Real Meat and Real Leather Without Animals

A Brooklyn startup is doing just that. Modern Meadow grows real leather from skin cells harvested from a real live (and unharmed) calf. They use the skin cells to produce collagen. In the normal tanning process the animal hide has to have hair, muscle, and fat removed to get down the collagen connective tissue from which leather is made. This lab actually grows the collagen without all that other stuff that a living animal needs. The lab-grown collagen is free of blemishes and makes perfectly good leather. They can even fine-tune things like thickness and elasticity to suit the needs of the final consumer. Right now, they are concentrating on leather because it's the most lucrative, but they could do muscle tissue for meat just as well.

First commercial carbon-capture plant set to open in Switzerland

A commercial carbon capture will open soon.

The firm expects to be opening the plant near Zurich in September or October. The plant will suck carbon dioxide out of the ambient air and sell it to an agricultural company to spur the growth of lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes.
C0₂ is already taken out of the air in enclosed spaces like submarines and space capsules. Climeworks will be using a similar process called direct air capture (DAC), in which normal ambient air is pushed through a fibrous sponge-like filter material that has been impregnated with chemicals called amines, derived from ammonia, which bind to C0₂.

 

There was once a Black Wall Street

But it was destroyed by a white mob in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. 

The event is seldom mentioned in history books, but it is a big part of black history in America — an event that demonstrates the broader violence perpetrated against black Americans throughout the Jim Crow era.

Big Oil Subsidies

The next time Congress works on budget cuts, they should start cutting with the oil subsidies. Currently 4.5 billion taxpayer dollars go to the oil industry each year in tax breaks that may have been warranted in the past, but the rationale in today's industry is no longer there. Yet, because of intensive lobbying and Citizens United, there is no will in Congress to plug this "Giant" loophole.

Breath test for lung cancer

Lung cancer detection could be as simple as a breath test. Cancer cells give some signature compounds that can be detected in small concentrations.

Deadbeat Trump

Donald Trump has a history of not paying his bills. Many small businesses have failed after doing business with him. I'm sure glad he isn't going to get into public office or anything like that.