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A New Device Uses Sunlight to Create Drinking Water From Air   Biwa/Getty IN BRIEF Scientists have developed a sunlight-powered device that can extract water even from desert skies. The device is powered passively by sunlight and may provide an answer to the billions facing severe water shortages around the world. AN URGENT NEED MET According to the World Health Organization  (WHO), 663 million people — one in ten — lack access to safe water. Fully  one-third of the world’s population  lacks plumbing enough to have access to a toilet—that’s more than 2.4 billion people. A  2016 report  found that water shortages affect two-thirds of the world’s population.  Water shortages  — and the conflicts they cause — will worsen as climate change ramps up. In fact, the  2015 World Economic Forum  cited lack of access to clean water as the number one global risk in existence today. Working to find a solution to these problems, ...

Unmaking inequality: a history of violence Walter Scheidel (Stanford University) Borgerhoff Mulder et al., Science 326 (2009): study of intergenerational wealth transmission and dynamics of inequality in 21 small-scale societies (type of wealth/wealth transmission) Growing resource inequality in England and Wales Share of the richest 1% in national net worth 1700 39% 1740 44% 1810 55% 1875 61% 1911/13 69% Summary of the argument Development tends to increase resource inequality Agrarianism; Industrialism Violent shocks are the only factors capable of significantly reducing resource inequality (for a while) Violence Mass-mobilization wars Transformative revolutions State collapse Demographic contraction Pandemics Other factors are exotic or ineffective (abolition of slavery, migration, financial crises) Only a particular type of war generally lowers inequality! Requires mass mobilization that • raises state demands on the rich (to pay for war) • raises redistribution to th...

Cell Biologists Discover Crucial ‘Traffic Regulator’ in Neurons Neuroscience News April 19, 2017 Featured Neuroscience 5 min read Summary: Researchers provide a comprehensive map of transport in mammalian axons. Source: Utrecht University. First comprehensive map of transport in mammalian axons. Neurons are the main cells in the nervous system. They process information by sending, receiving, and combining signals from around the brain and the body. All neurons have a cell body where molecules vital for its functioning and maintenance are produced. The axon, a long and slender extension that can reach one metre in length in humans, sends information from the nerve cell to other nerve cells. Neuronal survival is highly dependent on the transport of vital molecules within this axon. Research has shown that defects in the transport function in the axons play a key role in degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer. First comprehensive map “Previous research ...

Cell phones were first introduced in the 1980s, became widely available in the U.S. during the 1990s, and today we're living in a society where cellphone-only households are no longer the exception; they're the norm. 1 The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which classified cell phones as possible carcinogens in 2011, suggested during the late '90s that a study looking into the relationship between cell phones and cancer made sense. In 2000, the  Interphone study  was initiated. When its results were finally released (years behind its scheduled completion date), there was controversy over the results. However, the Interphone Study Group did eventually acknowledge that  "heavy users"  of cell phones  had an approximately  doubled  risk of glioma, a life threatening and often-fatal brain tumor, after 10 years of cell phone use. The most shocking part of their finding is their definition of a "heavy user" —someone using a cell ph...