Free Republic

China-Africa relations have deepened over the past two decades, characterised by increased economic cooperation, investment and infrastructure development. China is now Africa’s largest trading partner, with partnerships focused on building roads, railways and energy projects. As the ninth Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) kicks off this week in Beijing, a new, green theme is shaping their relationship: the global renewable energy race. We asked Lauren Johnston, a development economist with expertise in China-Africa relations, to provide some insights into this development as it positions both regions as key players in the global shift towards green energy. How is the race...

Higher intake of heme iron, the type found in red meat and other animal products—as opposed to non-heme iron, found mostly in plant-based foods—was associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) in a new study. The researchers assessed the link between iron and T2D using 36 years of dietary reports from 206,615 adults enrolled in the Nurses' Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. The researchers also analyzed the biological mechanisms underpinning heme iron's relationship to T2D among smaller subsets of the participants. They looked at 37,544 participants' plasma metabolic biomarkers, including...

Betelgeuse is our next door supergiant. It is almost 1000 times bigger than our sun and possibly it has already exploded in a giant supernova. How would we notice, how fast would the process be and what could we expect to see from Earth? Something happened in 2019 Betelgeuse is currently in the final stages of its short life. So when the red supergiant abruptly darkened in late 2019, the behavior led many to speculate that it might be about to explode. The loss of brightness was far greater than anything previously recorded. Analyzing data from Hubble Space Telescope and...

Iron deficiency (ID) is common in an American statewide health system, and the time to resolution is prolonged, according to a study. Jacob C. Cogan, M.D. and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of electronic medical record data from a Minnesota statewide health system and identified patients with ID (ferritin level ≤25 ng/mL). Participants had at least one follow-up ferritin level within three years. Resolved ID was classified as having a subsequent ferritin level ≥50 ng/mL. Data were included for 13,084 patients with ID between 2010 and 2020. The researchers found that 41.9% of patients had resolution within three years of...

A study published in the journal Prehistory Works, indicates that two objects sampled from the Villena Treasure were smithed using meteoric iron...The Villena Treasure is one of the most important Bronze Age hoard finds in the Iberian Peninsula, discovered by José María Soler in 1963 in Villena, Spain. Archaeologists uncovered a collection of bowls, bottles, and bracelets, which were ornately crafted from gold, silver, iron and amber.Iron was considered a precious metal before the advent of iron smelting, where meteoric iron was the only source of iron metal used to make jewellery, tools, and weapons during the Bronze Age.Iron sourced...

"[The king] Unis seizes the sky and splits its iron."Inscribed in hieroglyphs in a 4,400-year-old pyramid, this sentence evidences that ancient Egyptians understood the extraterrestrial origin of iron-rich meteorites—thousands of years before European scientists reached the same conclusion......the world's oldest-identified iron objects are small beads that come from a burial in Gerzeh, a roughly 5,300-year-old village in northern Egypt. Other pre-Iron Age iron objects have been found in Egypt, including an amulet in the 4,000-year-old tomb of Queen Aashyet in Deir el-Bahari and a dagger blade in King Tutankhamun's tomb...The earliest-known Egyptian references to iron in connection with stars, meteoroids...

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) vowed Monday to work to block the $14.9 billion sale of U.S. Steel Corp. to Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel, which he described as an “outrageous” move. The deal was announced Monday, prompting the stock prices of U.S. Steel to jump up 25 percent. Fetterman criticized the sale, saying in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the move was “wrong for workers and wrong for Pennsylvania.”

Change in clinical practice would have clear benefits for patients undergoing major bowel surgery, according to analysis. The study provides evidence that giving iron intravenously before colorectal surgery improves outcomes for patients, reducing the need for blood transfusion by 33%. Anemia is a common problem in patients undergoing bowel surgery due to bleeding from the gut and blood loss during the operation. Anemia is also associated with feeling tired and unwell, a slower recovery and other complications after surgery. Blood transfusion is used when blood levels are low, but there has been concern that colorectal cancer patients may have higher...

Supramolecular assemblies of six rubidium and one iron atom. Scanning tunneling microscopy revealed the clear signal of the one iron atom. (Ajayi et al., Nature, 2023) ***************************************************************************** Atoms may not have bones, but we still want to know how they are put together. These tiny particles are the basis on which all normal matter is built (including our bones), and understanding them helps us understand the larger Universe. We currently use high-energy X-ray light to help us understand atoms and molecules and how they're arranged, catching diffracted beams to reconstruct their configurations in crystal form. Now, scientists have used X-rays...

