TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Stanley]

See THIS for a Guardian report on the news that stem cells have been used in an attempt to reverse severe macular degeneration in the eye. What struck me was the fact that the embryo they extracted the cells from was the size of a pin head!

[Tripps]

A chap on Radio Four this morning - following the announcement yesterday by NASA, that quantities of saline water had been found on Mars - said it was possible that human life had originated on the red planet.

This is by my favourite author Gerald Kersh. I first read it years ago - perhaps it's true.

Men Without Bones.

We were loading bananas into the 'Claire Dodge' at Puerto Pobre, when a feverish little fellow came aboard. Everyone stepped aside to let him pass--even the soldiers who guard the port with nickel plated Remington rifles, and who go barefoot but wear polished leather leggings. They stood back from him because they believed he was afflicted by God, mad; harmless but dangerous; best left alone.

All the time the naptha flares were hissing, and from the hold came the reverberation of the roaring voice of the foreman of the gang down below crying: "Fruta! fruta! FRUTA!" The leader of the dock gang bellowed the same cry, throwing down stem after stem of brilliant green bananas.The occasion would be memorable for this, if for nothing else--the magnificence of the night, the bronze of the negro foreman shining under the flares, the jade green of the fruit, and the mixed odours of the waterfront. Out of one stem of bananas ran a hairy grey spider, which frightened the crew and broke the banana chain, until a Nicaraguan boy, with a laugh killed it with his foot. It was harmless he said.

It was about then that the madman came aboard, unhindered, and asked me: "bound for where?"

He spoke quietly in a carefully modulated voice; but there was a certain blank, lost look in his eyes that suggested to me that I keep within ducking distance of his restless hands which, now that I think of them, put me in mind of that grey, hairy, bird eating spider.

"Mobile Alabama," I said
"Take me along?" he asked.
"None of my affair, Sorry, Passenger myself," I said. "The skipper's ashore. Beter wait for him on the wharf. He's the boss".

"Would you happen by any chance to have a drink about you?"
Giving him some rum, I asked: "How come they let you aboard?"

"I'm not crazy," he said. "Not actually...a little fever, nothing more. Malaria, dengue fever, jungle fever, rat bite fever,. Feverish country this, and others of the same nature. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Goodbody, Doctor of Science of Osbaldeston University. Does it convey anything to you? No? Well then; I was assistant to Professor Yeoward. Does that convey anything to you?"

I said "Yeoward, Professor Yeoward? Oh yes He was lost wasn't he somewhere in the upland jungle beyond they source of the Amer River.

"Correct!" cried the little man who called himself Goodbody. "I saw him get lost"

Fruta!--Fruta!--Fruta!--Fruta! came the voices of the men in the hold. There was rivalry between their leader and the big black stevedore ashore. The flares spluttered. The green bananas came down.And a kind of sickly sigh came out of the jungle, off the rotting river--not a wind, not a breeze--something like the foul breath of a high fever.

Trembling with eagerness and at the same time shaking with fever chills so that he had to use two hands to raise his glass to his lips--even so, he spilled most of the rum--Doctor Goodbody said: "for God's sake, get me out of this country--take me to Mobile--hide me in your cabin!"
"I have no authority," I said "but you are an American Citizen; you can identify yourself; the Consul will send you home."

"No doubt. But that would take time. The consul thinks I'm crazy tooAnd if I don't get away, I fear that I really will go out of my mind. Can't you help me? I'm afraid.

"Come on now," I said. "No one shall hurt you while around. What are you afraid of ?"

"Men without bones" he said, and there was something in his voice that stirred the hairs on the back of my neck, "Little fat men without bones".

He talked in fits and starts in his fever, his reason staggering just this side of delirium:

". . . What men without bones?. . . .They are nothing to be afraid of actually. It is they who are afraid of you. You can kill them with your boot or with a stick. . . .They are something like jelly. No it is not really fear-- it is the nausea, the disgust they inspire. It overwhelms. It paralyses. I have seen a Jaguar, I tell you a full-grown Jaguar--stand frozen, while they clung to him, in hundreds, and ate him up alive! Believe me I saw it. Perhaps it is some oil they secrete, some odour they give out . . . I don't know . . . "

Then, weeping, Doctor Goodbody said: "Oh, nightmare--nightmare--nightmare! To think of the depths to which a noble creature can be degraded by hunger. Horrible! horrible!"

"Some debased form of life ?" I suggested, that you found in the jungle above the source of the Amer?" "Some degenerate form of anthropoid?"

