Search results for ""Author Lina Zeldovich""

The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap! Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we’ve created to do so—from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today—has also done considerable damage to the earth’s ecology. Now scientists tell us: we’ve been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and much more. In clear and engaging prose that draws on her extensive research and interviews, Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of poop upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle climate change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. Don’t just sit there and let it go to waste.

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The fascinating and dramatic story of a forgotten, life-saving cure to conquer deadly bacterial infections - bacteriophages - and the remarkable scientists behind themWhen antibiotics started to fail the race to save humanity from deadly antibiotic resistant infections began. Science journalist Lina Zeldovich reveals the remarkable history of bacteriophages or 'phages', through the colourful lives of the British, French, Soviet and American scientists who discovered, developed and are now reviving this unique living medicine for seemingly incurable diseases.Starting with the original discovery of bacteriophages, or 'phages', in 1917, Zeldovich reveals how they were all but forgotten as antibiotics rose to medical stardom in the West and Stalin purged leading scientists behind them in the former Soviet Union. It was only when patients started dying from antibiotic resistant infections that those scientists who fled the former Soviet Union realis

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