BetterBodyLab

02/08/2026

https://youtu.be/-1jXocR_nXg?si=_LOC-dmINyxVAsJD
Obama speaks.

Obama Breaks His Silence With Sharp Criticism of Trump | What He Said & Why It Matters Former President Barack Obama has broken his silence with pointed crit...

04/10/2023

From a very young age I relished any kind of movement - dancing, running, climbing, biking, gymnastics, etc. Now in my early 70’s, I still love movement and am passionate about helping others to move better and feel good in their bodies! I began to study and practice yoga in my late 30’s,

11/06/2022

Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in 1909 to a Jewish-Italian family in Turin. Levi-Montalcini's years in medical school coincided with the rise of fascism in Italy and the imposition of anti-Semitic laws which limited her career prospects. Once WWII broke out, she and her family decided to stay in Italy rather than flee overseas and she built a laboratory in her bedroom to continue her research work. It was in this makeshift laboratory that she began studying the development of chicken embryos; research that laid the underpinning of her later Nobel Prize-winning work on the mechanism of cell growth regulation.

After the N**i invasion of Italy in 1943, Levi-Montalcini and her family were forced underground and moved to Florence where she worked as a doctor in Allied war camps after the city was liberated. Following the war, in 1946, she moved to the U.S. for more than twenty years to conduct research at Washington University in St. Louis. It was there that she discovered nerve growth factor, a protein which regulates the growth of cells; this discovery was critical to better understanding tumor growth among other conditions.

It was for this breakthrough research that the Nobel committee described her work, along with fellow winner Stanley Cohen, as “a fascinating example of how a skilled observer can create a concept out of apparent chaos.” Both received the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Dr. Levi-Montalcini passed away in 2012 at the age of 103.

Rita Levi-Montalcini's story is told along with other pioneering women of science in the illustrated biography "Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers" for ages 9 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/women-in-science) and “Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science – and The World" for teens and adults (https://www.amightygirl.com/headstrong-52-women)

She is also featured on the 'Famous Women in Science Socks' for teens and adults at https://www.amightygirl.com/famous-women-in-science-socks

For a fascinating book for adults about women in the Italian Resistance during WWII, we highly recommend "A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/a-house-in-the-mountains

For many books for children and teens about girls and women who lived during the Holocaust, visit our blog post, "60 Mighty Girl Books About The Holocaust" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11586

11/06/2022

10/31/2022

QOTD: "I don't want self driving cars. I want boring things like public transit that comes so regularly I don't need to check a schedule. I want fast passenger rail so accessible and easy it's preferable to suffering airports. I want cities that aren't built around cars-as-default!!"

10/09/2022

In 1887, Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, better known as Nellie Bly, was a 23-year-old inspiring journalist. Upon a New York World newspaper editor's request, she faked insanity to conduct first-hand research at a New York insane asylum. The asylum she was sent to typically housed poor immigrants. She stayed there for ten days until the editors could get her released.

Speaking of her experience, Nellie said, "What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment?... I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck."

Nellie published Ten Days in a Mad-House, which helped increase funding and change in New York insane asylums.

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Sources: Nellie Bly. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, / Wikimedia Commons

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10/08/2022

A cartoon by Teresa Burns Parkhurst.