"No no no Men!" Now surely you remember Professor Yeoward's ethnological expedition?"

"It was lost" I said

"All but me " he said. ". . . We had bad luck. At the Anana rapids we lost two canoes, half our supplies, and all our instruments. And also Doctor Terry, and Jack Lambert, and eight of our carriers.

"Than we were in Ahu territory where the Indians use poison darts, but we mad friends with them and bribed them to carry our stuff Westward through the jungle. . . because, you see, all science starts with a guess, a rumour, and old wives' tale; and the object of Professor Yeowards expedition was to investigate a series of Indian folk tales that tallied. Legends of a race of gods that came down from the sky in a great flame when the world was very young.
"Line by criss cross line, and circle by concentric circle, Yeoward localised the place in which these tales had their root--an unexplored place, that has no name because the Indians refuse to give it a name, it being what they call a "bad place."

His chills subsiding, and his fever abating, Doctor Goodbody spoke calmly and rationally now. He said with a short laugh; "I don't know why, whenever I get a touch of fever, the memory of those boneless men comes back in a nightmare, to give me the horrors. . .
So we went to look for the place where the gods came down in flame out of the night. The little tattoed Indians took us to the edge of the Ahu territory and then put down their packs, and asked for their pay, and no consideration would induce them to go further. We were going, they said to a very bad place. Their chief who had been a great man in his day, sign-writing with a twig, told us that he had strayed there once, and drew a picture of something with an oval body and four limbs, at which he spat before rubbing it out with his foot in the dirt. Spiders? we asked Crabs?, What?

So we were forced to leave what we could not carry with the old chief against our return, and go on unaccompanied, Yeoward and I, through thirty miles of the rottenest jungle in the world. We made about a quarter of a mile a day. . . a pestilential place! When that stinking wind blows out of the jungle, I smell nothing but death and panic. . .
But at least we cut our way to the plateau and climbed the slope, and there we saw something marvelous. It was something that had been a gigantic machine. Originally it must have been a pear-shaped thing, at least a thousand feet long, and in its widest part, six hundred feet in diameter. I don't know of what metal it had been made, because there was only a dusty outline of a hull and certain ghostly remains of unbelievably intricate mechanisms to prove that it had ever been. We could not guess from where it had come; but the impact of its landing had made a deep valley in the middle of the plateau.

"It was the discovery of the age! It proved that countless ages ago, this planet had been visited by people from the stars! Wild with excitement, Yeoward and I plunged into this fabulous ruin. But whatever we touched fell away to fine powder.

"At last, on the third day, Yeoward found a semi-circular plate of some extraordinary hard metal which was covered with the most maddeningly familiar diagrams. We cleaned it, and for twenty four hours, scarcely pausing to eat or drink, Yeoward studied it. And, then, before the dawn of the fifth day he awoke me with a great cry, and said; 'It's a map, a map of the heavens, and a chart of a course from Mars to Earth!'

"And he showed me how those ancient explorers of space had proceeded from Mars to Earth, via the moon.

. . . To crash on this naked plateau, in this green hell of a jungle? I wondered. 'Ah but was it a jungle then?' said Yeoward. 'This may have happened five million years ago!' "I said: 'Oh but surely! it took only a few hundred years to bury Rome. How could this this thing have stayed above ground for five thousand years, let alone million?' Yeoward said: It didn't. The Earth swallows things, and regurgitates them. This is a volcanic region. One little upheaval can swallow a city, and one tiny peristalsis of the bowels of the earth can bring its remains to light again a million years later. So it must have been with the machine from Mars. . .

"I wonder who was inside it, ' I said. Yeoward replied: very likely some utterly alien creatures that couldn't tolerate the Earth, and died, or else were killed in the crash. No skeleton could survive such a space of time. "So we built up the fire, and Yeoward went to sleep. Having slept, I watched. Watched for what? I didn't know. Jaguars, peccaries, snakes? None of these beasts climbed up to the plateau: there was nothing for them up there. Still unaccountably, I was afraid.

"There was the weight of ages on the place. 'Respect old age' one is told . . . The greater the age, the deeper the respect, you might say. But it is not respect; it is dread, it is fear and time and death Sir! . . . I must have dozed, because the fire was burning low - I had been most careful to keep it alive and bright--when I caught my first glimpse of the boneless men.

"Starting up, I saw, at the rim of the plateau, a pair of eyes that picked up luminosity from the fading light of the fire. A jaguar, I thought, and took up my rifle. But it could not have been a jaguar because when I looke left and rightI saw that the plateau was ringed with pairs of shining eyes . . . as it might be, a collar of opals; and there came to my nostrils, an odour of God knows what.

