Eddy's Good News: Siamese crocodile eggs and cutting the cost of recycling gold

Virgin Radio

23 Jul 2024, 17:18

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:

Monday 23rd July 2024

Cambodian conservationists have found a nest of 60 Siamese crocodile eggs and this is a massive deal for an incredibly rare apex predator. 

It was believed that the Siamese crocodile, with its distinctive, dinosaur-like features of a bony ridge down its skull, was extinct until one was sighted in the year 2000. Since then authorities in Cambodia (where they live now) have been on a mission to save them. Captive breeding and reintroduction programs and education of villages to patrol , find and protect the nests. 

The most brilliant thing about this discovery in the Cardamom Mountains, is that it’s an area not covered by the reintroduction drive, so this represents the species starting to make a recovery. For an animal that they estimate there are only 400 in the wild, 60 eggs is a huge bonus for the species, so they protected the nest around the clock until the baby crocs hatched and their mum carried them all into the water in her mouth where she will feed and protect them until the next mating season. Sadly a lot of them will be lost to predators but that’s why so many hatch. 

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

A huge and fascinating recycling win as scientists discover a way of drastically cutting the cost of recycling gold that’s in circuit boards. 

The thing about gold is that it’s not just jewellery and coins. Any HiFi or sound engineering buff knows that gold is a superconductor and gold plated leads are by far the best. Gold is used in minute quantities in circuit boards for this reason but they’re really difficult and expensive to recycle. But some very clever scientists in Zurich have revolutionised the process. They make sponges from whey protein, dissolve the boards in acid, the gold and other precious metals dissolve into the liquid. Then they introduce the special sponges which absorb the metals and make it easy to retrieve them.  

The golden nugget they retrieved in the last test was worth fifty times the energy they used to retrieve it, which means they have a sustainable business they can bring to market now.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org