Global Debt Hits New High

LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Global debt levels hit a new record high of $313 trillion in 2023, with developing economies scaling a fresh peak for the ratio of debt to their gross domestic product, a study showed.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a financial services trade group, said on Wednesday that global debt surged by over $15 trillion in the last quarter of 2023 year-on-year. The figure stood at around $210 trillion almost a decade ago, according to the data.  READ MORE...

World's Largest Fuel Cell Vehicle

The proof-of-concept hydrogen powered ultra-class mine haul truck at Anglo American's Mogalakwena Platinum Group Metals mine in South Africa. The truck has successfully completed its mission to demonstrate the potential 

of zero emission haulage after one full year of operational trials. Image courtesy of Anglo American.

LONDON and SEATTLE, May 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The world's largest zero-emission haul truck, designed and built by First Mode in partnership with Anglo American, has successfully completed its mission to demonstrate the potential of zero emission haulage after one full year of operational trials. The proof-of-concept mining truck is a critical technology in heavy industry's efforts to reduce its reliance on diesel and other fossil fuels.

"In May 2022, First Mode achieved what many thought impossible with the world's first and world's largest hydrogen-fueled haul truck," said Julian Soles, CEO of First Mode. "The truck's tremendous success is undisputed, having exceeded performance on all significant tests, including travel speed and payload. We are also extremely proud to report zero safety incidents or downtime associated with the program. Our proof-of-concept demonstrates not only the feasibility, but also the urgent need to scale our nuGen™ Haulage Solution to help the mining industry reduce its reliance on diesel."

In 2019, First Mode partnered with Anglo American to study potential pathways to decarbonizing the mining company's existing fleet of ultra-class haul trucks. The resulting nuGen™ Haulage Solution replaces all diesel components of the haulage ecosystem, including vehicle powerplant, refueling system, fuel storage infrastructure, and fuel production. The proof-of-concept truck made its debut May 6, 2022 at Anglo American's Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) mine site in Mogalakwena, South Africa.

Natascha Viljoen, CEO of Anglo American's PGMs business, commented, "We are proud to have played host to this world-first technology. We recognise that replacing our diesel haul trucks with a zero-emission alternative is central to our ability to deliver carbon neutral mining, with the potential to also offer broader operating performance benefits. We look forward to seeing the next generation model in action."   READ MORE...https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-largest-fuel-cell-electric-vehicle-completes-successful-year-of-trials-301826795.html#:~:text=LONDON%20and%20SEATTLE%2C%20May%2017,full%20year%20of%20operational%20trials.

97% ARE STRAIGHT

LONDON – Around 3% of people in England and Wales aged 16 or over identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to 2021 census data released on Friday.

The census in 2021 was the first in Britain to ask about people’s sexual orientation, and the results are broadly in line with previous, smaller-scale surveys.

The census, conducted by Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), also asked about people’s gender identity for the first time. About 262,000 people – 0.5% of those aged 16 or over – replied that the gender they identified with was different from their sex registered at birth, the ONS said.

The questions about sexual orientation and gender identity were voluntary, and 7.5% of people declined to answer about their sexual orientation, while 6.0% did not answer the question on gender identity.

Overall, 43.4 million people in England and Wales said they were “straight or heterosexual”, while 1.5 million – 3.2% of the population aged 16 or over – identified as gay or lesbian, bisexual, or other.

Some 1.5% of people said they were gay or lesbian and 1.3% were bisexual. Another 0.3% ticked a box for “other sexual orientation”, two thirds of whom called themselves pansexual.

On gender identity, 262,000 people aged 16 or over answered that they were a different gender to the sex they were registered as at birth, the ONS said.

Of those, 48,000 said they now identified as a trans man, 48,000 identified as a trans woman, 30,000 said they were non-binary and 18,000 said they had another gender identity, the ONS added.

The ONS defines a trans man as someone who identifies as a man but was registered female at birth, while trans women were registered as male at birth, but now identify as women.

Census figures for Britain as a whole are not yet available, as Scotland delayed carrying out its census for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A previous, annual UK-wide survey conducted by the ONS showed that in 2020 3.8% of people identified as gay or lesbian, bisexual or other, up from 1.9% in 2014 when same-sex marriage was first allowed in England and Wales.

That survey also gave breakdowns of sexual orientation by age, gender and ethnicity – showing, among other things, that younger people are much more likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Sex between men aged 21 or over was legalised in England and Wales in 1967. The age of consent was lowered to 18 in 1994 and reduced to 16 – the same as for heterosexual relationships – in 2000.

Census data on sexual orientation by age will be published on Jan. 25, and further details will come later in the year.

The UK is Famous for What?

ENGLAND is famous for many things - David Beckham, Fish and Chips, Big Ben, Red Buses, black cabs, Oasis, Blur, the Beatles, London and tea.

England is famous for its long history.

England is famous for its Royal Family.
(Find out more about our Royal Family )

England is famous for its Castles and Historic houses
Windsor Castle is the oldest royal residence still in use.

