Archive by date | June 2012

Upsides and downsides of openness — the view from TEDGlobal

Let’s start with the bad news. With every technological development that helps make the world a better place, criminals and terrorists are out there to apply it to their own ends. Hence the use of satellite communications and a hi-tech operations centre that allowed the Mumbai terrorists in 2008 to track and maximize their massacre of 172 men, women and children; hence the encrypted national communications infrastructure constructed by Mexican drugs barons; hence the threat of synthetic viruses…  … Read more

UK fracking safe but US operations marred by ‘poor practices’

UK fracking safe but US operations marred by ‘poor practices’

Hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’ as it is popularly known, presents a “very low risk” of contaminating drinking water or triggering forceful earthquakes in the UK, and can safely be performed so long as companies engage in different practices to those that have produced concern in the United States.  Read more

Walport named as next UK chief scientific adviser

Walport named as next UK chief scientific adviser

Mark Walport has been named as theUK’s next chief scientific advisor. Walport, a professor of medicine, has been director of the Wellcome Trust, theUK’s largest medical charity, since 2003. He will replace John Beddington, a population biologist who has been in the advisor post since 2008. Walport’s term begins in April of next year.  Read more

Crossing the nuclear landscape

Crossing the nuclear landscape

How many different nuclei are out there? If you just take the number of distinct elements, you get 114, as of last month. But then there are the isotopes—elements which have an extra neutron (or two, or three, or more). The number of isotopes discovered so far is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3,000.  Read more

US Supreme Court upholds Obama health-care reform law

US Supreme Court upholds Obama health-care reform law

In a 5-4 vote on the signature legislative achievement of Barack Obama’s presidency, the US Supreme Court today upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the central, controversial provision requiring  the uninsured to buy health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts, who usually votes with the court’s conservative majority, switched sides for the crucial fifth vote that upheld the law — and delivered a decisive victory to the Obama administration.  Read more