Charles Perrings, a professor of environmental economics at Arizona State University, has proposed that people can help soften the impacts of global warming or global climate change by starting with their own backyard. More information in the full article.

Arizona State University Physics Professor Kong-Thon Tsen and his son Shaw-Wei Tsen might be holding the key for curing, if not totally eliminating, deadly viruses such as hepatitis and HIV. They reportedly found out that viruses can be destroyed by using ultrashort-pulse lasers or USPs.

According to them, we must find a way to remove these viruses from our system because vaccinations are sometimes insufficient. In the study conducted by the father and son tandem, it was demonstrated that this laser technique was able to shatter the protein shell (capsid) of the tobacco mosaic virus.

What was left of the mosaic virus after the experimentation was just a "harmless mucus-like mash of molecules." Interestingly, the Tsens mentioned that the energy used to destroy the mosaic virus was 40 times lower than the threshold for human cells. Surpassing the limit would cause harm to the human T-cells.

We ran a report back in June of this year concerning USPs and the company Raydiance Inc., which is planning to fully-developed the technology to be used in other fields aside from physics such as medicine and biology. Hearing about the Tsens' accomplishment, Raydiance Inc. President Scott Davison had this to say:

The extreme brevity of these pulses is creating a physical effect that traditional lasers and other types of non-laser approaches can't do. What we see is a new wave of exploration and discovery in applying USP in a whole bunch of industries and applications.