HIV Drug Reduces Carbon Emissions

Daily Upsider on July 25, 2024

A groundbreaking report has revealed that changing the ingredients or manufacturing methods of widely used medications can significantly reduce carbon emissions.

The study found a reduction of 26 million tons of CO2, equivalent to the entire carbon footprint of Geneva for ten years. This reduction has already been achieved.

The HIV treatment dolutegravir (DTG) is used by 24 million people worldwide. Over 110 low and middle-income countries have adopted DTG as the preferred treatment option. Rapid voluntary licensing of the medicine, including its pediatric version, to over a dozen generic manufacturers, has significantly reduced prices. It’s estimated that 1.1 million lives will be saved from HIV/AIDS-related deaths by 2027.

DTG’s predecessor, efavirenz, contained 1200 milligrams of active ingredients, while DTG contains 650 milligrams of just one compound. This small difference was enough to reduce the medication’s carbon footprint by a factor of 2.6.

Unitaid, a global public-private partnership that invests in new health products for low and middle-income countries, published the report “Milligrams to Megatons.” It is the first research to compare carbon footprints between commonly used medications. The authors noted that the reduction in carbon footprint surpasses many climate mitigation achievements in health and other sectors.

Since DTG entered production in 2017, 2.6 million fewer tons of CO2 have entered the atmosphere each year compared to if efavirenz was still the standard treatment. The global medical sector’s carbon emissions are about 5% of the global total, larger than the emissions of many big countries and 2.5 times as much as aviation.

“This report shows that we can achieve significant health improvements while also reducing carbon emissions. By adopting innovative practices and prioritizing sustainability, we can ensure that medicines like DTG are effective and environmentally responsible,” Vincent Bretin, Director of Unitaid’s Results and Climate Team, told Health Policy Watch.

Dairy Helps Extracts Gold from E-Waste

Daily Upsider on July 25, 2024

Scientists have developed a cost-effective method to recycle certain electronic waste using whey protein. This approach allows for easy gold recovery from circuit boards, costing 50 times less than the value of the recovered gold—figures that appeal to large-scale businesses. Traditional e-waste recycling methods can’t match these savings, making this method potentially scalable.

Professor Raffaele Mezzenga from ETH Zurich discovered that whey protein, a byproduct of dairy manufacturing, can create sponges that attract ionized gold. Electronic waste contains valuable metals like copper, cobalt, and gold, used extensively in electronics for their conductive properties.

Mohammad Peydayesh, Mezzenga’s colleague, first denatured whey proteins under acidic conditions and high temperatures, forming protein nanofibrils in a gel. After drying the gel, they created a sponge from these fibrils. To extract gold, they soaked 20 salvaged motherboards in an acid bath until the metals dissolved into ionized compounds. The sponge then attracted these ions, and a heat treatment aggregated the gold into 22-carat flakes for easy removal.

They extracted 450 milligrams of gold, worth about $38.70 at current market value, though the nuggets contained around 9% copper. Further smelting could purify the gold, reducing its weight slightly.

The true financial value lies in the bottom line—50 times the cost of energy and materials. The scientists plan to market this technology quickly and explore if other food waste byproducts can be used to make the protein fibril sponge.

E-waste is a growing global problem, requiring energy-intensive machinery for recycling. The benefits of recycling these materials include preventing long-term landfill waste, the loss of the precious metals to said landfills, and reducing the demand for new mining operations.

Spain’s School of Bell Tolling

Daily Upsider on July 25, 2024

There are over 2,000 bell towers across Catalonia alone, and they all need tolling each half-hour; but it’s actually so much more than that.

To better interweave communities and keep long-practiced traditions alive, Spain is witnessing a class graduate from its first bell-ringing school.

This strange idea is all about reviving a dying art that was recently inscribed on UNESCO’s list of Intangible World Heritage, featuring human activities like baking, dancing, and poetry, that tell the story of our species’ cultural diversity across time and across countries. Over the last 120 years, manual bell-ringing has gradually been replaced by automatic systems in Catholic and Protestant churches, which has flattened their potential and muted their messaging powers.

“We have the utopian goal of a toller in each bell tower. I know it’s a utopian goal because there are over 2,000 bell towers across Catalonia,” admits Xavier Pallas, a bell-ringing instructor at Vall d’en Bas School of Bell Ringers, who just graduated his school’s first class.

He says that despite there being more effective means of communicating than bell-ringing, its function serves as an important method of local communication that binds and unifies communities in times of grief and joy. What will come perhaps as a surprise is that, depending on the order, tone, and number of chimes, churchbells in Spain announced everything from fire alarms and bad weather warnings, to when the fishermen were arriving with the day’s catch, and even how much it was going to cost.

“We need to keep these rituals in both cases,” says Pallas.

500 Times the Speed of Sound

Daily Upsider on July 25, 2024

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, designed to study the Sun’s outer corona, has just matched the record for the fastest human-made object. The previous record holder, was in fact, the Parker Solar Probe itself.

On June 29, the probe was recorded traveling at 635,266 kilometers (394,736 miles) per hour, equaling a speed it first reached in 2018. This is roughly 500 times faster than the speed of sound.

The probe is expected to reach even higher speeds, with a projected top speed of around 692,000 kph (430,000 mph) when it makes its closest approach to the Sun in 2025. That’s fast enough to travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo in under a minute.

Achieving these incredible speeds involves precise timing and momentum. The Parker Solar Probe uses the gravity of Venus in a series of flybys to slingshot itself closer to the Sun.

The probe aims to get very close to the Sun’s ultra-hot plasma, collecting data to enhance our understanding of the Sun. In April 2021, it ‘touched’ the Sun’s corona for the first time, collecting plasma samples and measuring changes in the magnetic field.

Amazing video of the probe entering the suns corona:

The data collected is invaluable and cannot be obtained from Earth. Parker has now completed its 20th close approach, coming within 7.26 million kilometers of the Sun’s surface. Eventually, it will get within 6.12 million kilometers.

The probe is built to withstand extreme conditions, including high speeds, heat, and radiation. Its 11.4-centimeter (4.5-inch) carbon-composite shield can withstand temperatures up to 1,371 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit).

The Parker Solar Probe’s title as the fastest human-made object is likely to remain unchallenged for some time. If the record is broken, it will probably be by another spacecraft.

Diabetes-Reversing Drug

Daily Upsider on July 23, 2024

In a new study published in Science Translational Medicine, A new drug tested in mice increased the number of beta cells in the pancreas sevenfold, effectively reversing diabetes symptoms.

This achievement, described as a “functional diabetes cure,” is unprecedented in drug development.

In just three months, the mice’s cells began producing insulin again through a combination of two drugs: harmine, which inhibits the enzyme DYRK1A, and a GLP1 receptor agonist, found in the diabetes drug Ozempic.

Researchers from Mount Sinai and City of Hope tested their drug by injecting human beta cells into mice and then administering the treatment. The beta cells increased sevenfold in three months, with diabetes symptoms disappearing within a month after treatment stopped.

Previous attempts at this concept involved converting stem cells into human pancreas beta cells in vitro and transplanting them into diabetes patients, a costly and time-consuming procedure.

“This is the first time scientists have developed a drug treatment that increases adult human beta cell numbers in vivo,” said Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Ocaña, corresponding author of the study. “This research brings hope for future regenerative therapies to treat the hundreds of millions of people with diabetes.” Harmine alone has undergone a phase 1 clinical trial in humans for safety and tolerability, but DYRK1A inhibitors have not.