Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: finance – Page 123

More than an ordinary aerial drone but not quite a satellite, a huge solar-powered airplane with three tails and wings wider than a jumbo jet’s will soon be taking to the skies.

Odysseus, developed by Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences of Manassas, Virginia, is one of the largest unpiloted aircraft ever built — and one of the lightest. It has a 243-foot wingspan but weighs less than a small car, the company says. Its six electrically powered propellers will be driven by energy from hundreds of solar panels that cover the aircraft’s exterior or from banks of rechargeable batteries on board, depending on the available sunlight.

With a top speed of 100 miles an hour, Odysseus won’t be very fast. But it’s designed to soar to altitudes above 60,000 feet and stay aloft for months at a time.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration now is pivoting toward promoting EVs in public transportation and fleet operations – primarily, two- and three-wheelers, taxis and buses. The Ministry of Finance is finalizing a plan to spend about 40 billion rupees ($600 million) in the next five years to improve the nation’s charging infrastructure and subsidize e-buses.

An electric-vehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, and it has nothing to do with cars.

The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws – a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. But while the world’s largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, India’s e-movement hardly got a hand from the state.

Rather, drivers of the ubiquitous three-wheelers weaving through crowded, smoggy streets discovered that e-rickshaws are quieter, faster, cleaner and cheaper to maintain than a traditional auto rickshaw. They also are less strenuous than cycle rickshaws, which require all-day peddling. So with more rides possible in a day, the e-rickshaws are proving more lucrative.

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Crop Trust guards about one million varieties of seeds in a mountain in Svalbard, Norway. The doomsday vault is the back-up for 1,700 seed banks worldwide, in the event of some future apocalypse.

The term “conservation” may bring wildlife or land preservation to mind. But what about the food we eat?

According to Crop Trust, an international organization working to safeguard agriculture, we only use about 1 percent of available crops to fuel our diets. That could put the future of our food system at risk.

That’s why Erik Oberholtzer helped to gather leaders in the restaurant industry last week at Google’s New York City office in an effort to encourage a more diverse and delicious future. On the menu was Breadfruit Tikki, Teff Tacos and Fonio Salad.

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Anversa, who according to publications was most recently affiliated with the Cardiocentro Ticino and University of Zurich, could not be reached for comment. An email to his address at Cardiocentro Ticino bounced back. A number of Anversa’s co-authors either did not immediately respond to a request for comment, or declined.

“We are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards and to rigorously maintaining the integrity of our research,” Harvard and the Brigham said. “Any concerns brought to our attention are reviewed in accordance with institutional policies and applicable regulations.”

Anversa received his MD from the University of Parma in Italy and gained prominence as a stem-cell researcher at New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y., where he worked before moving to Harvard Medical School and the Brigham in 2007. Anversa became a full professor in 2010, joined in that rank that year by Dr. José Baselga, who earlier this fall resigned his post at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center amid reports that he failed to adequately disclose financial conflicts of interest.

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ORACLE, Ariz. — They lived for two years and 20 minutes under the glass of a miniature Earth, complete with an ocean, rain forest, desert, grasslands and mangroves. Their air and water were recycled, and they grew the sweet potatoes, rice and other food they needed to survive.

About 1,500 people were invited and some 200 journalists were on hand as the eight original inhabitants of Biosphere 2 left their glass terrarium a quarter-century ago last month in two groups that no longer talked to each other amid the stress of sharing a small space and disputes over how the project should be run. Detractors called the $150 million experiment a failure because additional oxygen was pumped into what was supposed to be a self-sustaining system.

A power struggle in subsequent months led the financial backer, Texas billionaire Edward Bass, to hire investment banker Stephen Bannon, who was later President Trump’s chief strategist, to bring the project back from financial disarray.

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