A South Carolina fourth grader is credited with helping save the life of his classmate who was choking on a chicken nugget at lunch.
The 10-year-old said at first he thought his friend was joking, until he realized the boy couldn’t breathe.
(WATCH the video below, or READ the full story at WBTV)
Story tip from carilyn
When parents were asked how they thought they were doing, they expressed doubts and fear that they weren’t living up to their own goal of being good parents.
But when their kids were asked to give their evaluation, the answers reminded parents that they’re doing better than they think.
On Mother’s Day, tell a parent or grandparent something they might not have heard: “You’re doing better than you think.”
(WATCH the moving video from Minute Maid below)
For nearly a decade, Stephen Colbert sat at a desk hosting his amusing late night talk-show on the cable channel Comedy Central. Though many don’t agree with his politics, everyone is talking about his latest contribution to education in his home state.
He’s using the money raised from auctioning that desk to help fulfill every grant request made by South Carolina public school teachers.
The donation of $800,000 will fund nearly 1,000 projects in more than 375 schools.
(READ the full story in the Washington Post)
More and more, we’re seeing brilliant uses for household items once discarded as trash. You will never look at coffee grounds the same way after seeing the furniture, jewelry, and coffee machine housings that Adam Fairweather has brought to life using humble coffee waste.
The UK designer, who has become an expert in recycling technologies, started exploring the idea of using coffee grounds to create new materials ten years ago when Starbucks began opening stores in Britain. He wanted to find a way to unlock the value inherent in these steamy, brown leftovers.
“The idea that it already had this high value but we only use a little of it, that was interesting because I felt that there was a way of tapping into this perceived high value the product has intrinsically,” he told the Guardian.
The initial result was Greencup. The service delivers organic, Fairtrade coffee to offices, caterers and restaurants around the UK. Then, it collects the coffee waste and recycles it into valuable fertilizer.
With access to such a supply of coffee waste, Fairweather, an inventor at heart, envisioned the creation of more products. He opened an industrial design and manufacturing nonprofit, called Re-worked.
The Guardian reports that after Google began using Greencup’s closed-loop coffee service, it purchased furniture from Re-Worked that was made from a hybrid material comprised of 60% coffee grounds. Jeweler Rosalie McMillan has mixed the same material with gold and silver to create designer bangles. Sanremo has used a concoction of 70% coffee grounds to create a decorative housing for its Verde coffee machines.
Fairweather hopes to scale the process of making materials from coffee waste, but only if he can remain true to his vision of a fair trade “circular business”.
Recycle This Story because May 9th is Fair Trade Day. (Click to share below)…
Vivian Bailey, 97, has spent the past 15 years fundraising for the children at Running Brook Elementary School in Maryland, so they can go on educational field trips. When she was growing up, attending a poor school in the South, they never had such opportunities, which is why she wanted to make a difference for these students.
Finally, last week, she got to travel on one of her own, to the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. It was her very first field trip.
“Children out on the western part of the county where we have all these millionaires get these fabulous field trips. The parents of these children don’t have that type of money and I’m just determined that our children get the advantage of field trips,” she told WTTG-TV.
Her second trip is already in the works.
(READ the full story, w/ photos, from WTTG-5)
Tatiana Guerra of Brazil may have lost her vision at age 17, but she still got to “see” what her little one looked like.
With a little help from Huggies, the mom-to-be was able to “feel” her unborn baby, Murilo, when the ultrasound was turned into a printed cast from a 3D printer.
“Mommy’s counting the days,” she says as she rubs her tummy.
Just 15 minutes after she asked her doctor to describe what the baby looked like, she was handed the cast of the baby’s face and body.
The whole thing was a surprise–check out this video to witness her reaction.
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Every Mother’s Day, we honor the women who have dedicated their lives in service to their children and families. To help celebrate moms worldwide, we’ve collected some inspiring quotes about the impact–and sacrifice– of motherhood.
