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Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind. Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky has put that concept to the test in numerous experiments over 20 years and repeatedly found that people feel better when they are kind to others, even more than when they are kind to themselves. “Acts of kindness are very powerful,” Lyubomirsky said. In one experiment, she asked subjects to do an extra three acts of kindness for other people a week and asked a different group to do three acts of self-kindness. The people who were kind to others became happier and felt more connected to the world. The same occurred with money, using it to help others versus helping yourself. Lyubomirsky said she thinks it is because people spend too much time thinking and worrying about themselves and when they think of others while doing acts of kindness, it redirects them away from their own problems. Oxford’s [Oliver] Curry analyzed peer-reviewed research like Lyubomirsky’s and found at least 27 studies showing the same thing: Being kind makes people feel better emotionally. But it’s not just emotional. It’s physical. Lyubomirsky said a study of people with multiple sclerosis ... found they felt better physically when helping others. She also found that in people doing more acts of kindness that the genes that trigger inflammation were turned down more than in people who don’t.
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Dogs have such exquisitely sensitive noses that they can detect bombs, drugs, citrus and other contraband in luggage or pockets. Is it possible that they can sniff out even malaria? And when might that be useful? A small pilot study has shown that dogs can accurately identify socks worn overnight by children infected with malaria parasites even when the children had cases so mild that they were not feverish. In itself, such canine prowess is not surprising. Since 2004, dogs have shown that they can detect bladder cancer in urine samples, lung cancer in breath samples and ovarian cancer in blood samples. Trained dogs now warn owners with diabetes when their blood sugar has dropped dangerously low and owners with epilepsy when they are on the verge of a seizure. Other dogs are being taught to detect Parkinsons disease years before symptoms appear. The new study ... does not mean that dogs will replace laboratories. But for sorting through crowds, malaria-sniffing dogs could potentially be very useful. Some countries and regions that have eliminated the disease share heavily trafficked borders with others that have not. For example, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the island of Zanzibar have no cases but get streams of visitors from Mozambique, India and mainland Tanzania. And when a region is close to eliminating malaria, dogs could sweep through villages, nosing out silent carriers people who are not ill but have parasites in their blood that mosquitoes could pass on to others.
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There is a massive battery right under your feet. Unlike a flammable lithium ion battery, though, this one is perfectly stable, free to use, and ripe for sustainable exploitation: the Earth itself. While temperatures above ground fluctuate throughout the year, the ground stays a stable temperature, meaning that it is humming with geothermal energy. "Every building sits on a thermal asset," said Cameron Best, director of business development at Brightcore Energy in New York, which deploys geothermal systems. "I really don't think there's any more efficient or better way to heat and cool our homes." A couple of months ago Eversource Energy commissioned the US's first networked geothermal neighbourhood operated by a utility, in Framingham, Massachusetts. Pipes run down boreholes 600-700ft (about 180-215 metres) deep, where the temperature of the rock is consistently 55F (13C). A mixture of water and propylene glycol ... pumps through the piping, absorbing that geothermal energy. Heat pumps use the liquid to either heat or cool a space. If deployed across the country, these geothermal systems could go a long way in helping decarbonise buildings, which are responsible for about a third of total greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Once a system is in place, buildings can draw heat from water pumped from below their foundations, instead of burning natural gas. The networks ... can be set up almost anywhere.
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Dr. Kate Mulligan is the Senior Director of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing (CISP), a new national hub created to support health care providers and social services professionals to connect people to non-clinical supports and community resources. Mulligan ... led one of Canada's first social prescribing projects. "They have a conversation with someone with expertise [like a doctor] to determine a plan, and get support to follow through on something non-clinical that benefits their health. It should be happening systematically, as a regular part of our health system," [said Mulligan]. Someone experiencing food insecurity or an illness like diabetes can be prescribed fresh foods. That could mean a voucher for your local farmers' market, a food box delivery to your home or a credit card that you can spend at the regular grocery store. Social prescribing also means making sure the provided food is culturally appropriate ... thinking about possible connections to include and benefit local farmers. A small community largely inhabited by retirees – lots of people ending up living alone without a strong support network – implemented social prescribing. An older man was diagnosed with depression after his wife died. He kept going for primary care, but really what he was experiencing was unsupported grief. Through social prescribing, he was connected with a fishing rod and a fishing buddy. This is like a $20 intervention. Within a fairly short time, he got off his medication and reconnected with other services too – built friendships, got connected to other community offerings. The health centre started developing their own services, like grief support cooking classes for older grieving widows.
