Sci-Tech

Britain first country to approve ‘three-parent’ babies

by Jacques KLOPP Agence France Press LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – Britain is set to become the first country in the world to legally offer “three-parent baby” fertility treatments after regulators gave the green light. The technique, which uses DNA from two women and a man, would allow mothers who carry disease-causing mutations in their mitochondrial genes to give birth to children free of the illness. British lawmakers had voted in February to allow the […]

Yahoo reveals new hack, this time a billion-plus users

by Rob Lever Agence France-Presse Yahoo said Wednesday personal data from over a billion users was stolen in a hack dating back to 2013 — twice as big as another breach disclosed just three months ago. In a huge blow to the struggling internet pioneer, Yahoo said it made the discovery as it was investigating what was already the largest data breach of a single company. “Yahoo believes an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, […]

Lost treasures of Syria’s Palmyra rise again in new 3D show

by Antoine FROIDEFOND Agence France-Presse Palmyra may just have fallen yet again to the Islamic State group, but a new “immersive” 3D show in Paris lets you walk through the Syrian city’s classical colonnades as they were before the jihadists blew them to bits. The “Eternal Sites” exhibition uses high-definition images often shot by drones to allow the public to visit four of the most threatened heritage sites in the world in war-torn Syria and […]

Does Pokemon get you on the Go? For a bit, says study

PARIS, France (AFP) — It has been hailed as a revolutionary way to get people moving, using smartphones to pursue cartoon creatures through city parks and streets on foot, instead of taking the car or metro. But has Pokemon Go made people more active and healthy? A study Wednesday reported mixed success. In the first week of playing the game, people took 955 additional steps per day on average — equaling nearly half the World […]

Blue crayfish’s speedy shell building inspire scientists

ARAVA DESERT, Israel (Reuters) — Deep in the heart of an Israeli desert, blue crayfish are helping scientists in the search for treatments of an array of human diseases. Yossi Ben, CEO of Israeli biotech company Amorphical, has been growing blue crayfish for more than a decade in freshwater pools in the Arava desert. Twelve years ago Ben noticed that his band of crustaceans were able to build a new shell at an amazing speed. Other […]

Cuba and Russia sign agreements in transport, technology and energy

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) — Cuba and Russia signed new agreements in areas such as transport, technology and energy on Thursday (December 8) after the conclusion of the fourteenth meeting of its Intergovernmental Commission in Havana. The meeting was led by Russian Vice-President Dmitri Rogozin and Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, Cuba’s Vice President of the Council of Ministers, who co-chairs the bilateral commission for economic-trade and scientific-technical cooperation. In total, Moscow and Havana signed seven legal instruments […]

JetPack Aviation shows off its portable, turbine-powered backpack

LONG BEACH, California (Reuters) — JetPack Aviation took to the skies above the port of Long Beach, California to demonstrate their latest portable, turbine-powered backpack. According to the Los Angeles area company, the JB-10 is the smallest and lightest jetpack ever created. It can fly for around 10 minutes at altitudes over 6,500 feet (1981 meters) and speeds greater than 65 mph (104 kph). Those figures were unimaginable even ten years ago, the company’s CEO […]

Future buildings could grow their own foundations

NEWCASTLE, England (Reuters) — What do you get if you put an architect, civil engineer, computer scientist, and microbiologist into a room? A future building that grows its own foundations. This might sound like a less than funny joke. In fact, it’s the result of a unique project launched by researchers at the universities of Newcastle and Northumbria, in England, to create a new generation of building materials that are partly living and able to […]

High-jumping robot could aid in earthquakes, building collapses

by Kerry SHERIDAN MIAMI, United States (AFP) — An agile jumping robot that was inspired by some of the animal world’s best leapers could one day help in rescue efforts after earthquakes or building collapses, US scientists said Tuesday. Known as Salto, the 10-inch (26-centimeter) tall robot can jump higher than a bullfrog and almost as high as a galago, or bush baby, a small primate found in Africa. The robot can jump one yard (one meter) […]

How artificial hearts work

Artificial hearts operate like a natural human heart. They are made of soft “biomaterials” intended to lessen the risk of blood clots or rejection by the immune system and are powered by a belt of lithium batteries.

Paradise lost: How toxic water destroyed Pakistan’s largest lake

by Caroline Nelly PERROT MANCHAR LAKE, Pakistan (AFP) — For generations the Mohanna tribe have lived, loved, worked, and played on Pakistan’s Manchar Lake; their floating settlement serving their needs from birth to death. But an unrelenting flow of toxic wastewater is pouring into the lake — a byproduct of industrialisation and aggressive agricultural practices upstream — and has slowly rendered it inhospitable, poisoning the water and almost everything in it. For fishermen such as Mohammed […]

Carbon neutral city (videographics)

Welcome to Carbon Neutral City! This urban development — with its own smart grid — runs entirely on locally-produced, clean energy. Here, wind parks, solar panels and biogas plants powered by cattle manure and vegetable waste, are the norm. https://youtu.be/xTMjZ3KvpZU MARIAN HENBEST FRED. GARET / AFP VIDEOGRAPHICS / AFP