EurekAlert! Staff Picks
Each month, our team members share their favorite recent news releases, stories that caught their eye, sparked their curiosity, or made them think. We hope you’ll find them just as interesting!
Noreen Rozario
Editorial Coordinator
Being an avid coffee drinker, I really enjoyed reading this Feature Story by The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. It describes a new resource - a digital platform - that is helping Honduran coffee farmers, who are at risk of losing access to the European market due to a lack of tools to trace the deforestation-free status of their coffee. The new platform is tailored for small-scale producers like Honduran coffee growers, which is allowing hundreds of farmers to meet compliance requirements. I thought it was also thoughtful and impressive that the new software is made accessible at little to no cost, acknowledging the financial constraints that may be faced by these farmers.
A release submitted by California Institute of Technology describes how researchers created a "smart bandage" that can monitor chronic wounds in patients. I think this device would be beneficial in a hospital setting as it can also deliver treatment and speed up healing for cuts, incisions, scrapes, and burns that are slow to heal on their own!
I found this Feature Story posted by NIH/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to be quite fascinating because it relates to twins in some way! Seeing as I am a twin myself, this story was eye catching! The story describes researchers who are exploring the concept of a digital carbon copy of individuals, kind of like a virtual twin. This innovative idea may help predict long-term disease risks, assess treatment responses, and simulate surgeries before they occur! Although this technology is still in its early stages, it may hold the potential to improve our health outcomes in the future.