Amouranth may make a killing after investing in Activision Blizzard in March 2022

For a second straight year, banks are making more money providing loans and underwriting bond sales for green-related

Wind turbines make money when they spin. But when they shake, it can cost billions. Siemens Energy AG

If you’re anything like us, the first coffee of the day is the only thing that can get us up on a morning – and it turns out, there’s real science behind it. Everyone knows that coffee can give us a welcome caffeine hit, but it’s now been revealed that the drink also gives us an extra ‘special boost’ too. Scientists have claimed that the act of drinking a cup of joe gives the body a lift, making us more alert, which can’t be replicated merely with caffeine. In fact, new research shows that drinking hot coffee activates additional areas of the brain. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Scientists from the University of Minho in Portugal and elsewhere looked into the effects of coffee outside of just caffeine content as part of a study – and they found that plain caffeine didn’t have the same impact. In fact, a cup of coffee also influenced working memory and goal-directed behaviour. “There is a common expectation that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning. When you get to understand better the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenon, you open pathways for exploring the factors that may modulate it and even the potential benefits of that mechanism,” study co-author Nuno Sousa explained. Experts said that drinking coffee actually increased the connectivity in the brain’s more advanced nerve network controlling vision, and other parts involved in working memory, cognitive control and goal-directed behaviour – something not found when participants only took caffeine. Researchers also said that if subjects wanted to not just feel alert but ready to go, caffeine alone might not do the job. “Acute coffee consumption decreased the functional connectivity between brain regions of the default mode network, a network that is associated with self-referential processes when participants are at rest,” study co-author Maria Picó-Pérez said. “The subjects were more ready for action and alert to external stimuli after having coffee,” she added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

TOKYO Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission on Friday said it had issued a warning to OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed

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When President Joe Biden speaks at a community college in New York on Wednesday, he's expected to hit Republicans hard for budget cuts they are demanding as part of their bill to raise the debt ceiling.

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Nasa has named Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin as the second company to build a lunar lander under its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon for the firs time in more than 50 years. The US space agency awarded the first contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2021 in a $3 billion deal that was disputed by Mr Bezos at the time. Those initial missions using SpaceX’s Starship system are slated for later this decade. “We want more competition, we want two landers,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said at an event in Washington on Friday. “It means you have reliability, you have backups. It benefits Nasa, it benefits the American people.” Today’s announcement evokes deja vu for Amazon.com founder Bezos and defense contractor Dynetics Inc, the head of a partnership with Northrop Grumman. Those companies lost out to SpaceX for the 2021 contract, part of an initial moon lander procurement program. Nasa under that program said it could pick up to two companies, but blamed budget constraints for only going with SpaceX. The new contract is the biggeset ever deal for Blue Origin, which Mr Bezos founded in 2000. The Amazon founder has invested billions of dollars into the company to compete for high-profile commercial and government space contracts with SpaceX. After losing in 2021, Blue Origin unsuccessfully fought to overturn Nasa’s decision to ignore its Blue Moon lander, first with a watchdog agency and then in court. Blue Origin and lawmakers had pressured Nasa to award a second lunar lander contract to promote commercial competition and ensure the agency has a backup ride to the moon. Nasa in early 2022 announced the program for a second lander contract. Nasa chief Bill Nelson said at the time: “I promised competition, so here it is.” Blue Origin has already named its corporate partners for the lunar lander: Lockheed Martin , Boeing, spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic. Northrop Grumman, previously a key partner in Blue Origin’s unsuccessful Blue Moon bid in 2021, switched teams to join its former rival Dynetics. Nasa’s multi-spacecraft plan for the Artemis moonshots involves its Space Launch System rocket launching astronauts toward the moon aboard the Lockheed-built Orion capsule. That will dock in space with a lunar lander that will ferry the crew the rest of the way to the Moon’s surface. Additional reporting from agencies Read More ‘It’s becoming like an airport’: How SpaceX normalised rocket launches Watch live: Nasa reveals who will build second Artemis lunar lander Nasa Mars lander study reveals ‘main source of heat’ on Red Planet Saturn’s rings are no more than 400 million years old – study