Monday's Positive News

May 18
3 min read

What better way to start the week than with a worldwide selection of positive news nuggets?

Emma Raducanu with her coach Andrew Richardson — Credit: USTA

Reunited

Emma Raducanu has rehired Andrew Richardson, the coach who helped guide her to her sensational US Open triumph in 2021, on a formal basis as she prepares to return to competition this week in Strasbourg in the buildup to the French Open. Richardson will accompany Raducanu at the WTA 500 event as she competes for the first time in two months after struggling with a post-viral illness. In a statement, Raducanu said: “Grateful to have reconnected with someone who has known me for over a decade now and looking forward to building together one iteration at a time.” Now that she has returned to the coach who helped her to her greatest achievement, maybe she can return to her winning ways.

Basket of potatoes — "A wonderful case of culture shaping biology"

Gene Adaptation

Between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, Indigenous communities living high in the Andes Mountains began to domesticate the potato. They ate so much of this versatile, highly nutritious tuber that their genes began to change - and those adaptations live on in their descendants today, scientists report in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications. Indigenous Andeans living in what is now Peru have extra copies of a gene called AMY1, which helps the body digest starch. These individuals have the highest known numbers of AMY1 of any population in the world. What’s more, the genetic changes appear to have emerged around the same time potatoes were domesticated in the region. “It is a wonderful case of culture shaping biology,” says study co-author Omer Gokcumen.

Latest Advice: Turns out we've been storing our potatoes incorrectly.

Zero Cervical Cancer

Australia, the first ever country to roll out a national HPV vaccination programme, is now seeing zero cervical cancer in women under 25, reports BBC News. Together, vaccination and screening in Australia have pushed incidence down to 6.3 cases per 100,000 women and increased five-year survival to 77 percent.

a hairy ghost pipefish species officially named Solenostomus snuffleupagus — Credit: David Harasti

New Species

A real-life Snuffleupagus exists - but unlike the cute character from Sesame Street, this one lives under the sea. Described for the first time in a recent paper, the hairy ghost pipefish species has officially been dubbed Solenostomus snuffleupagus thanks to the brightly coloured filaments that give it a decidedly shaggy appearance. Marine biologist David Harasti first spotted the furry-looking fish in coral near Papua New Guinea - and it has been confirmed as an entirely new species, only known to be located in the southwestern Pacific. “Once you see it, the resemblance to Snuffleupagus is impossible to ignore,” Harasti told Popular Science. Like other ghost pipefish, the species can blend in with its surroundings, using its flamboyant “hair” to hide among filamentous algae within coral reefs.

Another Good Use of AI

Most diagnoses for pancreatic cancer currently come too late for treatment to be effective, but artificial intelligence (AI) could be about to change that. In a study, an AI model helped radiologists to detect signs of the disease up to three years before a clinical diagnosis - a development that could save many lives.

Invisible Hand

China’s has cut its oil imports by roughly 25 percent from pre-Iran war levels, which is remarkable - it means they’re no longer stockpiling. This has stabilised oil prices around the rest of the world, and is one of the main reasons the Iran-based energy crisis isn’t worse, says Bloomberg.

"Everybody has talent and it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in." George Lucas

On This Day

18 May 1965: American engineer Ray Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories in London, England in 1965. Operating initially with a staff of four, he invented the revolutionary Dolby noise reduction system, which eliminated unwanted tape hiss and forever transformed the quality of recorded music and cinema sound.