Loading...
The Rural Voice, 1998-04, Page 14QUICK -FIT INTERCHANGEABLE FRONT-END LOADER ATTACHMENTS Front Loader Pallet Fork .4. . • 48" long solid forklift tines • Sliding adjustable • 5000 Ib. capacity Manure Fork • 48- - 7 tines • 60" - 8 tines, • 72" - 9 tines • 84" - 11 tines Single European -Style Spear SE500 • 39" forged tine • Easy stabbing & removal • Optional 49" tine available Material Bucket *as • Wrap-around wearbar for extra strength • Unique formed construction for easy filling and clean-out HORST WELDING R.R. 3, Listowel, Ontario N4W 3G8 (519) 291-4162 FAX (519) 291-5388 Dealer enquiries invited 10 THE RURAL VOICE Scrap Book Mixing hybrids could boost yields If researchers in Australia and China are right, doctors could soon have a new weapon in their fight against cancer and cattle farmers could have a valuable new by- product of their animals. A team of researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is working to identify special factors in the cartilage of cattle that have been shown by international research to prevent a cancerous tumour from developing a blood supply and spreading to the rest of the body. "Overseas scientists have demonstrated that certain extracts of shark cartilage, injected into tum- ours, cause them to regress," said Dr. Greg Harper, team leader of CSIRO's laboratory in Rockhamp- ton, New South Wales. "They also appear to inhibit the development of blood vessels to the cancer, which allows them to spread around the body." Harper's work has established that similar factors occur in bovine cartilage. "To reach the body's blood supply and spread, a cancer first has to pass through a matrix of extra- cellular material," he said. Cartilage is a tissue that fun- ctions without nerves, blood vessels or a lymphatic system and consists largely of extra -cellular material and it is these characteristics which make it useful in trying to stop a cancer from spreading. "It also contains factors which interfere with the cancer's passage. We believe that by increasing these factors, the cancer is forced to expend more energy in trying to get through the extra -cellular matrix, making it far more difficult for it to spread, or metastasize," he said. These factors go by the family name of glycosaminoglycans, or "gags". Harper and researcher Xiaoyi Qui from Beijing's Tiantan Hospital in China are trying to identify and characterize the particular gags in bovine cartilage that do the best job in inhibiting cancer spread. The market for shark cartilage is worth $1 billion a year in the U.S. alone but sharks are in short supply. Shark cartilage sells for $250-$500 (Cdn) per kilogram. If cartilage from cattle can be substituted it will mean a reliable new supply for the medical community and a new by- product for the beef industry.0 — Source: Western Producer Chicken manure goes up in smoke Chicken manure may be good fertilizer but in Britain it may help green the earth a different way. Two small power plants in Britain already burn poultry litter in conventional boiler systems but a new plant operated by Agrigen of Cheltenham, plans to generate 75 million kilowatts of power per hour by burning 120,000 tonnes of poultry litter a year. The plant, to be built at Northampton in central England, will use a bubbling, fluidised -bed combustion system to create steam to power a generator. The fluidised bed is made up of sieved natural sand. After the sand is heated to about 300 degrees Celsius, poultry litter is fed into the bed from a hopper above. Light material combusts instantly on contact with the sand particles, while heavier material is combusted when it falls into the bed itself. Agrigen says that this double action results in a much larger combustion zone with a high degree of turbulence and high heat transfer rate within the bed, resulting in a complete combustion of the fuel. About 38 tonnes of steam per hour will result and this will drive a turbine with a capacity of 11.6 megawatts. "Poultry litter is a remarkably clean fuel with significantly lower emissions than coal when burned in a fluidised -bed boiler," says Derck Howard -Orchard of Agrigen. It produces ash residue that can be used for phosphate -rich fertilizer. The system will have a double benefit for Britain's environment by creating power using low -emission fuel and using some of the 1.4 million tonnes of poultry litter created yearly, preventing methane production.0 —Source: British Information Services