Guardian: Plastic tub gets the snub as Nestlé tests paper container for Quality Street
Christmas-favourite sweet brand hopes to cut virgin plastic use, but consumers may mourn reusable tub.
Guardian: Anger at UK’s ‘bonkers’ plan to reach net zero by importing fuel from North Korea
A plan by the British government to burn biomass imported from countries including North Korea and Afghanistan has been described as “bonkers”, with critics saying** **it undermines the credibility of the UK’s climate strategy.
A bioenergy resource model, published in late summer, calculates that only a big expansion in the import of energy crops and wood from a surprising list of nations would satisfy the UK’s plan to meet net zero.
The government wants biomass to play a “significant role” in decarbonising all sectors of the economy in the years leading up to 2050, and has provided more than £20bn to businesses using it in the power and heat sectors over the past two decades.
Hill Times: Whither the centrist option?
The state of our politics may have centrist Canadians dreaming of the different electoral system the Trudeau government promised, but ultimately failed to deliver.
As the election campaign in British Columbia continues to unfold, all signs suggest the provincial map is now essentially a two-party race between the governing BC NDP and the formerly-moribund-but-suddenly-in-contention Conservative Party of BC.
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Guardian: Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year
Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, a report has found, rising from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022.
“This shocking increase in aid funding to fossil fuels is a wake-up call,” said Jane Burston, CEO of nonprofit the Clean Air Fund, which conducted the research. “The world cannot continue down this path of propping up polluting practices at the expense of global health and climate stability.”
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The report found the top five funders of fossil fuel projects between 2018 and 2022 were the Islamic Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank.
ScienceDaily: In double breakthrough, mathematician solves two long-standing problems
Pham Tiep, the Joshua Barlaz Distinguished Professor of Mathematics in the Rutgers School of Arts and Science’s Department of Mathematics, has completed a proof of the 1955 Height Zero Conjecture posed by Richard Brauer, a leading German-American mathematician who died in 1977. Proof of the conjecture — commonly viewed as one of the most outstanding challenges in a field of math known as the representation theory of finite groups — was published in the September issue of the Annals of Mathematics.
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In the second advance, Tiep solved a difficult problem in what is known as the Deligne-Lusztig theory, part of the foundational machinery of representation theory. The breakthrough touches on traces, an important feature of a rectangular array known as a matrix. The trace of a matrix is the sum of its diagonal elements. The work is detailed in two papers, one was published in Inventiones mathematicae, vol. 235 (2024), the second in _Annals, _vol. 200 (2024).
CleanTechnica: There Is A Reason There Is Only One Ford F-150 Lightning In Denmark So Far
To make the turn signals work [legally] cost about DKK 20,000 including VAT ($3,000).
Wired: Internet Archive Breach Exposes 31 Million Users
The hack exposed the data of 31 million users as the embattled Wayback Machine maker scrambles to stay online and contain the fallout of digital—and legal—attacks.
Last Updated: 09.Oct.2024 22:55 EDT
