From the article: Starting next August, drivers of the most polluting vehicles will have to pay $15 per day to enter an Ultra-Low Emissions Zone expanded to include all of metropolitan London, the British capital’s mayor announced Friday.

“Cleaner air is coming to Outer London,” Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted. “Today I’m announcing that we’re expanding the #ULEZ London-wide in a move that will bring cleaner air to five million more Londoners.”

“Our city is being smothered by toxic air—and it’s hurting and killing Londoners, leading to asthma, dementia, and even cancer,” the mayor continued. “Air pollution particles have even been found in the livers and brains of unborn babies. We cannot stand idly by and allow this to continue.”

“Around 4,000 Londoners die prematurely each year because of long-term exposure to air pollution, with the greatest number of deaths in outer London boroughs,” Khan added. “That’s why this expansion is so important—we need to clean the air for everyone.”

London Public Health Director Kevin Fenton tweeted that “air pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health in the U.K… It affects everyone who lives and works in London, and its impacts are felt throughout the life-course from before birth to old age.”

This is nothing new. You’re not allowed to install any 3rd party software on government systems without admin rights.

From the article: There is growing evidence that clean energy supply chains throughout the world are linked with modern slavery, according to a new report from Australia’s Clean Energy Council. The report calls attention to Australia’s part in global efforts to stop the problem, despite the country’s relatively small role in the industry, according to a Clean Energy Council press release.

“Australia is on a trajectory to produce the vast majority of our electricity from solar, wind, hydro and batteries by 2030, but it’s important that this shift happens in a way that is fair and equitable,” said Clean Energy Council Policy Director of Energy Generation and Storage Dr. Nicholas Aberle in the press release. “As with many other modern products ubiquitous in everyday life, renewable energy technologies can have long supply chains that are linked at various points to modern slavery.”

Australia’s clean energy industry has encouraged governments and companies to take actions to put an end to modern slavery and forced labor, reported The Guardian.

The report, “Addressing Modern Slavery in the Clean Energy Sector,” has asked for increased local manufacturing and renewable energy production, including a “certificate of origin” program to contend with slave labor concerns in South America, China and Africa.

From the article: The wind energy project, developed by Spanish firm Acciona, will generate 1,000MW at peak production. It will more than double the existing 923MW wind farm by the state.

Both installations will power about 1.4 million households, Reuters reports. Tesla’s Megapack project will be located nearby at Kogan Creek Power Station. It will have a capacity of 200MWh.

Construction of the energy storage project will start in the fourth quarter of 2023. CE Energy will handle it. However, there has not been any information on when Acciona will start work on the wind farm. Australia has been a repeat customer of Tesla’s Megapacks. The country hosts four such installations already.

The largest is the 450 MWh Victorian Big Battery project. A second one, located in Bouldercombe, Queensland, will complete construction early next year. Australia is aiming for its energy to be 70 percent renewable by 2032. It is banking on massive batteries like Megapacks (dubbed “coal-killer”) to achieve the goal. They are replacements for coal-powered “peaker plants” that kick in to help balance loads at peak consumption periods.

From the article: An longitudinal study of people who participated in Vasloppet, the world’s largest long-distance ski-race, held in Sweden showed that those participating in the race have lower incidence of bipolar disorder compared to the general population.

However, when performance in the race was considered, high performance women had higher risk of bipolar disorder than slower skiing women. This association was not found in men. The study was published in the International Journal of Bipolar Disorders.

Bipolar disorder is a complicated diagnosis. Its key feature are mood swings ranging from severely depressed to overactive manic episodes. Around 2-4% of the population are estimated to suffer from it.

The disorder typically begins with one or several depressive episodes, but these are later followed with at least one episode of mania or hypomania. Mania is a condition in which a person displays an over-the-top level of activity or energy, mood or behavior. It is characterized by feelings of invincibility, lack of sleep, racing thoughts and ideas, rapid talking and having false beliefs or perceptions.

Recent studies have linked bipolar disorder to around 10-year shorter life expectancy, for both men and women. This has been attributed to poor cardiovascular health and an increased risk of suicide of persons suffering from bipolar depression. Because bipolar disorder affects how energetic a person feels, many researchers have wondered whether exercise could have some bearing on the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder.

A large study in Sweden found people with the lowest fitness levels to have a higher risk of bipolar disorder. But are there any associations with an active lifestyle in general?

“Previous studies suggested that the preventive potential of physical activity for mental health could be substantial,” said study author Martina Svensson, an assistant researcher at Tomas Deierborg’s Experimental Neuroinflammation Laboratory at Lund University. “We were both interested in investigating this at a larger level.”

From the article: The link between chronic pain and a loss of appetite may finally be understood – in mice at least.

Zhi Zhang at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues injected mice with bacteria that provoke chronic pain. Ten days later, these mice were eating less frequently and for shorter periods of time compared with control mice that had been injected with saline. When the first group of mice were later given pain medication, they ate normally, the researchers wrote in a paper published in Nature Metabolism.

To better understand the neuronal activity responsible for this change in behaviour, the researchers analysed the brains of the first group of mice while the animals were in chronic pain. They found substantial neuron signalling in the mice’s anterior cingulate cortex, a pain-processing region of the brain in the prefrontal cortex.

To determine whether that signalling was related to appetite loss, the researchers provoked chronic pain in another group of mice, with these animals going on to eat less. The team then administered a chemical that prevents neuronal signalling in the anterior cingulate cortex and the mice’s appetites improved.

The prefrontal cortex isn’t generally associated with appetite control. To better understand how neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex may influence appetite, the team injected various traceable substances into these neurons in a third group of mice that were similarly made to feel pain.

They found that these neurons’ signals led to the lateral hypothalamic area, the brain’s “feeding centre”.