Family entertainment centers could still survive in smaller cities and suburban areas, because they are centers of convenience for on-the-go parents. But expect a substantial number of these venues to begin closing over the next three to five years. Attempts to placate millennials won’t work; they’re already giving their kids distracting devices at young ages....
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Report decouples carbon emissions, economic health
From 2008 through 2013, the US economy grew while power plants’ carbon emissions fell, according to a detailed study by four major utility companies, Bank of America and several environmental groups. The analysis indicates that emissions controls on fossil-fuel-burning power plants may create less of an economic drag than many assume — and that the...
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The study finds that, in addition to weaker demand, carbon emissions decreased because of the falling price of solar and other forms of renewable energy, as well as improved pollution controls at coal-burning electric power plants
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Look, Ma, no friction
Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory have concocted a new carbon material that virtually eliminates friction between surfaces. These new carbon “rollers” could slash maintenance costs for machinery and vastly extend the life of any mechanical device. Researchers were experimenting with graphene — single-layer sheets of carbon atoms — sliding against a steel ball coated...
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Although the team hasn’t yet overcome the scrolls’ hydrophobia, there are thousands of applications that can benefit from the discovery. Commercial applications could be ready before 2022.
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HORSE power: Old technology new again
Large farms, food-processing plants, cafeterias, residential neighborhoods and other operations that churn out at least 135 pounds of organic waste daily can generate their own power with the “High-solids Organic-waste Recycling System with Electrical Output,” or HORSE. An anaerobic digester, the HORSE uses bacteria to break down that daily volume of trash into 125...
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Anaerobic digesters are an old technology that’s finding new life in an economy that sees one system’s waste as another’s raw material. Entrepreneurs are finding niches like this in the space that unites profitability, sustainability and environmental responsibility.
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Ending antibiotic resistance
Because the medical profession has overprescribed antibiotics for decades, they’re becoming increasingly ineffective. The only harmful bacteria left alive are the ones resistant to the drugs that are supposed to kill them. Each year, 2 million people in the US become infected with resistant bacteria and 23,000 people die as a result. Now the Tampa-based...
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Moffitt’s technique can be applied to drug protocols for other bacteria, promising an eventual solution to the epidemic of drug resistance. Bacteria’s resistance to drugs also mirrors cancer’s development of resistance to conventional therapies. The Moffitt team is transferring its method of winnowing effective drug therapies to research into selecting effective cancer treatment.
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Building a brain from scratch
For 10 years, scientists with the Blue Brain Project at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale have been trying to reverse-engineer a rat’s brain and build one themselves. Now they finally have a rough draft. The group made a digital replication of a portion of a rat’s neocortex, the part of the brain that controls sensory perception,...