Tuesday, July 15, 2025
TECH WATCH
In Cairo, where rising construction costs and a booming building sector create challenges, engineers have developed innovative bricks made entirely from desert sand, using natural enzymes and plant-based polymers as a binding formula.
This advanced process cures at room temperature, eliminating the need for cement, water, and kilns, and produces zero CO₂ emissions—contrasting sharply with traditional concrete, which accounts for 8% of global emissions.
The result is a solid block that lab tests claim is stronger than concrete, withstanding extreme temperatures, erosion, and high compressive force, while being 40% lighter, easing transport and suiting low-cost housing in arid regions.
The startup behind this has begun constructing schools and homes in Egypt’s rural villages, drawing interest from governments in North Africa and the Middle East, where sand is abundant but concrete is costly.
#bricks #construction #sndbricks #mudbricks #cementbricks #concretebricks #civilengineering #engineering
Monday, July 14, 2025
FACTS AND FIGURES
CHEQUES TO DEAD PEOPLE!
$1.4 billion worth of stimulus checks was sent to more than 1 million dead Americans, a congressional watchdog said yesterday.
That happened partially because the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which was in charge of sending out stimulus checks, didn’t have access to the Social Security Administration’s set of death records.
Excerpt from
MORNING BREW, dt June 26, 2020.
Grateful thanks to MORNING BREW.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
FACTS AND FIGURES
Illustration of an early xenotransfusion from lamb to man, from Matthias Gottfried
Purmann’s Grosser und gantz neugewundener Lorbeer-Krantz, oder Wund Artzney . . .
Zum andern Mahl vermehrt heraus gegeben (1705).
June 15
The first successful transfusion of blood into a human was performed on this day in 1667. The blood donor was a sheep, and the supervising doctor was a French physician named Jean-Baptiste Denys. He put a small amount — about 12 ounces — of sheep's blood into a 15-year-old boy, who survived the procedure. He repeated his experiment on another man and was again successful, but when he tried to increase the amount of blood actually transfused for his third and fourth patients, they died, and the practice of animal-human blood transfusions was outlawed in 1670.
It was believed at that time that volatile, hot-tempered people could be calmed by giving them the blood of a docile animal, like a sheep or cow, but there were concerns about long-term changes and mutations in the patient. Would he end up with a sheep's head? Samuel Pepys mused in his diary about the possibilities: "This did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like." It was generally agreed upon that humans should only receive transfusions of human blood, but the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion didn't occur until 1818, due to lack of understanding about blood type compatibility.
Friday, July 11, 2025
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