England is famous for its educational institutes. It has some of the most famous universities of the world like Oxford, Cambridge and London universities.

England is famous for some of the world’s greatest pop stars - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Queen, Phil Collins, the Spice Girls and Oasis.
(Find out more about our music)

England is famous for William Shakespeare. Hamlet,
Othello, and Romeo and Juliet were written by him.

England is famous for its green hills and fertile lowlands.
(Find out more about the land)

England is famous for its rain and the lush green of its countryside
(Find out more about the Climate)

England is famous for its breakfasts.
(Find out more about the food)

England is famous for its creams and butters and for its delicious cheeses: Stilton, Cheshire, double Gloucester, red Leicester, and cheddar.
(Find out more about our cheeses)

England is famous for its strawberries

England is famous for its pubs. (English pubs are a part of everyday life here. They're pretty much a community gathering place. Many people go there to watch a football game, play pool or just have a beer.)
(Find out more about our Pubs)

England is famous for Wimbledon.
(Find out more about Wimbledon and other sports)

England is famous for an ancient circle called Stonehenge.
It is the most important prehistoric monument in England.
(Find out more about our landmarks)

England is famous for for Big Ben
(Find out more about our landmarks)

England is famous for the legend of Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest and its notorious sheriff.

Stashed Inside the Pyramids

The pyramids of Giza are grand monuments, but what's inside them and the other ancient 

Egyptian pyramids? (Image credit: Ratnakorn Piyasirisorost via Getty Images)

When British archaeologist Howard Carter cracked open King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, he reported seeing "wonderful things." Tut's tomb was filled with extraordinary treasures, including the golden death mask of Tutankhamun, a golden throne and even gold sandals. But did all royal tombs in ancient Egypt have such plush grave goods?


The answer is no. While the Great Pyramid of Giza and other ancient Egyptian pyramids are incredible monuments, the burial goods inside them were likely relatively modest compared with those buried in the tombs of later pharaohs, such as Tutankhamun.


"The burials in the biggest pyramids might have looked quite simple in comparison to Tutankhamun," Wolfram Grajetzki, an honorary senior research fellow at University College London in the U.K. who has studied and written extensively about ancient Egyptian burial customs and burial goods, told Live Science in an email.

Pyramids were used as Egyptian pharaohs' tombs from the time of Djoser (reign circa 2630 B.C. to 2611 B.C.) to Ahmose I (reign circa 1550 B.C. to 1525 B.C.). Most of these pyramids were plundered centuries ago, but a few royal tombs have remained relatively intact and provide clues about their treasures, Grajetzki said.


For instance, Princess Neferuptah (who lived around 1800 B.C.) was buried in a pyramid at the site of Hawara, around 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Cairo. Her burial chamber was excavated in 1956 and "contained pottery, a set of coffins, some gilded personal adornments and a set of royal insignia that identify her with the Underworld god Osiris," Grajetzki said.


King Hor (who lived around 1750 B.C.) was buried with a similar set of objects, although he wasn't buried in a pyramid, Grajetzki said. "The body of [Hor] was wrapped in linen, the entrails placed into special containers, called canopic jars," Grajetzki said. "His face was covered with a mummy mask."  READ MORE...

Self-Esteem at age 5

Self-esteem could be set at a surprisingly young age — so what influences it? At the age of just five, children have developed a sense of self-esteem as strong as adults, a study finds.

Self-esteem tends to remain stable over the lifespan. This suggests self-esteem could be set very early on. Professor Andrew Meltzoff, one of the study’s authors, said: “Some scientists consider preschoolers too young to have developed a positive or negative sense about themselves. Our findings suggest that self-esteem, feeling good or bad about yourself, is fundamental. It is a social mindset children bring to school with them, not something they develop in school.”

Until now it has been difficult to test the self-esteem of young children. Dr Dario Cvencek, the study’s lead author, explained: “Preschoolers can give verbal reports of what they’re good at as long as it is about a narrow, concrete skill, such as ‘I’m good at running’ or ‘I’m good with letters,’ but they have difficulties providing reliable verbal answers to questions about whether they are a good or bad person.”  READ MORE...

An Anti-James Bond

Best known for Peaky Blinders, rising star Joe Cole plays Harry Palmer in the new TV remake (Credit: ITV)

In 2006, an ordinary-looking pair of spectacles went on sale at Christie's, the London auction house. They were expected to fetch up to £3,000 ($4,088). In fact, they sold for £6,600 ($8,994), and the buyer had bought a little piece of movie history.

The spectacles were worn by Michael Caine when he played Harry Palmer in the 1965 espionage thriller The Ipcress File. Palmer, a former soldier, is introduced in a scene in which he is woken by his alarm clock, and reaches for his glasses before he gets out of bed. He's as blind as a bat without them – just one way in which he was not your typical action hero, certainly not back in the 60s.

In a nod to the movie, the very first shot of the new television adaptation of The Ipcress File shows Palmer's thick-rimmed spectacles. This time, Joe Cole (perhaps best known for his role in Peaky Blinders) plays the chippy working-class spy who loves culture, cooking and women but who doesn't have a lot of time for the posh public school boys who run British intelligence.

