Shell Needs Oil to Pay for Green

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES


The boss of oil giant Shell has insisted it can transition to net zero by 2050, but it will need the cash from its oil and gas business to pay for it.

Ben van Beurden dismissed splitting its legacy oil and gas business from its renewables investment, a move urged by activist shareholder Third Point.

Talking exclusively to the BBC, he said the company's plans for greener energy could only be funded by oil and gas.

"At this point in time [the cash] comes from our legacy business," he said.

Mr van Beurden was speaking at Europe's biggest oil refinery at Pernis near Rotterdam, a facility he plans to transform from refining petrol and diesel, to making biofuels and hydrogen over the next decade.

"These things can only be done if you have a facility (like Pernis) to work with and if you have the cash.

"If we have to build a hydrogen plant from a wind farm that we build in the North Sea for a billion dollars that is not going to be funded by a hydrogen business - it will be funded by the oil and gas business," he said.  READ MORE...

Grasses

 

Political Humor

 

Trying to Sit Down

Fastest Programmable Quantum Computer In CHINA

China's leapfrogging capabilities in terms of technology development are well documented. Now, scientists from China claim to have developed the world's fastest programmable quantum computers.

Created by researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and led by Pan Jianwei, the quantum computing system called "Zuchongzhi 2.1" is at least a million times more powerful than its nearest competitor.

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World's fastest supercomputers
Named after a mathematician from 5th century, Zuchongzhi 2.1 performs quantum computing 10 million times faster than Google's Sycamore computing system.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Newspaper Cartoons

 

Space Missions Cause Brain Damage

Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the record for the longest spaceflight. Polyakov spent 438 days in space, returning to Earth on March 22, 1995. (Image credit: NASA)


Staying in space for a long time can cause brain damage, according to a new study.

Being in space has well-documented negative effects on the body. But the effect of being in space on the brain has been studied less. A recent study examined five Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station for about five and a half months. The researchers found elevated levels of proteins in the blood that serve as biomarkers of brain damage.

The study, which was detailed Oct.11 in JAMA Neurology, was small, and the effects on the cosmonauts' brains did not seem to be major. Still, the research could lead to further examination of the effect of being in space on the brain, especially as people begin to spend even longer amounts of time in space.


"It's not like major traumatic brain injury or anything like that," Henrik Zetterberg, a neurochemist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and one the study's authors, told Space.com, adding that the damage was comparable to suffering a concussion. "But still, all of the cosmonauts have this pattern of biomarker change."  READ MORE...

Puppy

 

Zinc Might Treat Colds

In 1771, the German physician Hieronymus David Gaubius introduced the western scientific community to "a medication with many promises" – zinc.

More than 200 years later, we can find it amongst the many supplements on pharmacy shelves. It's even known to be one of the rare things that might help fight off a common cold. 

Evidence for zinc supplement use is limited, study results have been mixed, and dosage, formulation and length of prescription have not been investigated properly to date.

A new meta-analysis of 28 randomized controlled trials has now strengthened the notion that supplementing zinc could prevent symptoms and shorten the duration of viral respiratory infections, like the common cold or the flu.

"It is commonly thought that zinc's role in preventing and treating infections is only for people who are zinc deficient; our findings really challenge this notion," says integrative medicine doctor Jennifer Hunter from Western Sydney University in Australia.

"The two large trials from China found very low dose zinc nasal spray reduced the risk of clinical illness. The two smaller trials in the US that evaluated the preventive effects of oral zinc excluded people who were zinc deficient.

"All the other trials that evaluated zinc for treating the common cold were in populations where zinc deficiency is very unlikely."

When zinc was taken as a preventative measure, the analysis found there was a 28 percent lower risk of developing milder symptoms, and an 87 percent lower risk of developing moderately severe symptoms.  READ MORE...

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Wake Up America!

 

Sultry

 

Their Peace Views Were Crap

The Beatles legend Paul McCartney has touched on the thing his late bandmate John Lennon and Lennon‘s wife Yoko Ono were believed in and said the things they believed in were crap.

The richest The Beatles member, Paul McCartney, was one of those founding members of the rock band he achieved world fame, The Beatles. After The Beatles disbanded, McCartney launched his solo career. Releasing 18 solo studio albums in total, his latest album was titled McCartney III and was released on December 18, 2020.

On the other hand, John Lennon was the co-founder, co-lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and co-frontman of The Beatles from 1960 to 1969. He had appeared in the entire albums of the band and wrote beloved songs such as I Want To Hold Your Hand, I’ll Cry Instead, I’ll Be Back, No Reply, It’s Only Love, Girl, Tomorrow Never Knows, She Said She Said, Good Night, I’m So Tired.

