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Category: sustainability – Page 541

A massive, previously unexplored cave discovered by accident in Canada has been named “Sarlacc’s Pit,” after the multi-tentacled alien beast that first made an appearance in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

Officials from Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change first came across the huge cavern in Wells Gray Provincial Park in British Columbia while conducting a caribou count by helicopter in March.

The sinkhole was later discovered to be the entrance to a cave, and is 328 feet long, 196 feet broad and 600 feet deep. Officials believe it may be Canada’s largest cave.

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Tesla launched a new ‘Enhanced Anti-theft’ system as an aftermarket product last month and we now take a first look at one of the very first installations on a Model X.

There have been strings of Tesla thefts earlier this year that prompt the automaker to offer several new security features.

We reported on several Tesla vehicle thefts through relay attacks in Europe earlier this year.

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As local, federal, and international policies targeting the quality of the air we breathe continue to evolve, questions arise of how effective existing policies have been in improving human health. For example, how many lives have been saved by tough air pollution policies? How many illnesses have been caused by lax policies?

US ozone levels map highlighting highest levels

Annual mean levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution declined in the United States between 1990 (left) and 2010 (right), leading to thousands of lives saved, according to researcher Jason West.

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The American missile defense system, strategically placed all around the globe, has been the centerpiece of the “defensive” capabilities of Washington for years. The system relies on anti-aircraft missiles, supposed to shoot down incoming hostile projectiles. But the emergence of unconventional weaponry –namely the hypersonic missiles– has raised demand for new, equally unconventional defense systems.

Apart from hitting an incoming projectile with an intercepting one, the anti-missile research and development in the US revolved around two main ideas – using lasers and hitting hostile missiles with a kinetic device. The US military-industrial companies have been recycling the two concepts for years, fielding several prototypes that never entered full-scale production.

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Analyst Salveen Richter and colleagues laid it out:

The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies… While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

For a real-world example, they pointed to Gilead Sciences, which markets treatments for hepatitis C that have cure rates exceeding 90 percent. In 2015, the company’s hepatitis C treatment sales peaked at $12.5 billion. But as more people were cured and there were fewer infected individuals to spread the disease, sales began to languish. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that the treatments will bring in less than $4 billion this year.

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Critics say that geoengineering efforts are Band-Aid solutions that treat the symptoms of climate change instead of the cause: global carbon emissions. Jim Thomas, the co-executive director of an environmental advocacy organization called the ETC Group, told Nature that he fears the Harvard project could push the concept of geoengineering into the mainstream.

But advocates say that anything that could buy some extra time in the face of looming climate catastrophe is worth exploring.

“I’m studying a chemical substance,” Harvard researcher Zhen Dai told Nature. “It’s not like it’s a nuclear bomb.”

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I’m Caleb Harper, principal investigator and director of the Open Agriculture initiative at the MIT Media Lab. Kent Larson courtesy of MIT Media Lab.

In his book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, Barry Estabrook details how grocery store tomatoes are both less nutritious and delicious than those grown decades ago. Industrial farming now grows crops for yield, sacrificing taste and vitamins for an easy-to-harvest, shippable product. It’s why apples at your local supermarket are probably about a year old. Caleb Harper, a principal research scientist at MIT and director of the OpenAg Initiative, wants to use technology to grow food that’s healthier, tastier, and more sustainable.

“Growing for nutrition and growing for flavor, it’s not really something anyone does,” he told Digital Trends at the recent ReThink Food conference in Napa, California.

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Right now, in the desert just east of Reno, Nevada, Tesla is drilling into recently laid asphalt to install more electric vehicle chargers in the parking lot of the Gigafactory. The company has hired so many new workers in recent years that it needs more space to let them charge their Nissan Leafs, Chevy Bolts, Toyota Priuses, and, of course, Teslas. But before long, those chargers will be ripped right back out, along with the asphalt, and moved to a new spot to make room for more factory space.

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