Nanosolar begins shipping thin-film solar cells

by Brad Linder
Dec 18th 2007 @ 11:32AM

Filed under: Alternative Energy

In some ways, nothing is cheaper than solar energy. After all, it falls from the sky and anyone can collect it. Solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity, on the other hand can be kind of pricey. So of course, a lot of companies are sinking a ton of money into figuring out how to make cheaper solar cells.

California-based Nanosolar today begins shipping printed thin-film solar cells after 5 years of development. OK, but what the heck does that mean? Essentially, Nanosolar has developed a way to "print" solar cells by painting CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenide) ink onto the back of flexible material.

The printed panels work as semiconductors and have two benefits:

1. They're flexible, which means you can install them in unusual places
2. They're much cheaper to produce than traditional solar panels, at just $.99 per watt.

Nanosolar's first commercially produced panels are on their way to Germany for deployment at a power plant.

[via VentureBeat]

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Waterworld, the sequel: Sea levels rising much faster than expected

by Patrick Metzger
Dec 18th 2007 @ 11:06AM

Filed under: News

Will New York be the new Venice? A study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that global warming might cause sea levels to rise twice as fast as predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change.

By looking back at the last time in the geological record that temperatures warmed as quickly as they're doing right now, the researchers determined that we may be wildly underestimating the rate at which the oceans may rise. Their study suggests that the actual rise in sea level by the end of the 21st century could be around 64 inches, double the IPCC estimate of 32 inches. The end result could be catastrophic for low-lying areas, which would become much more vulnerable to flooding and storm surges.

The report comes follows recent news that sea ice in the Arctic is melting far more rapidly than expected. While that doesn't directly contribute to a rise in sea levels, the loss of sunlight-reflective ice is believed to create a feedback loop which accelerates global warming.

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Boy arrested for opening his Christmas present early

From USA Today

Police arrest boy who opened Christmas present without permission

Police charged a 12-year-old boy with petty larceny Sunday after he opened a Christmas present without permission.

"The boy's great-grandmother had specifically told him not to open his Nintendo Game Boy Advance, which she had wrapped and placed beneath the Christmas tree, according to a police report," The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald reported. "But on Sunday morning, she found the box of the popular handheld game console unwrapped and opened. When the boy's 27-year-old mother heard about the opened gift, she called police."

"He took it without permission. He wanted it. He just took it," the 63-year-old great-grandmother told the newspaper.

The boy, who has a history of disciplinary problems, was booked as a juvenile and released the same day. His mother plans to ask the state to take custody of him during an upcoming court appearance.

"Yeah, it's strange," a police spokesman said of the case.

Kite-Powered Ship Launched

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 18, @03:36AM
from the aeolius-called-left-message dept.

The Grand Poobah writes "The big-kite technology we discussed last month has officially launched in Hamburg, Germany. Reuters has a writeup of the new technology, which aims to cut fossil fuel use on sea voyages by an estimated 20% by means of a huge computer-controlled kite. The link includes a video."

Bees Can Optimize Internet Bottlenecks

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 17, @03:33PM
from the bee-all-that-you-can-bee dept.

prostoalex writes "Georgia Tech and University of Oxford scientists claim bees can help up develop a better Internet traffic algorithms. By observing bees, the researchers noticed that bees pass back information on route quality. 'On a basic level, the honeybee's dilemma is a tale of two flower patches. If one patch is yielding better nectar than the other, how can the hive use its workforce most efficiently to retrieve the best supply at the moment? The solution, which earned Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize, is a communication system called the waggle dance.' Any practical applications of that? Well, apparently ad servers, serving banners across a variety of servers, can report back on the time it took to generate the page."

Researchers create light-based quantum circuit that does math

Posted Dec 17th 2007 11:21AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It looks like quantum computing could now be one step closer to some form of practicality, as a team of researchers from the University of Queensland have announced that they've created a light-based quantum circuit that's capable of performing basic calculations. According to ZDNET Australia, that was done by using a laser to send "entangled" photons through a linear optical circuit, which allowed them to create a circuit consisting of four "qubits," (or quantum bits, pictured at right), which in turn allowed them to calculate the prime roots of fifteen, three and five. Somewhat interestingly, the university's research is funded in part by none other than DARPA, which the researchers themselves admit may be due to the technology's potential for cracking otherwise uncrackable codes.

