Bus entirely powered by human, food waste hits roads in UK

The UK’s first bus powered entirely by human and food waste has gone into service between Bristol and Bath. Engineers believe the bus could provide a sustainable way of fuelling public transport - cutting emissions in polluted towns and cities. The 40-seater Bio-Bus, which runs on gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste that’s unfit for human consumption, helps to improve urban air quality as it produces fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines.

Running on waste products that are both renewable and sustainable, the bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works - a plant run by the company GENeco.

GENeco claim to be the first company in the UK to start injecting gas generated from food waste and sewage into the national gas grid network and at the same time installing a gas refuelling plant for the bus.

“Through treating sewage and food that is unfit for human consumption we’re able to produce enough biomethane to provide a significant supply of gas to the national gas network that’s capable of powering almost 8,500 homes as well as fuelling the Bio-Bus,” said Mohammed Saddiq, General Manager, GENeco.

“Gas powered vehicles have an important role to play in improving air quality in UK cities, but the Bio-Bus goes further than that and is actually powered by people living in the local area, including quite possibly those on the bus itself. Using biomethane in this way not only provides a sustainable fuel, but also reduces our reliance on traditional fossil fuels,” said Saddiq.

The Bio-Bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas, which takes the annual waste of around five people to produce. The first passengers to get on board the Bio-Bus were visitors to the UK who were commuting from Bristol Airport to the city of Bath. Bath Bus Company, which is operating the service, said the bus was greener for the environment.

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3D printed object developed in space

The world’s first zero-gravity 3D printer on the International Space Station (ISS) has created the first object made using additive manufacturing, paving the way for future long-term space expeditions.

“This first print is the initial step towards providing an on-demand machine shop capability away from Earth. The space station is the only laboratory where we can fully test this technology in space,” said Niki Werkheiser, Project Manager, ISS 3D printer at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.

Nasa astronaut Barry Wilmore, Expedition 42 commander aboard the ISS, installed the printer on November 17 and conducted the first calibration test print. Based on the test print results, the ground control team sent commands to realign the printer and printed a second calibration test on November 20. These tests verified that the printer was ready for manufacturing operations.

On November 24, ground controllers sent the printer the command to make the first printed part: a faceplate of the extruder’s casing. This demonstrated that the printer can make replacement parts for itself, said Nasa. The 3-D printer uses a process formally known as additive manufacturing to heat a relatively low-temperature plastic filament and extrude it one layer at a time to build the part defined in the design file sent to the machine.

Wilmore then removed it from the printer and inspected it. Part adhesion on the tray was stronger than anticipated, which could mean layer bonding is different in microgravity, a question the team will investigate as future parts are printed. Wilmore installed a new print tray, and the ground team sent a command to fine-tune the printer alignment and printed a third calibration coupon. When Wilmore removes the calibration coupon, the ground team will be able to command the printer to make a second object. The results from this first print are contributing to a better understanding about the parameters to use when 3-D printing on the space station.

“This is the first time we've ever used a 3-D printer in space, and we are learning, even from these initial operations. As we print more parts we’ll be able to learn whether some of the effects we are seeing are caused by microgravity or just part of the normal fine-tuning process for printing. When we get the parts back on Earth, we'll be able to do a more detailed analysis to find out how they compare to parts printed on Earth,” said Werkheiser.

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Hydrogen Peroxide Bleaching Agent – Infographic

Hydrogen Peroxide First described in 1818 by Louis Jacques Thénard, who produced it by treating barium peroxide with nitric acid. Hydrogen Peroxide is the simplest peroxide (a compound with an oxygen-oxygen single bond) and in its pure form is a colorless liquid, slightly more viscous than water. It is a nonplanar molecule possessing (twisted) C2 symmetry

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 -Super Resolved Fluorescence Microscopy

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 was decided to be awarded to Eric Betzig Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, US; Stefan W Hell, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany and William E Moerner, Stanford University, Stanford, “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

The development has surpassed the limitations of the light microscope. For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres. Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 for having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld.

Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. Two laser beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow, another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.

Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation for the second method, single-molecule microscopy. The method relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilized this method for the first time.

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