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Invented in 2002!! A disruptive invention to illuminate shanty towns and beyond .... Makes also sense for space habitats ... paper? anyone?

And a nice video ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhHKXxEN9Q0#t=12

what an interesting personality ... very symathetic Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered "productive" enough.

The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.

He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."

Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.

Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize - and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".

Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "

By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."

Higgs revealed that his career had also been jeopardised by his disagreements in the 1960s and 7

And the follow up by Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

interesting one - Luzi will like it :-)

Need some Graphene? Use your blender!

stronger than steel - small teeth of snail like creature ...

According to a BBC news article it's actually stronger than Kevlar...

The spider silk is no longer the toughest natural material around.

"Researchers hope the minute particles are from the asteroid"

i knew it was the coffee making me sleepy

C-R-E-E-P-Y image in here...

Yeah, no doubt that's the entrance to hell... even more disturbing as it seems at least one house got in.

Yeah... I wonder if/how they plan to plug it?

Here is the tractor beam I mentioned from fridays science coffee. At the moment its used for microscopic particles only. This could be looked into to see if it could be scaled up to deflect particles in space

fascinating ....

Nice... enter cyber-warfare...

found this reference from the guy: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5285410 should we update our betavoltaics report?