In 1969, John Lennon had collaborated with his second wife Yoko Ono to form the Plastic Ono Band. With the band, they had held the two-week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace.

Now, Paul McCartney has commented about Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s anti-war action. When the interviewer mentioned Lennon‘s quitting The Beatles to explore new artistic territory with Yoko Ono, McCartney said the things they’ve believed in were crap. According to him, a war could not be ended like this.

“The thing is – so much they held to be the truth was crap,” McCartney says. “‘War is over,’ well, no, it isn’t. ‘If enough people want the war to be over, it’ll be over…’ – I’m not sure that’s entirely true.”  READ MORE...

Bending

 

Brain Implant Gives Vision

Berna Gomez, wearing glasses to test the prosthesis. (John A. Moran Eye Center at the University 

of Utah)

A 'visual prosthesis' implanted directly into the brain has allowed a blind woman to perceive two-dimensional shapes and letters for the first time in 16 years.

The US researchers behind this phenomenal advance in optical prostheses have recently published the results of their experiments, presenting findings that could help revolutionize the way we help those without sight see again.

At age 42, Berna Gomez developed toxic optic neuropathy, a deleterious medical condition that rapidly destroyed the optic nerves connecting her eyes to her brain.

In just a few days, the faces of Gomez' two children and her husband had faded into darkness, and her career as a science teacher had come to an unexpected end.

Then, in 2018, at age 57, Gomez made a brave decision. She volunteered to be the very first person to have a tiny electrode with a hundred microneedles implanted into the visual region of her brain. The prototype would be no larger than a penny, roughly 4 mm by 4 mm, and it would be taken out again after six months.

Unlike retinal implants, which are being explored as means of artificially using light to stimulate the nerves leaving the retina, this particular device, known as the Moran|Cortivis Prosthesis, bypasses the eye and optic nerve completely and goes straight to the source of visual perception.

After undergoing neurosurgery to implant the device in Spain, Gomez spent the next six months going into the lab every day for four hours to undergo tests and training with the new prosthesis.  READ MORE...

Breeze

 

Big Bang Isn't the Beginning

The modern cosmic picture of our universe’s history begins not with a singularity, the Big Bang, 

but rather with a period of cosmic inflation that stretches a flat, uniform universe. The end of 

inflation is the onset of Hot Big Bang., Nicole Rager Fuller/National Science Foundation)

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Big Bang teaches us that our expanding, cooling universe used to be younger, denser, and hotter in the past.
• However, extrapolating all the way back to a singularity leads to predictions that disagree with what we observe.
• Instead, cosmic inflation preceded and set up the Big Bang, changing our cosmic origin story forever.

Where did all this come from? In every direction we care to observe, we find stars, galaxies, clouds of gas and dust, tenuous plasmas, and radiation spanning the gamut of wavelengths: from radio to infrared to visible light to gamma rays. No matter where or how we look at the universe, it’s full of matter and energy absolutely everywhere and at all times. 

And yet, it’s only natural to assume that it all came from somewhere. If you want to know the answer to the biggest question of all — the question of our cosmic origins — you have to pose the question to the universe itself, and listen to what it tells you.

Today, the universe as we see it is expanding, rarifying (getting less dense), and cooling. Although it’s tempting to simply extrapolate forward in time, when things will be even larger, less dense, and cooler, the laws of physics allow us to extrapolate backward just as easily. Long ago, the universe was smaller, denser, and hotter. 

How far back can we take this extrapolation? Mathematically, it’s tempting to go as far as possible: all the way back to infinitesimal sizes and infinite densities and temperatures, or what we know as a singularity. This idea, of a singular beginning to space, time, and the universe, was long known as the Big Bang.

But physically, when we looked closely enough, we found that the universe told a different story. Here’s how we know the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore.  READ MORE...

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Westler

 

US Ends Trade War With UK

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

The UK has been "left behind" according to steel makers after the US agreed to end a trade war over items that also included whiskey and Harley-Davidsons.


President Biden has signed a deal to end tariffs on steel imports from the EU, which were imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump.


But the agreement does not cover exports from the UK, putting British steelmakers at a disadvantage.


Trade body UK Steel said a deal for British producers was "sorely needed".


The tariffs, which came into force in 2018, nearly halved British steel exports to the US, Gareth Stace, director general of UK Steel, said.


The US is the second-largest market for British-made steel. But the new deal will put UK producers at a competitive disadvantage compared to European rivals who will be able to ship their products to the US without paying import tax


In return, the EU removed retaliatory tariffs that it had put on whiskey, power boats and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.


"Whilst it is promising to see the US take steps to open up access to its steel markets again, there is significant concern that UK producers have been left behind in this process and continue to wait for their own deal," Mr Stace said.  READ MORE...