Science
From mathematics and AI to medicine and psychology, The Optimist Daily features the latest news on discoveries, technological advances, and breakthroughs in the world of science. Our Science section is here to engage and enlighten you.
South Korea is on a mission to transform from carbon villain to model
A year ago, Soyoung Lee was one of a crowd of climate activists demonstrating on the streets of Seoul in a campaign inspired by the global school strike founder Greta Thunberg. Today, the 35-year-old lawyer is the youngest member of the South Korean parliament and a driving force in the Read More...
How AI can save the American West this fire season
The American West is heading into the dry season, but AI could help firefighters predict where fires are likely to break out for a less devastating fire season. A new deep-learning model maps out landscape dryness and the amount of burnable material across 12 states to get ahead of destructive Read More...
To save the Amazon rainforest, scientists turn to reverse-engineering
With software, taking something apart and putting it back together again can help engineers improve their understanding of the underlying source code of their software. In structural engineering, the same methods can determine the cause of potentially fatal design flaws. This is known as Read More...
This floating hybrid platform harvests energy from wind, solar, and waves
Generating renewable energy from offshore farms is a great way for coastal communities to get off the grid and source their power in an eco-friendly way. Soon that may become a possibility for more coastal areas around the world, thanks to a recently developed modular floating maritime platform Read More...
Ohio could soon be home to America’s first freshwater offshore wind farm
While Europe has 105 offshore wind farms, the US currently has only one up and running. But according to the U.S. Department of Energy, Americans shores have enough wind blowing to produce more than 2,000 gigawatts of power, or nearly double the nation’s current electricity use. In what Read More...
An extremely rare white grizzly bear has been filmed in the Rocky Mountains
Cara Clarkson and her family were driving down a remote highway in Canada’s Rocky Mountains when a figure glimpsed against the dark evergreen forest left them in disbelief. Nuzzling through the snow for food was a white grizzly bear (no it wasn’t a polar bear), which Clarkson managed to capture Read More...
Big data has drastically improved the way we fight child exploitation
It pains us to think of this, but every day thousands of sexually explicit images of children proliferate in the worst corners of the internet. Under US law, Internet service providers such as Google and Facebook are required to report all cases of child exploitation by providing “cyber tips” Read More...
Could a trash-to-hydrogen plant realize the dream of green hydrogen fuel?
Hydrogen fuel has seemingly fallen off the radar considering all the hype that surrounded this potentially sustainable fuel source in past years. Other than a blatant lack of infrastructure, a big problem with hydrogen fuel is that we haven’t figured out a way to produce hydrogen fuel in a clean, Read More...
Mount Sinai has created AI that can diagnose COVID-19
We’ve seen artificial intelligence (AI) detect different cancers, kidney illness, and brain tumors. Now, researchers from Mount Sinai believe they are the first in the US to use AI, combined with imaging and clinical data, to diagnose COVID-19. In a paper published in Nature Medicine Read More...
This tech makes sunlight more potent so normal greenhouses can grow more
Indoor farming startups are known to grow crops using efficient LED light bulbs with custom “light recipes” that adjust the color of the LEDs to help plants grow faster. With that said, all these lighting systems using LED bulbs still use a huge amount of energy, which is why scientists have Read More...