The Rasa is a prototype hydrogen car that, like the drone mentioned yesterday, emits only water vapour. It is produced by start-up Riversimple in Llandrindod Wells, UK, and instead of using pellets like the drone, it is designed around a fuel cell requiring 10 times less power than an ordinary car. This keeps the vehicle cruising, but …
Continue reading ‘Good news: hydrogen powered cars as well’ »
For 10 minutes the first flight by an aircraft, powered fully by solid hydrogen, has stayed in the air. It is an experimental drone and runs on pellets that emit only water vapour when they burn. The fuel cell is also three times as light as a comparable lithium battery. Previously, large tanks of liquid …
Over the past 12 years, Novobiotic Pharmaceuticals has cultivated 50,000 strains of microorganism no one else could. And they’ve discovered 25 new antibiotics. One made headlines a year ago because it kills bugs in a new way, and one to which it is much more difficult for bacteria to develop resistance. These 25 antibiotics will not necessarily …
“Go out of the world as you entered it. The same passage that you made from womb to life, without feeling or fright, make again from life to death. Your death is part of the order of the universe, the life of the world”. (Montaigne) Epicurus teaches us that death is nothing to fear. Life …
Tech start-ups are supposedly a paradise for “talent”, with their “nap pods”, Cordon Bleu chefs and yoga classes. But not everyone benefits from the “pay-and-perks arms race” under way in Silicon Valley. Indeed, last year a survey of 5,000 tech workers found that many feel “alienated, trapped, underappreciated and otherwise discombobulated”: only 19% said they …
It seems there is a specific gene variant – an “allele” – that regulates sensory pleasure and pain reduction; and the more of it found in a population, the happier that population tends to be. Researchers from Bulgaria and Hong Kong discovered that Ghana, Mexico and Nigeria all had populations with a high incidence of …
This blog has discussed the huge problem of meeting the growing world demand for beef. The global demand for meat is expected to increase by more than two-thirds in the next 40 years, with huge effects on the whole environment – everywhere. It sounds disagreeable, but Mark J. Post, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, …
Continue reading ‘More on the threat posed by beef farming’ »
There are more than seven billion humans on the Earth, and to feed them we’ve taken 40% of the planet’s total land mass and turned it into cornfields to produce feed for beef cattle. Unfortunately, the world population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and possibly 11 billion by the end of …
Continue reading ‘Potentially good news about feeding the world: vertical farms’ »
Scientists have discovered bacteria that are resistant to all known antibiotics. First identified in China, the potentially lethal ‘superbug’, which is resistant to what is known as the ‘antibiotic of last resort’ – colisten – has now been found in the UK. The director of Antibiotic Research UK, Dr David Brown, warned that it is …
Normal people believe in the strangest things. About half of US adults endorse at least one conspiracy theory. Belief in paranormal or supernatural phenomena is widespread, and superstition and magical thinking are nearly universal.Surprisingly large numbers of people also hold beliefs that a psychiatrist would class as delusional. In 2011, psychologist Peter Halligan at Cardiff University assessed how common such beliefs …
Belief varies enormously from person to person, especially on issues that really matter such as politics and religion. According to research by Gerard Saucier of the University of Oregon, these myriad differences can be boiled down to five basic “dimensions” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 104, p 921). At their core, he says, these concern …
Continue reading ‘Core beliefs of human beings (part 1 of 3)’ »
With the introduction of the inexpensive and very effective gene-editing technology, CRISPR, there is potential to alter all manner of genes, allowing scientists to alter genes for cancer and many other diseases. This is a scientific breakthrough. On the other hand, CRISPR comes with ethical issues: on what and on whom to use it? What …
“No one knows how many species of organisms have existed since life began. Thirty billion is a commonly cited figure, but the number has been put as high as 4000 billion. Whatever the actual total, 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us…. For complex organisms the average lifespan of a …
Chinese scientists have genetically modified human embryos for the first time, prompting calls for a worldwide ban on the practice. The researchers, at Sun Yat-sen University, modified genes responsible for the fatal blood disorder thalassemia in “non-viable” embryos that were later destroyed. Their work was only partly successful, and caused unexpected mutations in other genes. …
Americans have become heavier over the years – and not just Americans – and the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes has rapidly increased. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 10 percent of American adults have Type 2 diabetes, and that 86 million (!) adults over age 20 are prediabetic. Call that 86 …
