This Week in the Future, June 28-July 2, 2010 Baarbarian Geoengineering the Andes, air-monitoring bees, self-assembling paper airplanes and…Shriners? It’s the future. Here are some of our favorite posts this week on PopSci : German Airports Using “Biodetective” Honeybees To Monitor Air Quality McLaren F1 Designer Unveils New Ultra-Efficient Minicar, Smaller (And Cooler) Than Smart Car Video: “Smart Sheets” Can Self-Assemble Into Airplanes, Boats Aspiring Peruvian Geoengineer Begins Project to Whitewash Andes Peaks, Hoping to Slow Glacier Melt NASA Introducing “Moonbase Alpha”, a 3-D Game Set on the Moon Leave a comment (any comment) to put your name in the pile; we’ll randomly choose and announce our winner right here. And, if you just can’t wait that long, you can buy the shirt for yourself here .
Brick Tamland, James Inhofe, and a Cow Cow: Keven Law/ Flickr , BY-SA Under-the-radar polluters, and the individuals doing their best to hold climate science back If you’re reading PopSci , you probably already know all about the latest efforts to offset carbon dioxide emissions, engineer clean building materials and combat pollution from traditional energy sources like coal and oil. But you may be less aware of the more insidious climate villains–the quieter ones, which aren’t necessarily belching toxic gases or currently destroying the Gulf of Mexico. Their damage is more indirect, but that doesn’t make it less harmful. A problem as immense as climate change stretches beyond the obvious.
Jeanne Louise Calment Lived to Age 122 In 1997, Jeanne Louise Calment of France died at the age of 122, making her the oldest documented human to have ever lived. People who live to be 100 years or older are rare, and only about 1 in 600,000 people in industrialized nations live that long. But is there something genetically unique about centenarians that enables them to age gracefully and relatively disease-free?
iPhone The iPhone 4 ’s outer ring of antennas has been earning some grief lately as some owners have found that reception can change even based on where your hand is placed . Even Steve has weighed in on this issue via his itchy email finger. Spencer Webb of AntennaSys (an “antenna design” firm) knows the science, though, and he’s shared a little outsider wisdom on how the iPhone’s metal actually works. Webb starts by talking about the design of cell phone antennas in general.
My current apartment lacks air conditioning of any kind. Good for the environment and the utility bill, but bad for me and my restless sleep. News today of some crazy 90% more efficient AC has made me feel worse.
Well, this is crazy. The LIFE project at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has plans to create a mini sun in the lab, one that could create more energy than it takes to create. More » Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – United States – Earth – Government – Executive Branch
Getting more or less flavor out of garlic and onions is all about controlling their chemical weapons, according to a scientist who’s studied them for at least forty years. Learn how mincing, rinsing, cooking, and crushing the pungent stuff affects your dishes. More » Garlic – Garlic and Onions – Cook – Onion – Produce
The researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) succeeded to produce electricity by attaching a single zinc oxide nanowire on a rat’s diaphram and then heart. Placed in capsule to shield from the body fluids, the nanowire generated electricity by stretching caused by every single breath of the animal while on the diaphragm and by
East Carolina University’s Psychophysiology Lab recently published some promising findings from a study on the effect casual games can have on the cognitive abilities of older players. According to Gamasutra , the study, which has run for almost six months and counting, has measured certain mental functions of 40-some participants over the age of 50 as they’ve played various PopCap games in half-hour chunks over the duration of the study. Researchers have found that even this semi-regular play (like, really, who plays a PopCap game for just thirty minutes) has boosted participants’ cognitive response times by 87 percent, in addition to increasing their executive functioning by a whopping 215 percent. So, what does that mean
Back in April, the Shibaura Institute of Technology and the Professor Furukawa released to the world a working prototype to some kind of “Robot Skateboard” known as Compact Mobility. After contacting the Professor Furukawa, the Institute of Technology kindly invited us to give the “Compact Mobility” a try and to learn more about this new
Scientists at the University of Tokyo have discovered a new compound, titanium pentoxide(Ti3O5), that can be used as optical data storage medium. They treated the microscopic black crystals in the titanium pentoxide (Ti3O5) compound with laser light and observed that their structure changed in a way that made it difficult to conduct electricity. Hence the conclusion
This Week in the Future, May 17-21, 2010 Baarbarian It’s a shotgun wedding, officiated by a robot matador, the cloned baby bull that brought them together resting comfortably in a newly invented incubator backpack. And the roaches, my God, the roaches. Only in the future.
The first age of airships died with the 36 people who perished in 1937’s Hindenburg disaster. More than 70 years later an Alabama-based company plans to launch the world’s largest inflatable craft. Is the age of airships returning? More »
DNA Tests for Dog Poop It wuznt my fault I swearz via Flickr/ silgeo DNA has long been used to solve crimes and even exonerate the innocent. Soon, it could be used to pinpoint poo. Apparently, video camera surveillance was way too 20th-century for the good people of Scarlett Place Condominiums in Baltimore, who have proposed DNA tests to identify the originators of dog poop left on the premises. Someone has not been doing his or her civic, um, duty and picking up Fido’s waste, leaving messes all over the ritzy condo grounds, according to the Baltimore Sun.
If you’re an astronomy buff and looking for a little bit of Friday Fun, you can pore high-resolution photos of the Moon and help NASA flag and identify previously unseen craters. More » Moon – Earth – NASA – Astronomy – Space
