Focus

Here's a tidbit from John Tierney's NYT Findings column, "Ear Plugs to Lasers - The Science of Concentration":

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When something bright or novel flashes, it tends to automatically win the competition for the brain’s attention, but that involuntary bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-down process that Dr. Desimone calls “biased competition.” He and colleagues have found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s planning center — start oscillating in unison and send signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.
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“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong input like a television commercial,” said Dr. Desimone, the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at M.I.T. “If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the words.”
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Here are some tips from the author of "Rapt,” a guide to the science of paying attention, Winifred Gallagher.

Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption. (For more advice, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

Terreform: Growing Houses

The solution to our environmental problems is going to require some out of the box thinking. This is one of the most interesting ideas I have seen in quite a while (check out the website at terreform.org):

Swallowing the iPod Shuffle

I recently posted x-ray proof that sword-swallowing is not a trick, so why is it so hard for this sword-swallower to swallow a tiny iPod shuffle?

Can the iPod shuffle be swallowed? from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Winners of the Green Innovation Challenge

Check out NewScientist's gallery showing the winners of an international competition to find innovations that could help combat climate change:

Gallery

Flying Bionic Penguins

Corn Ethanol No Better Than Petroleum

Here's another nugget regarding alt. energy (SciAm.com):

Corn Ethanol Will Not Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions

I've posted on this topic before, check out Beyond Fossil Fuels, Duckweed, Renewable Energy to the Rescue, Water vs. Energy, A Note on Biofuels and Alternative Biofuels.

Beyond Fossil Fuels

I want to direct your attention to a series that started today on SciAm.com. I am super busy with the end of school and trying to find a job, so I don't have any time to discuss it, but check it out:

Beyond Fossil Fuels
A survey of executives at companies engaged in energy alternatives to fossil fuels reveals some of the challenges facing the industry

Seeing Through Walls

The previous post showed how a reflective coating and a camera can make it possible to see through objects - well here's another way:

Invisibility: From Sci-Fi to Reality

Check out these two almost unbelievable new technologies: first, the combination of a special reflective coating and a video camera may make it possible to see through the solid parts of your car to virtually eliminate blind spots; second, by altering electromagnetic waves it is possible to make light waves appear as if they pass right through an object, thus making it invisible. Check it out:

Florida's Solar City

I already posted about this once, but for those of you who missed it, here is another article about Babcock Ranch, the first solar city in the U.S. (from SciAm.com):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Florida utility and a real estate developer are aiming to bring the country's first solar-powered city to the Sunshine State.

FPL Group Inc's utility Florida Power & Light is working with the realty group Kitson & Partners to construct what the utility says will be the world's largest photovoltaic solar plant in a planned, environmentally friendly city near Fort Myers in southwestern Florida.

Called Babcock Ranch, the city will aim to build 19,500 houses and about 6 million square feet of retail, light industrial, and office space when it is completed, the developers said.

The entire project is expected to cost $2 billion. Read more...

Better Light Bulb?

From Green Inc.:

The pending extinction of traditional incandescent bulbs in the United States and abroad has created an enormous market opportunity for energy-efficient lighting technologies. The current shortcomings of compact fluorescent lights and pricey LED bulbs show that future dominance of the American socket is still very much up for grabs.

Vu1 (that is, “view one”), a company based in Seattle, thinks it has a shot.

The company’s tag line, “light without compromise,” suggests that it’s keenly aware of the biggest stumbling block for most next-generation lighting technologies: they don’t behave like incandescent bulbs, which is what most consumers are accustomed to. “We believe that we’ve got something here that will be much more comparable with people’s expectations than what’s been out there until now,” said Vu1’s chief executive officer, David Grieger. Read more...

Solar City to Rise In Florida: Will it Work?

From SciAm.com:

A Florida developer unveiled plans today to build the nation's first solar-powered city – a cluster of homes, offices and factories less than 20 miles from Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast.

"Babcock Ranch" would be built on 17,000 acres in Charlotte and Lee counties, with more than half of the land set aside for nature preserves, agriculture and other open space. Florida Power & Light Co. would build a 75-megawatt solar photovoltaic array to supply electricity to the development's 6 million square feet of residential, industrial and retail buildings.

The big question: If you build it in this economy, will buyers come? Find out...

