BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Most dinner party advice is written for hosts. How to plate things beautifully, keep conversation going, and handle a soufflé without panicking. Guests get less coverage, which might be why so many of them don’t really think about it. But hosts notice. They notice the friend who showed up 40 minutes late without a text. The person who spent half the evening on their phone. The one who said “this was so fun!” at the door and then vanished. They notice the opposite, too: the person who brought something small and specific, caught a detail nobody else mentioned, or sent a message two days later. Being a good guest means paying attention, and honestly, that’s more than half the battle. Start before you even get there The most basic thing: show up when you said you would, and let your host know if something changes. “Fashionably late might work for a cocktail party,” says Olivia Pollock, etiquette and hosting expert at Evite. Evite’s data shows 62 percent of hosts report being frustrated with guests who RSVP yes and then don’t show. A lot goes into even a casual dinner. Bring something. It doesn’t need to be expensive or carefully sourced. “It doesn’t have to be expensive,” Pollock says. “A bottle of wine, a candle, or, my favorite, some candy. Just don’t show up empty-handed.” Olive oil, flowers in a vase, or something from a bakery are all great options. The point is that you thought of it. When you’re there, be there Reneille Velez, an event planner, says it plainly: “Arrive on time, leave on time, and be fully present in between. Put the phone down and engage with people you don’t know.” The phone thing is easy to underestimate. A host who spent three hours cooking notices when a guest is half-checked out. Asking questions, talking to whoever’s next to you – that’s what being present actually looks like. If you want to help, offer once and take the answer at face value. “A simple ‘Can I help with anything?’ is perfect,” says Pollock. “If they say no, respect that; they might have a system. But if they say yes, jump in and roll up your sleeves.” Hovering in the kitchen after you’ve been told it’s handled doesn’t actually help. The specific compliment Generic compliments are fine. Specific ones land differently. “Compliment something specific: the table, the music, a detail that shows you were paying attention,” says Velez. “The best guests make a host feel like everything they did mattered.” The playlist, the flowers, the dish they adapted for someone’s dietary thing. Those details tell a host that the effort wasn’t wasted. “Your host spent time planning, prepping, and, realistically, probably stressing a little,” says Pollock. “Let them know you see it!” After you leave A text the next day, a short note, a quick call. Any of these works. “Hospitality is an act of generosity,” says Velez. “The kindest thing a guest can do is make sure their host knows it was received.” Pollock keeps it practical: “A thank you lets them know you had a great time and appreciated being included.” Within 48 hours is the window, while the dinner is still fresh. The people who keep getting invited back aren’t always the most charming ones in the room. They’re the ones who made the host feel like it was worth the trouble.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post 6 small things that make you a guest hosts love having over first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Tuberculosis kills more than a million people a year. It’s the world’s deadliest infectious disease. And for most of its history, the standard diagnostic hasn’t changed much since the 1880s: a phlegm sample examined under a microscope. The test has real problems. Not everyone can produce phlegm. Children, elderly patients, and those already weakened by illness often can’t. The results are imprecise. About half of actual TB cases get missed. And in many settings, patients travel through several health facilities before finding one that can test at all. “Many people are making three, four, five visits before they finally come to a health center where there is TB testing available,” says Adithya Cattamanchi, a pulmonologist at UC Irvine who has spent years working at health centers across Uganda. By that point, the disease has had weeks or months to progress. And every untreated patient is still spreading it. How the new test works Last year, Chinese biotech company Pluslife released the MiniDock MTB, a portable device that takes a phlegm sample or, where phlegm isn’t possible, a plain tongue swab. It heats and spins the sample, then scans for TB DNA. The device costs $300. Each test runs $3 to $4. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine tested it across nearly 1,400 patients with TB symptoms at health centers in seven countries across Africa and Asia. Both phlegm and tongue swab samples met WHO accuracy targets. The WHO had already recommended the test the month before the study was published. “What we hope it means is that many more people will have access to high-quality TB testing,” says Cattamanchi, who co-authored the study. Alfred Andama, a microbiologist at Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Uganda, says earlier detection matters beyond the individual. “Detecting patients early, starting them on treatment early and following up to make sure they adhere to treatments makes a lot of improvement in their lives.” Getting to someone sooner also cuts transmission and reduces the chance the disease builds resistance to standard antibiotics before treatment even starts. The COVID connection The MiniDock MTB has a pandemic footnote. When COVID hit, funding and research poured into swab-based diagnostics at a pace TB had never seen. Pluslife and others have since turned those same molecular methods toward tuberculosis, a disease that spent roughly 150 years waiting for exactly this kind of attention. What it still can’t do The test has real limits worth naming. Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, says it may miss early-stage cases when the bacterial load is still low. “For that type of work, we don’t think this is the tool yet,” she says. “Maybe it needs some improvement.” It also can’t distinguish standard TB from drug-resistant strains, which still requires a separate test, and that distinction matters a lot for treatment decisions. Cattamanchi isn’t glossing over any of that. But he’s also watched people make five-clinic journeys just to get tested. “My hope honestly is that after more than 150 years, we finally get rid of using a microscope,” he says. “And everyone who has TB symptoms is getting a high-quality molecular test. I think we’re closer to that today than we’ve ever been before.”     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post The new TB diagnostic that could replace 150 years of microscope testing first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

A British policeman has been hailed as a hero after helping to save the life of an American officer while on holiday in Nashville. Off duty sergeant Taylor Johanson had just arrived in the Tennessee city when he saw local Officer Peter Kinsey being assaulted by a man on the side of the road. The […] The post Hero British Cop ‘Saves Life’ of American Officer While on Holiday in Nashville appeared first on Good News Network.

