TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Biologists aren't keeping track of endangered species, says GAO The coastal California gnatcatcher has been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since 1993. You would think that when construction of the Sky Ranch development east of San Diego was predicted to harm seven gnatcatcher breeding pairs three years ago, the government would keep close tabs on those numbers, termed “incidental take.” [More] rss.sciam.com |
Exotic Solar Cells Get Cheaper Solar cells could be produced from materials other than silicon under a breakthrough that scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, say could dramatically reduce the price of solar technologies.Solar companies have been searching for some time for materials that are more efficient, cheaper to produce and use fewer raw materials than silicon. But tests of copper, indium, gallium, selenide (CIGS) or related materials have failed so far to produce a winner. [More] rss.sciam.com |
A "Complex" Theory of Consciousness Do you think that your newest ac­quisition, a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner that traces out its unpredictable paths on your living room floor, is conscious? What about that bee that hovers above your marmalade-covered breakfast toast? Or the newborn who finally fell asleep after being suckled? Nobody except a dyed-in-the-wool nerd would think of the first as being sentient; adherents of Jainism, India’s oldest religion, ­believe that bees--and indeed all living creatures, small and large--are aware; whereas most everyone would accord the magical gift of consciousness to the baby.The truth is that we really do not know which of these organisms is or is not conscious. We have strong feelings about the matter, molded by tradition, religion and law. But we have no objective, rational method, no step-by-step procedure, to determine whether a given organism has subjective states, has feelings. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Sunny Germans Triumph in U.S. Solar Decathlon It's all about the meters . As any would-be installer of solar rooftop panels knows, having the right meter to count how much power your photovoltaics are producing is key. So perhaps it's no surprise that Team Germany snatched victory on the last day of the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon with a perfect score in, you guessed it, net metering. [More] rss.sciam.com |
100 Years Ago: The Perfect Car JANUARY 1960 ASTOUNDING TALES -- “The press of the Soviet Union has been astounding its readers with accounts of a ‘revolution’ in science and a ‘miracle’ of technology. Nikolai A. Kozyrev, an astrophysicist, was said to have wrought the revolution, with his hypothesis that the passage of time is the source of cosmic energy. The miracle was the harnessing of a ‘concentration of energy.’ Speaking for the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, three distinguished physicists joined in a public rebuke to the press for ‘cheap sensationalism’ and for placing its pages ‘at the disposal of absolutely incompetent people.’ They declared: ‘We are not against bold hypotheses, provided they are given substantiation.’ However, ‘This is not a case of the concentration of energy but of the concentration of amazing ignorance.’” [More] rss.sciam.com |