Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
A 58-year-old woman paralyzed by a stroke was all smiles after sipping her cinnamon latte with the help of a mind-controlled robotic arm. Cathy Hutchinson is one of two tetraplegic patients able to reach and grasp with a robotic limb linked to [a] tiny sensor in her brain, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. The device, called BrainGate, bypasses the nerve circuits broken by the brainstem stroke and replaces them with wires that run outside Hutchinson's body. The implanted sensor is about the size of a baby aspirin. "You can go from the brain ... directly to a device like a computer or a robotic arm," said BrainGate developer John Donoghue, director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "This can help restore independence to a person who was completely reliant on other people for every activity, whether it's brushing their teeth, eating their dinner or taking a drink." Hutchinson, who has been unable to move or speak for 15 years, had the 96-channel sensor implanted in her brain's motor cortex in 2005. Since then, the BrainGate team has been fine-tuning the system to give her back some of the control she lost. With its hair-like electrodes, the BrainGate sensor taps into the flurry of brain activity, recording electrical signals that can be translated into movement commands. "It's like learning a language," Donoghue said of the translation process, a series of mathematical calculations that copy the brain's processing ability.
Note: Remember that the world of classified and secret research is generally at least 10 years in advance of whatever is available to the public. The above link contains videos of this event. Another very good video on this new breakthrough is available at this link. For a video of a new device which will likely soon replace wheelchairs and empower paraplegics, click here. And for an inspiring five-minute video of a disabled vet who learned to walk on his own again because someone believed in him, click here.
Endurance athletes sometimes say they're "addicted" to exercise. In fact, scientists have shown that rhythmic, continuous exercise — aerobic exercise — can in fact produce narcoticlike chemicals in the body. Now researchers suggest that those chemicals may have helped turn humans, as well as other animals, into long-distance runners. The man behind the research is University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen, a runner himself. He thinks humans are "Wired to run, meaning that our brains ... have been sort of rewired ... to encourage these running and high aerobic-activity behaviors." Many anthropologists think early humans learned to run long distances to chase down and exhaust prey, like antelopes. Meat is one payoff for runners. But Raichlen thinks there may have been another reward: a runner's high. He designed an experiment to test this idea. When people exercise aerobically, their bodies can actually make drugs — cannabinoids, the same kind of chemicals in marijuana. Raichlen wondered if other distance-running animals also produced those drugs. If so, maybe runner's high is not some peculiar thing with humans. So he put dogs — also distance runners — on a treadmill. Also ferrets, but ferrets are not long-distance runners. The dogs produced the drug, but the ferrets did not. Says Raichlen: "It suggests some level of aerobic exercise was encouraged by natural selection, and it may be fairly deep in our evolutionary roots."
