Archive

All editions of JansBrief

Thursday, 14 May 2026

New edition

The hunt for antibiotics is going feral

The antibiotic pipeline has been dying for decades — not because the science is impossible, but because the economics are perverse. A new antibiotic that works brilliantly earns less than a mediocre...

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Wednesday, 13 May 2026

New edition

The fertiliser clock is ticking

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has dominated headlines through the lens of oil prices and naval confrontations. But buried in a warning issued this week by FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu is a threat...

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Tuesday, 12 May 2026

New edition

The air is alive — and scientists are reading it

The next revolution in environmental surveillance will not come from satellites, drones, or ground sensors. It will come from breathing. Researchers are now systematically harvesting DNA from the air...

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Monday, 11 May 2026

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The power ring that could break Nigeria's grid curse

When Tola Talabi proposed building a dedicated electricity ring around Victoria Island — Lagos's most commercially dense square kilometres — experienced investors told him he was mad. The national...

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Sunday, 10 May 2026

New edition

Seaweed next to the salmon could quietly feed the world

The protein problem is, at bottom, a pollution problem. Every kilogram of farmed fish produces waste nitrogen and phosphorus that silts up coastlines and starves water of oxygen. Scaling aquaculture...

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Saturday, 9 May 2026

New edition

The eye in your pocket is not yours

You bought the phone. You pay the bill. You carry it everywhere — to the bedroom, the bathroom, the hospital, the protest. But the device in your pocket was not designed for you. It was designed to...

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Friday, 8 May 2026

New edition

Balcony solar is about to rewire American energy from the bottom up

Something quietly revolutionary is happening in state legislatures across the United States, and almost nobody in the mainstream press is paying attention. Dozens of US states are now considering...

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Thursday, 7 May 2026

New edition

Sharks with sensors are fixing our broken ocean models

Somewhere off the coast of the eastern United States, nineteen sharks are doing science. Fitted with small sensor packages that measure temperature, salinity and depth as the animals dive through the...

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Wednesday, 6 May 2026

New edition

When rivals share a van, the planet wins

The biggest available reduction in delivery emissions has nothing to do with electric trucks, drone drops or hydrogen fuel cells. It is about persuading competitors to share the same vehicle. A...

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Tuesday, 5 May 2026

New edition

The fish that became a notebook

Iceland has quietly built something extraordinary: a circular economy around cod. Not the glamorous kind of innovation that attracts Silicon Valley pitch decks, but the kind that transforms an entire...

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Monday, 4 May 2026

New edition

The ants know something we don't

In a laboratory in Brazil, fire ants exposed to biochar — the carbon-rich soil amendment made by pyrolysing organic waste — began foraging twice as fast, building nests three times more complex, and...

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Sunday, 3 May 2026

New edition

The city in a bucket of water

In New York's East River, scientists have discovered something that could transform how we monitor every city on Earth. By scooping up ordinary buckets of river water and analysing the environmental...

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