May 26, 2020
The Optimist Daily Update with Summers McKay & Kristy Jansen - Your weekday commute update from The Optimist Daily featuring our top 5 positive news solutions from independent, reader-funded, journalists. Listen in to start your day with a positive solutions mindset and share with someone else who Read More...
New agreement helps protect migrating monarch butterflies
Every year millions of monarch butterflies migrate from northern and eastern U.S. and Canada to spend winter in southern California and Mexico. Now, these threatened species are getting a little more help along the way, thanks to an agreement between The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Read More...
US graduates are turning their regalia into PPE to help front-line workers
Virtual graduation ceremonies will be the norm this year, but front-line physician assistant Nathaniel Moore, doesn’t want graduates to let their hard-earned regalia to go to waste — he’s urging recent graduates to wear the cap and donate the gown. Moore founded a charity called Gowns 4 Read More...
South Korea is on a mission to transform from carbon villain to model
A year ago, Soyoung Lee was one of a crowd of climate activists demonstrating on the streets of Seoul in a campaign inspired by the global school strike founder Greta Thunberg. Today, the 35-year-old lawyer is the youngest member of the South Korean parliament and a driving force in the Read More...
How AI can save the American West this fire season
The American West is heading into the dry season, but AI could help firefighters predict where fires are likely to break out for a less devastating fire season. A new deep-learning model maps out landscape dryness and the amount of burnable material across 12 states to get ahead of destructive Read More...
Capturing isolation: This is the best of COVID-19 lockdown photography
With billions of people subjected to some level of stay-at-home order over the past couple of months, the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered one of the most profound shared global experiences humanity has ever seen. That’s why photography social network Agora called out to its diverse community to Read More...
How to deal with parental stress as the summer looms closer
If you are a parent, it’s been a challenging few months, to say the least. Life has asked you to play many roles: Full-time parent, full-time teacher, and perhaps full-time employee, too. Now summer is looming—and while some parts of the world are opening up, there is a good chance you will be Read More...
Researchers find regular exercise improves memory
Researchers have pondered the connection between exercise and brain health for years. While it seems clear the two are related, researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have now identified a concrete connection between aerobic exercise and memory. Aerobic exercise Read More...
To save the Amazon rainforest, scientists turn to reverse-engineering
With software, taking something apart and putting it back together again can help engineers improve their understanding of the underlying source code of their software. In structural engineering, the same methods can determine the cause of potentially fatal design flaws. This is known as Read More...
This floating hybrid platform harvests energy from wind, solar, and waves
Generating renewable energy from offshore farms is a great way for coastal communities to get off the grid and source their power in an eco-friendly way. Soon that may become a possibility for more coastal areas around the world, thanks to a recently developed modular floating maritime platform Read More...