Articles from ‘elocal magazine’

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957, placing the first human-made object in space. Fast forward to 2024, and we are now launching more than a thousand satellites into space each year, improving our weather forecasts, boosting our internet coverage and propelling the field of Earth science into new terrain. And for researchers studying the profound changes gripping our planet due to the climate crisis, that means they’ve…

Nicholas Winton organized a rescue operation that brought approximately 669 children from Czechoslovakia to safety in Great Britain before the outbreak of World War II. · Nicholas Winton was born Nicholas Wertheimer on May 19, 1909, in West Hampstead, England, and baptized as a member of the Anglican Church by decision of his parents who were of German Jewish ancestry. He was a stockbroker by profession. · In December 1938, Martin Blake, a…

In a historic milestone, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the 70-year-old heir to the L'Oréal beauty empire and the world's richest woman, is now also the first woman to amass a staggering $100 billion fortune. · According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, her wealth recently crossed this monumental mark, securing her position as the 12th richest individual globally. · Bettencourt Meyers, born on July 10, 1953, inherited a substantial…

Some scientists are working to tackle climate change or cure cancer, but others are more focused on figuring out if time travel really would follow Back to the Future rules. From where “love” is felt in the body, to the scientific value of giant piles of bird poop, and talking to whales as practice for understanding aliens, here are the top 10 weirdest science stories of 2023. · Brainy computers · Nothing says “mad scientist” like…

Winston Peters campaigned on a policy of scrapping the current Royal Commission inquiry into Covid. His main complaint is the terms of reference are far too narrow. Peters wants a new, independent and broader inquiry. · David Seymour supported the Royal Commission when it was announced but expressed concerns about the failure to include key issues in its terms of reference. · The National Party also objected to the fact other political parties…

A team of scientists from China's Northeast Normal University has developed an electrochemical method for extracting uranium from ordinary seawater that has the potential to supply humanity with an effectively unlimited energy source. · By current estimates, there are about 8 million tonnes of known reserves of uranium on land. That's enough to fuel the world's nuclear reactors for centuries based on current technology, but in the sea there is…

Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland’s new commission for media regulation, has invited public feedback on the country’s first Online Safety Code for video-sharing platform services. The draft Code includes a recommendation, amongst many others, that platforms consider incorporating a feature that turns off recommender algorithms based on user profiling by default. · Safety measures designed to make video-sharing platform service providers (VPSP) legally…

Researchers have demonstrated a programmable nano-scale robot, made from a few strands of DNA, that's capable of grabbing other snippets of DNA, and positioning them together to manufacture new UV-welded nano-machines – including copies of itself. · The robots, according to New Scientist, are created using just four strands of DNA, and measure just 100 nanometers across, so about a thousand of them could squeeze up into a line the width of a…

A DARPA program is claiming a major breakthrough in quantum computing. The Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program has created the world's first quantum circuit with logical quantum bits (qubits). · Based on concepts that almost seem like magic or lunacy, quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize computers as we know them. By exploiting quantum effects and some relatively complex mathematics,…

COP28 is underway and grand commitments to triple nuclear power by 2050 are recognition of the following reality: There is no way, absolutely none, that the world’s energy transition away from fossil fuels can be achieved without a massive increase globally of nuclear power. Yet, western governments and companies are failing to get new nuclear technologies and projects off the ground. Outdated anti-nuclear opinions, massive initial capital…