Nature magazine writes:   The impact of neonicotinoid insecticides on insect pollinators is highly controversial. Sublethal concentrations alter the behaviour of social bees and reduce survival of entire colonies   However, critics argue that the reported negative effects only arise from neonicotinoid concentrations that are greater than those found in the nectar and pollen of pesticide-treated plants.

Furthermore, it has been suggested that bees could choose to forage on other available flowers and hence avoid or dilute exposure.  Here, using a two-choice feeding assay, the honeybee, Apis mellifera, and the buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, do not avoid nectar-relevant concentrations of three of the most commonly used neonicotinoids, imidacloprid (IMD), thiamethoxam (TMX), and clothianidin (CLO), in food.

Moreover, bees of both species prefer to eat more of sucrose solutions laced with IMD or TMX than sucrose alone. Stimulation with IMD, TMX and CLO neither elicited spiking responses from gustatory neurons in the bees’ mouthparts, nor inhibited the responses of sucrose-sensitive neurons. Our data indicate that bees cannot taste neonicotinoids and are not repelled by them. Instead, bees preferred solutions containing IMD or TMX, even though the consumption of these pesticides caused them to eat less food overall. This work shows that bees cannot control their exposure to neonicotinoids in food and implies that treating flowering crops with IMD and TMX presents a sizeable hazard to foraging bees.

President Barack Obama ordered the US government to take steps towards lifting sanctions on Iran, in accordance with the historic nuclear deal struck between six world powers and Tehran.

Obama’s directive comes 90 days after the UN Security Council endorsed the accord signed in Vienna in July, a milestone referred to as “Adoption Day.”

“I hereby direct you to take all necessary steps to give effect to the US commitments with respect to sanctions,” Obama said in a memorandum addressed to the US secretaries of state, energy, commerce and the treasury.

The measures will take effect upon confirmation by the Secretary of State that Iran has met its commitments under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the accord is known, Obama said.

“This is an important day for all of us and a critical first step in the process of ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes,” Secretary of State John Kerry added in a statement.

But no sanctions will be lifted immediately — full relief will come not on “adoption day” but on “implementation day,” the point when the IAEA is able to certify that Iran has fully complied with its end of the bargain.

Under the deal with world powers, Iran will dramatically reduce its uranium enrichment program, surrender or dilute most of its highly enriched fuel and open its nuclear sites to inspectors from the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.

In return, the United States, Europe and other countries will rescind a raft of economic sanctions imposed on Iran because of fears that its nuclear research program concealed plans to develop an atomic bomb.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif were also set to make statements on the lifting of crippling sanctions on Tehran.

Tehran has said it hopes “implementation day” will come quickly, in less than two months, but Washington envisages a longer timeframe.

“For us it’s important that it’s done right, not that it’s done quickly,” a senior administration official told reporters. “We cannot imagine less than two months.”

 At a recent meeting of the Arctic Council the President of Iceland pointed out the many opportunities opening up in the Arctic as one of the few positive outcomes of global warming.  The council, founded in 1996, brings together eight nations with land above the Arctic Circle – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US.

When we see a dollar bill laying around, we see buying power. But without a numeral printed on each bill, paper money isn’t anything more than a proprietary piece of paper made out of a cotton/linen blend, just like the kind you might find upholstering your furniture.

Commissioned to design a project for the National Bank, London-based designer Angela Mathis decided to deconstruct currency from around the world and turn it into a textile. She then used this textile to upholster a number of custom-designed stools.

She calls it “Value.” As designed, Value comes in the form of four stools, each upholstered with a potpourri of different-colored currencies, reduced to shreds. Depending on how she combines these currencies—the American dollar, the purple English pound, the brown Indonesian rupees, and the color dense euro—Mathis was able to create different colors, textures, and effects (such as marbling).

This might seem like an extraordinarily wanton (and maybe criminal) destruction of money. Not so. The artist points out that the average life of a note is scarcely more than 18 months, at which point, it is decommissioned. In America, you can actually buy a five-pound bag filled with $10,000 worth of shredded currency for just $45.

This is the sort of currency Mathis used for her project, making it far more affordable than it looks like it would be at first glance. She asked herself: what will happen to all of this cotton and linen when the digitization of currency has made physical bills almost obsolete? Value imagines a world in which currency is routinely repurposed, because it has no inherent value anymore, just material worth

California’s governor Jerry Brown has signed into law the most sweeping and stringent digital privacy law in the country on Thursday.

Unicorn investors (start ups that roll out at over a billion dollar evaluation when they have made no money).  Good for entrepreneurs?  Bad for investors?

Barry Diller, speaking at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit, said the numbers are inflated because new investors are pouring money into the space, with the emergence of mobile technology driving fast-paced generation of ideas and inventions. Valuations will fall to a more rational level relatively soon as investment falls away, he said, without specifying a timeline.

