Une découverte majeure pourrait bouleverser notre compréhension des maladies neurodégénératives. Des chercheurs canadiens viennent de démontrer chez la souris que certaines lésions cérébrales typiques des pathologies à prions se développent même en l’absence totale de prions infectieux. Les tissus cérébraux présentent alors des trous spongiformes, des cicatrices et des plaques amyloïdes caractéristiques, normalement attribués exclusivement ... Lire plus
Les chercheurs progressent dans la compréhension des mécanismes biologiques liés à l’obésité. Une équipe scientifique chinoise vient de démontrer qu’un régime de restriction énergétique intermittente provoque des modifications substantielles à la fois dans le cerveau et la flore intestinale des personnes obèses. Cette découverte pourrait révolutionner les approches thérapeutiques destinées à maintenir un poids corporel ... Lire plus
Une découverte majeure pourrait bouleverser notre compréhension des maladies neurodégénératives. Des chercheurs canadiens viennent de démontrer chez la souris que certaines lésions cérébrales typiques des pathologies à prions se développent même en l’absence totale de prions infectieux. Les tissus cérébraux présentent alors des trous spongiformes, des cicatrices et des plaques amyloïdes caractéristiques, normalement attribués exclusivement ... Lire plus
Les chercheurs progressent dans la compréhension des mécanismes biologiques liés à l’obésité. Une équipe scientifique chinoise vient de démontrer qu’un régime de restriction énergétique intermittente provoque des modifications substantielles à la fois dans le cerveau et la flore intestinale des personnes obèses. Cette découverte pourrait révolutionner les approches thérapeutiques destinées à maintenir un poids corporel ... Lire plus
Earlier today I asked you to reinvent a component of the sixteenth century Dutch sawmill, which – according to a new book – was the world’s first industrial machine. You can read that post here, along with some great BTL discussion about the world’s greatest inventions. (Spoon or spear? Plough or spectacles? Transistor or trousers?)
Homo sapiens : l'espèce devenue tellement fragile qu'elle a désormais peur de l'environnement qui l'a vu naître. Visiblement, nous n'avons pas tout à fait dompté Dame Nature.
En plein cœur du LHC, les chercheurs ont découvert quelque chose qu’ils n’étaient même pas venus chercher : le toponium, une particule éphémère et insaisissable dont l'existence était prédite depuis 1990.
En plein cœur du LHC, les chercheurs ont découvert quelque chose qu’ils n’étaient même pas venus chercher : le toponium, une particule éphémère et insaisissable dont l'existence était prédite depuis 1990.
As a physicist in industry, I spend my days developing new types of photovoltaic (PV) panels. But I’m also keen to do something for the transition to green energy outside work, which is why I recently installed two PV panels on the balcony of my flat in Munich. Fitting them was great fun – and I can now enjoy sunny days even more knowing that each panel is generating electricity.
However, the panels, which each have a peak power of 440 W, don’t cover all my electricity needs, which prompted me to take an interest in a plan to build six wind turbines in a forest near me on the outskirts of Munich. Curious about the project, I particularly wanted to find out when the turbines will start generating electricity for the grid. So when I heard that a weekend cycle tour of the site was being organized to showcase it to local residents, I grabbed my bike and joined in.
As we cycle, I discover that the project – located in Forstenrieder Park – is the joint effort of four local councils and two “citizen-energy” groups, who’ve worked together for the last five years to plan and start building the six turbines. Each tower will be 166 m high and the rotor blades will be 80 m long, with the plan being for them to start operating in 2027.
I’ve never thought of Munich as a particularly windy city, but at the height at which the blades operate, there’s always a steady, reliable flow of wind.
I’ve never thought of Munich as a particularly windy city. But tour leader Dieter Maier, who’s a climate adviser to Neuried council, explains that at the height at which the blades operate, there’s always a steady, reliable flow of wind. In fact, each turbine has a designed power output of 6.5 MW and will deliver a total of 10 GWh in energy over the course of a year.
Practical questions
Cycling around, I’m excited to think that a single turbine could end up providing the entire electricity demand for Neuried. But installing wind turbines involves much more than just the technicalities of generating electricity. How do you connect the turbines to the grid? How do you ensure planes don’t fly into the turbines? What about wildlife conservation and biodiversity?
