MOST COUNTED AS PROGRESS

Togo’s cotton yields rose from 570 kg to over a tonne per hectare.

The national average rose above one tonne per hectare in 2025–26; some farmer-field-school groups reached 1.4 to 2 tonnes while cutting pest treatments.

SOURCEBird Story Agency via AllAfrica

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1233 COUNTS ALL TIME

A phase 3 lung-fibrosis drug preserved breathing better than placebo.

The lower dose met the trial’s main goal over 52 weeks. The higher dose did not, and the detailed results are not yet published.

SOURCEReuters / Bristol Myers Squibb

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1243 COUNTS ALL TIME

An mRNA vaccine formulation kept working after two months at body-heat temperatures.

A preclinical formulation held onto its biological activity for more than two months at 37°C—and matched fresh material in mouse immune-response tests.

SOURCENature Biotechnology

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1253 COUNTS ALL TIME

Of 285 large UK rewilding projects, one was hit by fire this year.

The advocacy-group analysis also found burned areas from 2016–2026 were concentrated in acid grassland, heather, bog and other simplified landscapes rather than restored habitat.

SOURCERewilding Britain

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1263 COUNTS ALL TIME

Australia’s high court made coal planners account for overseas emissions.

The 3–2 ruling invalidated an expansion approval after the planning commission focused on only 2% of projected emissions and did not consider conditions for the other 98%.

SOURCEHigh Court of Australia

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1273 COUNTS ALL TIME

Students redirected 30,000 pounds of medical supplies before they were thrown away.

Project MedBridge moved about 50 pallets of unopened N95 respirators and therapy packs into a distribution network serving underresourced health facilities.

SOURCEProject MedBridge / Reasons to Be Cheerful

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1283 COUNTS ALL TIME

Six people with advanced retinal disease became measurably more sensitive to light.

In a 10-person safety trial, an experimental optogenetic treatment produced clinically meaningful light-sensitivity gains in six participants. It did not restore normal sight.

SOURCENew England Journal of Medicine

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1293 COUNTS ALL TIME

The helicopter crew got him off the truck in under five minutes.

An 80-foot hoist, one deputy on the wire and a crew that did not waste a second.

SOURCEMaricopa County Sheriff’s Office via People

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1303 COUNTS ALL TIME

A small headset trial found improvements in long-covid brain fog.

Four weeks of at-home magnetic-field sessions produced encouraging early signals for long-COVID cognitive impairment.

SOURCEMount Sinai

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1313 COUNTS ALL TIME

One-year-old scrub-jays weren’t supposed to nest. Four pairs did.

A genetic-rescue experiment got an unexpectedly ambitious first breeding season.

SOURCEUniversity of Central Florida

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1323 COUNTS ALL TIME

The ocean can take their land. It can’t take their country.

The first global political declaration on sea-level rise says an island state does not stop being a country because rising water makes its land uninhabitable.

SOURCEAlliance of Small Island States / United Nations

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1333 COUNTS ALL TIME

Kosovo spent 27 years clearing landmines. The job is done.

HALO Trust has concluded humanitarian mine clearance in Kosovo, 27 years after the war left fields, roads and villages contaminated.

SOURCEThe HALO Trust / Positive News

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1343 COUNTS ALL TIME

THE RIVER DIDN'T GET TO KEEP IT.

The river took a baby elephant. Five fishermen brought it back.

A days-old elephant calf drifted roughly four kilometers down the Teesta. Five fishermen reached it by boat; forest officials reunited it with its mother.

SOURCEThe Indian Express / West Bengal Forest Department

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1353 COUNTS ALL TIME

This one-gram robot can hop over a stair.

DirectHop uses a tiny motor and three folding legs to make controlled, repeated jumps. The prototype can clear a standard stair and twitch itself upright after a fall.

SOURCEUniversity of Washington / Newswise

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1363 COUNTS ALL TIME

THE LINE HELD.

A high school football team pulled a pontoon out of a flash flood.

When flash flooding hit New Richland, Minnesota, players from the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva football team helped with a pontoon rescue instead of watching from the bank.

SOURCEKEYC News

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1373 COUNTS ALL TIME

NINETY-NINE, IN SQUASH.

A farm built a world-record Attenborough portrait out of pumpkins.

Sunnyfields Farm unveiled a giant mosaic portrait of Sir David Attenborough assembled from pumpkins, breaking its own world record for the largest pumpkin mosaic.

SOURCEBBC News

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1383 COUNTS ALL TIME

THE HAND FELT BACK.

He lost his arm at 16. Now he can feel his wife's hand.

Seventeen years after an amputation, Alexander “Avi” Davidson became the first participant to take Utah's thought-controlled bionic arm home — with a nerve interface that gives it a sense of touch.

SOURCEUniversity of Utah Health

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1393 COUNTS ALL TIME

A WALL THAT BREATHES.

They skipped the seawall and put 22 concrete arches in the lagoon instead.

A 200-foot eroded bank at Sebastian Inlet State Park got 22 honeycomb reef arches and up to 90 red mangroves instead of a wall — finished September 10.

SOURCESebastian Daily

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1403 COUNTS ALL TIME

THE CLEANING CREW HAS SHELLS.

Alabama put 1,500 mussels to work cleaning a river.

About 1,500 rare native freshwater mussels — including two endangered species — were released into the Paint Rock River on August 25 after years of streambank repair.

SOURCEOutdoor Alabama

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1413 COUNTS ALL TIME

NOBODY REINTRODUCED IT.

They stopped interfering. Forty years later, an anteater walked back in.

Mongabay reports a giant anteater turned up in an Argentine reserve on its own, decades after the species vanished locally — a case for letting recovering habitat do the work.

SOURCEMongabay

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1423 COUNTS ALL TIME

TWO ORIGINS. ONE BRAIN.

The human brain may have been built from two ancient systems.

Stanford researchers found the forebrain/midbrain and hindbrain arise from distinct progenitor cell populations — and used that insight to grow functional human hindbrain motor neurons in the lab.

SOURCEStanford Medicine

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1433 COUNTS ALL TIME

THE HERD GOT BIGGER.