By Oleg Vukmanovic and Karolin Schaps LONDON (Reuters) - Signs of trouble aboard a North Sea drilling platform where a natural gas leak has triggered fears of a massive explosion began in a plugged well a month ago, operator Total said on Friday.
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Read More »Who’s Responsible for Meeting the Cyber Threat?
Recently an old colleague, Dr Andrew Rogoyski, came to lecture to our MSc students on how government deals with cyber security. Dr Rogoyski has studied the interactions between government and industry and his talk led to a key question for which there was a surprising range of views
Read More »The Cool City Challenge: Getting a Low-Carbon Lifestyle to Catch On
Most people are aware that reducing carbon emissions could help the planet. But convincing a particular individual to change his or her behavior in ways that emit less carbon not to mention the behavior of an entire city can be a monumental challenge.
Read More »No Matter How Huge, Mega Millions Jackpot Will Always Be a Bad Bet
Yesterday my father-in-law asked me to buy him $100 in lottery tickets.
Read More »Neuroscientists Can Stumble When They Make Conclusions from Examining Single Patients
Trepinated skull of Phineas Gage Our current understanding of how the brain works often borrows from observations of the anomalous patient.
Read More »Struggling Young Readers Like Kindles
Kindles, Nooks and other E-readers catch flack for threatening the future of printed books. But reading itself may get a boost from the devices
Read More »Compressed-Air Car Winds Way To Market
Air-powered cars have been on the cusp of reality for more than a century. Sure, compressed air is a clean fuel, but it's not efficient enough to power a car engine that will take you very far or very fast. [More]
Read More »Microbial Mules: Scientists Experiment With Engineering Bacteria to Transport Nanoparticles and Drugs
Tiny robots that swim through our blood vessels attacking viruses and malignant cells have not quite crossed the line that separates science fiction from science--but there might be a way to jump-start their development.
Read More »Tyler Cowen Shares His New Rules For Mindful Foodies
Go grocery shopping with a top economist. The best food doctrine may be no doctrine at all. In his new book, An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies, Tyler Cowen argues that while Americans will pay a pretty penny to eat well, expensive food isn't always the best.
Read More »Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Were Genetic Mutants
A typical sunflower with a dark center and a mane of large yellow 'petals' (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The word “sunflower” brings to mind a mane of vibrant yellow petals encircling a dark whorl of seeds.
Read More »One billion stars (and a huge amount of data)
To say a picture is worth a thousand words would be selling this one rather short.
Read More »Brain’s Nerves Found to Line Up Like a Grid
By Helen Shen of Nature magazine The nerves in a human brain form a three-dimensional grid of criss-crossing fibers, say researchers who have mapped them. The regular pattern creates a scaffold to guide brain development and support more complex and variable brain structures, says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Read More »A Rosie Future: Jetsons -Like Gadgets with "Ambient Intelligence" Are Key to Smart Homes and Cities
Fifty years after The Jetsons promised us a future of robot maids, flying cars, video phones and meals at the push of a button, it seems that reality may actually surpass this futuristic vision. By 2062, the year the animated show was set, advances in artificial intelligence , sensor networks and robotics promise to make the Jetsons's home in Skypad Apartments, and indeed in all of Orbit City, seem quaint by comparison (although flying cars may remain out of reach--especially ones that beat parking problems by folding into a suitcase).
Read More »Climate Change Poses Disaster Risk for Most of the Planet
Climate change is bringing more droughts, heat waves and powerful rainstorms, shifts that will require governments to change how they cope with natural disasters to protect human lives and the world economy, a new U.N. report says.
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