Trending ideas

Use of waste plastic as a reducing agent for iron ore

China's recent announcement that they will cease to accept large quantities of waste plastic has brought a growing crisis into sharp focus; global capacity for waste plastic handling is being rapidly outstripped by production. The clear solution... continue reading

Orthogonal versus redundant data in education

Our university was recently hit by malware. It took weeks to restore most data, some lost completely. All backups were affected making a simple restore ineffectual. Why take this redundant approach in data safety? Consider flight data recorders:... continue reading

METRICS: a pattern language for education scholarship

Scholarly activities in health professions education have been growing but despite the interest, what is considered as scholarship in (medical) education has remained vague. Boyer’s classes of scholarly activity (Boyer 1990) and Glassick’s... continue reading

“Venus” cult and “Old Man” mythological motif have already existed since 50.000 BP

If human language and genes spread “in tandem” as postulated by Michael Witzel, the split up time of the major phylogenetic lineages may provide a minimum age for the origin of Palaeolithic myths.
If this hypothesis is true, the distribution... continue reading

Hypothesis of Buddhism activity of freeing captive animals in huge amount may have quantum superposition effects of consciousness and lead to discernible placebo effects.

1: Placebo effect sometimes plausibly has powerful effects.
2: Buddhism philosophy holds that every living animal is sentient, and has a consciousness and killing them is bad for the killer and freeing them is good somehow. Consciousness may... continue reading

Operational and lifecycle advantages of hybridized iron ore reduction and biomass gasification

Recent research has demonstrated that biomass can be used as a reducing agent for iron ore but also that iron ore reduction can be coupled with biomass gasification, co-producing reduced iron and synthesis gas which can itself be converted to... continue reading

Oxygen enrichment to enhance training effectiveness and physiological adaptation

For decades, sportspersons have lived by the adage “live high, train low,” an approach that has been repeatedly borne out by research. High altitude adaptations improve performance, while the availability of more oxygen at low altitude permits... continue reading

Can DNA Rescue African Semi-legendary Chronicles?

Southern African social institutions are based on societal values, with folktales being used to teach moral values, preserve and perpetuate wisdom accumulated over many generations. The integration of folktales from oral to written phases has seen... continue reading

Is it necessary to liberalize genetic paternity tests in France?

There is a real ethical problem with genetic paternity research In France. And first of all, a great hypocrisy: such test can be carried out on national territory only by court decision (at risk of being illegally for the subject and the analysis... continue reading

Anti-eclipse glasses

Eclipse glasses function by blocking all UV light and the majority of visible light according to the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard. The visual effect of those glasses is to show significantly... continue reading