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  By Christine Ro Technology of Business reporter,(BBC) IMAGE SOURCE, BBC/MAMMOTH SCREEN/MIKE HOGAN Image caption, The production team of Poldark, which stars Eleanor Tomlinson, called for low-carbon suppliers The green memo  sent out by the production  team of the programme Poldark asked that the location department use low-carbon suppliers of lighting and reusable batteries wherever possible. The request was vague and the expectations unclear. But such requests are increasingly mainstream and point to the growing awareness in the film and TV industry of its carbon dioxide emissions. In film and TV production, the main sources of carbon emissions are transport and energy. According to the report  Screen New Deal , the average big budget film production produces 2,840 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. It would take 3,709 acres of forest a year to absorb this amount. Half of this comes from fuel, 30% from energy utilities, and 16% from air travel. Louise Smith focuses on transport and energy wh

From -knowable magazine, By David Levin,    Edited by - Amal Udawatta, In the not-so-distant future, the surgeons who treat our ailments might be tiny machines that swim through our bodies, tracking down cancerous tumors or clearing clots from even the smallest arteries. If this sounds like science fiction, you’re not wrong: Movies like  Fantastic Voyage  and  Innerspace  have long played with the concept of shrinking machines down to the size of a single cell — yet over the past few years, advances in robotics and materials science have brought the idea ever closer to reality. CREDIT: JAMES PROVOST (CC BY-ND) Roboticist Bradley Nelson ETH Zürich Roboticist Bradley Nelson of ETH Zürich has spent his career working to create microscopic devices like these. He says that while engineers have already built robots no bigger than a microbe that can move around and sense their environment, these still need to be controlled remotely by people. The next major challenge, he says, will be imbuing

  From - Knowable Magazine,  By - Bob Holmes, Edited by Amal Udawatta T here’s a reason the world has more hobbyist bird-watchers than, say, rodent-watchers: Birds are unusually fascinating creatures. Biologists aren’t immune to their charms — they’ve long been working to understand why and how the creatures come by their flashy colors, varied shapes, florid songs and intricate behaviors. Those aren’t easy questions to answer, given the thousands of genes — many of unknown function — in a typical bird genome. Searching for the gene or genes behind a given trait can feel like trying to map out a vast landscape with a dim flashlight. But now geneticists have turned on the floodlights thanks to new technologies that make  sequencing entire genomes fast and cheap . Able to study the whole genome at once, scientists have unprecedented power to understand the biology of birds, from their evolutionary origins to their many eye-catching adaptations — and even to follow one of evolution’s most

 By:  Associated Press , Edited by Amal Udawatta, Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle, including the then under construction units 3 and 4 at the plant, in 2017. Regulators have told the utility they can now load the number 3 unit with nuclear fuel. Credit:  Grant Blankenship/GPB A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia can begin loading radioactive fuel into one of its two new reactors, federal regulators said Wednesday, a key step toward generating electricity at the first new nuclear reactor built in decades in the United States. The Southern Nuclear Operating Co. hopes in October to begin loading fuel into its third reactor at Plant Vogtle, near Waynesboro, Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Nuclear's parent company, Atlanta-based Southern Co, said last week. Andrea Veil, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said inspectors "independently verified that Vogtle Unit 3 has been properly built and will protect public health and safety when it transitions