A dog owner says her pooch saved her life, by repeatedly pawing at her armpit, which eventually alerted her to breast cancer. The 61-year-old says her chihuahua Flag started the odd behavior years ago, constantly hitting the underside of her arm with his paw. She originally dismissed the behavior, until she spotted a small lump […] The post Chihuahua Won’t Stop Pawing at Her Until Owner Finds the Breast Cancer She Smelled appeared first on Good News Network.

The sustainable fashion industry has spent years trying to reduce harm: less water, fewer synthetic chemicals, more recycled material. A research team at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology went in a different direction. They grew the fabric from a living organism. The material comes from Cordyceps militaris, a fungus used in traditional Chinese medicine that naturally forms hyphae, fine threadlike filaments that weave into dense networks. Researchers cultivated it into small pellets, pressed those into flexible sheets, and added glycerol to make them pliable. The resulting fabric can clean itself, and if it tears, placing fresh fungal pellets on the damaged spot causes new fibers to grow back. “A living textile does not mean that the dress is constantly growing during normal use,” Li Ke, the paper’s first author, said. Under dry conditions with little to feed on, the biological activity stops. What else it can do The fungal matrix can host other microorganisms. The team demonstrated this by adding an engineered yeast that clings to fungal cell walls to introduce color, and incorporating hyphae from Aspergillus niger, a melanin-rich fungus, for UV protection. They describe the structure as a “plug-and-play platform,” meaning different organisms can be layered in to give the material different properties without changing its base form. Environmental testing found it degraded fully within 41 days. The team made a prototype dress, but Li was direct about where things stand: this is not replacing cotton anytime soon. The near-term uses he describes are temporary: short-run fashion, exhibition pieces, art installations, biodegradable packaging. “The broader concept could extend beyond clothing wherever a biodegradable structure with locally programmable biological functions is useful,” he said. The cost structure is a real hurdle. The culture medium accounts for more than 95 percent of production expenses, and getting to commercial scale means finding cheaper nutrient sources and improving the fermentation process, before real-world testing for washability and durability. The longer aim is to cut down on outside inputs, having the fungus produce its own pigments and functional molecules rather than relying on added organisms. “In the longer term, synthetic gene circuits may enable biological functions to be activated only at selected locations, times or environmental conditions,” Li said.  The post The biodegradable, self-cleaning fabric made from living caterpillar fungus first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Six years ago, fewer than one in six rural homes in India had a tap water connection. As of mid-July, more than four in five do, and the difference adds up to 124 million additional households. Minister V. Somanna confirmed the numbers in a written reply to India’s Rajya Sabha: 156.7 million of the country’s 193.6 million rural households now have tap water as of July 16. When the Jal Jeevan Mission launched in August 2019 (its full name, “Har Ghar Jal,” means water for every home), only 32.3 million rural households, about 16.7 percent, had it. It has run as a partnership between the central government and the states. How the mission scaled Getting there required regular government reviews with states, field teams sent to slower-moving regions, and money. When costs rose during the Covid-19 pandemic and the supply disruptions that followed, the guidelines were revised in June 2022 to make more central funding available. What the assessments found Connection numbers only go so far. A 2022 independent assessment found 86 percent of connected households had working taps, and of those, 85 percent were getting adequate water, 80 percent on a regular schedule, 87 percent at quality standards. The pipes are working. The 2024 assessment is underway. Data by district and village is publicly available.  The post India connects 124 million rural homes to tap water first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Rivers are how plastic gets to the ocean. Stop it there, and you stop it for good. The Great Bubble Barrier, a Dutch company, has built a technology to do exactly that. A perforated tube runs across the bed of a waterway and connects to an air pump. The pump creates a rising curtain of bubbles. Installed diagonally across the river’s flow, the current naturally carries floating plastic, and material suspended lower in the water column, to a collection point at the bank. The system does not block fish. It does not block ship traffic. It covers the full width and depth of the river. What it catches The system has been validated by universities and independent research institutes. It captures around 86 percent of surface plastic. “That number is indeed quite stable,” says Anne Marieke Eveleens, the company’s chief business development officer. The Great Bubble Barrier currently operates in Amsterdam, Katwijk, and Harlingen in the Netherlands, and near Vila do Conde in Portugal. Installations in Europe and the United States are under discussion. Why rivers matter more than beaches Less than 10 percent of plastic is recycled globally. The rest enters waterways through poor waste management or accident. Beach clean-ups and ocean collection efforts help. They are not keeping pace. “The production of plastic is only increasing,” Eveleens says. “We expect it to triple by 2030. The demand for plastics is very high. We use it in all of our daily activities, and at the same time, we don’t really know what