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Scientists have received 13 radio bursts from deep space. They think that it could be a star or a plant interacting with a blackhole, but it also could also mean that a alien planet is calling for help. Except they don't know for sure.

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Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space-including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.

Fast radio bursts, as they are known to scientists, are among the universe's most bizarre phenomena. Each burst lasts just thousandths of a second, and they all appear to be coming from far outside our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Since these bursts were discovered in 2007, their cause has remained a puzzle. Based on estimations of the known range of their frequencies and an understanding of activity in the universe, scientists expect that nearly a thousand of them happen every day. But to date, only a handful have been found.

Now, a team using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, has announced the additional 13 new detections, including an especially rare repeating burst. Until now, only one other repeating fast radio burst was known to exist.

"The repeater," as it being called, and its 12 counterparts came from a region of space some 1.5 billion light-years away, the team reports today in the journal Nature. All 13 new bursts have the lowest radio frequency yet detected, but they were also brighter than previously seen fast radio bursts, leading the team to think the low frequency has something to do with the sources' environment.

"It doesn't mean that they're traveling from further away," says study author Shriharsh Tendulkar, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of physics at McGill University. "As light propagates through the hot gas and plasma in the intergalactic medium and the interstellar medium, it has a bunch of different effects on the signal."

For instance, the radio waves get twisted as they travel through space and can scatter or be absorbed by gas and plasma. The team therefore thinks that all 13 bursts likely originated from dense, turbulent regions inside of their host galaxies, particularly areas with a lot of violent activity, such as near dense supernova remnants or close to black holes.

Deepening mystery

Tendulkar and the team also noticed that the structure of the new repeating burst is strikingly similar to the only other repeater ever found.

"The fact that we see these multiple structures in the burst was very similar to the first repeating fast radio burst. This is very uncommon," he says. "Now there is this tantalizing evidence that these bursts' structures are seen only in repeaters." That suggests that if more fast radio bursts are found with that structure, they may be prime candidates for also being repeaters.

The new repeating burst is brighter than the previous detection, which might be due to the fact that it is 1.5 billion light-years closer, but the team can't know that for sure. To draw more comparisons, they'll have to search the skies for the new burst's host galaxy, which is not a guaranteed find. In the meantime, the team is continuing to use CHIME to observe the region of the sky where these bursts came from, as well as using other radio telescopes to follow up on the finds.

"We are trying to build up clues and trying to understand whether the repeating fast radio bursts and single fast radio bursts are different populations," Tendulkar says. "Do they come from different objects? Or are they related in some way to each other? We are trying to figure these things out, so that's really exciting."

What's more, when CHIME detected these new bursts, it was only running at a fraction of its capacity, and the team is excited to see how many more will appear in their data now that the instrument is fully up and running.

"The CHIME discovery points to a huge potential," says Shami Chatterjee, a senior researcher at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science who was not involved in the latest discoveries. "I'm intensely curious how many [fast radio bursts] they are sitting on now. They must have dozens or hundreds."

Finding yet more bursts means that the odd occurrences could be effective tools for understanding the traces of gas, dust, and plasma that exist in the seemingly empty space between galaxies, called the intergalactic medium, Chatterjee adds.

"Everyone agrees that in the intergalactic medium, it's very hard to have a probe that can tell you about its makeup," Chatterjee says. "It is orders of magnitude emptier than our own interstellar medium, but because of the [fast radio bursts] that we are now finding, it is going to be one of the few ways that we can probe this medium and understand those environments."

And for now, Tendulkar notes that the mystery surrounding fast radio bursts remains part of their appeal.

"There is a lot of fun in the not knowing," he says. "You keep adding more information, but as in all sciences, whenever you solve one mystery, it always opens up three more."

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Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space

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Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space-including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.

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Fortnite battle royal is one of the hottest video games in the world. There are currently 40 million people playing and it is free to play game. When you start the game there are 100 people playing agest you for the victory royal. Causing many people to get addicted and quitting their jobs just to play a game.  The kids that play the game are changing their behaviour at school, constantly turning their homework late, and also causing parents to be very concerned and worried. The most dangerous thing about playing this game talking to strangers because you will not know who you are playing with and that might cause people hacking on your computer or knowing your credit card number without you knowing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2018/12/09/fortnite-addiction-sending-kids-gaming-rehab/2221149002/

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Christmas shoppers could have their faces scanned in central London this week as part of a police trial.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-46584184
Are you safe doing your daily shopping? Not for long. The london police are scanning inicoent people in police trails and using it to thier advantage. I think that this is an extreme issue considering that even in a shoping mart that you are not safe. I think that people should be more careful around technology as facial recognition devolops.

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SebastianChristmas shoppers could have their faces scanned in central London this week as part of a police trial.https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-46584184Are you safe doing your daily shopping? Not for long. The london police are scanning inicoent people in police trails and using it to thier advantage. I think that this is an extreme issue  

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SebastianChristmas shoppers could have their faces scanned in central London this week as part of a police trial.https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-46584184Are you safe doing your daily shopping? Not for long. The london police are scanning inicoent people in police trails and using it to thier advantage. I think that this is an extreme issue  

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Facial recognition programs are said to targets illegal chimpanzees traders when stealing the endangered species. The same software to recognize facial social media accounts is being used to catch and save chimps from being trafficked from Africa to Syria. The algorithms in the software could potentially save the precious members of this endangered species. Most chimps are being sold at a high price for about $12,500 and a little under £10,000 at zoos and other facilities.  The algorithm is being trained using a database of 3,000 ape face images. It takes the most prominent features in the face of the ape and in each of these pictures, a box is drawn around the chimp's face. It is matched with existing images in the ever-expanding photo database. The algorithm then tries to match the existing photos with chimpanzees advertising on the internet. An estimated 3,000 great apes, two-thirds of which are chimpanzees, are lost from the wild every year as a result of the illegal poaching. As a result, these individuals have come up with a solution to save the nearly extinct apes species.  I personally think this is a great way to solve this endangered species, but could also potentially expanded to other animals who have similar feature to humans, like monkeys.

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Wildlife criminals had better watch out! The same software that recognises you in a friend's social media post is being adapted to tackle the illegal trade in chimpanzees.

The amber eyes in the image above belong to Manno, who was trafficked from Africa to Syria before being rescued.

Pictures of Mano are now being used to train the algorithm that could help save members of his endangered species from the same experience. It's a first for chimpanzee conservation.

The algorithm will search through photo posts on social media looking for the faces of rescued apes.

If the technology recognises a trafficked animal, the owners of the accounts featuring the chimp can then be targeted by the authorities.

These might be the smugglers who originally advertised the ape or a foolish buyer who subsequently showed off their purchase.

The hope is this new initiative can help break up criminal networks.

A year-long BBC investigation into the brutal smuggling of chimpanzees into the brutal smuggling of chimpanzees found that as pets in wealthy homes or as performers in commercial zoos, baby chimps can command a price tag of $12,500, a little under £10,000.

How did this project start?

The idea came to conservationist Alexandra Russo when she was investigating online ape trafficking and sifting through posts on Instagram and Facebook for evidence of chimpanzees being offered for sale.

"We were spending more and more time looking through the depths of the internet; it's like a rabbit hole. You don't know where to look, you click around pretty aimlessly until you start to find things that look suspicious. So, I thought there must be a more efficient way to do this," she explains.

"I began discussing the possibility of using some kind of software that could automatically find ape faces in online searches."

Alexandra contacted the non-profit Conservation X Labs and met computer vision expert Dr Colin McCormick. " ChimpFace" is the result.

How does the technology work?

It first detects that the image shows a chimpanzee and then determines the individual.

"We train the algorithm to recognise individual chimps using up to 30 photos of an individual, adapting it to the chimp's facial structures," explains Dr Colin McCormick.

Processing time is quick, under a second, but takes longer as more images are added to improve accuracy.

"It is important to get images of each individual in different positions, facial expressions, in altered lighting, and with the head tilted at a different angle," explains Alexandra.

The algorithm technology is being trained using a database of 3,000 ape face images.

In each of these pictures, a box is drawn around the chimp's face and then matched with existing images in the ever expanding photo database.

Nine chimpanzee conservation organisations have contributed pictures - from the Great Ape project in Brazil to Project Primate Internationa l in Guinea.

The photos show captive chimpanzees currently living in sanctuaries, as well as wild chimpanzees.

"They send us images of known named apes so we can build the individual recognition algorithm, but the fact that chimpanzee faces are so close to human faces creates a harder technical challenge," Dr McCormick says.

Chimpanzees share an estimated 98% of their genes with humans, which means that "the facial algorithms have to be really good at distinguishing human faces online from chimpanzees, unlike with elephants or tigers".

Pattern recognition software, such as LemurFace ID, has been used to identify Lemurs with a 97% accuracy and the Zoological Society of London has also worked with Google to develop facial recognition software to track wild elephants.

What do conservationists say?

"Smart camera traps equipped with an AI face-recognition algorithm could be a powerful tool in the hands of researchers and conservation practitioners on the ground in Africa," says Lilian Pintea from the The Jane Goodall Institute, which has contributed to the image database with photos from their Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in the Republic of Congo.

"This kind of tech will help trace these large-scale criminal networks and expedite rescues. At border points, for example, if you had the app on your phone, you could quickly look up the chimp and chart the trafficking routes," says Jenny Desmond, Co-founder of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection.

"Every day I get sent an image of another chimp, posts from China, Easter Europe all over - but there's no way of tracking it effectively until now."

How will the project develop?

Dan Stiles from the PEGAS Project to End Great Ape Slavery comments: "Facebook and Instagram have started closing wildlife trafficker accounts, so it's a game of whack-a-mole to try to prevent online sales." Dan has worked with Alexandra to investigate online ape sales.

An estimated 3,000 great apes, two-thirds of which are chimpanzees, are lost from the wild every year as a result of the illegal trade, according to the UN Environment Programme.

"We want to integrate the tool into other rescue organisations to then scale up and out so we can start to really wrap our heads around these large-scale trade networks," Alexandra says.

The aim is to provide a streamlined platform for authorities from the local police to the Transnational Crime Unit and Interpol.

Alexandra hopes to deploy the tool to track the movement of chimps live online after the current rounds of fundraising.

"We're looking to partner with social media companies who could incorporate ChimpFace into their crime monitoring. Then, we could put a big dent in wildlife trafficking," she says.

"Technology is our enemy in the ways it has made it easier for chimps to be trafficked online but it is also our ally in tackling this crime where it lives," Jenny Desmond observed.

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Wildlife criminals had better watch out! The same software that recognises you in a friend's social media post is being adapted to tackle the illegal trade in chimpanzees. The amber eyes in the image above belong to Manno, who was trafficked from Africa to Syria before being rescued.

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Link

This article is about whales and the unique sounds that they make. Many whales such as the humpback whales and bowhead whales make beautiful singing noises and some have an alphabet of thousands of letters. A humpback whale's song can last 20 to 30 minutes long. Bowhead whales on the other hand, sing a song that is about 45 seconds to 2 minutes long, and then repeat it multiple times.  Humpback whales have a very different way of singing than bowhead whales. For instance, humpback whales sing similar songs for a single season, but bowhead whales sing similar songs only a few hours or a few days before they change them.

My question is does the singing noise that the wales make reflect on how well they are feeling?

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Rather than building up plastic filaments layer by layer, a new approach to 3D printing lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at up to 100 times faster than conventional 3D printing processes

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Rather than building up plastic filaments layer by layer, a new approach to 3D printing lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at up to 100 times faster than conventional 3D printing processes, University of Michigan researchers have shown.

3D printing could change the game for relatively small manufacturing jobs, producing fewer than 10,000 identical items, because it would mean that the objects could be made without the need for a mold costing upwards of $10,000. But the most familiar form of 3D printing, which is sort of like building 3D objects with a series of 1D lines, hasn't been able to fill that gap on typical production timescales of a week or two.

"Using conventional approaches, that's not really attainable unless you have hundreds of machines," said Timothy Scott, U-M associate professor of chemical engineering who co-led the development of the new 3D printing approach with Mark Burns, the T.C. Chang Professor of Engineering at U-M.

Their method solidifies the liquid resin using two lights to control where the resin hardens -- and where it stays fluid. This enables the team to solidify the resin in more sophisticated patterns. They can make a 3D bas-relief in a single shot rather than in a series of 1D lines or 2D cross-sections. Their printing demonstrations include a lattice, a toy boat and a block M.

"It's one of the first true 3D printers ever made," said Burns, professor of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering.

But the true 3D approach is no mere stunt -- it was necessary to overcome the limitations of earlier vat-printing efforts. Namely, the resin tends to solidify on the window that the light shines through, stopping the print job just as it gets started.

By creating a relatively large region where no solidification occurs, thicker resins -- potentially with strengthening powder additives -- can be used to produce more durable objects. The method also bests the structural integrity of filament 3D printing, as those objects have weak points at the interfaces between layers.

"You can get much tougher, much more wear-resistant materials," Scott said.

An earlier solution to the solidification-on-window problem was a window that lets oxygen through. The oxygen penetrates into the resin and halts the solidification near the window, leaving a film of fluid that will allow the newly printed surface to be pulled away.

But because this gap is only about as thick as a piece of transparent tape, the resin must be very runny to flow fast enough into the tiny gap between the newly solidified object and the window as the part is pulled up. This has limited vat printing to small, customized products that will be treated relatively gently, such as dental devices and shoe insoles.

By replacing the oxygen with a second light to halt solidification, the Michigan team can produce a much larger gap between the object and the window -- millimeters thick -- allowing resin to flow in thousands of times faster.

The key to success is the chemistry of the resin. In conventional systems, there is only one reaction. A photoactivator hardens the resin wherever light shines. In the Michigan system, there is also a photoinhibitor, which responds to a different wavelength of light.

Rather than merely controlling solidification in a 2D plane, as current vat-printing techniques do, the Michigan team can pattern the two kinds of light to harden the resin at essentially any 3D place near the illumination window.

U-M has filed three patent applications to protect the multiple inventive aspects of the approach, and Scott is preparing to launch a startup company.

A paper describing this research will be published in Science Advances, titled, "Rapid, continuous additive manufacturing by volumetric polymerization inhibition patterning."

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3-d printing; graphene; optics; chemistry; inorganic chemistry; engineering; nature of water; engineering and construction

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Rather than building up plastic filaments layer by layer, a new approach to 3D printing lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at up to 100 times faster than conventional 3D printing processes, University of Michigan researchers have shown.

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Christmas shoppers could have their faces scanned in central London this week as part of a police trial.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-46584184
Are you safe doing your daily shopping?

