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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
A familiar story for many species around the world. NEW YORK (November 24, 2009) -- The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today a report revealing that the last remaining population of Siberian tigers has likely declined significantly due to the rising tide of poaching and habitat loss. WCS says the report will help inform Russian officials of what needs to be done to protect remaining...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
Uranium burned in a research program for next generation Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) fuel burns far more efficiently than existing light water reactors. WASHINGTON, D.C. — Idaho National Laboratory (INL) scientists have set a new world record with next-generation particle fuel for use in high temperature gas reactors (HTGRs). The Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Program, initiated by the Department...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | yesterday
Regular readers know I'm a big fan of a general movement toward more use of electric power for transportation, heating (using heat pumps), and for other applications where fossil fuels are currently used directly. Yesterday I discovered another reason to like electric motors: They are quieter on a river that is rich with wildlife. You end up finding more of the noisy wildlife. In my case the wildlife...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
An aging population costs lots of money to treat for all their diseases. Rejuvenation therapies would therefore save a lot of money for disease treatments. Our aging population will double the number of people with diabetes even without an increase in prevalence at each age. In the next 25 years, the number of Americans living with diabetes will nearly double, increasing from 23.7 million in 2009 to...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
That tire rots your brain. Women who store fat on their waist in middle age are more than twice as likely to develop dementia when they get older, reveals a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy. The study has just been published in the scientific journal Neurology. "Anyone carrying a lot of fat around the middle is at greater risk of dying prematurely due to a heart attack or stroke," says...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
An Oak Ridge National Laboratory program to do deep retrofits of housing for energy efficiency comes up with an average $20k price tag. How can this pay itself back? Deep energy retrofits are renovations to existing structures that use the latest in energy-efficient materials and technologies and result in significant energy reductions. Jeff Christian, the ORNL buildings technologies researcher heading...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
Some former fast track suburbs have lost population since the recession started. The recession and housing collapse have halted four decades of double-digit growth for nearly half of the nation's biggest rapidly expanding suburbs. Twenty-four of the 53 cities of 100,000 or more that grew by at least 10% every decade since 1970 lost population in the last two years. This is blamed on the recession....
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Will China's lack of democracy give it a leg up in the next wave of human space exploration? Michael Hanlon argues the next big step in space exploration takes too much time for a democracy to fund it. It may simply be that space exploration is incompatible with US democracy. A Mars shot would take four presidential terms at least. No president will ask taxpayers to fund something he won't be around...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
A person's own purified adult stem cells can reduce pain from a form of heart disease. CHICAGO --- The largest national stem cell study for heart disease showed the first evidence that transplanting a potent form of adult stem cells into the heart muscle of subjects with severe angina results in less pain and an improved ability to walk. The transplant subjects also experienced fewer deaths than those...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
About 73,000 years ago (74,000 by some estimates) a massive volcano on the Indonesia island of Sumatra erupted with a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 8. Such an eruption isso severe in its effects it basically would cause the deaths of billions of people today. New evidence finds that Toba's eruption caused deforestation in what is now central India. CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study provides...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Some obese people even think they could gain weight. ORLANDO, FLA., Nov. 17, 2009 — Some obese people misperceive that their body size is normal and think they don't need to lose weight, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2009. In the Dallas Heart Study of 5,893 people, researchers found that 8 percent of the 2,056 who were obese said they were...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans of mixed races tend to marry those of similar racial mix ratios. A team led by Neil Risch and Esteban González Burchard of the University of California, San Francisco, took DNA samples from married couples in Mexican and Puerto Rican populations, examining around 100 genetic markers from across the genome. From these markers, the researchers were able to discern the...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Using nanocrystal-based inks printed onto metal foil photovoltaics start-up Solexant claims it can get its costs under those of low cost leader First Solar. Making the entire cell using a roll-to-roll process gives the company an advantage over other thin-film photovoltaic companies that print on glass, which is heavier and limited to smaller areas, says Solexant CEO Damoder Reddy. "The cost benefit...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
An MIT press release about the use of nanoparticles to deliver gene therapy contains an interesting statistic about the size of the overall effort to develop clinically useful gene therapies: In the United States alone almost 1000 gene therapy clinical trials are underway. That's a surprisingly large number. There are nearly 1,000 clinical trials under way in the United States involving gene therapy,...
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FuturePundit (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
The direction of causation is not clear but a little bit of anxiety might be good for your health. Depressed smokers must have terrible life expectancy. A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King's College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking. Utilising a unique link between a survey of over...
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prakash m apte | 11/12/2008
PLANNING FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS : HOUSING Prakash m Apte NCST PANEL ON FUTUROLOGY’S (Short Study Series) A population distribution policy needs to be evolved in relation to the resource structure. The distribution pattern of settlements in a hierarchy of system of settlements needs to be based on a careful analysis of the development potential of each area and region. Location of settlements has to...
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