out kindness daily takes practice, it leads to a lifestyle and mindset that helps us meet the world and each other with greater compassion and empathy. Two of our stories this week highlight kind offerings to animals: a town in Iceland works to save baby puffins and volunteers in the US coordinate across different cities to help frogs and salamanders safely cross highways. These acts extend beyond nice thoughts and create transformative action and empowering solutions. May we find avenues to show our care for others this week. Wishing you well!
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Yves Alarie | Unsplash
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The Icelandic island of Heimaey hosts a million puffins annually for their breeding cycle. On their first flights leaving the burrow, some young birds - known as pufflings - get confused by the lights of town and head inland instead of out to sea. When puffins land on streets, their wings are too weak to get them aloft from the flat ground, leaving them vulnerable to cars, predators and starvation. Generations of citizens have made it their mission to find any pufflings that get lost on the island and help them get airborne. For members of the Puffling Patrol, this can mean late nights and being out in bad weather in service of helping these iconic birds. "I feel proud I helped it get to the ocean. And maybe someday I'll rescue its pufflings," said Sunna Tórshamar Georgsdóttir, a member of the Puffling Patrol. What drives the people to help these birds? The writer concludes, "Hope is the thing that drives the people of Heimaey to care for pufflings."
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Carnegie Mellon University
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The first autonomous US rover is about to head for the moon. Developed by students, faculty and alumni at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania over three years, the Iris rover is being carried to the moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Its 60-hour-long mission will snap images of the moon's surface for geographic study and test new localization techniques as it transmits data about its position back to Earth. The team also plans to send along the MoonArk, a tiny time capsule filled with poems, music, pictures and small objects. Launch is currently scheduled for May 4 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. "Hundreds of students have poured thousands of hours into Iris," said Raewyn Duvall, a research associate and commander of the mission. "We've worked for years toward this mission, and to have a launch date on the calendar is an exciting step."
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Armand Khoury | Unsplash
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In the last three years, Luxembourg, the world's wealthiest country, has been providing free public transportation to residents and tourists alike. The free transport not only promotes ease of travel, many residents believe it benefits the environment by reducing the number of cars on the road, thereby curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the initiative bolsters trust in the public sector, which continues to invest in the country's public transport system, including buses, trams, and trains. Showing appreciation for this element, Luxembourg teacher Ben Dratwicki says, "This is a good initiative, it favors the public sector, it strengthens the public sector."
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Mike B | Pexels
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Electric vehicles have reached a 25% market share in China, the world's largest car market, which makes up 34% of global car sales. Of the almost 27 million vehicles sold in 2022, seven million were EVs, and EV sales are growing at a staggering pace. EV market share in 2022 grew 93% over 2021 and Bloomberg forecasts it is likely to reach 35% this year, a milestone originally predicted to be reached in 2025. Thus the petrol and diesel car market will contract by millions much earlier than anyone anticipated and it is not clear how legacy auto companies will sustain anything close to current sales. The Chinese business and finance news site Jiemian says that new and second hand internal combustion engine vehicle prices now are being slashed as dealers frantically try to offload stock.
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Brett Amy Thelen
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When frogs and salamanders wake from winter hibernation in woodlands, they head toward breeding ponds - a treacherous journey if a route intersects with a road. Grassroots crossing initiatives have spread across the US in the last two decades, with volunteers shepherding tens of thousands of amphibians and collecting data that has led communities to build tunnels and close roads to cars on busy migration nights. In New Hampshire, Harris Center for Conservation Education salamander crossing brigades have been collecting data since 2007 that has prevented development approvals. In Waterloo, New Jersey, volunteers helped between 1,000 and 2,500 amphibians across a particular street for years, helping to make the case for building a passage under the road.
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