to do with this plastic at the end of its life.” Catching plastic in rivers, before it disperses into open ocean, is a different category of problem. The Great Bubble Barrier’s 86 percent capture rate is what becomes possible when you get to it early enough. The scaling challenge The company’s stated ambition is Southeast Asia, where some of the world’s most heavily polluted rivers flow. Getting there is not only an engineering problem. “You need to make sure that permits are in place, that there’s a waste collection system so that our waste doesn’t end up a few meters further into the river again,” Eveleens says. “We work together with communities in the local area, we ask their help to figure out what the most frequent object is that we find and whether we can do something about it locally.” Every deployment requires governments, local waste managers, and communities to coordinate. Recognition through the Earthshot Prize, Prince William’s global environmental award, accelerated that effort. “Almost everywhere we go in the world, people have heard of a bubble barrier,” Eveleens says. “It really made a huge push for us to go international and bring our solution to where it’s needed.” Beyond collection The barrier does more than pull plastic from rivers. Every deployment generates data: what types of plastic appear most frequently, where, and when. That information feeds back into policy upstream. “All this data that we’re gathering is also a way to make new policy to prevent it from happening in the first place,” Eveleens says. The technology is validated. It is operating across four sites in two countries. More are under negotiation. The engineering problem is solved. Getting the barriers into every river that needs one is the work that remains.    The post The Great Bubble Barrier: bubble curtains are intercepting 86 percent of river plastic first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Minimalism is on the rise, not just in design and architecture, but in the way people live their lives. Having fewer things, sporting simpler styles, and enjoying the fundamental good things in life is cool now. Regular people who aren’t influencers post fewer updates to social media. The world is just so loud and chaotic, more people are getting satisfaction out of just… chilling out and existing. There’s an old joke/meme that goes something like this: “Guys literally only want one thing and it’s disgusting.” Its used to imply, obviously, that men are shallow and crude creatures. TikTok creator and simple-life advocate Nolan Reid, however, has a different idea of what men really want. Not your typical guy influencer Nolan recently made a video about “Little things in life that make men happy.” The hilarious list includes: A fridge full of beer. Drinking said beer in the garage. With your dog. And a good buddy. Finding a cool stick. Kicking a rock. Staring at water. Dropping rocks into said water. As a fellow man, I would say: Yeah. That pretty much covers it. It really doesn’t take much! Watch Nolan’s full video to see the rest, and just appreciate how much joy and satisfaction he gets from these simple things. @nolanreid7 It’s that simple #beer #mustache #muzzymade ♬ Going up the Country – Canned Heat It turns out he is not alone People loved Nolan’s list, so much so that they began adding their own ideas of “simple things men love.” The video racked up hundreds of thousands of views across TikTok and Instagram. One commenter wrote, “He just described my whole personality.” Another added, “This guy gets it.” Others chimed in with their own additions to the list, like staring at a fire for hours or just peace and quiet. But most of the nearly 200 comments were just people chiming in to say one thing: “Hell yeah.” Finally, someone who understands us! The video was such a hit that Reid put out two sequels where he added things like skipping rocks, throwing a thumbs up in a photo, or making something from scratch. “A dog” seems to make an appearance in every single video, and for good reason: Dogs make guys happy! Nolan’s ultra-relaxed vision of “masculinity” is honestly so refreshing. A refreshing break from toxic masculinity Men on social media are usually bombarded with the Andrew Tates and Jordan Petersons of the world: influencers who constantly berate us to make more money, lose weight and add muscle, sleep with more women, take charge, and relentlessly self-improve. I like Nolan’s much chiller idea of masculinity. It reminds me of being a kid: taking pleasure in the simple things, not racing to be anywhere, not trying to impress anyone or prove anything. And I love that all the things listed are timeless. They were enjoyed by men, and all people, in the 50s, in the 90s, and they’ll be enjoyed by people 50 years from now, too. Nolan’s entire account is a breath of fresh air, an antidote to hustle culture. His videos find joy in: Breaking down cardboard boxes Driving at sunset Going fishing Throwing a frisbee Wearing t-shirts A daily visit to his page is almost like a meditation. I highly recommend giving him a follow to add a little counterprogramming to your social media feed. Why he started making these videos Nolan says in another recent video that he started making TikToks and Instagram reels just for fun, but discovered along the way that he was really passionate about the message. @nolanreid7 And many more #littlethings #men #happy #muzzymade ♬ It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over – Lenny Kravitz “I never thought that my simple living and love for little things would resonate with so many of you.” He said he hopes to inspire people to “take a step back and enjoy the good simple things in life.” And now, I suddenly have the urge to go chuck a rock into a river, so I would say: Mission Accomplished! This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated. The post A guy revealed the 12 simple things that make men happy and it’s 100% accurate appeared first on Upworthy.