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Links for 2019-01-02

  • The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scam

    The need to have a massive and costly buildout of [hydrogen refuelling] infrastructure remains one of the most glaring problems of a supposed transition to a hydrogen economy. The cost of a single hydrogen fueling station is likely to be over $2 million. This is in contrast to the relatively modest $50,000 cost of deploying a high-speed battery-electric car charging station. Another factor here is the reality of putting into place an all-new infrastructure from scratch versus building off of an already existing electrical infrastructure that exists in every developed nation.  The fact that every building, garage, and lamp post in the US is already electrified means we simply have to add one final component to the existing and established network.

    (tags: hydrogen green driving cars fuel fossil-fuels decarbonisation)

  • Don’t buy a 5G smartphone—at least, not for a while | Ars Technica

    wow, 5G sounds like it’s going to be terrible

    (tags: 5g 4g mobile-phones mobile tech hardware radio)

  • Risky business: linking _Toxoplasma gondii_ infection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

    Using a saliva-based assay, we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for Toxoplasma gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in ‘management and entrepreneurship’ over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197). Finally, after synthesizing and combining country-level databases on T. gondii infection from the past 25 years with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of entrepreneurial activity, we found that infection prevalence was a consistent, positive predictor of entrepreneurial activity and intentions at the national scale, regardless of whether previously identified economic covariates were included. Nations with higher infection also had a lower fraction of respondents citing ‘fear of failure’ in inhibiting new business ventures. While correlational, these results highlight the linkage between parasitic infection and complex human behaviours, including those relevant to business, entrepreneurship and economic productivity.

    (tags: science biology infection toxoplasmosis parasites humans behaviour entrepreneurs business brains economics)

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