Green Roofs, Warp Engines and Cheap Solar Power

August 01, 2008

These are the coolest stories I read this past week.

July 25 / Scientific American
Urban Roofscapes: Using "Wasted" Rooftop Real Estate to an Ecological Advantage
How a green roof can minimize run-off and mitigate the urban “heat island effect.”

July 25 / BBC
HP's Plan to Fix Ailing Planet
Trillions of sensors deployed worldwide will monitor the state of the planet and pick up ailments (wildfires, hurricanes, bacteria, hazardous chemicals) that may need to be warded off or remedied.

July 26 / The New York Times
China Surpasses U.S. in Number of Internet Users
Is anyone surprised? I'm so not surprised that I almost didn't put this on the list. You're right. I'm taking it off. 

July 28 / Discovery News
Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light
Gather 'round Trekkies. Your time has come. Two physicists have figured out warp drive works without breaking the laws (of physics, that is).

July 28 / Scientific American
Engineering Silicon Solar Cells to Make Photovoltaic Power Affordable
One company is on a mission to get the cost of solar cells down to a buck a watt. Those are light bulb prices that would make energy from the sun competitive with that from coal-burning power plants.

July 28 / The New York Times
Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine
This company pronounces their name, Cuil, as "cool." That, and the fact that they are trying to upstage Google, makes me narrow my eyes with skepticism.

July 30 / Nature
Energy: Upgrading the Grid
What it takes to make a stupid power grid super smaht.

July 30 / Wired
Project to Rebuild Internet Gets $12M, Bandwidth
There's a project dedicated to rebuilding the Internet's underlying architecture? Whoa. I didn't even know about that.

July 30 / BBC
Olympic Link to Early 'Computer'
A closer look at an ancient Greek timepiece discovered in 1901 reveals that it has dials that record the dates of the original Olympic games.

July 31 / Technology Trends
OmegaTable, A 24-million Pixel VR Display
This virtual reality display is a multi-sensory touch tabletop that gives people a 3D experience without looking like a giant dork in those special glasses.

July 31 / Technology Review
3-D Printing for the Masses
This printing service takes orders from customers and turns ideas into three-dimensional prototypes at an affordable cost. If you're an artist, architect, designer, or general hobbyist, you might want to read this article.

July 31 / The Guardian
Sweet Peas Make a Second Skin
Didn't know this, but an enzyme in sweet pea pods and seeds can cause floppy skin in grazing animals. That's totally weird. But that same enzyme, when used in a polymer gel wound dressing, could relieve shrinking or lumpy skin grafts on burn victims.

July 31 / Economist
Genetically Modified Olympians?
You can detect performance-enhancing drugs, for the most part, but how do you detect gene therapy?

July 31 / New Scientist
Solar-Cell Material Can Soak Up More Sun
The sun cranks out a ton of energy, but conventional solar cells are only able to absorb the visible light part of the sun's spectrum. A new material that absorbs the infrared could, in theory take energy absorption from 30 percent to 63 percent.

Steel-melting solar mirror, eco-friendly fireworks, freeing oneself from email's grip and more!

July 04, 2008

June 27 / The New York Times
Data Centers Explore Novel Ways to Cut Energy Use
Data centers make the Web possible. Make my job possible. But electricity consumed by microprocessors in those data center is rising by 16 percent per year. That kind of voracious appetite for energy is expensive and not very green. But people at the recent Data Center Energy Summit are brainstorming solutions to curb the beast's energy appetite, including reusing hot water from cooling systems to filling a town's swimming pool.

June 28 / The New York Times
I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
Gasp! This guy stopped using email. On purpose. His server didn't even go down or anything!

June 29 / Guardian
Calls for ID Card to Replace Passwords
Passwords be damned! Finally, an industry group known as the Information Card Foundation is advocating that we replace our passwords with an electronic ID card. Advantages: security and signing in just once.

June 30 / Guardian
Welcome to the Particle Menagerie
Up, down, top, bottom, charm, strange, axions, sleptons and quarks. How do physicists dream up such whimsical names for the fundamental particles they discover? Simon Singh explains

June 30 /  Guardian
The Brains Behind the Operation
Cern scientists have invented a new way to network computers, and it could be the next leap forward in computing.

June 30 / Discovery News
Meet the Steel-Melting Solar Mirror
Enterprising kids know you can melt crayons by focusing light on them with a magnifying glass. MIT students are now vaporizing wood, and can theoretically melt steel, by focusing sunlight with mirrors.

July 1 / Popular Science
Powering Cars With Toxic Waste
Scientists invent a uranium-eating molecule that could help turn nuclear junk into fuel.

July 1 / Technology Trends
Toward Eco-Friendly Fireworks
Researchers are developing new pyrotechnic formulas that burn cleaner and produce less smoke.

July 1 / Scientific American
Farming Solar Energy in Space
Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean, renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years.

July 1 / The New York Times
Google’s Ethos, Applied to Dining
Crowdsourcing sommeliers and open source recipes. Let's eat.

July 1 / Guardian
Hybrid Embryos: U.K. Team Plans Stem Cell First
British scientists got the okay from their gov to create the world's first human stem cells from embryos that are part human and part animal.

July 2 / Nature
How to Weave an Invisible Rug
You've heard of an invisibility cloak. Researchers calculate that a carpet, not a cloak, would be the most realistic kind of cloaking device. It would produce a controlled mirage.

July 2 / The New York Times
Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity
Senator Barack Obama’s Web site has netted him lots-o cash. Now it's netted him lots-o backlash. When followers heard he supported legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, they protested electronically.

July 3 / Wired
Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282-MPG VW
Fuel efficiency seems like oxymoron. But now Volkswagen is upping the ante with a new bullet-shaped car that gets triple-digit mpg. Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha.

July 3 / Scientific American
Who Will Die?: Computer Predicts Which Death Row Inmates Will Be It
Sounds like a gruesome game that no one would want to play. But the predictions could actually lead to a fairer appeals process.

July 3 / The New York Times
See Spot Run. Now Find Out Where He Went.
Track everyone, everything with GPS, for under $130.

July 3 / Guardian
Environment: Climate Risk From Flat-Screen TV
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Crimeware Pays
Adware, phishing, and spam are a strange -- and big -- business.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Iraq Electricity, By the Numbers
The scorching truth about electricity use and need in Iraq.