Lifeboat Foundation

Tokyo-based Nakabayashi offers everything from bookbinding services, child car seats and office products. But the newest (and certainly coolest) product of the 2,000-man company is an in-office machine, which turns used copier paper into toilet rolls, right there in the office. Brillant.

The toilet paper machine is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1,800 sheets (or 7.2kg) of used A4-sized paper, which would have usually been just thrown away. At 600kg, it seems to be a dangerously massive piece of hardware.

Distribution in Japan begins in August and Nakabayashi wants to sell 60 units in the first year. Good luck with that, as each machine comes with a price tag of $95,000. Unfortunately, there is no information on operating costs yet, but I can’t imagine these being in proportion.

Containerized waste water system.

BioKube offers containerized wastewater treatment plants for easy setup and relocation. This solution is ideal for remote locations such as mining camps and oil rig sites.

We offer a variety of capasities that can meet your requirements.

Continue reading “BioContainer wastewater systems in standard shipping containers” »

Orenco Systems AdvanTex AX-Mobile

For more than a decade, Orenco’s AdvanTex^® technology has provided a reliable, energy-efficient alternative for wastewater treatment in some of the world’s most remote places. The AdvanTex is Orenco’s most portable treatment plant yet. Think of it as a “mini” onsite treatment facility, ready to go wherever you need it.

Cancer Research UK scientists have invented a new experimental drug that aims to harness the full power of the body’s own immune system, launching a two-pronged response against cancer, according to a study published in Nature Cancer today.

In the study, partly funded by Cancer Research UK, the new immunotherapy drug, which targets suppressive ‘regulatory’ immune cells inside a tumor, significantly improved long-term survival in animal models even when used without other drugs.

Continue reading “Scientists develop next-generation immunotherapy now entering early phase clinical trials” »

Circa 2017 o.o

When life gave one Chinese company giant panda poop, it decided to make paper — and profits. The Qianwei Fengsheng Paper Company in southwest Sichuan province has teamed up with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda to recycle the animal’s faeces and food debris into toilet paper, napkins and other household products, state media reported Wednesday. The goods, soon to be released on the Chinese market, will be marketed as part of a “panda poo” product line decorated with a picture of the bamboo-eating, black-and-white bear. “They’re taking care of our garbage for us,” Huang Yan, a researcher at the giant panda centre, told the Chengdu Business Daily. Huang told Xinhua state news agency that the 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of bamboo poo that adult pandas unleash daily are rich in fibre after absorbing the fructose from the shoots. In addition to their valuable dung, pandas also produce 50 kilograms of food waste every day from the bamboo husks they spit out after chewing. While the process of turning bamboo into paper generally involves the breaking down of fructose to extract fibre, this step naturally occurs in the pandas’ digestive tract, the paper company’s president, Yang Chaolin, told Xinhua. Fengsheng will collect the faeces from three panda bases in Sichuan a couple of times a week. After it is boiled, pasteurised and turned into paper, it will be tested for bacteria before going on sale. Boxes of “panda poo” tissues will be sold at 43 yuan ($6.5) a pop. “Pandas get what they want and we do too,” Yang said. “It’s a win-win.”

Pilots display a different pattern of functional connectivity in the brain, according to new research conducted in China. The new studies examined interactions and synchronized activity between different areas of the brain, and the findings suggest that pilots tend to have enhanced cognitive flexibility compared to their non-flying counterparts.

“Civil aviation is a distinctive career. Pilots work in a complex, dynamic information environment. They must be aware of all the relevant information regarding this environment and recognize their meaning and importance,” said the authors of the new research in an article published in PLOS One.

Because of the cognitive demands placed on pilots, the researchers hypothesized that they would display a different pattern of brain connectivity compared to non-pilots.

A first look at the out-of-this-world fashion.

It took dozens of park rangers, searchers, doctors and nurses, but Michael Knapinski, who became lost amid freezing, whiteout conditions in Mount Rainier National Park last weekend, was brought back to life in what his medical team is calling a miraculous recovery.

The 45-year-old from Woodinville was on a snowy hike with a friend on the morning of Nov. 7. The two separated below the Muir Snowfield. His friend planned to continue on skis to Camp Muir while Knapinski snowshoed down toward Paradise, where they expected to meet up.

“I was pretty close to the end (of the trail). … Then it turned to whiteout conditions, and I couldn’t see anything,” Knapinski told The Seattle Times in a phone interview Friday. The last thing he said he remembers is taking baby steps down the mountain, surrounded by white.

“This competition gives students an unparalleled opportunity as members of the Artemis generation to help overcome the historically challenging technical obstacles of mitigating lunar dust,” Niki Werkheiser, NASA’s Game Changing Development program executive, said in a statement.

Since the Apollo missions, we’ve known that lunar dust is extremely clingy. Early NASA astronauts ended their spacewalks on the Moon covered in the stuff, likely caused by electrical charges built up by the moving around the lunar surface.

“The more time you spend there, the more you get covered from helmet to boots with lunar dust,” Buzz Aldrin was quoted in early NASA reports after completing the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Aldrin also called lunar dust “one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the Moon.”