As part of its commitment to the Paris climate accords, France will prohibit the sale of new petroleum-powered vehicles in 2040. Nicolas Hulot, France’s ecology minister, says the goal will be “tough” for French carmakers to meet. But Peugeot, Citroen and Renault already are racing to get electric vehicles to market.  On the demand side, France’s plan includes subsidies to...

First there was Bitcoin. It was followed by scores of cryptocurrency competitors. Now there’s SolarCoin. Think of it as solar energy’s equivalent of frequent-flyer miles. People or businesses that generate solar electricity can claim one SolarCoin for every megawatt-hour of solar electricity they generate and can document through their utility. Players submit proof to the SolarCoin Foundation, which credits the...

While young tech whizzes are making new apps for your phone or designing cybersecurity protocols, Amazon Web Services is creating the Cloud that these devices need to operate – and Amazon is doing it with engineers whose average age is over 40.  Some tech giants, such as Oracle and IBM, have a workforce with an average age above 35. That’s...

Biologists’ conventional wisdom held that humans were genetically programmed to expire at about 115 years of age. Once in a while, an odd specimen might exceed the limit; most of us fade away earlier due to disease, poor habits or bad luck. But, try as it might, science would never be able to extend our expiration date.  Or maybe it...

Although symptoms differ among illnesses, everyone with a respiratory condition has a cough. Now you can cough at your smartphone and learn what’s wrong with you.  An Australian start-up called ResApp has trained software that can be added to your smartphone to recognize subtle differences among coughs accompanying respiratory diseases. When you cough into your phone, the software will recognize...

Congratulations. You’ve lived long enough for scientists to discover that beer is a health food.  Or at least it can be if you’re drinking a brew concocted by researchers at the National University of Singapore.  Scientists modified the brewing and fermentation processes to yield a beer containing probiotics. These are “good” bacteria that can promote health, kill viruses, neutralize toxins...

Researchers at Augusta University in Georgia have found a way to build muscle mass. Nothing gets added to the body. Instead, it’s subtracted.  The researchers bred lean and obese mice, both of which were unable to produce a protein called myostatin, which inhibits muscle development. As a result, both the fat and lean mice gained muscle mass.  Just as important,...

Researchers at England’s Newcastle University have implanted a camera in an artificial hand and paired it with artificial intelligence so the hand can recognize an object and know how to pick it up the right way.  With current bionic hands, the wearer usually has to initiate the hand’s motion by sending signals from the brain to the end of the...

The USA has become the DSA, the Divided States of America.  Even the Middle East is dividing in unexpected ways. Qatar was just banned from the Arab League club. Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Russia… explosive land mines are being laid across the globe.  Amid all the turbulence and uncertainty, the world has not gone up in smoke and down...

Are sea levels really rising? Is climate change real? Real or imagined, the debates go on endlessly.  Here’s the way we see it: If you dump trillions of tons of poison into the air, Earth and water, do you think it will make things better or worse?  As glaciers melt, rising temperatures break new records. Just a few weeks ago,...