[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

Tags: darpa, quantum, quantum computing, QuantumComputing, qubits, university of queensland, UniversityOfQueensland

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African "sex tree" endangered by own popularity

by Patrick Metzger
Dec 17th 2007 @ 12:30PM

Filed under: Food, News, Polit-eco

An unassuming plant in the Ugandan rainforest, nicknamed the "sex tree' , risks becoming a victim of its own success. The bush has been used by local people for generations as a medicine to restore flagging male virility, but now it's being driven to extinction through over-harvesting.

In addition to the short-term trauma of unchecked ED in a society where Viagra and its performance-enhancing cousins aren't widely available, the sex tree crisis highlights the larger problem of the growing human impact on Africa's wild areas. Rainforests are key repositories of biodiversity, and an expanding human population threatens to destroy thousands of undiscovered plant and animal species.

Residents of the region are now being trained to harvest wild plants in more sustainable ways, but that doesn't address the basic issue of habitant encroachment that's happening around the world.

To see the video, go here.

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How Feds are Dropping the Ball on IPv6

IMHO, Commander Taco tends to side with the techie rather than the practical but I thought this was interesting. If so few orgs are adopting this, it seems to me that this is one of those ideas that may still be ahead of its time. There may be a reason to move in the future but I understand why CIOs are reluctant to move if what we have is meeting the needs. It is kind of like upgrading the plumbing in your house. You could and things may work better but why tear up your house and go through the headache if the toilet still flushes.

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 17, @11:20AM
from the go-long-go-long dept.

BobB-NW writes "U.S. federal agencies have six months to meet a deadline to support IPv6, an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol known as IPv4. But most agencies are not grabbing hold of the new technology and running with it, industry observers say. Instead, most federal CIOs are doing the bare minimum required by law to meet the IPv6 mandate, and they aren't planning to use the new network protocol for the foreseeable future."

Tips for a low-carbon Christmas

by Patrick Metzger
Dec 17th 2007 @ 10:01AM

Filed under: Gadgets and Tech, Home, Polit-eco, Activism

A UK thinktank called the New Economics Foundation says that our holiday indulgences aren't just unhealthy for us, but for the whole planet, and they throw out some interesting numbers to prove it. For example, the energy consumed by in a year by all the WII game consoles sold this Christmas will lead to a rise in annual CO2 emissions that's the equivalent of 180,000 one-way flights from London to New York. To offset your guilt over the fact that you're going to buy one anyway and damn the polar bears, NEF has 10 suggestions to make the season a little greener:

• Give the gift of time - instead of something plastic flown all the way from China, give your loved one some of your time. You could promise to do the household chores, or take on a project with them.
• Turn off the TV - do you really need to watch Celebrity Santa Claus Boxing or whatever reality TV abomination the writerless networks have come up with this year? Spending time with family or reading a book is less energy-intensive and probaby better for your brain. Hell, hitting yourself in the head with a two by four is probably better for your brain.
• Don't eat brussel sprouts - not because they taste like recycled newsprint soaked in brine, but because they're environmentally unsound. They produce methane, or more accurately cause you to produce methane and that's not fun for anyone.
• Practice random niceness - this is the perfect time of year to greet strangers with a warm smile and a holiday greeting, unless you live in New York. Just kidding, jaded urbanites need friendliness too.

DDR your GBA

Posted Dec 17th 2007 9:45AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Gaming

This one's a little messy, and involves the death of a perfectly likeable DDR pad, but it's all for a good cause. Jason1820 modded up his DDR pad to control his Game Boy Advance, and got himself a good game of Pac-Man going. The video after the break demonstrates the very type of hijinks that can ensue, and also serves as a helpful reminder why Nintendo was insane not to include a backlight in original Advance. Yeah, we're still bitter about that.

Tags: ddr, game boy advance, GameBoyAdvance, hack, mod

5 ways to recycle holiday cards

by Kelly Leahy
Dec 15th 2007 @ 1:26PM

Filed under: Home, Kids and Parenting

As the holiday cards start flowing through my mail slot I am taking mental notes on how best to reuse them once the new year arrives. I would rather store them for an entire year than toss them into the recycling bin. Here are some of the solutions I've come across:

1. Cut them into gift tags. The heavy paper used for cards is perfect for cutting into tags. A pair of scissors is all you need but you can always get a little fancier if you have scrapbook cutters on hand.
2. Create geodesic ornaments. With the help of scissors, glue and a jar lid, you can create some really beautiful ornaments to hang around the house. You don't have to be terribly crafty to do this though the result looks rather sophisticated.
3. Another craft that is good for all cards you may receive is to create a card box. These can be used to hold treasures or as gift boxes for jewelry.
4. Create a postcard by drawing a centerline on the back and adding a stamp.
5. Cut out shapes and use to decorate scrapbooks and packages or make a collage.

