Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 557

If you are diagnosed with cancer today there are often several treatment options, with your doctor forming a plan of attack that will feature multiple approaches. Chemotherapy is one of the most popular weapons against cancer, but new research suggests it may be possible to get chemo-like results without actually putting a patient through a chemotherapy routine.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists discuss the possibility of using the natural “kill code” of human cells to fight tumors. That code, which is used by our body to recycle cells and kills them off when they are old, isn’t used by cancer cells and that allows the bad cells to fester and spread.

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Earth’s natural resources largely determine the global economy’s ebb and flow. As such, the effects of climate change continue to cause concern among economists and environmentalists alike.

In 2018, professors William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their work exploring how climate change affects economic stability. Ultimately, the pair’s research found the phenomena to be closely linked. The case for investment in sustainable ventures is clear: Without such commitments, both the planet and the global economic ecosystem will suffer.

Sustainable investments may jump start the slow process of changing consumer habits. Below, we examine the economy-boosting benefits of environmentally friendly business models — and how sustainable investment plays an important role.

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More than an ordinary aerial drone but not quite a satellite, a huge solar-powered airplane with three tails and wings wider than a jumbo jet’s will soon be taking to the skies.

Odysseus, developed by Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences of Manassas, Virginia, is one of the largest unpiloted aircraft ever built — and one of the lightest. It has a 243-foot wingspan but weighs less than a small car, the company says. Its six electrically powered propellers will be driven by energy from hundreds of solar panels that cover the aircraft’s exterior or from banks of rechargeable batteries on board, depending on the available sunlight.

With a top speed of 100 miles an hour, Odysseus won’t be very fast. But it’s designed to soar to altitudes above 60,000 feet and stay aloft for months at a time.

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Desiccants kill more than plants. Herbicides like glyphosate also kill bacteria. You could just as easily call them “antibiotics.” Our gut bacteria are sensitive to antibiotics, which is why we should avoid eating herbicides. When our microbes are healthy, our immune system is stable. But when microbes are disturbed, diseases like obesity, Alzheimer’s, or celiac disease can result.

Driving down a grid road in central Saskatchewan, a machine that looks like a giant insect approaches me in a cloud of dust. The cab, hanging 8 feet above the road, is suspended by tires at least 6 feet tall, with wing-like appendages folded along each side. Should I drive around it or under it?

It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, almost all conventional crops are desiccated in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.

Mike Shewchuk jumps down from his swather as I pull into his farmyard. He is a young farmer whose blond brush cut and a robust stride would have not been out of place 50 years ago. Along with his dad, uncles, and brother, he farms 15,000 acres an hour outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They recently received a century farm award, for having continuously farmed the land since the early 1900s.

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Amidst the ongoing threat of the California wildfires, a Tesla Model 3 owner has posted a brief demonstration of the electric sedan’s capability to maintain the air quality inside its cabin, despite the vehicle not being equipped with the Model S and X’s hospital-grade HEPA filter or a dedicated “Bioweapon Defense Mode.”

Elon Musk took to Twitter last week to offer the Model S and Model X as vehicles that can be used to transport people away from the ongoing CA wildfires. The Model S and X are capable of scrubbing the air inside the car, thanks to their large HEPA filters that are fitted with separate acid and alkaline gas neutralization layers. Later social media updates and anecdotes from Model S and X owners driving through the CA area indicate that Bioweapon Defense Mode helped maintain the air quality inside their vehicles.

In a follow-up tweet, Elon Musk noted that the Model 3’s air filtration system is not on the same “hospital-grade” level as that of the Model S and X, since the smaller vehicle does not have enough space to accommodate the HEPA filtration system in Tesla’s two flagship vehicles. This could be seen in the parts catalog for the vehicles, where the Model X HEPA filter was listed as “FILTER, HEPA, MDL X,” while the Model 3’s system was simply listed as “HVAC, CABIN FILTER, M3.”

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