What’s your favorite memory of your mom– something she did that no one else did, something quirky or endearing that really makes you smile? We are collecting your ‘mom-isms’ for a Good News Network Mother’s Day post on Sunday. Please share yours in the comments below, or use Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #MyMomism
Share for Mother’s Day (click below)… Top photo by aarongilson (CC)
Can you deliver a message to space using a car? Yes, if you have 11 sets of tire tracks.
That’s how a 13-year-old girl sent her father aboard the International Space Station a short message–spread out over 1,300 acres.
The carmaker Hyundai provided the cars and the computers that turned the girl’s handwriting into GPS driving directions. Eleven cars, driving side by side, left tire tracks in a dry lake bed spelling out “Steph (loves) you.” And it was big enough for her father to see from space. The video below shows how it was done.
Hyundai only identified the girl as “Steph,” but ABC News reported Astronaut Terry Virts, scheduled to return from the ISS this month, has a daughter named Stephanie.
At 59,808,480 square feet, the image set a Guinness World Record for the largest tire track image — and arguably the largest billboard in the solar system.
(READ more at the New York Daily News)
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Just in time for Mother’s Day, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund announced the birth of an endangered mountain gorilla in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda.
There are less than 900 of these primates in existence worldwide, so each birth is a precious gift.
The video below shows the new baby and describes how gorillas make great mothers: They sleep with their babies every night for four years and nurse the infants during their first three years of life. They also carry their offspring everywhere for the first eight months.
READ more at GorillaFund.org / Story tip from Jane Riley
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Four men trapped under 10 feet of bricks, mud and other debris were rescued in Nepal thanks to a heartbeat detection device developed by NASA and the Department of Homeland Security. The search-and-rescue technology called FINDER (Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response) uses a microwave-radar detector the size of a suitcase.
Following the April 25 earthquake, two prototype FINDERs were deployed to Nepal.
“The true test of any technology is how well it works in a real-life operational setting,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers.
The men had been trapped beneath the rubble for days in the hard-hit village of Chautara when the FINDER was turned over to a team of international rescuers from China, the Netherlands, Belgium and members of the Nepali Army. Using FINDER, they were able to detect two heartbeats beneath each of two different collapsed structures, allowing the rescue workers to find and save the men.
“FINDER exemplifies how technology designed for space exploration has profound impacts to life on Earth,” said Dr. David Miller, NASA’s chief technologist in Washington, DC.
It has previously demonstrated capabilities of detecting people buried under up to 30 feet of rubble, hidden behind 20 feet of solid concrete, and from a distant of 100 feet in open spaces. A new “locator” feature has since been added to not only provide search and rescue responders with confirmation of a heartbeat, but also the approximate location of trapped individuals within about five feet, depending on the type of rubble.
Source: Jet Propulsion Lab / Story tip from carilyn
Roger Brown knew death was coming, which gave him time to arrange a special surprise for seven of his longtime friends.
A week after he died, Brown’s closest friends in the town of Sketty, Wales, discovered they had each been given $5,400 and one specific rule — they had to spend it on a weekend holiday in Europe.
Brown was the common thread tying the group of mates together. As retirees, they all hung out in the same local pub, remaining friends for over forty years. When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he decided he didn’t want the party to end.
It took almost three years to make the arrangements, but the band of buddies has just returned from Berlin, where they saw the sites and toasted his memory in frequent “comfort stops,” as one of his friends described their pub crawl.
“We would like to formally apologize to Roger’s two sons, Sam and Jack, for taking away some of their inheritance,” Roger Rees told the Swansea Evening Post. “We spent most of it on beer, the rest we wasted.”
Roger Brown would probably think it was money well spent.
(READ more at The Daily Mail)
Photo by Images of Money, CC
Reconciling new-age social media with old-school tradition, a new service turns Tweets into snail mail for American Military service members around the world.
Since smartphones are now our primary form of communication, one tech start up called Bond has built a robot that will do all of the work for you. Send a tweet or update your Facebook status, tag it with the hashtag #thankskindly, and that robot will automatically choose from one of a thousand handwriting styles to translate your Twitter and Facebook messages into old-fashioned ink on paper notes.
