Digital collection makes the Louvre's artwork accessible to all
From Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to the French Crown Jewels, you can now immerse yourself into the Louvre’s extensive world of art and history from the comfort of your home — for free. Paris’ famed museum has recently announced that, while its doors remain closed due to the pandemic, it Read More...
Smart street radar system could soon help save lives on the road
While many cars today are equipped with radars that can detect pedestrians on the road, surrounding buildings or other cars in the area can block these systems and make them ineffective. In an effort to help overcome this challenge, a team of engineers is working on a radar that can be mounted on Read More...
This online platform is destigmatizing mental health in the Air Force
Yesterday’s Optimist View discussed the importance of mental health resources for first responders. Today we bring you a story with a similar theme from the US Air Force which is using an online mental health platform to make these services more widely available. The Air Force already offers Read More...
How Cool Food nudges consumers to eat more sustainable meals
Back in 2019, Genentech, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, partnered with Cool Food, a World Resources Institute (WRI) initiative, to see if they could cut the emissions by nudging employees towards purchasing more sustainable meals. At Genentech’s enormous headquarters, where Read More...
Kelp could replace corn and soy as a biofuel base
We’ve written about kelp as a tool for capturing carbon emissions, but it turns out these giant underwater forests could provide a solution for many of our environmental crises. Researchers from the University of Southern California have found that kelp could serve as a fast-growing and efficient Read More...
Pufferfish-inspired water purifier aims to tackle water scarcity
According to the World Wildlife Fund, some 1.1 billion people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water. To address this issue, scientists from the University of Princeton have developed an affordable solar panel water purifier that’s inspired by the pufferfish’s ability to Read More...
Harvard scientists thrilled with new personalized cancer vaccine
Although the pandemic has put many things on hold, it has also spurred advancement in a variety of fields. For instance, there’s been a lot of interest and investment in vaccine technology for coronavirus, but the Covid-19 virus is not the only illness we can fend off with the surge of new Read More...
Scientists engineer first synthetic cell that undergoes division and growth
What if we could engineer synthetic cells to develop into useful chemicals? Or “program” cells so that they perform specialized tasks on demand? After more than a decade of research, scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology Read More...
Meet Samantha Flores: The activist fighting loneliness among LGBTQ seniors
Many elderly people face loneliness and isolation, an issue that people of all ages will understand better having now experienced the social restrictions of the pandemic. For the elderly who identify with the LGBTQ community and came of age in a different era, the isolation can be even worse. Many Read More...
These are the best cannabis strains for improved sleep
A growing list of states are legalizing recreational marijuana and one of the most common uses for cannabis as a therapeutic medicine is as a sleep aid. Cannabis is widely used to help combat anxiety and promote deeper sleep without the use of prescription drugs. If you haven’t used cannabis Read More...