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Hero scientists just found a way to make ice cream melt more slowly.

Based on my personal calculations, approximately 600 trillion ounces of ice cream go to waste each year because of melting.

And you don't even want to know how many spritzes of 409 it takes to clean it up off the kitchen floor. Or how many children's tears are shed in the process.


That cone is about two seconds away from disintegrating entirely. Photo by George Thomas/Flickr.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that maintaining optimal ice-cream-eating conditions has been one of humanity's most vexing puzzles for centuries.

The joy of a frosty ice cream cone in the heavy, sweltering summer heat is so immense, yet so fleeting. Eat it too quickly, you get brain freeze. Too slowly, and you've got liquid Neapolitan running down your hand.

It's enough to make anyone feel a little ... heated.

Here's the new scoop: Scientists just found a way to make our ice cream melt a little more slowly in the summer.

Dippin' Dots were supposed to be the future. Sadly, the company went bankrupt in 2011. Photo by newwavegurly/Flickr.

A team from Edinburgh and Dundee universities in Scotland recently discovered that a naturally occurring protein called BsIA can help ice cream stay frozen longer.

See, an ice cream's melt-rate is usually based on something called its "overrun," or, in other words, how much air and other non-dairy stuff is in it. Cheaper ice cream brands use more emulsifiers, which is just a fancy word for things added to processed foods to help stabilize them so they melt more slowly. Premium ice cream brands (you know, the ones where the brand name is written in cursive) use a much higher percentage of natural ingredients and flavorings, so they're a lot more susceptible to melting.

According to researchers, BsIA — which naturally exists in plant roots and is used to ferment foods — helps bind together the air, fat, and water in ice cream to make it more resistant to those warm temperatures.

That means we're one step closer to rich, ultra-premium ice cream that doesn't immediately dissolve the moment you step into the sun.

And the cherry on top? This new super ice cream could hit shelves in the next three to five years.

This. Changes. Everything.

Of course, not everyone is happy about this innovation, namely family dogs and local ant colonies that typically look forward to claiming those sugary puddles of ice cream as their own.

But for the rest of us, BsIA will soon give way to an entirely new world. One where enjoying a frozen treat on a hot day is no longer a race against the clock. One where the inside of ice cream shops doesn't have to be an unbearable 15 degrees. One where life's finest decadence can be savored, not scarfed — the way it was always meant to be enjoyed.

Someone get these researchers a medal. Or better yet, take them out for a sundae.

They've earned it.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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