The city of Paris at night. By 2040, all oil exploration and production in France will end. Wikimedia Commons.
Today, Emmanuel Macron, the current president of France, announced that his country would no longer allow for oil exploration in its territory and by 2040, all oil extraction in France would be ended. Now, at first, you might be tempted to say this is merely symbolic as France isn’t exactly an huge oil producer, but you’d be wrong. France does have some significan ...read more
(Originally published 12/16)
CC BY-SA 3.0
Make sure you’re on Santa’s “nice list” this year. Lend your hands, hearts and brains to science during these 12 days leading up to Christmas!
On the 1st day of Christmas, the Forest Restoration Alliance gave to me:
A chance to monitor the invasive insects that attack both hemlocks and Fraser firs (the most popular Christmas Tree in North America).
On the 2nd day of Christmas, Audubon gave to me:
Two turtle doves that I ...read more
A feeding bot rolls through the racks of crickets at Aspire Food Group’s test farm in Austin, Texas. (Credit: Aspire Food Group)
When Gabe Mott, Shobhita Soor and Mohammed Ashour wanted to proposed building a commercial-scale cricket farm optimized with robots and data, the idea earned the McGill University students the $1 million Hult Prize, the largest student competition for social good, in 2013.
But when it came to launching the concept, they needed to leave convention behind, includ ...read more
(Credit: NASA)
In space, astronauts see stars in more than one way. Ever since the 1960s, space travelers have reported seeing bright flashes of light even with their eyes closed.
They’re usually described as either bursts or streaks, and are most often white. They seem to be frequent, too, many astronauts complained of trouble sleeping because of the disruptive scintillations. The culprit seems to be cosmic rays, highly energetic particles emanating from far-off sources that are normall ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
For many who value science, 2017 will be remembered as the dawn of a new era. January saw the inauguration of Donald Trump, a president who has denied climate change and filled his inner circle with anti-science activists. But the year was as much an awakening as an annus horribilis: Researchers and citizens alike, in the U.S. and beyond, chose to speak out at rallies, on social media and even in the political arena — unprecedented numbers of scientists are consideri ...read more
A parasitic fungus that controls the behaviour of fruit flies has, for the first time, been studied in the lab.
In a fascinating preprint posted on Biorxiv, researchers Carolyn Elya et al. report how they discovered the pathogen in the wild near Berkeley, California. The fungus belongs to the species Entomophthora muscae, which is already known to prey on various species of wild flies. But Elya et al. found a way to infect laboratory flies with the disease, thus allowing them to study the fungus ...read more
An unmanned military robot rolls out of a U.S. Marine amphibious vehicle during the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise 2017 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. Credit: Lance Cpl. Jamie Arzola
A United Nations meeting on lethal autonomous weapons ended in disappointment for advocates hoping that the world would make progress on regulating or banning “killer robot” technologies. The UN group of governm ...read more
A view acquired by the new GOES-East satellite on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. Click on the image to see the latest view of the Continental United States. And then hit the Play button on the left of that web page to watch an animation of recent images. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA/SLIDER)
A brand spanking new advanced U.S. satellite is now fully operational and monitoring weather, wildfires, lightning and other phenomena.
The satellite formerly known as GOES-16, now renamed GOES-East and fully ope ...read more
