Latest posts
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Why Longevity Science Is About Healthspan, Not Immortality
Research on ageing is largely an effort to compress the period of ill health at the end of life. The claims that attract attention are not the ones the evidence currently supports.
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Why Discovering New Antibiotics Is So Difficult
The easy antibiotics were found decades ago by screening soil microbes. What remains is a scientific problem wrapped in an economic one: the drugs are needed but rarely profitable.
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What Tidal and Wave Energy Have to Withstand
The tides are predictable and the resource is enormous, but the sea is a hostile place for machinery. Most of the difficulty is survival, not generation.
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What Direct Air Capture Has to Overcome
Removing carbon dioxide from ambient air is technically possible and energetically expensive. The obstacle is that the gas is dilute, and diluteness is a physical cost, not an engineering inconvenience.
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What Battery Material Supply Chains Depend On
Battery cost has fallen dramatically, but the materials inside them are geographically concentrated. That concentration, rather than any single technology, shapes the supply risk.
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How Geothermal Energy Is Being Extended Beyond Hot Springs
Conventional geothermal needs an unusual combination of heat, water and permeability in the same place. Newer approaches try to remove one of those requirements.
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What Dementia Research Is Actually Trying to Change
Dementia is an umbrella term for conditions with different causes. That distinction is why progress has been uneven, and why recent work focuses on earlier detection rather than reversal.
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What Sleep Research Has Established and What It Has Not
Sleep is not simply the absence of activity. It is an organised state with distinct stages, and the evidence for its functions is stronger for some claims than for others.
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Why Hydrogen Is Harder to Handle Than Its Chemistry Suggests
Hydrogen burns cleanly and carries energy per kilogram better than almost anything. Its difficulty is not chemistry but physics: it is the smallest molecule, and that creates practical problems throughout the supply chain.
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Why Planting Trees Is Not the Same as Restoring Forests
Tree planting is visible, countable and easy to fund. Forest recovery is slower, less photogenic and depends on conditions that a planting operation alone does not create.