Scientists have discovered a record number of dead fir trees in Oregon, in a foreboding sign of how drought and the climate crisis are ravaging the American west. A recent arial survey found that more than a million acres of forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by Read more…
Germany is bleeding cash to keep the lights on. Almost half a trillion dollars, and counting, since the Ukraine war jolted it into an energy crisis nine months ago. And it may not be enough. “How severe this crisis will be and how long it will last greatly depends on Read more…
The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) on Thursday issued digital asset guidance to state-regulated banks laying out what information financial institutions must submit before getting approval to engage in virtual currency-related activities. The guidance, one of the clearest paths forward yet for banks to offer cryptocurrency services, Read more…
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three — and paradise is when you have none. — Doug Larson
Last March, brain-computing interface expert Tom Oxley sat down to dinner with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to talk about Oxley’s nascent company, Synchron. That meal in Ojai, Calif., ended with something better than dessert: Bezos told Oxley that he wanted to invest in the business. Synchron said Thursday it completed Read more…
Theoretical physicist Sankar Das Sarma wrote a thought-provoking essay for New Scientist magazine’s Lost in Space-Time newsletter: I was recently reading an old article by string theorist Robbert Dijkgraaf in Quanta Magazine entitled “There are no laws of physics”. You might think it a bit odd for a physicist to Read more…
“A teenage girl’s incurable cancer has been cleared from her body,” reports the BBC, “in the first use of a revolutionary new type of medicine….” Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital used “base editing” to perform a feat of biological engineering to build her a new living drug. Six months Read more…