As technology continues to advance, we’re seeing innovation come about at faster rate than ever before. But as that technology becomes more accessible, we’re also seeing it originate outside of labs from surprising, yet inspiring sources.
For four years, now-13-year-old Anushka Naiknaware has been researching applications for nanoparticles, and that work has most recently netted her an award at the Google Science Fair, thanks to a real-world application that could change the way we treat chronic wounds.
Chronic wounds, by definition, are those that don’t heal on a normal or typical timeline. Often, this is due to a lack of moisture or a disruption in the healing process from removing the bandage, often to check the healing process. What Anushka has done is print a circuit that, when conducting electricity, could record moisture levels that would prevent a doctor from having to manually inspect a wound, allowing it more time to heal undisturbed.
This could be a huge innovation for those suffering from chronic wounds, namely the elderly, whose injuries tend to take longer to heal than young people’s.
In the below video, made for her entry in the Google Science Fair, Anushka talks about her development and the inspiration behind it:
"I realized that this was a very big problem because more people die of injuries per year than they do of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. After I discovered that, I wanted to find a solution for this," she says in the clip.
It’s remarkable that her desire to make change was met by her ability to do so. It’s not clear what the timeline of implementation would be for her innovation, but it’s a safe bet this won’t be the last contribution this rising star makes to the world of science.
Witnessing her remarkable talents and goals at age 13, we’re excited to see what she achieves with even more resources and education a little further down the road.
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.