one of these again. french illustrations from 1910 of life in the year 2000. some pleasingly close. a lot of flying and robots. some inexplicable (bunch of people staring at a horse). some bmi.

ah. that makes sense. what about the one where they're having dinner then?

nice book extract on the influence of cold war strategy on the development of the internet, RAND corporation etc.

talking of interesting business models - > futures markets for whether or not despots will still be in power by the end of the year. Markets>Foreign Affiars/International security

cheers to luca for pointing out the management one. netlogo model "demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random."

his day to day research experience must be relatively unusual highlights include: - Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18380130 'The effect of a joke on tipping when it is delivered at the same time as the bill' http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/JASP2002.pdf "Love is in the air": Effects of Songs With Romantic Lyrics on Compliance to a Courtship Request. http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/PsyMusic2010.PDF and the mostly confusing 'Presence of Various Figurines on a Restaurant Table and Consumer Choice: Evidence for an Associative Link.'

software for encrypting/decrypting hidden messages in social media

eco-friendly? really? apparently going to be tested soon.

amusingly one of the researchers is a Dr. Rong Lan

To Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, and Review Editors for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) "I would also like to emphasize that enhanced media interest in the work of the IPCC would probably subject you to queries about your work and the IPCC. My sincere advice would be that you keep a distance from the media and should any questions be asked about the Working Group with which you are associated, please direct such media questions to the Co-chairs of your Working Group and for any questions regarding the IPCC to the secretariat of the IPCC." and an amusing related memo on how to deal with reporters if you can't avoid them. I particularly enjoyed the list of words that mean one thing to scientists and something else to other people. https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B88iFXWgVKt-NDc2N2FiM2QtYzQzYS00MWMxLWE4MGEtZjUwZDlmNzc3MTcz&hl=en

i agree. however, (and perhaps it would have been useful to post my source which didn't seem so interesting at the time) the contents of this particular memo seems to have been interpreted as a more or less direct consequence of "ClimateGate" rather than standard practice. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-climate-change/ On the other hand, I'd suggest that talking to the press is not necessarily a great way of educating the public, there being some truth i think to the contents of the memo.

apparently warm things attract each other instead. a symbolic prize of a virtual launch vehicle based on a smeg fridge/freezer for the most amusing/shortest refutation. "A ~1068 gm hollow copper sphere hovers above a 1000 W heat element." "After power was applied to the heat element for 400 s, the means of the first and last ~6 force measures indicate that the sphere's gravitational mass increased by 1.9 % or 20 gm."

bit confused about what they actually have achieved so far but sounds like it might turn out to be interesting. "The scientists first infiltrated the leaves of Anemone vitifolia -- a plant native to China -- with titanium dioxide in a two-step process. Using advanced spectroscopic techniques, the scientists were then able to confirm that the structural features in the leaf favorable for light harvesting were replicated in the new TiO2 structure. Excitingly, the AIL are eight times more active for hydrogen production than TiO2 that has not been "biotemplated" in that fashion. AILs also are more than three times as active as commercial photo-catalysts. Next, the scientists embedded nanoparticles of platinum into the leaf surface. Platinum, along with the nitrogen found naturally in the leaf, helps increase the activity of the artificial leaves by an additional factor of ten."

don't have access to the full paper myself. found from article in (ahem) the daily mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1260870/Nuclear-reactors-safer-scientists-discover-effect-self-repairs-radiation-damaged-materials.html

lets you link your account to a credit card and then publish whatever you just bought and what you paid for it to your facebook status/twitter feed/etc.

apologies if this has been posted before. they announced the winners in september. links to the papers of the top 3 teams

sorry, geek central. in case anyone is interested in some new energy efficient pc components. they do energy use/time measurements under load. Unfortunately they don't seem to take idle consumption into account

is it me or is there an ongoing convergence of sources of posts on here? in that vein here's a weird brain experiment you can try at home. can't get it to work myself.

could it be useful in e.g. propellant tanks?

ah. interesting