Plants make up 80 percent, but human activity chopped that number in half over the last 10,000 years The human population on Earth is about 7.6 billion people (and counting). But according to a new global census of biomass, humans … Continued
Indigenous Australian claims to be the most ancient continuous civilisation on Earth have been backed up by the first extensive testing of their DNA. Their origins date back more than 50,000 years to the Old Stone Age, according to the research. Scientists … Continued
South Australia has recently put the world’s biggest lithium battery into operation – but perhaps it should’ve waited. A local startup says it’s built the world’s first working thermal battery, a device with a lifetime of at least 20 years that can … Continued
A new scientific study points toward lifelong neuron formation in the human brain’s hippocampus, with implications for memory and disease. Not everyone was convinced. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla was the senior author on last year’s Nature paper, which questioned the existence of neurogenesis. Alvarez-Buylla, … Continued
DNA is spelled out with four letters, or bases. Researchers have now built a system with eight. It may hold clues to the potential for life elsewhere in the universe and could also expand our capacity to store digital data … Continued
The Pentagon thinks bugs could hold the secrets to conscious experience. The Pentagon’s emerging technologies unit put out a call last week for proposals that use insect brains to control robots — because they could be used to create efficient new models for … Continued
Algorithms are increasingly being used to make ethical decisions. Perhaps the best example of this is a high-tech take on the ethical dilemma known as the trolley problem: if a self-driving car cannot stop itself from killing one of two … Continued
Abandoned coal mines across the UK could be brought back to life as huge underground farms, according to academics. Mine shafts and tunnels are seen as “the perfect environment” for growing food such as vegetables and herbs. The initiative is … Continued
covative thinks it can use mycelia, the hair-like network of cells that grows in mushrooms, to help build everything from lab-grown meat to 3D-printed organs to biofabricated leather. Can mushrooms be the platform we build the future on? When the … Continued
Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of … Continued
This is the first of two articles on this theme by Henk van Houten, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Royal Philips. The second article, which focuses more on human beings than machines will also be posted here in the … Continued
Social supermarkets have emerged in Britain in the past five years as a response to food poverty and food waste. These non-charitable initiatives sell food “surplus” to people on low incomes at heavily discounted prices, alongside providing them with social … Continued
New York City is taking to court the globe’s five largest oil companies, holding them responsible for current and impending damages to the city as a result of alleged oil-driven climate change. The lawsuit filed this week against Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, … Continued
The futures foundation first reviewed Stewart Brand’s book “The Clock of the Long Now” when it came out in 1999. The actual clock is now being constructed in the USA. The entire article about the construction of the clock can … Continued
EARTH is observed as never before. Satellites track typhoons, monitor volcanic-ash plumes and catalogue the changing ways in which human beings use the land. The sort of high-quality imagery that, a couple of decades ago, was the preserve of spies … Continued
At the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, work is almost finished on a huge new solar plant that’s set to provide one megawatt of renewable power for the local electricity grid. The new plant sits just a hundred metres … Continued
Self-driving cars are now a regular fixture in some American cities, but they are heavily reliant on high-precision 3D maps of the roads. That means they can’t tackle the vast majority of the country that hasn’t been charted, but MIT … Continued
Coal, which fueled the world’s biggest economies for more than a century, is increasingly losing out to renewables. The latest example of how one of the dirtiest fossil fuels is being squeezed out of the market came this week in … Continued
Scientists found that neurons in mammalian brains were capable of producing photons of light, or “Biophotons”! The photons, strangely enough, appear within the visible spectrum. They range from near-infrared through violet, or between 200 and 1,300 nanometers. Scientists have an exciting suspicion that our … Continued
s it a tram, or is it a train, or even a fancy bus? The world’s first electric-powered ‘trackless train’ has been launched in China. Using virtual rail lines on the streets of Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, the new Autonomous Rail … Continued