A Lancaster, Pennsylvania teen got a bunch of his friends together to join the search for a missing five-year-old girl.
Temar Boggs didn’t know the girl or her family but suddenly had a gut feeling that he would find the child.
He saw a van driving around the neighborhood and got a glimpse inside of a girl in the back seat.
A young man in Tennessee doesn’t let autism or mental challenges stop him from living a full life — and helping others less fortunate to do the same.
After visiting the animal control office to look for a new pet, 15 year-old Bubba asked his mother why the dogs and cats didn’t have any toys, beds or blankets. They looked cold and lonely in their cages. He asked if the family could buy the beds and toys. His mom had to explain that they couldn’t afford the cost.
“All that day I could see that he had a lot on his mind,” said his mother. “Later that evening he came to me and told me he would raise money to help the animals.”
What if underground parking garages were lit by lamps running off the CO2 exhaust from the passing cars?
French Bio-chemist Pierre Calleja invented an algae lamp that needs no electricity for illumination and also gobbles up carbon emissions that cause global warming.
The French start-up he works for, FermentAlg, installed one of the algae-filled tanks in a parking garage in Bordeau. It feeds on the CO2 in the air at the rate of 1 ton per year, the amount that a tree absorbs over its entire lifetime, according to the French project Shamengo.
The mayor of Vilnius plans to install a huge screen on the town hall to broadcast a real-time “happiness barometer” that will monitor the mood of the Lithuanian capital.
The giant display will monitor the level of happiness based on tabulated votes sent in by city residents from their mobile phones and computers.
(READ the story from Reuters)
Ten years ago the Iberian lynx was nearing extinction but today, thanks to an imaginative conservation programme that has brought hunters, farmers and the tourist industry under its wing, its numbers have tripled from 94 to 312.
“Now there is hope,” said Miguel Ángel Simón, director of the lynx recovery program in Andalusia, southern Spain.
(READ the story in the Guardian)
Photo by lynxexsitu.es – CC
One of the most memorable videos ever appearing on the Good News Network was a 2009 ESPN feature on a pair of athletes wrestling at a Cleveland inner city school. Leroy Sutton had years earlier lost both his legs in a train accident. His teammate, Dartanyon Crockett, carried Leroy on his back during every wrestling match and every practice.
The outstanding young men found a place in the heart of Lisa Fenn, the ESPN features producer who, after the story aired, received hundreds of emails from viewers who wanted to help send the wrestlers to college. Both said they’d like to go but that there was no money. Fenn set up a trust fund and a website, “Carry On”, to accept the donations.
ESPN decided to produce a video update, telling the story of how Lisa quit her job to take on the arduous task of applying to colleges and essentially being a mother to the boys who had lost their moms early on.
Today, Leroy is on track to earn his bachelor’s degree from an Arizona college having studied video game design. Dartanyon visited the U.S. paralympic training center and decided to switch to judo and pursue a medal in London.
“She is the largest support that I’ve ever had,” said Dartanyon in tears.
(WATCH the video or READ the story at ESPN) – Photo credit: ESPN
An award-winning innovation by two African students could help reduce the devastating impact of the life-threatening disease malaria — which is spread relentlessly by infected mosquitoes.
The young men, from Burkina Faso and Burundi, have used indigenous herbs to create a soap that repels mosquitoes, thus reducing the disease.
Their “Faso Soap” has earned the pair a $25,000 Grand Prize in the Global Social Venture Competition.
In January 2007, California began an unprecedented $3.3 billion ratepayer funded effort to add 3,000 MW of new solar installations over the next decade. The California Solar Initiative continues to be the country’s largest solar program.
The state’s public utilities commission last week issued its annual progress report showing that the program has installed 66 percent of its total goal on 167,878 different customer sites, enough to fully power approximately 150,000 homes and avoid building three power plants.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling secretly posed as a retired military policeman to write a crime novel that has been hailed as one of the best debut detective stories in years.
Rowling wrote “The Cuckoo’s Calling
If you are reading the Good News Network, you are probably an optimist. You make lemonade out of lemons. You see the glass half-full. You’re hopeful about the future.
