Crystals made of proteins help cure cancer Crystals made of proteins are revolutionizing cancer research and treatment. They are not the usual crystals found in nature made of minerals but are man-made in a laboratory. They are tiny, clear and colorless, barely visible to the naked eye. As they are also very fragile, they break easily. So […]
Skin-to-skin Contact Helps Child Development The human touch, in this case skin-to-skin contact, sometimes called “kangaroo care”, is essential for healthy physical and psychological development. Holding a newborn, and even more so a premature baby, against skin on the chest of an adult, usually a parent, increases the probability that the baby will grow healthier across the board. Many studies […]
In Japan, the city of Fukuoka is using human sewage to fuel hydrogen-powered cars. It’s part of the Fukuoka Hydrogen Leader City Project to achieve a hydrogen society. And it’s the first project in the world to produce sewage-powered cars. Fukuoka sends the human sewage produced by its 1.55 million citizens to a sewage treatment plant, where biogas generated from […]
Have you heard of plants capable of extracting minerals from the ground while stopping erosion and decontaminating the soil? That’s what plants called hyperaccumulators do. A hyperaccumulator is a plant that can grow in places containing very high levels of metals, absorbing them through their roots. They concentrate extremely high levels of metals in their tissues. […]
A large seabird is causing quite a flutter of excitement. She is around 65 years old and just gave birth to her 40th chick. That feat has scientists calling this bird “an iconic symbol of inspiration and hope”; most Laysan Albatrosses live a maximum of 40 years and are thought to be infertile later in life. So this […]
AeroFarms is revolutionizing agriculture. It’s on a mission to “combat our global food crisis by leveraging our patented technology and farming locally”. How? Since 2004, AeroFarms has been operating vertical indoor farms. So what is a vertical farm? As The Good Times reported back in June 2012, “It’s indoor farming, like the concept of greenhouses, but on […]
Mark Pollock is blind and paralysed and testing robotic legs as part of his mission to find a cure for paralysis. He is using his personal experience of a devastating spinal cord injury to spur change around the world. What is Mark’s story? At the age of 22 he became blind. Yet this did not deter him from competing in endurance […]
The sad state of our oceans – vast garbage patches floating in the oceans’ subtropical gyres (places where ocean currents accumulate garbage, especially plastic bottles), oil spills from boats and other sources, and other pollutants – has people and companies coming together to find solutions. Two such solutions, one in the open ocean and one […]
Reading literary fiction is beneficial. It makes people more empathetic, socially perceptive and emotionally intelligent. That’s what a study entitled “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” published in Science, the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, shows. The research also indicates that reading popular fiction or serious non-fiction does not produce the […]
Should Western companies adopt jugaad innovation? Jugaad is a Hindi word that translates to finding a low-cost, creative, quick and alternative way of solving or fixing problems. It promotes constructive and different thinking about innovation and strategy. It’s an Indian way of improvising, sometimes expressed as, “making do with what you have”. In India, the concept of jugaad is […]