We have a lot of stupid people the United States governments. ItÂ’s not their fault. The creators of our Constitution designed a system that should rarely entangle itself in highly profitable transactions that involve innovative products or strategies. As a result, our economy historically bids the most driven and intelligent away from government jobs. Government, then, finds a governing formula that works, and sticks to it, often no matter what. China, as every American senses, differs. There, the government bears no shame in announcing that it is the sole source of all beneficial economic activity. In this way, the...

The first hints that the moon had an Earth-like interior came from NASA's Apollo missions. Data gathered by the lunar landers' instruments suggested that the celestial body was differentiated — or layered with denser material at the center and less dense material nearer the surface — as opposed to uniform rock all the way through. Apollo astronauts even left seismometers on the moon, which later revealed that it experiences moonquakes... However, scientists were only recently able to sort through the massive data sets from the Apollo missions and other lunar probes to get a clearer picture of the moon's insides....

Chemical Elements in a Distant Gas Cloud This artist’s impression shows a distant gas cloud that contains different chemical elements, illustrated here with schematic representations of various atoms. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the explosions of the first stars that appeared in the Universe. These early stars can be studied indirectly by analyzing the chemical elements they dispersed into the surrounding environment after they died in supernova explosions. The three distant gas clouds detected in this study are rich in carbon, oxygen, and magnesium, but...

Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals. If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid--Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars. The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of...

Summary: Researchers have discovered what they believe is the earliest use of steel in Europe -- on Iberian stone pillars from the Final Bronze Age... Using geochemicalanalyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region... that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. The result was also confirmed experimentally by undertaking trials with chisels made of...

Japanese researchers discovered a large dakō iron sword and a giant bronze mirror in a 4th-century burial mound in the city of Nara. The two items were found last November in the Tomio Maruyama Tumulus. According to the local government groups, the 125-pound, shield-shaped decorated mirror was the first of its kind to be discovered, and the seven-foot iron serpentine dakō sword is the largest and oldest from the Kofun period (300 CE–710 CE) to be found. Experts say this allows the two items from the Tomio Maruyama Tumulus to be classified as national treasures. The shield-shaped mirror is two...

Explanation: In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts. The new star was visible to the naked-eye for months, and is now thought to be the earliest recorded supernova. This deep telescopic view reveals the wispy outlines of emission nebula RCW 86, just visible against the starry background, understood to be the remnant of that stellar explosion. Captured by the wide-field Dark Energy Camera operating at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, the image traces the...

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is associated with anemia or iron deficiency among children, according to a study. Vasile Valeriu Lupu, Ph.D. and colleagues examined the presence of anemia as a result of pediatric GERD in 172 children. The researchers found that 23 of the patients with GERD also had anemia, showing a moderate, significant correlation (r = −0.35). Cases with GERD also had significantly lower levels of serum iron (F = 8.46). "GERD is accompanied by a degree of iron deficiency that opens the way to iron deficiency anemia. Considering the fact that anemia can be one of the signs...

Explanation: The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present...

The ornate object was covered in dirt but well preserved, inspiring the farmer, who wishes to remain anonymous, to send photos to archaeologists at the nearby Silesian Museum in Opava. Jiří Juchelka(opens in new tab), head of the Silesian Museum's archaeology department, told Radio Prague International(opens in new tab) (RPI) that the 20-inch-long (51 centimeters) object — made out of gold with inclusions of silver, copper and iron — was likely the front of a leather belt. "It is decorated with raised concentric circles and topped with rose-shaped clasps at the end," Based on the style of the decoration, she...

The Psyche spacecraft was supposed to launch toward its namesake, a bizarre metallic space rock in the main asteroid belt, between August and October of this year. But issues with Psyche's flight software made it impossible to hit that window... Psyche will still launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as previously planned. 2022 liftoff would have delivered Psyche to its asteroid target in early 2026. But a 2023 launch requires a different trajectory, pushing the arrival back to August 2029... NASA's Janus smallsat mission, which is designed to study two separate binary...