Move over Houston, Austin is in the space race.
Category: economics
Five crucial Earth systems near a tipping point: Report
Five of Earth’s vital systems are close to a point of irreversible change, warns a new report released by a global network of scientists ahead of the upcoming U.N. climate change conference in Brazil.
The 2025 Global Tipping Points report updates a 2023 report to assess 25 Earth systems that human societies and economies depend on, including the stability of coral reefs, forests and ice sheets. It found at least one system has likely passed a tipping point, while four others are perilously close.
The Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100. The report notes that Earth has already reached an average increase of 1.4°C (2.5°F) over the past couple decades.
Researchers pioneer ‘green’ framework for sustainable drug development
Medical drugs are expensive to make and can have an adverse effect on the environment. Researchers Stefano Cucurachi and Justin Lian have developed a framework to help the health care system assess the economic and environmental sustainability of medical compounds. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
With a growing and aging population, and more people living with chronic disease, health care costs are rising and the pharmaceutical industry is expanding fast. Patients and health care professionals are also beginning to wonder about the environmental impact of medicines. But information on this is lacking.
“Some sources claim 10% of all pharmaceuticals have an environmental risk, but only the smallest fraction has ever been assessed,” says Cucurachi, Associate Professor of industrial ecology.
Global lead exposure still costs trillions and endangers children, study finds
Lead poisoning was once thought to largely be a problem of the past, as the globe gradually weaned itself off leaded gasoline in road vehicles in 2021. But has global lead pollution truly been resolved?
A new study led by Dr. Chen Mengli, a Research Fellow from the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in collaboration with researchers from Imperial College London, University of Warwick, University of Oxford, Jadavpur University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Bristol, showed the answer is not yet: Lead exposure remains a pressing public health and economic challenge in the 21st century.
The researchers estimated that ongoing childhood lead exposure costs the world more than US$3.4 trillion in lost economic potential each year, with disproportionate impacts on low-and middle-income countries.
Advances in AI will boost productivity, living standards over time
Artificial intelligence offers the potential to improve people’s living standards. Such advances can be approximated by changes in GDP per capita over time. Using that common measure, AI could enhance longstanding productivity gains or, alternatively, drastically alter the economy in relatively short order.
The Dyson Sphere Economy — Mega Structures, Mega Markets, and Mega-Wealth
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A Dyson Swarm isn’t just power—it’s prosperity. See how humanity could turn a star’s energy into a solar-scale economy of trillions.
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/ discord Credits: The Dyson Economy — Mega-Structures, Mega-Markets, and Mega-Wealth Produced, Narrated & Written: Isaac Arthur Editor: Jonathan Maltz Editor: Thomas Owens Graphics: Bryan Versteeg, Jeremy Jozwik, Ken York, Sergio Botero, Udo Schroeter Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images Music Courtesy of Stellardrone & Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:09 The Vision of the Space Elevator 2:46 The Rope That Reaches the Sky 9:08 Manufacturing the Megastructure 12:58 Tether Design and Variants 19:57 PIA 21:52 Defects and Composites: Strength in Layers 22:48 Power and Payload 25:20 Safety, Scaling, and the Road Ahead.
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Credits:
The Dyson Economy — Mega-Structures, Mega-Markets, and Mega-Wealth.
Produced, Narrated & Written: Isaac Arthur.
Editor: Jonathan Maltz.
Editor: Thomas Owens.
Graphics: Bryan Versteeg, Jeremy Jozwik, Ken York, Sergio Botero, Udo Schroeter.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Stellardrone & Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator.
Chapters.
0:00 Intro.
0:09 The Vision of the Space Elevator.
2:46 The Rope That Reaches the Sky.
9:08 Manufacturing the Megastructure.
12:58 Tether Design and Variants.
19:57 PIA
21:52 Defects and Composites: Strength in Layers.
22:48 Power and Payload.
25:20 Safety, Scaling, and the Road Ahead.
Ladislaus Bortkiewicz
Ladislaus Bortkiewicz was born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, to two ethnic Polish parents: Józef Bortkiewicz and Helena Bortkiewicz (née Rokicka). His father was a Polish nobleman who served in the Russian Imperial Army.
Bortkiewicz graduated from the Law Faculty in 1890. In 1898 he published a book about the Poisson distribution, titled The Law of Small Numbers. [ 1 ] In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian horse-kicking data famous. The data gave the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers followed a Poisson distribution. The book also examined data on child-suicides. Some [ 2 ] have suggested that the Poisson distribution should have been named the “Bortkiewicz distribution.”
In political economy, Bortkiewicz is important for his analysis of Karl Marx’s reproduction schema in the last two volumes of Capital. Bortkiewicz identified a transformation problem in Marx’s work. Making use of Dmitriev’s analysis of Ricardo, Bortkiewicz proved that the data used by Marx was sufficient to calculate the general profit rate and relative prices. Though Marx’s transformation procedure was not correct—because it did not calculate prices and profit rate simultaneously, but sequentially—Bortkiewicz has shown that it is possible to get the correct results using the Marxian framework, i.e. using the Marxian variables constant capital and variable capital it is possible to obtain the profit rate and the relative prices in a three-sector model. This “correction of the Marxian system” has been the great contribution of Bortkiewicz to classical and Marxian economics but it was completely unnoticed until Paul Sweezy’s 1942 book “Theory of Capital ist Development”
Google is powering Belgium’s digital future with a two-year €5 billion investment in AI infrastructure
Google is investing an additional €5 billion in Belgium over the next two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure. This includes expansions of our data center campuses in Saint-Ghislain and will add another 300 full time jobs. We’ve also announced new agreements with Eneco, Luminus and Renner which will support the development of new onshore wind farms and support the grid with clean energy.
Our commitment goes beyond infrastructure. We’re also equipping Belgians with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-driven economy, at no cost and will fund non-profits to provide free, practical AI training for low-skilled workers.
This is an extraordinary time for European innovation and its digital and economic future. Google is deepening its roots in Belgium and investing in its residents to unlock significant economic opportunities for the country, helping to ensure it remains a leader in technology and AI.
2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Peer Review
Introduction.
Grounded in the scientific method, it critically examines the work’s methodology, empirical validity, broader implications, and opportunities for advancement, aiming to foster deeper understanding and iterative progress in quantum technologies. ## Executive Summary.
This work, based on experiments conducted in 1984–1985, addresses a fundamental question in quantum physics: the scale at which quantum effects persist in macroscopic systems.
By engineering a Josephson junction-based circuit where billions of Cooper pairs behave collectively as a single quantum entity, the laureates provided empirical evidence that quantum phenomena like tunneling through energy barriers and discrete energy levels can manifest in human-scale devices.
This breakthrough bridges microscopic quantum mechanics with macroscopic engineering, laying foundational groundwork for advancements in quantum technologies such as quantum computing, cryptography, and sensors.
Overall strengths include rigorous experimental validation and profound implications for quantum information science, though gaps exist in scalability to room-temperature applications and full mitigation of environmental decoherence.
Framed within the broader context, this award highlights the enduring evolution of quantum mechanics from theoretical curiosity to practical innovation, building on prior Nobel-recognized discoveries like the Josephson effect (1973) and superconductivity mechanisms (1972).