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Trine Krebs is sometimes called "the leek woman," or even Miss Dry-Legume, of Denmark. The 48-year-old has for decades traveled around the country as, in her words, a "food inspirer," proselytizing about all things vegetables. So when, in October 2023, the Danish government published the world's first ever national action plan for shifting towards plant-based diets, Krebs was ecstatic. The Danish government has three main goals: to increase demand for plant-based foods, to develop supply for plant-based foods, and to improve how all the different stakeholders – from scientists to farmers and chefs, food sociologists, and nutrition experts – in this nascent domestic industry are working together. Danish authorities see reducing meat and dairy consumption as key to reaching the Nordic state's goal of cutting carbon emissions by 70 percent before 2030, when compared to 1990. The climate think tank Concito estimates that more than half of Denmark's land is used for farming and that agriculture accounts for about a third of its carbon emissions. Yet a published in 2021 found that the emissions made by producing plant-based foods are roughly half the amount incurred by meat production. Denmark believes ... that the necessary shift toward plant-based eating also offers a massive economic opportunity. If the country were to gain a three percent share of the global plant-based food market, it could create up to 27,000 jobs.
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Can you eat a diet that's good for your health and good for the planet? A new study suggests that it's possible. It found that people who ate mostly minimally processed plant foods such as nuts, beans, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, along with modest amounts of meat, fish, eggs and dairy, had lower rates of premature death from heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. At the same time, their diets had a smaller environmental footprint because they consisted of foods that were grown using relatively less land and water and that were produced with fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The study ... was inspired by a landmark 2019 report from the EAT-Lancet Commission, which designed a "Planetary Health Diet" capable of sustaining 10 billion people and the planet by 2050. The planetary health diet, in broad strokes, encourages people to eat more plants and whole foods alongside small portions of meat and dairy. People whose eating habits most closely adhered to the planetary health diet were 30 percent less likely to die prematurely compared to people who ate the lowest amounts of foods that form the basis of the planetary health diet. Planetary health eaters had a 10 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, a 14 percent lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular diseases, a 47 percent reduction in the risk of dying from lung disease, and a 28 percent lower likelihood of dying of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
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Rhoda Phiri was having a hard time sleeping. She found it difficult to mingle with people in her community and at church. Even basic chores were hard. She was, she says, in a "dark corner." Then one day in 2020, a couple of women knocked on the door of her home in Zambia. The women were with StrongMinds, an international nonprofit that provides support for depression, particularly among women and adolescents. She accepted the women's invitation to join a group therapy program, held under a tree in an area near her home, and as she learned about depression, she recognized the signs in herself. "All the symptoms they were talking about, it's like they were talking about me," Phiri says. "It's like they knew what I was going through." Instead of relying on mental health professionals, StrongMinds offers group therapy facilitated by trained community members – often clients who have completed the treatment themselves, like Phiri. This group therapy model has proven to be an effective way to treat depression. Since the organization launched in 2013, half a million people have gone through the treatment program. Three-quarters of participants screened as being free of depression symptoms two weeks after completing it. "What we've learned in 11 years is that depression treatment can be, what we call, democratized," says StrongMinds founder ... Sean Mayberry. "You can take it out of the hands of doctors and nurses and give it to the community itself."
