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What if the whole world suddenly went vegetarian?

If everyone in the world switched to vegetarianism or veganism tomorrow, by 2050 carbon emissions related to the agriculture industry would have been reduced by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent. Greenhouse gas emissions would see similarly significant reductions.

via What if the whole world suddenly went vegetarian? – ScienceAlert.

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Genetically Modified Male Mosquitoes Released in Brazil

The insect assassins have been launched. Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes have descended on the Brazilian city of Piracicaba in the battle against dengue and a test in Florida is also in prospect.

The GM mosquitoes are all male, and when they mate with native females, they pass on a gene to offspring that causes the larvae to die before they mature.

via Modified mosquitoes begin blitz on dengue in Brazilian city – health – 06 July 2015 – New Scientist.

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An Empty Ocean

What’s wrong with this picture? I’m in blue water, I’m in a bikini… Life should be perfect! Right? Except it’s not- I’m all alone- there’s nothing left… At a time when the US is going bananas over the shark encounters in NC – let’s think of something SO. MUCH. SCARIER… An empty ocean. For two weeks Jean-Marie and I dived and dived and dived this shark hotspot in the Red Sea to meet the resident oceanic white tip sharks – as in 8 hours a day diving. In the right place, at the right time. Not a single shark. Now to me, THAT was frightening. More frightening than any news report about an animal doing its thing in its own environment. Be scared of the really scary stuff out there! Photographer: Jean- Marie Ghislain

Source: https://www.facebook.com/hanliprinsloofreedi

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Charge your phone with 1 square meter of plants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4awMjtlzteM

Plant-e has developed sustainable technology to harvest electricity from plants.  Covering your roof could power half your house.

N.B.  This video is from 2010 so it is a bit dated.

Check their website http://plant-e.com/

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Cisco Analysis of Australia Falling Behind in Fiber Rollout

    • That all roads point to the requirement of optic fibre being implemented deep into both wired and wireless networks.
    • The future is indeed wireless, but it’s mostly WiFi and not 4G.
    • Wireless technologies need to be primarily methods of connecting to nearby fibre networks.
    • That Australian mobile networks will soon have to join the US and UK in offloading data onto local WiFi networks in order to avoid congestion.
    • That a 4G mobile user uses 28x more data than a 3G user.
    • That new wireless spectrum needs to be opened up as quickly as possible to cope with growth.
    • That as much wireless traffic as possible needs to be seamlessly offloaded onto the wired networks to avoid congestion.
    • There is a huge increasing requirement for low-latency data transfer and high upload speeds.
    • That a fibre to the node infrastructure which relies on a ‘last mile’ premises connection using Australia’s current copper infrastructure, current HFC networks or fixed 4G-like wireless won’t have the symmetry, contention ratio, bandwidth or latency to keep up with demand by 2016.
    • That fibre needs to be very nearby every internet connection whether wired or wireless.

via NBN stats: Australia’s broadband future and why the Coalition’s alternative ‘won’t work’ – Blog – ABC Technology and Games (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

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103-Year-Old Orca Is Bad News For SeaWorld

“Granny,” the world’s oldest known living orca. The 103-year-old whale (also known as J2) was recently spotted off Canada’s western coast with her pod — her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

https://www.thedodo.com/recently-spotted-103-year-old–547381307.html

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New material science allow no products to be stuck in containers

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Amazing Fluid Dynamics on Film | Clouds over San Francisco Bay

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Passive Air Cooling by 5 degrees using Hydroceramics

Hydrogel is a moisture-absorbing polymer capable of absorbing up to 400 times its own volume in water, then as the water evaporates, it cools down the area around it.

The hydrogels then refill themselves when humidity is high on the outside. With the help of this “passive cooling” concept, these walls can reduce room temperature in up to 5°C without the use of air conditioning and reduce energy consumption by 28 percent.

via Students create hydroceramic wall that could replace the use of air conditioners.