BetterBodyLab

08/24/2025

Where we are....

“It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” President Donald Trump wrote yesterday afternoon on social media.

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.

10/08/2022

10/06/2022

When Marlon Brando decided to reject his Oscar for The Godfather in 1973 in protest of the film industry's treatment of Native Americans, he asked then 24-year-old Sacheen Littlefeather to read his rejection speech at the Oscar ceremony. The Apache activist and actress, who died this week of breast cancer at the age of 75, was only able to read a short excerpt before she was met with a chorus of boos and some cheers. Her appearance marked the first time a Native American woman had taken the stage at the Oscars and she did so wearing traditional Apache dress. Littlefeather, who went on to appear in films such as "The Trial of Billy Jack” and “Winterhawk," only recently received a formal apology from the Academy for her treatment during Oscars; an apology that she said she was "stunned" to receive. For her part, Littlefeather was always proud of taking a stand that night; as she once reflected, “I didn’t represent myself. I was representing all Indigenous voices out there, all Indigenous people, because we had never been heard in that way before.”

To introduce children to Native American and Aboriginal girls and women -- whose stories are also underrepresented in children's literature -- visit our blog post, "A Celebration of Native American and Indigenous Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10365

To inspire children and teens with true stories of girls and women who took a stand for justice, visit out our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364

To inspire young readers with the stories of girls and women in the performing arts, visit A Mighty Girl's "Creative Arts" section at https://www.amightygirl.com/books/general-interest/creative-arts

And to introduce children and teens to more inspiring female trailblazers in the arts, sciences, and other fields, visit our "Role Models" biography section at https://www.amightygirl.com/books/history-biography/biography