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World News

A New Movement is Going Global

The growing body of evidence linking smartphone use with mental health issues in children has led to the rise of a grassroots organization in the U.K. that supports parents choosing to keep their kids away from these devices.

Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC), founded by Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough in February, quickly garnered interest, creating local parent groups across the U.K. and attracting over 60,000 members within weeks, according to its website.

Concerns about the widespread normalization of children owning smartphones fuel interest in the movement. Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, reports that by age 12, 97% of children in the U.K. have a mobile phone. In the U.S., 42% of children have a smartphone by age 10, rising to 91% by age 14, according to a 2021 report by Common Sense, which surveyed 1,306 young people aged 8 to 18.

Parents often provide smartphones to their children for entertainment, tracking their location, and staying in touch when they are away from home. However, studies and experts warn that this access opens the door to social media and potential mental health risks.

SFC aims to unite parents who opt not to give their children smartphones, helping them overcome peer pressure and feelings of isolation. Its rapid growth has led to international expansion, with groups forming in the U.S., Australia, the UAE, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and other countries.

Shortly after the SFC campaign launch, the U.K. government, led by the Conservative Party, issued new guidelines banning smartphone use in schools and during break times. Similarly, some U.S. regions, including Los Angeles and the states of Florida and Indiana, have enacted school mobile phone bans.

Innovation

Microscope Achieves 5-Nanometer Resolution

Researchers have developed a microscope with a resolution better than five nanometers—five billionths of a meter. To put this in perspective, the microscope can image at a scale equivalent to splitting a hair into 10,000 strands.

The team, consisting of members from the Universities of Göttingen and Oxford, along with the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), created a high-resolution fluorescence microscope capable of revealing the smallest cell processes. This new tool offers far more detailed images than standard microscopes, which have a resolution limit of about 200 nanometers.

Conventional microscopes can't capture structures like the fine tubes that form a scaffold in human cells, or the small gaps between nerve cells, which are only 10 to 50 nanometers apart. The new microscope overcomes these limitations by achieving a resolution better than five nanometers.

This fluorescence microscope uses single-molecule localization microscopy, where individual fluorescent molecules in a sample are switched on and off, allowing their positions to be determined with high precision. The structure of the sample is then modeled from these positions. Previously, this method provided resolutions of around 10 to 20 nanometers. However, Professor Jörg Enderlein's research group at the University of Göttingen's Faculty of Physics has now halved that resolution using a highly sensitive detector and specialized data analysis.

Enderlein described the technology as a milestone in high-resolution microscopy, offering single-digit nanometer resolution while being more cost-effective and user-friendly than other methods. The research team also developed open-source software for data processing, making the technology widely accessible. Their findings were published in Nature Photonics.

Culture

12-year-old Master Angler of Maryland

Lucy Moore, a 12-year-old from Maryland, has earned the prestigious Master Angler Award from the state. Dubbed the "black belt of angling," Moore received this accolade after an impressive year of fishing alongside her father, Nick Perez.

Starting her fishing journey at just 3 years old and earning the nickname “Blue Gill Queen” for her early achievements, Moore dedicated nearly 30 hours to fishing for a rare Musky in Kentucky. On the last day of their trip, she successfully caught a 24-inch Musky, meeting one of the 60 species requirements for the Master Angler certification in Maryland.

Erik Zlokovitz from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources commended Moore for her remarkable ability to catch trophy-sized fish across 10 different species—an accomplishment that surpasses many adults. The award was presented at Bass Pro Shops, where Moore was gifted custom fishing gear, a $250 gift card, and the opportunity to feed the fish in the store’s tank.

An exceptional student and advocate for Kids Can Fish, Moore is already exploring top marine biology programs in the US, with the University of Miami being a potential goal.

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Mind Stretchers

⁉️ 

I am a number, but when you add ‘G’ to me, I go away. What number am I?

Answers to yesterday’s Mind Stretchers:
What number do you get when you multiply all the numbers of a telephone dialpad?
- Zero, As one of the numbers on a telephone’s dial pad is 0, the product of all numbers will be zero.

Chris Hostetler got the correct answer first!

The first to send us the correct answer for today’s mind stretcher for a shout-out with the answer tomorrow. Just send us the answer and your name to [email protected] or reply to the email.

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