All posts tagged: cigarettes

Want to Support Your Favorite Cleveland Museums? Buy Cigarettes!

Want to Support Your Favorite Cleveland Museums? Buy Cigarettes!

Published by José Betancourt

Museums and other arts institutions in Cleveland, Ohio, have a financial support structure that might surprise you. Some of the biggest visual arts presenters, as well as much smaller organizations, get money each time someone in Cuyahoga County, of which Cleveland is the county seat, buys a pack of cigarettes. According to the New York Times, Cleveland “is thought to be the only place in the country” where such a tax supports arts organizations, and the paper reports that via the nonprofit Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the levy has supported the arts to the tune of $270 million since it was put into effect in 2007. The organization has given out some 4,000 grants to 485 nonprofit organizations, while, in the same time period, the entire state of Ohio has gotten just $48 million from the National Endowment for the Arts, notes the paper. Related Articles The Cleveland Museum of Art, the city’s encyclopedic institution founded in 1913, is one such beneficiary. Also getting support is the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, established in 1968 …

The End of Cigarettes Is Coming

The End of Cigarettes Is Coming

Published by Daniella Wilson

For almost two decades, British retailers have told customers that if they were born after the current date 18 years ago, they can’t buy cigarettes. Starting next year, that date will freeze. Under a recently passed law, selling cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, will be illegal—in perpetuity. As long as the law is in effect, no one who is 17 or younger on New Year’s Day 2027 will ever be allowed to buy tobacco legally. This generational tobacco ban represents a very different approach from the tobacco-control policy that most Americans are used to. The U.S. regime looks more like what the drug-policy scholar Mark Kleiman called “grudging toleration” toward cigarettes: tax, regulate, and scold, but stop short of outright bans. The new British approach will, eventually, lead to outright prohibition. Prohibition. The word conjures the specter of violence, crime, and policy failure. But the United Kingdom isn’t the first jurisdiction to impose a generational ban, and it probably won’t be the last. The tiny island nation of the Maldives …

Birds Are Getting Hooked on Cigarettes

Birds Are Getting Hooked on Cigarettes

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Nicotine, the highly addictive chemical compound in cigarettes, is having a bit of a resurgence as of late — with patches of the stuff even appearing in vending machines at tech company offices, offering overworked staffers a way to get through the day. Even some species of birds are getting hooked on cigarettes — but not for the reason you might think. Instead of suffering from a debilitating nicotine addiction, blue tits across Europe are hoarding cigarette butts to ward off parasites using the natural and artificial toxins in tobacco and cigarette butts, as the New York Times reports. It’s a bizarre evolutionary outcome resulting from an otherwise ecologically damaging side effect of our collective smoking addiction. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Animal Behavior, a team of researchers at the University of Lodz in Poland suggests that volatile compounds from the cigarette remains being brought into Eurasian blue tit nests could be helping …

Belarusian balloons full of cigarettes pose NATO’s latest security threat

Belarusian balloons full of cigarettes pose NATO’s latest security threat

Published by Sam Flores

At first, they might not seem like much of a threat: weather balloons, filled with helium or hydrogen, carrying bundles of cigarettes from Belarus. But as the number of these balloons crossing into NATO airspace has multiplied – including two major incursions this week into Lithuania and Poland that forced officials to shut air traffic – officials and experts are concerned that it represents an escalation of a Russian hybrid warfare campaign against the alliance and the European Union. Source link

Scientists convert cigarette butts into new material for fast, durable energy storage

Scientists convert cigarette butts into new material for fast, durable energy storage

Published by Jenni Sidey

Billions of cigarette butts end up on sidewalks, beaches, and gutters each year. They are small, easy to ignore, and hard to clean up. Over time, they can also leak toxic chemicals into soil and water. A new study suggests this familiar trash could become something far more useful: a high-performance material for fast, durable energy storage. Scientists from Shenyang Agricultural University report that they can convert discarded cigarette butts into an advanced carbon material that works as a strong electrode for supercapacitors. The study describes a process that turns the filters into nitrogen and oxygen co-doped nanoporous biochar. In lab tests, the material stored large amounts of charge, charged quickly, and stayed stable through thousands of cycles. “Our work shows that cigarette butts are not just a pollution problem, but also a valuable carbon resource,” said corresponding author Leichang Cao. “By converting them into functional porous carbon materials, we can address waste management while supporting clean energy technologies.” SEM images of (a) H-hydrochar, (b) CNPB-600-4, (c) CNPB-700-1, (d) CNPB-700-2, (e) CNPB-700-3, (f) CNPB-700-4, (g) …