Surgeon Invents Plastic-Reducing Urine Collection Pot
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
A hospital specialist has invented a new product that manages to reduce plastic and simplify the process of testing urine.
These three introductory paragraphs, add more detail.
Consultant urologist Dr Nick Burns-Cox has been working on his own innovation, the Pee-In-Pot (PiP) for 10 years.
Made from bamboo and sugar cane, it removes four items from the current urine collection process, three of them plastic.
Mr Burns-Cox, who works at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, said he hoped it would cut down the use of single-use plastic in the NHS and reduce the chance of errors.
I like the design of this simple device.
But, personally, I hope it becomes universal, as I have trouble giving urine samples.
I had my stroke in Hong Kong and the Chinese nurses, were so aggressive, when it came to taking urine samples, they have given me an aversion to them.
In my view the device could help the patient psychologically, at what could be a difficult time.
I Seemed To Have Improved My Left Knee
My left knee has always been weaker than my right.
- What really made it bad was living with C and our three children in a fourth floor walk-up flat with no lift.
- I usually carried the double-pushchair up the stairs a couple of times a day.
- It should also be born in mind, that my left humerus was broken by the school bully, when I was fifteen.
Our GP at the time, we were living in the flat, thought I should have an operation on the knee, but luckily I didn’t as another GP a few later gave me a set of exercises, that improved it to a certain extent.
Since my stroke and returning to London, I have relied on buses and trains, as I can’t drive and don’t even have a car.
My knee seemed to be getting worse and I reasoned it wasn’t being helped, by the high step in and out, you get on some trains and buses.
This picture shows the high step into a Northern Line train at Moorgate station.
I found that the step-down here, gives a bang on my knee every time I get out of the train.
This second picture shows Bank station, which is a new platform and level.
It’s surely very much a matter of GCSE mathematics and geometry, with a bit of money to get many more train and bus entries level.
So I have developed a maneuver to get out of the train or bus.
- Most doors have a vertical rail on either side. You can see one rail in the first picture.
- As I want to avoid hurting my left leg any more, I grab the rail on the left side of the door going out, with my left hand.
- I have my bag in my strong right hand. If I have two bags, one is usually My Faithful Servant, so I can hold them both in my right hand.
- I then swing around the vertical rail holding on with my left hand.
- So far, every time I’ve landed safely and lightly on my right foot.
My left knee seems to be improving.
Surprisingly, the extra pulls on my left arm don’t seem to harm it.
The Story Of An O-Ring
I have a very unusual skin, as is partly shown by these pictures.
Note.
- There is a scar on the back of my left hand, where I cut it on the glass bathroom door in my bedroom.
- But with skillful gluing at the Royal London hospital and TLC and stern words from the practice nurse at my GP’s it healed perfectly.
- If I give blood samples or have an injection, I don’t need a plaster.
- My left foot is a deeper shade of red to the right. No-one has given me a reason for this.
- My previous now-retired GP, always took his own blood samples, when he needed them and had smiles all over his face. Perhaps, he was proving to himself, that it was happening?
- I wrote about my skin before in My Strange Skin, in 2020.
- One therapist said unusually for someone, who had a left-sided stroke, that my left leg is the stronger.
As my ancestry is part-Jewish and part-Huguenot could it just be that only the strongest genes survived from their poor living conditions my ancestors endured in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
My Cardiologist And His Wife, Have Suggested I Use An Emollient In My Bath
I am now adding Oilatum Emollient to my bath water, which I get delivered by Ocado.
It is not cheap, but my feet are now more made for walking.
I put three cap-fulls in a bath and lie in it for about 10-20 minutes.
An O-Ring Failure On Bad Friday
A rubber O-ring sitting in a groove on the plug, should keep the water in the bath, but as this picture shows the O-ring had seen better days.
The picture of the new O-ring shows how it should look on the plug.
On Bad Friday, the O-ring finally gave up and any water put in the bath, went straight down the drain.
A Fruitless Bad Friday
Internet searches proved fruitless in my search for a shop that was open on Bad Friday.
So I vowed to try again today.
Searching For cp Hart At Waterloo
cp Hart, from whom I bought the original bath, appeared to be open at Waterloo, so after breakfast on Moorgate, I made my way to look for the branch of cp Hart at Waterloo.
Note.
- Why does South London and its trains have to be covered in graffiti?
- Most of it, is not even good graffiti.
- In my view, the Bakerloo Line should not get new trains, until the graffiti has stopped.
- I wandered round Waterloo for about ninety minutes before I found cp Hart, with the help of two police constables.
- And when I finally found cp Hart, they didn’t do spares.
