PodSpec » World

Messing with our planet

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:21:40 +0000

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 [...]

Rewriting Macroeconomics Curriculum

cs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:12:28 +0000

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”.

At elite American universities, where endowments have shrivelled and hiring is down, increased [...]

Small island for sale

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:42:46 +0000

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. Any day now the Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) brewery beside the M4 motorway at Reading will brew its last [...]

Coming up empty

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:37:06 +0000

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 [...]

Stanford 2014

cs — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:32:38 +0000

Admission decisions will, in fact, be released sometime after 3pm (Pacific Time) today, March 26, six days ahead of schedule.

The Office of Undergraduate [...]

Single Molecule Transistor

cs — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:59:05 +0000

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.

They were able to manipulate the molecule’s different energy [...]

Rubber from Dandelions

cs — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:58:51 +0000

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 [...]

Native Flu Fighting Proteins

cs — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:07:42 +0000

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.

Shedding greater light on the human body’s first-line defense against the flu virus, [...]

Wireless Electricity

cs — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:27:24 +0000

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.

Instead of taking a hammer to the phone, Soljacic marveled at the fact that this device, and billions of others like it, was sitting [...]

News vs Newspaper

cs — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:09:53 +0000

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 [...]

Foundations of Economic Analysis

cs — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:41:29 +0000

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.

His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Mr. Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centers of graduate education in [...]

Birds and Aviation Fuel Efficiency

cs — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:10:28 +0000

Copying Birds may save aircraft fuel.

Source: The Economist. Photo: Corbis

BOTH Boeing and Airbus have trumpeted the efficiency of their newest aircraft, the 787 and A350 respectively. Their clever designs and lightweight composites certainly make a difference. But a group of researchers at Stanford University, led by Ilan Kroo, has suggested that airlines could take a [...]

Elephant Camps

cs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:50:39 +0000

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. The decision affects around 140 elephants in 26 zoos and 16 circuses in the country, said B.K. Gupta, an officer at India’s Central Zoo Authority.

The order followed complaints [...]

Giant Crack in Africa

cs — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:22:33 +0000

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

A new study [...]

Irish Carbon Budget

cs — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:58:58 +0000

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 [...]

Doomsday Seed Vault

cs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:06:37 +0000

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.

“The world faces many daunting challenges today, one of the greatest of which is how to feed a growing population in the context of [...]

Youngest circumnavigator

cs — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:35:30 +0000

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.

Mike Perham suffered knockdowns and damage to his yacht during the 24,000-mile (38,700-km) trip and the teenager from Hertfordshire, southern England, said he was now looking forward to a “good meal and [...]

Telescope turning 400

cs — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:47:31 +0000

Celebrating 400th anniversary of Galileo’s Telescope.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14213985

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Bolt 9.58s

cs — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:19:57 +0000

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.

American Tyson Gay was second in a time of 9.71, [...]

University Predating Harvard and Oxford

cs — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:01:59 +0000

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 [...]

Bhuvan challenging Google Earth

cs — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:20:56 +0000

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).

A web-based tool like Google Earth, Bhuvan promises to give better 3-D satellite imagery of India than is currently being offered by the US-based software giant plus a host [...]

Mapping the world

cs — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:22:23 +0000

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.

We may take these 21st-century services for granted. But someone still [...]

Flying Frogs

cs — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:46:04 +0000

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.

But the environmental group said the vital habitats of the mountain range were facing growing pressures from unsustainable development [...]

Largest English Newspaper

cs — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:51:32 +0000

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 [...]

Lincoln Stamp and Trading Ice

cs — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:05:39 +0000

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 [...]