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The biggest refugee crisis in world history Torrential flooding in southeast Asia - produced by a combination of rising sea levels, melting glaciers and extreme weather events - is creating the biggest refugee crisis in world history. Bangladesh and neighbouring regions are seeing literally tens of millions of men, women and children displaced from their homes.* This unfolding horror is the worst environmental crisis of the 21st century so far. Although various different countries are affected, the disaster is centred on Bangladesh with its high population (over 150m) and high density, situated in the low-lying Ganges River delta. With most of the country just a few metres above sea level - and with a flat topography - storm surges are flooding vast areas of land with virtually no hope of recovery. As well as the physical damage to infrastructure, salt in the ground means that fields up to 40km from the new coastline are rendered useless for growing crops.* Millions are drowned, while others die in the subsequent looting and chaos that sweeps the nation. With so many refugees attempting to flee the region, conflicts begin to erupt along the borders with India and Burma. The sheer scale of this catastrophe makes it difficult to coordinate relief efforts, and relatively speaking, only token assistance can be offered by the UN.
Gay marriage is legal in every US state The movement to obtain marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples in the USA began in the early 1970s. The issue became even more prominent in the 1990s, with Congress' passing of the Defense of Marriage Act. In the early 21st century, public support grew considerably. By 2011, same-sex marriages had been granted by five of the 50 states, the federal district, and one Indian tribe. By 2015, the number of Americans opposing gay marriage was being exceeded by those in support.* This progress continued over the next decade, with a growing majority of states declaring same-sex marriage bans to be unconstitutional. By the 2020s, even the southern "Bible Belt" states had begun to overturn the ban, Mississippi becoming the last to do so.*
African elephants are going extinct in the wild Despite efforts to curtail the ivory trade, vast numbers of elephants continued to be poached throughout Africa. Their population - which stood at 600,000 in 2009 - declined by nearly 40,000 each year.* They are now on the brink of extinction, with no reported sightings in the wild. Zoos and parks are working to maintain a viable population for future rewilding.
A
cure for the common cold is available for general public use In 2010, however, scientists made a revolutionary discovery. It was found that certain antibodies could "piggyback" on an invading virus as it entered the cell. Once inside, they would trigger a protein called TRIM21, pulling the virus into a disposal system and eliminating it. Artificially boosting the amount of TRIM21 was shown to help this process. What had once seemed impossible - a cure for the common cold - was edging towards a reality. Further research, including animal tests, led to the first trials on humans in the mid-2010s. Though successful in the laboratory, this drug faced the lobbying efforts of pharmaceuticals, concerned at their sudden loss of profitability. Nevertheless, it eventually became available to the public. The treatment can be taken in inhaler form and cures colds in under two hours. Workplace absences are decreased substantially as a result. A number of other viruses responsible for a range of diseases can also be targeted by this new approach. They include norovirus, which causes winter vomiting, and rotavirus, which results in severe diarrhea and kills thousands of children in developing countries.*
Completion
of the Square Kilometre Array By utilising advanced processing technology, it can survey the sky more than 10,000 times faster than ever before. With stations extending to a distance of 3,000 km from a concentrated central core, it continues radio astronomy's tradition of providing the highest resolution images in all of astronomy.
Click
to enlarge
Petabyte storage devices are available Data storage devices are continuing to grow exponentially, with capacities doubling every year. Nanotechnology is enabling truly vast quantities of information to be stored. A petabyte is 1000 terabytes, or one million gigabytes. Secure digital and microSD cards have disappeared by now, replaced by an even smaller form-factor.
The first probe to fly into the Sun's outer atmosphere Solar Probe Plus is a historic mission, flying into the Sun's outer atmosphere (corona) for the first time. This probe travels to within 5.9 million km (3.6 million miles) of the Sun's surface - just four times the length of its diameter. At such close range, a shield is needed at the front of the spacecraft. This is made of reinforced carbon-carbon composite, able to withstand temperatures of 2000°C. At closest approach, Solar Probe Plus hurtles around the Sun at approximately 450,000 miles per hour; fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington in one second. The mission's primary scientific goals are: • To determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the
sources of solar wind. Coming closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft, Solar Probe Plus employs a combination of in situ measurements and 3D imaging to revolutionise our knowledge of the physics, origin and evolution of the solar wind.*
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References 1 Such
a disaster could emerge "in the next ten to 15 years", according
to Peter Schwartz, chairman of Global Business Network. 2 Flooded future looms for Bangladesh, BBC News: 3 Automated Poll Produces Starkly Different Results on Gay Marriage
Question, FiveThirtyEight: 4 Hansen: It won't be easy to kill same-sex marriage, DesMoinesRegister: 5 African elephants could be extinct in 15 years, The Telegraph: 6 A
cure for the common cold may finally be achieved as a result of a remarkable
discovery in a Cambridge laboratory, The Independent: 7 SKA
- Square Kilometre Array, skatelescope.org: 8 Solar Probe Plus: A NASA mission to touch the Sun, John Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory:
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