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Latin America is the world's most dangerous region due to cartel and gang violence. It has 9% of the global population but one-third of the world's homicides. Kidnapping and extortion are on the rise. The trend is driving a turn toward increasingly militarized solutions. El Salvador, for example, has incarcerated some 75,000 people – nearly 2% of its population – in recent years on suspicion of being involved in gangs. In Colombia, by contrast, exchanging the threat of arrest for dialogue is a key part of the government's painstaking strategy of negotiating peace simultaneously with some 20 armed factions to end 60 years of conflict. That process, known as Paz Total ("total peace") and launched less than two years ago by President Gustavo Petro, has been marked by reversals and unintended effects. But a key distinction lies in its emphasis on both empathy and the rule of law. The strategy's first example of "restorative incarceration," launched earlier this month, shows how. In exchange for admitting guilt for violent acts and seeking forgiveness from victims and the families, 48 military and former guerrilla leaders are now serving "sentences" by planting trees and helping heal the communities they once dominated through fear. "We're going to sow life to try to make amends and build peace," [said] Henry Torres, a former army general. As Colombia's new attorney general put it, "our mission will be ... a mission for the dignity and well-being of our people." Peace requires patience, said Juan Manuel Santos, a former president who negotiated a 2016 peace accord with Colombia's main guerrilla faction that still serves as a template for Mr. Petro's broader peace plan. "You need to convince, to persuade, to change people's sentiments, to teach them how to forgive, how to reconcile," he told The Harvard Gazette.
Note: A prison in Brazil with low recidivism rates uses a humane approach, where there are no armed guards and inmates have the keys to their own cells. Explore more positive stories like this about repairing criminal justice.
Forgiveness is a principle promoted by just about every faith tradition. Even neuroscientists agree on its mental and physical benefits – from lowered risk of heart attacks to improved sleep. Twenty years ago, UK-based journalist Marina Cantacuzino launched the Forgiveness Project, a collection of stories from survivors and victims of crime and conflict, as well as perpetrators who reshaped their aggression into a force for peace. Cantacuzino documented real-life stories of seemingly supernatural examples of forgiveness. A Canadian woman who forgave her husband's killer. An Israeli filmmaker wounded in a terrorist attack. A Minneapolis mother who grew to love the person who murdered her only child. But even Cantacuzino admits it can seem difficult to relate to those who forgive the seemingly unforgivable. Are they morally superior? Extremely religious? Some are, but they are more likely to share the traits of curiosity, empathy and a flexible viewpoint. It feels like those characteristics are harder to come by today. The cacophony of "if you're not with us, you're against us" has divided families and entire communities. One's ability to recognize the pain on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war can evoke outrage, for example. But Cantacuzino continues to support discussions that bring together Israeli and Palestinian victims of the conflict, stories that require people to embrace complexity and contradiction while honoring the "sanctity of every human life ... Stories stick, whereas facts fade," she says. The Forgiveness Project's exhibit has now journeyed to 17 countries, including Kenya, Australia and Israel.
Note: Explore Cantacuzino's latest inspiring book, Forgiveness: An Exploration, which delves into the politics, mechanics and psychology of forgiveness. Explore more positive stories that reveal the power of healing social division and polarization.
Between 136.5 and 148.5 million people became casualties of war in the 20th century alone. The economics are equally staggering. For instance, U.S. spending on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan could top $4 trillion. Despite the exorbitant human and financial costs, the vast majority of governments consider defense spending to be a necessity. A few renegade countries have opted to shed their militaries, however. The first country is the most recent one on our list to get rid of its armed forces. After Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president [of Haiti] on Dec. 16, 1990, his government was overrun by a military coup. Aristide ... moved quickly to disband Haiti's armed forces before they could pose any further problems. What prompted Costa Rica to eliminate its armed forces? In 1948, after an unusual period of political upheaval ... the new government drafted a constitution that not only guaranteed free and open elections but also abolished the country's armed forces. The island nation of Mauritius is home to more than a million people and one of the strongest economies in Africa. What you won't find, however, are regular military forces. Thanks to the deep distrust Panamanians held for the military, the government adopted a constitutional amendment disbanding the military in 1994. In 1986, Micronesia entered into a Compact of Free Association with the United States.
