IN MORE than 30 years of teaching introductory macroeconomics, says Alan Blinder of Princeton University, he has never seen interest as high as it was last year. At Harvard, says David Laibson, students in his undergraduate macroeconomics course are “chomping at the bit”.
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THE renewable-fuel standard released in February by America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paints an ambitious picture of biofuels’ future. It wants the amount of the stuff used as transport fuel to climb from 13 billion gallons (49 billion litres) in 2010 to 36 billion gallons in 2022, requiring by far the largest part of that [...] MANHASSET, NY — Researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have successfully created a transistor made from a single molecule. The researchers showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor. The tyres of the future may be made from dandelions. OTHER than being an ingredient of the more recherché sorts of salad, herbal tea or wine, dandelions are pretty useless plants. Or, at least, they were. But one species, a Russian variety called Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), may yet make the big time. It produces molecules [...] A team led by Harvard researchers has discovered a family of naturally occurring proteins in human cells that protect against influenza and other illnesses—a finding that may lead to methods to speed up vaccine production and to new flu prevention drugs for humans. Marin Soljacic couldn’t sleep. The problem was his wife’s Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled. How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry — in 1845. CHANGE is in the air. A new communications technology threatens a dramatic upheaval in America’s newspaper industry, overturning the status quo and disrupting the business model that has served the industry for years. This “great revolution”, warns one editor, will mean that some [...] Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. Copying Birds may save aircraft fuel. Source: The Economist. Photo: Corbis A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. PORTLAND, Ore. — Diatoms–single-celled phytoplankton (algae)–are one of the most plentiful life forms on Earth, accounting for 20 percent of the carbon dioxide removed from the environment each year. The mechanism they use–encasing themselves in patterned silicon dioxide shells as they fall to the bottom of oceans and lakes worldwide–removes as much carbon dioxide from [...] A tiny chemical “brain” which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented. The molecular device – just two billionths of a metre across – was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test. After 38 years, Israeli solves math code. A mathematical puzzle that baffled the top minds in the esoteric field of symbolic dynamics for nearly four decades has been cracked — by a 63-year-old immigrant who once had to work as a security guard. Nanodots could yield denser memories, ceramic engine PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at North Carolina State University said they were able to read and write bits at room temperature using magnetic nanodots that delivered 1 terabit of memory per centimeter2. Wall Street Journal | September 12, 2009 Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence. UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Wednesday a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost, filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds in case food crops are wiped out by a catastrophe. An adhesive made by worms inspires a new treatment for broken bones. Celebrating 400th anniversary of Galileo’s Telescope. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14213985 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei Google Earth’s got some competition now — from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which today unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan (meaning earth in Sanskrit). Between GPS devices on your car’s dashboard and digital maps of almost any locale in the world on your smartphone or laptop, it’s hard to get lost these days. A flying frog, the world’s smallest deer and the first new monkey to be found in over a century are among 350 new species discovered in the eastern Himalayas in the past decade, the WWF said Monday. Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers have revealed. Solar Eclipse July 22, 2009 | New Delhi, India According to Roman legend, there once was a cruel boy who tortured a fox by tying straw to its tail and then setting the straw ablaze. The god Robigus was so outraged that he punished humanity with wheat rust, a fungal nightmare that leaves crops looking as though they had been burned. STOCKHOLM (AFP) – A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday. The dive to 10,902m (6.8 miles) took place on 31 May, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean. Whenever a new gadget hits the streets, it’s a race to see who will be the first to reduce to its constituent pieces. With the launch of the iPhone 3G S we’ve got a pair of different companies doing their darndest to disassemble the latest iteration of Apple’s iconic device. Frankly, I’d be happy to [...] |
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