"Fear has its smell as any animal trainer will tell you -- ask any nurse. These smells compel healthy animals to fight or to run away. This was a combination of the two, plus the stink of vegetation gone bad. I fired at the pair of eyes I had first seen. Then, all the eyes disappeared while from the jungle, there came a chattering and a twittering of monkeys and birds, as the echoes of the shot went flapping away.

"And the thank God, the dawn came. I should not have liked to see by artificial light the thing I had shot between the eyes.
"It was grey and , in texture, tough and gelatinous. Yet, in form, externally, it was not unlike a human being. It had eyes, and there were either vestiges-- or rudiments--of head, and neck, and a kind of limbs.

"Yeoward told me that I must pull myself together; overcome my 'childish revulsion' as he called it; and look into the nature of the beast. I may say that he kept along way from it when I opened it. It was my job as zoologist of the exhibition, and I had to do it. Microscopes and other delicate instruments had been lost with the canoes. I worked with a knife and forceps. And found? Nothing: a rudimentary nervous system, and a brain about the size of a walnut. The entire creature, stretched out, measured four feet.

"In a laboratory I could tell you, perhaps, something about it . . . with an assistant or two, to keep me company. As it was, I did what I could with a hunting knife, and forceps, without dyes or microscope, swallowing my nausea - it was a nauseating thing! -- memorising what I found. But as the sun rose higher, the thing liquefied, until by nine o'clock there was nothing but a glutinous grey puddle, with two green eyes swimming in it. . . . And these eyes-- I can see them now-- burst with a thick pop, making a detestable sticky ripple in that puddle of corruption. . . .

After that I went away for a while. When I came back, the sun had burned it all away, and there was nothing but something like what you see after a dead jellyfish has evaporated on a hot beach. Slime. Yeoward had a white face when he asked me: ' What the devil is it?' I told him that I didn't know, that it was something outside my experience, and though I pretended to be a man of science with a detached mind, nothing would induce me ever to touch one of those things again.

"Yeoward said ' you're getting hysterical, Goodbody. Adopt the proper attitude. God knows we are not here for the good of our health. Science, man, science! Not a day passes but but some doctor pokes his fingers into somethng fouler than that!' I said: 'Don't you believe it. Professor Yeoward, I have handled and dissected some prety queer things in my time, but this is something repulsive. I have nerves? I daresay. Maybe we should have brought a psychiatrist . . . I notice by the way that you are not too anxious to come too close to me after I've tampered that thing. I'll shoot one with pleasure, but if you want to investigate it, try it yourself and see!'

"Yeoward said that he was deeply occupied with his metal plate. There was no doubt, he told me that this machine had been, had come from Mars. But evidently, he preferred to keep the fire between himself and me, after I had touched that abomination of hard jelly.
"Yeoward kept himself to himself, rummaging in the ruin. I went about my business, which was to investigate forms of animal life. I do not lnow what I might have found if I had had--I don't say the courage, because I didn't lack that--if I had had some company.

Alone, my nerve broke.

"It happened one morning. I went into the jungle that surrounded us, trying to swallow the fear that choked me, and drive away the sense of revulsion, that not only made me want to turn and run, but made me afraid to turn my back and even to get away. You may or may not know that of all the beasts that live in the jungle the most impregnable is the sloth. He finds a stout limb, climbs out on it and and hangs from it by his twelve steely claws; a tardigrade that lives on leaves. Your tardigrade is so tenacious that even in death, shot through the heart, it will hang on to its branch. It has an immensely tough hide, covered by an impenetrable coat of couarse, matted hair. A Panther or a Jaguar is helpless against the passive resistance of such a creature. It finds itself a tree whic it does not leave untill it has eaten every leaf, and chooses for its sleeping place, a branch exactly strong enough to take its weight.
"In this detestable jungle, on one of my briefn expeditions--brief because I was alone and afraid--I stopped to watch a giant sloth hanging motionlesss from the largest bough of a half denuded tree, asleep, impervious, indifferent. Then out of that stinking green twilight came a hoard of those jellyfish things. They poured up the tree, and writhed along the branch.

"Even the sloth, which generally knows no fear, was afraid. It tried to run away, hooked itself on to a thinner part of the branch, which broke. It fell and at once was covered with a shuddering mass of jelly. Those boneless men do not bite: they suck. And as they suck they change from grey to pink and then to brown.

