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[GGN] #11 Fox Friendship, Living Plastic and Sister’s Bone Marrow Match

Day 6,010, 08:57 • Published in United Kingdom

• by Garth Lidlington

Man’s heart warming fox friendship

A wildlife fan has struck up an extraordinary friendship with a young fox after he noticed she was ill. Bob Dunlop realised the fox had developed mange on her tail after spying her lack of hair on wildlife cameras set up near his home in Littleport, Cambridgeshire.

The 69-year-old worked out where the animal’s den was located and began to treat the cub by feeding it bread with a homoeopathic remedy recommended by a wildlife expert.

Their heart-warming friendship blossomed as the young kit began to greet Mr Dunlop on his daily walks through the English forest.

Mr Dunlop said he knows he must let her re-wild and is slowly cutting down the amount of time he visits—and has already stopped feeding her.

“She’s such a special animal, it will be hard to let go.”

“But I do not intend to make her tame as she is a wild fox.”

Living Plastic Aims to Boost Environment

Scientists believe they’ve found a way to make plastics more durable and biodegradable by adding bacterial spores that have been put through evolutionary rigours.

This kind of “living plastic” can break down in about five months without the necessary addition of any other microbes.

Researchers led by scientists at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) created this living plastic in the form of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a soft but durable commercial plastic used in footwear, floor mats, cushions, and memory foam.

They explained that the material is filled with bacterial spores that, when exposed to nutrients present in compost, germinate and break it down at the end of its life cycle.

The biodegradable TPU was made with bacterial spores from a strain of Bacillus subtilis that has the ability to break down plastic polymer materials.

“What’s remarkable is that our material breaks down even without the presence of additional microbes. Chances are, most of these plastics will likely not end up in microbially rich composting facilities,” said Professor Pokorski.

Although the researchers still need to study what gets left behind after the material degrades, they believe that any lingering bacterial spores are likely harmless.

Sister Sends Cancer Into Remission Through Bone Marrow Donation

A young girl in the English city of Sheffield has seen her rare blood cancer go into complete remission, and she has her even younger sister to thank for it.

Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in 2020 at age 6 after collapsing in the school playground, the family was desperate for donor stem cells from bone marrow to treat the rare form of the disease.

Remarkably, it was none other than 6-year-old Ruby Leaning’s 2-year-old sister, Mabel, who came up as a perfect match and was able to donate her bone marrow to keep Ruby alive and treat her cancer.

It was a long and difficult road that involved scares and good fortune. Ruby’s grandmother, Amanda Fawcett, spoke to SWNS about how difficult it was.

“It’s every parent’s nightmare… I was in the room with her mom when we found out, and you just can’t take anything in at all. It was all just heart-shattering,” she said.

“We [weren’t] expecting [Mabel] to be a match at first, but thankfully she was, so we just couldn’t believe our luck,” Fawcett told Fox News. “It was amazing – we were so thankful.”

Declared cancer-free in 2022, the family says that because Mabel has come to realise what she did for her sister, she asks to “borrow” nearly everything of Ruby’s, but Fawcett said it’s all “fun and games.”