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Nov 15, 2020

BioContainer wastewater systems in standard shipping containers

Posted by in category: transportation

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” »

Nov 15, 2020

Mobile Wastewater Treatment

Posted by in category: energy

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.

Nov 15, 2020

Scientists develop next-generation immunotherapy now entering early phase clinical trials

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

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 , 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” »

Nov 15, 2020

Chinese firm turns panda poop into toilet paper

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, food

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.”

Nov 15, 2020

Neuroscience studies suggest that pilots display a unique pattern of brain functional connectivity

Posted by in category: neuroscience

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.

Nov 15, 2020

From Virgin Galactic to Space X: 3 Space Suits for Future Star Travelers

Posted by in category: space travel

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

Nov 15, 2020

‘He came back from the dead’: Lost Mount Rainier hiker starts to recover after rescue in whiteout conditions

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

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.

Nov 15, 2020

NASA is Asking Students to Come up With a Lunar Dust Buster

Posted by in category: space

“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.”

Nov 15, 2020

Can We Change Our Genes & DNA With Our Thoughts?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

A 2002 article published in the American Psychological Association’s prevention & treatment, by University of Connecticut psychology professor Irving Kirsch titled, “The Emperor’s New Drugs,” made some more shocking discoveries. He found that 80 percent of the effect of antidepressants, as measured in clinical trials, could be attributed to the placebo effect. This professor even had to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get information on the clinical trials of the top antidepressants.

A Baylor School of Medicine study, published in 2002 in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at surgery for patients with severe and debilitating knee pain. Many surgeons know there is no placebo effect in surgery, or so most of them believe. The patients were divided into three groups. The surgeons shaved the damaged cartilage in the knee of one group. For the second group, they flushed out the knee joint, removing all of the material believed to be causing inflammation. Both of these processes are the standard surgeries people go through who have severe arthritic knees. The third group received a “fake” surgery, the patients were only sedated and tricked that they actually had the knee surgery. For the patients not really receiving the surgery, the doctors made the incisions and splashed salt water on the knee as they would in normal surgery. They then sewed up the incisions like the real thing and the process was complete.

Nov 15, 2020

An EV Conversion Engineered As A Drop-in Replacement

Posted by in categories: engineering, sustainability, transportation

With electric vehicles such as the Tesla or the Leaf being all the rage and joined by fresh competitors seemingly every week, it seems the world is going crazy for the electric motor over their internal combustion engines. There’s another sector to electric traction that rarely hits the headlines though, that of converting existing IC cars to EVs by retrofitting a motor. The engineering involved can be considerable and differs for every car, so we’re interested to see an offering for the classic Mini from the British company Swindon Powertrain that may be the first of many affordable pre-engineered conversion kits for popular models.

The kit takes their HPD crate EV motor that we covered earlier in the year, and mates it with a Mini front subframe. Brackets and CV joints engineered for the kit to drop straight into the Mini. The differential appears to be offset to the right rather than the central position of the original so we’re curious about the claim of using the Mini’s own driveshafts, but that’s hardly an issue that should tax anyone prepared to take on such a task. They can also supply all the rest of the parts for a turnkey conversion, making for what will probably be one of the most fun-to-drive EVs possible.

The classic Mini is now a sought-after machine long past its days of being dirt-cheap old-wreck motoring for the masses, so the price of the kit should be viewed in the light of a good example now costing more than some new cars. We expect this kit to have most appeal in the professional and semi-professional market rather than the budget end of home conversions, but it’s still noteworthy because it is a likely sign of what is to come. We look forward to pre-engineered subframes becoming a staple of EV conversions at all levels. The same has happened with other popular engine upgrades, and no doubt some conversions featuring them will make their way to the pages of Hackaday.