For ten years – except for a few days when internet access was impossible – no matter where I have been SR published every day. It has been done from deep beneath Red Square, Pakistani internet cafes, London pubs, and more than once from an open boat, as I bent hunched under a tarp pelted by rain in a tossing night sea. But beginning with today and, for the next 12 days until Sunday 27th July, SR will go dark. Thanks to the gracious hospitality of a friend I will be cruising in Northern Canadian and Alaskan waters on his very fine boat, out of touch with the net. It is a trip I have thought about and wanted to do for 25 years. A life experience to be long-remembered. If you are an SR subscriber nothing will come into your mailbox during that time and, then, SR will begin again on its regular seven day schedule. I wish all my readers the best of summers. This will certainly be one of mine. — Stephan
A new type of solar panel that allows light to pass through it like a pane of glass has been invented by scientists who said that it is 10 times more powerful than conventional methods of producing energy from sunlight. The discovery raises the prospect of using ordinary domestic windows to generate electricity with minimum structural alterations, although scientists have not yet worked out how much it would cost to convert a domestic home to a solar-powered generator. Instead of coating the entire solar panel with solar cells – the expensive semiconductor devices that turn the energy of sunlight into electricity – the new solar panel works on the principle of concentrating the light, and the energy, at the edges of a pane of glass where it can be collected by the solar cells. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston said that the ‘solar concentrator’ is made from a film of organic molecules that can be coated on to glass window panes or other surfaces exposed to sunlight. This allows light to pass straight through the window even though it is being used to generate power. It also means that the expensive […]
Carbon nanotubes are the crucial chemical ingredient that could make artificial photosynthesis possible, say a team of Chinese researchers. The team has found that nanotubes mimic an important step in photosynthesis that chemists have been unable to copy until now. Artificial photosynthesis has the potential to efficiently produce hydrogen that could be used as a clean fuel for vehicles. It could also be used to mop up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Photosynthetic organisms use the energy from light to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen then reacts with carbon dioxide to help synthesise carbohydrates, the molecules organisms use to store energy. Chemists have long tried in vain to reproduce the process, but one key step in particular has proven impossible to copy. Visible photons can only contribute a limited amount of energy towards a chemical reaction. This energy is absorbed by electrons involved in the reaction. Elusive goal Reactions that require more energy, such as the synthesis of carbohydrates, can only proceed when several energised electrons are available to contribute. For that reason, chemists say the photosynthesis falls into a class of reactions known as multiple electron systems. But nobody […]
MOSCOW — Russian scientists are evacuating a research station built on an Arctic ice floe because global warming has melted the ice to a fraction of its original size, a spokesman said. The North Pole-35 station, where 21 researchers and two dogs live in huts, will be taken off the floe in the western Arctic Ocean this week instead of in late August as originally planned, said Sergei Balyasnikov of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg. The research crew landed in early September on the 1.2- by 2.5-mile floe near the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. During its westward drift of more than 1,550 miles, the floe shrank to just 1,000 by 2,000 feet. ‘The evacuation is ahead of schedule because of global warming,’ Balyasnikov said. The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika will escort the research vessel Mikhail Somov to the station, which is drifting between the Franz Josef Land archipelago and the island of Novaya Zemlya in the western Arctic. The researchers are packing up their winterized huts and equipment to prepare for the ships’ arrival, Balyasnikov said. Over the last 60 years, Russia has organized dozens of stations that collect data on weather […]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is taking action against Comcast for illegally violating Net Neutrality, after a coalition of Net users and activists caught the cable giant blocking open access to the Internet. Topolski Ignites the Fire Martin told the Associated Press last night that Comcast had ‘arbitrarily’ blocked Internet access and failed to disclose to consumers what it was doing. ‘We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.’ The move is the agency’s response to a complaint filed by Free Press and members of SavetheInternet.com, which called for severe action against Comcast for jamming people using popular ‘file-sharing’ applications. But the story goes back further than that. Organized People Beat Organized Money Martin’s action – to be voted on by the full FCC in three weeks – would be a major milestone for the growing open Internet movement, marking another defeat of entrenched corporate interests in Washington and a stunning victory for ordinary people who want to control their Internet experience. If adopted by the FCC, Martin’s order could set an historic precedent for protecting the future of the open Internet. Against every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
