In today’s Good News, an inexpensive insect repellent shows promise as an effective — and safe — way to protect babies from malaria. And in Kentucky, a collaboration between local farmers and a county high school results in less food waste and elevated lunches students actually look forward to eating.

Catherine Garcia
The Week Digital

The recent surprise discovery of bacteria in the most common type of kidney stone may lead to new treatments and preventative measures, according to a study in the journal PNAS. While studying calcium oxalate stones, a UCLA-led research team observed live bacteria and layers of bacteria in the stone’s crystals. There is a “long-held assumption” that kidney stones develop “solely through chemical and physical processes,” said study senior co-author Dr. Kymora Scotland, but this shows that bacteria may “actively contribute to their formation.”

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Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London researchers have developed a new way to track falling space debris using existing earthquake sensors. These sensors can also detect sonic booms from objects re-entering the atmosphere, and that data allows scientists to quickly estimate where hazardous debris may land. This low-cost, scalable approach could help authorities respond faster to contamination risks, recover toxic materials more effectively and better understand how growing space activity affects the planet.

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Babies carried in cloth wraps treated with permethrin, an insect repellent, are two-thirds less likely to develop malaria, according to a study in Uganda. In the six-month trial, 200 mothers swaddled their infants in permethrin-treated wraps and 200 mothers used wraps dipped in water. There were 0.73 weekly malaria cases per 100 babies in the permethrin-treated group, compared to 2.14 in the water group. Permethrin has a “good safety profile” and has been applied to textiles for decades, said The Guardian.

Students at Boyle County High School in Kentucky are eating five-star lunches, thanks to a kitchen staff that cooks from scratch with fresh ingredients from local farmers. Fajitas and street tacos are among the most popular items, using beef from a sustainable farm seven miles from campus. The school’s partnership with farmers benefits everyone, officials say, with food waste plummeting and kids enjoying their meals. “Most days, honestly, I’m gonna give it a good 9.5,” student Nora Coleman told LEX 18.

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