Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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“While astronauts in space need to get creative with their water supply, that’s not to suggest that people ought to start drinking pee to access clean water. Rather, Aquaporin, the company behind the new system, suggests that the same kind of technology could be used to clean up other types of wastewater or filter existing drinking water supplies to the point that they could be used.”

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Roughly 2 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water, according to CNN, and a system like Aquaporin could help remove pollution and plastics from the supply.

“It has an enormous potential,” Dines Thornberg, innovation manager at BIOFOS, Denmark’s largest state-owned wastewater facility, told CNN. “I think the Aquaporin system could lead the way in actually creating clean, affordable drinking water from wastewater in the future. I am really optimistic that we can meet the challenges of water scarcity in many parts of the world with technologies like this.”

Continue reading “Scientists Say Pee-Drinking Machine Could Save Lives” | >

Is ADHD actually a superpower that goes out of control from time to time? Can it be turned into an advantage?

Unclench. Mary is just an urban legend—a case example of how people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder can hyperfocus on a task for hours, losing all awareness of their surroundings. Hers is a story that people in the ADHD community tell themselves so we will feel less alone.

“We all hate the name ADHD,” says Elaine Taylor-Klaus, cofounder of Atlanta consultancy group ImpactADHD. Because the word “deficit” is in the name, many incorrectly assume having ADHD means you can’t pay attention. Instead, ADHDers often pay more attention to certain tasks than we should. It’s called hyperfocus.

Kimberly Gordon, a psychiatrist at Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore, explains the symptom as “an intense, deep concentration on a specific task.” Like our mythological Mary, Gordon says, “When individuals with ADHD hyperfocus on one thing, they tend to block out everything else going on around them. The brain sends off signals of activity, pleasure, and engagement as they are immersed in a task while hyperfocused.”

Continue reading “People With ADHD Can Actually Focus So Hard it’s Scary” | >

The United States generates seven million tons of sewage sludge annually, enough to fill 2, 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. While a portion of this waste is repurposed for manure and other land applications, a substantial amount is still disposed of in landfills. In a new study, Texas A&M University researchers have uncovered an efficient way to use leftover sludge to make biodegradable plastics.

In the September issue of the journal American Chemical Society (ACS) Omega, the researchers report that the bacterium Zobellella denitrificans ZD1, found in mangroves, can consume sludge and wastewater to produce polyhydroxybutyrate, a type of biopolymer that can be used in lieu of petroleum-based plastics. In addition to reducing the burden on landfills and the environment, the researchers said Zobellella denitrificans ZD1 offers a way to cut down upstream costs for bioplastics manufacturing, a step toward making them more competitively priced against regular plastics.

“The price of raw materials to cultivate biopolymer-producing bacteria accounts for 25–45% of the total production cost of manufacturing bioplastics. Certainly, this cost can be greatly reduced if we can tap into an alternate resource that is cheaper and readily obtainable,” said Kung-Hui (Bella) Chu, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We have demonstrated a potential way to use municipal wastewater-activated sludge and agri-and aqua-culture industrial wastewater to make biodegradable plastics. Furthermore, the does not require elaborate sterilization processes to prevent contamination from other microbes, further cutting down operating and production costs of bioplastics.”

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Science fiction is shifting into reality. With humanity’s plans to return to the moon this decade and further ambitions to travel to Mars in the next, we need to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy for these years-long missions. One solution long championed by science fiction is suspended animation, or putting humans in a hibernation-like sleep for the duration of travel time.

We can turn to nature for guidance and a potential solution to this challenge.

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