July 2010
13 posts
1 tag
Nuclear Power Costs Rise Higher Than Solar
Several ratings agencies and law/environment folks have reported that the costs behind building and operating nuclear power plants is estimated to be more than the costs of solar energy facilities.
“Solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants,” John O. Blackburn, a professor of economics at Duke University, in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a...
3 tags
Oooh. Shiny. Nationwide 4G from LightSquared
This sounds awesome: a nationwide 4G-LTE wireless network that is scheduled to be up and running (covering 92% of the US population) by 2015. There are some minor details — such as AT&T and Verizon are not allow to play on this network! But that FCC clause denying AT&T and Verizon access is aimed at increasing wireless broadband competition. (Will it save Sprint’s business? ...
3 tags
Does Cellulose Really Exist In Space?
I’ve always wondered why the detection of cellulose in space hasn’t been studied more. If cellulose actually exists elsewhere in the universe, I’d think that would be pretty good supporting evidence of ET life out there…
This was reported in Nature, in 1978. Tholins have been detected as well (I think by Carl Sagan). There are many unidentified bands in the spectra of...
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Robot Teachers
The NYTimes has a short video on robotic teachers that all look humanoid… but I’d think that the software to improve human learning is more important than having robots that don’t quite bridge the “uncanny valley.”
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infographics are cool →
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Despicable Me
I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I was somewhat surprised to discover that it was produced by a company I’d never heard of: Illumination Entertainment. IBM apparently had a hand in rendering the animation, saying:
For “Despicable Me” the animation process generated 142 terabytes of data — an amount roughly equivalent to the traffic generated by over 118 million...
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Infograph: GDP per capita over 500yrs
Here’s an awesome graph of the growth of GDP over the last 500 yrs for East Asia and the US…
Portable Eye Doc
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Isotope Ratios Will Give You Away
Apparently, you are what you drink. And if you drink bottled water (or bottled drinks in general), the isotope ratios in your favorite beverages can be traced back to where the water came from. So if you drink a lot of Dasani water bottled in Colorado, the isotope signature from that water can end up in your hair… and it’s possible that your drinking habits can be discovered from...
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Solar-Powered Plane... To Orbit The Globe?
A solar-powered plane just spent 26hrs in the air, proving that it’s possible for it to fly continuously, day or night. While the group behind it is planning to circle the globe in this solar plane, I think it would be more interesting to see this vehicle as an autonomous solar-powered plane — so that it could be an alternative to launching LEO satellites. If autonomous solar powered...
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A Persistent Gender Gap For Math/Verbal Skills
This is an interesting study: Gender Gap Persists At Highest Levels Of Standardized Testing. Over a 30 year time period, the test scores of boys and girls show that in the top 5% of the bell curve, boys do better than girls at math/science tests at about a 4:1 ratio. During the same period, top performing girls only do slightly better than the boys in verbal reasoning and writing ability...
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The Elusive Giant Magnetocaloric Effect
Refrigerators are pretty energy-inefficient. So discovering materials that can produce a giant magetocaloric effect could help save a lot of energy someday. But I’m not sure which effect has more promise the thermoelectric effect or the giant magnetocaloric effect. The giant magnetocaloric effect definitely wins on having a cool name, though.
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iProducts: Great since day one →
The original iPhone was great on day one. It couldn’t do as much as today’s iPhone, but it performed its feature-set extremely well. There were almost no rough edges or unpolished areas in its hardware or software, and nearly everything seemed justifiable, well conceived, and well executed.
Apple has a culture of doing things in “insanely great” ways. Sure, people can argue that...