Mid-week collection of upbeat news nuggets to brighten the day.
D-Cup, A-Bomb
You knew it had to happen at some point. After a summer of costumes, crossover posters, memes and more, someone has decided to make an actual Barbenheimer movie, reports Empire. In this case, that someone is B-movie mogul Charles Band, who has figured out a mash-up film that will essentially blend the stories of Greta Gerwig's pop cultural colossus Barbie and Christopher Nolan's carefully crafted biodrama Oppenheimer for what could be a fun (and low-budget) mixture. Boasting the tagline of D-Cup, A-Bomb, it's been in the works since August (though cameras have yet to roll).
US Offshore Wind
Joe Biden's administration has approved the largest offshore wind project in U.S. history.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will create clean, reliable offshore wind energy that's capable of powering over 900,000 homes.
Why Wind Turbines Are Getting Bigger And Bigger: The feats of engineering in offshore wind are becoming truly astonishing, for a simple reason...
Decade of Success
The WHO just released a report on 'a decade of success' in responding to neglected tropical diseases in Africa. This is one of the great public health stories of our time. In 2023, 88 million fewer people in Africa require interventions against NTDs than in 2013. 'The successes of the past decade are built on over 70 years of shared experiences and learnings.'
Champs-Élysées Rumpus
There's a rather heated debate going on in Paris, close to the Arc de Triomphe on the city's famous Champs-Élysées. Louis Vuitton, the luxury French brand, has acquired the building that formerly housed the headquarters of HSBC and, prior to that, was a grand 400-room hotel inaugurated in 1899 called the Hotel Elysées-Palace. Louis Vuitton wants to convert the site back into a luxury hotel and has proposed putting up a protective hoarding that represents one of its famous travel cases. Some say it looks fabulous. Others think it breaches the law about advertising.
Reason For Hope
Despite the widely-held belief that dementia is destined to rise exponentially as global populations age, in the developed world at least, the prospects of avoiding it are much better than they were a generation ago. In Europe and North America, incidence has fallen by 13 percent per decade over the past 25 years, and that trend is now showing up in other countries too. 'There is reason for hope,' reports the Financial Times.
Anastrozole
A daily pill that halves the risk of breast cancer is to be rolled out by the UK's National Health Service, allowing women to live in “freedom from fear”. Around 300,000 women will be offered the medication anastrozole under plans to routinely prescribe drugs to prevent cancer, much as statins protect against heart disease. Amanda Pritchard, head of the NHS, says the first-of-its-kind programme heralds “a new era for cancer prevention”. She says the daily 4p (5 cents) pills will follow statins in having a “transformative” impact saving lives.
Unorthodox Fusion
UK startup ENG8 claims a pivotal fusion energy milestone - consistently achieving over five times more energy output than input. This net gain was validated by an independent certification agency, Underwriters Laboratories. Unlike mainstream hydrogen fusion, ENG8 uses water molecules as fuel in a proprietary catalytic system involving heat and dissociation. While most facilities pursue magnetically-confined plasma fusion, ENG8's approach relies simply on temperature and pressure. If scalable commercially, it could provide carbon-free electricity from readily available resources like water, reports Interesting Engineering. Though still at an early-stage, any viable fusion reactor is something of a holy grail for clean energy. ENG8 claim their unorthodox water-based method could be deployed in their EnergiCell product as early as next year. “The results are quite brilliant, the stability of the fusion reaction was incredible, and this development can make the biggest difference to climate change of any other technology on earth. It changes everything - faster than you think,” says Valeria Tyutina, CEO at ENG8.
‘Botox isn’t something I do - I need to move my eyebrows.’ Sarah Jessica Parker
On This Day
8 November 1731: In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin opens the first library in the north American colonies: the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Mood Booster
Dog singing at the piano: House owner got noise complaints, so decided to set up a nanny cam. This is what they saw.
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