The Memebox FutureBlogger rings in the New Year with the top 10 energy breakthroughs from 2008:
There is still a lot we do not know about the basics of energy systems dealing with photons, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, enzymes and metals. Our current first phase efforts to design nanoscale materials used in energy production, conversion and storage are certain [...]
A desert-dwelling fox of North Africa.
For Foxing Day.
From Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1911, G & C Miriam Co. Springfield, MA, [found here.]
Bet your iPhone can’t do this…. UCLA scientists have found a way to rig an ordinary cell phone, an LED, a light filter and some wiring together, Wired reports, into a cheap and easy blood scanner that can detect HIV and malaria, among other diseases:
UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan images thousands of blood cells instantly by placing them [...]
Here, something pretty for your Yule: How Luigi Colani designed the future.
A Colani-designed semi-trailer.
From steam trains to flying boats.
Spacecraft like ginger flowers and orange peels.
You can see more of Colani’s biodesign on his Swiss web site (warning: the main page launches a flurry of pop-ups) or the German one, or just read about him here [...]
SONG: “Isopods In My Aquarium” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “Antarctica Has More Species than Galapagos”, LiveScience, 2 Dec 2008, as used in the post “Life On Ice.”
ABSTRACT:
I remain amazed at how many different things thrive deep under the ice.
There are no polychaetes
and isopods
in my aquarium today
[...]
Sounds grim, but New Scientist says it’s true. The more intelligent soldiers were the most likely to die in combat:
The unprecedented demands of the second world war – fought more with brains than with brawn compared with previous wars – might account for the skew, says Ian Deary, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study. [...]
Click to embiggen vastly
This Lovecraftian landscape is jasmine tobacco. Not waving, photosynthesizing.
From Louisa Howard at the Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility.
New Scientist gives us a recipe for converting cheap wine to the good stuff:
It is backed by a decade of research, the results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal and the end product has passed the ultimate test- blind tasting by a panel of wine experts. No fewer than five wineries have now invested in the technology.
The [...]
We’re one step closer to living in a Flash Gordon serial, New Scientist reports, as engineers prepare to unleash a brilliant barrage of airborne death with fleets of flying lasers:
Although the Airborne Laser (ABL) was fired from a stationary plane at a target on the ground just a few metres away, the test marked a milestone for the weapon, [...]
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