“What we have had is an enormous amount of money coming in, continuing money coming in, and no shoes dropping yet of any real size,” Diller said. “When it begins to happen, reality descends — then, in fact, valuations will become more rational.”

There are 140 startups valued at $1 billion or more, eight of them joining the so-called “unicorn club” in September, according to research firm CB Insights. Most of these startups aren’t profitable, so the valuations don’t matter, Diller said.

“The price only makes sense if you’re saying, ‘I’m over here in this non-digital age and I want to get into this and I’ll pay this huge opportunity cost, and maybe I’ll make something of this,”’ Diller said, citing Walt Disney Co.’s purchase of Maker Studios for $500 million as an example.

The race for Internet service from space is on, again.

After a series of failed satellite Internet projects over the past two decades, fresh investment is coming into the sector, and at least three high-profile projects are moving forward.

OneWeb, a London-based consortium backed by tycoon Richard Branson, announced in June it had raised $500 million from investors including Airbus, Qualcomm and Intelsat to advance its plan for satellite broadband to underserved parts of the world.

Also this year, U.S.-based space exploration firm SpaceX secured a $1 billion investment that could help founder Elon Musk’s plan to build a satellite Internet network, with backing from Google and the financial firm Fidelity.

U.S.-based LeoSat, backed by Europe’s Thales Alenia Space, is also working on a satellite broadband project aimed at business. And Samsung outlined plans in a research report this year “to make affordable Internet services available to everyone in the world via low-cost micro-satellites.”

The projects seek to launch hundreds of low-orbit satellites to beam the Internet from space. The initial costs could be high, but would avoid the expense of building ground-based systems for wired or wireless broadband.

If the plans sounds familiar, we’ve seen this before.

Teledesic, a 1990s project backed by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Saudi royal family investors, died before it went into service, as did another venture called SkyBridge, whose assets were eventually acquired by OneWeb.

Greg Wyler, chief executive of OneWeb, said much has changed since Teledesic abandoned its “Internet in the sky” plan more than a decade ago: the cost of satellite technology has come down, and most people now realize that connectivity is needed to spur economic development.

“If your goal is to end extreme poverty, boost the things that contribute to economic growth like health care and education, all of those things sit on a foundation of connectivity,” Wyler said.

OneWeb plans to begin launching its 648 low-orbit satellites in 2017, and begin connecting customers by 2019, Wyler said.

The company has “contractual arrangements” to operate in more than 50 markets and is looking at a broad global footprint.

“More than half the world is not connected,” he said.

In some developed markets like the United States, individuals who live in remote areas could subscribe to Internet broadband. In developing countries, it may be schools, health care centers and other government entities.

“Our technology fundamentally reduces the cost of connectivity,” he said.

An equally ambitious plan is being developed by Musk and SpaceX, which could launch as many as 4,000 satellites.

Musk said on Twitter that he sees “advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations” that would provide “unfettered (Internet access) certainly and at very low cost.”

Details of the SpaceX plan are still sketchy, but the company filed plans with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to begin testing. Eventually, FCC approval could allow the SpaceX project to offer broadband services globally.

LeoSat’s plan calls for between 78 and 108 satellites for a broadband network aimed at high-volume business customers such as major corporations, governments, maritime operators and the oil and gas industry, said Chief Executive Mark Rigolle.

While LeoSat, a startup created in 2013, is aiming at only a few thousand customers, it can also serve as a “backbone” for other operators, which would mean millions could use its connections.

“We want to become ‘fiber from the sky’ from anywhere to anywhere,” Rigolle said.

“It’s not a product that is available in today’s market.”

The company was created by former oil and gas industry executives who understood the need for better connections in remote parts of the world, Rigolle said.

These low-earth orbit systems require more satellites but can cover areas not served by the higher-orbit systems, with better connectivity because of faster transmission speeds.

Rigolle said LeoSat will be able to transmit around the globe “from satellite to satellite without ever touching the ground,” create a system which is “effectively faster than fiber” and more secure.

Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said now may be an opportune time to launch a space broadband service because of advances in technology and growing needs for connectivity.

“Space has a lot of natural advantages” over terrestrial systems, he said.

“Space systems provide a way to cover massive amounts of territory very quickly, and the new satellites are increasingly sophisticated.”

Because growing numbers of people around the world rely on wireless broadband, Pace said that “demand is more intense than in the 1990s and satellite systems have a chance of meeting that demand and being a player.”

Still, he said it is not clear if satellite systems can compete effectively with ground-based systems. And he said that any new entrant will still have to compete for airwave spectrum and deal with regulators in various countries.

With a number of satellite firms competing, it is not clear if all will survive.