Town of 65,000 Generates Heating From 8°C Fjord Waters

The town of Drammen, 40 miles west of Oslo in Norway, has installed a heat pump from a Glaswegian company Star Renewable Energy that allows them to heat most of the town from the near-freezing 8°C waters of the nearby Fjord.

Source: BBC News

One unit of heat costs 1 pence to generate, compared with 3p for biomass, 5p for gas and almost 8p for oil, generating annual savings of around €2m a year and 1.5m tonnes of carbon.

In the UK, the Glaswegian company in question is already working with local housing associations in Glasgow and is speaking with a dozen city councils including Newcastle, Durham, Manchester and Stoke. The company calculates that the Thames river could generate 1.25GW of capacity, enough to heat 500,000 homes.

Top Science Stories of 2015 So Far

The website Futurism.co has created an info-graphic that highlights 20 of the most impressive scientific advancements and discoveries this year so far. You can check out Futurism's interactive version to click through to a source for each story (Source: uk.businessinsider.com).

UK Crime Down Nearly 15% Since 2010

The public's perception of crime levels is notoriously very different to any actual crime figures going on in society. The fear of crime is a very volatile measure of actual criminality, and one which is continually played upon by the tabloid media who stir up the inherent suspicion in the public that crime is escalating out of control. However, the actual crime figures paint a very different picture.

UKCrimeStats is an open data platform of the Economic Policy Centre, a think tank dedicated to "closing the gap between policy and knowledge in new and innovative ways".  They proclaim themselves to be the leading public resource for maps, analysis and reporting of monthly crime data. Their independent data plots an interesting picture of a crime rate which is declining overall:

Source: Figures from UKCrimeStats

As an example, in July 2011 there were 278,738 burglaries reported which was down to 128,596 in January 2015.Criminal Damage & Arson (CD&A) is down from 229,915 in March 2011 to 11,802 in January 2015.

Overall reported crimes is down from 491,730 in December 2010 to 419,603 in January 2015, a reduction of nearly 15%. 

And figures in 2010 were themselves down from a crime high in the 1990's which we reported in a previous blog entry. Back in 1995 there were approximately 19 million offences recorded, as compared to fewer than 8 million by 2013:

Public Health is Better Than Ever

Considering the hammering the NHS gets in the right wing press and at the hands of politicians many of whom, coincidentally, have vested interests in private healthcare firms, you'd be forgiven for thinking that public health in the UK is worse than it used to be. But a cursory glance at historic disease stats shows another story.

Disease rates over time are a function of available treatments, inoculation programmes, health education and front-line healthcare. The NHS has a role in all of those things. So it should take the credit for some of the following stats.

The following graph shows the number of cases of a selection of infectious diseases identified between 1982 and 2013, as taken directly from government statistics (although older stats go back as far as 1912, as discussed below):

Source: Gov.UK NOIDs Statistics

Let's take a few examples in detail:

• Measles - In 1961 there were 763,531 cases of measles. By 2013 that was reduced to just 6,183, which is in itself a small increase since the low of 2,235 in 2010 due to the inaccurate and hysterical MMR jab reporting.
• Mumps - Likewise Mumps spiked in 2005 during the MMR jab hysteria at 56,256 cases and has now been reduced to 10,093 cases by 2013.
• Whooping Cough - In 1961 there were 169,441 cases. By 2013 there were just 3,273 cases, and that's despite a resurgence from a low of just 405 in 2010.
• Viral Hepatitis - In 1982 there were 10,605 cases, which were reduced to the point where no stats were collected by 2013.
• Tuberculosis - In 1912 there were a whopping 110,706 cases of TB reported. By 2013 there were fewer than a tenth of that at 8,087 cases,
• Scarlet Fever - In 1921 there were 137,073 cases. By 2013 there were just 4,642.
• Erysipelas - In 1913 there were 23,260 cases of this horrible looking thing, which I confess I've never even heard of. It disappeared from stats altogether in 1966.
• Diptheria - In 1920 there were 69,481 cases. By 2013 there were 9.
• Smallpox - In 1930 there were 11,839 cases. There hasn't been a case reported since 1978, in which year there were 2.
• Food Poisoning - In 1998 there was a peak of 93,932 cases. By 2013 there were just 15,216 cases.

It's also worth pointing out that the population in 1912 when these stats start was 42 million, whereas today it's heading towards 70 million. So the numbers of disease cases reported at the beginning of the 20th century were vastly higher despite there being nearly half as many people in the UK.

So, despite  constant crisis stories in the press about GPs and Hospitals, public health is actually the best it's ever been. 

NASA's Dawn Probe Achieves First Ever Orbit Around Dwarf Planet

NASA's Dawn probe, launched in 2007, has become the first ever space craft to go into orbit around a dwarf planet. It was captured by the dwarf planet’s Ceres's gravity at about 4:39 AM Pacific Standard Time this morning.

Source: NASA

Having already explored the asteroid Vesta, the Dawn probe will then have investigated two 'protoplanets', which are thought to be the sorts of smaller bodies that collided together to form planets like our own.

Protoplanets have been observed forming from the disk of dust and gas surrounding a star, so to be able to study a protoplanet up close, at about a tenth of the distance between the earth and the moon, will give science the first real chance to understand their make up.

For starters, we'll be interested to know what those mysterious two shiny spots are:

Source: BBC News

And that's no mean feat, considering Ceres is about 400 million km from earth on average and only 950 km across.

This Week's Advances in Medical Research

One area which is rich with stories of progress and positivity is the field of medical research. Take for example the following recent stories from just this last week or so as a measure of how much great work and progress there is going on right now.

There was the story which showed how doctors in Minnesota, USA fitted a bionic eye to a blind man to allow him to see for the first time:

There was also a recent story on how doctors in Liberia think they are very close to ending Ebola in the country. Ebola killed more than 4,000 people in Liberia, but there have been no confirmed new cases in Liberia for a week, defying predictions that half a million Liberians would die from the disease as a result of the outbreak.

There was also a promising story on the new range of targeted cancer drugs which, unlike conventional chemotherapy, which attacks all rapidly dividing cells, targeted drugs focus on the genetic mutations that drive cancer growth. They work by locking the messages from the gene which creates a chemical signal that drives the growth of abnormal cells. It's just one more step towards a truly effective way of treating cancer brought about by the ongoing cancer research battle.

And there was a story about a potential treatment for drug resistant TB, a story about how a substance found in a banned diet pill has been shown to reverse Type 2 diabetes in rats, the development of functional leg muscle material from stem cells, and the world’s first “bionic reconstructions” have been performed on three Austrian men to help them regain hand function.

Not bad for a week or so's worth of medical research.

Average Intelligence has Risen the Equivalent of 20 IQ Points Since 1950

The IQ test is a notoriously narrow measure of intelligence, and even then, it's possible to become more 'test wise' by getting more practice at taking IQ tests, without actually getting more intelligent.

Even so, it seems that the human race is getting collectively better at the sorts of tasks that IQ tests measure. Researchers at Kings College, London have compiled historical IQ test results together and noted a trend whereby overall IQ points per head of population have increased over time.

They analysed data from 405 previous studies from more than 200,000 participants, over 64 years and from 48 countries. They found that, on average, intelligence has risen the equivalent of 20 IQ points since 1950:

Source: BBC News

This may be that because more people globally now go through formal education than they did in the past, meaning that they get more practice in the sort of critical thinking and problem solving that the IQ test measures. It may be that the modern world contains more daily interpretation of signs, symbols and patterns as a part of daily routine. Or it may be from better nutrition and living conditions.

Or maybe humans are just getting cleverer?