It is unsurprising that in the meeting room of Bare Conductive’s east London office, there is a light switch on the lefthand side of the door. What is surprising is that the switch is painted onto the wall. More surprising still is that the company says the button does not need to be there at all: you could in theory tap anywhere on the wall and a light would come on.

The light switch acts as an illustration of the young company’s core product – an electric paint or ‘paintable wire” which can be applied to paper, wood, cement and textiles, among other materials, and becomes conductive once it dries.

From its most simple use of lighting up a tiny bulb on a birthday card to creating an over-sized game controller for consoles or painting an entire wall so that when it is touched a light comes on, the liquid has been used for a variety of applications since the four founders of the company came up with the idea while working on a final-year project together at the Royal College of Art.

In 2009, Isabel Lizardi, Matt Johnson, Bibi Nelson and Becky Pilditch wanted to investigate whether they could print an electrical […]

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There are at least four contenders in the race to bring a cold-fusion powered heat-producing device to market in the near future. These are the Rossi E-cat project now based in North Carolina under the aegis of a new firm called Industrial Heat; the Brillouin and SRI effort to develop a nuclear reaction boiler out in California; the Defkalion Green Technology’s effort in Vancouver and Greece to market a heat producing device later this year; and finally BlackLight Power’s radically different ‘hydrino” technology which, if it proves to work at a commercial scale, could trump all the rest.

Of the four, Rossi’s E-cat has received the most publicity – at least on the internet if not in the mainstream media. Last week a new book by Swedish journalist, Mat Lewan, entitled An Impossible Invention, was released. Lewan relates the story of Andrea Rossi and his E-cat in much detail from the time when Rossi first decided to research the phenomenon, through the first semi-public demonstration in January 2011 to the current time. If nothing else, Rossi is important to the cold fusion story as he was the first to demonstrate commercial-scale production of heat and may be the first to develop […]

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The history of science is one chock-full of mice and men. Historically, biological and medical research has largely depended on rodents, which provide scientists with everything from cells and organs to behavioral data. That’s why a new study in which researchers found that mice actually fear men, but not women, has the potential to be so disruptive. It might mean that a number of researchers have published mouse studies in which their results reflect this male-induced stress effect – and they know nothing about it.

“People have not paid attention to this in the entire history of scientific research of animals,” says Jeffrey Mogil, a pain researcher at McGill University and lead author of the study. “I think that it may have confounded, to whatever degree, some very large subset of existing research.” Moreover, the effect probably isn’t limited to behavioral studies, because the organs and cells that are used in medical research, such as in cancer studies, often originate in rodents. “If you’re doing a liver cell study, the cells came from a rat that was sacrificed either by a man or a woman,” Mogil says. As a result, “its stress levels would be in very different states.” This, he […]

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Have we gone stark raving mad?

The question is brought to mind by the new gun law signed last week in Georgia by Gov. Nathan Deal. You might have thought that since the United States couldn’t possibly have more permissive firearms laws than it does now, nothing more could be done to coddle the gun lobby and tip the balance of our statutes away from law enforcement. Alas, you would be wrong.

The creativity of the National Rifle Association and other organizations devoted to establishing conditions in which every man, woman and child in our nation will have to be armed is awe inspiring. Where imagination is concerned, the best absurdist artists and writers have nothing on the NRA. No wonder Stephen Colbert has decided to move on from the realm of satire. When parody becomes reality, the challenges facing even a comedian of his talents can become insurmountable.

You might not have thought that the inability of people to pack while praying was a big problem. Georgia’s political leaders think otherwise, so the new law allows people to carry guns in their houses of worship. True, congregations can set their own rules, but some pastors wonder about the confusion this provision […]

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Since the 1992 Rio Summit on Environment and Development, the largest international gathering in history, world leaders have repeatedly pledged to limit human-induced climate catastrophe. But there’s been little actual progress on achieving a binding agreement on climate change to date. Activists hope next year’s Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris will deliver a better response. Facts belie their optimism.

Despite investments in energy efficiency and a movement toward cleaner energy in the U.S., Europe, China and some emerging economies, annual emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have risen almost twice as fast since the 1990s compared with the prior decade. Even if an agreement is reached to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the atmosphere already carries far more carbon dioxide than the responsible upper limit of 350 parts per million (ppm). Right now we’re at 400 ppm, while adding 2 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere every year. Unless global leaders agree to return to under the 350 ppm limit within this century, we risk triggering irreversible damage that could make climate change spin out of control. A recent study by the World Bank found that average temperature […]

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