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Researchers may have finally found a way to wean kids off junk food
Good nutrition is essential for everyone, but it’s especially important for growing teenagers. However, due to the attractive and addictive nature of junk food, public-health researchers have been struggling for decades to get teens to adopt healthier diets. One of the biggest obstacles is the Read More...
Scientists produced a human heart using a 3D printer and a patient’s own cells
While the number of people in need of a heart transplant is high, the number of available hearts for transplants are low. That’s a problem, one that researchers at Tel Aviv University believe they can fix via 3D printing. Recently, the researchers managed to successfully print an entire heart, Read More...
How books can be a powerful ‘punishment’ for those who commit hate crimes
In 2016, an old schoolhouse in Virginia that was once used for teaching black students during the era of segregation was sprayed with offensive graffiti. From the moment Prosecutor and Deputy Commonwealth Attorney Alejandra Rueda heard about the racist and anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled across the Read More...
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...