Lifeboat Foundation

Biology professor and researcher Christopher Cullis said he pondered two big questions when he first caught sight of the wild marama bean plant, its definitive patches of green leaves standing out in contrast from among an otherwise parched and brown Namibian landscape.

“Why isn’t this plant affected by the lack of water like everything else—and why isn’t it being eaten by any wildlife?” Cullis said, turning one of the walnut-sized beans over in his fingers and recalling his first trip to the coastal southwest African country about a decade ago. “The answers to those questions make this a very interesting and important legume.”

Continue reading “A bean for all seasons?” »

Although oxygen is common throughout the cosmos, most of it isn’t in the form that we as humans need to breathe – molecular oxygen, or O₂. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular oxygen, which could help us fight climate change here on Earth or generate oxygen for life in space.

Scientists say surge of radiation led to lightning causing forest fires, making adaptation vital.

A month after the fire that ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, scientists and research bodies are getting organized to help restore the building—and advance scientific knowledge.

At a public hearing held yesterday by France’s Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Options (OPECST), academics explained how they can contribute to the government’s efforts to restore the cathedral, which was partly destroyed on 15 April.

“This catastrophe is, in the end, a privileged moment for research, because we’ll have access to materials that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to access,” said Martine Regert, deputy scientific director of the Institute of Ecology and Environment at the French national research agency CNRS. For example, analyzing certain isotopes in the cathedral’s timber frame could provide insights about the medieval climate, said Philippe Dillmann, a research leader at CNRS’s Institute for Research on Archeomaterials.

Continue reading “A month after the fire that ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris” »

It’s been exactly one year since US scientists reported a mysterious surge in ozone-destroying chemicals, known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Banned in 1987 under the globally signed Montreal Protocol, there was only one explanation: somewhere out there, in an unknown location, someone must have gone rogue, setting back progress on the ozone hole by a decade or more.

After much speculation, the whereabouts and magnitude of these harmful emissions has been confirmed in scientific research. As earlier reporting in The New York Times had already suggested, they seem to be coming from the northeast coast of mainland China.

Continue reading “We Finally Know Where The Scandalous Ozone-Destroying Chemicals Are Really Coming From” »

And they might be better for the climate than electric ones.

They’re already planning to build a prototype of it.

Researchers plan for new centre to explore refreezing the poles, sucking out CO₂ and ocean greening.

Get ready for a future in which most things you need to live, food, housing, transportation, and information, are free or nearly free.

The influential economic theorist looks ahead to a world of virtually free energy and zero marginal cost production, and to a desperate race against climate change.