Leaded Gas for Cars Impossible to Buy Globally

- Adam Clare
small car

After decades of effort by environmentalists leaded gasoline for use in automobiles is impossible to buy anywhere on the planet. Last month Algeria ended sales for leaded gasoline which marked the end of the dangerous fuel for consumers according to the UN Environment Programme. All gas burning is bad for people and the planet, but leaded gasoline use was the worst.

The next step in getting rid of leaded gasoline is to ban it’s use in airplanes.

Petroleum containing tetraethyllead, a form of lead, was first sold almost 100 years ago to increase engine performance. It was widely used for decades until researchers discovered that it could cause heart disease, strokes and brain damage.

UNEP cited studies suggesting that leaded gas caused measurable intellectual impairment in children and millions of premature deaths.

Most rich nations started phasing out the fuel in the 1980s, but it was still widely used in low- and middle-income countries until 2002, when the UN launched a global campaign to abolish it.

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How Cities Deal with More Intense Heat Waves

- Adam Clare

Global warming is bringing more intense heat waves to our urban environments which means cities will need to adapt to the new temperatures. Indeed, regular readers will recognize a lot of ways cities can mitigate extreme heat from painting roads white to regulating green roofs. Over at Arch Daily they have compiled a neat list of good ways cities are exploring to stay cool.

In an attempt to combat the urban heat island effect that affected Sydney’s suburbs, the city has made light-coloured roofs mandatory for all new houses. At the same time, the authorities require residential lots to feature at least one mature tree, as the canopy cover in some neighbourhoods is only 1 per cent. The new regulations will initially be applied in the suburb of WiltonSydney’s current climate strategy intends to further address urban heat by growing the city’s canopy cover by 50% by 2030 and implement cool pavements.

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Organs Made in Outer Space

- Adam Clare
desert and stars

Custom made 3D printed organs in space may sound like science fiction, but it’s real and up at the International Space Station they are experimenting with how to print organs better than before. Printing organs is still a relatively new technology and we have good technology to print organs on Earth already. One problem with printing organic material is gravity, so a bunch of astronauts are flying over our heads right now trying to find out if printing organs in space can avoid problems of Earth-based organ printing.

The micro-gravity environment of the ISS was ideal for testing the Bio Fabrication Facility, which was launched into orbit in 2019 and is due for an upgrade in 2021. Developed by US companies Techshot and NScrypt, it is designed to print human cells into organ-shaped tissues. Initially Morgan was using it to test prints of cardiac-like tissue of increasing thicknesses. Ultimately, however, the team behind the technology hopes to refine the equipment so they can print entire human organs in space, which can be used in transplants.

Printing human organs is not quite as science fiction as it sounds. A number of bio-technology companies are working on different approaches, which aim to use a patient’s own cells make new tissue. In most cases they re-programme the cells by following a Nobel Prize-winning process developed a decade ago to turn them into stem cells, which are then theoretically capable of developing into any part of the human anatomy. Given the right nutrients and encouragement, these can then be induced into the cell type of choice. By suspending stem cells in a hydrogel that can be built into a scaffold to stop the growing structure collapsing in on itself, the desired cell type can then be printed layer by layer into living, functioning tissue. 

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This Drone is Hitting the Rails

- Adam Clare

In order for train travel to be safe the rails the trains ride on need to be of a certain quality. You don’t want the equivalent of a pot hole on rails. In order to maintain good tracks workers need to shut down the rail line and physically go out to the rails. This delays trains, and therefore travelers. Nordic Unmanned, a Norwegian company, has created the BG-300 drone which is designed to monitor rail quality without having to alter train schedules.

As it does so, it inspects the tracks utilizing cameras and “other sensors,” plus it can lubricate rail switches if required. Importantly, though, if it encounters any other rail traffic, it will autonomously fly up off the tracks in order to get out of the way until that traffic passes. It can also use this functionality to move from one track to another.

As a result, stretches of rail lines do not have to be closed to trains while inspections are being performed. Such is not the case with traditionally used inspection vehicles, such as trolleys or rail-wheel-equipped trucks.

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Yes, You Have Changed

- Adam Clare

beards

You have changed. The person you are today is not the same person you were years ago. Being able to change your mind is the mark of a smart person because you can re-frame how you think based on new information. Indeed, we can rethink our personalities too, more and more researchers are discovering that we can indeed alter our personalities whenever we want to.

A growing batch of recent studies suggests that adult personality can be altered at any age – though, as Bleidorn and her co-authors show in a 2017 study, the magnitude of such shifts is by far the greatest for people in their 20s. And after we hit our 80s, the general pattern of change is no longer for the better. In one Scottish study which followed people for six years after the age of 81, their extroversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness all declined significantly as they grew older. “As a system, we tend to deteriorate as we get closer to dying, and personality traits are a kind of indirect indicator of our overall functioning,” says Roberts.
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If you’d like to change at least some part of your personality, you’re in good company. A staggering 87 to 97 percent of people said they would too, in a 2014 survey with 200-plus participants published in the Journal of Research in Personality. Conscientiousness topped the wish list of desired traits. Luckily, given the proper tools, says Roberts, people can indeed alter their personality.

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