General
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With the effects of global warming no longer in doubt, many countries are implementing carbon emission regulations. Companies from every sector and every industry are also trying to do their bit, with new technologies being implemented to try and reduce their carbon footprints.
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In the hit Netflix show Stranger Things, a mirror world is found under the fictional town of Hawkins. US scientists are now engaging in what they describe as a ‘pretty wacky’ experiment to see if this science fiction concept is plausible. The scientists, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have set up equipment to test if it would be possible to find a parallel universe that could be identical in many ways to our own, with mirror particles, mirror planets and possibly even mirror life.
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While the southern hemisphere has been enjoying a relatively mild winter, mainland Europe has sweltered for days under record-breaking temperatures. France reached temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius, Spain hit a high of 42 degrees, and the UK saw its hottest day of the year, reaching a balmy 33 degrees Celsius.
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We have become used to being connected 24 hours a day. Whether we are at work, at home, or out and about, we expect to be able to access the internet and our favourite apps, and we expect fast and stable connectivity.
Malaria still kills tens of thousands of people a year. While prophylactic drugs are available, they are generally too expensive for the populations living in malaria areas, as are other protective measures.
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Dogs have been referred to as “man’s best friend” for hundreds of years, and thought of that way for thousands. They are friendly, love people, and are able to melt the hearts of most humans with just a look.
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Adhesives, well…, adhesives hold the world together. From the Pritt glue children use at school, to the sellotape that comes out of the cupboard for Christmas and birthday presents, to industrial adhesives that are used in the manufacture of everything from machinery to disposable goods, there seems to be an adhesive for everything.
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More than 50 years ago, scientists saw that there was something very bright at the centre of our galaxy. That bright object was long thought to be the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, named Sagittarius A, which has a gravitational pull strong enough to make stars orbit around it very quickly. Stars close to Sagittarius A orbit as fast as 20 years. In contrast, our solar system takes about 230 million years to circle the centre of the galaxy.
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Being a member of South Africa’s government can never be described as boring. Fighting a plummeting GDP figure, junk status, public infighting about the mandate of the Reserve Bank (which led to the sharpest decline in the Rand in a decade), and continued suspicions about corruption, the government is now facing a class-action lawsuit brought by environmental rights groups.
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The Earth has a lot of water – around 71% of our planet’s surface is covered with water. For years, scientists have tried to discover why, and where all that water came from. Did Earth form with its water already here? Or was it delivered later by a cosmic hailstorm of comets or asteroids? The evidence has tipped back and forth over the years, and scientists haven’t been able to provide a definitive answer.
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has validated the fact that burn-out is real. The WHO has included burn-out in its most recent International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is widely used as a benchmark for diagnosis and health insurers.
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Earth is remarkable in our solar system because it is the only rocky planet with such a large moon, and is also the only planet besides Pluto to have a moon so fundamentally similar to itself in composition. Most bodies in the solar system have unique chemical compositions, but lunar rocks brought home during the Apollo missions show that their isotopic fingerprint is almost identical to that of minerals from Earth.
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A few years ago, microscopic life forms called tardigrades, also known as “water bears”, created an uproar in the scientific community, when one of the creatures laid eggs that successfully hatched after the tardigrade was frozen for almost 30 years. These animals can weather extreme heat, cold, radiation and even the vacuum of space, researchers have found, and could provide clues to how we can make crops more resistant to drought, better preserve blood and medicines, and even make more effective sunscreen.