- I tripped over the uneven pavement in the last picture. But as I usually do, I retained my balance and didn’t fall. Is that all the B12 I take for coeliac disease?
My mother always used to say, that you shouldn’t go to South London without a posse.
Eventually, I had a coffee in Costa and took the 76 bus home.
Success At Last!
To get home on a 76 bus, I have to change in De Beauvoir Town and whilst I waited for the 141 bus to take me home, I checked out the local builders merchants.
The owner was his usual self and fitted my plug with a free new O-ring.
I was now able to have a bath.
And watch the snooker.
I can certainly recommend a television in your bathroom.
Note the vertical handrail, that allows me to step easily in and out of the bath.
Eastern Green Link 2 Moves Up A Gear Using Low Carbon Fuel For Material Handling Trucks
The title of this post is the same, as that of this press release from National Grid.
These three bullet points act as sub-headings.
- Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2), a high voltage direct current (HVDC) 436km subsea transmission cable connecting Scotland and England, is being delivered as a joint venture by National Grid Electricity Transmission and SSEN Transmission.
- Project sustainability efforts are accelerating by adopting Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) fuelled trucks to move materials in Yorkshire.
- The introduction of HVO fuel will deliver up to 90% reduction in direct CO2 emissions.
The use of HVO fuel is good and the carbon dioxide emission savings are to be welcomed, but there is only so much of this HVO fuel available.
If hydrogen-fueled trucks were available, then this would deliver up to 100% reduction in direct CO2 emissions.
This paragraph from the press release talks about where the HVO fuel will be used.
HVO, a low-carbon biofuel made from waste vegetable oils, will be used at the Wren Hall converter station site in North Yorkshire, where 20-tonne construction trucks will transport approximately 370,000 tonnes of quarry stone from a quarry 27 miles away. This switch from conventional diesel to HVO is expected to deliver up to a 90% reduction in direct CO2 emissions and an 80% reduction in other harmful emissions such as particulate matter.
This Google Map shows the location of Wren Hall with respect to Drax power station.
Note.
- The six large cooling towers of the Drax power station are in the North-West corner of the map.
- Google Maps indicate, where they think Wren Hall is, with a red arrow.The lane running North-South to the West of the red arrow is called Wren Hall Lane.
- There is a legend saying BAM Nuttall Ltd Eastern Green Link 2 on the opposite side of the square of lanes to the red arrow.
Click the map to show it to a larger scale.
It looks to me, that if hydrogen could be provided on the Drax site, then the 370,000 tonnes of quarry stone from a quarry 27 miles away could be brought to the site by hydrogen-powered 20-tonne construction trucks.
So how could hydrogen be provided on the Drax site?
- Drax is a 2.6 GW biomass power station, so I’m sure that some electricity could be used to generate hydrogen.
- Drax is a rail-connected site, so hydrogen could be brought in by rail.
- Depending on the amount of hydrogen needed, hydrogen could surely be brought in by road.
I feel that if hydrogen-powered 20-tonne construction trucks were available, this transfer of quarry stone could be performed carbon-free.
Conclusion
This project illustrates a problem with large infrastructure projects all over the UK.
Moving the large amounts of stone, concrete, sand and rubble into and out of construction sites generates a lot of carbon dioxide and pollution from the 20-tonne trucks employed.
If I were to be given Ed Miliband’s job of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, one of my first actions, would be to say that all new 20 tonne construction and cement trucks would have to be zero carbon.
I suspect, that zero-carbon with trucks this size, will mean hydrogen, as the weight of the battery would destroy the mathematics of the truck.
This would obviously reduce carbon emissions, but more importantly, what would it do for the health of those working on large construction sites?
In MAN Expands Its Zero-Emission Portfolio, I show MAN’s heavy hydrogen trucks.
This is an articulated heavy hydrogen truck.
I’m sure that MAN could build a hydrogen-powered 20-tonne construction truck.
In Cummins Agrees To Integrate Its Hydrogen ICE Technology Into Terex® Advance Trucks, I talk about the solution to the cement truck problem.
This is a side view of the top-of-the-range monster.
Note.
- Front is to the right.
- I suspect the driver doesn’t have to get out of the cab to discharge the concrete.
- The engine is at the rear with vertical exhausts.
- All axles are driven.
You’d certainly notice one of these if they were to be used in the City of London.
And this is the baby of the range.
Three axles is normal for the UK. so I wonder if this machine will ever make it across the pond.
This last paragraph in the original article describes the X15H hydrogen internal combustion engine.