via two green chickens

Video: Paris Hilton runs out of gas (and hilarity ensues)

Posted Dec 17th 2007 9:28AM by Lascelles Linton
Filed under: Green Culture, Hybrid

Soon-to-be hybrid owner Paris Hilton ran out gas recently and, go figure, the paparazzi stalking helped out by picking some up for her. The video above is a Jimmy Kimmel Live routine about the incident that includes footage of the entire incident taken by the paparazzi. In the video, we hear Paris say she "has never put gas in the car" to which Kimmel comments "usually when she runs out of gas, she just buys a new car."

Now it all makes sense. I think this video explains the logic behind Paris' statement that she will buy a hybrid: they get good mileage which, ta da, means more time before you have to buy a new car. If that is not funny enough for you, what Paris does with the, well, just watch. What she does proves that the rising price of gas is not a big concern to super-rich heiresses who drive $200,000 Bentleys.

Electricity Over Glass

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 17, @08:41AM
from the still-no-sandwiches-over-plastic dept.

guddan writes "Running a live wire into a passenger jet's fuel tank seems like a bad idea on the face of it. Still, sensors that monitor the fuel tank have to run on electricity, so aircraft makers previously had little choice. But what if power could be delivered over optical fiber instead of copper wire, without fear of short circuits and sparks? In late May, the big laser and optics company JDS Uniphase Corp., in San Jose, Calif., bought a small Silicon Valley firm with the technology to do just that."

[+] power (tagging beta)

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China pulls plug on coal

by Josh Loposer
Dec 17th 2007 @ 8:30AM

Filed under: News, Alternative Energy

Not to be left out of the climate crusade, China has done a 180° on its approval of 13 small coal-power plants. Larger centralized plants, according to officials, consume less power and discharge less net pollutants. As they edge ever closer to taking the top spot as the worlds most polluting country, the Chinese government seems determined not to appear as unresponsive to world sentiment as the US -- yet I'm not sure whether Chinese internet users can legally access this website.

China's ambitious plan to cut emissions by 10% from 2006-2010 is already looking improbable at best -- although cutting down on coal consumption would obviously help. While they seem to be making an effort, with its economy growing exponentially, it looks like China will opt out of mandatory caps of greenhouse gases in Bali. Of course, so is the US -- how do we keep ending up on the same side of the debate with the Chinese?

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How We Might Have Scramjets Sooner than Expected

Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 13, @05:52PM
from the zooom-zippy-fast dept.

loralai writes "Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. This technology, decades in the making, could redefine our understanding of air travel and military encounters. 'To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15--nearly 10,000 mph.'"

Is paper recycling a waste of money?

by Kelly Leahy
Dec 15th 2007 @ 3:30PM

Filed under: Home, News

I am personally invested in my recyclables. I didn't mean for it to get this way but because I spend so much time rinsing and sorting, I get to know the contents of my bin very well. Top this off with the fact that I have to pay extra every month for curbside service and you could say that I believe that I am making good environmental choices.

But what if all of my efforts are a waste of time and money? I have heard the argument before that there are more trees now than there were in 1920 and that most virgin pulp comes from tree farms. I hadn't given much consideration to the chemical process used to turn paper back into pulp and the residue it leaves behind. Although there is less paper in the landfills, the recycling process re-bleaches the paper leaving dioxins behind.The actual process of recycling paper can cost up to three times as much as simply bringing it to a landfill.

But rather than throw our collective hands in the air and ditch the bin, there are a few things that we can do. The first is to select paper made with high post-consumer content which guarantees that what we put on the curb is getting used. Secondly, select a product that was not bleached with chlorine. Lastly, try to decrease your household waste to begin with and you won't need to fret over its use once it leaves your home.

Gallery: 5 Reasons to Ditch Unwanted Catalogs

Vista named #1 biggest tech disappointment of 2007 -- by PC World

Posted Dec 17th 2007 1:56AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

First PC World gets all up on the soapbox that (until a certain date) the MacBook Pro is the fastest PC the mag had tested, but consider the next step taken: PC World has boldly declared Vista #1 with a bullet in in their Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007. Ok, sure, we get that it's "disappointments" and not "crappy products" -- the two imply very different things, and it's hard not to be somewhat disappointed by any product that took the better part of a decade to come out -- but if PC World harshing on Vista this bad doesn't smack at all of linkbait, well, we don't know what does. Oh, and here's that link.

