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"A report released late Thursday in London and discussed Friday at the U.N. climate conference in South Africa said that - in theory - reflecting a small amount of sunlight back into space before it strike's the Earth's surface would have an immediate and dramatic effect. Within a few years, global temperatures would return to levels of 250 years ago, before the industrial revolution began dumping carbon dioxide into the air, trapping heat and causing temperatures to rise."

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals. Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose. Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments.

Earthship Biotecture creates buildings that... * Heat and cool themselves naturally via solar/thermal dynamics * Collect their own power from the sun and wind * Harvest their own water from rain and snow melt * Contain and treat their own sewage on site * Produce food in significant quantities * Utilize materials that are byproducts of modern society like cans, bottles and tires

RepRap http://reprap.org open source 3D printer at Metalab http://metalab.at Deviant Ollam visited the Lab and he immediately had an idea what to print with the reprap: A cover to block the flash for his camera. He video documented this and made this nice little video. It's cool when people get creative around reprap.

In September this year, two research groups independently reported the existence of monopoles - "particles" which carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals. These crystals are made up of pyramids of charged atoms, or ions, arranged in such a way that when cooled to exceptionally low temperatures, the materials show tiny, discrete packets of magnetic charge.