Good information you could have missed in 2024

It’s time for “Sunny Side Up,” the excellent news broadcast, along with your host, David Pogue!

Good morning! Well, you could bear in mind 2024 as a yr of dangerous information. For instance … what am I doing? Why would I remind you?!?

But there was additionally GREAT information this yr that you just might need missed.

We start with … homicide hornets!

Murder hornets

These large bugs arrived in Washington state four years ago from Asia. They can wipe out total hives of honeybees, and even kill individuals.

If they had been to unfold, that will be dangerous information.

So, authorities arrange traps, tip traces, and tiny monitoring units, and by December 18, entomologist Sven Spichiger introduced: “Now we will formally say that eradication has been achieved, and it is a vital victory.”

Score: Humanity 1, Nightmare 0.

Overdose discount

But zero is just one good quantity; 20,000 is one other – 20,000 Americans who did not die of drug overdoses in 2024, in comparison with final yr’s whole – a 17% decline, based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The actually nice information is that we have seen a historic decline in overdose deaths prior to now yr – the most important decline in overdose deaths ever recorded in historical past,” stated Magdalena Cerdá, a professor of epidemiology on the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

So, why did this occur? “We have quite a lot of hypotheses,” Dr. Cerdá stated. “One of them is that there is been a extremely concerted funding in entry to naloxone, which is a drug that can be utilized to reverse overdoses. Also, what we have seen is a shift from individuals injecting medication to individuals smoking medication. There’s additionally been a decline in individuals simply utilizing medication, like fentanyl, amongst adolescents and younger adults.”

Within epidemiology circles, is that this an enormous deal? “Absolutely!” she stated. “Of course, there’s nonetheless greater than 90,000 individuals who died of an overdose prior to now yr; that is unacceptably excessive.”

The pleasant skies as soon as once more

Remember New York’s LaGuardia airport? The one with low ceilings, slim corridors, and never sufficient gates for as we speak’s huge planes? It was dim and dingy. It was “hailed” because the worst airport within the United States. In 2015, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously remarked, “I should be in some third world nation,” when speaking about one among America’s busiest airports. 

So, in 2015, they began constructing a complete new airport, in levels, over and across the previous one, after which demolished the unique with out ever shutting down the airport!

Speaking from LaGuardia, airport critic David Pogue has his verdict: “Well, one factor’s for certain: It’s not dim and dingy anymore! Now, it is huge, vivid and ethereal, flooded with pure gentle, extra environment friendly safety, super-cool artwork, together with a computer-controlled waterfall. And the planes at the moment are nearer to the runways, so there’s much less sitting on the bottom.”

The critics sing a distinct track now. They name it the finest airport in America! At this level, there’s just one factor left to do: Start the entire thing once more, at JFK Airport!

Artificial intelligence

AI has been within the information nearly day by day this yr – largely about how scary it is. 

What will get much less protection is how AI is predicting the weather better … adjusting traffic lights more efficiently … and diagnosing diseases more accurately.

But the most important AI story of the yr may simply be AlphaFold. Its function is to map the shapes of proteins — infinitesimal, folded-up molecules, too small to see with a standard microscope. “For a protracted, very long time, we have tried to determine, ‘What are the shapes of those?'” stated John Jumper, director of the AlphaFold venture at Google’s DeepMind division. “Because in the event you get the improper form, you usually get illness.”

Jumper says that if we knew the shapes of the proteins that trigger most of the worst illnesses, we may begin making medication to repair them.

Before AlphaFold, the form of a protein was decided by means of a laborious course of: “Maybe a yr of time, possibly $100,000 in expense to get a single reply, to get only one,” Jumper stated.

But AlphaFold works 1000’s of occasions quicker; this yr, it completed calculating the shapes of all 200 million recognized proteins. The scientific world went loopy!

Better but, Google then supplied its discovery to the world without spending a dime. Over 2 million researchers are already utilizing it to sort out malaria, most cancers, Parkinson’s, COVID, diabetes, and rather more.

Jumper stated, “I’m sure that we now have saved or will save lives with AlphaFold. We can have medicines that we did not have due to this know-how.”

This yr additionally introduced somewhat excellent news particularly for John Jumper: He just won the 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry!

Still extra excellent news!

Well, I’m afraid that is on a regular basis we now have. We will not have the ability to point out the 24 states that raised their minimum wage this year …

How the U.K. shut down its last coal plant …

How you can now renew your passport online …

The 800 school districts now using electric school buses, for cleaner air and fewer little one bronchial asthma circumstances …

The first successful return from the dark side of the moon …

How the hole in the ozone layer is healing faster than anyone expected …

Or the postal service’s new mail trucks. They might have somewhat little bit of a platypus vibe, however they lastly provide airbags, air-con, aspect doorways for unloading, anti-collision techniques – and most of them will likely be electrical.

Have a joyous new yr, and bear in mind: Bad information breaks all of a sudden, however excellent news occurs all over the place, on a regular basis. Good morning, everybody!

      
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Story produced by Annie Iezzi. Editor: Emanuele Secci.