Taylor Van Zant

So proud of this fellow Virginian and she is only 18 years old👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 An 18-year-old just did what billion-dollar water companies couldn't. Meet Mia Heller. A high school junior from Warrenton, Virginia who built a water filter in her garage that strips out 95.5% of microplastics from drinking water. That's better than most government treatment plants, which sit somewhere between 70% and 90%. Her secret weapon? Ferrofluid. A magnetized liquid made of oil and powder that latches onto microplastic particles. Then a magnet yanks them out. No membranes. No constant filter replacements. No endless maintenance bills. The ferrofluid even gets recycled, around 87% of it, in a closed loop. The spark for all of this wasn't a classroom project. It was a local newspaper article warning that her town's tap water was loaded with PFAS and microplastics, and that nobody was coming to fix it. So she watched her mom swap out filter after filter and thought, there has to be a smarter way. She built the prototype herself. Tested it with a homemade turbidity sensor. Then walked into the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair and walked out with a special award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society. Up against nearly 1,700 students from 62 countries. She's now eyeing a household version that sits under your kitchen sink. The future of clean water might not come from a lab in Silicon Valley. It might come from a teenager's garage in Virginia. Source- @SmithsonianMag

And this isn't all over Canada why?

@MikhailaFuller @MayoClinic They'll take credit for discovering it sooner than admit past failures or apologize for attacks. Take the win internally and let these turds keep spinning

Hey @MayoClinic given you’re (finally) running studies on the ketogenic diet you may want to update your hit pieces. Or I suppose, wait a few more years to catch up.

@simonmaechling Keep the dream alive

It’s a rough time to be a scientist. You spend decades learning how to measure things properly. How to separate signal from noise. How to distinguish hazard from risk. And then you open your phone and watch fear beat data - again and again and again. In the lab, we argue about controls, concentrations, confidence intervals. Online, people argue about screenshots, podcasters and blogs. This little molecule in my hand? The dose matters. Exposure matters. Evidence matters. Being a scientist today means doing more than running experiments. It means explaining, clarifying, correcting - over and over and over again. So yes - it’s a rough time to be a scientist. But it’s also the most important time to speak up.

His most underrated achievement and asset

Stinging Nettle is one of the most nutritious wild plants in North America — and one of the most aggressively avoided because of what happens when you touch it. Here's the complete picture. 🔬 Why it stings: The leaves and stems are covered in hollow trichomes — tiny needle-like structures with a fragile silica tip. When skin makes contact, the tip snaps off, the trichome acts as a hypodermic needle, and it injects a cocktail of formic acid, histamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin directly into the skin. The burning, itching sensation is your body's immune response to this chemical injection — it typically lasts 20-60 minutes. 🏛️ Historical uses that seem extreme: Roman soldiers stationed in cold British outposts deliberately beat their legs with nettle bundles (a practice called urtication) to stimulate blood flow and warmth in freezing conditions. The inflammation response brings blood to the surface. This practice has been studied for arthritis pain management and is documented in multiple European clinical trials with modestly positive results. 🥗 As a food — genuinely remarkable: Stinging nettle contains more iron per gram than beef liver, significant calcium, high levels of Vitamin C and K, and a protein content (by dry weight) exceeding many leafy vegetables. Preparation eliminates all sting: → Blanching in boiling water for 60 seconds completely neutralizes the chemicals → Drying also eliminates the sting → Cooking it wilted as a spinach substitute — stronger, more mineral flavor 🌿 Ecological value: the sole or primary host plant for several butterfly species including Eastern Comma, Question Mark, and Red Admiral. #StingingNettle #WildPlants #ForagingUSA

