It’s a victory for the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef, with a 20-year moratorium on all new shale oil projects in the region. Led by the Save Our Foreshore group, the success shows just how powerful local, grassroots campaigns can be.     Full Story…

[Read more →]

In considering the truth of the Peak Oil theory it is worth our while to consider alternate theories. The Peak Oil phenomenon follows from normal theories of the origin of fossil oil. Namely that there is a fixed quantity of oil which exists, and that it was formed from buried biological matter which […]

[Read more →]

Sarin is an organophosphate that irreversibly inhibits cholinesterase. it’s a neurotoxin, and a potent one. It’d be absolutely terrifying as a weapon, if it weren’t so unstable. Even if a rogue state had gobs of Sarin last year, it’s all pretty much a dud by now. The instability of acid halides (carbonyls there, but all […]

[Read more →]

Monday night - time to check out the new articles in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine:
Is Sleep Essential?:
Everybody knows that sleep is important, yet the function of sleep seems like the mythological phoenix: “Che vi sia ciascun lo dice, dove sia nessun lo sa” (”that there is one they all say, where it may be […]

[Read more →]