The entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Credit Spencer Lowell for The New York Times
It was a freakishly warm evening last October when a maintenance worker first discovered the water — torrents of it, rushing into the entrance tunnel of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a storage facility dug some 400 feet into the side of a mountain on a Norwegian island near the North Pole. A storm was dumping rain at a time of year when the temperature was usually well below freezing; because the water had short-circuited the electrical system, the electric pumps on site were useless. This subterranean safe house holds more than 5,000 species of essential food crops, including hundreds of thousands of varieties of wheat and rice. It was supposed to be an impenetrable, modern-day Noah’s ark for plants, a life raft against climate change and catastrophe. Local firefighters helped pump out the tunnel until the temperature dropped and the water froze. Townspeople from the village at […]
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Stephan: Exactly as predicted in SR.
Credit: Shutterstock
Air travel seems to get increasingly unpleasant as time goes by. Tighter security, more passengers, fewer amenities, and additional fees all add up to an often unfriendly experience in the skies (not to mention being forcefully dragged off an overbooked plane). Now, a new study in the journal Climatic Change posits that climate change is going to make this whole endeavor even worse by making it harder for planes to get off the ground.
You may recall earlier this summer when a 120-degree heatwave in the Southwest forced American Airlines to cancel more than 40 regional flights due to dangerous takeoff temperatures. This led to a number of passenger delays and a lot of internet explainersand hand-wringing.
While the heatwave approached record-breaking levels, in the future this type of heat will be more common, and thus more disruptive.
The first global analysis of this impact, the study found that in coming decades during the hottest parts of the day between 10 and 30 percent of fully loaded planes may have to […]
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, - Sunday Express (U.K.)
Stephan: I first picked up the Homo Superior Trend in 2005 from a paper in a genetics journal, and have been following it and writing about it since then. The momentum of this trend is increasing; here is the latest.
It is my belief that by 2050 humanity with be faced with an existential crisis, the creation of Homo Superior, a new species that will be smarter and healthier free of chronic diseases compared to Homo Sapiens.
Because we are a culture based on greed and profit I presume that the rich will be the ones to first avail themselves of this new technology because it will be expensive and, because it includes gene-lining, all of their children will share those benefits of health and intelligence. The implications of this fork in humanity are barely discussed, but will soon be upon us.
David King, director of Human Genetics Alert (HGA), voiced his fears over what is widely viewed as the first step on a slippery slope.
He told express.co.uk: “It’s true that the more and more animals that are genetically engineered using these techniques brings us closer to the possibility of genetic engineering of humans.
“Dogs as a species, in respect of cloning are very difficult, and even more difficult to clone human beings.
“There’s no medical case for it, the scientists are interested in being the first person in the world to create a genetically engineer child.
“They’re interested in science and the technology and their careers. They will continue pushing the regulations for it.“That does set us on the road to eugenics. I am very concerned with what I’m seeing.”
An army of super-humans has been a staple of science fiction and superhero comics for decades – but the super-dog technology brings it closer to reality.
The Chinese researchers first self-bred cloned dog was named Little Long Long.
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Sara Chodosh, - The Raw Story/Popular Science
Stephan: We live in a matrix of life, and we have so much to learn, if only we can put aside our hubris and assumptions.
Credit: Popular Science
A flock of ravens ravaging a carcass may technically be called an unkindness, but the real unkindness is using that term. Everyone is always hating on the smarty pants, but ravens are not terrifying. Do they have sharp, curved beaks that they use to tear dead animals to pieces? Yes. Are their calls reminiscent of a creepy laugh? Most definitely. But just because they’re masterminds doesn’t make them evil—it just makes them awesome.
Ravens can solve puzzles, trick other animals into helping them out, and communicate with each other at a level even apes can’t match. And now we know they can hatch plans. These aren’t dastardly plans to overthrow humans in a battle for control of the Earth (we hope)—they’re plans to get better food for themselves. It’s like the marshmallow test—more on that in a minute—but for birds that have more self control than most children.
This latest revelation comes courtesy of two cognitive scientists at Lund University in Sweden who literally put ravens to test. They published their findings on Friday in […]
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