Quick catch up of last week's most important good news about medicine, health, wellbeing, nature conservation and clean energy.
'Central Park Karen': Do you remember a news story from a few years back when a black man was enjoying some bird watching in New York's Central Park and a woman wrongfully and maliciously accused him of being threatening? Well, because of that incident he got a job presenting a show on NatGeo and last week he won an Emmy for it.
Medicine / Health
Universal Donor: Scientists are one step closer to making blood types universal. Using enzymes produced by bacteria (that almost all of us have in our guts already), the scientists were able to strip red blood cells of antigens and sugars that create distinctions between blood types.
Health Label: One of America's most senior health officials - Surgeon General Vivek Murthy - has called on the country to impose smoking-style warning labels on social media platforms. With allies on both sides of the aisle, the plea could get the support it needs to pass.
Healthy Ageing: A massive study of 2.3 million people has found that, independent of socio-economic factors, mental well-being may be the most important single aspect to healthy ageing and living longer lives. But a surprise finding (published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour) was that those who reported the best mental health and stress resilience, which boosted well-being, also seemed to eat more cheese.
Finnish Line: Finland’s multifaceted approach to preventing teenage abortions has proven highly effective, with a 66 percent reduction reported between 2000 and 2023. This large drop, owing to free contraception and obligatory sex education, serves as a model for public health programs. Meanwhile...
Mifepristone: All nine Supreme Court judges have dismissed a suit filed that contested access to the abortion drug mifepristone, which was approved for use by the FDA in 2000. Access to the pill will remain unchanged in states where abortion is legal.
Chimpanzees ‘Self-Medicate’: Wild chimpanzees eat plants that have pain-relieving and anti-bacterial properties to heal themselves, new research shows.
Nature Conservation
EU Landmark Vote: A new law to restore a fifth of the European Union’s land and sea by 2030 has been approved by the European Parliament, following months of delays. “Today’s vote is a massive victory for Europe’s nature and citizens who have been long calling for immediate action to tackle nature’s alarming decline,” said an environmental coalition led by WWF Europe.
Proof of Concept: At the beginning of 2023, Colorado began enforcing a 10 cent charge on all single-use plastic and paper bags at major retailers in the hope it would encourage the use of reusable ones. The result? 1.5 billion fewer plastic or paper shopping bags.
Scotland’s Rainforests: Plans to restore and expand Scotland’s last remaining rainforests just got a boost, with the news that volunteers have collected 2.2m rare native seeds. The haul is part of a three-year project to grow 1.5m native trees from seed. Many of the species included have unique genetics, and date back to the end of the last Ice Age.
New National Park: Australia's new 37,422-ha (145 square mile) Comeroo Station in NSW will provide habitat for at least 158 native species (12 of which are threatened), and boasts alluvial floodplains, wetlands, grasslands, woodlands, and Yantabulla Swamp, an internationally-recognised area that hosts up to 50,000 waterbirds at any one time.
Clean Energy
Concrete Idea: Researchers at MIT have come up with a new way to store energy inside a modified concrete. It's a tantalizing potential solution to the looming energy storage problem, as it could turn an entire house into a battery.
Upside Down Energy: Energy prices in France turned negative following a surge in renewable output last week. Negative energy prices are becoming increasingly common thanks to favourable weather and large-capacity renewable energy production. While it's a windfall for the environment, negative prices are also a symptom of storage solutions struggling to even out power availability over time.
Solar Efficiency Record: Oxford PV is setting the pace and pioneering the commercialisation of next-gen solar cells using ‘miracle material’ perovskite, and has just achieved a world record with solar efficiency of 26.9 percent for residential panels - a 1.9 percent improvement.
Today's Articles
Denmark Leads: Denmark has published the world's first plant-based diet action plan to radically reduce the country's climate footprint.
Hero Bangladeshi Doctor: Creates low-cost machine (that includes a shampoo bottle) to cut pneumonia mortality rates at his hospital by 75 percent.