TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Jimmy Carter urges energy reform, again When it comes to energy policy in this U.S., not very much has changed since President Jimmy Carter declared more than three decades ago that achieving energy independence was "the moral equivalent of war." [More] rss.sciam.com |
The $31-billion question: What's the weather? Mark Twain once said he counted 136 kinds of weather in a single New England day. If he were around today, he’d probably be tuning in to his local TV station and going online for help with the task. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Can You Be Too Perfect? David Liu is a technology entrepreneur in San Francisco. He has helped found several start-ups to market products he has developed, including those stylus pens the UPS driver hands you to sign for your packages. But even as he dreams up new inventions, an ongoing patter in his head objects that they are stupidly obvious. And despite his accomplishments, Liu teeters on a mental precipice: “It feels shameful, like, hey, I’m in my early 30s, I should have had a Yahoo by now--or I should at least have had a company I sold for tons of money.”Liu is a perfectionist, someone who demands utmost excellence from himself, an expectation that can lead to fear of failure and reflexive self-criticism. Even when he is doing well, Liu has trouble feeling good about himself. “It’s so habitual, the beating-myself-up part,” he says. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Clean Energy Contest; and Counting Crickets and Katydids The transcript of this podcast wil be posted in two to three weeks. <i>Scientific American</i> podcast correspondent Cynthia Graber talks about the M.I.T. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Readers Respond on "What Now for Nuclear Waste?" Terrible Thing to Waste One of the most important messages in Matthew L. Wald’s “ What Now for Nuclear Waste? ” is that we really have several options for handling nuclear waste. All the options, whether aboveground storage for a couple of hundred years until we decide on the next step, reprocessing fuel to remove the long-lived isotopes to be burned in a fast reactor, or even the original plan for burying spent fuel will have little to no impact on future generations or the environment. There are no plausible scenarios for controlling climate change that do not require use of nuclear energy. Apart from hydroelectricity, it is the only base-load source that does not require burning fossil fuels. For this country, there are no new major hydro sources available. Unfortunately, as Wald notes, the process for deciding how we ultimately handle nuclear waste has been driven largely by politics and not science. It is time, however, that we mature past the disingenuous arguments about nuclear waste as a roadblock to any new nuclear plants and build the facilities we need. [More] rss.sciam.com |