Walking Thoughts

  Rutland is the sort of place that looks, at first glance, like it might apologise if you bumped into it. It is small. Not just small in the way that a village is small, but small in the way a well-kept secret is small. You can cross it in the time it takes for a cup of tea to become thoughtfully drinkable. And yet, like certain cupboards and at least one well-known wardrobe, it contains rather more than its dimensions strictly permit. Rutland is small enough that history cannot help but bump into itself. In larger counties, the past has room to stretch out, to yawn, to keep a respectful distance from the present. In Rutland, it must share the same narrow lanes, queue politely at the same village shop, and occasionally apologise when it treads on its own toes. Take  Rutland Water , for instance. Officially, it is a reservoir.  Unofficially, it is a sort of inland sea that dreams of tides. The water lies there, doing its best impression of a respectable reservoir, bu...

  The circular economy is about maintaining the highest value for as long as possible in the resources we use through Intelligent design maintenance and reuse and refurbishment before they need to be recycled or recovered. Intelligent design 1996 to 2002 Research into efficient regeneration of granular activated carbon To Remove organics from water for supply As clean drinking water My PhD is the design of a novel reactor to remediate pollutant in water using recycled materials for environmental protection. Innovative technology for water and wastewater treatment for portable supply and water recycling to the environment. Technical evaluation of technology Maintenance 2009 to 2020 Performance and risk balancing performance of water Treatment assets and water recycling assets with the risk carried by the business so that they are neither over maintained nor under maintained. This achieved efficient maintenance strategies. Predictive maintenance maintained assets Preventing the need ...

  However the circular economy approach is different and involves changing the linear approach by closing the loop. This involves  designing out waste at the beginning designing and  manufacturing products so they can be maintained over their lifetime  designing for deconstruction  recycling end of life products back into new products and materials and maintaining the value of the materials in the product cycle to refurbishment reuse and recycling and avoiding landfill.  This has high level benefits on the environment including  reducing the need to extract raw virgin materials  reducing greenhouse gas emissions and  reducing waste and pollution.  It also has other business benefits including  Stream lining manufacturing processes  saving costs such as production costs and landfill tax  improving customer interaction and loyalty  improving local economy resilience,  ensuring a more secure source of supply for raw...

  A transformative new drug for pancreatic cancer.  Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the deadliest cancers, with a five-year survival rate of  just 13 percent ; advances in therapy against the disease have been slow. A key reason is that around  three-quarters  of these cancers are driven by mutations in KRAS, a protein that has been considered essentially undruggable because it lacks an obvious binding site for a drug molecule. A new treatment, called daraxonrasib, gets around this by first binding to another protein in the cell, cyclophilin A, forming a complex that can then  latch onto and block mutant KRAS, cutting off the signal that drives tumor growth.  In a phase three trial of around 500 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had already progressed while on chemotherapy, the company  reported  a median overall survival of 13.2 months with daraxonrasib versus 6.7 months with chemotherapy, roughly doubling survival. That is ...

  Today is the first day of food caddy collection From our ‘doorstep’ by the local council. It seems a little belated and has been divisive. Reading the marketing material that has accompanied this change in waste collection Has brought to mind my first LinkedIn post On Halfway to Net Zero, also published in chemical industry journal  https://www.chemicalindustryjournal.co.uk/on-halfway-to-net-zero . This is because One of the ways in which  Council food caddy schemes provide environmental benefits is diversion of the food waste from landfill, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The methane which arises is 2800% more potent than CO2, Having a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) of 28. When I responded to claims that the UK were halfway to net zero, I noted that the inroads we had made to date were largely from one offs such as closing the coalmines, banning CFCs and reducing methane emissions from landfill. Not to mention a pandemic. “ It has taken 30 years – and a pandemic –...

  Here’s a sharpened, high-impact LinkedIn piece that keeps your voice but gives it authority, rhythm, and that quiet “this person knows exactly what they’re doing” energy: Hook (stop-the-scroll line): You don’t have to choose between being brilliant on paper and brilliant in practice. I recently had a moment that made me pause. A new line manager described me as  “very academic.” And they’re not wrong. But it isn’t how I see myself. Because here’s the truth: I didn’t become academic  instead of  being practical. I became academic  because  I’m practical. I started out intending to study physics, but quickly pivoted to natural sciences. Not for the title, but for the impact. I wanted a career rooted in environmental protection, not just theory. Three years into the water industry, split between compliance and innovation, I found something that mattered enough to pursue deeply. That’s when I chose to do a PhD in wastewater engineering. Not at the start of my...