GreenCast: econ friendly walls

Never heard of this? Well you soon will... it's an invention -very local- born out of adversity!!!

Remember years back when neighboring countries  impose bans on sand exports to spore which drove up sand prices & construction cost. Well that lead to 2 outcomes, one:  developers switched to using glass as walls, not only it gives buildings & condos a more beautiful facade, it's cheaper!

The other was the Building & Construction Authority awarded a 1.2 million dollar R&D grant to NUS 's department of Civil engineering to  encourage development of technology that would make construction cheaper, greener & possibly faster.  Professor Wee Tiong Huan's team stood up for the challenge & GC ecoWall was born!!!!!! Together with a Realtor, Mr  Patrick Tan, they incorporated GreenCast 2 years ago in 2010.

So what's all the fuss about? Well to begin with, it's developed in Singapore....yay.....!!!!! Kudos to Professor Wee- That should be encouraged right?????  Not only is this new product more Eco-friendly, it is also more efficient! It's stronger than brick. Great for soundproofing. Installation is also simpler & faster leading to cost cutting verses the traditional cumbersome way of brick laying which is time consuming & costly.

So what's the future for GreenCast? Very Bright I hope.... as of this moment, they are targeting a turnover of 10 million dollars by the 2013 financial year. Good Luck guys.... very proud of the effort!!!

Adult cells into Stem Cells

There's lots of excitement when UK John Gurdon of Gurdon Institute in Cambridge & Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University  won the Nobel prize in Medicine recently!!! They share the US $1.2 million .

Their research........... They found that adult cells can be turned back into stem cells! which can turn into any kind of tissue & may one day repair damaged organs!!!!!!! The big hope is for stem cells to be able to be used to replaced damaged tissue in EVERYTHING from spinal cord injuries to Parkinsons.

In the past scientist once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back to stem cells & stem cells could only be created by  harvesting embryos. Thanks to these 2 brilliant men, we know now that development is not strictly a one-way street. Can you imagine the possibilities now?????

Interested in looking at Einstein's Brain?

Oh Boy..... did you know that they have recently launched an exclusive iPad application of Einstein's brain!!!!! I'm serious! This will allow researchers & kapos like us to peer into his brain like looking through a microscope. Now I was wondering what would I do that for? hmm....

Apparently a medical museum had obtained funding to scan & digitize nearly 350 fragile & priceless slides made from slides of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955. A pathologist removed E's brain hoping that someone in the future could discover the secrets behind his genius.

Research showed that E's parietal lobe was 15 % wider than normal. This is the area that's impt to the understanding of maths, language & spatial relationships.