5 ways to generate more positivity in the online world
Here at the Optimist Daily, our mission is to be a beacon of light in a world that seems to dwell too much on the doom and gloom. We don’t bring you stories about solutions and positive development because of some naive conception of how our world is. Rather, we bring you these stories because we Read More...
IBM is turning to AI to tackle Huntington’s disease
In the past months, we’ve seen a sharp rise in the possible applications of artificial intelligence in the medical world. From diagnosing brain tumors to detecting cervical cancer, the proposition of using AI to save lives is extremely to us. In that same vein, we have a new application of AI to Read More...
Scientists come up with a much greener way to make parts for airplanes
The extremely sturdy yet lightweight carbon-fiber materials used to build airplanes and spacecraft require a whole lot of energy to produce, which, in turn, creates a lot of emissions. The good news MIT engineers have recently figured out a way to create these aerospace-grade composites using Read More...
How this city in Illinois plans to stop homelessness by the end of the year
Less than a decade ago, more than 700 people were homeless in the small, 150,000 person city of Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago. By the end of the year, the city expects that number will have shrunk to essentially zero—making it the first community in the U.S. to end Read More...
Google is combining the largest solar deal ever with battery storage in Nevada
Running the cloud-based computing services that companies like Google offers is extremely energy-intensive. Fortunately for us, the energy-hungry companies that run these services seem more than willing to operate their data centers without using fossil fuels. In 2017 Google switched from just Read More...
Scientists can finally study the ocean floor thanks to these underwater drones
There is only one truly wild frontier remaining on Earth: the ocean floor. Seeing that it’s 2020, you might expect that we know a lot about the ocean. The reality, however, is that we’ve only explored 1 percent of it. That, however, is set to change after a team of geoscientists developed a way Read More...
How cacao trees are helping to stop illegal gold mining in the Amazon
Located in the far north of the Brazilian Amazon, Yanomami is Brazil’s biggest indigenous reserve, spread over 9.6 million hectares (23.7m acres). But its wild, mountainous forests are overrun by an estimated 20,000 wildcat gold miners, called garimpeiros. For the people of the Yanomami, this Read More...
Aerial firefighting at night is now possible with new high-altitude drop system
Since 1953, firefighters have been battling flames by flying planes low to the ground and dropping liquids or foams that can suppress fires. When we say low, we mean at between 100 and 120 ft (30 and 36 m). Such basement floor flying is extremely dangerous, but it's necessary because if the liquid Read More...
How positivity can literally make your brain work better
Positivity has the power to create transformational change in all facets of life. In praise of positivity’s wide-ranging power, we are dedicating this week to publishing a series of articles on the topic. To kick things off, we bring you a study from Stanford University about the effect of Read More...
Scientists have discovered 4 new species of walking shark
Scientists have identified four new species of walking shark in the waters off Australia and New Guinea. While that might sound like the stuff of horror films, researchers say that the foot-long fish, which have evolved to use their fins to walk on land or in shallow water, are actually adorable. Read More...