The United Nations has passed the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons. In light of North Koreas continued testing of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, each capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the decision couldn't be more timely. The UN's decision to pass the treaty, with more than 120 countries ready to adopt it, despite a boycott from countries the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, followed a petition in March, signed by more than 2,500 scientists from 70 countries, calling for total nuclear disarmament. The treaty proposes a strengthening of the almost 50-year old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that gives only the five original nuclear powers — the US, Russia, Britain, France and China — the right to keep their destructive arsenals. To find out more go to The U.N. Is Currently Meeting To Negotiate A Complete, Global Ban on Nuclear Weapons.
Ambient radio signals could power smartphones
Smartphones and mobile devices have revolutionised our lives, but their battery lives are still limited, requiring constant re-chariging. Scientists as the University of Washington in the US, however, have developed a working battery-free cellphone that harvests power from ambient radio signals and light, and is capable of making voice calls using off-the-shelf components available from most electronics stores. By removing the on-the-spot conversion of analogue signals picked up by your phone's microphone into digital data that's relayed across the mobile network, which requires around 800 milliwatts to when making call — a huge amount of power compared with the 3.5 microwatts the battery-free cellphone needs to operate; instead of the conversion, the phone retains everything analogue, registering tiny vibrations from its microphone during a call to transmit the signals to a nearby base station, operating several metres away. To find out more go to First battery-free cellphone makes calls by harvesting ambient power.
'The Sperminator'- sexbots are coming
In the future, will sex with robots be commonplace and considered normal? A recent report by the Foundation for Responsible Robotics attempts to tackle these questions. Sex aids have been around for centuries and are widely available, and now most liberal societies accept or tolerate sex in many different forms and varieties. Currently, most sex toys are essentially representations of the human body — mostly female, but robotics companies, with an eye to the future, are now developing robots that simulate sexual partners that can interact and respond to people in ways previously unimaginable, adding intimacy, companionship, and conversation to sexual gratification. To find out more go to Our sexual future with robots.
Say 'high' to chocolate snuff
A US company is marketing Coco Loko, a new, drug-free way to get a buzz that includes cacao powder, gingko biloba, taurine and guarana, which are commonly found in energy drinks. Legal Lean, a Florida-based supplement company is selling tins of Coco Loko, which have about 10 servings, for US$24.99. The effects of the cacao-based powder are said to last for about 30 minutes to an hour, and are "almost like an energy-drink feeling, like you're euphoric but also motivated to get things done," says Nick Anderson, the 29-year-old founder of the company. Currently there are no medical data on what happens if you inhale chocolate, according to the Johns Hopkins Sinus Centre, but the the medical community has long raised concerns about the health effects of energy drinks, which often rely on caffeine, taurine and guarana, and have been shown to raise blood pressure and cause heart palpitations. To find out more go to Snortable chocolate with energy drink stimulants targets health-conscious clubgoers.
China ranked number one for supercomputers
For the second year running China has the fastest supercomputer in the world. In the recently released new rankings, the world's fastest computer is the TaihuLight, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, and is capable of performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, almost three times faster then the second-placed Tainhe-2. TaihuLight uses 41,000 chips, each with 260 processor cores, giving it 10.65 million cores. It has 1.3 petabytes of RAM, slightly less than Tianhe-2, and draws 15.3 megawatts of power. Taking third spot is the newly upgraded Piz Dain at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Lugano, and in fourth is the US Department of Energy’s Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It's the first time that more of the world’s top 500 supercomputers are Chinese than American: China now boasts 167 computers in the rankings, while the U.S. has 165, and third on the list is Japan, with 29. To find out more go to 2017 Rankings of World Supercomputers.
Measuring a kilogram just got more accurate
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently revised its value for Planck's constant — a number it uses to define a kilogram — and had come up with a more precise definition. Max Planck, from whom the constant is derives, was a pioneer of quantum physics, and worked on, amongst other things, the quantisation of energy, which lies at the heart of quantum theory. He worked out that heat radiation is given off by vibrating atoms, and the frequencies of the radiated waves were all multiples of a base figure he called h — Planck's constant — and can be multiplied by the frequency of a wave to determine its overall energy. Einstein showed the there is a relationship between energy and mass, and so Planck's constant can also be used to describe the mass of an object. The scientists determined that the new definition for a kilogram has an uncertainty of just 13 parts per billion, beating NIST's last measurement, which had an uncertainty of 34 parts per billion. To find out more go to New Measurement Will Help Redefine International Unit of Mass.
The tropics are expanding, and it's not good news for Australia
The Earth's tropical zone is expanding and could have far-reaching impacts, especially for Australia, according to a report published in Geographical Research. Although they occupy a zone between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, tropical climates occur within a larger area of around 30 degrees either side of the equator, with the dry, subtropical zone — where we find the words's great warm deserts — lying adjacent to this broad region. Since 1979, the Earth's tropical atmosphere has been expanding by 56 kilometres to 111 kilometres per decade in both hemispheres and are projected to continue to expand — driven largely by human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases and black carbon (released though the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass), as well as warming in the lower atmosphere and the oceans. And as these subtropical zones shift, droughts will worsen and overall less rain will fall in most warm temperate regions. To find out more go to Expansion of the tropics: revisiting frontiers of geographical knowledge.
Sea levels rising, and rising faster
A new study, the third of its kind in the past year, confirms that sea levels are rising, and rising at a rate that is increasing with time, according to a report published in Nature Climate Change. In 1993, a rate of 2.2 millimetre per year was reported; and based on changes in the mass of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets — the two largest sources of land-based ice on the planet — a sea level rise of 3.3 millimetre per year was reported in 2014. Previously, the dominant component of sea level rise was the expansion of ocean water as it heats up, the new study, however, has found that melting, from Greenland in particular, is now becoming a bigger contributor to sea level rise than thermal expansion. To find out more go to The increasing rate of global mean sea-level rise during 1993–2014.
UNESCO coral reef warning
Unless carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by the end of this century, all World Heritage sites containing reefs will experience severe bleaching, and will cease to contain functioning coral reef systems, according to a UNESCO report. The report finds that unless CO2 emissions are reduced by the end of the century, all reef-containing World Heritage sites will experience annual severe bleaching, and will cease to host functioning coral reef ecosystems. The report, UNESCO's first assessment of the impacts of climate change on World Heritage coral reefs, indicates that heat stress, sufficient to cause severe coral bleaching and mortality, cannot be managed at the local level, and say that national and global action are required to limit warming to 1.5°C. To find out more go to Assessment: World Heritage coral reefs likely to disappear by 2100 unless CO2 emissions drastically reduce.
Egg shape finally 'eggsplained'
Scientists believe they have answered a question that has been around since the time of Aristotle: why are bird's eggs egg-shaped? After extensive research they have concluded that the egg shape fits better inside a sleek bodied flying machine, according to research published in the Science. By simplifying egg morphology to two variables — their symmetry (the difference between the pointed and blunt end) and their ellipticity (how long and oval the egg is), the researchers compared over 49,000 photographs of eggs covering 1400 species of living and distinct birds. The found that, of all the characteristics that differed among the birds, the shape of the wing matched the differences in asymmetry and ellipticity of the eggs best. To find out more go to Avian egg shape: Form, function, and evolution.