Armed and Curious

A fleet of 40 vehicles armed to the teeth with advanced tornado tracking/monitoring equipment controlled by 100 scientists will spend next month trying to unravel the mystery of tornadogenesis. For more of the techie details, click here or check out the video below (kind of long, but pretty cool):

Viral Batteries

From NewScientist:

GENETICALLY engineered viruses that assemble into electrodes have been used to make complete miniature rechargeable batteries for the first time. The new lithium ion batteries are as powerful as existing devices but smaller and cleaner to make, claim the team behind the work. The technology could improve the performance of hybrid electric cars and electronic gadgets. Read more...

100 mpg Car Contest

From NewScientist:

Last night in California a list of 111 teams was announced – one of which may hold the key to motoring's green future. They are the registered entrants to the Progressive Auto X Prize, a contest that will award prizes totalling $10 million for vehicles that can go 100 miles on the energy equivalent to that in a gallon of fuel.

Notable by their absence were the world's largest car manufacturers – bar Indian firm Tata – who don't seem interested in taking part. The list is varied spanning slick Californian start-ups with electric cars, to less-refined backyard efforts still finalising their designs. Read more...

See a gallery of some of the vehicles entered into the Auto X Prize

Is GM Serious?

Check out their latest project. Is this supposed to be the idea that revitalizes the company? I hope not!!!

For the Bird Watchers

From Wired Science:

With an old computer and 30 dollars worth of off-the-shelf components, you can gear up with cutting edge avian monitoring technology and help save the birds.

For years, birdwatchers counted by sight during the daytime. The night — when most migratory birds travel — was literally hidden to them. But that's changing. Anyone can attach a microphone to a computer running birdcall-identifying software and track birds passing overhead in the darkness.

"You wouldn't be able to understand what's happening at night without this technology," said Andrew Farnsworth, a Cornell University ornithologist. "And when it comes to recording the things I work on, that's something anyone can do."

Scientists already depend on citizen birdwatchers for data that provides the foundation for estimates of species health and behavior. Their spare-time jottings are collated in efforts like the Great Backyard Bird Count, eBird, North American Bird Phenology Program and Project Feederwatch. With hundreds of species threatened by habitat loss, climate change and pollution, that data is now invaluable for conservation efforts.

But because many species migrate at night and are hard to find during the daytime, birders can miss them, said Farnsworth, or are forced to use proxy measures: If a bird seen yesterday isn't seen today, then it probably left. "It's not that the proxy methods are bad," he said, "but we're finding this method of nocturnal tracking can be incredibly powerful." Read more...

Robot Makes Publishable Discovery in Genetics

From NewScientist:

Science Works to Ensure Safe Food

From SciAm.com:

During the most recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning, which was connected to peanut butter and other peanut products, the food-borne bacteria has sickened nearly 700 people and may have contributed to the death of nine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports. That came on the heels of an outbreak last summer, finally traced back to jalapeño peppers imported from Mexico, that was responsible for more than 1,400 infections, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports.

And when deadly pathogens enter the food supply, the financial costs can add up, too. The peanut butter salmonella outbreak caused the recall of thousands of peanut-related products, and Georgia Peanut Commission executive director Don Koehler says the total loss could be more than $1 billion.

So what are researchers doing to protect our food?

Read more...or check out this slideshow.

Plan B for Energy: 8 Revolutionary Energy Sources

From SciAm.com:

Plan B for Energy: 8 Revolutionary Energy Sources

If efficiency improvements and incremental advances in today's technologies fail to halt global warming, could revolutionary new carbon-free energy sources save the day? Don't count on it—but don't count it out, either

Editor's Note: We are posting this feature from our September 2006 issue in light of the Obama administration's renewed focus on how to power the country without overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

To keep this world tolerable for life as we like it, humanity must complete a marathon of technological change whose finish line lies far over the horizon. Robert H. Socolow and Stephen W. Pacala of Princeton University have compared the feat to a multigenerational relay race. They outline a strategy to win the first 50-year leg by reining back carbon dioxide emissions from a century of unbridled acceleration. Existing technologies, applied both wisely and promptly, should carry us to this first milestone without trampling the global economy. That is a sound plan A.

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Sooner or later the world is thus going to need a plan B: one or more fundamentally new technologies that together can supply 10 to 30 terawatts without belching a single ton of carbon dioxide. Energy buffs have been kicking around many such wild ideas since the 1960s. It is time to get serious about them. “If we don’t start now building the infrastructure for a revolutionary change in the energy system,” Hoffert warns, “we’ll never be able to do it in time.”

But what to build? The survey that follows sizes up some of the most promising options, as well as a couple that are popular yet implausible. None of them is a sure thing. But from one of these ideas might emerge a new engine of human civilization. Read more to find out what they are...