New Scientist reports The world’s first high-rise factory will be built in Nanjing, China. The 24-storey industrial and commercial building, to be completed in 2024, will dwarf today’s tallest factories. According to the project architect Robert Caulfield of CK Designworks, based in Melbourne, Australia, existing factories don’t rise above eight storeys. The high-rise’s footprint is [...]

New Scientist reports IF MODERN medicine cannot provide an answer to multidrug-resistant microbes, perhaps ancient animals can. Biologists have resurrected a mammalian antimicrobial compound that was last seen on Earth 59 million years ago when mammals were recovering from the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. Even now it is potent enough to destroy [...]

New Scientist reports Google continues to allow us to virtually go where no archaeologist has gone before. The latest finds, in the Arabian peninsula, are of spectacular stone structures that rival the Nazca lines of southern Peru in their intricacy. The ruins are known to local Bedouin groups as “the works of the old men”, [...]

THE cars of the future could be powered by electrified roadways. Such technology would allow electric cars to forgo their heavy batteries, which not only add to a vehicle’s weight, increasing the energy needed to move it, but also force it to sit idle while recharging. New Scientist reports that the idea has been around [...]

Coconuts and sunshine will soon provide all the electricity demands of the South Pacific islands of Tokelau. Foua Toloa, Tokelau’s leader, announced this week that by the middle of next year solar energy will supply 93 per cent of Tokelau’s electricity – the rest will come from coconut oil. Motor vehicles and some cooking devices [...]

New Scientist reports To control Shanghai’s growing pet population and curb rabies, the biggest city in China has just introduced a one-dog policy. Starting yesterday, and recalling family-planning measures introduced in 1976, Shanghai residents are only allowed one dog per household. All dogs in the city must also receive rabies vaccinations, with dog owners who [...]

New Scientist reports: The world’s first “vertical street” will soon be built in Melbourne, Australia. Every sixth floor of the 35-storey building will have gardens capable of growing trees up to 10 metres tall and the entire building will be boasting the very latest in green technology. While roof gardens and landscaped balconies have been [...]

New Scientist reports A RACE is on to retrieve the first million-year-old sample from deep within Antarctica’s ice. It’s a prize that could help us understand what drives major changes in Earth’s climate. Every 100,000 years or so, the Earth swings into an ice age – but it wasn’t always this way. Until around 1 [...]