NYC public school system launches “Meatless Mondays” to fight climate change
This week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all the public schools in NYC will observe “Meatless Mondays” in order to tackle two major problems – climate change and child obesity. This means that starting in the 2019 school year, all New York City public schools will begin serving up free, healthy vegetarian breakfast and lunch menus every Monday. Following a successful trial period in 15...
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Poor villages in India get access to electricity from newly built biogas plants, thanks to the untiring efforts of this young lady
Akanksha Singh completed her Masters in Social Entrepreneurship from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2014, after which she went to Jhabua district in the state of Madhya Pradesh as part of an internship. Although Akanksha was aware of the economic and social inequalities that existed in her country, her stint as an intern turned out to be a real eye opener. “The two weeks that I was there,...
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Millions in India to benefit from major price cuts offered by government on anti-cancer drugs
The Indian National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) recently announced major price cuts (some of them as much as 87%) on 390 different anti-cancer treatment brands, which means that these lifesaving cancer medicines will be available to over 2 million cancer patients in the country at much cheaper rates. The price cuts are expected to collectively save roughly 8 billion INR ($115 million) in medical...
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This Indian woman left her job to save the lives of distressed farmers
Shruti N was working at a renowned hospital in Hyderabad as a psychiatrist. While working there, she realized that while metal health issues plagued people in both urban and rural areas, the rural population did not have access to good psychologists or psychiatrists. She was also aware that since its inception, the Indian state of Telangana had witnessed an astounding 4,000 farmer suicides. Shruti was already...
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This gin is being made from surplus supermarket grapes that would otherwise end up as food waste
British fruit supplier and importer Richard Hochfeld imports bunches of black and green grapes from South America and South Africa and every year, the company loses the equivalent of 1.4 million punnets of grapes in the transportation and packing process. Out of the bunches, there are some loose ones and others that are damaged or don’t meet the supermarket specifications. Total wastage of these...
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Around 5,000 people wait in rain for hours to see if they’re a stem cell match for boy with cancer
Oscar Saxelby-Lee, a 5-year-old from UK, is battling acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and his doctors have warned that the little boy has just three months to find a stem cell donor who can help cure his cancer. Oscar’s parents, Olivia Saxelby and Jamie Lee, launched an appeal to get as many people as possible to sign up to a blood stem cell donor register as part of a campaign called “Hand in Hand for...
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These are perhaps the most sustainable shoes on planet
Did you know that more than 20 billion pairs of shoes are manufactured annually? And that almost all of them contain some form of plastic and are non-biodegradable. This means that all of these will eventually end up in our landfills and will continue to pollute the planet for hundreds of years. Now it is not that making high quality, eco-friendly shoes from recyclable materials is entirely impossible. A few...
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Scientists successfully cure two people of HIV using stem cell therapy
In a recently published research paper, a team of international scientists has revealed that is has been successful in curing two patients – one from London and the other from Düsseldorf – of HIV using stem cell therapy. They found no rebound of HIV in the two patients who stopped taking their HIV medication after they received stem cell transplants for a hematological [blood] disease. Professor Ravi...
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Shaken by a beggar’s death due to starvation, this Indian couple feeds more than 70 homeless daily
One day, while returning from a restaurant, a couple from Chennai, India, came across an old man begging for food. Johnson Joshua and his wife Shareen did what every good Samaritan should do – they ordered some food and fed the old beggar. The couple came across the same man quite a few times in the next few days and fed him whenever they could. Sadly, just a few days later, they came to know that the man...
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Scientists develop a process that turns non-recyclable glass into toothpaste and other useful stuff
Thanks to a team of researchers from the University of Queensland, it is now possible to put non-recyclable glass to good use. At present, only a tiny fraction of glass is actually recycled. Since it is quite difficult to sort and separate the smaller fragments, they usually end up in our landfills. The researchers have, however, invented a process that can turn non-recyclable glass into everything from tires to...
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