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Cern plans even larger hadron collider for physics search

Cern has made ideas for a new and improved successor of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), its given name is the Future Circular Collider (FCC). It will be 4 times longer and 10 times more powerful. FCC is hoped to be looking for new sub-atomic particles by the year of 2050. This important because this accelerator should have the capability to help improve our knowledge of physics and it may help us advance many types of technology that will impact society.

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Cern has published its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider, given the working name of Future Circular Collider (FCC).

The Geneva based particle physics research centre is proposing an accelerator that is almost four times longer and ten times more powerful.

The aim is to have the FCC hunting for new sub-atomic particles by 2050.

Critics say that the money could be better spent on other research areas such as combating climate change.

But Cern's Director-General, Prof Fabiola Gianotti described the proposal as "a remarkable accomplishment".

"It shows the tremendous potential of the FCC to improve our knowledge of fundamental physics and to advance many technologies with a broad impact on society," she said.

Cern's plans have been submitted in a conceptual design report. These will be considered by an international panel of particle physicists, along with other submissions, as they draw up a new European strategy for particle physics for publication in 2020.

Prof John Butterworth of University College, London is among those drawing up the strategy. He told BBC News that, although he was keeping an open mind, he was particularly attracted to Cern's proposal.

It entails gradually building up to a 100km ring that is almost ten times more powerful than the LHC.

"This programme is very ambitious, very exciting and would be my plan A," he said.

The proposal involves digging a new tunnel under Cern and then installing a ring that would initially collide electrons with their positively charged counterparts, positrons.

Stage two would involve installing a larger ring to collide the nuclei of lead atoms (large hadrons) with electrons.

Stages one and two would lay the ground for the final step of colliding large hadrons together nearly ten times harder than they have been by the LHC.

New discoveries

Physicists hope that such collisions at these unprecedented high energies will reveal a new realm of particles that really make the Universe tick, rather than the sub-atomic pretenders we know of, which play only a part in mediating the forces of nature.

The current theory of sub-atomic physics, called the Standard Model, has been one of the great triumphs of the 20th century.

It neatly explains the behaviour of matter and forces through the interaction of a family of 17 particles. The last of these, the Higgs Boson, was discovered by the Large Hadron Collider in 2012.

But observations by astronomers indicated that there was more to the Universe than could be explained by the Standard Model. Galaxies were rotating faster than they should be and the expansion of the Universe is accelerating rather than slowing down. On top of that, the Standard Model cannot explain gravity.

So there must be a deeper process going on, involving yet to be discovered particles. Uncovering them would provide physicists with their much sought after theory of everything, one that would tie together all the forces of nature and unify the twin pillars on which modern physics rests: general relativity and quantum mechanics.

When physicists first proposed the construction of the LHC they knew that if the Standard Model was correct it would be capable of discovering the Higgs.

They had hoped that it might also discover particles beyond the standard model.

So far it has failed to do so.

The difficulty with Cern's proposals for a larger Large Hadron Collider is that no one knows what energies will be needed to crash large hadrons together to discover the enigmatic, super particles that hold the keys to the new realm of particles.

Cern hopes that its step-by-step proposal, first using electron-positron and then electron-large hadron collisions will enable its physicists to look for the ripples created by the super particles and so enable them to determine the energies that will be needed to find the super particles.

Perhaps because of media hype, national governments and taxpayers had expected the LHC to have already found particles beyond the standard model. So a new request for a larger accelerator risks creating the impression that the physics community's desire for ever larger, more expensive accelerators to solve the mysteries of the Universe is potentially as limitless as the Universe itself.

Costs and benefits

The UK's former Chief Scientific Advisor, Prof Sir David King, has advised the UK government and the European Commission on large funding requests.

He told BBC News that he believed that the escalating costs of conducting basic research in particle physics means that it is now time to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, especially when it was unclear whether the £20bn machine would discover any new particles.

"We have to draw a line somewhere otherwise we end up with a collider that is so large that it goes around the equator. And if it doesn't end there perhaps there will be a request for one that goes to the Moon and back."

"There is always going to be more deep physics to be conducted with larger and larger colliders. My question is to what extent will the knowledge that we already have be extended to benefit humanity?"

Prof King believes that governments should consider if the money could be better spent on research into other, more pressing priorities.

"We are rattling towards a high temperature planet in which the current global economy will cease to operate. More than 150 million people will be displaced. So if we had a pot of £20bn and we were discussing what to do with it, we would be faced with people in the medical sciences community coming up to us with ideas to improve human health and wellbeing."

"But I'm going to say a new high priority for human beings is now dealing with climate change."

What is bosonics?

However Cern's director for accelerators and technology, Dr Frédérick Bordry, said that he did not think that £20bn was expensive for a cutting edge project, the cost of which would be spread among several international partners over 20 years.

He added that spending on Cern had led to many technological benefits, such as the World Wide Web and the real benefits were yet to be realised.

"When I am asked about the benefits of the Higgs Boson, I say 'bosonics'. And when they ask me what is bosonics, I say 'I don't know'.

"But if you imagine the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson in 1897, he didn't know what electronics was. But you can't imagine a world now without electronics."

Follow Pallab on Twitter

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Cern plans for even larger hadron collider

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Cern has published its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider, given the working name of Future Circular Collider (FCC). The Geneva based particle physics research centre is proposing an accelerator that is almost four times longer and ten times more powerful.

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Why cold weather doesn't mean climate change is fake. In parts of the US it has been very cold and there has been a storm recently. People who don't believe in global warming have been saying to scientists that global warming's not true and were just given proof to help persuade people.

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A record-breaking cold snap is relentlessly descending on parts of the U.S. this month. It spawned from a split polar vortex that sent cold, Arctic air across the continent.

In a time when climate change is discussed in the context of record highs, droughts, and wildfires, cold weather and blizzards can seem out of place. For those who deny that climate change is happening, it's an opportunity to undermine scientific consensus.

How do you explain a cold winter in a world that scientists say is getting hotter?

First, it's important to understand the difference between climate and weather. Climate is defined as the average weather patterns in a region over a long period of time. It's the difference between Europe's temperate and Mediterranean zones versus the harsh cold conditions of the Arctic tundra. Each of these climate regions experiences day-to-day fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, air pressure, and so on-daily variations known as weather.

How warming can lead to cooling

When the term global warming was popularized a few decades ago, it referred to the phenomenon of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the average temperature of the planet. Though record high temperatures in many places have been one impact of this decades-long shift, scientists now understand that an atmosphere changed by rising levels of gases like carbon and methane leads to more climate changes than just warming.

Scientists believe Earth will experience more extreme, disastrous weather as the effects of climate change play out.

In response to President Trump's January 20 tweet about cold temperatures, Potsdam University physicist Stefan Rahmstorf noted on Twitter that, while North America was experiencing cold Arctic air, the rest of the world was abnormally hot. And, the polar vortex bringing that cold air to the U.S. may actually become increasingly unstable, Rahmstorf noted.

As more Arctic air flows into southern regions, North America can expect to see harsher winters. That was the conclusion of a study published in 2017 in the journal Nature Geoscience. It found a link between warmer Arctic temperatures and colder North American winters. A separate study published in March of last year in the journal Nature Communications found the same link but predicted the northeastern portion of the U.S. would be particularly hard hit.

"Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south. These swings tend to hang around for awhile, so the weather we have in the eastern United States, whether it's cold or warm, tends to stay with us longer," said study author Jennifer Francis in a press release.

A future of extreme weather

Record cold temperatures and blizzards aren't the only extreme weather patterns expected.

High altitude, east-to-west winds known as jet streams rely on the difference between cold Arctic air and warm tropical air to propel them forward. As the air in the Arctic warms, those jet streams slow and prevent normal weather patterns from circulating-floods last longer and droughts become more persistent. One study published in Science Advances last October predicted extreme, deadly weather events could increase by as much as 50 percent by 2100.

But we don't have to wait until 2100 to see how climate change is leading to deadly weather.

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Why cold weather doesn't mean climate change is fake

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A record-breaking cold snap is relentlessly descending on parts of the U.S. this month. It spawned from a split polar vortex that sent cold, Arctic air across the continent. In a time when climate change is discussed in the context of record highs, droughts, and wildfires, cold weather and blizzards can seem out of place.

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Washington state is preparing to legalize being able to compost dead body's. They already have a couple plans for greenhouses to be built that are going to be using dead body's to fertilize the plants. But still some people want to bury their
family in there old yard. Will they really legalize that and what will people think about being able to bury their parents in their own yard?

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This is the vision - in an indoor garden, a honeycomb structure lines the walls, and inside each cell, a human body composts. When it's done, loved ones take home a pot of soil, not an urn of ash.

A person's final resting place could be the foundations of a flowerbed or could feed the roots of a tree.

This is what Washington state is preparing to legalise. If the bill passes, the western state would be the first in the nation to allow human composting as a burial option.

Here's what it means to choose a compost burial - and why a growing group of Americans are eschewing convention for a new way to rest in peace.

Lying in the open, a human body can take months to return to earth, says forensic anthropologist Daniel Wescott.

First, the skin "slips" and blisters. It turns blacks and greys and greens. It bloats.

In drier climes, it can mummify for years; in wetter ones, a face becomes a skull in weeks.

Prof Wescott of Texas State University studies the decomposition of human bodies at the largest forensic research centre in the country.

"As long as you have good bacterial activity, you can decompose in probably a month."

But this is a rarely a body's fate these days.

Most will be cremated, buried in a casket, or sealed in a vault - eating up wood, land, and other resources in the process.

A growing number of voices in the Pacific Northwest are now saying that isn't enough.

"Nature knows how to transform our bodies to soil all on its own," Nina Schoen says.

The 48-year-old Seattle resident is among the groundswell of people seeking greener ways to die.

"What's most important to me is that after I'm gone, my body is able to give back to this earth that has supported me, and through that create new life."

The driving force behind the movement in Washington state is Katrina Spade and her company, Recompose.

It says it can turn you into useable, fertile, soil in 30 days.

"It's just an accelerated process of natural decomposition," says Nora Menkin, executive director of People's Memorial, a non-profit funerary services advocacy group in Seattle, Washington.

The method Recompose offers is based on the ways we already compost livestock - with a few changes from Washington State University soil science researcher Prof Lynne Carpenter-Boggs to make the mixture more socially acceptable.

Based on research from Prof Carpenter-Boggs' team, the final process involves placing the body in a mix of wood chips and similar composting materials, allowing thermophilic - heat-loving - microbes and bacteria to get to work.

Remains are also heated to 131 F (55 C), killing off contagions so the resulting soil is safe to use - a key part of why many supporters prefer this manner of burial.

"We have all this energy and potential that's either burned up or sealed away in burials, when it could be utilised to let life go on," Ms Menkin says.

Energy is a recurring theme for supporters of the alternative burial movement: Most say they began looking into these options because they wanted to round out their lives in a greener way.

"Environmental concerns are very important to me and play an active role in my day to day choices," Ms Schoen says.

"It's a lens that runs through all parts of my life. It only makes sense that how I die is also aligned with how I live."

Recompose touts their process as using "1/8 the energy of cremation", saving an estimated metric ton of CO2 emissions per person over conventional methods.

In Washington state, which has one of the highest rates of cremation in the country, Ms Menkin says it could make a real difference.

"My initial reaction was, well, that's a lot of work for what seems like a natural burial," she says.

Those involve placing a body in a biodegradable casket or just a shroud before burial, allowing the body to return to nature, naturally.

Many places, like the UK, already offer natural burials. But advocates for human composting like Ms Menkin say the practice could increase accessibility to green funerals worldwide.

"If it brings the option to urban dwellers and becomes available worldwide, especially in really urban areas that don't have the option for any kind of natural burial, that could be a real asset to those areas and the planet."

More on alternative funerals

'I will be composted when I die'

Dissolving the dead

The world is running out of burial space

Disposing of any human remains on non-cemetery grounds, unless you are the landowner, is a minor crime. And using public lands requires the approval of government agencies controlling the lands and waters.

Those laws will hold true for recomposed burials too, but when remains are useable soil, even city-dwellers might find spaces to memorialise the departed.

"Natural burial is quite wonderful, but as the population increases, there is less available land, and that's to me why having an option like recomposition is so essential," Ms Schoen echoes.

Recompose founder Katrina Spade told Pacific Standard magazine she hopes the company will one day transform city warehouses into indoor gardens where people can lay their loved ones to rest and see the body's "journey of transformation from human to soil".

Cremation was once heralded as the environmental answer to death; burning bodies meant no caskets, no toxic embalming chemicals, no plots of land rendered unusable.

Most of the world already prefers cremation burials, particularly in urban centres faced with ever-decreasing space. The US is catching up.

In 2018, just over half of America's 2.8 million dead were laid to rest via a crematorium, according to data from the US census and National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).

Cremation's lower cost accounts for much of its popularity boost, the report says, but environmental concerns, fewer religious prohibitions, a newly transient population, and a cultural desire for less ritualistic practices have also changed America's relationship with death.

Washington in particular has an unchurched, environmentally-conscious population, making it a natural leader of these changes.

By 2035, the NFDA predicts only 15% nationwide will opt for traditional burials.

University of Southern California public policy Prof David Sloane, whose family tree features a line of cemetery superintendents, says the country is in a "moment of cultural hybridity".

"Conventions around death, dying, memorials and mournings are all being challenged," he says.

Those challenges come from all manner of changes, he thinks. Like people choosing to die at home rather than in hospital; people mourning on social media rather than in church.

"Human composting is just one more example of how people are experimenting.

"It in some sense flies in the face of longstanding conventions and at the same time responds to new concerns about environmental issues. And so I think those two things make it very novel."

Ms Schoen also tells me most people are shocked to hear how environmentally unfriendly current practices are.

"One of the most common reactions people have when hearing [about recomposition] for the first time is surprise when learning about the negative environmental impacts of burial, cremation, and embalming."

But experimenting can be costly.

"An issue that a lot of people have is the expense of it all," says Ms Menkin of People's Memorial. "Right now it's projected to cost about $5,500 (£4,200). To be in an urban centre you need real estate, design - it's not a cheap project to take on."

The median cost of a burial and viewing ceremony in the US is over $7,000. For a vault, you can add another thousand.

Cremations fall closer to $1,100.

The push for compost burials is still small and grassroots. It's certainly not an option that would appeal to everyone.

Prof Sloane adds that as culture changes, there will always be ethical and societal questions raised by the composting of bodies.

"Will people's bodies be cared for honourably? And will we continue to be able to remember them as parts of our communities?"

Like the cremationists of the late 19th Century, Prof Sloane says there's a chance the movement will see pushback from religious institutions and the existing funeral industry.

