News April 28, 2018

One of the problems with monitoring nuclear weapons to see if other countries are not cheating is exactly that, monitoring nuclear weapons. It is very hard to do with accuracy if you are doing it remotely and if inspections are being done they are not reliable since many nuclear materials can just be moved to another location to avoid detection. Even when countries agree to inspections they don’t want other countries to know about the technology being used in developing the weapons. No country wants another to know how its warhead works. This was realized by the scientists at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and they have been hard at work on this problem. A new way is being developed to check these nukes which will be agreeable to both sides if they are sincere since they won’t have to worry about their nuclear secrets being discovered. The scientists at MIT go so far as to say this method could be used to actually do away with every nuke on earth because we would finally know if nukes exist.

One story which did make it to Newsweek is about NASA. It seems they have discovered strange holes in the ice over the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean. They had done a flyover of the area. NASA has never seen these types of holes before. The holes appeared not far from the Mackenzie River Delta in Canada. About 50 miles northwest to be precise. The scientists are puzzled about what created these holes. They are discussing theories and one being put forward states the holes could have been caused by sea mammals. They are thinking seals might have caused water to rush over the ice as they surfaced for air. There are some mumblings about global warming but it is hard to see why just a few holes would be created in one area.

Something has happened in Australia which was said to be impossible by 2020, yet it is happening. Scientists and engineers had stated Australia was not going to meet is renewable energy goals. At the Paris Climate Conference of 2015 Australia agreed to meet certain goals but were roundly criticized the next year for falling behind. Australia had agreed to reduce its emissions by 26-28 percent and renewable energy was one way to do this. It turned out the renewable energy sector was far more robust than suspected and Australia already has 19.7 percent of all it electricity being produced by renewable energy and the amount is growing. That translates to 8.7 million homes using renewable energy. In 2017 the population of Australia was 24.64 million people.

Now for something most Americans would consider gross. What makes a good burger? Most agree it is the taste. What if a burger was made from something other than beef but tasted the same, would people eat it? Apparently, they would and this has been proven in Germany. Burgers are being sold in supermarkets in Germany which are made from buffalo worms. These are not really worms but insect larvae. That doesn’t seem to make it any better in my eyes, but they are said to be popular. The idea came from the South-Eastern Asian culture. It is not uncommon for the people in that culture to eat insects. The insects can not be seen in the burger and it looks much like any other burger. One supermarket claims they have people lined up for the new burgers who can’t wait to bite into them. Yuck!

There is a new gene-editing tool in town called CRISPR-Cas9. Why should we care? We should care because it shows potential to correct so many things which are plaguing humanity. Modifying our genes can help us to avoid many diseases, slow or prevent cancer, change our bodies so space travel will be more viable and do many other things for us. This new tool will give more control over gene-editing and we can expect many good things to come from it. It might also be useful in the search for extending life and humans could find themselves with a much longer life expectancy.

Most of us never knew what I am about to tell you and that is music can alter your mind. Researchers have decided to check out what listening to music does to someone at work. There are claims by people who say listening to music at work improves their mood and can even make them more productive. So here is what scientists have found. Listening to music at work can make it harder to remember new data, but it can make people more productive. There seems to be a connection with listening to music and getting people into a better mood. Scientists have said, “It’s shown that when you’re in that particular mood state, you take in more options, you don’t narrow your focus, and that is beneficial to creative problem solving.”