All posts by Tom James

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In the year 2025… will US military dominance survive?

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The US National Intelligence Council has published their quadrennial Global Trends Review, from The Guardian:

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America’s expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be “losing clout” by 2025. Internal bickering and a “democracy gap” separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU “a hobbled giant”, unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.

There’s some other interesting stuff in there. The Guardian points out that the tone is different from the last time the NIC report was published in 2004:

It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected “continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US”.

That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies “in the ground” were “sufficient to meet global demand”.

It’s interesting how quickly perspectives can change – and reaffirms how difficult it is to create near future science fiction.

[from The Guardian][image from Army.mil on flickr]

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Buran space shuttle

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An interesting article on the Russian “Buran” space shuttle created in the last years of the Soviet Union:

On November 15, 1988, as snowy clouds and winds were swirling around Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Buran orbiter, attached to its giant Energia rocket, thundered into the gloomy early morning sky. Three hours and two orbits later, the 100-tonne bird glided back to a flawless landing just a few miles from its launch pad.

Despite the kind of strong winds that would rule out any launch or landing attempt by the US space shuttle, Buran touched down just 3m off the runway centreline.

And this planet-wide ballet was performed with its “pilots” safely on the ground.

[from the BBC][image from benjamin-nagel on flickr]

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Marijuana is teh good, episode 3

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Research suggests drugs similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, may help reduce memory impairment due to Alzheimer’s, from Physorg:

The research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana and hemp might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimer’s remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment.

Any new drug’s properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its high-producing effects. THC joins nicotine, alcohol and caffeine as agents that, in moderation, have shown some protection against inflammation in the brain that might translate to better memory late in life.

This following news THC could also be used as an antibiotic, and that cannabis is believed to be less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.

[from Physorg][image from Wikipedia]

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Mammoth progress

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Scientists have successfully sequenced a reasonably complete genome from an extinct animal for the first time, in this case, a woolly mammoth:

The team sequenced the mammoth’s nuclear genome using DNA extracted from the hairs of a mammoth mummy that had been buried in the Siberian permafrost for 20,000 years and a second mammoth mummy that is at least 60,000-years-old.

By using hair, the scientists avoided problems that have bedeviled the sequencing of ancient DNA from bones because DNA from bacteria and fungi, which always are associated with ancient DNA, can more easily be removed from hair than from bones.

Another advantage of using hair is that less damage occurs to ancient DNA in hair because the hair shaft encases the remnant DNA like a biological plastic, thus protecting it from degradation and exposure to the elements.

[image and story from Physorg.com][photo credit: Stephan Schuster lab, Penn State]