Popular Science

The first annual BioMass conference, attended by biofuels researchers, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and farmers, is underway here at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Prime on the agenda in the opening session this morning was a question lately blaring from headlines, for instance in a story in today's New York Times: can we grow crops for converting into fuel without catastrophically upsetting the world's food supply?

Hanyoung Lee wants you to be seen. The South Korea-based product designer devised a prototypical warning device to prevent pedestrian strikes along roadway crosswalks. It's called the Virtual Wall, a visual barrier created from plasma laser beams.

Silicon Valley is mostly a world of practical technology—applying principles from pure science to create handy gadgets. But today, Hewlett Packard announced a new electrical component born of theoretical physics. The device, a nanoscale component called a "memristor," requires no power to retain data, which it can store more densely than a hard drive and access about as fast as a computer’s RAM memory—potentially allowing it to replace both components in the future.

The good news is that the ozone hole over Antarctica is slowly healing, thanks to controls on ozone-depleting substances that were once widely used in products such as refrigerators and aerosol cans. Stratospheric ozone protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause problems such as skin cancer and crop damage.

We've talked in this space in the past few months about detecting the existence of Earth-like planets in other solar systems, and on the educated guesswork which goes into putting a number on the probability of intelligent life existing out there as well. You may remember that the discovery of terrestrial planets is well on its way as technology improves; and that the Drake equation—with all its assumptions—has proved to be remarkably accurate.

Could new federal fuel mileage regulations kill sports-car specialists like Porsche? Probably not, but those companies may have to pay heavy fines as the cost of doing business or radically change their US product mix. That's AutoWeek's interpretation of new rules proposed by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Less than fifteen years ago, the concept of an extrasolar planet orbiting a star much like our own was only a theory. Since that time, we've discovered nearly 300 extrasolar planets in all, but have consistently failed to find systems which orbit around stars resembling the sun. Today, the BBC is reporting on a find by astronomers from St. Andrews University of two gas giants on par with Saturn and Jupiter in orbit around a star half the size of our sun. While the finding is not a direct link to a system similar to ours, it does present an increased likelihood that our system is not unique.

We have all at one point or another learned some variation of a mathematical formula involving trains and their timetables. For example: if a train leaves Boston for New York at 7am and travels at 60mph, will it beat a train leaving Providence at 6am traveling 45mph? The idea behind this kind of "story" problem is to engage a student with a real-world example to which they can relate. The thinking follows that that engagement will solidify the mathematical concept. It's one of those conceits that has hung around for seemingly as long as math has been taught. And it may very well be completely wrong.

When it comes to climate change, a quick fix won't do. Science published a paper Friday from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) which concludes that a proposed plan to inject the atmosphere with sulfate particles in order to cool the planet would actually have dire consequences.