This week’s positive news

Good morning!

Here is the weekly reminder that some things are going in the right direction. Have it!

Remote operations

Working remotely is certainly quite common these days, but operating surgeons doing it is still rare. Recently, a lung operation was performed in China where the surgeon was in Shanghai and the patient in the city of Kashgar, 500 miles and three time zones away. From a control table in Shanghai, the surgeon controlled several robotic arms in the operating room and was thus able to remove the tumor. The operation took about a year to prepare, but only about an hour to carry out. As I understand it, this operation is unique due to the long distance, but operations “at a distance” are becoming more and more common, thanks in large part to the 5G network, which apparently suits these robots very well. This makes operations and specialist care more accessible to more people, even if you don’t live in big cities with big, well-developed hospitals.

National allergy program can provide several benefits

Approximately one in three Swedes has some form of allergy, and around 800,000 suffer from asthma. We also know that many allergies are becoming more and more common. This spring it was therefore decided that we will have a national allergy program that will coordinate care for those with allergies and/or asthma. The program is based on Finland’s, which since it was launched in 2008 has seen reduced costs, fewer visits to the emergency room and that the increase in allergic diseases has stopped.

Deepened cooperation between Danish and Swedish police

The Danish and Swedish police will deepen their cooperation to access the gangs’ cross-border activities. Soon there will be Danish police stationed in Malmö, and Swedish police stationed in Copenhagen. In this way, you will be able to focus more on working with speed and the proactive perspective.

New machine limits mosquito populations

In addition to being nuisance bastards in general, mosquitoes also spread diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and the Zika virus. Controlling the mosquito population is an important part of combating the spread of disease, but it is not simply a matter of killing one type of insect without affecting other species. A relatively common(?) way of working is to make females and males incompatible with each other so that they cannot reproduce. By releasing sterile males, the females mate with them, believing they have “done their job” without actually having been fertilized. This in turn leads to the next generation being smaller. You can repeat the process for several generations until the population is under control, and you have not had to put out harmful poisons or the like that risk affecting other animals as well. However, this method of working has proven to be difficult to do with mosquitoes because you had to sort male and female pupae manually with a kind of sorter. Now it seems that a Chinese research team has finally solved the problem. They have invented an automated machine that allows one worker to sort over 30 million pupae a week, which is more than 17 times as many as before. It does this without damaging the pupae, and is also better at sorting; the amount of female pupae that end up wrong is significantly fewer than before. (Thanks u/moopey for the tip!).

Electric patches provide better healing for hard-to-heal wounds

An international group of researchers has found a new treatment method for chronic wounds. These often affect, for example, those with diabetes type 2, which almost 5% of Sweden’s adult population has. On one side of the patch (the one against the skin) are a bunch of electrodes, and on the other side a small battery. By adding a drop of water, the battery is activated, causing an electric field to be created around the wound. In tests done on diabetic mice, the patch caused the wound to close more quickly, new blood vessels to form faster, while inflammation levels were significantly reduced. Overall, wounds healed 30% faster than with the current standard dressing. The patches are also thin, easy to apply and relatively cheap to produce, factors that are all important for them to produce results in real life as well, not just in controlled lab environments.

An extra “news” about the most British thing the British have ever done

This, to me, is more of a cute story than positive news, but it made me happy, so I’m including it anyway. In an attempt to attract more tourists to a nature reserve in Norfolk, England, they have done the most British thing ever: they have opened a pub. Surprisingly enough, the pub is the only one in the country located in a nature reserve. From the pub you can e.g. go on boat trips through the reserve. Good idea? Doubtful. Funny? Yes.

Endings and Sources:

These posts have got their own website! It was made by u/amteapotsometimes. We’re having some trouble writing the link directly in the post, but I’ll put it in a comment below. If you yourself have come across any positive news, you are welcome to write it in a comment or send a PM, and I can include it in next week’s post.

• Operations:1 2 (<- Here are pictures of the robot if you are curious). 3 4
• Allergies: 1
• The police: 1
• Mosquitoes: 1 2 3 4 5 6
  • (Did I think I would ever volunteer to read this much about mosquito pupae and related subjects in my spare time? No, I didn’t)
• Patch: 1 2 3
• The pub: 1