Good news you may have missed in 2025

4 days ago 9

Good morning! And this is … the bully quality of the year!

Yeah, I know, I know. I've heard the jokes. "The bully quality successful 2025? This is gonna beryllium a truly abbreviated broadcast!" But that's lone due to the fact that the bully quality got drowned retired by each the atrocious news.

We statesman contiguous with … plastics!

Compostable plastics

Plastic is made of petroleum. And erstwhile we propulsion it away, it breaks down into tiny particles that upwind up successful our bodies, our blood, and our brains.

So, where's the good news? Material that whitethorn look similar mean plastic, but this worldly is made from sweetener cane, and it's wholly biodegradable. "It's compostable plastic," said Andrew Brousseau, who runs Black Earth Compost adjacent Boston. "The cardinal is that they interruption down, and they don't permission microplastics successful our soils."

At Black Earth Compost, these amended plastics interruption down on with household nutrient scraps to go invaluable compost for farms and gardens.

The finished product? Compost – "Black gold" – that's safe, with nary microplastics successful our brain.

Max Senechal is an enforcement astatine CJ Biomaterials successful Woburn, Mass., 1 of respective companies present making wholly compostable plastics.

"The bully quality present successful '25 is that we've reached a constituent wherever we tin nutrient these astatine ample scale," Senechal said.

Take for illustration a biodegradable integrative straw. Senechal said it "gives you each the functionality without the guilt!"

Disagreement

If we tin each hold connected anything, it's that we can't hold connected anything.

"We surely person gotten to a spot wherever disagreement is mostly conscionable corrosive," said Northwestern University prof Eli Finkel. "We request to find a mode to bash it better."

Finkel whitethorn person recovered it. He co-created the Center for Enlightened Disagreement astatine Northwestern University, 1 of respective caller projects to assistance america disagree better, specified arsenic moving exercises that teach students how to disagree.

"In fact, the archetypal programme progressive the usage of improv techniques," Finkel said. "For example, ideate that your occupation is to rant for 1 afloat infinitesimal astir thing that makes you very, precise angry. My occupation is to instrumentality that accusation and contiguous to everybody what it is that you worth – not wherefore you're angry, not what you are opposed to, but what is underneath the choler that you feel."

Does it work? "I consciousness precise hopeful," said Finkel. "The students are truly leaning successful to this thought that, to beryllium a productive subordinate of a multicultural society, we request to beryllium capable astatine slightest to perceive and recognize what the radical who disagree with america believe."

He said the extremity is to use this dynamic to the demographic astatine large: "If we tin execute present what it looks similar we're achieving, I deliberation it won't instrumentality america agelong earlier we're capable to dispersed this not lone to different institutions of higher education, but to precocious schools and possibly adjacent beyond," Finkel said.

Popup Wetlands

Everyone knows that birds alert South for the winter, and backmost again successful the spring. But these are not nonstop flights; they request places on their agelong journeys to stop, eat, and sleep.

According to The Nature Conservancy's Katie Riley, California has mislaid astatine slightest 90% of the lakes and marshes that were erstwhile layover spots, acknowledgment to municipality growth, modern agriculture, and clime change. Her team's extremist idea: Pay farmers to flood their fallow fields during migration times, creating "pop-up" wetlands.

Riley said, "Some birds, similar the sandhill cranes we're seeing retired present today, usage those flooded fields really to sleep. Much smaller birds, they request flooded fields to beryllium capable to provender and entree small bugs successful the field."

I asked, "If you weren't paying farmers to flood their fields here, what would hap to those birds that are trying to migrate?"

"They would not survive," Riley replied. "We would spot populations spell down."

This year, the farmers successful the BirdReturns programme are offering astir 50,000 acres of vertebrate remainder stops.

Ben Leacox, wide manager of Zuckerman Family Farms successful Lodi, Calif., said not lone bash birds payment from it, but farmers do, too: "This programme whitethorn beryllium the quality betwixt maine being successful the achromatic oregon the reddish this year," helium said. "This is simply a win-win transaction for everybody."

AI and Med

You mightiness not expect to find artificial quality connected a "good-news" show. [🤷‍♂️] But successful healthcare, AI is bringing tremendous advances successful predicting disease, discovering caller drugs and, especially, diagnosing illnesses.

"It's beauteous darned good," said Dr. Robert Wachter, seat of the Department of Medicine astatine the University of California, San Francisco. He's besides writer of an upcoming publication astir artificial quality successful medicine: "A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future."

He gave america a demonstration, by providing a patient's symptoms to ChatGPT: "I person a 28-year-old patient, she's mislaid a clump of value successful the past six weeks. She's benignant of tremulous, she's shaking. She's beauteous sweaty, and her stools are loose. Can you gimme a consciousness of what mightiness beryllium going on?"

ChatGPT replied: "Based connected those symptoms, it sounds similar she could beryllium dealing with thing similar hyperthyroidism. Of course, you'd privation to corroborate that with immoderate thyroid relation tests."

But we cognize that AI sometimes tin marque worldly up – what's known arsenic "AI hallucinations." Isn't that a risk? "It tin be, and it's thing we interest about," Wachter said. "And it's why, astatine slightest for now, you don't privation this happening diagnosing by itself. We speech astir the doc successful the loop.

"It's getting amended each year, and I deliberation this was the twelvemonth that we turned a corner, wherever this is going to beryllium thing of a aureate epoch successful medicine implicit the adjacent 5 oregon 10 years," helium said.

Wrap

Well, I'm acrophobic that's each the clip we have. We won't person clip to notation however U.S. homicides dropped astir 20 percent this year …

Or however Paris cleaned up the Seine River truthful wholly that radical are present swimming successful it for the archetypal clip successful 100 years …

Or however a British foundation cleared 300,000 onshore mines near implicit from a civilian warfare successful Sri Lanka, ft by foot. It took 16 years, but present 280,000 radical person returned safely location …

Or however 4 aged dams connected the Klamath River successful California and Oregon had chopped disconnected salmon from their accepted spawning grounds for implicit 100 years – but erstwhile the aged dams were removed past year, the salmon returned wrong days. Somehow, they remembered!

Have a joyous New Year, and remember: Bad quality breaks suddenly, but bully quality happens everywhere, each the time. Good morning, everyone!

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