Removal

Earlier this month, Ella, a three-year-old Vietnamese potbelly pig, entered into a surgical procedure at Oregon State University (OSU). Simultaneously, she entered the record books as the first pig to ever have undergone the complete removal of an ear canal. Although the procedure is commonly carried out on dogs, the OSU surgery marks the first time it had been conducted on a pig, a species that has a notoriously tricky ear canal.Ella, who had been rescued by Morningside Farm Sanctuary in Veneta, Oregon from a hoarding…

Twitter has restored its suicide prevention feature after it was reportedly removed under orders from current CEO and new owner Elon Musk. As reported by Reuters, the feature was removed from the social media platform, apparently under the direction of Elon Musk from multiple sources familiar with the matter. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s current head of trust and safety, said that the change was temporary and that the company was working on improving the prompts before bringing them back. Twitter was “fixing…

This should probably go without saying, but the profit margins of any movie are nowhere near as simple as subtracting the budget from the box office takings, something the bean counters behind the DCU know all too well. There’s marketing, distribution, ancillary expenditure, the cut taken by the theaters, the back-end profits and participation points taken by the cast and key creatives, meaning that any project determined to be certified as a smash hit needs to recoup its budget at least twice over and then some to even…

Twitter's new owner Elon Musk, according to two sources, ordered the removal of a feature that offered suicide prevention hotlines and other safety options to users searching for specific information. No prior mention of the withdrawal of the #ThereIsHelp function has been made. Searches for topics such as mental health, HIV, vaccinations, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural catastrophes, and freedom of speech have returned connections for support groups in numerous…

Following a series of devastating fire years across the West, a number of states are increasingly funding efforts to clear out forests to reduce those dangers. That includes removing undergrowth, cutting down trees, or using controlled burns to break up the landscape and prevent fires from reaching forest crowns.  States are expected to produce more and more forest waste from these efforts as climate change accelerates in the coming years, says Justin Freiberg, managing director of the Yale Carbon Containment Lab, which…

A high-stakes race that will shape the future of direct air capture technology has officially begun. The Department of Energy fired the starting gun Tuesday with the release of guidelines the agency will follow when awarding $3.5 billion for four regional hubs that aim to rapidly scale up systems for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That prize money, which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021, will be distributed over the next five years in two prize competitions. The infusion of cash comes…

The European Union has taken a major step toward legitimizing attempts to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Yesterday, the European Commission adopted a proposal for new rules on how to certify carbon removal, a still controversial strategy for limiting climate change.The worry is that, without the proposed rules, ineffective carbon removal projects might derail climate goals and give polluters a sham to hide behind while presenting themselves as green. So, to weed out such projects, the European Commission wants to…

Power plants that generate electricity through the combustion of fossil fuels are a significant contributing factor to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.Over the last couple of hundred years, the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has skyrocketed. Scientists predict that if we don’t remove at least some of it, there will be even more heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, and other climate disasters. In this episode of the American Chemical Society’s video series Reactions, they break down how people are…

Swiss company Climeworks plans to phase out the first-generation technology that made it a pioneer in the business of carbon removal. The move is part of Climeworks’ pivot away from selling its captured carbon dioxide to companies like Coca-Cola. Instead, Climeworks says it will focus on efforts to store the CO2 underground permanently.Climeworks became the first company to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and sell it as a product back in 2017. That’s when its direct air capture (DAC) plant called Capricorn opened in…

Ford Kuga is top selling model in PHEV segment in Germany It now seems certain that revisions to Germany’s government grants for the purchase of a plug-in car will result in the abolition of the plug-in hybrid (PHEV) grant from the start of 2023. At present this is worth a maximum of €6,750. To qualify for this amount, cars need to have a homologated electric-only range of 60km and should have a net list price…