A Little Good News Is Good For The Heart

by Kevin Burton

   And all my floors do is squeak. Check this out:

   Researchers in Switzerland are developing floors that use your footfalls to generate energy.

   They have improved their “nanogenerator” with the use of a silicone coating and embedded nanocrystals to produce “a device that was 80 times more efficient, enough to power LED lightbulbs and small electronics,” according to the Good News Network.

   “The team began by transforming wood into a nanogenerator by sandwiching two pieces of functionalized wood between electrodes,” reads the article. “Like a shirt-clinging sock fresh out of the dryer, the wood pieces become electrically charged through periodic contacts and separations when stepped on, a phenomenon called the triboelectric effect.”

   I did this once or twice before. In the good names of Anne Murray (“we sure could use a little good news today”) and the apostle Paul who tells us to concentrate on things that are true, honest, just, pure…. (Phil. 4:8), Page 7 brings you a load of good news.

   All stories courtesy Good News Network. This next story from Leicestershire, England hits close to home.

   “A plumber is flush with success after he landed a record deal when a music mogul heard him singing—while he fitted his bathroom.”

   “49-year-old Kev Crane spent six weeks installing a new suite at the home of Paul Conneally—completely unaware he was the owner of a record label.”

     So while Crane installed pipes, he would display his own pipes by singing while he worked, “singing along to his favorite tunes on the radio including David Bowie and Meat Loaf.”

   “Record company boss Conneally was so impressed with this dulcet tones he gave him a deal, and he’s now made his first album.”

    “My wife has been so overwhelmed by it all,” Crane said, “in tears about it. Good tears because she knows it’s my passion.”  

   Next, potentially life-saving research being conducted at MIT.

   “Attempting to save some of the 1.9 million people who die from blood loss every year, researchers at MIT are using barnacles as inspiration to craft a glue that can seal a wound in just 15 seconds,” reads the article.

   Barnacles are strange creatures which can glom onto virtually anything in the ocean, no matter what type of surface the object has.

   “Hyunwoo Yuk, a mechanical engineering scientist at MIT, and his colleagues based their barnacle-inspired glue on the cocktail of lipids (fats) that the animals use before clinging to surfaces. This oil they secrete sweeps away contaminants, and primes the surface for glomming onto with a bio-cement that would otherwise not take as well.”

   “Wound adhesives tend not to work well with major injuries. They rely on coagulants which can take minutes to work, time the patient may not have. Furthermore, they rely on dry-enough skin to be able to hold a wound closed; hardly the ideal conditions when a patient is bleeding heavily, or if you have to close an internal wound,” the article reads.

   “When secreted onto a cut in the heart of a rat, the new glue stopped the blood-loss and sealed it within 10 seconds, and proved to withstand eight times the breaking pressure compared to commercial alternatives,” the article treads.

      From Oklahoma and Afghanistan, a story of maternal love and life trajectory.   

   “An Oklahoma mom, who’s come to think of some gifted Afghan girls as adopted daughters, has moved heaven and earth to help get the teens to safety since Taliban extremists retook Afghanistan.”

   “Harvard graduate Allyson Reneau has 11 kids of her own, but there was still plenty of room in her heart for the members of Afghanistan’s all-girl robotics team, a.k.a. “the Afghan Dreamers.”

   “Reneau and the tight-knit group bonded back in 2019 when they met at a Washington D.C.-based Humans to Mars summit.”

   “In the weeks building up to the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Reneau became increasingly concerned for the girls’ welfare. She became frustrated by the lack of cooperation in the U.S. to secure their safety, the article reads.

   “Rather than wait, she headed to the sanctuary country of Qatar, hoping to use the connections she had there to help expedite a rescue.”

   “In conjunction with the Dreamers’ parent organization Digital Citizen Fund, and the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Reneau was able to pull some strings and get the exit process rolling.

   Soon enough, 10 robotics team members between the ages of 16 and 18 were boarded on a commercial flight.

    “I got a text from one of the girls that just said: ‘We did it.’ All the emotion from two weeks of work and running into a wall constantly, and burying your feelings, and bearing your feelings for the girls, it just hit me all at once,” Reneau told Business Insider.

   Since arriving in Qatar, the girls have been inundated with numerous scholarship offers from several prestigious U.S. universities. Thanks to the escape, they can now pursue their life’s dreams.