Another major fast-food chain has announced new items made of faux-meat
It was only a couple years ago that faux-meat was a niche outsider in the world of food. These days, meat alternatives are going full-blown mainstream after the second fast-food chain in two weeks announced new menu items that are made using plant-based meat. The trend started when Burger King Read More...
A new WWF program is persuading poachers to save the snow leopard in Russia
When American researcher Rodney Jackson of the Snow Leopard Conservancy donated 20 motion-activated camera traps to his Russian colleagues, the hope was that they would be able to snap some photos of endangered snow leopards and learn more about them. After two years, however, not a single leopard Read More...
These three strategies will help you beat procrastination
One explanation for why procrastination can rule our lives and pull us in has to do with a behavioral economics term called “time inconsistency.” Time inconsistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards. When you make plans for Read More...
This smartphone app lets farmers control where their cows graze from afar
When left alone, livestock will often cluster in certain areas of a field while leaving other regions alone. That causes some sections to be overeaten, which makes the grass and soil there less healthy over time. The neglected areas—left to overgrow and develop weeds, and without the benefits Read More...
A new mandate in Boston could lead to more protected bike lanes across America
In many European cities, bicycles are king. Bicyclists have their own lanes, they have the right of way, and the city tries to do everything they can do to support bicycle-riding. In America, it’s a much different story, with cars dominating the roads and respect for bike lanes being Read More...
Tesla’s new Gigafactory is as high-tech as you might have expected—and more
When it’s fully complete, Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, will be the largest building in the world, sprawling over 15 million square feet on a plot of land more than three times larger than Central Park. The building, which Elon Musk has called “the machine that builds the machine,” Read More...
This is what makes the Impossible Burger look and taste like real beef
At the Optimist Daily, we tend to write quite a bit about meat alternatives. After all, getting people to eat less meat (thus creating less emissions) by offering faux meat that looks and tastes just like the real thing seems to be working pretty well. Just look at Impossible Foods, which has Read More...
Scientists come up with device that generates electricity from snowfall
These days it seems scientists are finding ways to produce energy out of just about anything, from sunlight and wind to waves and cow manure. Generating electricity from falling snow can now be added to that list after scientists at UCLA developed a small device that does just that. Apparently, Read More...
Community solar projects are finally including low-income households
Although community solar projects are on the rise in America, there’s one major flaw: less than half of US community solar projects have any participation from low-income households, and of the projects that do include lower-earning families, only about 5 percent involved a sizable share above 10 Read More...
The ‘electric quadricycle’ could soon replace delivery trucks in busy cities
The air quality is really bad in cities like London and the traffic is really slow. Meanwhile, with the growth of online shopping, there are more and more delivery trucks clogging the streets. That's where Electric Assisted Vehicles, or EAV, come in to play. The company just introduced an electric Read More...