1. 10 common scientific misconceptions
Did you grow up believing in any of these science myths? From baby birds to flushing toilets, we debunk common 'facts' that are often just a form of misconstrued science.
2. Inventions that were going to change the world – but didn’t
Every new invention is supposed to be the "next big thing" – and some are. The cellphone, the PC, the plane: all inventions that revolutionized the way we live our lives and far surpassed their initial hype. But some inventions don't quite measure up to the fanfare that precedes their release. These end up in the scrap bin of history. Check out what inventions we all thought would revolutionize our world... but only ended up on this website list. ...
3. The Top 7 Technology Trends That Will Dominate 2014
4. What is 4-D Printing?
An M.I.T. lab is tweaking the idea of 3-D printing with the help of smart materials that continue to change even after they leave the printer.
5. Nano Energy Storage Could Make Conventional Batteries Obsolete
...Components are molded from a material consisting of carbon fiber in a polymer resin, nano-structured batteries and super capacitors. The result, says Volvo, is an eco-friendly and cost-effective structure that stands to substantially cut vehicle weight and volume.
Volvo is already at work with an S80 that uses components made form the material that serve structural functions and replace a conventional battery at the same time. The company says that by completely substituting an electric car’s existing components with the new material, overall vehicle weight could be reduced by more than 15 percent.
“The way it works is reinforced carbon fibers sandwich the new battery and are molded and formed to fit around the car’s frame such as door panels, the trunk lid and wheel bowl,” said the company in a statement. ...
6. This Radioactive Element Could Power the Planet
7. Green energy rethink: 'Paying huge amounts of money to do nothing'
Bjorn Lomborg: Very clearly we do want to fix global warming, but you aren’t fixing it if you end up paying an enormous amount of money to do very, very little good. Now let’s remember that most of the subsidies that Europe gets go to wind and solar panels, but we already control that because we have an ETS (European Trading System) already in place. So whenever you buy an extra solar panel or whenever you subsidize an extra wind turbine you don’t actually cut carbon emissions, you simply make it cheaper for someone else to use more coal fire power. So the reality is that we just pay huge amounts of money to do virtually nothing.
8. New Scientist: First sign that humanity is slowing its carbon surge
2012 may go down in history as a remarkable year. For the first time, the maddening pace of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions showed signs of a global slowdown.
Importantly – and unlike the drop in emissions triggered by the 2008 recession – the let-off is happening at the same time as global wealth continues to swell. ...
9. The Grid: Wal-Mart Now Draws More Solar Power Than 38 U.S. States
Solar power and keg stands have one thing in common: Wal-Mart wants to profit from them.
In the race for commercial solar power, Wal-Mart is killing it. The company now has almost twice as much capacity as second-place Costco. A better comparison: Wal-Mart is converting more sun into energy than 38 U.S. states. ...
And a related story: Walmart, Safeway, Others Unplugging From Unreliable Power Grid
More large corporations have decided that the electric power grid is unreliable and are planning to unplug from it and generate their own electricity.
The Wall Street Journal has confirmed a story that Off the Grid News previously reported – and the newspaper found the practice is even more widespread than previously thought.
Off The Grid News had reported that several large corporations, including Walmart, Safeway, Google, Bank of America and Coca-Cola, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on systems to generate their own electricity. A Journal article indicates that many other large companies, too, are taking steps to generate their own electricity. ...
10. Nuclear Power Needed To Slow Climate Change, Experts Say
... Some of the world's top climate scientists say wind and solar energy won't be enough to head off extreme global warming, and they're asking environmentalists to support the development of safer nuclear power as one way to cut fossil fuel pollution. ...
11. UN highlights role of farming in closing emissions gap
Changing the way farmers plough their lands could have a big impact on global emissions of greenhouse gases. ...
12. Can LED Bulbs Make Nuclear Plants Obsolete?
... By a sheer coincidence, LED lights and nuclear power provide an intriguing way to study the issue. Nuclear power plants generate approximately 19% of the electric power in the U.S. Lighting accounts for approximately 19% of the power used. Thus, you can argue the fleet of 104 commercial nuclear reactors exists to keep the lights on. If you want to increase functional capacity by 20 percent, you can build 21 nuclear reactors or reduce light power by 20 percent. ...
... So what’s the logical thing to do? Spoiler alert—bulbs win hands down. The Department of Energy estimates that solid-state lighting is already on track to cut lighting power by 46%. ...
13. WAPO: Israel knows water technology, and it wants to cash in
... Israel recycles more than 80 percent of its effluents, compared with about 1 percent in the United States, the governor said. ...
... Israel is a world leader in desalination of seawater. By next year, more than a third of Israel’s tap water will come from the Mediterranean Sea and a few briny wells. Israel’s total water consumption remains nearly at 1964 levels — even though its population has quadrupled to 8 million people, according to the economic ministry. ...
... Distel said that water used to be a kind of “dumb industry” dominated by low-tech and cheap water, distributed by centuries-old pipes and canals, employing irrigation technologies that dated to the ancient Egyptians. Municipal water systems such as those in Los Angles, London and New Delhi traditionally lost 20 percent or more of their water to leaks and evaporation.
But in a world dominated by scarcity, climate change and population growth, water is no longer being taken for granted. ...
14. Scientific American: Forget What You've Heard: Humans Are Not Using More Than 1 Planet
On a global level, the popular "footprint" metric used to measure people’s ecological impact may not be very a useful after all. ...
15. This 'Genome Hacker' Is Building Family Trees With Millions of Branches
Thanks to computer-aided genealogical analysis, your family may have 43,000,000 members. ...
16. A Cure for the Allergy Epidemic?
... My guide was Mark Holbreich, an allergist in Indianapolis. He’d recently discovered that the Amish people who lived in the northern part of the state were remarkably free of allergies and asthma. ...
... That yawning difference positions the Indiana Amish among the least allergic populations ever described in the developed world. This invulnerability isn’t likely to be genetic. ...
... Farming, Dr. Holbreich thinks, is the Amish secret. This idea has some history. Since the late 1990s, European scientists have investigated what they call the “farm effect.” The working hypothesis is that innocuous cowshed microbes, plant material and raw milk protect farming children by favorably stimulating their immune systems throughout life, particularly early on. ...
17. Economist: Trouble at the lab
Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not.
18. Zeer Pots: A Simple Way to Reduce Post-Harvest Food Waste
... In Zambia, storage containers are commonly built out of twigs, poles, or plastic bags. Unsealed, unrefrigerated containers such as these can allow contamination from pests, rodents, and fungi. In hot climates, perishable foods such as berries and tomatoes typically do not last longer than two days without refrigeration. Without proper storage facilities, rural farmers have to watch their ripened crops succumb to rot, infestation, and mold.
Practical Action, a nongovernmental organization that works with farmers in Southern Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, encourages the use of earthenware refrigerators called zeer pots to help prevent post-harvest food waste. The pot-in-pot refrigerator design keeps fruits and vegetables cool by harnessing the principle of evaporative cooling. These pots can extend the shelf life of harvested crops by up to 20 days by reducing storage temperature. ...
19. How Did English Get To Be The International Language Of Science?
More than 98 percent of all scientific articles published today are in English, but that hasn’t always been the case. ...
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