Good News Notes: “The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss — not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy. The company uses small molecules to program progenitor cells, a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear, to create the tiny hair cells that allow…
Category: discovery
Scientists Rewind The Clock of Human Skin Cells to Make Them Act 30 Years Younger
Good News Notes: “It’s not quite the mythical fountain of youth but it is, perhaps, a start: Scientists have managed to engineer human skin cells to reverse 30 years of aging, resetting them to a much more youthful state in terms of certain molecular measurements. While it’s very early days for the research – so…
Facing disastrous floods, they turned to mangrove trees for protection
Good News Notes: “As sea levels rise, eroding embankments and pushing water closer to their doorsteps, the residents of the hundreds of villages in the Sundarbans — an immense network of rivers, tidal flats, small islands and vast mangrove forests straddling India and Bangladesh — have found their lives and livelihoods at risk. In the…
Sightings of vaquita porpoises kindle hope for endangered species’ rescue
Good News Notes: “A group of scientists sighted at least nine vaquita marina porpoises in the upper Gulf of California in late 2021, leading the chairman of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) to declare that there is still hope for the critically endangered species. During a five-day period in October and November, scientists on…
‘Lost’ Bat Rediscovered After 40 Years
Good News Notes: “A bat previously believed extinct is now back from the dead. Researchers announced March 8 that they had spotted Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli) for the first time in 40 years. “Rediscovering Hill’s horseshoe bat was incredible – it’s astonishing to think that we’re the first people to see this bat in so long,” Bat Conservation…
Japanese bird researcher 1st in the world to prove animals use words, grammar
Good News Notes: “A Japanese researcher studying a bird common to the country’s forests and urban parks has proven for the first time that animals communicate using words and grammar. Toshitaka Suzuki, a 38-year-old assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Hakubi Center for advanced research, first became interested in Japanese tits — each about 15 centimeters…
Could wind turbines help to enliven our warming waters?
Good News Notes: Offshore wind is set to move further and further from shore, as demand for renewable energy grows and new floating turbine technology makes deep-water expansion possible. However, for the first time, large areas of the UK continental shelf now open for development are “seasonally stratified”. David Attenborough has described these seasonal seas as some of the…
Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Ehancement Reduces Opioid Misuse and Chronic Pain
Good News Notes: “Guidelines recommend treating individuals living with chronic pain who also have a history of opioid misuse with nonopioid therapies. Mindfulness-based interventions are an option, but the efficacy of these practices haven’t been determined for this population. Investigators decided to address this gap by evaluating the impact of mindfulness-oriented recovery enhancement (MORE) for the reduction…
Solar cell innovation generates 1,000x more power
Good News Notes: “The photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a lattice. This has been revealed in a study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). They achieved this by creating crystalline layers of barium titanate, strontium titanate and…
Coral resiliency offers encouraging signs despite warming oceans
Good News Notes: “Corals, forecast for doom in many future climate scenarios, could be more resilient to rising temperatures and ocean acidification than scientists once thought. New research, in which scientists spent 22 months studying several types of corals in Hawaii, suggests that several species, absent other stressors, could survive even if the world warms…