Science | Praxis

Private Technological Innovation Will Soon Be Out of This World

This week ushered in some significant news stories in technology and innovation. Facebook’s Aquila drone successfully completed its inaugural test flight, remaining in the air almost three times longer than expected. The massive high-altitude, solar-powered drone is an experiment in new methods of covering the world in wireless Internet access (which I wrote about in more detail here). In short, Aquila uses laser-based communication systems to communicate to ground relay stations, which then convert the signals into Wifi. Technical challenges remain, and this initial test…

Potentially Inhabitable Planet Discovered Orbiting Star Closest to Earth

The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates have been discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be “Earth-like” (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have been shown to be both terrestrial and located within their parent star’s habitable zone (aka. “Goldilocks zone”). But in what may prove to be the most exciting find to date, the German weekly Der Spiegel announced…

3D Printing Is Coming Soon to a Restaurant Near You

Back in 2013, when NASA was still setting its sights on a human mission to Mars, a team of Texas researchers won a federal grant to build a 3D printer that could pump out customized food in space. The natural first choice for a demo? Pizza, of course. But just after the first version was finished and a second grant was due to arrive, researcher Anjan Contractor and his team at the Systems and Materials Research Corporation in Austin, Texas, received the discouraging news that…

Despite Media Hype, Americans Aren’t Freaking Out About Zika

So why aren’t Americans freaking out over Zika? One answer is a question of politics. Ebola’s particularly horrifying symptoms and its position in American pop culture (thanks, Dustin Hoffman) made it fertile ground for political exploitation in the run-up to the 2014 mid-term elections. As Charles L. Briggs and Daniel C. Hallin write in their book, Making Health Public, “Republican politicians and pundits integrated Ebola into a campaign narrative about the failure of the Obama administration to protect the United States from external threats.” With…

Study: Unsanitary Conditions in Prisons, Jails Spreading Diseases Into General Populations

The cycling of inmates in and out of prisons and jails around the world contributes significantly to the global epidemics of HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. […] The authors reached their conclusions by analyzing nearly 300 scientific papers written about prisoners and infectious diseases by scientists around the world during the past 10 years. They also requested research data from United Nations organizations and from prison officials in countries such as China…

Understanding the present is the key to the future