intelligentliving

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Recycling Plant by Michael Wells

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Meet a medieval woman named ‘Tora’ who lived 800 years ago in Norway

Using skeletal remains unearthed in Norway, researchers created a realistic-looking model of what a medieval woman nicknamed 'Tora’ may have looked like.

sulc.us/tora

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Recycling Plant by Michael Wells

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Transparent wood could soon replace plastics

Transparent wood promises to be an environmentally friendly substitute for glass or plastic used for making car windshields, see-through packaging and biomedical devices, according to a study.

Published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, the study said transparent wood reduced ecological impacts on the environment because of its renewable and biodegradable properties. It is also said to be cost-efficient as it is five times more efficient than glass thus cutting energy cost significantly.

The world currently produces around 400 million tons of plastic waste each year, with increasing levels of single-use plastic which is used and then discarded, according to the UN Environment Program. Now, transparent wood is emerging as one of the most promising substitute materials of the future.

“Transparent wood as a material can replace the environmentally harmful petroleum-based plastics such as polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), acrylic, polyethylene, etc.,” said Prodyut Dhar, an author of the study and assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology’s biochemical engineering school.

Read more.

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What if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? Why our world might look very different

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. Over 90% of all species vanished. When the dust settled, all dinosaurs except a handful of birds had gone extinct. Imagine the asteroid had missed, and dinosaurs survived. Picture highly evolved raptors planting their flag on the moon.

sulc.us/dinoswhatif

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Douglas Davis, Art and the Future (Praeger, 1973).

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‘Extinct’ clam from 30,000 years ago turns up just fine in California

A species of clam known only by the 28,000-year-old fossils it left behind has turned up alive and well on an American shoreline.

sulc.us/clamalive

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The twenty-first century is the century of information and telecommunication technologies. The importance of technology in education is evident. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a student who does not use computers, electronic gadgets, or the internet. Students receive and send emails to their professors and use resources...

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Yet the way ant colonies have been idealized and used as a trope oversimplifies entomological reality as much as it does human society. There are more than 12,000 species of ants, most of them hardly studied; we are only one species of the 500 or so primates. Of the ant species that have been studied, there is an overwhelming multiplicity. Army ants build bridges. Leaf-cutter ants not only developed farming; they also evolved to be coated in armor made of rock. Microfossils have been discovered in harvester ants’ intricate refuse piles. Black garden ant queens perform “undertaking” to prevent disease. Acacia ants protect acacia trees; Matabele ants carry their injured kin home. Ant roles are not as fixed as Wilson thought. Indian jumping ants may overthrow their queen and compete for the role — the victor shrinking its brain to save energy for the ovaries, able to regrow it if necessary. Ants might be more conscious than originally believed, meaning the prevailing view of a single ant as a smooth-brained automaton working in service to its queen and their superorganism could be false. A recent book of ant portraits called Ants: Workers of the World highlights their anatomical diversity. Even at this level of detail, Brooke Jarvis notes, the ants “quickly begin to feel not just like individuals, but like people.”

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Trying to soothe and put to sleep a crying baby can be difficult and draining. For the best chance of success, a recent study recommends holding the baby in your arms and walking around with it for five minutes. Kumi Kuroda, the study’s corresponding author and lead scientist, said: “Many...

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For many years, Parkinson’s disease symptoms were treated using implants that regulate brain electrical activity. However, recently it has been clear that these implantable devices may be capable of so much more. A new design that uses built-in triboelectric generators to turn the user’s breathing movements into electricity could improve...

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Mushrooms have been proposed as eco-friendly substitutes for leather and packaging materials, among other things. In addition, a recent study suggests that they could also be used in biodegradable electronics. The Reishi Mushroom This novel use for mushrooms was “more or less an accidental finding” made by Austrian researchers Doris...

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Divers are cultivating herbs in a fascinating underwater garden off Italy’s Northwestern coast, around an hour’s drive from Genoa. According to National Geographic, terrestrial plants are grown in nine underwater transparent plastic greenhouses called “biospheres,” which can be seen shimmering from the surface. Nemo’s Garden The submerged installation, Nemo’s Garden,...

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On Sept. 15, 2022, Air Canada announced a purchase agreement with Swedish company Heart Aerospace for electric-hybrid aircraft, bringing electric aviation one step closer to the runway. Heart Aerospace Short-range commercial planes are beginning to make sense due to advancements in battery technology. As a result, several startups are developing...

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A recent study by the University of Michigan finds that local wind and solar jobs can fully replace the jobs lost at coal plants across the United States as the country’s power-generation system transitions away from fossil fuels in the coming decades. The Study Nearly 80,000 workers were directly employed...

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Taco Bell continuously seeks new ways to satisfy its customers, introducing enticing favorites like nacho fries. The latest idea from Taco Bell is to provide ultrafast charging stations to the growing number of electric vehicle (EV) drivers so they can “get an EV charge and a chalupa all in one...