Iron Fertilization sequesters carbon An international research team has published the results of an ocean iron fertilization experiment (EIFEX) carried out in 2004 in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature. Unlike the LOHAFEX experiment carried out in 2009, EIFEX has shown that a substantial proportion of carbon from the induced algal bloom sank …
Under the new loosening of China’s One Child policy married couples in which just one parent is an only child can also have a second baby. The previous rules allowed two children for couples in which both parents are only children. The old policy also made exceptions for China’s officially recognized ethnic minorities and rural …
Thailand’s government has imposed a 60-day state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding provinces following months of protests by anti-government demonstrators in the capital. The deputy interior minister announced the new measures Tuesday, giving security forces new powers to ban political gatherings of more than five people, censor news media, impose curfews and detain subjects …
The new system, known as CRISPR, allows researchers to permanently and selectively delete genes from a cell’s DNA. In two new papers, the researchers showed that they could study all the genes in the genome by deleting a different gene in each of a huge population of cells, then observing which cells proliferated under different …
Saturn’s largest moon Titan is an eerie world about the size of Mercury. It is the only moon in the solar system with a thick, hazy atmosphere and the only place aside from Earth that has large bodies of liquid on its surface. But there’s also one very big difference: on frigid Titan, the lakes …
Swedish researchers combined a scaffold made from gelatin with a tiny amount of rat brain tissue that had already had its cells removed. This “decellularised” tissue, they hoped, would provide enough of the crucial biochemical cues to enable seeded cells to develop as they would in the brain. When the team added mesenchymal stem cells …
Disney Research presents a new energy harvesting technology that generates electrical energy from a user’s interactions with paper-like materials. The energy harvesters are flexible, light, and inexpensive, and they utilize a user’s gestures such as tapping, touching, rubbing and sliding to generate energy. The harvested energy is then used to actuate LEDs, e-paper displays and …
The radical boss of Haier wants to transform the world’s biggest appliance-maker into a nimble internet-age firm. Haier Group has 9.6% of the global appliance market and sales of over $26 billion. It is ranked as the eight most innovative firm worldwide (ahead of Amazon). By listening closely to demanding consumers, his firm’s fast and …
The Afrobarometer research project says that access to food, healthcare and education is still terrible for millions The impression from travelling in Africa, including in many rural parts, is that things are improving for the poorest. Having visited about half of Africa’s 55 countries this year or last, Baobab thinks the report’s findings seem odd. …
The Ukrainian space agency has always been short of funding. The Ukrainians used to work closely with the Russians as part of the Soviet program, but that stopped with the breakup of the soviet union. Currently Russia’s leader Putin has bad relations with the Ukraine. Ukraine has the Zenit rocket family Ukraine had been working …
1. TheSpacewriter presents an exoplanet with clouds. The Kepler space telescope (along with the Spitzer Space Telescope) have returned data about a distant exoplanet called Kepler-7b that show it has clouds in its atmosphere. The data allowed astronomers to create an atlas of cloud forms over this planet, ranging from high clouds and clear skies …