Kristianstad, Sweden does not use oil, natural gas, or coal to heat its homes and businesses. Instead, it uses gas extracted from biomass like farm and food waste. This is not uncommon in European cities, but Kristianstad harnesses “biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by one-quarter in the last decade.”
Using Waste, Swedish City Shrinks Its Fossil Fuel Use
A patient, known as the “Berlin patient” may have been cured of HIV via stem cells. The patient was an HIV-positive man with myeloid leukemia, which he managed to beat, but then relapsed in 2007. After his relapse, according to the article, “the man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.” The case was reported in 2008, but there has recently been a follow-up report. The whole process is incredibly significant, because “if a cure has been achieved in this patient, it points the way towards attempts to develop a cure for HIV infection through genetically engineered stem cells.”
Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection in ‘Berlin patient’, say doctors