Military Dad Photobombs Son’s School Picture (WATCH)
Bond teamed up with snack-maker Kind for the campaign, which runs through the end of May, Military Appreciation Month. The campaign will also donate a dollar for every #thankskindly tagged post to Cellphones for Soldiers, a charity supplying service members with phones or phone cards to stay in touch with the folks at home. The campaign has a goal of raising $10,000 by May 31.
Check out the video below to see how the robot works.
(READ more at Mashable)
Knowing what to say to someone suffering from a serious illness isn’t always easy.
Card companies do their best to try to find the perfect words, but according to Emily McDowell, those cards don’t always keep it real.
That’s why she created Empathy Cards, with messages that are honest, compassionate, and even quite funny.
“I hope these cards can help people with cancer feel loved, heard, and understood,” McDowell, who is an illustrator, told Good News Network. “If they can help open the door to real, heartfelt exchanges, they’re a success in my book
McDowell, who was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 24, said that the most difficult part of her illness, wasn’t losing her hair or sickness from chemo, but the loneliness and isolation she felt when many of her close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.
“Sympathy cards can make people feel like you think they’re already dead, and I never personally connected with jokes about being bald or getting a free boob job, which is what most cancer cards focus on,” McDowell said. “I believe we need some better, more authentic ways to communicate about sickness and suffering.”
Above all, she wants to connect people through truth and insight, and for the recipients of these cards to feel seen, understood, and loved.
Instead of buying a whole new outfit for a wedding or graduation, fashionistas in the Netherlands can visit a fashion library and take home their favorite threads on loan.
This fashion library known as Lena is based in Amsterdam. Suzanne Smulders who co-founded it with three other young entrepreneurs said they believe we have an “over-consuming society,” especially when it comes to clothing.
Bored with your wardrobe? Sign up for @LENAlibrary to check out (and swap out) clothes: http://t.co/MAooG1jNPP pic.twitter.com/fgsz4AWZVb
— Co.Exist (@FastCoExist) May 7, 2015
“In Holland, we throw away 240 million kilos of textiles a year, while there are very bad circumstances in the whole chain, she told Fast Company. “Time for a change, we thought.”
The team said they believe the entire fashion industry should shift to a sharing model, like Rent the Runway.
(READ more at Fast Company Co-Exist) – File photo by mikefats, CC
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When it comes to detecting prostate cancer, these canines win by a nose.
A pair of three-year-old German shepherds named Zoe and Liu were more than 90% accurate in identifying cases of the disease, successfully outperforming the best lab machines in the world.
Currently, the PSA test that most hospitals use is only accurate 25% of the time– meaning that three of every four men diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t actually have the disease.
Italian scientists thought dogs would return fewer false-positive results, so they trained the two shepherds to sniff out very specific compounds that only turn up in urine samples from prostate cancer patients. Their hypothesis was right–they turned out far fewer false positives.
Rescued Young Kangaroo is Convinced He’s a Dog, Loves Life on the Farm
The results, which bolstered earlier tests by the UK group, Medical Detection Dogs (MDD), were published in the Journal of Urology.
“If our detection dogs were a machine, there would be huge demand for them,” Claire Guest, chief executive at MDD told WebMD.
As far back as 2006, Good News Network has featured stories about how dogs –and cats–were believed to have “smelled” cancer. A dog’s sense of smell is thousands of times more precise than humans, allowing them to detect scents diluted to just one in a thousand parts of a solution. Zoe and Liu were originally trained to sniff out explosives for the Italian military. The new study suggests they and other dogs could have valuable peacetime jobs as well.
(READ more at WebMD) – Photo by It’sGreg, CC license
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When tragedy touched Jeanie Baltz’s family a half century ago, she did something that would touch the lives of hundreds of others — she started donating blood. Fifty years later, those donations are credited with saving 550 lives.
The 71-year-old Baltz says she always “felt the need to give back” ever since her younger sister nearly died and needed a transfusion.
“I would donate blood to try to save people like her,” Baltz told KFSM in the video below. She’s donated 23.5 gallons of blood in the last 50 years.
