26 Dec 2009
An alcohol substitute that mimics its pleasant buzz without leading to drunkenness is being developed by scientists.
The new substance could have the added bonus of being “switched off” instantaneously with a pill, to allow drinkers to drive home or return to work.
The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to [...]
Category archive for “Science”
Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness in development
11 November, 2010 – 00:14
Forget the Large Hadron Collider. All hail Cern’s new, straight-line atom smasher
11 November, 2010 – 00:09
hysicists are demanding a £4.4bn, 31-kilometre tunnel if they are to explain the mysteries of the universe
Sunday, 18 July 2010
After decades of bending atoms around giant rings and smashing them apart in search of the secrets of the universe, scientists at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, are reviving a 1960s technology and [...]
Indigenous tribes more vulnerable in swine flu outbreaks
10 November, 2010 – 23:45
Pandemic expected to hit remote, poverty-stricken communities far harder than wealthy Westerners
Sunday, 11 October 2009
The only road to St Theresa Point in north-eastern Manitoba is made of ice and lasts just two months. The remote community’s 3,200 people, most of them Cree Indians, are squeezed into 530 homes, more than half of them without running [...]
Billions wasted on swine flu pandemic that never came
10 November, 2010 – 23:29
How did the World Health Organisation get its prediction of a 7.5 million death toll so wrong?
By Paul Rodgers and Smitha Mundasad
Sunday, 16 May 2010
The spectre of plague stalked the world last year with its constant companion, fear. Schools and stadiums were closed in Mexico, tourists from Egypt to Singapore were quarantined, and the surgical [...]
Australia faces worst plague of locusts in 75 years
10 November, 2010 – 23:06
Ideal breeding conditions for grasshoppersare expected to cost farmers billions
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Australia’s Darling river is running with water again after a drought in the middle of the decade reduced it to a trickle. But the rains feeding the continent’s fourth-longest river are not the undiluted good news you might expect. For the cloudbursts also [...]
Ten years on, and still the brightest light in space
10 November, 2010 – 22:14
The International Space Station flies over the UK tonight, so keep your eyes peeled
Sunday, 7 November 2010
The International Space Station is the most expensive object ever built, which has some critics wondering if it is worth $100bn
If you look to the heavens between sunset and moonrise tonight, at 6.20pm in London, the brightest object you’ll [...]
Maori legend of man-eating bird is true
14 September, 2009 – 00:00
Creature that features in New Zealand folklore really existed, scientists say
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said [...]
‘The Eagle has landed’: A space geek remembers the moon shot
5 July, 2009 – 00:00
As a 10-year-old ’space geek’, Paul Rodgers was glued to the television when Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words, ‘The Eagle has landed.’ Forty years on, he looks back at mankind’s giant leap – and the Cold War politics that turned the space race into a mad dash
The first sign of trouble came when the [...]
MRI boost gives view into lungs
25 January, 2009 – 10:49
British scientists have boosted the power of an MRI scanner 1,000,000%, giving doctors a window into living, breathing lungs for the first time. The technique, called hyperpolarisation, makes the signal detected by a standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner so strong it reveals details that could only be seen previously by slicing the patient open.
Bubble reveals secrets of how stars form
1 May, 2000 – 00:00
British astronomers have looked deep inside a distant galaxy for the first time to unravel the mystery of how stars are made.
Their observations revealed a gigantic magnetic pump funnelling cosmic dust into the centre of the galaxy, where it piles up until it forms a ball dense enough to spark a nuclear chain reaction. Jane [...]
