Eddy's Good News : Increasing the lifespan of roads and rescue rats?!

Virgin Radio

8 Jun 2022, 09:40

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, 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 10am and 1pm (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:

Wednesday 8th June 2022

Good news from down under where scientists have discovered how to double the lifespan of roads, by using old tyres to make them!

Say g’day to the bitumen brainiac engineers at RMIT University in Australia who are going to save billions of quid around the world if this idea catches on. As the world gets hotter, governments will have to spend more and more to maintain roads that get sun damaged. They heat up, and crack and then become unsafe. But if you shred up old tyres and mix them in the bitumen road mix it acts as a sunscreen and toughens up the road so it lasts twice as long!

Imagine the money that will save, if all roads in hot countries last 100% longer!? Of course it’s a double win because old tyres going into landfill, or even worse, being burned, is a huge worldwide problem, so this is part of a sustainable solution and the applications go beyond just roads, to playgrounds or even public outdoor furniture, bus stops, bike shelters, which could all now have inbuilt sun protection.

Via: goodnewnetwork.org

Amazing news from here in the UK…so you’ve heard of rescue dogs, there are probably rescue camels in the desert and a rescue llama may not be too much of a stretch to imagine, but what about a rescue rat!? Surely that’s a joke, a cartoon, a meme, but no, rescue rats are a thing and here’s why.

Imagine you’ve been the victim of an earthquake, you and your loved ones are buried under rubble and you’ve no way of contacting anyone. Suddenly, out of nowhere you see a rat, eurrgh, a rat!! Except, hang on…this rat has a tiny little backpack on it, and it seems very friendly, OMG the rat is talking!! Oh hang on, is that a little speaker, and a microphone!? Now you get the picture thanks to Dr Donna Kean, a 33-year-old research scientist from Glasgow, who’s already trained seven rats to get into the nooks and crannies of a collapsed building so that rescuers can talk to the survivors. It’s an absolutely brilliant idea, the backpacks also have video and location trackers, so these rescue rodents really are the most useful tool for anyone trying to rescue people under collapsed buildings and Donna is training more, they’re so clever that she can fully train them in two weeks! Amazing! 

Via: goodnewnetwork.org