Over 170 students set to graduate from North Carolina State University were about to get the surprise of a lifetime when they filed into the arena in their red caps and gowns. As with all graduation speeches, possibilities seemed palpable; hopes and dreams were waiting on the horizon. Unbeknownst to the scholars, their commencement speaker, […] The post College Commencement Speaker Announces He’s Paying Off Final Year of Loans For Graduates to Honor Father appeared first on Good News Network.

If you know the song, sing along! “Robin Hood and Little John, walking through the forest/Laughing back and forth at what the other’n has to say/Reminiscing this and that and having such a good time/Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly, what a day… “Never ever thinking there was danger in the water/They were drinking, they just guzzled it down/Never dreaming that a scheming sheriff and his posse/Was a-watching them and gathering around.” There never was a greater set of foes than Robin Hood and that evil Sheriff, whose greed was even more legendary than Robin Hood’s archery skills. A metal detectorist just found the Sheriff’s ring In a deliciously ironic turn of fate, a retired merchant navy engineer in England has found a treasure that would have made his country’s most popular folk hero proud. Graham Harrison, a 65-year-old metal detector enthusiast, discovered a gold signet ring that once belonged to the Sheriff of Nottingham. The discovery was made on a farm in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire, 26.9 miles from Sherwood Forest. The forest is known worldwide for being the mythological home of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. A central road that traversed the forest was notorious in Medieval times for being an easy place for bandits to rob travelers going to and from London. Today, the forest is a designated National Nature Reserve. It contains ancient oaks that date back thousands of years, making it an important conservation area. “It was the first big dig after lockdown on a glorious day. We were searching two fields. Other detectorists kept finding hammered coins but I’d found nothing,” Harrison said according to the Daily Mail. “Then I suddenly got a signal. I dug up a clod of earth but couldn’t see anything. I kept breaking up the clod and, on the last break, a gold ring was shining at me. I broke out into a gold dance.” Harrison sent the ring to the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme to have it authenticated. After doing some research they found that it was once owned by Sir Matthew Jenison, who was the Sheriff of Nottingham between 1683 and 1684. March Historica & Coin Auction. 24 March — 25 March. The Sheriff of Nottingham’s gold signet ring #Historica #Auction @HansonHistoricaCheck out HansonsAuctions's video! #TikTok https://t.co/vaJVz5I175 pic.twitter.com/cbdwbWrqdH— Hansons Auctioneers (@HansonsUK) March 23, 2022 The first accounts of Robin Hood, then known as Robyn Hode, first appear as early as the 13th and 14th centuries, a few hundred years before Sir Matthew served as sheriff. But there’s no doubt that the archer and leader of Merry Men would have been delighted to know that an everyday guy came into possession of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s ring. Sir Matthew was knighted in 1683 and acted as a commissioner to examine decaying trees in Sherwood Forest. He was later elected to Parliament in 1701. However, a series of lawsuits over shady land dealings would eventually be his ruin and he’d die in prison in 1734. The gold signet ring bears the coat of arms of the Jenison family, who were known for getting rich off a treasure trove of valuables left for safekeeping during the English Civil War. The valuables were never claimed, so the Jenisons took them for themselves. Was Robin Hood a real person? The whole thing makes you question how much of the legend of Robin Hood is actually true. Experts debate whether Robin Hood stories are based on one person or accounts of multiple different people. Various versions of the mythology begin and end in different time periods, but all share some similarities: Namely, Robin Hood shooting a bow and arrow and being constantly at odds with the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. In the end, Robin Hood was said to have been murdered by his aunt. As he bled to death, “Little John placed Robin’s bow in his hand and carried him to a window from where Robin managed to loose one arrow. Robin asked Little John to bury him where the arrow landed, which he duly did. … A mound in Kirklees Park, within bow-shot of the house, can still be seen and is said to be his last resting place,” according to Historic UK. Another site, a cemetery in Yorkshire, features a tombstone that reads: Here underneath this little stoneLies Robert, Earl of HuntingdonNe’er [never] archer was as he so goodAnd people called him Robin HoodSuch outlaws as he and his menWill England never see again. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the only ring What makes the story even more remarkable is that a second ring found at the same site five minutes before Harrison’s discovery was sold at auction in 2023. The circa 1560 posy ring, inscribed with the words “I Meane Ryght,” was found by water company worker Andy Taylor and is also believed to have belonged to a member of the Jenison family. What happened to the ring after it was found As for Harrison, he decided that he would sell the ring to someone who appreciates its importance. “There can’t be many people who’ve found anything like that. I’m only selling it because it’s been stuck in a drawer,” Harrison said. “I hope it will go to someone who will appreciate its historical value.” It was sold at auction by Hansons Auctions for £8,500 ($11,115). You can witness the intense final moments of the auction here: WOW! The final moments as the Sheriff of#Nottingham ring goes under the hammer… @HansonHistorica @HansonsAuctions@nottslive@BBCNottingham pic.twitter.com/NLssFdaksL— Hansons Auctioneers (@HansonsUK) March 24, 2022 Let’s hope that the man who sold the ring does what Robin Hood would have done with a piece of jewelry that adorned the hand of a nobleman whose family came into money by taking other people’s loot. Surely, he’d take the proceeds from the auction and give them to the poor. This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated. The post A lucky ‘metal detectorist’ found the Sheriff of Nottingham’s ring, valued at $11,000 appeared first on Upworthy.