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I mentioned recently the book “When smoke ran like water”, which describes how industry has for decades paid to discredit research which they don’t like. The latest example of such behaviour comes from Exxon, who has been offering scientists $10 000 each if they will discredit research on climate change. Exxon is the . . . → Read More: Exxon – big profits being misused This week’s Economist has a report about the new Nikon D40 – a 6 megapixel digital SLR camera which undercuts its rivals by several hundred dollars. Their main point in the article subtitled Nikon’s new camera favours quality over quantity is that they think Nikon has recognized that chasing an ever-increasing number of pixels . . . → Read More: Six million pixels are enough America’s research arm for their armed forces, DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency), has raised the bar – a lot – for next year’s Urban Challenge. The last Challenge issued by DARPA for 2005 was the Grand Challenge, which required competitors to build a vehicle capable of travelling completely autonomously 132 miles over desert . . . → Read More: Urban Challenge I read this a few days ago, and forgot to bookmark it. Now it has been reported again by CNN: Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war. Researchers . . . → Read More: Bees have been trained to sniff out explosivesNew studies by NASA show that perennial Artic ice has been shrinking by 6% per year in the last two winters – a rate far higher than has been measured before. In 12 months between 2004 and 2005, an area the size of Turkey disappeared. Turkey is a big country… The rate of . . . → Read More: Global warming is speeding up According to Science (subscription required, so look here for a short summary), the percentage of people who believe in Evolution in the USA (40%) is lower than 32 of 34 countries polled*. Only Turkey came in with a lower percentage of believers, “Old Europe” averages about 70%. * “Human beings, as we know . . . → Read More: Less than half of America believes in evolution Ballbot is a robot, a little shorter than a human, which balances on a metal ball about the size of a football. It was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh by Ralph Hollis, who is hoping to develop a robot capable of performing tasks such as moving objects in confined spaces. . . . → Read More: Meet Ballbot William Mitchell, former head of the school of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has developed the City Car, with help on the styling from Frank Gehry in his Smart Cities research group. Mitchell felt the Smart car, developed by DaimlerChrysler in Germany didn’t go far enough either in terms of public . . . → Read More: Concept Car from MIT styled by Frank Gehry You’d think after the BSE skandal in the 1990′s (which was most probably precipitated by feeding cattle with ground-up bones and carcasses) that we would have learnt the error of our ways, but I see that it is now standard practice in Asia to feed chicken dung to fish. It is a United Nations . . . → Read More: Fish feed on chicken dung A US federal judge has ruled that “Intelligent Design” may not be taught – or even mentioned – in biology classes in a Pennsylvania school district. His judgement included the opinion: “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again . . . → Read More: Intelligent Judge |
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