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When Alex Babich, 47, stood in his backyard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, craning his neck to look 35 feet into the sky, he wasn’t just staring at a sunflower. He was looking at his roots — and his future legacy. The flower, nicknamed “Clover” and confirmed Wednesday by Guinness World Records as the tallest sunflower ever measured, stretches as high as a telephone pole. Babich, born and raised in Ukraine, immigrated to the U.S. at age 14 in 1991 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Seven years ago, he started growing sunflowers as a symbol of his love for his home country. “Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine, so it’s special to me,” he said. Babich’s first sunflower was 13 feet tall, then 15, then 19. Quickly, he began asking himself, “How far can we take this?” He collected seeds from his tallest specimens to refine a genetic line, swapped seeds from other giant sunflower growers and formulated a secret plant feed he now calls a “family heirloom.” He planted each seed indoors under grow lights in the early spring before transferring them outside. Then he sketched a blueprint of a sunflower scaffold on a napkin and began building. Babich said the record-breaking flower was the result of “trial and error over years.” “It’s one of my kids,” he said. “You’re out there every day taking care of it.” Babich’s 10-year-old son also had an important contribution that earned the towering flower its name. He would climb onto the scaffolding and place four-leaf clovers on the sunflower’s leaves, for good luck. “I’m going to die someday, but the stories of this flower will live on,” he said. “My kids will be telling this story to the grandkids.” When measuring day came on Sept. 3, Babich was nervous. About 85 people had gathered to watch, including several master gardeners from a local university and representatives from the Allen County Department of Weights and Measures. Babich was on a WhatsApp call with a representative from Guinness World Records. A camera crew was filming, and a drone flew overhead. Even Icy D. Eagle, the mascot of the local Komets ice hockey team, was there, according to Guinness. They used a 40-foot cherry picker to measure the flower. Clover was 35 feet and 9 inches, 5 feet taller than the previous world record holder in Germany. “It’s very emotional,” Babich said. “It’s as good as it gets for someone who grows giants.” Growing up amid food shortages in Ukraine sparked Babich’s love for gardening. His affection for sunflowers deepened after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “We just pray that the war will end, that the killing will stop,” Babich said. “We just hope this inspires some people in the right places. It’s been long enough.” The sunflower has long been a national symbol representing peace in Ukraine, and since 2022, it has become a symbol of solidarity with the embattled country. In one viral video clip in the war’s early days, a Ukrainian woman confronted a Russian soldier, ultimately offering to “put sunflower seeds in your pocket so they grow when you die.” In 1996, ministers from the U.S., Russia and Ukraine planted sunflowers at the Pervomaysk missile base to mark the country’s nuclear weapon disarmament. In 1986, after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that later brought Babich’s family to the U.S., scientists planted sunflowers to remove toxins from the soil. Babich’s sunflower will soon be the star of a documentary, titled “Bloom,” planned for release this summer. In the meantime, Babich has started planting sunflowers around campsites he visited with his family and passing out seed packets to children at festivals. Plastered onto the seed packets are stickers with the words “Spread the love – sunflower seeds.” submitted by /u/l__o-o__l [link] [comments]

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Listening to happy tunes helped study participants with motion sickness get over their predisposition and recover better, according to new research. Motion sickness is a common condition that happens when you’re moving while sitting still, such as riding in a car. It occurs when our eyes, inner ear and body send conflicting messages to the brain, resulting in nausea, headaches, or breaking out in a cold sweat. Now, Chinese scientists studying ways for improving the condition have published a study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showing that playing different types of music may help people recover more effectively. Using a specially calibrated driving simulator, they induced car sickness in participants and then played different types of music while they tried to recover. Soft and joyful music produced the best recovery effects, while sad tunes were even less effective than doing nothing at all. “Motion sickness significantly impairs the travel experience for many individuals, and existing pharmacological interventions often carry side-effects such as drowsiness,” said study author Dr. Qizong Yue of Southwest University in China. “Music represents a non-invasive, low-cost, and personalized intervention strategy.” The researchers explained that feeling tense in anticipation of possible car sickness can trigger a physical reaction, bringing sickness on more quickly. Because music can be used to alleviate tension, Dr Yue and his team wondered if it could help people who get carsick. The team began by developing a model to induce motion sickness. They recruited 40 participants to screen routes on a driving simulator and chose the most effective route for making people feel carsick. 30 people who reported moderate levels of previous carsickness then wore electroencephalogram (EEG) caps, to try to identify quantifiable signals of carsickness in the brain’s activity. They were divided into six groups – four that received a music intervention, one that received no music, and one whose simulators were stopped when they started to report that they might feel slightly carsick. The last group acted as a comparative sample for the EEG data. They had received the same stimuli as the other 25 participants, but weren’t allowed to become nauseous, so the difference between their brain activity and the other participants’ would help identify signals characteristic of carsickness. To begin with, the participants sat still in the simulator for a few minutes to capture EEG signals from their brains. Then they performed a driving task and reported their level of carsickness to the research team. Once they stopped driving, the participants in the music groups were played tunes for 60 seconds, and then asked to report how sick they felt. Joyful music alleviated carsickness by 57% The scientists found that joyful music alleviated carsickness the most, reducing it by 57.3%—followed very closely by soft music, at 56.7%. Passionate music reduced motion sickness by 48.3%, while playing sad music turned out to be slightly worse than doing nothing. The control group reported a reduction of carsickness symptoms by 43.3% after their rest, while those who listened to sad music reported a reduction of just 40%. The EEG data showed that participants’ brain activity in the occipital lobe changed when they reported carsickness, measureing less complex activity in this brain region when participants said they felt quite sick. The better the said they felt as they recovered, the more the activity measured by the EEG returned to normal levels. Joyful or soft music? The researchers believe it’s possible that soft music relaxes people, relieving the tension that exacerbates carsickness, while joyful music might distract people by activating brain reward systems. But sad music could have the opposite effect, by amplifying negative emotions and increasing overall discomfort. The researchers say further work with a larger sample size is needed to confirm the results. They plan to follow up the experiments with investigations of different forms of travel-sickness and the role played by personal musical taste. “Based on our conclusions, individuals experiencing motion sickness symptoms during travel can listen to cheerful or gentle music to achieve relief,” said Dr. Yue, who believes the findings of this study would “likely extend to motion sickness experienced during air or sea travel,” as well. submitted by /u/mement0m0ri [link] [comments]

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The UK’s climate-aid spending on “nature protection and restoration” reached record levels of nearly £800m last year, according to government figures obtained by Carbon Brief. The data suggests the UK is on track to achieve its five-year pledge to provide £3bn in nature-related funds for developing countries by 2026. Funding for forest protection has also increased, but will need to rise by an additional £100m this year in order to meet the target of £1.5bn, within the £3bn total. The latest figures, provided to Carbon Brief via freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, include climate-aid contributions to forest-dense regions, from the Amazon to the Congo Basin. By far the largest slice of last year’s finance – amounting to almost half of forest funds – came from a £153.9m project supporting controversial carbon-offsetting schemes in developing countries. This is one of the largest donations the UK has made to a nature-and-forests project since 2021, outstripping others that have been underway for years. submitted by /u/carbonbrief [link] [comments]

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