New research from SMU’s Geothermal Laboratory, funded by a grant from Google.org, documents significant geothermal resources across the United States capable of producing more than three million megawatts of green power — 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants today…
Let’s face it, programmable thermostats can be complicated. They’re like any other device you have to program — they sound neat but actually using them can be annoying. And yet, the thermostat is one of the most important parts of a home for keeping the carbon footprint low. So how do we simplify something that can add up to a complex ordeal what with mornings, evenings, different rooms, different preferences, and so on? Well, the creator of the iPod — a marvelously simple but powerful device — has an idea…
The Copiale Cipher is a 105-page handwritten document that was composed sometime in the late Eighteenth Century. It has 75,000 characters, both symbols and Roman letters. Until recently, it was indecipherable. But now linguists using translation programs have decoded the first sixteen pages. Here’s how they did it…
Researchers at the Tel Aviv University have created a track around which a superconductor can float, thanks to the phenomenon of “quantum levitation“. Suspending a superconducting disc above or below a set of permanent magnets – the magnetic field is locked inside the superconductor ; a phenomenon called ‘Quantum Trapping’.
Besides a reduced monthly power bill, there’s a certain smug satisfaction to recharging your gear with solar energy. It’s almost like you want everyone to know how eco conscious you’re being, and with the Changer solar charging system, you’ll actually be rewarded for bragging about it…
Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, you’ve probably heard me and other people talk about the radiation exposure we experience in everyday life. All humans, throughout history, have been exposed to background radiation produced constantly by the natural environment. Then there’s added exposures from modern sources: X-rays and medical scans, living near power plants (both coal and nuclear, and the coal is actually worse), and flying in airplanes…
Images like this helped researchers determine differences in the faces of children with autism.
University of Missouri researchers may be a step closer to understanding what causes autism. They have found differences between the facial characteristics of children who have autism and those who don’t.
A bedbug is a wingless insect with a flat reddish body that infests dwellings and bedding and feeds on human blood. The common human bedbug of temperate regions, Cimex lectularis, is largely nocturnal, spending the day in crevices in walls and furniture and in bedding. Its bite causes irritation in many individuals, but it is not known to transmit diseases…
The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory…
Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar’s receivers. But just as light can’t pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it’s hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what’s happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side…
What happens if you combine Twitter-like sharing, the depth of blogging and the voting mechanics of Reddit? You might get Chime.in, UberMedia’s take on social networking…