The X15H was showcased at the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo in May (2023), along with its hydrogen ICE-powered concept truck. The X15H features a 700-bar pressure 80kg capacity hydrogen storage system and a range of more than 500 miles, with up to 500 horsepower.
Could one of these trucks really deliver ready-mix concrete from London to Manchester and return?
The trucks would appear to be available, so let’s get a few over and try them out.
Incidentally, if someone had told me ten years ago, there would be rear-wheel drive trucks like Volkswagen Beetles, I’d have said they were wrong in no uncertain terms.
The Wren Hall substation would appear to be an ideal trial project for hydrogen-powered construction trucks and cement trucks.
Alzheimer’s Expert Was Treated Like A Heretic Until Now
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
For decades Professor Ruth Itzhaki believed there was a link between Alzheimer’s and the virus that causes shingles, and has just been vindicated
These two paragraphs outline an amazing story.
Ruth Itzhaki does not, she says, refer to it as her time “in the wilderness”. When she reflects on the decades investigating — often almost alone — whether Alzheimer’s could be triggered by viruses, she prefers a different term. “I’d call it, ‘repeated burning as a heretic at the stake’. ” For much of her career she was treated “contemptuously”.
Today, as yet another study finds that the shingles vaccine appears to cut dementia risk, that has changed. At a stage in life when most researchers are retired, Itzhaki, an emeritus professor at Manchester University, finds herself reviewing studies from around the world. She is treated with contempt no more. But, she says, it has not been fun. “I just have to stop myself from being bitter.”
Sad to say, it is not an unusual story.
This was the comment, I appended to the Times web site.
There was a wonderful BBC Panorama about a Glasgow Veterinary professor, who believed the messenger of the body was an oxide of nitrogen, at least twenty years ago.
He was ostrasised for being a heretic.
Eventually, he was proved to be right.
I might have exposed how a simple treatment for stroke is ignored in the UK.
I was found to be coeliac at fifty and Addenbrooke’s hospital said that I should have B12 injections every three months.
In my sixties, I had a serious stroke and if I lived in the States, I would have been given B12 injections to aid my recovery. But that simple treatment is not used here, as it is considered American quackery.
However, several doctors have said, I have made a remarkable recovery. Was that because of the B12 injections, I still have?
More research needs to be done and I’ll travel anywhere to help any doctor, who is doing serious research.
It could just be, that as a London Mongrel, I have more survival genes, than a small field of Japanese Knotweed.
I should add, that as the date of my next B12 injection approaches, I can almost feel, the various parts of my body fighting for what little I have left.
But what do I know? I’m just a slightly crazy engineer/scientist and mathematician, with no medical training, who has been given an unusual body to investigate.
How Jewish is Volodymyr Zelensky?
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Jewish Chronicle.
This is the sub-heading.
The Ukrainian President is hailed as one of the few Jewish world leaders not from Israel, but how Jewish is he
The article is a must read, as it gives a valuable insight into what drives Zelensky.
These two paragraphs describe his upbringing.
Zelensky grew up in the Russian-speaking city of Kryvyi Rih, in the eastern part of Ukraine. Like most Soviet Jews, his parents were highly educated but limited in where their careers could go. His father was a professor of mathematics and his mother studied engineering.
Zelensky said he grew up in an “ordinary Soviet Jewish family,” which was to say, not very religious, since “religion didn’t exist in the Soviet state as such.”
We could certainly do, with more world leaders, who understood science and had less religion.
It also publishes a story of four brothers that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
“Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine,” he said. “The fourth brother survived. … Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president, and he is standing before you today, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Zelensky has come one hell of a journey and it has been very much a Jewish journey.
In addition to all the pogroms, persecutions and the Holocaust, he would probably know all the various medical problems and diseases, that members of the Jewish faith seem to have suffered, in Eastern Europe.
Today, The Times published an article which is entitled Zelensky: Putin Will Die Soon And The Ukraine War Will End.
IThe article has this sub-heading.
The Ukrainian leader says after Nato summit that the Russian president is near death and fears losing his grip on his people.
I would believe, that the Ukrainian leader is talking from a position, where he is sure of his facts, because of his Jewish heritage and what he knows of Putin’s heritage, which is partly Jewish, and his life and medical history.
Consider.
- As a coeliac, who lost his son indirectly to coeliac disease, I believe that it is a dangerous disease to have, if it is undiagnosed and you are not on a gluten-free diet.
- From some of the stories, I’ve read about Putin, I wonder, if he could be an undiagnosed coeliac. As I spent fifty years of my life that way, I know what it’s like.
- According to the NHS, coeliac disease is much more common in women and backing this up, is the fact that I’ve only ever met two male adult coeliacs.
