Month: February 2025

Sydney Pelusio is a busy wife and mother of two. She faced a life-threatening health crisis in March 2024.

The active runner initially thought she had the flu when she experienced general fatigue and overall sickness. After three days, her family urged her to seek medical help. IV and generic medication wasn’t helping. Instead, her condition worsened and she was rushed to Unity Hospital.

“I think an hour and 15 minutes after arriving at Unity is when I was already in the cath lab and had cardiac arrest,” she recounted.

Doctors diagnosed her with myocarditis, a condition triggered by a virus that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. Her immune system was attacking her heart.

“In the setting of a heart attack, you say time is muscle, so the longer you wait, the more the heart muscle dies and these situations, we were looking just to keep Sydney alive,” said Dr. Cameron Hall, an interventional cardiologist at Rochester Regional Health.

Sydney’s life was saved by Impella, the world’s smallest heart pump. “It’s an implantable device that goes through the arteries. It gets into the heart, and it actively pumps blood out of the heart and into the body, and it keeps the body alive,” Dr. Hall explained.

See the full coverage: Mother runs half-marathon less than one year after cardiac arrest

A handful of school buses in northern Illinois will soon have a new summer job.

ComEd is the latest utility to explore whether electric school buses could help manage the grid when school is out of session and air conditioners are humming.

Under such vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, arrangements, electric school buses charge up at night when power is cheap and plentiful, then discharge electricity to the grid when local power demand is high. This infusion can alleviate the need to fire up natural gas peaker plants, buy expensive power on the market, or even build new power plants.

The buses basically act as batteries attached to the grid, in a win-win situation where school districts are paid for the service and utilities get power that is cheaper and possibly cleaner than what they could otherwise acquire during peak hours.

V2G projects are still in nascent and pilot-project stages, and significant challenges exist. The grid needs to communicate seamlessly with the bus charging station, and operators must make sure bus batteries are ready when needed and that the grid isn’t overloaded by local bursts of energy. Standards and certifications for V2G technology and practice are also still in early stages.

ComEd has proposed a pilot project launching this spring and running through 2025 in partnership with the San Diego-based company Nuvve, which also has led V2G pilots in California, Delaware, and New York as well as in Europe and Asia. While the ComEd pilot will only involve four electric school buses in three different northern Illinois school districts, it could pave the way for widespread V2G in an area with hot summers, air pollution problems, and lots of students.

“We’re in an environment where for the first time in 25 years, the load on the grid is increasing, driven by heat pumps, data centers, [and] EVs,” Poilasne said. ​“It’s not just load increasing; it’s the volatility of these loads. The generation is volatile; the load is volatile. You need to design a system for peaks” that last a short time but can skyrocket electricity costs.

Read the full article: Electric school buses could help power Illinois’ grid

February is American Heart Month, and we have an incredible story of survival that happened right here in Tampa. A man suffered a heart attack, coded three times, and underwent multiple surgeries. He is now back to living his life, thanks to an innovative medical device that is quickly gaining attention.

That device is called an Impella. Cardiovascular doctors at Tampa General Hospital explained that it’s a temporary heart pump saving lives in the Tampa Bay area.

Lives like Charles Black. On July 16, 2024, Charles went to play golf as if it was any other hot summer day. That golf trip ended with him in the hospital, where he proceeded to fight for his life throughout the next few weeks.

He had a heart attack, coded three times, was life-flighted to different hospitals, and had multiple surgeries. One of those critical interventions was the insertion of the Impella. Dr. Lucian Lozonchi explained that the Impella draws blood from the left ventricle and pumps it into the aorta, boosting blood flow throughout the body and giving the heart a chance to rest and recover.

“Then the pump was removed, and his heart recovered. It was really weak, but we were able to keep him alive,” Dr. Lozonchi said.

Ultimately, that tiny device gave Charles his life back. Now, he carries the Impella in a key chain as a reminder that every day is a gift. Meanwhile, his wife was emotional as she recalled the days at the hospital, hoping and praying her husband would be okay. She said she is forever thankful for the medical staff and their techniques.

See the full coverage: Life-saving innovation: Tampa man shares heart attack survival story

Nuvve Holding Corp. just announced a new collaborative pilot program with Resource Innovations and ComEd to explore the benefits of bidirectional charging using electric school buses. The project will power more than 4.3 million ComEd customers and three school districts across northern Illinois.

Running through the end of Q4 2025, the pilot aims to assess the environmental, societal, and grid impacts of integrating vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology into clean transportation. It will evaluate how to deploy energy stored in the batteries of electric school buses to enhance grid stability and reduce energy costs. Further, it aims to demonstrate Nuvve’s technology, offering the study harnessing energy stored in vehicle’s battery for use during peak times and bolstering energy efficiency for school districts and local communities.

