Day: 26 April 2007

Bricks a la Sewage

Yesterday some work was being done on the piping where I live and I couldn’t work from home like I normally do because of the stench. Good news may come from this because that stink, combined with a few other materials, may end up in future buildings.

Imagine if you could turn old rubbish into new houses. That’s exactly what civil engineer Dr John Forth from University of Leeds wants to achieve with the invention of a building block made almost entirely of recycled glass, metal slag, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, and pulverised fuel ash from power stations.

Dirt Fights Cancer

treeThe fight against cancer has found some support from something that we stomp over: dirt. I love ‘discoveries’ like this because I hope it’ll make people aware of how important biodiversity is.

The bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine.

Scientists originally isolated the drug paclitaxel—now commonly known as Taxol—in 1967 from the bark of Pacific yew trees (Taxus brevifolia) in a forest near the Mount St. Helens in Washington. This yew also yields related compounds known as taxanes that can be converted to paclitaxel. Research since then has revealed other yew species generate paclitaxel and taxanes as well, as do some fungi and certain hazelnut varieties