Russian professor Evgeny Moskalev of Saint Petersburg Technological University has evolved a technique that allows turning alcohol into powder and packing it in pills. The new technique can solidify any kind of alcohol, including whisky, cognac, wine and beer. The new technique can solidify any kind of alcohol, including whisky, cognac, wine and beer.
“Dry” vodka can be wrapped in paper and carried around in a pocket or a bag. Vodka in form of a pill would come handy at parties when “consumers” would be able to calculate their exact required dosage.
Fifty years ago today, twelve nations signed The Antarctic Treaty, regulating research activity, economic exploitation, and territorial claims in Antarctica. To mark this occasion, Annie C. Lee of Fast Company has compiled eleven interesting facts about the frozen continent:
3. Antarctica's biggest population center is the U.S.-operated McMurdo Station. In the summer, the community can swell to more than 1,000 people; this past winter, there were just 153. 4. Antarctica's two-letter Internet suffix is ".aq." Internet access is via satellite; a dish on Black Island provides 10-MB-per-second service to McMurdo. 5. Tourism is one of Antarctica's two main industries. Antarctica had 37,858 tourists last year. Most visitors arrived by sea -- a typical 10-day cruise to the region runs from $5,000 to $10,000 per person -- and nearly all landed on the Antarctic Peninsula. No ship carrying more than 500 passengers may land in Antarctica.
Link | Antarctic Treaty | Image: NASA
In the future, I see possibility in a lot of these machines hooked into a grid, with people performing basic human labor for money. Perhaps a new form of renewable energy generation? A new kind of supercomputer with thousands of people performing basic calculations at minimum wage "stations" across the world? Who knows?
The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.
So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time.
They initially extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig. Called myoblasts, these cells are programmed to grow into muscle and repair damage in animals.
The cells were then incubated in a solution containing nutrients to encourage them to multiply indefinitely. This nutritious “broth” is derived from the blood products of animal foetuses, although the intention is to come up with a synthetic solution.
