Though it is often said that crime is caused by poverty, there is little to no evidence to actually back up this claim. On the contrary it seems the more affluent people are more likely to commit property crimes. The Guardian has a nice article about this strange phenomenon:
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Urban design & public health
Creating an optimal living climate is one of the Four Goals formulated by Gerard O’Neil. This means that urban planners should take public health into account.
We found an important study at ScienceDaily:
Adults in lower walkability neighborhoods found to have a higher predicted cardiovascular risk
One step forward…
ScienceDaily has the following report:
Scientists invent animal-free testing of lethal neurotoxins
We applaud every technology that will reduce the need for animal testing. The more alternatives there are available, the greater the pressure will be to abolish animal testing all together. Though we will still have a long way to go, but every single step counts.
WikiHouse
WikiHouse is a project that applies the concept of Open Source Design to architecture. The idea is to print patterns on a plate of plywood, which are then mechanically cut by a milling machine – resulting in a kind of construction set. Continue reading WikiHouse
A new home for 300M people
The Guardian reports a study that shows that about 300 million people live on land that will be flooded by 2050 as a result of rising sea levels. In comparison the US population was about 327 million in 2018. Continue reading A new home for 300M people
Plastic recylcing
On ScienceDaily we found an interesting study:
All plastic waste could become new, high-quality plastic through advanced steam cracking Continue reading Plastic recylcing
New Site Update
As some of our regular readers might know, we intend to move to a new website. We have decided that WordPress is not suited to our needs. We are still considering several alternatives to WP.
As the main author of this site, I have good experience in working with Pelican for building websites for my own business. So I seriously considering this as an option for the new site. Though our original plan to move to Django CMS is still a viable option as well.
We will give further updates, when they are due.
Lead: one more time…
One of the Four Goals formulated by O’Neill in The High Frontier is to find an optimal life climate for all of humanity. The major implication of this for space habitats is to eliminate those substances, that are known to have a negative impact on public health. Continue reading Lead: one more time…
The history of human expansion
In the video below the folks of RealLifeLore give a short summary of the history of the territorial expansion of mankind.
Given our nature as an expansionist species it seems to be inevitable we will eventually settle the world’s oceans, Antarctica and, of course, Outer Space.
On a loosely related notice, Margaret Kohn and Kavita Reddy have written an article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the historical attempts to justify colonialism. They also spend some time explaining the difference between colonialism and imperialism.
RIP Leonov
Soviet-Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov has died at the honorable age of 85. He is known for being the first human to have made a space walk. As such he is an important figure in the history of space exploration and the eventual humanization of outer space. May the Universe have his soul. And we also want to express our condolences to his loved ones.