You have to wait 56 days between donations, and Baltz has already made an appointment for her next one — on May 25.
(WATCH the video below from WSBT-5)
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New Yorkers did a double take this week when they spotted Bono beneath a cowboy hat singing with U2 on a subway platform, along with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon.
The video above shows the rockers from Ireland singing Angel of Harlem at the Grand Central station stop. Check out more photos below. Good times!
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A grandmother who recently graduated from a Florida college says she hopes her achievement will show others that it’s not too late to further their education.
At nearly 80-years-old, Rosa Salgado not only earned her Associate of Arts degree in education with honors (having a 3.8 average) from Miami-Dade College, but also graduated alongside her two grandsons.
One of them, David Salgado, graduated with the same Associate of Arts degree and said his grandmother has really inspired him.
“For me and my family, for her to take this one step graduating, it fills my heart,” he told WTVJ-TV. 
Salgado, an immigrant from Colombia, faced various challenges, including the language barrier and the hospitalization of her youngest daughter, but through it all, she never gave up on her dream of earning a college degree. She hopes she can inspire others to realize that they are never too old to learn and to fulfill their life-long dreams.
(READ more from the Miami Herald )
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A disease that can cause birth defects, including blindness, deafness, and congenital heart defects, has been wiped out in the Americas.
After more than 250 million teens and adults received shots in an aggressive, ten year campaign, vaccination programs using the MMR vaccine in 32 countries have officially been credited with eliminating Rubella in the region that includes North and South America and the Caribbean.
Rubella, also called “German measles,” usually causes only mild symptoms, but pregnant women who catch it can miscarry, and their children may suffer a wide range of birth defects.
Aside from travelers coming in from outside the 32 countries, there have been no cases of rubella reported in the Americas since 2009. That led the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the disease eradicated in the region stretching from Greenland to the edges of Antarctica.
Rubella is only the third vaccine-preventable disease eliminated from the Americas. Smallpox was eradicated in 1971 and polio in 1994.
Measles, mumps and rubella are all preventable with the same MMR vaccine. Each shot costs a little over a dollar. PAHO’s next target is eliminating measles.
“The fight against rubella has taken more than 15 years, but it has paid off with what I believe will be one of the most important Pan American public health achievements of the 21st century,” said PAHO/WHO Director Carissa Etienne. “Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and finish the job of eliminating measles as well.”
(READ more at PAHO/WHO’s website)
Photo by PAHO/WHO, CC license
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Three babies are alive and happy, thanks to doctors who literally printed out the framework for new windpipes. All three were born with the same rare, life-threatening disease and none were expected to live very long. But three years after the first implant was tried, the first patient, Kaiba Gionfriddo, is now a curious, active 3-year-old who runs and plays with his family. He even got to meet his favorite cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, at Disney World recently, thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
The other two children are showing the same kinds of improvements as Kaiba, leading the doctors behind the breakthrough treatment to say it worked “better than we could have ever imagined.”
Man Creates ‘Shoes That Grow’ So Poor Kids Don’t Outgrow Them
All three babies were born with a disease called tracheobronchomalacia, which causes the windpipe to collapse and makes normal breathing impossible. In the video above, doctors explain how they created and implanted implanted 3D printed splints around the babies’ airways, creating a framework to hold the windpipe open and allow it to grow normally.
Three years after the first device was implanted in Kaiba, pictured here, the splint is dissolving just as it’s supposed to and doctors expect the child’s trachea will eventually show no signs of the disease that nearly killed him as a newborn.
“It’s wonderful and beyond anything I could have hoped for,” Dr. Glenn Green, one of the two doctors behind the procedure said in the University of Michigan video. “It’s so exciting to see.”
Green and Dr. Scott Hollister carried out the procedure at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, have published an article about 3D printed implants in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Following up on the three children over three years, they determined the devices saved all three lives and hold great promise for other children born with the disease.
(READ more from the University of Michigan Health System)
Photo Credit: University of Michigan Health System / Story Tip: Bereji
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