#086 - The Best News of Last Week - May 15, 2023
🧲 - Magnetic Marvels: Researchers Flip the Switch on Depression
1. New Zealand Government announces prescriptions charges will be free.
The $5 prescription fee at pharmacies will be scrapped in July. This is set to save about 3 million people a year money, and in particular 770,000 people aged over 65. It will make most prescriptions in New Zealand free.
Free access to medicines is also hoped to ease pressure on the over-burdened health system by helping people get medicines sooner.
2. Platypuses return to Sydney's Royal National Park after disappearing for decades
Platypuses have been relocated to the Royal National Park in Sydney, after they disappeared from the park's waterways about 50 years ago. A joint project by the University of New South Wales, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the World Wildlife Fund has reintroduced five females to the Hacking River, with a group of males to follow next week.
3. 74-year-old musician Otis Taylor gets Denver high school diploma decades after being expelled for hair
A musician who was expelled from a Denver high school over 50 years ago received his diploma. Otis Taylor was kicked out of Manual High School in 1966 because of his hair. This was decades before laws ending racial hair discrimination. Denver Public Schools wanted to right a wrong.
4. Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way (with magnets)
A new study led by Stanford Medicine researchers is the first to reveal how magnetic stimulation treats severe depression: by correcting the abnormal flow of brain signals. Powerful magnetic pulses applied to the scalp to stimulate the brain can bring fast relief to many severely depressed patients for whom standard treatments have failed.
The FDA-cleared treatment, known as Stanford neuromodulation therapy, incorporates advanced imaging technologies to guide stimulation with high-dose patterns of magnetic pulses that can modify brain activity related to major depression. Compared with traditional TMS, which requires daily sessions over several weeks or months, SNT works on an accelerated timeline of 10 sessions each day for just five days.
5. Electricity generation through solar, wind and water exceeded total demand in mainland Spain on Tuesday, a pattern that will be repeated more and more in the future
The Spanish power grid on Tuesday tasted an appetizer of the renewable energy banquet that is expected to flourish in the coming years. For nine hours, between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., the generation of green electricity was more than enough to cover 100% of Spanish peninsular demand, a milestone that had already been reached on previous occasions, but not for such a prolonged period.
6. RI Senate passes bill making lunch free at all public schools
Free lunch for all public school students in Rhode Island is one step closer to becoming a reality.
Tuesday night the Rhode Island Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill by a vote of 31-4 that would do just that. If the companion bill in the House were to pass, that takes effect July 1. The bill would make breakfast and lunch free for all public school students in the state, regardless of their household income.
7. Critically endangered red wolf pups born at North Carolina Zoo
The North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro celebrated the arrival of “not one but TWO litters” of the world’s most endangered wolf – the red wolf – in late April and early May.
A total of nine pups were born – three to parents Marsh and Roan, and six to Denali and May – the zoo announced on May 9.
That's it for this week :)
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