The world is good

2021-10-04 10:09:35 Open / Comment

2021-10-04 10:09:25 Dutch supermarket introduces “chat checkouts” to combat loneliness

Jumbo, a Dutch ƒsupermarket chain, has come up with a simple and creative solution to combat the widespread issue of loneliness by opening tills where clients can stop and chat instead of being rushed to pay and gather their shopping.

The very first “Kletskassa,” which translates to “chat checkout,” opened in 2019 in Vlijmen in Brabant. It was part of a health ministry program designed to encourage companies, organizations, and local councils to pick up on the signs of loneliness among the elderly early, and collaborate to come up with innovative solutions to address it.

The chat checkout was so successful that the group decided to plan 200 more to be put into operation in a year’s time, each one placed carefully in areas where loneliness is a significant issue.

“Many people, the elderly in particular, can feel lonely. As a family business and supermarket chain, we have a central role in society. Our shops are a meeting place and that means we can do something to combat loneliness. The Kletskassa is just one of the things we can do,” says Jumbo CCO Colette Cloosterman-Van Eerd.

The Netherlands is home to around 1.3 million people over the age of 75, half of whom report feeling lonely regularly.

“We are proud our staff wants to work the chat checkout,” Cloosterman-Van Eerd declares. “They really want to help people and make contact with them. It’s a small gesture but it’s a valuable one, particularly in a world that is becoming more digital and faster.”

To supplement the chat checkout, several Jumbo supermarkets are also introducing a “chat corner,” that offers locals a space to sip on coffee while catching up with each other. Open / Comment

2021-10-03 10:04:40 Open / Comment

2021-10-03 10:04:31 Scientists develop a snake-inspired battery that could help save lives

Coming from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, a novel battery design opens up new possibilities for the future of energy storage by bending and stretching like a snake.

Inspired by the morphology of serpents, the innovative design is intended to open new doors in the world of soft robotics, wearable electronics, or other applications where flexibility is an advantage, including disaster rescue operations.

The idea behind the design is to provide a more malleable energy storage solution for wearable devices and robots, where hard-but-small batteries link together to create an overlapping scale-like structure that can bend and stretch with the device.

As reported by New Atlas, the team used small, hexagonal-shaped lithium-ion battery cells to form the “scales”. The researchers then electrically connected the batteries with polymer and copper materials, which also acted as a hinge mechanism to enable stable deformations without incurring damage.

In tests, the stretchable battery proved it could maintain its performance even when bent out of shape and subjected to a stretching ratio of 90 percent, across more than 36,000 cycles.

These unique abilities to stretch and bend could see the battery find uses in wearable medical devices, such as those used to help in the rehabilitation of elderly patients. Additionally, the flexible battery could also find use in the design of search and rescue robots that need to work their way through narrow spaces in disaster settings. Open / Comment

2021-10-01 11:33:43 Open / Comment

2021-10-01 11:33:35 CRISPR gene-editing restores vision in patients with rare eye disease

Researchers from the Casey Eye Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University are reporting the successful use of CRISPR gene-editing to restore vision for patients with a rare eye disease. Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, is an uncommon genetic form of vision impairment, but seven patients are seeing clearer following an experimental DNA modification study.

CRISPR has been used successfully to treat patients with sickle cell disease, but this is the first time it has been used in this type of application. Presenting the results at an International Symposium on Retinal Degeneration, Dr. Mark Pennesi explained how the team used a harmless virus to ferry the CRISPR gene editor and billions of the modified viruses into patients’ retinas. The procedure was done in one eye of each patient.

Although the procedure was not successful in all patients, researchers are not sure if this is due to too low of a dosage or because of something else. More research is needed, but for those whom it did work, they are reporting the ability to see shapes and colors for the first time in years.

LCA is a degenerative disease, slowly reducing vision over time, but participant Michael Kalberer celebrated being able to see the strobe lights change color at his cousin’s wedding. Another participant, Carlene Knight, reports that she can more safely navigate her home and workplace. Open / Comment

2021-09-30 10:56:06 Open / Comment

2021-09-30 10:55:58 This middle school has its own mini grocery store to battle food insecurity

Gunna’s Drip Closet And Goodr Grocery Store operates much like other grocery stores. It has food and household essentials with regular operating hours, but there are a few key differences between this shop and your local corner store. For one thing, everything is free. For another, it’s located inside a Georgia middle school.

This innovative approach to addressing food insecurity is a collaboration between food waste company Goodr and rap star Gunna. Located in Ronald McNair Middle School in Atlanta, the store has healthy food options, fresh produce, and toiletries. Students can use an app to reserve their shopping time and are even provided with a free reusable tote to take home what they need. Parents are also given the opportunity to use the store and can even use the app to request items they would like to see offered.

Social entrepreneur and Goodr CEO Jasmine Crowe told NPR, “We were really conscious of making sure that we were providing items that the kids could make themselves because the principal let us know that a lot of these kids, when they leave school, they are essentially adults that are making the meals.”

Gunna, who was once a student at Ronald McNair Middle, has committed to funding the store forever. He and Crowe also plan to pursue more partnerships to bring similar stores to more schools around the country. An estimated 17 million children experience food insecurity in the US. Solutions like this help ensure that children get the nutrients they need while alleviating the stress of not knowing where their next meal is coming from. Open / Comment

2021-09-29 10:41:20 Open / Comment

2021-09-29 10:41:11 Blue food can help meet increasing global food demand sustainably

As global food demand is expected to grow by almost 60 percent by 2050, there’s an urgent need to feed the future world population in a way that doesn’t put too much pressure on the planet. According to five new studies, blue food could play a key role in feeding the world sustainably.

Blue food refers to anything that has been captured or grown in the water. As shown by the five peer-reviewed studies, tapping into the potential of fisheries and aquaculture could be an essential component in our efforts to deliver healthy diets and create more sustainable and resilient food systems across the world.

As highlighted by the research papers, global demand for seafood is expected to double by 2050. This increase in demand will need to be met with more aquaculture and farming instead of traditional fishing which, when done unsustainably, has been linked to environmental degradation.

By investing in new technology and improving practices at fisheries, the researchers estimate that the seafood supply could increase yearly by eight percent — that’s about 13.6 more tonnes of seafood in supply, which would help reduce world hunger by 166 million cases.

“For the first time we pulled together data from hundreds of studies on a wide range of seafood species,” says author Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Not only is seafood more sustainable than food sources linked to on-land farming, but it’s also more nutritious. For instance, trout has 19 times more omega-3 fatty acids than chicken, while oysters and mussels are 76 times richer in vitamin B-12 and have five times more iron and carp has nine times more calcium, according to the authors.

Directing our efforts at slashing production costs and increasing accessibility of blue foods, “there will likely be a shift away from land-based foods like chicken, beef, and dairy,” explains Halpern.

“I think what made us really excited is knowing that aquatic food could be a useful solution to combating malnutrition, and really showing that comprehensively for the first time,” added Halpern.

With that said, relying on the ocean for our food has its problems, with fishing being regarded as one of the leading drivers of declines in ocean marine animal populations. According to WWF, “Catching fish is not inherently bad for the ocean, except for when vessels catch fish faster than stocks can replenish, something called overfishing.”

However, as noted by an author of one of the BFA studies, there are plenty of opportunities for reducing the impact of existing blue food systems, such as tweaking our diets to include more species with lower environmental footprints. Open / Comment