P.S. -Seriously though, can Vista get a break here? We mean, honestly, it ain't all THAT bad.

Tags: microsoft, pc world, PcWorld, vista, windows

Are your devices really "Off"

Check out this link to see how much power your devices that are supposedly "Off" are sucking down.

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/008/trans008vampireenergy.html

Tesla to deliver Roadsters with "temporary" transmissions?

Posted Dec 13th 2007 9:02PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Transportation

The Tesla Roadster was supposed to be out before the end of the year, but it looks like the wicked-fast electric car won't make that target -- apparently the company is having problems finding a transmission strong enough to handle gear shifts while the car remains at full torque. The problem is somewhat unique to electric cars, and Tesla's got two different suppliers scrambling to find a solution -- but in the meantime, the company is considering providing vehicles outfitted with "temporary" transmissions that are basically guaranteed to fail after a few thousand miles. The first of these has already been built for company chairman Elon Musk, and Tesla is deciding whether to start shipping cars with the temporary units to other customers and then replacing them when a final transmission becomes available. That's the price of progress, we suppose, but something tells us quite a few people would rather just wait for the final product.

Tags: roadster, tesla, tesla roadster, TeslaRoadster, transmission

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Cause of Aurora Borealis Confirmed

Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 13, @10:35PM
from the it's-not-eskimo-ghosts-more's-the-pity dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There are reports that satellites have aided scientists in confirming why the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) exists. 'New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun. The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights.'"

[+] science, space, dust, aurora, astronomy (tagging beta)

US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 12, @11:37AM
from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

surfi writes "As The Inquirer points out, someone with a House of Representatives IP address has been feeding propaganda into the 'invasion of Iraq' article on Wikipedia." Well at least they are in good company with trustworthy institutions like the CIA and the Vatican.

[+] wikipedia, politics, usa, propaganda, theofascistamerica (tagging beta)

Can Time Slow Down?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 12, @01:04PM
from the there-is-no-spoon dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Does time slow down when you are in a traffic accident or other life threatening crisis like Neo dodging bullets in slow-motion in The Matrix? To find out, researchers developed a perceptual chronometer where numbers flickered on the screen of a watch-like unit. The scientists adjusted the speed at which the numbers flickered until it was too fast for the subjects to see. Then subjects were put in a Suspended Catch Air Device, a controlled free-fall system in which 'divers' are dropped backwards off a platform 150 feet up and land safely in a net. Subjects were asked to read the numbers on the perceptual chronometer as they fell [video]. The bottom line: While subjects could read numbers presented at normal speeds during the free-fall, they could not read them at faster-than-normal speeds. 'We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix,' Eagleman said. 'The answer to the paradox is that time estimation and memory are intertwined: the volunteers merely thought the fall took a longer time in retrospect'."

[+] time, matrix, waitwhatdoesthatevenmean, ignobel, duh (tagging beta)

Largest Ever Digital Survey of the Milky Way Released

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 12, @04:36PM
from the playing-nice-gets-you-places dept.

Several readers have written to tell us that an international team of over fifty astronomers from around the globe have created the largest ever digital survey of the Milky Way. IPHAS (INT/WFC Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane) is an image survey designed to show large-scale structure within our galaxy. IPHAS data is being released by utilizing technology from the UK government funded open source project Astrogrid. Some of the images are quite spectacular.

[+] graphics, space, slashdotted, wouldyouliketotakeasurvey, images (tagging beta)

Boeing 12,000lb Chemical Laser Set to Fry Targets

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 13, @03:00AM
from the houseful-of-popcorn dept.

coondoggie writes "Boeing this week completed work on and installed a 12,000-pound chemical laser in a C-130H aircraft. Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) which is being developed for the Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations."

[+] realgenius, military, science, sharks, deathstar (tagging beta)

USB missile launcher goes wireless

Posted Dec 12th 2007 9:22AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless

Never content with leaving their gimmicky products as is, the perfectionists over at Brando are prepping yet a third iteration of the wildly-popular USB missile launcher, with the new model featuring an upgrade to wireless control. Cubicle commandos now have over a 15-foot range from their workstations to wage this geekiest form of warfare, thanks to a two-part system that connects transmitter and launcher with a proprietary RF signal. If you happen to work in the type of environment that condones this sort of silly behavior, or just want to go out with a bang, the set can be yours for $45 starting on the 20th.

Tags: brando, usb, usb missile launcher, UsbMissileLauncher, wireless usb missile launcher, WirelessUsbMissileLauncher

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