“ComEd is excited to launch the Vehicle-to-Grid pilot program in 2025 as we continue with our mission … to advance the equitable adoption of EVs here in northern Illinois,” said Scott Vogt, VP of strategy and energy policy for ComEd. “V2G is the next frontier in our work to support local school districts on developing plans that will help lower emissions, upgrade their fleets, and implement the benefits of EVs and their related infrastructure affordably. We look forward to working with Nuvve, Resource Innovations, and various stakeholders in the region to deploy new technologies that will help bring the environmental and economic benefits of electric school buses into more communities.”

ComEd’s V2G pilot comes as part of the company’s Beneficial Electrification investments, setting forward a number of customer EV rebate and education programs and pilots to help inform future planning and support a growing customer demand for EVs and their related infrastructure. Since last year, these have helped add 3,500 EV charging ports across the region, and 200 added EV fleet vehicles, including numerous school buses.

Read the full article: Electric School Buses Put to the Test: V2G Charging Pilot Launches in IL

Nearly six million students are enrolled in K-12 schools across California, a system as vast and diverse as the state itself. But can one educational model meet every child’s unique needs? National School Choice Week 2025 is a time to reflect on the value of providing families with diverse options to find the best fit for their children’s education.

School choice allows families to address their children’s individual needs—whether it’s accessing specialized programs, schedules to fit a child’s learning style, or supportive learning environments – within the state’s various and vast urban, suburban, and rural communities. This freedom can be life-changing and offers students the chance to thrive in settings tailored to their unique strengths and challenges.

For example, 18-year-old artist Gianna Fenner discovered her passion for animation through a virtual learning model with California Virtual Academies (CAVA). Gianna struggled with academic anxiety but later thrived in an environment supportive of her talents, ultimately winning a national “My Senior Reel” competition and a scholarship to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Seventh-grader Kylie Mori escaped bullying and pursued her passion for photography, earning first place in the K12 Photography Competition. Their stories highlight the transformative power of school choice, which enables students to turn challenges into opportunities and achieve their goals.

Read the full article: Empowering California families through school choice

Clean energy electric vehicle charging tech firm Nuvve has said it will begin to buy Bitcoin by putting aside nearly a third of its spare cash.

The Nasdaq-listed company said in a Jan. 28 press release that it would “allocate up to 30% of its excess cash, calculated based on its estimated six-month operating expenses” toward buying Bitcoin.

Nuvve said adding Bitcoin will diversify its treasury holdings, and the move aligns with its goal of offering a Bitcoin payment option.

“BTC acceptance will promote more payment options for customers and suppliers with potentially less transactional friction inherent to digital currencies,” said Nuvve founder and CEO Gregory Poilasne.

Nuvve, which provides charging stations for EVs that can sell excess energy back to the grid and other energy storage solutions, joins a growing list of non-crypto publicly traded companies buying Bitcoin with an aim to bolster their treasury and share price as the cryptocurrency has gained 150% over the past year.

Shares in Nuvve (NVVE) closed up by 1.81% to $2.81 on Jan. 28 — down from a daily high of over $4, but its stock climbed 1.42% after hours to $2.85, per Google Finance.

Read the full article: EV energy tech firm Nuvve to start buying Bitcoin

February is American Heart Month, and Joe Sanchez’s story is raising awareness to practice heart health.

More than two years after undergoing lifesaving heart surgery, Joe Sanchez returned to his favorite place, the Imperial Beach Pier, to meet with the cardiothoracic surgeon and medical team who helped save his life.

A new high-tech help for young heart patients has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Doctors say this will allow them to save more lives, an important milestone as we kick off American Heart Month.

It’s a little device with a big job.

“It does all the work for your heart,” Katrina Penney, 21, said. “It did save my life, 100%.”

It is the Impella 5.5 – the world’s smallest heart pump that helps blood circulate.

“So, I had my Impella for five weeks,” she said. “I actually named my Impella, Ella.

“It’s very useful in the sense that actually it can be implantable without opening the chest,” Dr. Katsuhide Maeda with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said.

Maeda said the FDA has now approved the Impella that he put in Penney for use in younger children.

“We are so excited,” Maeda said. “This is a really like a, you know, game-changer.”

It’ll save more lives, Maeda added.

With the Impella, Penney survived until her second heart transplant in June of 2023.

“I know it’s crazy that this little tiny device — and this being probably the size of my fingernail — can completely save someone’s life, which is just incredible,” Penney said.

See the full coverage: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia doctor excited after world’s smallest heart pump FDA-approved for kids