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People experiencing mental or behavioral health crises and addiction have often been subject to police use of force, arrest and incarceration. [There are] efforts around the country to change that. One of the most common new approaches ... are civilian co-responder programs, in which behavioral health specialists, often social workers, show up to certain emergency calls alongside police. These can include situations like suicide threats, drug overdoses, and psychiatric episodes. Typically, the officers on the team have special training in crisis intervention. Generally, these teams aim to de-escalate any crisis or conflict, avoiding arrest and solving the reason for the emergency call, especially if it's a simple one. This week, the New Jersey Monitor reported that one call "for a welfare check on a woman with anxiety ended with the [state] trooper picking up her new cell phone from the post office and fixing a broken toilet" and the emergency call screener setting up her new phone. The Monitor also found that the program avoided arrests or police use of force in 95% of responses. The B-HEARD program in New York City, which is just three years old in a diverse city of 8.5 million, responded to roughly a quarter of mental health calls in precincts where it operated in the first half of 2023. Mental health calls make up 10% of all 911 calls in the city. In Denver, a study of the city's STAR program found the alternative response model reduced low-level crime.
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There was a lot that Army veteran Alex Dillman lost when he became a paraplegic after an IED blew up under his legs in Afghanistan, but now an unlikely activity has allowed him to take some of what he lost back. Hurtling through the air at 120 mph, Dillman doesn't need his wheelchair to skydive; he doesn't really need his legs either. In that unique state of concentration and freedom, he says he's "expected to perform," a do-or-die state of mind that he says he hasn't felt since his old life on deployment. Dillman originally saw adventure therapy as a way to combat depression and PTSD he suffered from in the wake of his lost abilities, but he never imagined it would help him get some of those abilities back. Now he's part of an adventure therapy non-profit called Skydive First Project, where he utilizes outdoor adventures to assist individuals suffering from PTSD and depression. Based in Tampa, activities encompass hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, horseback riding, scuba diving, and tandem skydiving. "[The] great thing about skydiving is that it gets me out of the chair," said Dillman. "I don't bring my chair with me, so I'm in a free state. I don't need to be in the chair to perform the act of skydiving." "I can feel my legs and my feet to a certain extent. I can get a better sense of my overall being, feel what my legs are doing, feel what my hips are doing. Having that feeling again ... even if it's for 30 seconds or 60 seconds ... is enough for me!"
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The Afghanistan Memory Home is a growing online archive of testimonies of endurance by ordinary Afghans during years of conflict and repressive rule under the Taliban. The virtual museum is an example of the kind of community-led initiatives that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described as "healing spaces" – local sites of nation-building where the traumas and resentments of war are salved through traditional forms of civic engagement based on cultural values, spirituality, and listening. These projects in reconciliation quietly persist almost everywhere people seek freedom from conflict or repression, from Afghanistan to Yemen. They often supplant the work of national transitional justice initiatives stalled by political disagreements or lack of cooperation. They also underscore that "justice isn't just punishment or prosecution and presenting evidence against perpetrators," said Ruben Carranza, an expert on post-conflict community healing. In South Sudan, for instance, a local peace and reconciliation process called Wunlit gave grassroots strength to a 2018 national peace agreement. Led by tribal chiefs and spiritual leaders, the "peace to peace" dialogue defused cattle raids and abductions between the Nuer and Dinka communities. In Iraq, the Ministry of Human Rights has relied on tribal, religious, and civil society leaders to help forge local support for a national dialogue on reconciliation. History has "taught us that relying solely on military force will not bring about lasting peace and stability," Hodan Ali, a Somali presidential policy adviser, wrote. The more durable work of peace involves empowering individuals and communities to tell their own stories – and listen to each other.