Jenny McCarthy thinks it sounds like a very fulfilling way to live. She made a list for the Chicago Sun-Times naming her top ten benefits for being optimistic.
Seven ultrasharp images of space released last week by the Gemini South Observatory in Chile reveal the remarkable potential of a new instrument that removes atmospheric distortions.
Astronomers recently got their hands on Gemini Observatory’s revolutionary new adaptive optics system, called GeMS, “and the data are truly spectacular!” says Robert Blum, Deputy Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory with funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation. “What we have seen so far signals an incredible capability that leaps ahead of anything in space or on the ground – and it will for some time.”
Training our immune systems to fight cancer has been an appealing prospect among scientists for decades.
Stanford researchers are on track to begin human trials of a potentially potent new weapon against cancer that does exactly that.
A team working with Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology at the Stanford School of Medicine and pioneer in the field of cancer immunotherapy, published results in March that showed it’s possible to perpetuate an anti-cancer immune response in laboratory mice.
The Pakistani child education activist who was shot in the head nine months ago by Taliban militants celebrated her 16th birthday by delivering a speech at the United Nations.
Speaking to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the 500 youth and dignitaries gathered, Malala Yousafzai said that the gunmen could not silence her because knowledge and education is more powerful than their bullets.
“Terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died,” she said. “Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala.”
When two locals from England joined a guide dog training course they didn’t expect their new retrievers to lead them to their future spouses, but the two believed that fate might have intervened when their ‘inseparable’ guide dogs fell seemingly in love.
Parents may find it difficult to get their kids to put down electronic devices so they can help with the dishes or take out the trash.
Good news! Now there’s an app for that.
A new generation of chore apps, designed primarily for the under-12 set, aims to turn kids into bed makers, laundry folders and toy picker-uppers by offering rewards ranging from funny collectible monsters to redeemable digital coins.
Researchers in Sweden studied the heart rates of choir members as they joined their voices together in song. Their findings, published this week in Frontiers in Neuroscience, confirm that heart rates become synchronized while the music produces calming effects.
When the choir began to sing — and exhale — in unison, the heart rates slowed down and became entrained, first appearing on the monitor as individual jagged lines, then quickly transforming to fairly uniform waves.
As Congress evaluates the Obama administration’s plans for universal preschool, several states are already inching toward that goal.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced last month 93 grants totaling $7.26 million to boost access to pre-kindergarten programs. Michigan and Minnesota lawmakers did the same to help students from low-income families attend pre-kindergarten.
(READ the story from the USA Today)
A Puerto Rican design student at London’s Royal College of Art has created a customized bicycle that grinds discarded plastic containers at one end and spits out a colorful plastic ribbon at the other end, useful for weaving into chairs, baskets or pop art. (See photo here)
Victor Monserrate has placed the plans for his simple machine online and says the recycler, designed with the developing world in mind, can be made out of old bicycle and toaster parts.
Another young designer, this time from New Zealand, was inspired to use scrap pieces of woolen carpet along with a biodegradable resin to create, among other things, an attractive hardshell suitcase that will naturally biodegrade in about 3 years if discarded.
The James Dyson Foundation is funding production for Dan Mclaughlin‘s ideas.
Finally, the BBC video below highlights an Italian designer’s modern foldable lamps, called “IN-EI”, which look like origami paper but are actually made from recycled bottles. The way they collapse into a flat shape no bigger than a magazine will help reduce shipping costs and CO2 emissions.
(WATCH the wonderful video featuring these three designers – made by Dougal Shaw for the BBC)
After the truck he was working on fell off the jack, Adam Simmons, a Plymouth, Mass., resident, was caught under the vehicle.
Simmons’ 22-year-old daughter, Rachael, heard the screaming and performed an incredible feat, lifting the SUV to help rescue her father.
People living in crowded urban centers will be interested in a remarkable window invented by South Korean researchers. By exploiting some exotic acoustic techniques, the window lets the fresh air flow in while keeping unwanted noise out.
The simple design comes from Sang-Hoon Kima at the Mokpo National Maritime University in South Korea and Seong-Hyun Lee at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, have achieved.