But for now, Recompose and advocates for compost burials are just focused on making it a legal option, Ms Menkin says.

"What's really surprising is we were ready to convince people and let them know just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad."

But they are overwhelmingly getting support, Ms Menkin says, "with a few people who just don't want to think about it".

Ms Schoen, who hopes her family can use her remains to create life in whatever way is meaningful for them, says Americans "just don't talk about death enough".

"It's separate, it's somewhere else with someone else, until it's not."

"And while it's a topic that many people don't like to talk a lot about, it's pretty incredible when you sit back and think about it."

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How do you compost a human body - and why?

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This is the vision - in an indoor garden, a honeycomb structure lines the walls, and inside each cell, a human body composts. When it's done, loved ones take home a pot of soil, not an urn of ash. A person's final resting place could be the foundations of a flowerbed or could feed the roots of a tree.

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A new 3-D printed ‘sponge’ sops up excess chemo drugs
Advancements in the fuel cell industry may be leading towards new technology in health science.
A tiny circular 'sponge' created by 3D printing is wedged inside a vein near a tumor that is being treated with chemotherapy. The 'sponge' could absorb excess drugs before they spread to  the rest of the body & possibly therefore lessen harmful side effects such as vomiting, immune suppression & heart failure. This has been tested on a pig & the 'sponge' captured 2/3 of a common chemotherapy drug that was injected into a nearby vein, the pig was not obviously  harmed in any way.
I think this is important because chemotherapy can have many side effects, some of which can last for a long time or even your whole life. This 'sponge' could capture the excess drugs that otherwise could escape & create problems elsewhere reducing risk of chemotherapy side effects.

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Bringing the filtering abilities of a fuel cell into the blood vessels of living organisms, a new device could cut down on toxic effects of cancer treatment.

At the heart of this approach - recently tested in pigs - is a tiny, cylindrical "sponge" created by 3-D printing. Wedged inside a vein near a tumor being treated with chemotherapy, the sponge could absorb excess drug before it spreads through the body - thus lessening chemotherapy's harmful side effects, including vomiting, immune suppression or even heart failure.

A human study could launch "in a couple of years, if all the stars are aligned," says Steve Hetts, a neuroradiologist at the University of California, San Francisco who came up with the drug-capture concept. He worked with engineers at UC Berkeley and elsewhere to create and test prototypes.

A test of the most recent prototype showed that the absorber captured nearly two-thirds of a common chemotherapy drug infused into a nearby vein, without triggering blood clots or other obvious problems in the pig, Hetts and his colleagues report January 9 in ACS Central Science.

The study addresses a major need, says Eleni Liapi, a radiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine not involved with the new work. Existing methods for controlling chemotherapy delivery do not fully block drug escape, she notes. "A technological advancement to reduce unwanted circulating drug is always welcome."

Tiny 'sponge'

Chemo is often delivered intravenously in the hope that some treatment reaches the cancer site. In a more localized form of chemotherapy used to treat hard-to-remove tumors, the drug travels through catheter wires snaked into arteries going straight to the tumor. Although this technique, known as transarterial chemo embolization, or TACE, is given to tens of thousands of people each year, typically some of the injected drug bypasses the tumor site and slips into general circulation where it can wreak havoc elsewhere.

Hetts uses the transarterial method to treat babies with a rare eye tumor called retinoblastoma - and it was those experiences that birthed the "sponge" idea in the first place. After the chemotherapy ran its course through transarterial catheters, the infants' eye tumors shrank. However, several weeks later, their blood cell counts tanked, suggesting to Hetts that some of the chemo drugs were escaping the eye and affecting other cells. Those observations eight years ago led Hetts to think that "if only I had a device I could put into the vein to bind up the excess drug, then maybe these little babies wouldn't get the side effect" of immune suppression.

Heart surgeons use a similar "filter" to remove bits of cholesterol plaque from arteries of people with atherosclerosis, a disease characterized by the clogging and hardening of arteries. Hetts envisioned a similar device for chemotherapy treatment - "but not just a dumb, inert membrane to capture debris," he says. "I wanted a 'smart' membrane that chemically binds to a drug."

Instead of trying to develop a drug-trap device for a super rare tumor - retinoblastoma has just 300 new cases per year in the United States - Hetts' team focused on a chemo drug for liver cancer, which is estimated to strike more than 40,000 Americans this year and kill three-quarters of them.

Anand Patel, a trainee in the Hetts' lab with a bioengineering background, tested a batch of resins and found several that could bind to this drug, known as doxorubicin. To optimize the resins and get them onto the tips of guide wires, Patel sought help with "cold call" e-mails to local professors. Nitash Balsara - a UC Berkeley chemical engineer with expertise in polymer chemistry and membranes - "was actually crazy enough to return my e-mail with interest," says Patel, who now works as an interventional radiologist in the Los Angeles area.

Balsara's lab develops materials to regulate ion flow in batteries and fuel cells. As it turns out, these filtration processes are "very similar to those that we needed to capture excess chemotherapy drugs from the blood," Patel says. The team worked with Carbon, Inc., a 3-D printing company in the San Francisco Bay area, to get the drug-binding material onto a 30-millimeter-long, cylinder-shaped "sponge" about as wide as a drinking straw. Hee Jeung Oh of UC Berkeley spent more than a year working out how to attach the drug-binding material to the 3-D printed cylinder with crisscrossing struts.

In experiments, the team injected the liver cancer drug through the pigs' leg and pelvic veins - which are similar in width to human liver veins, Hetts says. Before infusing the chemotherapy drug, the researchers inserted the 3-D printed sponge a few centimeters from the infusion site - as well as catheters above and below the sponge for collecting blood samples to measure drug absorption over time. Within a half hour, the device absorbed, on average, 64 percent of the liver cancer drug.

The next round of studies will monitor the capture of doxorubicin by drug sponges inserted directly into the pigs' liver veins.

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A new 3-D printed 'sponge' sops up excess chemo drugs

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Bringing the filtering abilities of a fuel cell into the blood vessels of living organisms, a new device could cut down on toxic effects of cancer treatment. At the heart of this approach - recently tested in pigs - is a tiny, cylindrical "sponge" created by 3-D printing.

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A Nobel prize in chemistry was shared between three people. They had come up with a way to create detailed images of molecules. They used this kind ability to fight the Zika virus for children.  One person, Dubochet would freeze the water so it can be in a glass form.  The other one,  Frank would sharpen the photo of the molecules to see much better.

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Three researchers based in the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way to create detailed images of the molecules that drive life - a technology that the Nobel committee said allowed scientists to visualize molecular processes they had never previously seen.

The 9-million kronor ($1.3-million Cdn) prize is shared by:

Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne.

Joachim Frank at New York's Columbia University.

Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their method, called cryo-electron microscopy, allows researchers to "freeze biomolecules" mid-movement.

The technology "is decisive for both the basic understanding of life's chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals," it said. "This method has moved biochemistry into a new era."

For instance, the academy said the technique was used when scientists began suspecting the Zika virus was causing the epidemic of brain-damaged children in Brazil. Images of the virus allowed researchers to "start searching for potential targets" for Zika drugs.

Speaking by phone, Frank told a news conference after the Nobel announcement Wednesday that cryo-electron microscopy means medicine no longer focuses on organs, but "looks at the processes in the cell."

He said the potential use of the method is "immense."

Cryo-EM makes it possible to portray biomolecules after freezing them very fast (vitrification method) so its natural shape is preserved. <a href="https://t.co/SXgeAVUk24">pic.twitter.com/SXgeAVUk24</a>
&mdash; @NobelPrize

American Chemical Society president Allison Campbell congratulated the winners Wednesday.

"This discovery is like the Google Earth for molecules in that it takes us down to the fine detail of atoms within proteins," Campbell said in a news release. "A picture truly is worth a thousand words, and the laureates' discoveries are invaluable to our understanding of life and the development of new therapeutics to improve people's lives and the health of our planet."

Nobel chemistry committee member Heiner Linke added: "It's the first time that we can see biological molecules in their natural environment and how they actually work together down to the individual atoms."

Electron microscopes once were thought to be useful only for examining nonliving material because the electron beam destroys biological material. But cryo-technology - freezing material at extremely low temperatures - protected the examined material from damage.

Dubochet's contribution was to freeze the water in the sample being examined so quickly that it vitrified, forming a kind of glass rather than ice, whose crystalline structure diffracted the electron beam.

Frank developed mathematical models to sharpen fuzzy electron microscope images, and Henderson, in 1990, was able to generate a 3D image of a protein at atom-level resolution.

The annual prize rewards researchers for major advances in studying the infinitesimal bits of material that are the building blocks of life.

Recent prizes have been given to scientists who developed molecular "machines" - molecules with controllable motions - and who mapped how cells repair damaged DNA, leading to improved cancer treatments.

It's the third Nobel announced this week.

The medicine prize went to three Americans studying circadian rhythms: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young.

The physics prize went to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for detecting gravitational waves.

The literature winner will be named Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday.

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared by 3 for cryo-electron microscopy | CBC News

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Three researchers based in the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way to create detailed images of the molecules that drive life - a technology that the Nobel committee said allowed scientists to visualize molecular processes they had never previously seen.

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China has become the first country to successfully land a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon. In the next decades it plans not only to build a new space station, but also a base on the Moon and conduct missions to Mars. With no air on the Moon, solar panels would operate far more efficiently, he believes, and a "belt" of them could "support the whole world".

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China is a relative late-bloomer when it comes to the world of space exploration.

But just 15 years after it first sent an astronaut into orbit, China has become the first country to successfully land a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.

And in the next decades it plans not only to build a new space station, but also a base on the Moon and conduct missions to Mars.

Importantly, Xi Jinping, the country's most powerful leader since Chairman Mao, has thrown his support behind the "space dream" - and with it billions in investment. Chinese state media, meanwhile, have cast the "space dream" as one step in the path to "national rejuvenation".

So why are President Xi and China so keen to make their mark in space - and what does it mean for the rest of the world?

Sending a message

According to Prof Keith Hayward, a fellow of the UK's Royal Aeronautical Society, China is being driven by the same motivations as the US, Russia and others.

First, demand from the military, without which "you would not have had half the money going in".

China mission lands on Moon's far side

Second, as "a good way to show off". "You could say that this is the space Silk Road - it demonstrates China is a force to be reckoned with," Prof Hayward notes.

Third, hitherto untapped resources which have the potential to make whoever finds them wealthy.

"It is the classic triad that has driven investment in space for the better part of 50 odd years," he told the BBC.

The landing of Chang'e-4 in January 2019 appears to sit comfortably within the second category - helping distinguish China as a force to be reckoned with, both globally and locally.

"It is something that is very, very good to have done," says Prof Hayward. "It says, 'we may not have put a man on the moon but we are pretty damn close to it'.

"It also sends signals out to their neighbours - it is a good way of showing soft power, with a little bit of hard."

Why China is fixated on the Moon

China's scientific revolution

China itself has been open about the value of space exploration in terms of increasing its standing on the world stage.

"Lunar exploration is a reflection of a country's comprehensive national power," Prof Ouyang Ziyuan - one of the country's top scientists - told China's official newspaper People's Daily back in 2006.

"It is significant for raising our international prestige and increasing our people's cohesion."

A new space race?

But it is not the prestige which is likely to be of concern to countries like the US.

Vice-President Mike Pence unveiled plans for a "US Space Force" in August 2018, saying it was needed because "our adversaries have transformed space into a war-fighting domain already". At the time, it was interpreted as a swipe at both Russia and China.

However, despite China's latest success and future plans, Prof Hayward doesn't seem to think the US needs to be worried.

"The US is still a big, big spender - not necessarily through Nasa [the US space agency], but through the Pentagon," he said. "I cannot see China being able to match that level of spending."

But is this a new space race? After all, the landing came just days after Nasa's New Horizons probe successfully carried out a flyby of an icy world some 6.5bn km (4bn miles) away. India, meanwhile, has announced it will send a three-member team into space for the first time in 2022. It seems like everyone is keen to make their mark.

So will China's advance worry other countries enough to cause them to adjust their future plans?

Unlikely, says Prof Hayward. "It is difficult to respond quickly - you are dealing here with some very long term plans."

Voyager 2 probe 'leaves Solar System'

Tributes paid to 'Mother of the Hubble'

How Chinese media reported the landing

What's more, Bernard Foing, executive director of the European Space Agency's International Lunar Exploration Working Group, noted that any advance was good for the wider world.

"China has shown a great advance and a will to collaborate with international partners," he said.

There is one country it cannot collaborate with, however: US counter-espionage legislation restricts Nasa from working bilaterally with Chinese nationals without express permission from Congress.

It has also been suggested that, despite appearing to aim to play catch-up with the US and Russia, China potentially doesn't view itself as being in a race with anyone.

"China is following its own motivations and interests rather than pacing its programme in competition with anybody else," John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told Wired magazine last year. "In my view, China is determining for itself what it wants to do, not in any formal competition with the quite uncertain plans of anybody else."

But, of course, space exploration is not just about political game playing.

There are also "genuine scientific objectives" to the Chang'e-4 mission, Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society pointed out.

Prof Ouyang also spoke of the country's scientific and technological goals in an interview with the BBC back in 2013.

"In terms of the science, besides Earth we also need to know our brothers and sisters like the Moon, its origin and evolution and then from that we can know about our Earth," he said.

And then there was the vast potential for resources, some of which could "solve human beings' energy demand for around 10,000 years at least".

Bringing them back, however, remains a challenge - but one which China will seek to solve: Chang'e-5 and 6 are sample return missions, delivering lunar rock and soil to laboratories on Earth.

Magpies and the Moon goddess

There are many elements of Chinese mythology present in China's space exploration program. to the Magpie bridge, China's relay satellite. Here's some background behind the names:

Chang'e (pronounced Chang-er): China's lunar probe is named after the Moon goddess and one of the most popular figures in Chinese mythology. She was a beautiful young woman married to a famous archer, Hou-yi, who managed to win an immortality potion. He decided not to take it as it was only enough for one, giving it to Chang'e for safekeeping. But one day a student of Hou-yi tried to steal the potion. Unable to defeat him, Chang'e drank the potion and floated to the Moon, where she still lives. Hou-yi was heartbroken and every year when the Moon was at its fullest, he would lay out her favourite food in tribute to her - an annual tradition across China ever since.

Jade rabbit: China's Moon rover is named after Chang'e's only companion on the Moon

Magpie bridge: China's relay satellite takes its name from the story of a goddess's daughter who falls in love with a poor farm hand. They get married and eventually have children. But when the goddess finds out, she's furious - and banishes them to different sides of the Milky Way. Feeling sorry for the grieving couple, magpies decide that once a year, they would form a bridge to connect the two lovers. This day is celebrated every year in China, their own version of Valentine's Day.