"But they are afraid of us. There is race-memory involved here. We repel them, and they repel us. When they became aware of my presence, they--I was going to say ran away-- they slid away, disolved into the shadows that kept dancing, and dancing, and dancing under the trees. And the horror came upon me, so that I ran away, and arrived back at our camp, bloody about the face with thorns, and utterly exhausted.

"Yeoward was lancing a place in his ankle. A tourniquet was tied under his knee. Nearby lay a dead snake. He had broken its back with that same metal plate, but it had bitten him first. He said: 'what kind of a snake do you call this? I'm afraid it is venomous. I feel a numbness in my cheeks and around my heart, and I cannot feel my hands.'

"i said: 'Oh my God! You've been bitten by a jacajaca!'

" ' And we have lost our medical supplies,' he said, with regret. And there is so much work left to do. Oh dear me, dear me! . . . Whatever happens, my dear fellow, take this and get back'

"And he gave me that semi circle of unknown metal as a sacred trust. Two hours later, he died. That night the circle of glowing eyes grew narrower. I emptied my rifle at it, time and time again. At dawn the boneless men had disappeared.

"I heaped rocks on the body of Yeoward. I made a pylon, so that the men without bones would not get at him. Then--oh, so dreadfully lonely and afraid!--I shouldered my pack, and took my rifle and my machete, and ran away down the trail we had covered. But I lost my way.
"Can by can of food, I shed weight. Then my rifle went, and my ammunition. After that I threw away my machete. A long time later, that semi circular plate became too heavy for me, so I tied it to a tree with liana vine, and went on.

"So I reached the Ahu territory, where the tattooed men nursed me and were kind to me. The women chewed my food for me, before they fed me, until I was strong again. Of the stores we had left there, I took only as much as might need, leaving the rest as payment for guides and men to man the canoe down the river. And so I got back out of the jungle. . . .

"Please give me a little more rum". His hand was steady now, as he drank, and his eyes were clear'
I said to him: "Assuming that what you say is true: these boneless men-- they were I presume, the Martians? Yet it sounds unlikely, surely? Do invertebrates smelt hard metals and----"

"Who said anything about Martians called Doctor Goodbody. "No no no! The Martians came here, adapted themselves to new conditions of life. poor fellows, they changed, sank low; went through a whole new process-- a painful process of evolution. What I'm trying to tell you, you fool is that Yeoward and I did not discover Martians. Idiot , don't you see? Those boneless things are men. We are Martians.

[Stanley]

Great story David, it rings a bell but I had forgotten it. Thanks for posting it......

[Tizer]

Thanks for the story Tripps, it brings to mind Sir Fred Hoyle and his support for the Panspermia theory of how life is distributed in the universe. LINK

[Stanley]

I once read a story that has stuck with me for years. Some scientists were running an experiment in a closed chamber and noted that under certain conditions the arrangement of the particles in the chamber clustered into patterns exactly like those of the Universe but at a vastly accelerated speed. Seeing no point in carrying on they switched the experiment off and went home for the weekend. A nascent universe perished.... Perhaps.

[Stanley]

See THIS for a report on a new blood test which gives a clear indication of whether a chest pain or other symptoms is a heart attack or something not life threatening. The new test can screen out up to 80% of patients within an hour with major savings on hospital admissions. It looks for a specific protein, the levels of which are a reliable indicator. It is available now and has been used on over 6,000 patients. Sounds like a major advance.....

[Tizer]

A very interesting development here in our understanding of human evolution and distribution. Humans evolved in Africa and then spread to Europe and Asia about 60,000 years ago but it now seems that there was a big migration of humans back into Africa about 3000 years ago, which is relatively recent. One suggestion is that it was linked with the development of farming.
`Ancient DNA reveals 'into Africa' migration' LINK

[Stanley]

I saw that as well Tiz. The great thing about the application of modern science to forensic archaeology is that it forces us to re-assess and every time we do it we find that we had under-estimated the old ones. That suits me because I have always suspected this to be true.
(I wonder whether they were seen as refugees or economic migrants?)
See THIS for an article on Victoria Cave at Settle about 15 miles north of here. News this morning that a major digital imaging project is to start so that the contents of the cave can be more widely appreciated. It still blows my mind to think that in there are remains that are 150million years old....

[Tizer]

After writing that post about migration back to Africa around 3000 years ago we watched a recording of the TV programme about the origins of the Celts. Interestingly they said it's now believed the Celts began to expand out from their Eastern European region and down towards the Mediterranean about 2800 years ago. I wonder if the European DNA in Africans will turn out to be Celtic DNA?

