Новости за 21.11.2018

Where the ionic wind blows

IT IS NOT unusual for technologies from science fiction to join the real world, with examples ranging from video phones, via artificial intelligence, to self-driving cars. The ion drive is another such. Ion drives purportedly propelled the evil Empire’s TIE (twin ion engines) fighters in the original “Star Wars” movie. Real ion drives now reposition satellites and send space probes on interplanetary journeys. Surprisingly, according to a paper published this week in Nature... Читать дальше...

The couple in happier times

AFTER FIVE months in solitary confinement, his final court appearance lasted barely five minutes. On November 21st a court in Abu Dhabi convicted a British academic of espionage and sentenced him to life in prison. Matthew Hedges, 31, is a doctoral candidate at Durham University. He travelled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earlier this year to study its internal security policies. He became an unwilling participant in his own research in May when police arrested him at Dubai’s airport. Читать дальше...

“The Price of Everything” shows that artistic value and monetary value are not always aligned, though it cannot fully explain why

IN SOME WAYS, the Atlantic Ocean seems unusually wide at the moment. Polls by the Pew Research Centre show that western Europeans take an increasingly dim view of America, and not just its president. On the other side of the ocean, conservatives think that a clinching argument against universal health care is to call it European. Yet in other, more intimate, ways the two continents appear to be converging. American families are increasingly hard to distinguish from European ones.

RUNNING A VAST global company, with offices and factories spread across the planet, means that jumping on and off a corporate jet is an everyday occurrence. But the welcome committee that greeted Carlos Ghosn at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on November 19th was anything but normal. The chairman of Nissan and Mitsubishi, and chief executive and chairman of Renault (as well as of the alliance that ties the three carmakers together), was met by a troop of dark-suited prosecutors. They had come to arrest... Читать дальше...

The regional airline must acknowledge how the European travel market is changing

Think of them as part of a grooming ritual

Research suggests that if families avoid talking about politics, they talk less

There are various schemes to remove hazardous debris from Earth orbits, but it will not be easy

Support for political parties today closely tracks the frontiers of the old Habsburg Empire