Eddy's Good News: Team USA's secret calming method and a most unique invention

Virgin Radio

15 Aug 2024, 14:00

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio Anthems, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 2pm and 6pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Thursday 15th August 2024

Did you watch the US team at the gymnastics in the Olympics? Even if you didn't, it would have been hard to avoid knowing how successful they - and their figurehead Simone Biles - were in Paris.

You will also most likely remember the pressure Simone was under following her mental health collapse which saw her withdraw from Tokyo. So what was the secret of their success, what was the key ingredient to calm down and reset the athletes nerves under such huge pressure? I’ll give you a clue. It’s got four paws, a lovely furry face and questionable breath, yes Team USA’s secret was Beacon, the golden retriever, their therapy doggo!

Throughout the games, Beacon was within petting distance of any one of the five members to calm pre-performance jitters. He’s a professional stress dog and his trainer - former rhythmic gymnastics coach Tracey Molnar - says the dog has incredible powers of intuition and empathy. He will find exactly which member of the team is the most nervous and go put his nose in their lap.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

Two secondary school students in the US have invented a unique water filtration device that uses a wall of sound to hold back microplastic particles from running water.

In lab tests, the acoustic force from the high-frequency sound waves impressively removed between 84% and 94% of the suspended microplastic particles in a single pass! 

Microplastic particles are everywhere on Earth—raining down from the jetstream, blowing up to the summit of Everest, and located at the deepest points of the ocean. Once ingested by humans they have been found to infiltrate every organ that has so far been examined for them. It’s a monumental challenge to address what they’re calling a pan-contaminant, Justin Huang and Victoria Ou from Texas, may just have an elegant solution. In a device no bigger than a pen, they use ultrasonic sound waves to move through water freely, to capture as much as 94% of microplastic contaminants by pushing them away from the water’s outflow point. It’s a huge improvement on a previous device which used sonics, now they are using the reward money from a prestigious prize to scale up their invention.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org