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Monday, Nov 2 · Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
Storm the service dog woke her. Her husband lived.The dog wouldn't go back to bed. That was the point.
A service dog named Storm woke her deaf owner shortly after midnight and refused to settle, which turned out to be the reason the owner's husband survived a fall down the stairs. Sandra Donally, 62, from Staffordshire, England, had been fast asleep when the dog leapt onto her bed and sat upright, staring toward the landing. "I told her that Gary was in the bathroom and asked her to go back to bed, but she wouldn't move," Donally said. Moments later she found her husband crumpled at the bottom of the staircase, unconscious and bleeding. Gary had missed the handrail and fallen. Paramedics took him to Royal Stoke Hospital, where he spent 24 days and underwent reconstructive surgery on a broken jaw. Donally lost her hearing suddenly in 2017 and was partnered with Storm in 2024. Without the dog, she would not have noticed Gary gone until half past six. He'd have lain there six hours.
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
Students buried a football field under 250,000 pounds of foodTeens needed service hours. A quarter-million pounds of food showed up.
Hundreds of New Jersey students buried Howell High School's football field under more than a quarter-million pounds of donated food last week, filling the end zones with thousands of bright yellow bags. The haul, collected during the second annual 100-Yard Food Drive Challenge, is the largest in the history of the nonprofit Dermer Dreams. The food has already gone to 30 food banks across the state, including Lunch Break, Fulfill and the Howell Food Bank. The football team pitched in to load the rented trucks, which is a reasonable use of people who are good at carrying things. "These students did more than collect food. They united communities and demonstrated the power of working together," said co-founder Dan Dermer, who runs the drive alongside his wife, Alyse. The group started in 2019 after the couple noticed local teenagers hunting for community service hours. This year built on an inaugural 2025 event at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Good News Network
They met at the gym at 88 and fell in loveHe thought that was the end. Then she kept showing up.
Barbara Thompson and Fred Jenkins both expected to spend their last years alone. They were both widowed, both 88, and both living at the Oscott Retirement Village in Birmingham. Then they met at the gym. Fred, a former Army PT instructor whose wife died three years ago, began coaching Barbara and a friend during a workout session. The friend stopped coming. Barbara kept showing up every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. "We laughed a lot and we joked a lot and I started looking forward to going to the gym," said Barbara, who turned 89 last week. The pair now spend nearly every day together, lifting weights three times a week and dancing whenever music comes on. They recently took their first holiday as a couple. They have no plans to marry or move in together, keeping their own apartments instead. "When my wife passed away, I just thought that that's the end of the world now," Fred said. It was not. Read the full story → | |||
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MEDICINE • Good News Network
A cheap B5 supplement eased psoriasis in a trialThe treatment was already on the shelf. Bought for something else.
A common nutritional supplement eased the symptoms of psoriasis in an early clinical trial, researchers in Beijing reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Psoriasis, an autoimmune condition that leaves itchy, scaly patches on the knees and elbows, has no cure. The team found that pantethine, a vitamin B5 derivative sold widely to help lower cholesterol, limits the activity of dendritic cells, immune cells that help drive the inflammation behind the disease. The proof-of-concept trial treated 24 patients with ointment over 12 weeks. Half also received pantethine tablets, and that group showed better results, especially among those who started with high blood cholesterol. In mice, the supplement prevented psoriasis from developing at all. "Our investigator-initiated clinical trial demonstrated encouraging therapeutic efficacy of pantethine as an adjunctive therapy in psoriasis," said co-lead author Dr. Wei-Na Zhang. The pill was already sitting on pharmacy shelves, bought for an entirely different reason. Read the full story → | |||
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SCIENCE • ScienceDaily Plants & Animals
Trees have muscle-like wood that pulls them uprightNo gravity, no sunlight, no clue which way was up. They straightened anyway.
Trees have muscle-like wood that works in opposing directions to pull themselves upright, researchers at INRAE reported this week. To isolate the sense, they placed young poplars on a rotating platform inside a sphere lit evenly from every angle, removing any cue from gravity or sunlight. The trees, starting from a curved position, slowly straightened anyway. The team found that tension wood, long thought to form only on a stem's upper side, had begun developing on the opposite side instead, producing a counter-pull that worked like an opposing muscle group. Trees were sensing their own shape and correcting it, a quality called proprioception once believed to belong only to animals. The work could help breed straighter crops and reduce lodging, when grain collapses before harvest. Bruno Moulia, INRAE research director, described a "genuine sensorimotor loop operating in the woody parts of trees," and said the goal is trees that stay relaxed, whatever life throws at them. Read the full story → | |||
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