Meat tax would serve health and beat climate change
The global livestock industry causes 15 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions and meat consumption is rising around the world, but dangerous climate change cannot be avoided unless this is radically curbed. Many people already eat far too much meat, seriously damaging their health and Read More...
How the people closest to death teach the greatest lessons of life
We’ve done a great job of curing illnesses, managing pain, and helping people live longer, but we still haven’t figured out how to deal gracefully with death. It is a painful part of life, but the profound thing is we can learn lessons from death that can make life fuller and happier. See here Read More...
How British plant-hunters served science
In a corner of the Yorkshire Dales, far from the beaten track, you might stumble on the peaceful village of Clapham. Now known as a stop-off point for exploring the dales, it was once the home of a rock garden full of plants never seen before in Read More...
Canadian researchers say you can improve memory with this one weird trick
Here's a study tip just in time for exam season: if you want to remember something, read it out loud. It's called the "production effect" — a term coined by the Canadian researcher who discovered it, Colin Read More...
Batteries can't solve all our energy-storage problems. Here's the solution
Sometimes, there can be too much of a good thing. Every so often, from California to Germany, there’s news of “negative electricity prices,” a peculiar side effect of global efforts to generate clean Read More...
Lyft is now offering rides in self-driving cars in a major US city
Lyft has begun offering self-driving rides in Boston. The autonomous vehicles have human backup drivers ready to take the wheel if any problems Read More...
Solar energy helps African village connect to the Internet for almost nothing
While new telecommunications has brought on much positive change in rural South Africa, the cost of data and airtime for these are amongst the highest in the world. One survey found that people spend up to 22% of their total income on telecommunications. That’s why a team of researchers have Read More...
Why shipping used clothes to East Africa has become a burden for locals
East Africa no longer wants your old clothes. For decades, countries such as Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda have received shipments of second-hand clothing from North American and European charities. These charities gather donations from well-meaning citizens who were Read More...
US health care is incredibly wasteful. To clean it up, we should look to India
We may not think about it much, but the medical industry produces plenty of waste from treatments, tossing disposable gowns, caps, booties, gloves and blankets, in addition to using loads of energy to drive machines needed in diagnosis and surgery. And that's not even talking anesthesia, which is a Read More...
Scientists have discovered a massive “carbon sink” in the Congo
Deep in the heart of the Congo rainforest, Congolese and British scientists have made an extraordinary discovery. What they have come across is a huge basin of peat, a mud-like material that builds up over centuries and stores carbon that would normally be released into the atmosphere during Read More...