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Self-cleaning paint makes soap superfluous
Imagine washing your car only with a hose without any soap or scrubbing the dirt off. A research team at the University College of London has developed a water-repelling paint. The active ingredient in the paint is coated titanium dioxide nanoparticles. These cause liquid to bead up and roll off Read More...
Robots are cleaning up Fukushima power plant
Four years after a tsunami caused hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the area is still not considered safe for humans. Thankfully, robots don’t mind a little radiation exposure. That’s why the clean-up of toxic waste and contaminated debris is now being carried out by specially designed Read More...
Farming for dummies: Grow your lettuce in a recycled container
Are you worried about food supplies? Or do you want to save money by growing your own food? Now you can start a farm in your parking lot. Just rent a farm in a box, a CropBox. In this recycled shipping container you can grow as much lettuce as on an acre of land. You don’t need to spend Read More...
Bitcoins: Goldman Sachs sees the writing on the wall
Why would we write about a boring report by a bank in The Optimist Daily? Because the report is on bitcoins and the bank is Goldman Sachs, an important pillar of modern finance. “Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are part of a technology ‘megatrend’ that could change the fundamental mechanics of Read More...
Doctors who lie help patients heal faster and live longer
Research has shown it time and again: Fake medicine works on the body because the mind believes it’s working. That’s the famous placebo effect. Now scientists are discovering that a doctor’s words also affect our biology. When doctors convey bad news—“you’ve only so many months to Read More...
European Union shows surprising progress on renewable energy
Governments are not known to be successful in meeting their targets. But here’s a surprising fact: The 28 states of the European Union are well under way to realize their target to generate 20% of the EU’s energy in 2020 from renewables. According to new data from the EU’s statistical agency, Read More...
A new health center in Haiti is built to tackle cholera
Five years after Haiti’s worst cholera outbreak, a newly opened cholera treatment center in Port-au-Prince has been designed to battle the highly contagious disease. This open-air center “is framed by ocean-hued walls that allow light and air to sweep through the space, adding cooling cross Read More...
Turning complaints into solutions
As an intelligent optimist, you may not be the world’s worst complainer. However, we all complain—it’s natural. But whenever we make negative statements, our brains release stress hormones, harming neural connections in areas used for cognitive functions such as problem-solving. So learn how Read More...
Vegetarian diet lowers colon cancer risk
A vegetarian diet may cut your risk of colorectal cancer by 22%. For vegetarians who eat fish that risk decreases even further: 43%. These are findings from a study by the Loma Linda University in California that involved more than 77,000 adults. Other studies have linked eating red and processed Read More...
The electric car makes driving cheap
A massive switch to electric cars is not just good news for the environment. It’s good news for your wallet as well. The average driver may save up to $1,700 a year. A study by Cambridge Economics has calculated that electric cars would result in a 40% reduction of oil imports for a country like Read More...