- Is coeliac disease in Russia, very much a girly disease, that action men, like Vlad the Butcher can’t get?
- If Vlad is an undiagnosed coeliac, there could be something nasty, like a stroke or cancer lurking in his genes.
Given his upbringing, Zelensky is probably giving us, a scientific analysis of the facts about his adversary.
Tea Removes Toxic Heavy Metals From Water, Study Suggests
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
The longer tea is steeped, the more contaminants are removed
These are the first three paragraphs, which give a flavour of the research.
A daily cup of tea may do more than just perk you up — it can also purge the water of toxic heavy metals, a study suggests.
Researchers found that tea leaves will trap lead, cadmium, and other unwanted contaminants during the brewing process. These metals bind to the leaves and remain there until they are thrown away.
Benjamin Shindel of Northwestern University, Illinois, who led the research, said that while other materials might achieve a similar effect, tea’s popularity made it unique. “What is special about tea is that it’s the most consumed beverage in the world,” he explained.
My late wife was a coffee drinker and I only have the odd cup of cappuccino, although, I do drink lots of zero-alcohol beer, hot chocolate and decaffeinated tea.
I would assume that from his name Professor Benjamin Shindel is quite likely to be Jewish.
So did he ask all his friends and relatives round for a tea party?
The Professor certainly wouldn’t have had to have stinted on the cakes, as they wouldn’t have got near the water, which was the real subject of the research.
But he wouldn’t have been short of volunteers to brew their favourite tea!
Eyes Full Of Sleep
I can remember my mother telling my wife a; C, about myself, when I was a baby. She said that my eyes got terribly bunged up with muck, what she called sleep. She also said she’d spend time cleaning out my eyes and ears.
Last night, I was finding, that my eyes were so full of muck, that I couldn’t type, with one in about five letters wrong.
I thought it just could be be my eyes full of sleep, so I ran a deep bath and gave my eyes a thorough flush.
After that I could see and type properly.
I slept well.
In fact I slept so well, that I overslept until nine. Which is very unlike me.
I also wasn’t sure of the day, when I woke up. But at least, I got my drugs right.
An Incident As A Child
In one incident as a child, when I was about five, I can remember my mother picking me up, taking me upstairs, running a bath and then undressing me quickly and putting me in it. I also remember that I was very red.
Any ideas about what she was doing?
To Norbiton For A Plate Of Lovely Liver
I seem to need a lot of Vitamin B12.
- I am coeliac, which probably means I don’t absorb enough out of my food.
- Although, when my gallstones were removed, the surgeon had a look and said everything was good.
- When Homerton Hospital found my Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, that I talked about in I’ve Got Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, they also said everything else was good.
- In the United States, Vitamin B12 is given to stroke patients to help recovery.
- I’ve had Vitamin B12 injections for nearly thirty years, since they were prescribed by Addenbrooke’s hospital.
Certainly, I find that a Vitamin B12 injection doesn’t seem to have the same effect, it had twenty years ago. So, is my brain saying, I’ll have that, when I have an injection?
When I lived in Suffolk and I felt my Vitamin B12 was low, I’d go down the pub or carluccio’s in Cambridge or Bury and have a plate of liver.
But liver is rare in London restaurants and Carluccio’s don’t serve it any more.
A guy in the reader’s comments in The Times told me of a restaurant called the Trattoria Calabrese, that sold liver in sage butter yesterday. So today, I took a train to Norbiton to get myself some extra Vitamin B12.
These pictures describe my first visit to Norbiton.
The short walk to the restaurant from Norbiton station was very much worth it. I shall go back!
Bristol May Be First English City To Face Monthly Black Bin Collection
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
More than 4,000 Bristolians are opposing the council’s plan to switch to a four-week cycle, which the city says would save money and be better for the environment
I live in Hackney and we still have two-weekly collections for recyclables and weekly for waste food.
These are my thoughts on Bristol.
As a widower, who lives alone , I don’t put much in my black bin, as I do recycle properly and use my waste food bin and green sack recycling fully.
I’ve also noticed, that a lot more items have been marked that they can go in the green sacks.
I am a coeliac and suffer from a vitamin B12 deficiency for which I get three-monthly injections at the GP. But that is not enough and I have found that one of M& S’s Liver and Bacon Ready Meals adds enough B12 to keep be going at full speed.
The trays of M & S’s Ready Meals are now recyclable and I suspect, they’re not the only packaging, that can now be recycled.
So as more and more packing is recycled, we can surely reduce the black bin frequency.
It would appear, that by making packaging more recyclable, we can make rubbish collection more efficient.
The Anonymous Widower 