People Change:
New Japanese government data shows that the number of Japanese births in 2024 declined 5.7% from 2023 to 686,000, the lowest since statistics were first kept in 1899 and the ninth successive year of decline.
A new AI driven test can predict which men are the best candidates to take prostate cancer drug abiraterone.
AstraZeneca announced positive trial results for a breast cancer drug which stops mutating tumours before they can grow.
Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a new blood test that can accurately detect people with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Australian researchers have developed a method to make the HIV virus visible.
Migration:
According to Our world in Data, in 2023 migrants sent or brought back US$ 822 billion to their countries of origin, almost three times the US$ 288 billion provided through global foreign aid.
Climate Change and the Environment:
The list of known forever chemicals now exceeds 10,000 with the presence of trifluoroacetic acid being of particular concern.
America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that recent global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide reached the highest seasonal peak since recordings began with the concentration rising from 300 ppm to 423 ppm in sixty years. Scientists calculated oceans absorbed 25-30 of CO2 released and absorbed 90% of excess heat.
A new study by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University concluded that the ocean’s acidification boundary was breached back in 2020.
According to the World Meteorological Organization 40 million square kilometres of the ocean around South East Asia experienced a marine heatwave in 2024.
Nasa research shows a dramatic rise in the intensity of droughts, floods and other weather related events in the past five years with extreme events more frequent, longer lasting and more severe with 2024 numbers twice the 2003 to 2020 average.
Indonesia plans to build a US$ 80 billion sea wall several hundreds of kilometres long along the north coast of its most populous island Java.
More than 100 people died in floods in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province.
According to a coalition of eight green groups, the world’s largest banks provided US$ 869 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2024, up US$ 162 billion from 2023.
Norway has launched the world’s largest full-scale carbon capture and storage operation with carbon dioxide injected into reservoirs under the North Sea.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
According to the IEA, global investment in clean energy in 2025 will be US$ 2.2 trillion, 2% up on 2024, while fossil fuel investment will drop.
The official report on the Iberian electricity blackout concluded that it was caused by renewable energy sources but by voltage not regulated due to poor planning by the system operator with several generators failing to perform as required.
Chinese researchers using satellite images estimated that the global installed capacity of solar panels above water, mostly in China and the rest of Asia, totals 21 GW forecast to reach 35.64 GW by 2030.
According to Ember 24-hour solar generation is now feasible with just 17 kWh of battery storage enough to turn 5 kW of solar panels into a steady 1 kW of 24-hour clean power making it possible to get 97% of the way to constant solar electricity every hour of every day of the year in the world’s sunniest cities at US$ 104/MWh, 22% lower cost than just a year earlier and cheaper than new coal or new nuclear.
Ireland closed its last coal fired power station becoming the 15th coal free country in Europe.
According to Our world in Data, air conditioning accounts for 7% of total world electricity consumption.
According to the IEA, the average market share of the top producers of copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earth minerals rose from 82% in 202 to 86% in 2024 with lithium demand growing 30% from 2023 to 2024.
The World Bank has announced plans to start funding nuclear power plants.
Proxima Fusion raised €130M Series A to build the world’s first stellarator-based fusion power plant in the 2030s.
Autonomous Electric Vechicles:
Some 97% of Norwegian new car sales in April were fully electric vehicles.
The new Xpeng G7 electric vehicle, which uses autonomous driving AI chips more powerful than those of Nvidia, received more than 10,000 orders during its first hour on sale. Xpeng has an agreement with VW to install the chips in VW models.
Chinese cellphone maker Xiaomi received 200,000 pre-orders for its latest electric vehicle in three minutes.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
Nvidia’s 2024 Blackwell GPU chip uses 105,000 times less energy in AI applications than its 2014 Kepler predecessor.
China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, the Remnimbi alternative to the Swift interbank transfer system, has reduced transaction times from 5-7 days to 7 seconds, with multiple intermediary banks eliminated and the cost reduced by 90% compared to Swift.
According to Stanford University research, in 2024 American private investment in AI was US$ 109 billion compared to US$ 9.3 billion in China and US$ 4.5 billion in the United Kingdom.
Chinese (not American as reported last month) scientists have unveiled a framework that could connect classical mechanics and thermodynamics under a single mathematical umbrella and so solve Hilbert’s sixth problem.
