Archive for the 'Energy' Category
Radiation Inside Fukushima Reactor So High That New Machines Must Be Designed to Monitor It
March 28th, 2012Via: Washington Post: One of Japan’s crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool it, according to an internal examination Tuesday that renews doubts about the plant’s stability. A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess […]
MIT Stacks Solar Panels, Gets More Power Out of Smaller Footprint
March 28th, 2012Via: ExtremeTech: What’s better than one pancake? A whole stack of pancakes! Using the same logic, a team of MIT researchers have stacked a bunch of photovoltaic solar cells together to produce up to 20 times the power output of conventional solar power installations. Normally I’m the first to drop my jaw in awe at […]
‘Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe’
March 22nd, 2012Mmm hmm. Via: Scientific American: To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human […]
IRAN’S BANKS TO BE BLOCKED FROM GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM ON SATURDAY
March 15th, 2012Flashback to a couple of weeks ago on Cryptogon: If SWIFT actually pulls the plug, I’d consider the fuse to be lit. Also, if SWIFT does it before 20 March, this is probably the real reason: Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than […]
US, EU and Japan Challenge China on Rare Earths at WTO
March 14th, 2012Via: BBC: The US, Japan and the European Union have filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization, challenging its restrictions on rare earth exports. US President Barack Obama accused China of breaking agreed trade rules as he announced the case at the White House. Beijing has set quotas for exports of rare […]
Britain: CCTV at Petrol Stations Will Prevent Uninsured Cars from Being Fueled
March 14th, 2012Wow. How long until this is linked to other databases? Unpaid property taxes, unlicensed pets, overdue library books, or who knows what else??? Via: Mirror: Cameras at petrol stations will automatically stop uninsured or untaxed vehicles from being filled with fuel, under new government plans. Downing Street officials hope the hi-tech system will crack down […]
MIT Researchers Put 30 Picowatts of Electricity Into LED, Get 69 Picowatts of Light Out – An Efficiency of 230%
March 9th, 2012Via: PhysOrg: For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that an LED can emit more optical power than the electrical power it consumes. Although scientifically intriguing, the results won’t immediately result in ultra-efficient commercial LEDs since the demonstration works only for LEDs with very low input power that produce very small amounts of light. The […]
Short Film: ‘There’s No Tomorrow’
February 29th, 2012Graham let me know that Dermot finished his film, There’s No Tomorrow. Via: Incubate Pictures:
DOE/ARPA-E and GM Sponsored Envia Systems More Than Doubles Energy Density for Lithium-Ion Batteries While Reducing the Cost by Half
February 29th, 2012“What does all of this mean for GM? I have no idea. But if something really, really strange happens, it might make much more sense in hindsight.” —Obama Fired GM’s CEO; What’s Stirring Behind the Black Curtain? “The Manhattan Project, a project lasting roughly five years from start to finish, had cost $2.3 billion in […]
For Frack’s Sake: U.S. Wants Natural Gas as Major Auto Fuel Option
February 29th, 2012Via: Network World: Natural gas has never been much of an option for US car drivers and its going to take a lot of effort by the government and auto manufactures to make it a viable alternative to gas. But that’s just what a $10 million program from the Department of Energy’s advanced project development […]