At one point of our tour, we cycle round a 90-degree bend in the forest and I wonder how a huge, 80 m-long blade will be transported round that kind of tight angle? Trees will almost certainly have to be felled to get the blade in place, which sounds questionable for a supposedly green project. Fortunately, project leaders have been working with the local forest manager and conservationists, finding ways to help improve the local biodiversity despite the loss of trees.
As a representative of BUND (one of Germany’s biggest conservation charities) explains on the tour, a natural, or “unmanaged”, forest consists of a mix of areas with a higher or lower density of trees. But Forstenrieder Park has been a managed forest for well over a century and is mostly thick with trees. Clearing trees for the turbines will therefore allow conservationists to grow more of the bushes and plants that currently struggle to find space to flourish.
Cut and cover Trees in Forstenrieder Park have had to be chopped down to provide room for new wind turbines to be installed, but the open space will let conservationists grow plants and bushes to boost biodiversity. (Courtesy: Janina Moereke)
To avoid endangering birds and bats native to this forest, meanwhile, the turbines will be turned off when the animals are most active, which coincidentally corresponds to low wind periods in Munich. Insurance costs have to be factored in too. Thankfully, it’s quite unlikely that a turbine will burn down or get ice all over its blades, which means liability insurance costs are low. But vandalism is an ever-present worry.
In fact, at the end of our bike tour, we’re taken to a local wind turbine that is already up and running about 13 km further south of Forstenrieder Park. This turbine, I’m disappointed to discover, was vandalized back in 2024, which led to it being fenced off and video surveillance cameras being installed.
But for all the difficulties, I’m excited by the prospect of the wind turbines supporting the local energy needs. I can’t wait for the day when I’m on my balcony, solar panels at my side, sipping a cup of tea made with water boiled by electricity generated by the rotor blades I can see turning round and round on the horizon.
Une étude menée par des chercheurs de l'Université de Bristol révèle des projections alarmantes pour l'avenir lointain de notre planète. La fusion des continents entraînerait des conditions climatiques extrêmes, rendant la Terre largement inhospitalière pour les humains et autres mammifères.
Du tonnerre et de la foudre sur notre voisine rouge ? Des phénomènes suspectés longtemps par la communauté scientifique, qui viennent de trouver confirmation grâce aux enregistrements de Perseverance, le rover de la NASA.
Un médicament peut être très populaire, mais si sa balance bénéfices-risques penche du mauvais côté, il n'a peut-être plus rien à faire dans nos pharmacies.
More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscape
It is not likely to be a hefty volume because the vast majority of the material has been lost in the mists of time. But the remnants of a language spoken in parts of the UK and Ireland 2,000 years ago are being collected for what is being billed as the first complete dictionary of ancient Celtic.
The dictionary will not be huge because relatively few words survive, but experts from Aberystwyth University say they expect they will end up with more than 1,000 words.
The genealogy site’s clarification of its terms and conditions has barred those working on unsolved crimes from access to the company’s vast trove of records.
En 2002, la biologiste évolutionniste Jenny Graves publiait un calcul qui allait semer la controverse pendant des décennies. Deux ans plus tard, elle affirmait dans un commentaire académique que le chromosome Y masculin « manquait de temps ». Sa projection reposait sur une donnée saisissante : au cours des 300 derniers millions d’années, ce chromosome déterminant ... Lire plus
En 2002, la biologiste évolutionniste Jenny Graves publiait un calcul qui allait semer la controverse pendant des décennies. Deux ans plus tard, elle affirmait dans un commentaire académique que le chromosome Y masculin « manquait de temps ». Sa projection reposait sur une donnée saisissante : au cours des 300 derniers millions d’années, ce chromosome déterminant ... Lire plus
Tech moguls may foolishly hope to stay forever young, but others could benefit too from evidence of the human body’s dynamic and varied journey through life
Ageing can feel remarkably sudden. One morning you awake to find new aches, or lapses in strength and memory that you could swear were not present just a few days prior. We do not literally age overnight, but as research is increasingly showing, we may not do so in a steady, linear path either.
Over the past decade a multitude of studies have suggested that ageing – at least for certain organs and bodily systems – may actually consist of long periods of stability, punctuated by inflection points or periods of rapid biological change. This shift in thinking has raised hopes for anti-ageing medicines. But it could also make us rethink our attitude to ageing in general, viewing it as a dynamic and varied journey – rather than simply a slow march of attrition and breakdown.
Connexion
