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Total number of posts: 24039
The floating scarecrow saving seabirds from fishing nets
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A bird-shaped kite and a floating scarecrow with spinning eyes reduced seabird deaths in Cornish fishing nets by up to 71 percent in a two-year trial. The devices cost relatively little, don't require significant changes to how fishers work, and are already Read More...
Coffee's memory boosting effect might have nothing to do with caffeine, study suggests
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a small experiment, researchers found that only participants who drank decaffeinated coffee showed significant improvements on memory tests. Those who drank caffeinated coffee did not. The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that caffeine Read More...
Berlin mapped 900,000 street trees. Now 12,000 people water them.
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Amanda Gläser-Bligh named her street tree Linda. Linda is a linden, eight years old, growing outside Gläser-Bligh's apartment building in Charlottenburg, and once a week during Berlin's hot months, Gläser-Bligh makes a couple of trips up and down the Read More...
London's Oxford Street gets fully pedestrianized this month: here's what that means
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Oxford Street, one of the busiest shopping streets in the world, goes traffic-free on October 26. London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced the closure of the stretch from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street, nearly a kilometer (just under half a mile) through Read More...
Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri becomes Morocco's first woman prime minister
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM On September 29, King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as Morocco's prime minister, making the 50-year-old urban planner and longtime mayor of Marrakesh the first woman to hold the role in the kingdom's history. She is also the third woman to Read More...
How to choose running shoes: what a physical therapist wants you to know
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The running boom shows no sign of slowing, and the shoe market has followed with thicker foams, carbon-fiber plates, and marketing claims that more technology means less injury and faster times. Some of that holds up. A fair amount doesn't, and the gap Read More...
Social physiology: the hidden health cost of eating alone, according to science
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A study published in Science Advances found that eating the same meal with a close companion produces measurably better blood sugar control than eating it alone. In experiments with 108 participants, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Read More...
6 things that will bring more birds to your backyard this autumn
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM If you've ever caught a flash of movement in the branches in early October - something small and unfamiliar, not the usual backyard regulars - there's a good chance it was a migrating bird passing through and looking for somewhere to stop. Tens of millions Read More...
Wisconsin's first certified Shinrin-yoku trail is open to everyone
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Think about the last time you went for a walk in the woods. Were you listening to a podcast? Checking your step count? Moving fast enough to feel productive, already running through everything you needed to do when you got home? If any of that sounds Read More...
DeafCity Hub and the fight to build a space where sign language can live and thrive
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Sign language interpreters at rap concerts go viral for a reason. There's something genuinely arresting about watching BSL in full flight: the expressiveness, the grammar operating in three-dimensional space, a face carrying as much meaning as the hands. Read More...