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Boogying the night away produces meaningful improvements in one's body mass and waist circumference in people who are overweight or obese, a new study found. Dancing was also seen to improve blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, physical fitness, cognitive disorders, hypertension, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, and mental health–in other words, all the root causes of the non-communicable diseases that kill most people in the West. The researchers believed that dance would be a more ideal form of exercise because it is sustainable–it's a sociable, entertaining way of exercising that participants will enjoy, rather than a drudgery they have to push themselves through. "Dance is effective on fat loss in people overweight and obese and has a significant improvement on body composition and morphology," said Zhang Yaya, a Ph.D. student at Hunan University, China. To get their results, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the team studied data from 646 participants who were overweight and obese across ten different studies. They found that dance is very effective for improving body composition and showed that more creative dance types had the most pronounced body composition improvement when compared with traditional dance. Improvements were also found in overweight children and patients with Parkinson's disease.
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When the bell rings at Jerusalem's Hand in Hand school, you hear something that's not common in Israel: the sound of young people's voices rising together in laughter and conversation in both Hebrew and Arabic. Israeli society is largely segregated. The separation begins at kindergarten, when Jewish and Arab children are sent to different schools and experience completely separate education "tracks" or systems. "Arabs go to Arab schools in their neighborhoods and Jews go to Jewish schools in the areas where they live," says Nour Younis, events manager for Hand in Hand. Hand in Hand [was] founded in 1998 by a group of parents who wanted their children to grow up differently. What began as two kindergarten classes in Jerusalem and Galilee has now become six campuses nationwide, with some 2,000 students. The school's eventual goal is to create a fifth track of education within the Israeli school system. Today there are four options: Arab schools and three Jewish tracks – secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. The students at Hand in Hand campuses are around 60% Arab and 40% Jewish. There is a waiting list of Arab children who would like to attend. Since Oct. 7 ... this school has become a rare oasis of freedom for Palestinians who say they can be harassed or worse for expressing their anguish over the war. "For our students, this is a safe place, a safe environment," says [school vice principal Engie] Wattad.
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Northwestern University's Prison Education Program welcomed its inaugural graduating class of incarcerated students on Wednesday, marking the first time a top-ranked U.S. university has awarded degrees to students in prison. Evanston, Illinois-based Northwestern ... runs the program in partnership with Oakton College and the Illinois Department of Corrections. It was a moving commencement ceremony for the 16 graduating men and their loved ones at the Stateville correctional facility in Crest Hill. "I have no words for this, (it's) otherworldly. Coming from where I came from, the things that I've been through and to be here is indescribable," said graduate Michael Broadway after the ceremony. Broadway attained his degree despite several setbacks, including battling stage 4 prostate cancer. "I'm just so proud of him," said his mother Elizabeth. "I really am. He looks so good in that gown." Due to ill health, she had not seen Broadway since ... 2005. Professor Jennifer Lackey is the program's founding director. "Twenty years ago, some of these guys were in rival gangs, and here they are swapping poetry with each other and giving critical engagements on sociology assignments," said Lackey. "The love and growth that we see in the community is really unlike anything I've experienced at the on-campus commencements." Around 100 students are enrolled in the Northwestern program across Stateville and the Logan Correctional Center, a women's prison.
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Over hundreds of thousands of years, women have developed more sensitive noses (particularly around ovulation and pregnancy), finer hearing at high frequencies, extended colour vision, and longer life expectancy than men by an impressive half decade. Forget plasma exchange and supplementation – entrepreneurs trying to extend human life should be studying women, who comprise around 80% of today's centenarians. American academic and author Cat Bohannon asks how this came to be, tracing defining female features back to our "presumed true ancestors", our Eves as she calls them. Bohannon calls on her astounding disciplinary range to tell this epic tale. Her writing ripples with references from literature, film studies, biochemistry, cognitive science and anthropology. Evolution, as Bohannon emphasises, doesn't care about our contemporary preferences or sensitivities. This emboldens her to confront uncomfortable stereotypes, like whether women's brains have evolved to be inferior to men's (in fact, the sexes have strikingly similar cerebral equipment). The author's parting plea is that we learn more about women and girls. In the UK, unlike the US, there is still no regulation that insists women are included in medical research. Not everyone agrees with the ethical good of extending participation. Might they acknowledge that being specific about people's sex and gender leads to more rigorous and reproducible scientific results?
