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In June 1914, when a rebellious student shot a member of the Austrian royal family on the other side of the world, most people in New Zealand would barely have heard of Serbia, the scene of the assassination. · Even less would New Zealanders have imagined that within weeks their young men would be volunteering in droves to lay down their lives for king and country as a result of this act. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the…

Construction is the world’s largest industry, employing seven percent of the planet's working-age adults, contributing 13 percent of the world’s GDP and completing floor space equivalent to the city of Paris every seven days. · The construction industry is also the most inefficient, least digitised and most polluting industry (37% of ALL emissions), so change is imperative from macro economic necessity alone. For the builders of the world faced…

Over the first half of the 20th century the world saw growing rates of heart disease mortality. From the 1920s to the 1960s more and more people were dying from heart attacks. It was described as an epidemic of heart disease. But in the mid-1960s heart disease mortality suddenly plateaued. · In the United States, for example, around 35% of overall deaths could be attributed to cardiac causes in 1966. From that point on heart attack mortality…

A perfect storm is brewing for China's most densely populated areas due to rising sea levels and subsiding land that has been accelerated beyond normal fluctuations. Scientists have sounded the alarm that, without intervention, urban areas below sea level could triple in size by 2120, impacting up to 128 million people. · It's a grave warning for a nation that has rapidly urbanized like nowhere else on the planet. In 1980, those living in…

This extraordinary residence is crafted from the fuselage of a Boeing 737 aircraft and perched on the edge of a cliffside in Bali. Named the Private Jet Villa, its functional cabin has been replaced with an all-new luxurious interior, including a bedroom with a jacuzzi in the cockpit. · The Private Jet Villa was designed by Geometrium Studio and is located on a gorgeous spot 150 m (492 ft) above sea level, on top of the Nyang Nyang Beach Cliff…

NASA has given the green light for the nuclear-powered Dragonfly rotorcraft to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Approval for the 2028 interplanetary mission comes after years of delay due to COVID-19 and a series of cost overruns. · Titan may be about 746 million miles (1.2 billion km) from Earth and one of the most difficult bodies in the solar system to explore, but it's such an oddity that it attracts scientific explorers despite the…

A recent article entitled “Using ChatGPT to predict the future of personalized medicine" in the prestigious journal Nature offers the following outlook: · “Personalised medicine is a novel frontier in health care that is based on each person’s unique genetic makeup. It represents an exciting opportunity to improve the future of individualised health care for all individuals.” · At the centre of the personalised medicine hype is a research…

Researchers have tracked muscle contractions in a bird's vocal tract, and reconstructed the song it was silently singing in its sleep. The resulting audio is a very specific call, allowing the team to figure out what the bird's dream was about. · When birds sleep, the part of their brains dedicated to daytime singing remains active, showing patterns that resemble those produced while awake. Researchers from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA)…

Building Empires ( district and city councils ) · So let’s go back to basics and look at what councils are supposed to do for their ratepayers. · A quick look at the Local Government Act 2002 shows the expectations of councils, briefly– · The purpose of local government is – · - To enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities - To promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of…

It may not be to everyone's taste, but kombucha tea may be able to deliver the benefits of fasting, without the hardest part – the fasting itself. Researchers found that when the yeasts and bacteria from the fermented, sweetened tea colonized the gut, they altered fat metabolism, without any other dietary changes, resulting in lower fat stores. · At the center of these findings is the flora found in kombucha tea's SCOBY (Symbiotic Cultures of…