Author Archive

Academic: Google criticism got me fired

Written by Dominic Rushe

Every second of every day Google processes over 40,000 search queries – that’s about 3.5bn questions a day or 1.2tn a year. But there’s one question that Google apparently doesn’t want answered: is Google a monopoly?

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Northern lights linked to North Sea whale strandings

Written by Matt McGrath

whalesImage copyright: GETTY IMAGES
Image caption: This sperm whale was one of a number stranded on this beach in the Netherlands

Large solar storms, responsible for the northern lights, may have played a role in the strandings of 29 sperm whales in the North Sea early in 2016.

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Seminar in Scotland on Wind Turbine Noise: September 22, 2017

Written by Christine Metcalfe

There are around 3000 wind turbines across Scotland, many of them close to individual homes and villages.
Similar symptoms such as loss of balance, nausea, loss of coordination, a pressure in the ear, thumping in the head or chest, epistaxis (high volume nosebleeds) are reported from some people living in close proximity to these turbines (also at many wind farms in the UK and elsewhere).

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UK Flooding Events and Fake Science

Written by Euan Mearns

Blöschl et al (2017, ref 1) published a paper in Science that purports to show flooding in S England occurs every year but only ever in January and that flooding is disconnected in time from extreme rainfall events via water storage in soils. The changing pattern with time is ascribed to man-made climate change and implications for insurance were highlighted by the Financial Times.

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Brilliant X-ray laser comes online

Written by Jonathan Amos

Beamline
Image copyright: XFEL
Image caption: The XFEL was considered a must-have machine for European science

One of the most powerful X-ray machines ever built has officially opened in the German city of Hamburg. The facility, which has cost more than a billion euros to build, will be used to study the detailed structure of matter, atom by atom.

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The most powerful nuclear blasts ever

Written by BBC

The first nuclear test in New Mexico, July 1945Image copyright: AFP
Image caption: The first nuclear test was carried out by the US in the New Mexico desert in 1945

The apparent hydrogen bomb that North Korea is believed to have detonated underground on Sunday was a massive explosion.

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