Science
From mathematics and AI to medicine and psychology, The Optimist Daily features the latest news on discoveries, technological advances, and breakthroughs in the world of science. Our Science section is here to engage and enlighten you.
Optimist View: Taking Ownership & Choosing A Better Future
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” - Octavia E. Butler BY KRISTY JANSEN We humans have had and will continue to have a profound effect on this planet and the biosphere. It's no longer debatable and that’s Read More...
MIT researchers are designing a machine to replicate a dog’s sense of smell
We recently shared a story about how robots can alleviate loneliness much like a pet. It turns out that robotics can replicate other great things canines do. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a machine that can emulate a dog’s acute sense of Read More...
NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars to search for extraterrestrial life
In an incredible interplanetary feat, NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars on Thursday. The touchdown, which took place on the red planet’s Jezero crater, marks the beginning of the agency’s most ambitious effort to directly investigate whether there was once life on our Read More...
Scientists use AI and smartphones to detect skin cancer highly accurately
The idea of using smartphones to detect potential skin cancers has been around for more than a decade, but until now, the technology hasn’t been advanced enough to challenge the accuracy of a trained dermatologist. Recently, however, researchers at MIT and Harvard developed deep learning Read More...
E-bikes will soon be available on a subscription basis in New York City
While e-bikes hold great potential to replace cars as a healthy way of commuting, they still come at a hefty price. In a bid to make this type of future transport more accessible, electric moped sharing company Revel has recently launched a monthly e-bike subscription service for New Read More...
Four benefits of Virtual Reality that go beyond entertainment
Although virtual reality has only been available to the everyday consumer for a few years now, the technology has progressed by leaps and bounds in terms of actually reaching a believable level of reality--one that we might expect to see in video games and movies. Even though VR is being Read More...
New telecom filtering technology could make scam calls a thing of the past
It goes without saying that scam calls are an incredible nuisance. But apart from being annoying, scammers also often get what they want — getting people on the other end of the line to lose significant amounts of money. Last year, for example, Australians lost about AU$48 million to Read More...
Brilliant invention provides light and drinking water at almost no cost
Amongst the cream of the crop of the Lexus Design Award 2021 is Henry Glogau’s ingenious contraption: a skylight that uses free sources of energy to light homes at night and distill seawater into safe drinking water. This no-cost, clean energy solution can provide basic services for Read More...
Scientists are designing self-charging wearables that heal themselves
What if your wearable gadgets could harvest body heat to power themselves so that they never ran out of battery? Soon, damaged chargers and lack of power outlets may be problems of the past as scientists come closer to creating wearable thermoelectric generators that are flexible, durable, Read More...
Experiment: Blue-green algae could help make life sustainable on Mars
As astronauts are preparing for the upcoming space missions to Mars, scientists are now hard at work to find ways to make the red planet as hospitable as possible for human settlement. A recent experiment has found that the good old blue-green algae may play a key role in achieving that Read More...