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Happy saturday! I am back with another round of positive news. I hope you enjoy reading through these uplifting stories and if this made you slightly more positive about the day, feel free to share this with other people!



Sign of hope for monkey species

The birth of a monkey at a zoo has been hailed as a "sign of hope" for its endangered species.


The baby Francois' langur was born on 17 February at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. Zookeeper Amanda Robinson said the team was ecstatic when they saw mother Lulu cradling her bright orange baby.


"It's believed the babies are born with bright orange locks so that parents can easily spot the youngster when they're being cared for by the troop," she said.

Native to China and northern Vietnam, Francois' langurs are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species. Their numbers have continued to fall in the wild, which makes the birth internationally important.

The infant was born as part of a European Endangered Species Breeding Programme, an internationally coordinated conservation initiative aimed at boosting the numbers of species that are threatened in the wild.



Exciting exo-skeleton advancements gives disabled users a chance to walk

This is a new robotic exoskeleton manufactured in Italy that promises to improve the quality of life and mobility of disabled or injured people in a creative way. The controls feature three modes of operation depending on the level of use the wearer has in his or her legs, and it’s made up of lightweight, interchangeable parts.

Walk mode is for users who are paralyzed from the waist down, and moves their legs for them with adjustable gait and walk speeds.

In development since 2013, the Twin has a battery life of about 4 hours, and is made with lightweight aluminum alloy modules that can be disassembled for transport or if they need to be upgraded.

Battery-powered motors located at the knee and hip joints power normal motion based on three different modes, Walk mode, Retrain mode, and TwinCare mode. It’s still just a prototype, and crutches need to be used to help maintain balance, but it’s an inspiring sight to see such cutting edge technology being developed on behalf of the disabled.



The game-changing gift transforming student lives

Yuliana Dominguez Paez, a 24-year-old student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was going to miss the mysterious assembly that her faculty had scheduled on Monday morning. Stuck in New York City's interminable traffic, she asked a friend to FaceTime her with any news. From the other end of the line, "all I heard was screams," she said. "And, 'free tuition.'"

Back on campus, Dr Ruth Gottesman had just changed the lives of Ms Dominguez Paez and her peers.

The college's former professor, philanthropist, and widow of a major Wall Street financier announced to a packed auditorium that she was donating $1bn (£790m), with the intention of eliminating tuition fees for those studying medicine at this school in the Bronx.

After being relieved of as much as six figures of debt, students told the BBC they could suddenly envision goals that had felt financially out of reach. They spoke of starting families, buying homes - and embarking on a career guided not by the need to repay a mountain of loans, but by giving back to their communities and bolstering underserved areas of medicine.

"I feel like what I'm most excited to see is seeing an increase in applications that reflect the population in the Bronx," said Ms Dominguez Paez. "Because now they know that they have the opportunity to afford going to medical school."



Hopefully something from today’s article resonated with you. It’s important to sit back and reflect with all the negativity physically and virtually in society, there are people and communities doing amazing things. I will leave you with a short clip from my favourite comedian Bob Mortimer!



https://youtu.be/YqJc4CFGErg?si=WnxvSoVgoVxqpoQT

Bob would never lie, would he?

Spread the positivity!