Like the film before it, the ITV series is based on the 1962 bestseller by the great spy novelist Len Deighton, which was published shortly after the cinema release of Dr No, the first instalment in the James Bond film franchise. Deighton's hero – unnamed in the novel but christened Harry Palmer for the screen – was quickly identified by critics and fans as being the anti-Bond.

James Watkins, director of the six-part adaptation, explains the differences between Ian Fleming's creation and Deighton's agent. "Bond is a superhero," he tells BBC Culture. "He kills without thinking or caring. He is establishment. He went to Eton. He uses his fists and his weapons more than his brain; gadgets, rather than real life.

"Harry is short sighted. Working class. Haunted by killing in Korea. A reluctant spy. Blackmailed into working for the establishment, insolent Harry is a constant thorn in their side. Trying to make his way in a world that is stacked against him. Always facing a class barrier. He's so much more relatable than the dinosaur Bond."      READ MORE...

Cause of Alzheimers

For the first time, researchers have used human data to quantify the speed
of different processes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease and found that it develops
in a very different way than previously thought. Their results could have
 important implications for the development of potential treatments.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, found that instead of starting from a single point in the brain and initiating a chain reaction that leads to the death of brain cells, Alzheimer’s disease reaches different regions of the brain early. How quickly the disease kills cells in these regions, through the production of toxic protein clusters, limits how quickly the disease progresses overall.

The researchers used post-mortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients, as well as PET scans from living patients, who ranged from those with mild cognitive impairment to those with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, to track the aggregation of tau, one of two key proteins implicated in the condition.

In Alzheimer’s disease, tau and another protein called amyloid-beta build up into tangles and plaques – known collectively as aggregates – causing brain cells to die and the brain to shrink. This results in memory loss, personality changes, and difficulty carrying out daily functions.

By combining five different datasets and applying them to the same mathematical model, the researchers observed that the mechanism controlling the rate of progression in Alzheimer’s disease is the replication of aggregates in individual regions of the brain, and not the spread of aggregates from one region to another.

The results, reported in the journal Science Advances, open up new ways of understanding the progress of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and new ways that future treatments might be developed.

For many years, the processes within the brain which result in Alzheimer’s disease have been described using terms like ‘cascade’ and ‘chain reaction’. It is a difficult disease to study, since it develops over decades, and a definitive diagnosis can only be given after examining samples of brain tissue after death.

For years, researchers have relied largely on animal models to study the disease. Results from mice suggested that Alzheimer’s disease spreads quickly, as the toxic protein clusters colonize different parts of the brain.  READ MORE...

Understanding Doodles

For Queen Victoria, it was donkeys. For Winston Churchill, it was airplanes. For Leonardo da Vinci, it was everything from crude drawings to the first workings of his groundbreaking laws of frictions. 

Throughout history, humans – whether royalty or a bored office worker – have doodled.

Usually relegated to the margins of notebooks or the back of envelopes, the doodle is often considered something messy, throwaway and unconsidered. 

If life is what happens when you're making other plans, then doodles are the result of your mind being somewhere else – a phone call, a meeting, a daydream. 

Yet in those scrawls – be it shapes, animals, lines, names – can be something powerful, with what they reveal and how they allow us to express our creativity. Hence why a new art project is taking doodles out of the margins and placing them centre-stage.

Frequencies, by Turner Prize-winning artist Oscar Murillo, collects together 40,000 canvases that have been marked, scribbled and drawn on by more than 100,000 children from around the world. 

Since 2013 Murillo has sent blank canvases to over 300 schools in more than 30 countries. The aim is to capture "the conscious and unconscious energy of young minds at their most absorbent, optimistic and conflicted" and the results are currently on show for the first time in their entirety in Murillo's former school in Hackney, east London. 

"The blank canvas is like a recording device," he tells BBC Culture. "You leave it there for six months at a minimum and then you simply allow for an individual to interact with that, however they wish. ​​

They are my collaborators, these almost 100,000 children."  READ MORE

Tuesday 1

Supersonic flight is arriving—in a hurry. In the last 18 months, Boom has successfully tested its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft and pre-sold 15 of its still-in-development 30-seat Overture models to United Airlines. Virgin Galactic and Rolls Royce rolled out a partnership to develop a 19-seater. Even the Russian Federation revealed plans to build a supersonic jet for commercial use.

Then there’s the Hermeus Quarterhorse. Think supersonic or Mach 1—the speed of sound—multiply by five and you have the hypersonic Quarterhorse.

Last week, the Atlanta-based company announced a $60 million award from the US Air Force to finance testing of the aircraft. Like the Greek god Hermes, this Hermeus is designed to travel seamlessly between worlds, with a projected top speed of Mach 5.5—or 4,219 mph. That makes it the fastest reusable aircraft on the planet, so a New York-to-London flight will take less than an hour.  READ MORE