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30-Second Science: Sun and Water Enable New Self-Healing Materials

Flexcrete

A Floating Chernobyl?

While the U.S. hems and haws over reviving nuclear energy as a less expensive alternative to oil, Russia has dug back 30 years in our nuclear history to find a solution for some of its own energy woes: the floating nuclear power plant.

Windpower Prop, Seen Close Up, Is Massive

A single prop for a wind turbine has been caught in the wild by Dogmantra, a friend of the Boing Boing Gadgets blog.

Sound Becomes Light

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California successfully converted sound waves to light radiation by reversing a process that transforms electricity to sound, which is commonly used in cell phones. This is the first time that sound has been converted to light. The findings, which were published this week in Nature Physics, could improve how computer chips, LEDs, and transistors are made, and also have applications in ultrafast materials science and terahertz radiation (T-ray) generation. The research team initially predicted that the conversion was possible around a year ago, using computer modeling, and has been trying to confirm it in the lab ever since.

Small Ways to Fix a Big Problem

It’s easy to feel deflated by the ever-growing raft of ecological problems out there. According to a recent MIT report, even if I were the most frugal of consumers—say a monk or a hobo—as an American, I’d still emit more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the average global citizen. That's partly because the U.S. infrastructure that we all enjoy (police, roads, hospitals) is an inevitable part of our per-capita contribution. Think globally, act locally?