French President Hollande earlier this week signaled a shift in his long-standing position that Assad should go before any solution could be found to the Syrian crisis. In recent days, Paris and Moscow appeared to move closer diplomatically after ISIL claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian plane over Egypt’s Sinai desert and the …
Even if carbon dioxide levels stopped rising today, the world would still warm by 1.6 °C above pre-industrial levels –which is more than three-quarters of the way to the 2 °C limit the world is supposed to be aiming for. That is the implication of two sets of figures announced on Monday. Global average levels …
Greetings from RB2015! My name is Claudia Aguirre and I’ll be live-blogging from the SENS research foundation conference Rejuvenation Biotechnology. A little about me….I have a PhD in neuroscience and am currently a scientific consultant in the health and wellness industries. I mostly focus on science communications and scientific content marketing but I am always …
Russian regulator Rostechnadzor has issued a construction licence for the multipurpose sodium-cooled fast neutron research reactor, or MBIR by its Russian acronym. The reactor complex will be located at the site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (RIAR), in Dimitrovgrad. In November, Uralenergostroy was selected in an open tender as the general contractor for …
An international team of scientists has sequenced the complete genome of the woolly mammoth. A US team is already attempting to study the animals’ characteristics by inserting mammoth genes into elephant stem cells. Current Biology – Complete Genomes Reveal Signatures of Demographic and Genetic Declines in the Woolly Mammoth Highlights •Complete high-quality genomes from two …
Viable yet damaged cells can accumulate during development and aging. Although eliminating those cells may benefit organ function, identification of this less fit cell population remains challenging. Previously, we identified a molecular mechanism, based on “fitness fingerprints” displayed on cell membranes, which allows direct fitness comparison among cells in Drosophila. Here, we study the physiological …
Expanding broadband access through wireless networks would be cheaper than building fixed wireline networks, however the benefits would be smaller, according to the Copenhagen Consensus latest study. Reaching 90% of the world’s people with wireless service by 2030, up from 32% now, would produce economic gains of $17 for every $1 spent, it estimated. That’s …
UNSW Australia’s solar researchers have converted over 40% of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported. The record efficiency was achieved in outdoor tests in Sydney, before being independently confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at their outdoor test facility in the United States. The work was …
To fund a Universal Basic Income of $10,000 per year for 300 million Americans would cost $3 trillion per year or require the investment of about $53 trillion. This would be reversing the current US debt and then tripling it in an investment fund. An unconditional basic income [UBI] (also called basic income, basic income …
We are getting new Star Wars movies. Blacklight Power is back and claiming they have made breakthroughs which overcome past problems. The Chicago Pile was the first artificial nuclear reactor. The first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 on 2 December 1942, under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. Fermi described the apparatus …
Scientists for the first time have cloned cells from two adults to create early-stage embryos, and then derived tissue from those embryos that perfectly matched the DNA of the donors. The experiment represents another advance in the quest to make tissue in the laboratory that could treat a range of maladies, from heart attacks to …