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China is a relative late-bloomer when it comes to the world of space exploration. But just 15 years after it first sent an astronaut into orbit, China has become the first country to successfully land a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.

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The Japanese Space Agency that has gone to land on an asteroid, collect samples and return back to Earth has started. It is hoped that samples from  the asteroid Ryugu will give them information about the formation of the early Solar System and whether asteroids brought water to Earth.

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BBC World Service - Science in Action, Japanese Space Mission Hayabusa 2 Reaches Asteroid

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Japanese space mission Hayabusa 2 successfully reaches boulder strewn asteroid - Ryugu

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https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2010/12/101209-green-cement-energy-greenhouse-gas/

This article is about turning cement greener. Cement is contributing to 5% of our carbon emissions. Heating up .They are lowering the amount of calcium and heat which will slash the amount of CO2 going into the air.

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This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

Cement is so common it's nearly invisible. But the material that's used to construct everything from bridges and office buildings to pools, sidewalks, and skate parks is one of the world's largest contributors to greenhouse gas pollution.

About 5 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions rise from the cement kilns that make the key ingredient of civilization's hard surface areas. That's roughly double the amount from the jet fuel burned in all global air travel.

Technically known as "Portland cement," named after the craggy peninsula ( map) where building stone was originally quarried in industrial-age England, cement is the binding agent, or glue, that makes concrete stick together and fastens one brick to another. The world's construction industry would literally fall apart without cement.

Because it's so ubiquitous, cement has become a focus for a handful of companies hoping to find ways to reduce or reverse its role as a climate change villain.

The problem lies in cement's chemistry, which is a sort of double-whammy of CO2 production. To turn Portland cement's key ingredient, calcium carbonate-found in limestone or chalk-into a finished product called alite, the minerals must be broken down in kilns heated to more than 2,550ºF (1,400ºC). The heating process uses tremendous amounts of energy, which is typically generated using coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

Then, the ensuing chemical process releases a second wallop of CO2 as a byproduct of turning calcium carbonate into calcium oxide. In total, producing a ton of cement releases 1,700 pounds (770 kilograms) of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Given the sheer volume produced-about 3 billion tons per year-it adds up to a staggering greenhouse gas problem. Almost all of the world's fine, gray cement powder is mixed with sand, aggregates, and water to make concrete, which is second only to water as the most consumed substance on earth, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Three tons of concrete are used annually for each person on earth, and the amount is growing.

Some firms, like California-based Calera and UK-based Novacem, say they've come up with ways to produce cement that actually traps CO2, resulting in a negative CO2 balance. But critics have been skeptical of these carbon-capture claims, which haven't yet been convincingly demonstrated, says Carnegie Institution for Science climate scientist Ken Caldeira.

Cement producers have been able to chip away at energy use over the years by using more efficient equipment and operations. But a process that could dramatically reduce the amount of energy it takes to produce cement or the amount of CO2 cement puts out could be a breakthrough in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology ( map), chemist Peter Stemmermann says his lab has an approach that will do both.

Called Celitement, it's a sort of an imitation cement that is heated to about 570ºF (300ºC) a fifth of the temperature needed by regular cement-a huge energy savings. By starting with a mixture lower in calcium and using different kinds of silicon components than ordinary cement, and by adding water earlier in the process, among other things, Stemmermann's ersatz cement alters the chemical reaction and slashes the amount of CO2 unleashed.

The finished product can be used in standard-issue construction machinery. "You just have to mill it a little bit, and it reacts like ordinary cement," Stemmermann says. "Everybody wants a cement that can be used with regular machines."
Overcoming the Cost Barrier
Carnegie scientist Caldeira says Celitement's more conservative claims are a refreshing change. "They seem to have attacked this on both scores-less calcium oxide and less heat," he says. "If they can do it and do it affordably, more power to them."

Stemmermann says affordability is, indeed, Celitement's biggest challenge. "We need less energy, but to start with, we will be more expensive," he says. "If you just compete with ordinary Portland cement, you have to be cheaper-and that's just not possible."

For now, Stemmermann and his partners are pushing Celitement, which seems to be more resistant to corrosion than ordinary cement, as a solution to specific needs. One application, he says, might be wastewater treatment plants, where harsh chemicals are used in concrete-lined lagoons full of waste. The chemicals eat away at the cement in normal concrete, meaning it has to be replaced often; Stemmermann thinks Celitement would last longer, saving money in the long run even if it cost more to start with. "If you come up with a cement which is more durable, nobody has a problem to pay more," he says. "We need to have some additional value."

So far, Celitement has been produced on a very small scale in Stemmermann's Karlsruhe lab, a few pounds at a time. But investors are impressed enough to fund a small pilot plant scheduled to open in 2011, and the German cement company Schwenk is working with the researchers to open a plant that can churn out 66,000 tons of Celitement a year by 2014. If the method takes off, it could make a significant dent in the construction industry's contribution to greenhouse gases.

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New Chemistry, Less Energy Could Yield Greener Cement

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This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge . Cement is so common it's nearly invisible. But the material that's used to construct everything from bridges and office buildings to pools, sidewalks, and skate parks is one of the world's largest contributors to greenhouse gas pollution.

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How do ski jumper fall from so high and don't brake a limb?  Consider dropping from the height of a mid-sized building onto hard, packed snow. What would happen to your legs? When skiers are doing the big jumps if you look at the landing ramp it is on a angle that when they come down it is going the same way the at gravity wants them to go in. So if some one was to just land on a flat piece of snow form that high if you survive you will have many broken bones, but if you land on a slope then you will probable not brake bone.

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How Do Ski Jumpers Fall Huge Distances Without Breaking Their Legs?

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Consider dropping from the height of a mid-sized building onto hard, packed snow. What would happen to your legs? Even if you survived, the bones in your legs probably wouldn't. So why doesn't that happen to ski jumpers or, even more astonishingly, freestyle skiers during the "aerials" event?

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Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats

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Eu-Rway  4000 Year-Old Termite Mound found the size of Britain in Brazil

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Eu-Rway  4000 Year-Old Termite Mound found the size of Britain in Brazil

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A giant termite mound has been found in Brazil. This giant termite mound is the size of Britain and can (even) been seen from Google Maps. I think that this article is true because this topic has been mentioned on many different websites. I tried to find this on Google Maps but couldn't find it. This may help us build more space-efficient cities.

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Researchers have discovered a gigantic complex of 200 million termite mounds in northeastern (CNN) - Brazil, which may be up to 4,000 years old and covers an area about the size of Great Britain.

Although visible on Google Earth, the conical mounds, some of which rise up to 10 feet high, are largely hidden from view at ground level in semiarid, thorny-scrub forests, according to research published this month in Current Biology.

"These mounds were formed by a single termite species that excavated a massive network of tunnels to allow them to access dead leaves to eat safely and directly from the forest floor," researcher and entomologist Stephen Martin of the UK's University of Salford said in a statement.

"The amount of soil excavated is ... equivalent to 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza, and represents one of the biggest structures built by a single insect species."

The mounds, more of which are still being built, came to scientists' attention when some of the lands were cleared for pasture in recent decades.

Soil samples collected from the centers of 11 mounds and dated indicated that the mounds were created 690 to 3,820 years ago. That makes them about as old as the world's oldest known termite mounds in Africa, according to a statement posted online by Cell Press.

The mounds are not nests but rather the result of the insects' slow and steady excavation of a network of interconnected underground tunnels, which resulted in waste building up in cones on the surface.

The vast tunnel network apparently allows safe access to a sporadic food supply, similar to naked mole-rats, which also live in arid regions and construct very extensive burrow networks to obtain food, the researchers said.

"It's incredible that, in this day and age, you can find an 'unknown' biological wonder of this sheer size and age still existing, with the occupants still present," Martin said.

The researchers said there are still many unanswered questions about the termite colonies, including the exact physical structure of the nests. No queen chamber for the species has ever been found.

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ancient termite megapolis as large as britain found in brazil - cnn

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Ancient termite megapolis as large as Britain found in Brazil

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Researchers have discovered a gigantic complex of 200 million termite mounds in northeastern (CNN) - Brazil, which may be up to 4,000 years old and covers an area about the size of Great Britain.

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Many countries that have legalized cannabis is now looking towards infusing drinks with the plant. There is a beer company that has introduced a cannabis infused beer with no alcohol or carbs. Coca-Cola is also keeping an eye on infusing their drinks with CBD, which is one  of the main ingredient of marijuana, for a wellness drink for the world. You can infuse juice, coffee, kombucha, beer, and many other drinks with either CBD, (cannabidiol) THC,(tetrahydrocannabinol) or both.
To me, this cause does not really have an affect on me since I am not allowed to use marijuana. But however, to the people who do use it, I think it would be a good idea because I know that marijuana has medical values, and that would mean you could get a health benefit from no carb beer mixed with something that is known to heal.

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In the wake of Canada's (soon to be) marijuana legalization, there's a lot of buzz floating around about cannabis-infused beverages.

Beer giants like Constellation Brands, Molson Coors and Heineken are dipping their toes in cannabis products and signing deals with Canadian marijuana producers.

READ MORE: Coca-Cola reportedly in talks with Aurora Cannabis to make infused drinks

Even the soft drink companies are eyeing the green; on Monday Coca-Cola said it was watching the growth of non-psychoactive CBD (one of the main ingredients in weed) as an ingredient in "wellness beverages."

But what exactly are cannabis-infused drinks and why are they growing in popularity?

Who are the players?

There's already cannabis drinks on the U.S. market where marijuana is legal (nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized the leaf for recreational use).

Heineken-owed Lagunitas recently released an IPA-inspired beer that is made out of hops and cannabis, called Hi-Fi Hops. The company said the beverage is alcohol-free and does not contain any carbs or calories.

Oregon's Coalition Brewing also released a CBD-infused beer called Two Flowers IPA.
WATCH: Could pot legalization in Canada drive down the price of beer?
And here in Canada, the cannabis beverage industry is starting to brew.

In August, Molson Coors announced it was partnering with Quebec-based pot producer, HEXO Corp., and making a non-alcoholic weed beverage for the Canadian market.

READ MORE: Molson enters into joint venture to develop cannabis infused beverages

Constellation Brands, which makes beers like Corona and Negro Modelo, along with whiskies, tequilas and vodkas has invested $4 billion in Ontario pot producer Canopy Growth.

And then there's Coca-Cola. On Monday, BNN Bloomberg reported the company was in talks with B.C.- marijuana producer, Aurora Cannabis to make CBD-infused wellness drinks.

"Along with many others in the beverage industry, we are closely watching the growth of non-psychoactive CBD as an ingredient in functional wellness beverages around the world," Coca-Cola said in a statement.

Aurora Cannabis said it has not signed a deal with respect to any partnership with a drink company. But the company did acknowledge that it had been in conversation with several beverage makers over the last few months.
WATCH: Tour of Aurora's Montreal cannabis production site
What's in cannabis drinks?

Drinks can be infused with cannabidiol (CBD), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or both.

CBD is one of the hundreds of compounds found in marijuana plants and contains less than 0.1 per cent THC, the primary ingredient that gets you high.

Terry Lake, the vice-president of corporate responsibility for HEXO Corp., said because cannabis is the active ingredient, the company's drinks will not have alcohol.

"It could be a dealcoholized beer that is infused with ingredients of cannabis. And it could be made up of many chemicals like THC, which gets you high, and CBD which does not get you high and will work more for anti-inflammatory and mood modulation qualities," he said.
WATCH: Parents hoping to turn to CBD to save their daughter's life.
What will it taste like?

The taste of the cannabis drinks will depend on the flavour you buy, Lake said.

READ MORE: Cooking with cannabis? Pot-based pop-up dinner has Vancouver buzzing

"It could be a beer taste in a dealcoholized beer. It could be a fruit flavour, a coffee drink or even kombucha," he said.

"We see in the United States, for instance, you've got drinks like Happy Apple in Washington State that is an apple-flavoured cannabis-infused drink, which tastes like fresh apples in a bottle."

When will it be on sale?

Even though marijuana will be legal on Oct. 17, edibles and drinkables will need to be regulated and consumers shouldn't expect to see anything on shelves until 2019.

READ MORE: Marijuana edibles won't be sold until July 2019

The federal government said regulating edibles is a "complex undertaking" as there are potential unique health risks and harms that need to be understood before it becomes legal.

According to the government, the sale of cannabis edibles would be authorized no later than Oct. 17, 2019.

"So next summer hopefully we can see these products on the shelves," Lake said, adding that he hopes to get his company's cannabis drinks ready for sale next summer.

Where can you buy cannabis drinks?

If you want to pick up a six-pack of cannabis-infused beer, the liquor store may not be the place to do it.

Lake said it's likely that Health Canada will sell weed drinks in regulated stores that sell cannabis (depending on what province you live in,, this could be a government-run entity or private store).

READ MORE: How to buy weed in Canada when it's legalized

Why are companies interested in cannabis drinks?

As legal weed becomes more widespread, it is expected that more beverage companies will get into the business of marijuana.

"Many beverage companies see the opportunity of cannabis, which could compete with or replace the alcohol business," Marc Lustig, CEO of CannaRoyalty said.

He said many of these companies are seeing their sales either plateau or decline due to changing consumer behaviour. So extending their product and brand in the cannabis industry is a great way to boost sales.
WATCH: Canopy inks deal with alcoholic beverage company
Will Canadians drink up the hype?

According to a 2017 Health Canada survey, only three per cent of cannabis users said they consume pot in a liquid form.

However, both Lustig and Lake believe Canadians are ready for the new product and this number will only soar come legalization.

"It's going to be a great market for this," Lake said. "If you go down to the U.S., in states like California and Washington, you can find these drinks already, they're very popular. And we now can do this on a national scale and that's why other companies are thinking about this."
WATCH: What's spurring the surge of marijuana stocks

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Drinking weed: Here's everything to know about cannabis-infused drinks

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In the wake of Canada's (soon to be) marijuana legalization, there's a lot of buzz floating around about cannabis-infused beverages. Beer giants like Constellation Brands, Molson Coors and Heineken are dipping their toes in cannabis products and signing deals with Canadian marijuana producers.