[Stanley]

It wouldn't surprise me at all Tiz. The blanket term 'Celts' is applied to a massive body of people who, the more we learn about them, were far more intelligent and capable than we ever suspected. I saw the same programme and had no problems with the theories. Barry Cunliffe has been researching this for years. Have a loo at THIS short video of him plugging one of his books. A good sound historian and archaeologist.

[Stanley]

See THIS for a Guardian report on the finding that instead of doing a whole body count of moles to assess liability to get melanoma, counting the number of moles on the right arm is just as accurate and far quicker. Sounds too simple to be true but then so many of the best ideas are!

[Tizer]

BBC, 4th Nov 2015
"Scientists in Japan have developed a type of ultra-hard glass. The new material is thin as well as hard and is made using alumina, an oxide of aluminium. If successfully commercialised, it could increase the durability of glass used in the windows of buildings, cars and in smartphone displays."..."..Young's modulus, which is an indicator of stiffness, was greater than that of some metals, and on its way to values associated with steel. Another mechanical property, called Vickers hardness, was comparable with the highest values previously reported for oxide glasses...."
More here: LINK

The glass is made using aluminium oxide and tantalum oxide, is fabricated by aerodynamic levitation and "possesses one of the highest elastic moduli and hardness for oxide glasses also displaying excellent optical properties". LINK

[Stanley]

Not surprising it's hard. Oxides of aluminium are a major constituent of grinding wheels....

Just for interest, here's the old Carborundum trademark logo. The slogan was 'Hard and Sharp'. I think it originated in the famous India Stone but no doubt nowadays is seen as insensitive.

[Whyperion]

See THIS for a Guardian report on the finding that instead of doing a whole body count of moles to assess liability to get melanoma, counting the number of moles on the right arm is just as accurate and far quicker. Sounds too simple to be true but then so many of the best ideas are!

Wonder how, and in what country, that works in ? In UK drive car in summer, tee-shirted right arm gets sunburnt (I exagerate a little), left arm sheltered by the mildly tinted windscreen. USA for example, is it left arm (or no arm as all cars / trucks have air-con?)

[Tizer]

`MPs urge Chancellor to 'supercharge' science', BBC News web site, 9th Nov 2015.
"The chancellor must "supercharge" the UK's science base with more funding, the new chairwoman of the Commons science committee has said. Conservative MP Nicola Blackwood told BBC News that spending on science had to increase in the long term if the UK was to remain competitive. She also said it was "farcical" that many scientific facilities were unused because of a lack of funds."...

Particularly significant is this section of the news report: `The HoC Science and Technology Select Committee report has called on the government to set a path for increasing public and private sector science R&D investment in the UK to 3% of GDP, which is a target agreed by European Union countries. The MPs point out that since 2010, science funding has been frozen, which has meant an effective cut of around 6%. "This has left the UK spending 1.7% of GDP on science and research, below the OECD average of 2.4% and behind the 2.8% and 2.9% spent by the US and Germany," the report notes. It also highlights a mismatch between money spent on building and improving laboratories - so called capital spending - and so called resource spending, which is the day-to-day funding of scientists to run experiments in those facilities. For example, a £400m neutron source at Harwell will only run for approximately 120 days this year. "At a time when the government is focusing on productivity, it is farcical that we are not realising the full value of our capital investments because new science research facilities do not have the annual resources to run at capacity - because 'batteries are not included' with capital spending. "This must be put right as a matter of urgency, not to mention common sense," said Ms Blackwood.' LINK

[Stanley]

Tiz, it's the old problem of the Treasury's view of funding. They differentiate between capital spending and administration costs (the cost of running and maintaining what has been funded). This was always a big problem with heritage funding which is where I learned about it. They were capable of giving quite generous capital funding and then sitting back and watching an enterprise fail through lack of ongoing funding from whatever source. My solution to this problem was to set up an enterprise that made money, the profits from which went into a ring fenced account which paid interest and that could be used for running costs without reducing the capital, I forget what the technical term is. But here I came across a dual problem, the inability of my directors to realise that this was one way forward and antipathy from the Treasury and the funding bodies as soon as a charity mentioned doing something commercial. One scheme I came up with was vetted by Coates accountants and they reported it was a licence to print money but I was still knocked back. Very discouraging and the consequence is that Ellenroad, like many other similar bodies, lives hand to mouth, in constant danger of insolvency. I can see how the examples you give could be in the same boat..... The fall in government funding is symptomatic of the consequences of austerity. As long as we have these policies the situation will only get worse and this supports my argument about the long term damage that is being done to both society and the basic infrastructure of the country. Shovels in the ground aren't the only areas that need funding but the government's view is both mistaken and short term.

