Water-Gen, an Israeli company, has developed a new Atmospheric Water-Generation Unit using its “GENius” heat exchanger to chill air and condense water vapor. The clean air enters their GENius heat exchanger system where it is dehumidified, removing the water from the air and directing it to a collection tank inside the unit. The water is …
Doing Manual Labor for Sustainable Development Makes You Sexy
(or, A Hodge-Podge of Fact and Opinion) By Josh Kearns I’ve just returned from an arduous – but tremendously joyful – trip to a small village in the remote coastal mountains of Burma’s “Deep South,” Tenasserim Division. The trip took two weeks and consisted of nearly four days of travel – each way – over …
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Another tool in the war against “superbugs”
Researchers have developed a new polymyxin-like lipopeptide to kill multidrug-resistant microbes (superbugs). In the past, when facing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, doctors could prescribe polymyxins. Polymyxins are lipopeptides that kill bacteria by binding to a component of the cell wall and disrupting ionic and hydrophobic interactions. Polymyxin-resistant bacteria have evolved so that they …
I’ve Got a BEEF with Sustainability
By Josh Kearns I’ve had a lot of unpopular ideas. Maybe the all-time most unpopular, though, is this one: The relatively short trips made by international humanitarian science/engineering and sustainable community development professionals for fieldwork, particularly to far-flung destinations, are almost certainly futile from an environmental sustainability perspective. Most of us in the international “humanitarian …
Crowd Funded Low-Tech Cyanide Mitigation, Anyone?
By Josh Kearns Crowdsourcing is by now thoroughly established as an internet meme. How do I know this? Because I’m aware of it. Compared to today’s hip and uber-connected Millennials, I’m a hopelessly antiquarian Gen-Xer. I do not and hope to never own a smart phone. (My career aspiration is to eventually go “full Wendell …
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(Bio-) Chemists Without Borders: Help Aqueous Solutions Hack Field E. coli Testing!
Biochemists and microbiologists: Aqueous Solutions has a mission for you. By Josh Kearns I recently visited two village training centers deep in the wilds of Tenasserim district (Thailand-Burma border region), where colleagues and I conducted follow-up inspections on water treatment systems installed by local trainees during recent months. (Check out our Facebook page for photos from …
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A Chemist’s Critique of Economics and “Sustainable Development”
Part I: Contemplation of the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) Author’s note This post is a bit longer (and headier) than previous posts, but herein I open a very complex and somewhat controversial constellation of subjects, and attempt to treat matters in a cross-disciplinary manner and at the root-level. My intention in blogging for Chemists …
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Making “Low-Tech” Biochar Adsorbent For Decentralized Water Treatment
By Josh Kearns Readers of this blog probably don’t have to be told that the proliferation of synthetic chemicals over the past century has hugely impacted drinking water sources around the world. But you might be shocked to learn that these toxic contaminants are completely ignored by international, governmental and non-governmental agencies concerned with expanding …
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Ler Per Her Water Treatment Workshop
by Josh Kearns For this, my second post on the Chemists Without Borders blog, I had prepared a more “academic-sounding” post about Making “Low-Tech” Biochar Adsorbent For Decentralized Water Treatment. While that’s an interesting topic (I hope…), we’ll save that discussion for next week as I’ve just returned from a real Chemist-Without-Borders situation with visceral …
Just So You Know
See the latest piece about Chemists Without Borders in Chemistry World, a news magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry – http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/02/humanitarian-chemists-without-borders