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Henry Ultracold simulators of super-dense stars

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Henry Ultracold simulators of super-dense stars

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190103142241.htm
Scientists at the rice university have created the world's first laser-cooled neutral plasma, completing a 20 year quest that sets the stage for simulators that recreate exotic states of matter found inside Jupiter and white dwarf stars. Killian (one of the scientists) said people are just at the beginning of exploring the implications of strong coupling in ultracold plasmas. For example, it changes the way that heat and ions diffuse through the plasma. People can study those processes now. He hopes this will improve our models of exotic, strongly coupled astrophysical plasmas, but he is sure people will also make discoveries that we haven't dreamed of yet.  I think this could be really useful to find out what the inside of  of Jupiter and white dwarf stars are like.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tw_JVz_IEc With the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-Cas9) scientists now have to potential to accurately edit genes and DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid). This means that if used properly, we could fix genetic diseases and replace them with healthy pieces of DNA. This also means that we could potentially control what we look like (eg. eye colour, skin colour, etc.) and even create "suerhumans"! As scientists race to discover the powers of this new technology, the potential is limitless. I think that this is very important because this technology could be life changing for many people.

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Scientists have received 13 radio bursts from deep space. They think that it could be a star or a plant interacting with a blackhole, but it also could also mean that a alien planet is calling for help. Except they don't know for sure.

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Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space-including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.

Fast radio bursts, as they are known to scientists, are among the universe's most bizarre phenomena. Each burst lasts just thousandths of a second, and they all appear to be coming from far outside our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Since these bursts were discovered in 2007, their cause has remained a puzzle. Based on estimations of the known range of their frequencies and an understanding of activity in the universe, scientists expect that nearly a thousand of them happen every day. But to date, only a handful have been found.

Now, a team using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, has announced the additional 13 new detections, including an especially rare repeating burst. Until now, only one other repeating fast radio burst was known to exist.

"The repeater," as it being called, and its 12 counterparts came from a region of space some 1.5 billion light-years away, the team reports today in the journal Nature. All 13 new bursts have the lowest radio frequency yet detected, but they were also brighter than previously seen fast radio bursts, leading the team to think the low frequency has something to do with the sources' environment.

"It doesn't mean that they're traveling from further away," says study author Shriharsh Tendulkar, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of physics at McGill University. "As light propagates through the hot gas and plasma in the intergalactic medium and the interstellar medium, it has a bunch of different effects on the signal."

For instance, the radio waves get twisted as they travel through space and can scatter or be absorbed by gas and plasma. The team therefore thinks that all 13 bursts likely originated from dense, turbulent regions inside of their host galaxies, particularly areas with a lot of violent activity, such as near dense supernova remnants or close to black holes.

Deepening mystery

Tendulkar and the team also noticed that the structure of the new repeating burst is strikingly similar to the only other repeater ever found.

"The fact that we see these multiple structures in the burst was very similar to the first repeating fast radio burst. This is very uncommon," he says. "Now there is this tantalizing evidence that these bursts' structures are seen only in repeaters." That suggests that if more fast radio bursts are found with that structure, they may be prime candidates for also being repeaters.

The new repeating burst is brighter than the previous detection, which might be due to the fact that it is 1.5 billion light-years closer, but the team can't know that for sure. To draw more comparisons, they'll have to search the skies for the new burst's host galaxy, which is not a guaranteed find. In the meantime, the team is continuing to use CHIME to observe the region of the sky where these bursts came from, as well as using other radio telescopes to follow up on the finds.

"We are trying to build up clues and trying to understand whether the repeating fast radio bursts and single fast radio bursts are different populations," Tendulkar says. "Do they come from different objects? Or are they related in some way to each other? We are trying to figure these things out, so that's really exciting."

What's more, when CHIME detected these new bursts, it was only running at a fraction of its capacity, and the team is excited to see how many more will appear in their data now that the instrument is fully up and running.

"The CHIME discovery points to a huge potential," says Shami Chatterjee, a senior researcher at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science who was not involved in the latest discoveries. "I'm intensely curious how many [fast radio bursts] they are sitting on now. They must have dozens or hundreds."

Finding yet more bursts means that the odd occurrences could be effective tools for understanding the traces of gas, dust, and plasma that exist in the seemingly empty space between galaxies, called the intergalactic medium, Chatterjee adds.

"Everyone agrees that in the intergalactic medium, it's very hard to have a probe that can tell you about its makeup," Chatterjee says. "It is orders of magnitude emptier than our own interstellar medium, but because of the [fast radio bursts] that we are now finding, it is going to be one of the few ways that we can probe this medium and understand those environments."

And for now, Tendulkar notes that the mystery surrounding fast radio bursts remains part of their appeal.

"There is a lot of fun in the not knowing," he says. "You keep adding more information, but as in all sciences, whenever you solve one mystery, it always opens up three more."

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Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space

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Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space-including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.

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Alan Shepherd discovered a rock on the moon when traveling on the Apollo 14 mission and brought it back to earth. But this rock isn’t just some rock. This rock was catapulted to the moon after an asteroid struck the earth. Scientists are saying that the rock is a part of the earth because a mineral that was found in the rock that helps find out what time the asteroid would have struck. The rock also has the exact same mineral as ancient rocks found on earth. When the asteroid struck pieces of earth were flung up so high that some of them landed on the moon. The moon was 3 times closer when the asteroid struck so the rock would’ve only needed to travel 128 133.333 kilometers. Scientist thinks that there are lots and lots more of the exact same rocks on the moon. The reason that it took so long to find out that the rock came from earth is that scientist only got the technology to find out such things a few years ago. Scientists believe that most of the rocks on the moon are part of the earth since the impact was huge.  Scientist also believe that half of the rocks on the moon are from earth or different planets.

I find it very fascinating that half of the rocks on the moon are from different planets or the moon. I also find it fascinating that with the technology we have now a days we can find out stuff like were a rock comes from. My thoughts on this podcast are that it is very interesting. I also think that it is very hard to believe that the moon was three times closer than it is now when the asteroid struck and the pieces of earth were flung up to the moon. One of my questions is how much of the moon is made up of earths rocks? Are their other pieces of rocks from different planets on the moon that might help us to find a planet that might have life on it.

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Airplay | How a rock travelled from the Earth to the Moon

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Airplay with Dave White: Scientists have discovered a rock brought back from the Moon during a long-ago space mission is actually a fragment of the Earth. Science writer Andrew Fazekas explains how this happened, and why it's significant.

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New driver less car technology, could make traffic lights and speeding tickets absolete. The goal of the project is to avoid speeding tickets and to save gas. Imagine you are driving in a 80 mph zone and the speed limit changes to 50 mph zone your car slows down to 50 mph. This information come from Andreas Malikopoulos at the university of University of Delaware. The goal of this project is to bring about the development of driverless cars that use 19 to 22 percent less fuel.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181026153309.htm

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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-47032600/the-pewdiepie-hackers-could-hacking-printers-ruin-your-life People hacking others to tell them to subscribe to Pewdiepie (a famous youtuber) and say that their printers and other devices are not secure.  This is really important because T-series another youtube channel that is growing at really fast rates cannot gain more subscribes. The hackers are going to stop hacking because the police are hunting them down. However, will they ever come to action again?

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The new circular collider will have a circumference that is 4 times the LHC and is 10 times the power of the LHC

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Cern has published its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider, given the working name of Future Circular Collider (FCC).

The Geneva based particle physics research centre is proposing an accelerator that is almost four times longer and ten times more powerful.

The aim is to have the FCC hunting for new sub-atomic particles by 2050.

Critics say that the money could be better spent on other research areas such as combating climate change.

But Cern's Director-General, Prof Fabiola Gianotti described the proposal as "a remarkable accomplishment".

"It shows the tremendous potential of the FCC to improve our knowledge of fundamental physics and to advance many technologies with a broad impact on society," she said.

Cern's plans have been submitted in a conceptual design report. These will be considered by an international panel of particle physicists, along with other submissions, as they draw up a new European strategy for particle physics for publication in 2020.

Prof John Butterworth of University College, London is among those drawing up the strategy. He told BBC News that, although he was keeping an open mind, he was particularly attracted to Cern's proposal.

It entails gradually building up to a 100km ring that is almost ten times more powerful than the LHC.

"This programme is very ambitious, very exciting and would be my plan A," he said.

The proposal involves digging a new tunnel under Cern and then installing a ring that would initially collide electrons with their positively charged counterparts, positrons.

Stage two would involve installing a larger ring to collide the nuclei of lead atoms (large hadrons) with electrons.

Stages one and two would lay the ground for the final step of colliding large hadrons together nearly ten times harder than they have been by the LHC.

New discoveries

Physicists hope that such collisions at these unprecedented high energies will reveal a new realm of particles that really make the Universe tick, rather than the sub-atomic pretenders we know of, which play only a part in mediating the forces of nature.

The current theory of sub-atomic physics, called the Standard Model, has been one of the great triumphs of the 20th century.

It neatly explains the behaviour of matter and forces through the interaction of a family of 17 particles. The last of these, the Higgs Boson, was discovered by the Large Hadron Collider in 2012.

But observations by astronomers indicated that there was more to the Universe than could be explained by the Standard Model. Galaxies were rotating faster than they should be and the expansion of the Universe is accelerating rather than slowing down. On top of that, the Standard Model cannot explain gravity.

So there must be a deeper process going on, involving yet to be discovered particles. Uncovering them would provide physicists with their much sought after theory of everything, one that would tie together all the forces of nature and unify the twin pillars on which modern physics rests: general relativity and quantum mechanics.

When physicists first proposed the construction of the LHC they knew that if the Standard Model was correct it would be capable of discovering the Higgs.

They had hoped that it might also discover particles beyond the standard model.

So far it has failed to do so.

The difficulty with Cern's proposals for a larger Large Hadron Collider is that no one knows what energies will be needed to crash large hadrons together to discover the enigmatic, super particles that hold the keys to the new realm of particles.

Cern hopes that its step-by-step proposal, first using electron-positron and then electron-large hadron collisions will enable its physicists to look for the ripples created by the super particles and so enable them to determine the energies that will be needed to find the super particles.

Perhaps because of media hype, national governments and taxpayers had expected the LHC to have already found particles beyond the standard model. So a new request for a larger accelerator risks creating the impression that the physics community's desire for ever larger, more expensive accelerators to solve the mysteries of the Universe is potentially as limitless as the Universe itself.

Costs and benefits

The UK's former Chief Scientific Advisor, Prof Sir David King, has advised the UK government and the European Commission on large funding requests.

He told BBC News that he believed that the escalating costs of conducting basic research in particle physics means that it is now time to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, especially when it was unclear whether the £20bn machine would discover any new particles.

"We have to draw a line somewhere otherwise we end up with a collider that is so large that it goes around the equator. And if it doesn't end there perhaps there will be a request for one that goes to the Moon and back."

"There is always going to be more deep physics to be conducted with larger and larger colliders. My question is to what extent will the knowledge that we already have be extended to benefit humanity?"

Prof King believes that governments should consider if the money could be better spent on research into other, more pressing priorities.

"We are rattling towards a high temperature planet in which the current global economy will cease to operate. More than 150 million people will be displaced. So if we had a pot of £20bn and we were discussing what to do with it, we would be faced with people in the medical sciences community coming up to us with ideas to improve human health and wellbeing."

"But I'm going to say a new high priority for human beings is now dealing with climate change."

What is bosonics?

However Cern's director for accelerators and technology, Dr Frédérick Bordry, said that he did not think that £20bn was expensive for a cutting edge project, the cost of which would be spread among several international partners over 20 years.

He added that spending on Cern had led to many technological benefits, such as the World Wide Web and the real benefits were yet to be realised.

"When I am asked about the benefits of the Higgs Boson, I say 'bosonics'. And when they ask me what is bosonics, I say 'I don't know'.

"But if you imagine the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson in 1897, he didn't know what electronics was. But you can't imagine a world now without electronics."

Follow Pallab on Twitter

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Cern plans for even larger hadron collider

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Cern has published its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider, given the working name of Future Circular Collider (FCC). The Geneva based particle physics research centre is proposing an accelerator that is almost four times longer and ten times more powerful.

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Inquiry backs M4 relief road.  The inquiry began in February 2017 and finished taking evidence in March 2018.  Alun Cairns warned failing to build the road, south of Newport, now could delay the project for more than a decade. If we don't build the road now the road won't be built until 2031 at least said Carins. The Welsh Government previously said officials were analysing a report from a public inquiry into the planned 14-mile (23km) relief road, and a decision will be made when advice has been prepared. The money for the road is available. I think it's a good idea to build the road now because, things could happen in the future that people might not expect.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-47032600/the-pewdiepie-hackers-could-hacking-printers-ruin-your-life People hacking others to tell them to subscribe to Pewdiepie and say that their printers and other devices are not secure.  This is really important because T-series cannot win the race. The hackers are going to stop hacking because the police are hunting them down. However, will they ever come to action again?

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Breakthrough in organic electronics
Researchers from the Chalmers University of technology in Sweden have discovered a new way to make organic electronics more efficient. They have found a way to add extra impure molecules to change the electrical properties of semiconductors inside organic electronics. It is called double doping, previously only single doping was available making things efficient but not reaching their full potential. This can help with solar power to improve efficiency and can help to create better solutions for cleaner energy.

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Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a simple new tweak that could double the efficiency of organic electronics. OLED-displays, plastic-based solar cells and bioelectronics are just some of the technologies that could benefit from their new discovery, which deals with "double-doped" polymers.

The majority of our everyday electronics are based on inorganic semiconductors, such as silicon. Crucial to their function is a process called doping, which involves weaving impurities into the semiconductor to enhance its electrical conductivity. It is this that allows various components in solar cells and LED screens to work.

For organic -- that is, carbon-based -- semiconductors, this doping process is similarly of extreme importance. Since the discovery of electrically conducting plastics and polymers, a field for which a Nobel Prize was awarded in 2000, research and development of organic electronics has accelerated quickly. OLED-displays are one example which are already on the market, for example in the latest generation of smartphones. Other applications have not yet been fully realised, due in part to the fact that organic semiconductors have so far not been efficient enough.

Doping in organic semiconductors operates through what is known as a redox reaction. This means that a dopant molecule receives an electron from the semiconductor, increasing the electrical conductivity of the semiconductor. The more dopant molecules that the semiconductor can react with, the higher the conductivity -- at least up to a certain limit, after which the conductivity decreases. Currently, the efficiency limit of doped organic semiconductors has been determined by the fact that the dopant molecules have only been able to exchange one electron each.

But now, in an article in the scientific journal Nature Materials, Professor Christian Müller and his group, together with colleagues from seven other universities demonstrate that it is possible to move two electrons to every dopant molecule.

"Through this 'double doping' process, the semiconductor can therefore become twice as effective," says David Kiefer, PhD student in the group and first author of the article.

According to Christian Müller, this innovation is not built on some great technical achievement. Instead, it is simply a case of seeing what others have not seen.

