Nicholas Parker would like to take this opportunity to loudly and clearly dispel any misconception that he is a tree hugger. As chairman of the trade group Cleantech Venture Network, Mr. Parker helps venture capital invest in technologies aimed at improving energy sources or providing alternatives by promoting the concept, providing research and sponsoring conferences that marry investors and entrepreneurs. The broad, loosely defined environmental category - known as cleantech - includes companies with ideas in solar power, fuel cells, batteries, water, pollution control, recycling, even farming. But make no mistake, Mr. Parker said. ‘This is not the venture equivalent of socially responsible investing,’ he insisted. ‘This isn’t about creating a few shekels for a community group.’ It’s about money, Mr. Parker said. And venture capitalists are clamoring to get in. In the first two quarters, venture capitalists invested $379 million in 30 cleantech companies, according to the National Venture Capital Association. That is up from $230.8 million in 27 companies in all of 2005. The fervor is so strong, some critics say, that the cleantech label is being attached to concepts that only marginally fill the bill, and the phenomenon is eliciting gentle mockery […]
Amidst fresh recalls of laptop batteries, experts in portable electronics are exploring every alternative-and coming up empty-handed The recall of nearly six million Dell (Dell) and Apple (AAPL) laptop batteries brought to light what has long been the tech industry’s dirty little secret: The batteries that power our laptops, wireless phones, iPods, and cameras are potential incendiaries. The risk of your laptop bursting into flames is low, and it is much lower for other devices. But it is real, and it’s not going away. The lithium-ion batteries that came into widespread use in the late 1990s enabled a revolution in portable electronics by allowing a lot of power to be packed into a very small space. But if you overcharge them, or there is an electrical fault such as a short circuit, the chemicals sealed inside the battery cells can become an explosive fire waiting to ignite. SCIENCE LESSON. You may recall from chemistry class that lithium is a metal that burns spontaneously when exposed to air and explodes in the presence of water. Surprisingly, though, the lithium has little to do with the risks posed by batteries, since lithium is not normally present in its […]
Europe-wide study has provided ‘conclusive proof’ that climate change is responsible for spring arriving earlier each year, researchers say. Scientists from 17 nations examined 125,000 studies involving 561 species. The season was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, researchers said. In regions such as Spain, which saw the greatest increases in temperatures, the season began up to two weeks earlier. The findings were based on what was described as the world’s largest study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered. The team of researchers also found that the onset of autumn has been delayed by an average of three days over the same period. Feeling the heat The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, provided conclusive proof that changes to the continent’s climate were affecting the timing of the seasons, the scientists said. One of the paper’s lead authors, Tim Sparks from the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), said the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. ‘We can’t tell that from our study but experts […]
NEW YORK — Time Warner Inc.’s AOL said on Thursday it will offer movies from four major Hollywood studios for downloading on its new Internet video service. AOL said films from Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group will be available for download on AOL Video for $9.99 to $19.99 per movie. AOL Video started in August as a one-stop shop to search and download a wide range of video content from the Web. It said in July that the service would allow users to buy or watch for free thousands of television shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels, including programs licensed from Viacom Inc.’s MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central networks and A&E Television Networks. Thursday’s announcement comes amid growing competition in the online video business, which includes movie download sites CinemaNow and Movielink, as well as online DVD rental company Netflix Inc.. AOL Video’s Vice President Fred McIntyre said that its strength was its search function and breadth of content. He did not say how many movie titles would be available for download. ‘Our focus is on providing a single source for users […]
Federal law provides no special protection for reporters with confidential sources. In other words, if the government needs information from those reporters to carry out a prosecution, the government can – in theory – go after them. Yet for more than 40 years, the Justice Department has wisely recognized in its own guidelines that it should use the force of law to compel reporters to give up their sources only when the need is pressing – and then, only after all other investigative avenues have been exhausted. All that is at risk in the Justice Department these days. In the past few months, the department allowed the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles to subpoena two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who broke the baseball steroids scandal to get them to reveal the source of the leak of Barry Bonds’ and Jason Giambi’s grand jury testimony. The journalists, whose courageous reporting forced baseball to deal with the steroid problem after ignoring it for a decade, now face jail if they refuse to give up their sources. (In the interest of full disclosure, I filed an affidavit in support of the reporters.) And in the Eastern District of Virginia, the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
