Miscellaneous
Meet Charles Arntzen, creator of world’s most promising anti-Ebola drug from tobacco plants
Bioengineered plants meet vaccines. It actually is a lot more promising than it may sound. A pioneer in the field is Arizona State University Professor Charles Arntzen. He has been working on nothing less than the world’s most promising anti-Ebola drug. ZMapp is an injectable synthetic serum made Read More...
Global warming soundtrack sounds eerily beautiful
An astonishing experiment by a music student and his teacher at the University of Minnesota has yielded a piece for string quartet that is as hauntingly beautiful as it is moving. Their goal: giving global warming a sound representation, just as animated color maps from NASA provide a visual Read More...
Lawyers in public-service jobs rank highest in happiness than their higher-paid peers
Passing the bar and becoming a lawyer is not all that it is made to be. At least not on the happiness and well-being fronts. Research shows that lawyers have significantly higher incidence of mental health, depression and substance abuse. One group, however, stands out for being significantly Read More...
Indigenous crops to provide food security in the dry American Southwest
The plight of Native people losing their way of life, including their agricultural know-how, and adopting the cheap diet provided by the food industry, is a well-documented story. The debilitating diabetes epidemic that afflicts these communities compounds poverty and food insecurity. Rebuilding Read More...
Could part-time work be the key to happiness?
Work-related stress is an epidemic linked to degrading public health in America. Not so much in the Netherlands, ranked the third happiest country on earth in this year’s World Happiness Report. Indeed, one of its secrets seems to be the widespread practice of the reduced-hour week. Working Read More...
Ecuador to break tree-planting record this Saturday
Ecuador’s latest public campaign aims for results in the ground. Over 350,000 tree seeds will be sowed Saturday by some 35,000 Ecuadoreans, breaking a Guinness World Record. It is about government’s commitment to—and citizens’ positive action for—the environment, said the Environment Read More...
How the sharing economy can boost the rooftop solar market
Nearly half of households are currently unable to host a solar photovoltaic system, according to the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. One major reason is that the rooftop solar market is closed to renters. Boston-based startup Yeloha intends to explore that untapped Read More...
Urban algae canopy brings nature and technology together
Nothing like checking out the latest concepts of ecologically minded designers and architects to regain faith in the potential that tomorrow’s urban world can bring. For instance, how about this algae canopy, featured at the Milan Expo, that produces a forest’s worth of oxygen daily? You will Read More...
U.K. boasts a 23-percent increase in female MPs in last elections
Women in U.K. politics have come a long way since the era of Margaret Thatcher. Last week’s general elections sent 191 women to Parliament (29% of seats), by contrast to 19 in the 1979 elections that brought the first female Prime Minister to power. Guess which party saw the biggest Read More...
What makes us happy has changed over the past 80 years
Back in 1938, security, knowledge and religion were the top three most important aspects of happiness. Good humor and leisure made the cut some 76 years later, according to psychologist Sandie McHugh from the University of Bolton in the U.K. She presented her study this week the Annual Conference Read More...