[Tizer]

More research from the universities of northern England:
`Nano-scale 'fingerprint' could boost security' LINK

[Stanley]

What an interesting approach. There was a talk on R4 yesterday about quantum mechanics and how different that world is than the one we experience. The days of quantum computers come nearer and if the experience with 'normal' computing is anything to go by the devices will get cheaper and more widespread. They quoted the expert who when asked what the market for the new 'computers' was said "four or five". I can feel another revolution coming on!

[Tizer]

`EU to give 7m euros in fight against olive tree killer'
"The European Commission says it will provide seven million euros (£5m) to fund research into a disease that poses a "very serious threat" to olive trees. The announcement was made at a scientific workshop in Brussels that focused on the most effective ways to tackle Xylella fastidiosa. First recorded in southern Italy in 2013, the disease has since been detected in southern France. Experts describe it as one of the "most dangerous plant pathogens worldwide". The funding, which comes from the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, is part of the effort to tackle the agent before it spreads more widely to other key olive-producing regions within Europe. Globally, the EU is the largest producer and consumer of olive oil. According to the European Commission, the 28-nation bloc produces 73% and consumes 66% of the the world's olive oil."
More here: LINK

[Tizer]

You will know I keep rabbiting on about how parasitic worms have such significant effects on human physiology and that eradication of them is one of the reasons we have more allergies. After evolving closely together for millions of years the worms are able to suppress our immune systems. Not that I'm suggesting we should all go out get infected but a better understanding of these interactions will help us fight disease. Now here's more on the link between parasitic worms and human biology...

Parasitic worm 'increases women's fertility'
"Infection with a species of parasitic worm increases the fertility of women, say scientists. A study of 986 indigenous women in Bolivia indicated a lifetime of Ascaris lumbricoides, a type of roundworm, infection led to an extra two children. Researchers, writing in the journal Science, suggest the worm is altering the immune system to make it easier to become pregnant. Experts said the findings could lead to "novel fertility enhancing drugs". More here: LINK

[Stanley]

The mind boggles at that last phrase.... "novel fertility enhancing drugs". Just how novel? I am reminded of the apocryphal story (I think....) that suggested that Maria Callas had deliberately had a tapeworm planted in her intestines so that she could lose weight. A possible treatment for obesity?
Time for my tapeworm story (yes, again! Someone my not have come across it.). One of my mates became convinced he had a tapeworm because its tail was protruding from his anus. Being a simple mechanic he decided to pull it out using a pair of pliers. It didn't work but began to irritate him so he went to the doctor who, when he heard the story, burst out laughing, apologised for his reaction and explained to him that what he thought was the tail of a tapeworm was actually a haemorrhoid! He could tug at it as long as he liked but it wouldn't come out! The moral of this story is don't jump to conclusions!

[Tizer]

A great story Stanley - fact is funnier than fiction.

Here's good news for the walkers among us:
`Bitwalking dollars: Digital currency pays people to walk'
"A digital crypto-currency has launched that is generated by human movement. Bitwalking dollars will be earned by walking, unlike other digital currencies such as Bitcoins that are "mined" by computers. A phone application counts and verifies users' steps, with walkers earning approximately 1 BW$ for about 10,000 steps (about five miles). Initially, users will be given the chance to spend what they earn in an online store, or trade them for cash. The founders of the project, Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi have attracted more than $10m (£6.6m) of initial funding from mainly Japanese investors to help launch the currency and create the bank that verifies steps and any transfers." LINK

[PanBiker]

That's very interesting Tiz, we already use a fitness tracker (Endomondo) and a fitness and calorie tracker (MyFitnessPal). We don't need any encouragement but if we can earn a bob or two for something we already do that would be a bonus. On current outings, I reckon we could probably make about 5 or 6BW$ a week. Will watch that one for developments.

[Stanley]

You could put it in the Boot Fund to pay for repairs and replacements!

[Tizer]

Good news!...
`British universities' 'business incubator' rated world's best'
"Now a group of British universities has been rated the best in the world at helping scientists turn their creativity into cash. The SETsquared Partnership - a collaboration between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey - was ranked "Number One" by respected independent research group, University Business Incubators (UBI). LINK