"The whole research field has been totally focused on studying materials which only allow one redox reaction per molecule. We chose to look at a different type of polymer, with lower ionisation energy. We saw that this material allowed the transfer of two electrons to the dopant molecule. It is actually very simple," says Christian Müller, Professor of Polymer Science at Chalmers University of Technology.

The discovery could allow further improvements to technologies which today are not competitive enough to make it to market. One problem is that polymers simply do not conduct current well enough, and so making the doping techniques more effective has long been a focus for achieving better polymer-based electronics. Now, this doubling of the conductivity of polymers, while using only the same amount of dopant material, over the same surface area as before, could represent the tipping point needed to allow several emerging technologies to be commercialised.

"With OLED displays, the development has come far enough that they are already on the market. But for other technologies to succeed and make it to market something extra is needed. With organic solar cells, for example, or electronic circuits built of organic material, we need the ability to dope certain components to the same extent as silicon-based electronics. Our approach is a step in the right direction," says Christian Müller.

The discovery offers fundamental knowledge and could help thousands of researchers to achieve advances in flexible electronics, bioelectronics and thermoelectricity. Christian Müller's research group themselves are researching several different applied areas, with polymer technology at the centre. Among other things, his group is looking into the development of electrically conducting textiles and organic solar cells.

Journal Reference:

David Kiefer, Renee Kroon, Anna I. Hofmann, Hengda Sun, Xianjie Liu, Alexander Giovannitti, Dominik Stegerer, Alexander Cano, Jonna Hynynen, Liyang Yu, Yadong Zhang, Dingqi Nai, Thomas F. Harrelson, Michael Sommer, Adam J. Moulé, Martijn Kemerink, Seth R. Marder, Iain McCulloch, Mats Fahlman, Simone Fabiano, Christian Müller. Double doping of conjugated polymers with monomer molecular dopants. Nature Materials, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0263-6

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electronics; graphene; spintronics; chemistry; spintronics research; mobile computing; markets and finance; computer science

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Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a simple new tweak that could double the efficiency of organic electronics. OLED-displays, plastic-based solar cells and bioelectronics are just some of the technologies that could benefit from their new discovery, which deals with "double-doped" polymers.

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This article is all about the evolution of plastic. The person who invented plastic

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"Unless I am very much mistaken, this invention will prove important in the future." Leo Baekeland wrote those words in his journal on 11 July, 1907. He was in a good mood. Aged 43, he'd done well.

Born in Belgium, his dad was a cobbler. He'd had no education, and didn't understand why young Leo wanted one. He apprenticed the boy into the trade, aged just 13. But his mum had other ideas.

With her encouragement, Leo went to night school, and won a scholarship to the University of Ghent. By the age of 20, he had a doctorate in chemistry.

He married his tutor's daughter and moved to New York, where he made so much money from photographic printing paper that he need never work again.

The Baekelands bought a house in Yonkers, overlooking the Hudson River, where Leo built a home laboratory to indulge his love of tinkering with chemicals. In July 1907, he was experimenting with formaldehyde and phenol.

These experiments would lead to his second fortune.

He became so famous that Time magazine put his face on the cover without needing to mention his name, just the words, "It will not burn. It will not melt."

What Leo Baekeland invented that July was the first fully synthetic plastic.

He called it Bakelite.

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy highlights the inventions, ideas and innovations which have helped create the economic world in which we live.

It is broadcast on the BBC World Service. You can find more information about the programme's sources and listen online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

And he was right about its future importance. Plastics would soon be everywhere.

When Susan Freinkel wrote her book Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, she spent a day noting down everything she touched that was plastic: the light switch, the toilet seat, the toothbrush, the toothpaste tube.

She also noted everything that wasn't - the toilet paper, the wooden floor, the porcelain tap.

Unlimited potential

By the day's end, she'd listed 102 items that weren't made of plastic, and 196 that were. We make so much plastic, it takes about 8% of oil production - half for raw material, half for energy.

The Bakelite Corporation didn't hold back in its advertising blurb: humans, it said, had transcended the old taxonomy of animal, mineral and vegetable. Now we had a "fourth kingdom, whose boundaries are unlimited".

That sounds hyperbolic, but it was true.

Scientists previously had thought about improving or mimicking natural substances.

Earlier plastics, like celluloid, were based on plants, and Baekeland himself had been seeking an alternative to shellac, a resin secreted by beetles that was used for electrical insulation.

Yet he quickly realised that Bakelite could become far more versatile than that.

Artificial explosion

The Bakelite Corporation christened it "The Material of a Thousand Uses", and, again, that wasn't far wrong.

It went into telephones, radios, guns, coffee pots, billiard balls and jewellery. It was used in the first atomic bomb.

Bakelite's success shifted mindsets: what other artificial materials might be possible, with properties you couldn't necessarily find in nature?

In the 1920s and 1930s, plastics poured out of labs around the world.

There was polystyrene, often used for packaging, nylon, popularised by stockings, and polyethylene, the stuff of plastic bags.

As World War Two stretched natural resources, production of plastics ramped up to fill the gap. And when the war ended, exciting new products like Tupperware hit the consumer market.

But they weren't exciting for long: the image of plastic gradually changed.

Shifting connotations

In 1967, the film The Graduate famously started with the central character, Benjamin Braddock, receiving unsolicited career advice from a self-satisfied older neighbour.

"Just one word," the neighbour promises, steering Benjamin towards a quiet corner, as if about to reveal the secret to life itself. "Plastics!"

The line became much-quoted, because it crystallised the changing connotations of the word. For the older neighbour's generation, "plastic" still meant opportunity and modernity. For the likes of young Benjamin, it stood for all that was phoney, superficial, ersatz.

Still: it was great advice. Half a century on, despite its image problem, plastic production has grown about twenty-fold. It'll double again in the next 20 years.

That's also despite growing evidence of environmental problems. Some of the chemicals in plastics are thought to affect how animals develop and reproduce.

When plastics end up in landfill, those chemicals can eventually seep into groundwater; when they find their way into oceans, some creatures eat them.

More from Tim Harford:
How fertiliser helped feed the world The hidden strengths of unloved concrete How the invention of paper changed the world Battery bonanza: From frogs' legs to mobiles and electric cars
But there's another side to the ledger - plastic has benefits that aren't just economic, but environmental too.

Vehicles made with plastic parts are lighter, and so use less fuel. Plastic packaging keeps food fresh for longer, and so reduces waste. If bottles weren't made of plastic, they'd be made of glass. Which would you rather gets dropped in your children's playground?

Rubbish recycling rates

Eventually, we'll have to get better at recycling plastic, if only because oil won't last forever.

Some plastics can't be recycled - like Bakelite. Many more could be, but aren't. In fact only about a seventh of plastic packaging is recycled - far less than for paper or steel. That rate is lower still for other plastic products.

What should be the 51st Thing?

Tim Harford has discussed 50 things which he argues have made the modern economy. Help choose the 51st thing by voting for one of these listener suggestions:

The credit card

Glass

Global Positioning System (GPS)

Irrigation

The pencil

The spreadsheet

You can vote on the 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy programme website. Voting closes at 12:00 GMT Friday 6 October 2017, and the winning 51st Thing will be announced in a special podcast on 28 October 2017.

Improving that will take effort from everyone. You may have seen little triangles on plastic, with numbers from one to seven.

They're called Resin Identification Codes, and they're one initiative of the industry's trade association. They help with recycling, but the system's far from perfect.

If the industry could do more, then so could many governments: recycling rates differ hugely around the world.

One success story is Taipei, Taiwan. It changed its culture of waste by making it easy for citizens to recycle, and fining them if they don't.

How about technological solutions?

Revolutionary?

Fans of science fiction will enjoy one recent invention, the ProtoCycler. Feed it your plastic waste, and it gives you filament for your 3D printer.

It is as close as we can get today to Star Trek's replicator.

In its day, Bakelite must have felt as revolutionary as that Star Trek replicator still feels to us.

Here was a simple, cheap synthetic product that was tough enough to replace ceramic tableware or metal letter openers, yet beautiful enough to be used as jewellery, and could even replace precious ivory.

It was a miracle material, even though - like all plastics today - we now take it for granted.

But manufacturers today haven't given up on the idea that you can make something precious and practical from something cheap and worthless.

The latest techniques "upcycle" plastic trash, mixing it with agricultural waste and nanoparticles to create new materials, with new properties.

Leo Baekeland would have approved.

Tim Harford writes the Financial Times's Undercover Economist column. 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is broadcast on the BBC World Service. You can find more information about the programme's sources and listen online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

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How plastic became a victim of its own success

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"Unless I am very much mistaken, this invention will prove important in the future." Leo Baekeland wrote those words in his journal on 11 July, 1907. He was in a good mood. Aged 43, he'd done well. Born in Belgium, his dad was a cobbler.

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A trip to Mars will include only two people. will the astronauts get along for 17 months? psychologists are researching on candidates for the mission to Mars. In the tests, the problems started within a few days and because they are going to mars they can't contact others from their ship. If any of the passengers get in a disagreement and something goes wrong they would have trouble working and the problem could escalate.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130227-manned-mission-mars-psychology-space-science/

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Rheanna's Chemistry Plastic waste: Cardiff chemists' £7m pollution push 

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Rheanna's Chemistry Plastic waste: Cardiff chemists' £7m pollution push 

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Plastic is one of the biggest problems in the world today. Using catalysis to speed up the  break down plastic may soon be a common thing. Using a gold-based catalyst in the manufacturing of PVC (one of the most commonly used plastics) in order to speed its break down. Using a gold-based catalyst instead of the common mercury is another good part of this project. This bit of science is only a temporary fix to the worlds plastic problem, but will solve the short-term issue.

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You have probably never given much thought to the science of catalysis.

But it is used to help manufacture virtually everything you own, and grow the food you eat.

Now scientists say it could also tackle some of the world's biggest environmental problems.

A team of researchers from across the UK are working on projects that could eventually cut plastic waste, purify polluted water and dirty air.
What is catalysis?
Catalysis is the study of materials which speed up chemical reactions.

Mix together certain molecules and it could take them years to interact, but throw in a catalyst and they will do so in seconds.

Industry relies on them to produce everything from building materials and fertiliser to medicines.

But they are probably best known for their use in vehicle exhaust systems, where they help break down the toxic gases produced by car engines before they are released into the atmosphere.
Watch: The explosive chemistry that cleans your exhaust How else could they be used to help the environment?
At Cardiff University's Catalysis Institute, they have just been awarded £7m to try and answer this very question.

The team's director Professor Graham Hutchings describes his researchers as "pioneers of catalyst design".

They have already had huge success in developing a gold-based catalyst for the production of PVC - one of the most commonly made plastics.

It means the mercury-based compounds that were used previously are being phased out worldwide.

Now they want to find new ways of using catalysts to make sure plastics are recycled effectively.

"Blue Planet showed really visually the problem plastic is causing in our oceans," Prof Hutchings said.

"What we're interested in here is creating a circular economy where the molecules are going around and being used, rather than ending up in landfill or being burnt. That's a short-term fix which doesn't solve our global problems.

All the plastic you can and cannot recycle

Recycling firms accused of abusing the market

Can Wales become a 'refill nation?'

Plastic pollution - in seven charts

"We're looking at point sources of emissions such as power stations and steelworks, seeing whether we can use that CO2 and make something useful out of it.

"What happens here will eventually make a difference to people's lives.

"Existing industrial processes can always be improved and we should always seek to do that and minimise the amount of pollution that comes from them."

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You have probably never given much thought to the science of catalysis. But it is used to help manufacture virtually everything you own, and grow the food you eat. Now scientists say it could also tackle some of the world's biggest environmental problems. A team of researchers from across the UK are working on projects that could eventually cut plastic waste, purify polluted water and dirty air.

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Black Arrow: UK space rocket returns home from Australia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-46938858

The Black Arrow had a crash landing and ended up in a South Australian outback for 45 years. Overtime the aircraft had been extremely damaged because of the weather. This rocket has been set as display in  Penicuik, Midlothian, later this month. I wonder how people found this rocket and how they weren't able to find it from 48 years ago.

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Huawei is in trouble! There have been warnings of security threats since 2012. The US, UK, Australia, and even New Zealand have excluded Huawei. However, luckily, the threats are not extremely serious, but they could later lead to the company's demise. This is important, as this could ruin the second highest selling company for phones. However, I believe that Huawei will somehow get out of this trouble. Something that I wonder, however, is how Huawei get out of this serious danger?

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47041341

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Light travels as extended waves and moves faster than sound. It can be reflected, refracted and dispersed. Ray diagrams show what happens to light in mirrors and lenses. Eyes and cameras detect light. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09scjrh
These folks in the Himalayas

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Light travels as waves. These are waves, like the ripples in a tank of water. The direction of vibration in the waves is at 90° to the direction that the light travels.

Light travels in straight lines, so if you have to represent a ray of light in a drawing, always use a ruler.

Unlike sound waves, light waves can travel through a (empty space). They do not need a substance to travel through, but they can travel through and substances. The table summarises some similarities and differences between light waves and sound waves:

The speed of light

Light travels extremely quickly. Its maximum speed is approximately 300,000,000 m/s, when it travels through a vacuum.

The very large difference between the speed of light in air (almost 300,000,000 m/s) and the speed of sound in air (343 m/s) explains why you:

see lightning before you hear it

see a firework explode before you hear it

see a distant door slam before you hear it

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BBC Bitesize - KS3 Physics - Light waves - Revision 1

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Light travels as waves. These are waves, like the ripples in a tank of water. The direction of vibration in the waves is at 90° to the direction that the light travels. Light travels in straight lines, so if you have to represent a ray of light in a drawing, always use a ruler.

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https://listverse.com/2014/03/26/10-futuristic-forms-of-transportation-we-could-see-soon
The SCARAB is a new form of transportation that we could see soon. This vehicle is vaguely shaped like a motorcycle but still has lots of room for luggage. This mode of transportation would be powered by batteries, biofuel or a fuel cell. You can drive it manually but on certain pathways it can drive by itself. The reason that this is important is because it provides us with a motorcycle based vehicle that is eco-friendly. SCARABS have not been built yet but there is hope that soon we will have them and be able to take them out for a drive.

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Bigger dogs, with larger brains, seem to perform better on certain measures of intelligence than smaller dogs. This may matter to pet owners because they may want there dog to perform better than little dogs. I think that little dogs could also perform better if trained more.

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Bigger dogs, with larger brains, perform better on certain measures of intelligence than their smaller canine counterparts, according to a new study led by the University of Arizona.

Larger-brained dogs outperform smaller dogs on measures of executive functions -- a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for controlling and coordinating other cognitive abilities and behaviors. In particular, bigger dogs have better short-term memory and self-control than more petite pups, according to the study published in the journal Animal Cognition.

