More than 200,000 tonnes of tiny plastic particles are blown from roads into the oceans every year, according to research. The study suggests wind-borne microplastics are a bigger source of ocean pollution than rivers, the route that has attracted most attention to date. “Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”
Municipal officials often say they want to boost diversion and keep collected materials in the regional economy, but developing a workable plan for doing so is difficult. Here's a look at one model that lays the groundwork. This is the first in a series of articles called “Steps to Circularity” that will explore a variety of different projects and viewpoints connecting the business of recycling to the wider circular economy movement.
Power in the network society is exercised through networks. There are four different forms of power under these social and technological conditions:
1. Networking Power: the power of the actors and organizations included in the networks that constitute the core of the global network society over human collectives and individuals who are not included in these global networks.
2. Network Power: the power resulting from the standards required to coordinate social interaction in the networks. In this case, power is exercised not by exclusion from the networks but by the imposition of the rules of inclusion.
3. Networked Power: the power of social actors over other social actors in the network. The forms and processes of networked power are specific to each network.
4. Network-making Power: the power to program specific networks according to the interests and values of the programmers, and the power to switch different networks following the strategic alliances between the dominant actors of various networks.
Counterpower is exercised in the network society by fighting to change the programs of specific networks and by the effort to disrupt the switches that reflect dominant interests and replace them with alternative switches between networks. Actors are humans, but humans are organized in networks. Human networks act on networks via the programming and switching of organizational networks. In the network society, power and counterpower aim fundamentally at influencing the neural networks in the human mind by using mass communication networks and mass self-communication networks.
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals and a god of trade, thieves, and travel, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His characteristics and mythology were borrowed from the analogous Greek god, Hermes. Mercury has influenced the name of many things in a variety of scientific fields, such as the planet, and the chemical element. The word mercurial is commonly used to refer to something or someone erratic, volatile or unstable, derived from Mercury's swift flights from place to place. He is often depicted holding the Caduceus in his left hand.
A new study offers a better understanding of the hidden network of underground electrical signals being transmitted from plant to plant – a network that has previously been shown to use the Mycorrhizal fungi in soil as a sort of electrical circuit.
When you drive, tiny bits of plastic fly off your tires and brakes. Now scientists have shown how all that road muck is blowing into “pristine” environments like the Arctic. Today in the journal Nature, researchers model how microplastics from our cars are travelling from densely populated regions into the environment.
“That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.” - Walter Benjamin
The biopsychosocial model is an interdisciplinary model that looks at the interconnection between biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors. The model specifically examines how these aspects play a role in topics ranging from health and disease models to human development. This model was developed by George L. Engel in 1977 and is the first of its kind to employ this type of multifaceted thinking.
Researchers in Singapore developed a system that’s sort of like noise-canceling headphones for your whole apartment. Their results were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. The prototype is not yet the most practical device in real world conditions, but it points the way toward the development of technologies that may help ease the strain of noisy city living.
Researchers at Zhejiang University and Microsoft claim they’ve developed an AI system — DeepSinger — that can generate singing voices in multiple languages by training on data from music websites. In a prepint paper they describe the novel approach, which leverages a specially-designed component to capture the timbre of singers from noisy singing data.
US crude production has already peaked, according to one of the country’s leading shale executives, as producers battered by the price crash shun new output growth and start trying to become profitable. Matt Gallagher, chief executive of Parsley Energy, one of Texas’s biggest independent oil producers, said the record output level struck earlier this year would be the high-water mark. “I don’t think I’ll see 13m [barrels a day] again in my lifetime,” the 37-year-old Mr Gallagher told the Financial Times.
Researchers have developed what they say is a breakthrough robotic lab assistant, able to move around a laboratory and conduct scientific experiments just like a human.