La Chine vient peut-être de créer l’un des matériaux les plus importants des prochaines années. Des chercheurs de l’Université forestière de Nanjing ont développé un plastique fabriqué à partir de bambou. Et le plus fou c’est qu’il est aussi résistant que le plastique classique. Sauf qu’au lieu de rester dans la nature pendant des centaines d’années… il peut se dégrader en environ 50 jours. Quand on sait que le monde produit plus de 400 millions de tonnes de plastique chaque année, ça paraît presque irréel. Le détail qui surprend le plus, c’est que ce matériau ne vient pas du pétrole. Il vient du bambou. Une plante capable de pousser jusqu’à 1 mètre par jour et connue pour absorber d’énormes quantités de CO₂. Les chercheurs expliquent aussi que ce nouveau plastique pourrait être utilisé pour : Des emballages, des objets du quotidien, des composants industriels, et même certaines pièces automobiles. Donc on ne parle pas d’un “plastique écologique fragile”. Les tests montrent une résistance impressionnante, supérieure à certains plastiques déjà utilisés aujourd’hui. Et même après recyclage… Le matériau conserverait encore environ 90 % de sa solidité. Évidemment, il reste encore des défis. Les 50 jours de dégradation dépendent de conditions précises et les tests à grande échelle sont encore en cours. Mais une chose est sûre : Le simple fait qu’un matériau biodégradable puisse rivaliser avec le plastique pétrolier aurait semblé impossible il y a encore quelques années. Et si le futur du plastique venait finalement… du bambou ?

You gotta be eating in every one of these posts....yes its a schtick but it works....Canada is already being turned into a joke being lead by a literal carny (slurr for carnival game worker)....only way through is to lean in and reverse the momentum...old people are already showed you their vote... but the younger generation is ready to move

Tell Big Brother and Mark Carney to butt out. Sign here: conservative.ca/cpc/stop-onlin…

Stop killing this plant! 🫣

@JohnCleese Literally the gayest belief system on Earth....though doth protest too much doesn't even begin to cover it

Mad as hatters And they plan to supplant all other belief systems

When the mushrooms glow like amethysts in the wild… The Cortinarius Magellanicus fungi.

@RobLogic Wo....

A lovely female Yellow Warbler that is nesting in my backyard. I can't see the nest as it's too deep in the cattails, but I've been seeing her flying in and out of the marsh.

@JasminLaine_ Cults are never known for their logic and consistency

So let me get this straight: when people from other nations claim asylum, or spend their entire life savings moving to Canada for a better life, the left cheers and applauds them. They are offered warm welcomes, compassion, and “you’re an inspiration”. But when Canadians so much as even travel to the USA, or ponder about moving there for a better life, the left viciously attacks them with smears, “you’re a traitor”, “Good, you’re not wanted”, “Get the F@&$ out”, “you’re not Canadian”.

@elonmusk Best accidental endorsement of a movement ever....extra stupidity of this amidst the controversy if Chris Nolan's Oddyssey and Helen of Troy casting....it's like we have mythical and historical evidence of glamorous women literally changing history...absolute perfection

Craziness

You think the yard ends at the grass line. But the real work is happening entirely out of sight. Every square foot of topsoil is managed by a localized sanitation and recycling department. They aren't just living in the dirt—they are manufacturing it. An earthworm acts as a heavy-duty aerator, eating its own weight in soil and dead roots every day to leave behind nutrient-dense castings. A pillbug—which is actually a terrestrial crustacean, not an insect—safely digests heavy metals from the soil, purifying the ground as it breaks down dead leaves. A millipede serves as the primary leaf shredder, turning tough autumn foliage into manageable pieces for smaller microbes to process. 🪱 A springtail operates on a microscopic level, grazing on fungal spores to prevent mold from completely overtaking damp soil. An earwig uses its pincers not to attack humans, but to fold its wings and navigate tight soil crevices, scavenging soft decaying matter and insect eggs. An ant colony excavates massive architectural networks, turning over more soil in a year than a commercial rototiller while distributing native seeds. A beneficial nematode acts as invisible population control, hunting down fungus gnat larvae and root-destroying grubs in the dark. A soil centipede navigates the subterranean crevices as a blind apex predator, keeping the populations of smaller grazers from exploding and unbalancing the ecosystem. A mycorrhizal fungus isn't an animal at all, but a living transport grid, connecting tree roots together to trade water for sugar across the yard. 🌿 Nine species. Nine sanitation roles. None of them take a day off. All of them operating right beneath your shoes. The yard is a factory. The soil is the assembly line. 🌱 #SoilHealth #BackyardEcology #Decomposers

@JohnCleese So gross

No, it's just that he can't allow anything which upsets Muslims because those are the only votes he's going to get

This is impossible and amazing....this is the absolute dream