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Volcanoes are notorious features on the landscape, but the mountains of Earth’s surface do not claim all of the volcanological action in the world. Concealed below the waves, underwater volcanoes mean that earth, fire and water can explode into a fury at any time in certain places, sometimes with fascinating results. Today, we’ll look at the most fascinating underwater volcanoes worldwide. While scarce, video footage has been included where available.

8. Kick ‘Em, Jenny

How far off are we from hopping on and off air taxis as a familiar local mode of transport? Eyes this week were fixed on one company aggressively keeping up its bit to open commercial routes and bring this type of mobility to life.

Volocopter on Wednesday presented its latest air design, dubbed VoloCity. The machine can accommodate two people and hand luggage.

Ben Sampson, Aerospace Testing International, noted that this is actually the fourth electrical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) iteration but “the first that meets the new European Aviation Safety Agency standards.”

In this episode of our CleanTech Talk podcast interview series, Zach Shahan sits down with Tomek Gać, Co-Founder of Tesla Shuttle and founder and CEO of Quriers.pl and Energia Słonca, to discuss the successes, challenges, and future of electric delivery vehicles. You can listen to the full conversation in the embedded player below. Below that embedded SoundCloud player is a brief summary of the topics covered, but tune into the podcast to follow the full discussion.

It’s called a sudden stratospheric warming event — and, unlike the name might suggest, the rare phenomenon could spell a burst of bitterly cold weather for Australia and New Zealand over coming weeks.

If so, it could be the southern hemisphere’s own version of the icy “beast from the east” that paralysed Europe in 2018, reported the New Zealand Herald.

A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event kicks off when the temperature of the stratosphere — that’s 30km to 50km above ground — over the South Pole climbs by more than 25C. Meteorologists from New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) think it’s likely this is about to happen next week.

Circa 2013


When a bomb explodes, you can’t outmaneuver it; you probably can’t even take cover quickly enough to protect yourself. Instead, you have to hope that there’s something—anything—already in the way that can shield you from the blast. Here are five of the best future bomb-proof materials that could end up saving lives in our increasingly uncertain future.

Photo by Jared Belson https://pestpush.com

Yes, bubonic plague—the Black Death that killed millions in the Middle Ages— is still out there. It even infects and kills people in the United States. Without treatment, half the people infected die, but the Food and Drug Administration approved ciprofloxacin in 2015 to treat plague, and it has just successfully been used to stop the infection in five people.

Before ciprofloxacin was approved for use, people infected with Yersinia pestis, the plague-causing bacteria, were treated with streptomycin or doxycycline. Streptomycin kills the bacteria, but has serious side effects, and doxycycline inhibits the bacteria, but doesn’t completely kill it.

Humans usually get plague after being bitten by a rodent flea that is carrying the Y. pestis bacteria. Rock squirrels, wood rats, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks, mice, voles, and rabbits also can become infected with plague from a flea bite, and fleas that bite them can, in turn, transmit the infection to humans by biting them.