As foraging worker bees flit around the neighborhood in search of nectar and pollen, they unwittingly pick up pollutants that then linger in the hive’s honey. Luckily, Hina Alam writes for the Canadian Press, trace amounts of lead, zinc and copper left by this process are too low to have much of an impact on […]

The seabed is not flat and smooth like the shimmering ocean above it. It’s a jagged, uneven landscape of submerged mountains and valleys, all hidden from sight – but not from science. By analysing the isotopic composition of the rocks that make up these underwater mountains networks – called mid-ocean ridges – scientists can identify […]

South Korea’s government has added blockchain to the fields of research and development eligible for a tax credit meant to boost innovation, English-language local media TheNews.Asia reports on Jan. 8. The local Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced the proposed changes to the enforcement decree of last year’s tax law, which will be enforced in February. The proposed amendments also include among the eligible fields […]

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced federal funding of up to $4.8 million for universities working on R&D projects, including those related to blockchain. Announced Monday, the funding is being made available through the department’s Office of Fossil Energy as a part of the “University Training and Research” initiative aimed to develop fossil energy applications. […]

The American Economic Association (AEA) will host four dedicated presentations of cryptocurrencyand blockchain research today, Jan. 4, as part of its ongoing annual meeting. The session, dubbed ‘Blockchain and Tokenomics,’ will cover four academic papers from various sources. It will be hosted by the academic group the Econometrics Society and chaired by Lin William Cong, assistant professor of finance at […]

The majority of Gen Z shoppers prefer to do their shopping in brick-and-mortar stores— especially when the locations are convenient. According to a survey of Gen Z shoppers (aged 18 to 22) by prescriptive analytics provider Profitect, 42% of respondents prefer to shop in-stores vs online. A further 34% prefer to shop in-stores and online […]

Energy efficiency is often a hard sell in the US. Energy efficient devices can require a bit more money up front, which is then paid back gradually often over the course of several years. But a new study in the latest edition of PNAS suggests that the problem isn’t only a matter of economics—instead, like […]

Utrecht University (UU) in the Netherlands thought it had nothing to be ashamed of when it accepted a €360,000 research grant from Philip Morris International (PMI) last September. The tobacco giant had agreed to fund a study on cigarette smuggling that had obvious public health importance, and the lead researcher, law professor John Vervaele, would enjoy complete […]

PhD candidate Yonatan Sompolinsky and Dr. Aviv Zohar, both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, released a paper this week on a new scalable BlockDAG — an alternative network structure to Blockchain — protocol called PHANTOM. Sompolinsky and Zohar's 2013 paper on the GHOST protocol …

Arizona State University (ASU) has announced a partnership with the digital currency Dash that will provide $350,000 to “accelerate research, development, and education in ways that advance blockchain transaction speed, efficiency, security, and expand its uses.” The funds will be allocated as follows:.