11 killed and 30,000 left homeless in Niger floods
Niamey (AFP) July 29, 2016 -
Eleven people have died in flooding in Niger and 30,000 left homeless after vast swathes of the country - including arid desert locations - were deluged with heavy rain, the UN said Friday.
The worst affected regions are both desert areas: Tahoua in the west, where seven people died and 5,321 people were left homeless, and Agadez in the north where three people were killed and 18,448 lost ...
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Six more officials charged in Flint water scandal
Chicago (AFP) July 29, 2016 -
Authorities in the US state of Michigan filed criminal charges Friday against six current and former state officials over lead water contamination in the city of Flint, signaling that their probe is expanding.
"Many things went tragically wrong in Flint. Some failed to act," Michigan State Attorney General Bill Schuette told a news conference as he announced the new charges.
"Some intent ...
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Reclaimed city off Singapore triggers ecology fears
Johor Bahru, Malaysia (AFP) July 31, 2016 -
A planned multi-billion-dollar new city near Singapore is attracting interest from investors with promises of luxury living but there are questions over its future owing to China's economic woes and warnings of environmental catastrophe.
Forest City, a $42 billion futuristic "eco-city" of high-rises and waterfront villas, will sit on four man-made islands on the Malaysian side of the Johor S ...
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New remote-controlled microrobots for medical operations
Lausanne, Switzerland (SPX) Jul 26, 2016 -
For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine.
EPFL sci ...
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The preventive destruction
Tomsk, Russia (SPX) Jul 28, 2016 -
Employees of the Department of Celestial Mechanics and Astrometry NII PMM of Tomsk state university (Russia) and colleagues from St. Petersburg State University, Keldysh Research Center, and Research Institute Sirius are developing measures to protect the Earth from potentially dangerous celestial bodies.
With the help of supercomputer SKIF Cyberia, the scientists simulated the nuclear exp ...
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Molten storage and thermophotovoltaics offer new solar power pathway
Atlanta GA (SPX) Jul 28, 2016 -
A new wrinkle on an old technology - solid-state thermophotovoltaics (TPV) - could provide a high-efficiency alternative for directly converting high-temperature heat from concentrated solar thermal to utility-scale electricity.
New computer modeling suggests that high temperature TPV conversion - which captures infrared radiation from very hot surfaces - could one day rival combined-cycle ...
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Earth's mantle appears to have a driving role in plate tectonics
Eugene OR (SPX) Jul 29, 2016 -
Deep down below us is a tug of war moving at less than the speed of growing fingernails. Keeping your balance is not a concern, but how the movement happens has been debated among geologists.
New findings from under the Pacific Northwest Coast by University of Oregon and University of Washington scientists now suggest a solution to a mystery that surfaced when the theory of plate tectonics ...
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