Thursday, February 15, 2007

Interesting Articles of the Week

Does the world have enough lithium to allow us all to drive electric cars?

A father attempts to hack his child's brain to help with his sensory processing disorder.

Viruses, not prions, may be at the root of diseases such as scrapie, BSE and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), researchers say.

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker supports oil or carbon emissions taxes to combat global warming and says the argument that they would ruin an economy was "fundamentally false."

GTC Biotherapeutics is among several companies worldwide perfecting the art of "pharming" -- genetically modifying animals to churn out drugs for disorders like hemophilia and cancer.

2 comments:

Audacious Epigone said...

Thanks for the lithium article. I was unaware of its relative scarcity and geographic epicenter.

I wonder how the disposable use of lithium accentuates the problem (Energizer's AA lithium batteries, for example).

Fat Knowledge said...

crush,

Glad you liked it. I aim to please. :)

I have no idea how much disposable use of lithium adds to the problem. The article says 70,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate are mined a year, so that would be a lot of AA batteries. I think you are supposed to recycle all the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, so hopefully most of them don't get thrown away. But I have no clue how many tons of lithium end up in the landfills each year.

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