Friday, October 23, 2026
Indonesia spares millions of acres of rainforest, a Samoan island bounces back, old apple varieties get a second chance, and a $10 chip could put a lab on your wrist.
Indonesia had planned to turn around 4.4 million acres of rainforest, swamp and peatland into rice fields, a project critics called the world's largest deforestation effort. Because the country reached rice self-sufficiency about three years ahead of schedule, officials say those forests will now stay untouched and any new farming will happen on land that's already been cleared.
Source: Good News Network →
Nu'utele Island, one of Samoa's most important wildlife havens, had been held back for years by rats and feral pigs that tore up the forest floor. Just a year after government agencies, local communities and the nonprofit Island Conservation cleared them out, native seedlings are carpeting the ground and residents can grow giant taro where crops used to fail.
Source: Good News Network →
A Lancaster University study of 28 Pacific and Indian Ocean islands found that reefs around atolls with thriving seabird colonies grew up to 2.5 times faster, fertilised by the birds' droppings. Combined with native plants whose roots hold the sand together, bringing seabirds back could give low-lying islands a real fighting chance.
Source: Positive News →
Most supermarkets stock only a handful of apple types, even though thousands exist. Spar Austria and produce trader Frutura are now trial-growing alpine heirloom varieties, starting with the Ilzer Rose from 1840 and the Falchs Gulderling from the 1870s, to see whether they can thrive commercially today. If they do, shoppers across the region could soon taste a bit of history.
Source: Good News Network →
A bronze statue of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king remembered for religious freedom and for freeing the Jewish people held in Babylon, now stands in Atlanta's Pardis Park. Organizers chose Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hometown on purpose, calling it a message of peace, justice and coexistence. It will be dedicated this weekend at a free festival of Persian culture.
Source: Good News Network →
Cambridge researchers and their spin-out GlitterinTech built a centimeter-sized optical spectrometer that measures light with lab-level precision at a tiny cost. It could one day let wearables track things like blood glucose without needles, and help with food safety and environmental testing too.
Source: ScienceDaily →
Chemists in Japan made an aviation fuel from coconut oil using a low-heat method that avoids the high pressures other biofuels need. Blended with kerosene and burned in a small jet engine, it matched kerosene's efficiency and released fewer unburned hydrocarbons, especially at idle.
Source: Good News Network →
NASA's Curiosity rover stitched together a panorama of wind-carved cliffs called yardangs stretching about 10 miles along Mount Sharp, left in their natural morning colors. The rover has now climbed more than half a mile up the mountain, farther than any rover before it, and scientists hope a closer look will explain how the landscape formed.
Source: ScienceDaily →
UC Berkeley physicists brought the Nobel-winning idea of phase contrast to electron microscopes using a 'laser phase plate.' It could make it possible to image proteins about a third the size of today's limits, opening a clearer window into how the body's tiniest machinery works and speeding drug discovery.
Source: ScienceDaily →
“Always look for the helpers. There's always someone who is trying to help.”— Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers Talks with Parents (1983), recalling his mother's advice