IN 1975 scientists expert in a new and potentially world-changing technology, genetic engineering, gathered at Asilomar, on the Monterey peninsula in California, to ponder the ethics and safety of the course they were embarking on. The year before, they had imposed on themselves a voluntary moratorium on experiments which involved the transfer of genes from [...]
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IN MORE than 30 years of teaching introductory macroeconomics, says Alan Blinder of Princeton University, he has never seen interest as high as it was last year. At Harvard, says David Laibson, students in his undergraduate macroeconomics course are “chomping at the bit”. The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft seems to symbolise a hollowing-out of corporate Britain. The truth is rather more complicated. THE Thames Valley provides two contrasting examples of what happens when foreign companies buy British ones. THE renewable-fuel standard released in February by America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paints an ambitious picture of biofuels’ future. It wants the amount of the stuff used as transport fuel to climb from 13 billion gallons (49 billion litres) in 2010 to 36 billion gallons in 2022, requiring by far the largest part of that [...] Admission decisions will, in fact, be released sometime after 3pm (Pacific Time) today, March 26, six days ahead of schedule. MANHASSET, NY — Researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have successfully created a transistor made from a single molecule. The researchers showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor. The tyres of the future may be made from dandelions. OTHER than being an ingredient of the more recherché sorts of salad, herbal tea or wine, dandelions are pretty useless plants. Or, at least, they were. But one species, a Russian variety called Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), may yet make the big time. It produces molecules [...] A team led by Harvard researchers has discovered a family of naturally occurring proteins in human cells that protect against influenza and other illnesses—a finding that may lead to methods to speed up vaccine production and to new flu prevention drugs for humans. Marin Soljacic couldn’t sleep. The problem was his wife’s Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled. How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry — in 1845. CHANGE is in the air. A new communications technology threatens a dramatic upheaval in America’s newspaper industry, overturning the status quo and disrupting the business model that has served the industry for years. This “great revolution”, warns one editor, will mean that some [...] Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. Copying Birds may save aircraft fuel. Source: The Economist. Photo: Corbis All elephants living in Indian zoos and circuses will be moved to wildlife parks and game sanctuaries where the animals can graze more freely, officials said Friday. A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. LONDON – Ireland is to ban the traditional lightbulb with householders forced to switch to new long-life low-energy bulbs. Legislation is being introduced to ban the sale of the normal incandescent lightbulb from January, 2009 so as the normal lightbulb breaks, householders will have to replace them with the more environmentally friendly long-life bulb which uses [...] UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Wednesday a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost, filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds in case food crops are wiped out by a catastrophe. LONDON (Reuters) – A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on Thursday after nine months at sea. Celebrating 400th anniversary of Galileo’s Telescope. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14213985 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt set a new world record as he cruised to a stunning victory in the 100m at the World Championships in Berlin. The 22-year-old Jamaican stormed home in a time of 9.58 seconds to leave the rest of the field in his wake. Built in 427 AD, world’s first university predating Harvard and Oxford.
At a summit meeting of leaders next week in the Philippines, senior officials from India, Singapore, Japan and perhaps other countries [...] Google Earth’s got some competition now — from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which today unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan (meaning earth in Sanskrit). Between GPS devices on your car’s dashboard and digital maps of almost any locale in the world on your smartphone or laptop, it’s hard to get lost these days. A flying frog, the world’s smallest deer and the first new monkey to be found in over a century are among 350 new species discovered in the eastern Himalayas in the past decade, the WWF said Monday. The Times of India Online has emerged as the world’s No.1 English newspaper website in terms of page views. According to the latest figures from internet marketing research company ComScore, timesofindia.com with 159 million page views in May 2009 was way ahead of the New York Times, Sun, Washington Post, Daily Mail and USA Today [...] WASHINGTON: When the letter with the 90-cent Lincoln stamp was mailed in 1873 by an ice exporter in Boston to his office in Calcutta, Mohandas Gandhi (later Mahatma) was a toddler of four, Narendranath Dutta (later Swami Vivekananda) was a stripling of ten, and Ulysses Grant (later to visit Calcutta) was President of the United [...] |
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