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At the highest point of Los Tres Miradores, a terrifyingly steep urban settlement with soaring views across Peru's capital, Lima, there is a curious set of large structures that resemble a fleet of ships in the sky. They are so-called "fog catchers." About 40 of these netted devices, made of high density Raschel polyethylene and spanning several meters wide, are lined up atop a misty mound and linked by a network of tubes that lead to storage containers. Home to a population of more than 10 million, Lima is one of the driest cities in the world. [The nonprofit] El Movimiento Peruanos sin Agua has helped install 600 fog catchers across Lima and a total of 2,000 across Peru, including in the regions of Arequipa, Iquitos and Cuzco. According to [founder Abel] Cruz, one man he supported is even able to raise 1,000 chickens thanks to fog catchers. In June, the project received a significant boost when it signed an agreement with the Mayor of Lima to install 10,000 more fog catchers in the hills surrounding the city in the next four years. The municipality ... said the project has the potential to "reforest, create ecological lungs, ecotourism and at the same time provide water for human consumption, for bio-orchards, botanical gardens, washing clothes, utensils and more." In Los Tres Miradores, the 40 fog catchers – which were installed in 2021 – provide enough water for 180 families, whether to bathe, clean, drink (after being filtered at home) or to irrigate crops on small garden patches.
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The psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, has passed another key hurdle on its way to regulatory approval as a treatment for mental illness. A second large clinical trial has found that the drug – in combination with psychotherapy – is effective at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In June, Australia became the first country to allow physicians to prescribe MDMA for treating psychiatric conditions. MDMA is illegal in the United States and other countries because of the potential for its misuse. But the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) ... has long been developing a proprietary protocol for using MDMA as a treatment for PTSD and other disorders. MAPS has been campaigning for its legalization. In 2021, researchers sponsored by MAPS reported the results of a study in which 90 people received a form of psychotherapy developed by the organization alongside either MDMA or a placebo. After three treatment sessions, 67% of those who received MDMA with therapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, compared with 32% of those who received therapy and a placebo. The results of a second trial ... were similar: 71% of people who received MDMA alongside therapy lost their PTSD diagnosis. A MAPS spokesperson says that the organization plans to seek formal FDA approval before the end of this year, and that because the agency has already designated MDMA as a â€breakthrough therapy' ... it will be evaluated quickly.
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If you want a glimpse of the future, go to Japan. What lies ahead for many other countries, including the United States, is in rural areas and regional cities outside greater Tokyo: lots of people aging and dying, and relatively few giving birth and raising kids. In today's Japan, the young and middle-aged are consumed by caring for the old, and small-town resources are overstretched. Japanese innovators are already demonstrating what's possible – and, in many cases, not with high-tech fixes but by showcasing design thinking, dignity and respect. Instead, they would be invited to share their wisdom and skills to help them stay active, sharp and socially engaged. Old people at the center cook for one another and teach young people how to grow vegetables and make art. The city [of Toyama] repurposed old train and tram lines into a sleek light-rail system, with platforms placed at the level of the train cars so that people would not need to climb or descend stairs. Public transit ridership among people in their 60s and 70s has since more than tripled, and this has helped seniors maintain active and social lifestyles. Other social entrepreneurs in Japan have focused on food – for instance, bringing children and the elderly together in cafeterias that serve traditional dishes. One Tokyo pop-up eatery, dubbed the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, has employed people with dementia as its waitstaff. [Japanese innovators have] yielded ideas that prioritize helping old people flourish, not just managing their illnesses, disabilities and deaths.
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