"The jury is out on why, necessarily, brain size might relate to cognition," said lead study author Daniel Horschler, a UA anthropology doctoral student and member of the UA's Arizona Canine Cognition Center. "We think of it as probably a proxy for something else going on, whether it's the number of neurons that matters or differences in connectivity between neurons. Nobody's really sure yet, but we're interested in figuring out what those deeper things are."

Canine brain size does not seem to be associated with all types of intelligence, however. Horschler found that brain size didn't predict a dog's performance on tests of social intelligence, which was measured by testing each dog's ability to follow human pointing gestures. It also wasn't associated with a dog's inferential and physical reasoning ability.

The study's findings mirror what scientists have previously found to be true in primates -- that brain size is associated with executive functioning, but not other types of intelligence.

"Previous studies have been composed mostly or entirely of primates, so we weren't sure whether the result was an artifact of unique aspects of primate brain evolution," Horschler said. "We think dogs are a really great test case for this because there's huge variation in brain size, to a degree you don't see in pretty much any other terrestrial mammals. You have chihuahuas versus Great Danes and everything in between."

Horschler's study is based on data from more than 7,000 purebred domestic dogs from 74 different breeds. Brain size was estimated based on breed standards.

The data came from the citizen science website Dognition.com, which offers instructions for dog owners to test their canines' cognitive abilities through a variety of game-based activities. The users then submit their data to the site, where it can be accessed by researchers.

Short-term memory was tested by dog owners hiding a treat, in view of their dog, under one of two overturned plastic cups. Owners then waited 60, 90, 120 or 150 seconds before releasing their dog to get the treat. Smaller dogs had more difficulty remembering where the treat was hidden.

To test self-control, owners placed a treat in front of their seated dog and then forbade the dog from taking it. Owners then either watched the dog, covered their own eyes or turned away from the dog. Larger-breed dogs typically waited longer to snag the forbidden treat.

Horschler and his colleagues controlled for whether or not the dogs had been trained. They found that larger-brained breeds had better short-term memory and self-control than smaller dogs, regardless of the extent of training the dogs had received.

In the future, Horschler said he'd like to do comparative studies of cognitive abilities in different breed varieties, such as the miniature poodle and much larger standard poodle, which are essentially the same except for their size.

"I'm really interested in how cognition evolves and how that arises biologically," Horschler said. "We're coming to understand that brain size is in some way related to cognition, whether it's because of brain size specifically or whether it's a proxy for something else."

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dogs; animal learning and intelligence; veterinary medicine; mice; animals; mammals; behavioral science; spiders and  ticks

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Do bigger brains equal smarter dogs? New study offers answers

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Bigger dogs, with larger brains, perform better on certain measures of intelligence than their smaller canine counterparts, according to a new study led by the University of Arizona. Larger-brained dogs outperform smaller dogs on measures of executive functions -- a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for controlling and coordinating other cognitive abilities and behaviors.

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British Rocket returns home from Australia
The Black Arrow rocket had a crash landing at a south Australian outback for 48 years. It was damaged by extreme weather and is set to go on display in Penicuik, Midlothian, later in January. This will help lots of students learn about the historic rocket and more about space. I think it would be very interesting to learn about the history of the rocket and why it went to space.

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The UK's only rocket to successfully launch a satellite into orbit is to be unveiled in Scotland after a 10,000-mile journey back home.

The Black Arrow projectile had lain at its crash landing site in the South Australian outback for 48 years.

Over time it was damaged by extreme weather and vandalism before space technology firm Skyrora stepped in.

The historic rocket is set to go on display in Penicuik, Midlothian, later this month.

Daniel Smith, director at Skyrora, said: "This is quite feasibly the most important artefact linked to the UK's space history.

"While our engineers have been working on our own launches, our STEM ambassadors have been arranging all of this in the background."

'Inspiring generations'

The rocket will be unveiled near the company's headquarters and workshop in Edinburgh.

Mr Smith said: "With the UK government aiming to make us a launch nation again, it seemed like the perfect time to bring Black Arrow back.

"We really hope the rocket will help to inspire current and future generations of scientists and engineers."

The UK Space Agency has previously announced £2.5m of funding for a proposed vertical launch spaceport in Sutherland.

Developed and tested on the Isle of Wight, the Black Arrow programme completed four rockets between 1969 and 1971.

The third flight was the first and only successful UK-led orbital launch, but the programme was then cancelled.

This is said to have given the rocket "cult status" among the space community.

'Longstanding heritage'

The Black Arrow's journey home saw it transported across land and sea - making the trip from the Australian desert to Edinburgh via Adelaide.

Skyrora has also commissioned a plaque to be placed where Black Arrow had lain.

Dr Graham Turnock, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "Black Arrow is testament to Britain's longstanding heritage in the space sector which continues to thrive today.

"The government's Spaceflight Programme includes a series of education and outreach activities which I hope will play a major role in inspiring the next generation of space scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs."

Skyrora successfully completed its inaugural sub-orbital test launch north of the border last year.

The company's next rockets, Skylark Micro and SkyHy, will allow its team to gain more launch experience, with the latter capable of reaching the edge of space.

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British rocket returns home from Australia

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The UK's only rocket to successfully launch a satellite into orbit is to be unveiled in Scotland after a 10,000-mile journey back home. The Black Arrow projectile had lain at its crash landing site in the South Australian outback for 48 years.

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https://www.bbc.com/timelines/zt23gk7  How video games became a billion dollar industry.
The most popular game company is Rockstar Games. When Rockstar Games released GTA-V it was the first game to reach a billion dollars in sales. People care because 40 years ago the first games were invented they were called board games. Games have evolved from 40 years ago and know they are more expensive and more improved. I believe that video games make so much money because they addict people to the games and make them spend money.

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The percentages are astonishing. We need more females in the chemistry world!

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Bullying and harassment is such a problem in the world of chemistry that a dedicated helpline is being set up for victims, a scientific body says.

The Royal Society of Chemistry says people were being denied opportunities because of "a culture of secrecy" and the 'unchecked power of managers'.

The research showed both men and women have been bullied and harassed by colleagues.

But it was mostly women who were discriminated against.

It's hoped the helpline will increase the number of women chemists.

'Rock stars'

Professor Rachel O'Reilly is now Head of the Chemistry School at the University of Birmingham.

But, in previous roles, she says she's "had issues or witnessed others" facing discrimination.

"I've been called 'little woman' a lot."

At a previous university, she was told that having children would create more work for other people in her department.

"It makes me really cross and really disappointed."

She says: "Academics can be a bit like rock stars. You hear about all the bad behaviours, but they're untouchable because of what they do."

"Young people can see this happening and think that's what you have to do to be successful, and it's this awful cycle."

How bad is the problem in chemistry?

This problem isn't exclusive to chemical sciences, or science in general, but this is the first time a professional science organisation has taken such a step.

Research shows that just under half of students studying the subject at university are women, but the numbers working in senior roles in chemical sciences are "exceptionally poor".

The RSC says this is partly because of the way funding is allocated, but their latest survey found there is a "culture of secrecy", a "lack of accountability around harassment' and an 'unchecked power of a managers in some teams and institutions".

The society's director of science and communities, Dr Jo Reynolds, says they were surprised by their findings as they hadn't asked any questions about bullying or harassment.

"We weren't looking for evidence of bullying and harassment [in this report] but it was one of the things that came out unprompted," she said.

"It's really disappointing to learn we are losing talent because of these cultural issues. We need to fix the environment in which this culture exists"

The society also wants institutions and individuals to be denied funding when evidence of bullying has been found.

This helpline is expected to be running by Summer 2019 and the society hopes it'll help all chemists reach their full potential.

It's also promising to do more to recognise departments which make significant progress when it comes to diversity and inclusion, create carers grants and launch a gender equality forum.

How big a problem are bullying and harassment in STEM?

When it comes to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), women make up just 21% of the UK workforce.

In October, a senior scientist was criticised after giving a workshop where he said "physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation."

Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University, in Italy, was suspended after the presentation at the particle physics laboratory Cern, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

A recent report into allegations of bullying and gender discrimination at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, a genomics and genetics research institute, concluded no wrongdoing took place, but that the institute's policies could be improved.

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Helpline to tackle bullying in chemistry

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Bullying and harassment is such a problem in the world of chemistry that a dedicated helpline is being set up for victims, a scientific body says. The Royal Society of Chemistry says people were being denied opportunities because of "a culture of secrecy" and the 'unchecked power of managers'.

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The diplodocus skeleton replica, Dippy was home to London's natural history museum for 112 years and now is being transferred to Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. The replica is 70 ft long and has 292 bones. Many different helpers have spent a total of five days unpacking and assembling the dinosaur, ready for the public opening. It took 16 packing crates to take Dippy from Northern Ireland to Scotland. I wonder why Dippy was in London for so long?

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Dippy the dinosaur has gone on public display in Scotland for the first time as part of a UK tour.

The replica diplodocus skeleton, whose home was London's Natural History Museum for 112 years, was unveiled at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum.

The replica is 70ft (21m) long and has 292 bones.

Dippy was commissioned by Scots-born industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who owned the original fossilised skeleton, and had a copy made from plaster.

Experts have spent five days painstakingly unpacking and assembling the dinosaur, ready for the public opening.

Prior to the UK tour, Dippy had never been on public display outside London, but has since attracted record-breaking visitors numbers for exhibitions in Birmingham and Belfast.

The skeleton arrived in Scotland from Northern Ireland in 16 special crates, with Glasgow being the tour's only Scottish stop.

Dippy will be on display until 6 May.

What makes people deeply dippy for dinosaurs??

'The people's dinosaur' hits the road

Natural History Museum conservator Lorraine Cornish was involved in seeing the dinosaur skeleton erected in Glasgow.

She said the Scottish leg of Dippy's tour of the UK was "a homecoming of sorts", given that Diplodocus carnegii is named after Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish steel mogul and philanthropist who financed its excavation.

Dippy's Scottish connections

Dippy, or Diplodocus carnegii to give the creature its full name, is partly named after Andrew Carnegie - the Scottish steel mogul and philanthropist who financed its excavation in Wyoming, USA in 1899.

When Carnegie heard that railroad workers had unearthed the fossilised bones of a diplodocus, he set out to acquire the bones so he could make them the centrepiece for his new museum in Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum of Art.

During the skeleton's reconstruction, experts discovered subtle differences from the two other diplodocus species known at the time - Diplodocus longus and Diplodocus lacustris. The new species was named Diplodocus carnegii in honour of its new owner.

When King Edward VII saw a sketch of the dinosaur while visiting Andrew Carnegie at his Scottish castle, Skibo, the conversation the men had about the sketch resulted in the commission of a replica cast, based on the original specimen in Carnegie's US museum.

The cast became known as Dippy, and was unveiled at the Natural History Museum London in 1905, where it was one of the most popular exhibits - until preparations began for Dippy on Tour in 2017.

Dippy is one of 10 replicas held in museums around the world, including Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow.

Director of the Natural History Museum, Sir Michael Dixon, said: "We are thrilled that Dippy has once again made it safely across the Irish sea and has now arrived at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow.

"Dippy has acted as an ambassador for the natural world, inspiring thousands of children to explore nature on their doorstep. We are sure his impact will be just as powerful in Scotland and hope visitors are as excited to see him as we are for him to be here."

Councillor David McDonald, chairman of Glasgow Life, said: "There is a wonderful sense of excitement surrounding the biggest thing to arrive at Kelvingrove Museum - quite literally - this year.

"We're delighted to be the only Scottish venue to host the iconic dinosaur. It feels a little like a homecoming given the conversations that led to his creation started at Skibo Castle, home of Andrew Carnegie, and it was a pleasure to have his great grandson with us for the opening."

William Thomson, Andrew Carnegie's great grandson, added: "For Andrew Carnegie, Diplodocus carnegii was more than a huge prehistoric creature. It was a symbol and an opportunity.

"By gifting copies to the heads of state of seven other countries as well as the UK, Carnegie hoped to demonstrate through mutual interest in scientific discoveries that nations have more in common than what separates them."

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Dippy the dinosaur has gone on public display in Scotland for the first time as part of a UK tour. The replica diplodocus skeleton, whose home was London's Natural History Museum for 112 years, was unveiled at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. The replica is 70ft (21m) long and has 292 bones.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46993649
After 10 years humanity has finally done it. Scientist Dr Lissa Herron has genetically modified chickens to lay anti cancer drugs. You may ask "Why does this matter?" this matters because anti cancer drugs are very expensive to make. They are expensive to make. Anti cancer drugs are expensive make because you need a big facility, a sterile environment and very expensive machines. The chickens can produce the same anti cancer drugs for a tenth of the cost! I think that this is a big step for mankind. I wonder if the chickens can create other drugs like penicillin?

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Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers.

The drugs are 100 times cheaper to produce when laid than when manufactured in factories.

The researchers believe that in time production can be scaled up to produce medicines in commercial quantities.

The chickens do not suffer and are "pampered" compared to farm animals, according to Dr Lissa Herron, of Roslin Technologies in Edinburgh.

"They live in very large pens. They are fed and watered and looked after on a daily basis by highly trained technicians, and live quite a comfortable life.

"As far as the chicken knows, it's just laying a normal egg. It doesn't affect its health in any way, it's just chugging away, laying eggs as normal."

Scientists have previously shown that genetically modified goats, rabbits and chickens can be used to produce protein therapies in their milk or eggs. The researchers say their new approach is more efficient, produces better yields and is more cost-effective than these previous attempts.

"Production from chickens can cost anywhere from 10 to 100 times less than the factories. So hopefully we'll be looking at at least 10 times lower overall manufacturing cost" said Dr Herron.

The biggest saving comes from the fact that chicken sheds are far cheaper to build and run than highly sterile clean rooms for factory production.

Many diseases are caused because the body does not naturally produce enough of a certain chemical or protein. Such diseases can be controlled with drugs that contain the deficient protein. These drugs are synthetically produced by pharmaceutical companies and can be very expensive to manufacture.

Dr Herron and her colleagues managed to reduce the costs by inserting a human gene - which normally produces the protein in humans - into the part of the chickens' DNA involved with producing the white in the chickens' eggs.

No yolk

After cracking the eggs and separating the white from the yolk, Dr Herron discovered that the chicken had relatively large quantities of the protein.

The team has focused on two proteins that are essential to the immune system: one is IFNalpha2a, which has powerful antiviral and anti-cancer effects, and the other is macrophage-CSF, which is being developed as a therapy that stimulates damaged tissues to repair themselves.

