- Green Chemists Synthesise Vanillin From Sawdust
An environmentally-friendly way of making vanillin from the lignin in wood pulp could change the economics of this flavouring industry
- A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry
Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—few realize that it feeds data to the ad industry.
Whenever discussion starts about how to hide from the tracking code that follows users around the Web to serve them targeted ads, recommendations soon pile up for a browser add-on called Ghostery. It blocks tracking code, noticeably speeds up how quickly pages load as a result, and has roughly 19 million users. Yet few of those who advocate Ghostery as a way to escape the clutches of the online ad industry realize that the company behind it, Evidon, is in fact part of that selfsame industry.
- Repairing Bad Memories
A neuroscientist who has anguished over the terrors in her own family’s history says people might erase the trauma from memories by taking a pill — or talking to a therapist at just the right time.
It was a Saturday night at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and the second-floor auditorium held an odd mix of gray-haired, cerebral Upper East Side types and young, scruffy downtown grad students in black denim. Up on the stage, neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, a riveting figure with her long, straight hair and impossibly erect posture, paused briefly from what she was doing to deliver a mini-lecture about memory.
- What Carbon Capture Can't Do
New tech will lower the cost of carbon capture, but the sheer scale needed to reduce emissions prevent it from being a panacea.
I’ve recently reported on a handful of ways that researchers are trying to lower the cost of capturing carbon dioxide, with the view to storing it underground or using it for something useful (see “Cheaper Ways to Capture Carbon Dioxide,” “Grasping for Ways to Capture Carbon Dioxide on the Cheap,” and “Fuel Cells Could Offer Cheap Carbon Dioxide Storage”).
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