Three eggs are enough to produce a dose of the drug, and chickens can lay up to 300 eggs per year. With enough chickens, the researchers believe they can produce drugs in commercial quantities.

The development of drugs for human health, and the regulatory hoops required, will take between 10 and 20 years. The researchers are hopeful of using chickens to develop drugs for animal health.

These include drugs which boost the immune systems of farm animals as an alternative to antibiotics, which would reduce the risk of the development of new strains of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. And there is the potential to use the healing properties of macrophage-CSF to treat pets, according to Dr Herron.

"For example, we could use it in regenerating the liver or the kidneys of a pet that has suffered damage to these organs. The drugs currently available are a bit too pricey so we hope that we might be able to get into that a little more," she explained.

Professor Helen Sang, of the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, said: "We are not yet producing medicines for people, but this study shows that chickens are commercially viable for producing proteins suitable for drug discovery studies and other applications in biotechnology."

The eggs are produced for research purposes and not on sale in supermarkets.

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Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers. The drugs are 100 times cheaper to produce when laid than when manufactured in factories. The researchers believe that in time production can be scaled up to produce medicines in commercial quantities.

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Opium discovered in Bronze Age jug.
According to the University of York, it is the first chemical evidence of opium contained in such a jug. Dr. Rachel Smith, from the university, said that it was not the opium itself that was found, but a link to poppies through an alkaloid that was found. It has been a long-standing theory that jugs like this were containers for opium, because of the shape, which represents the seed head of an opium poppy. This isn't the most important thing on Earth, but if you happen to find a jug like that, you will know what it is. I think this is really cool, and an amazing discovery.

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Traces of opiates preserved inside a 3,500-year-old jug have been found by scientists.

The late Bronze Age base-ring juglet and its contents are intact and is held in the British Museum collection.

There had been a "long-standing" theory the jugs had been containers for opium and a new technique was used detect a plant compound related to it.

It is the first chemical evidence of the opium poppy within such a jug, University of York scientist said.

Dr Rachel Smith, from the university, said: "It's not opium itself we've found, the jug is 3,500 years old so whatever was in there is degraded.

"We've certainly got a link to poppies through the alkaloid I found."

Dr Smith said there had been a "long-standing theory" the jugs had been containers for opium because their shape resembled a seed head of the opium poppy.

She said: "I was able to find traces of an opium alkaloid called papaverine."
Latest news and updates from Yorkshire
Alkaloids are a broad range of chemical compounds produced by plants, opium has particular ones that you can use to mark its presence, said Dr Smith.

They are known to have significant psychological effects on the human body, the university said.

She said the opiate alkaloids detected by her were the most resistant to degradation. That had made them easier to find in ancient residues than other well-known opiates such as morphine and codeine, she added.

The rest of the jug's residue was mostly composed of a plant oil.

A new analytical method was developed by Dr Smith as part of her PhD at the university's Department of Chemistry.

Opium poppies

The plant, papaver somniferum, is a native of Turkey

Opiates are drugs derived from or related to opium

Opium, morphine, codeine, and heroin are all derived from the milky latex found in its unripe seed capsule

It is also grown for its non-narcotic seeds, used in bakeries and for seasoning.

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Traces of opiates preserved inside a 3,500-year-old jug have been found by scientists. The late Bronze Age base-ring juglet and its contents are intact and is held in the British Museum collection. There had been a "long-standing" theory the jugs had been containers for opium and a new technique was used detect a plant compound related to it.

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The replica diplodocus skeleton that has been living at  London's Natural History Museum for the past  112 years has just been unveiled at  Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum.  the replica is 20 m long and 292 bones.  It took the experts 5 days to unpack them from the boxes. They needed 16 boxes to get it from London to Glasgow. I wonder how long it would have taken to recreate Dippy

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Dippy the dinosaur has gone on public display in Scotland for the first time as part of a UK tour.

The replica diplodocus skeleton, whose home was London's Natural History Museum for 112 years, was unveiled at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum.

The replica is 70ft (21m) long and has 292 bones.

Dippy was commissioned by Scots-born industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who owned the original fossilised skeleton, and had a copy made from plaster.

Experts have spent five days painstakingly unpacking and assembling the dinosaur, ready for the public opening.

Prior to the UK tour, Dippy had never been on public display outside London, but has since attracted record-breaking visitors numbers for exhibitions in Birmingham and Belfast.

The skeleton arrived in Scotland from Northern Ireland in 16 special crates, with Glasgow being the tour's only Scottish stop.

Dippy will be on display until 6 May.

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Natural History Museum conservator Lorraine Cornish was involved in seeing the dinosaur skeleton erected in Glasgow.

She said the Scottish leg of Dippy's tour of the UK was "a homecoming of sorts", given that Diplodocus carnegii is named after Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish steel mogul and philanthropist who financed its excavation.

Dippy's Scottish connections

Dippy, or Diplodocus carnegii to give the creature its full name, is partly named after Andrew Carnegie - the Scottish steel mogul and philanthropist who financed its excavation in Wyoming, USA in 1899.

When Carnegie heard that railroad workers had unearthed the fossilised bones of a diplodocus, he set out to acquire the bones so he could make them the centrepiece for his new museum in Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum of Art.

During the skeleton's reconstruction, experts discovered subtle differences from the two other diplodocus species known at the time - Diplodocus longus and Diplodocus lacustris. The new species was named Diplodocus carnegii in honour of its new owner.

When King Edward VII saw a sketch of the dinosaur while visiting Andrew Carnegie at his Scottish castle, Skibo, the conversation the men had about the sketch resulted in the commission of a replica cast, based on the original specimen in Carnegie's US museum.

The cast became known as Dippy, and was unveiled at the Natural History Museum London in 1905, where it was one of the most popular exhibits - until preparations began for Dippy on Tour in 2017.

Dippy is one of 10 replicas held in museums around the world, including Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow.

Director of the Natural History Museum, Sir Michael Dixon, said: "We are thrilled that Dippy has once again made it safely across the Irish sea and has now arrived at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow.

"Dippy has acted as an ambassador for the natural world, inspiring thousands of children to explore nature on their doorstep. We are sure his impact will be just as powerful in Scotland and hope visitors are as excited to see him as we are for him to be here."

Councillor David McDonald, chairman of Glasgow Life, said: "There is a wonderful sense of excitement surrounding the biggest thing to arrive at Kelvingrove Museum - quite literally - this year.

"We're delighted to be the only Scottish venue to host the iconic dinosaur. It feels a little like a homecoming given the conversations that led to his creation started at Skibo Castle, home of Andrew Carnegie, and it was a pleasure to have his great grandson with us for the opening."

William Thomson, Andrew Carnegie's great grandson, added: "For Andrew Carnegie, Diplodocus carnegii was more than a huge prehistoric creature. It was a symbol and an opportunity.

"By gifting copies to the heads of state of seven other countries as well as the UK, Carnegie hoped to demonstrate through mutual interest in scientific discoveries that nations have more in common than what separates them."

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Dippy the dinosaur has gone on public display in Scotland for the first time as part of a UK tour. The replica diplodocus skeleton, whose home was London's Natural History Museum for 112 years, was unveiled at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. The replica is 70ft (21m) long and has 292 bones.

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Sophia Eiley The moon’s violent birth may have given Earth the ingredients of life 

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Sophia Eiley The moon’s violent birth may have given Earth the ingredients of life 

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The violent collision between the earth and the moon may have given earth all the necessary elements for life. Scientist have had trouble figuring out how earth got its  carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. Researchers from Rice University Of Texas have run many simulations (approximately one billion impacts) and found that the moon has given life. In the future big collisions could bring life to inhabitable planets. This would take millions of years to do.

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How one heatwave killed 'a third' of a bat species in Australia

According to researchers, the record-breaking heat in Australia's north wiped out almost one third of the nation's spectacled flying foxes (also know as bats).

The bats were not able to survive in temperatures which exceeded 42c. In the city Cairns, locals saw bats falling from trees into backyards, swimming pools and other locations.

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Over two days in November, record-breaking heat in Australia's north wiped out almost one-third of the nation's spectacled flying foxes, according to researchers.

The animals, also known as spectacled fruit bats, were unable to survive in temperatures which exceeded 42C.

In the city of Cairns, locals saw bats toppling from trees into backyards, swimming pools and other locations.

Wildlife rescuers found surviving animals clumped together, usually on branches closer to the ground.

"It was totally depressing," one rescuer, David White, told the BBC.

'Biblical scale'

Last week, researchers from Western Sydney University finalised their conclusion that about 23,000 spectacled flying foxes died in the event on 26 and 27 November.

That tally was reached through counting by wildlife volunteers who visited seven flying fox camps following the heatwave.

Lead researcher Dr Justin Welbergen, an ecologist, believes the "biblical scale" of deaths could be even higher - as many as 30,000 - because some settlements had not been counted.

Australia had only an estimated 75,000 spectacled flying foxes before November, according to government-backed statistics.

"This sort of event has not happened in Australia this far north since European settlement," says Dr Welbergen, who is also the president of the Australasian Bat Society, a not-for-profit conservation group.

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The spectacled flying fox - so named for light-coloured fur around its eyes - can also be found in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Solomon Islands.

In Australia, the species is only found in a small rainforest region of northern Queensland, where it helps to pollinate native trees.

Dr Welbergen says about 10,000 bats of another species - black flying foxes - succumbed to the heat during the same two-day period.

Flying foxes often experience fatal heat stress when temperatures eclipse 42C, scientists say. During November's heatwave, Cairns recorded its highest-ever temperature of 42.6C.

'Canary in the mine'

Flying foxes are no more sensitive to extreme heat than some other species, experts say.

But because they often gather in urban areas in large numbers, their deaths can be more conspicuous, and easily documented.

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How many animals are born each day?

"It raises concerns as to the fate of other creatures who have more secretive, secluded lifestyles," Dr Welbergen says.

He sees the bats as the "the canary in the coal mine for climate change".

"It is clear from the present data that these [heat] events are having a very serious impact on the species," Dr Welbergen says. "And it's clear from climate change projections that this is set to escalate in the future."

Battle for protection

Experts have long been concerned about the survival of spectacled flying foxes.

Its population has more than halved in the past decade, says Dr David Westcott, who chairs the government's National Flying Fox Monitoring Programme.

In the past, mass deaths in the population were often associated with cyclones. But in recent years heatwaves have become a bigger risk, Dr Westcott says.

"We're very concerned. It's been a massive population decline for a species that isn't under a great deal of pressure outside of these weather events," he tells the BBC.

Even prior to November's heatwave, conservationists were lobbying the Australian government to upgrade its classification of the species from "vulnerable" to "endangered" - a move which would strengthen efforts to help it.

Globally, the species is listed as of "least concern" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

Some experts worry that public antipathy to bats may hinder conservation efforts. This is usually related to fears about contracting diseases from bats, and their noise in urban areas.

This week, amid a heatwave in New South Wales, authorities warned people against approaching bats due to reports of aggression.

"They're seen as these rats in the sky, so any preservation effort is hard going," Dr Westcott says.

"You can bet there were some people glad to see so many bats go down in the heatwave."

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How 'one-third' of a bat population died in two days

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Over two days in November, record-breaking heat in Australia's north wiped out almost one-third of the nation's spectacled flying foxes, according to researchers. The animals, also known as spectacled fruit bats, were unable to survive in temperatures which exceeded 42C. In the city of Cairns, locals saw bats toppling from trees into backyards, swimming pools and other locations.

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The GM chickens that lay eggs with anti-cancer drugs.

The researchers have modified chickens that can lay eggs that have medical drugs to help cure some cancers. The drugs from the chickens are 100 times cheaper then the ones made in the factory. During this process the chickens are not harmed at all but they are "pampered".  Scientists have shown that modifying goats, rabbits and chickens can be used to produce protein therapies in their milk or eggs.

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Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers.

The drugs are 100 times cheaper to produce when laid than when manufactured in factories.

The researchers believe that in time production can be scaled up to produce medicines in commercial quantities.

The chickens do not suffer and are "pampered" compared to farm animals, according to Dr Lissa Herron, of Roslin Technologies in Edinburgh.

"They live in very large pens. They are fed and watered and looked after on a daily basis by highly trained technicians, and live quite a comfortable life.

"As far as the chicken knows, it's just laying a normal egg. It doesn't affect its health in any way, it's just chugging away, laying eggs as normal."

Scientists have previously shown that genetically modified goats, rabbits and chickens can be used to produce protein therapies in their milk or eggs. The researchers say their new approach is more efficient, produces better yields and is more cost-effective than these previous attempts.

"Production from chickens can cost anywhere from 10 to 100 times less than the factories. So hopefully we'll be looking at at least 10 times lower overall manufacturing cost" said Dr Herron.

The biggest saving comes from the fact that chicken sheds are far cheaper to build and run than highly sterile clean rooms for factory production.

Many diseases are caused because the body does not naturally produce enough of a certain chemical or protein. Such diseases can be controlled with drugs that contain the deficient protein. These drugs are synthetically produced by pharmaceutical companies and can be very expensive to manufacture.

Dr Herron and her colleagues managed to reduce the costs by inserting a human gene - which normally produces the protein in humans - into the part of the chickens' DNA involved with producing the white in the chickens' eggs.

No yolk

After cracking the eggs and separating the white from the yolk, Dr Herron discovered that the chicken had relatively large quantities of the protein.

The team has focused on two proteins that are essential to the immune system: one is IFNalpha2a, which has powerful antiviral and anti-cancer effects, and the other is macrophage-CSF, which is being developed as a therapy that stimulates damaged tissues to repair themselves.

Three eggs are enough to produce a dose of the drug, and chickens can lay up to 300 eggs per year. With enough chickens, the researchers believe they can produce drugs in commercial quantities.

The development of drugs for human health, and the regulatory hoops required, will take between 10 and 20 years. The researchers are hopeful of using chickens to develop drugs for animal health.

These include drugs which boost the immune systems of farm animals as an alternative to antibiotics, which would reduce the risk of the development of new strains of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. And there is the potential to use the healing properties of macrophage-CSF to treat pets, according to Dr Herron.

"For example, we could use it in regenerating the liver or the kidneys of a pet that has suffered damage to these organs. The drugs currently available are a bit too pricey so we hope that we might be able to get into that a little more," she explained.

Professor Helen Sang, of the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, said: "We are not yet producing medicines for people, but this study shows that chickens are commercially viable for producing proteins suitable for drug discovery studies and other applications in biotechnology."

The eggs are produced for research purposes and not on sale in supermarkets.

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Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers. The drugs are 100 times cheaper to produce when laid than when manufactured in factories. The researchers believe that in time production can be scaled up to produce medicines in commercial quantities.