My youngest son called at 3:15 EST, which prompted me to ask why he was UP (2:15 CST). The news disturbed him and he was concerned about his parents. A price he has already paid, and now I pay as his concerns kept me awake.

As I blog this, 7.1 million people are without power on the east coast, 2.2 million in New Jersey. An explosion and fire at ConEdison has left downtown Manhattan dark. Sixteen people have lost their lives. Schools are closed all over NY state. The NYU Medical Center is being evacuated after backup generators failed. The Metro Transit Authority is saying this is the worst disaster in the 108 year history of the New York City subway system. Seven tunnels are flooded and the New York Stock Exchange remains closed for a second day.

Whatever your choice next Tuesday, we'll all live in the real aftermath (and price) of that choice.

In Austin, Texas I witnessed the caravans from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Interstates 10 and 45 packed headed towards Austin and Dallas respectively.

And, great wealth only matters: when you have a functional planet to spend it on.

So we’re back to “fuhgeddaboudit,” right?

White, who just shared his latest ideas at the 100 Year Starship 2012 Public Symposium, says that if you adjust the shape of the ring surrounding the object, from something that looks like a flat halo into something thicker and curvier, you could power Alcubierre’s warp drive with a mass roughly the size of NASA’s Voyager 1 probe.

In other words: reduction in energy requirements from a planet with a mass equivalent to over 300 Earths, down to an object that weighs just under 1,600 pounds.

“The NRI is a model for industry-driven consortia,” said NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. “It funds a highly leveraged, coordinated nanoelectronics research program centered at leading universities in partnership with federal and state government agencies. The innovation stemming from this NIST award will enable the United States to keep our current leadership in nanoelectronics that stimulates the economy and creates high-paying jobs.”

Technically, this leads to an effectively "negative coefficient of friction," something that has not been previously seen, according to team leader Rachel Cannara. Graphite, Cannara explains, is one of a special class of solids called "lamellar" materials, which are formed from stacks of two-dimensional sheets of atoms. The sheets are graphene, a single-atom-thick plane of carbon atoms that are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Graphene has a number of exotic electrical and material properties that make it attractive for micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems with applications ranging from gas sensors and accelerometers to resonators and optical switches.

While making Star Trek, Roddenberry's reputation as a futurist began to grow. His papers and lectures earned him high professional regard as a visionary. He spoke on the subject at NASA meetings, the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress gatherings, and top universities.

Star Trek was so wildly popular that it has since become the first television series to have an episode preserved in the Smithsonian, where an 11-foot model of the U.S.S. Enterprise is also exhibited on the same floor as the Wright brother's original airplane and Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis." In addition to the Smithsonian honors, NASA's first space shuttle was named Enterprise, in response to hundreds of thousands of letters from fans demanding that the shuttle be named after the beloved starship.

Site: Gene Roddenberry bio

A post to confirm I'm not the only one saying this...

In general, we only become aware of a politician's position on scientific issues during the campaign season. And, with a few exceptions like energy and climate policy, they rarely become campaign issues for anyone other than presidential candidates. So for the most part, it's rare to have a good picture of what our elected representatives think about science and technology.

If only that were true this year.

Missouri's Todd Akin, a Representative running for Senator, made headlines through his bizarre misunderstanding of biology, specifically that of the female reproductive system. Overcome by his desire to believe that pregnancy (and thus abortion) shouldn't be an issue for rape victims, he infamously claimed that the female body could somehow block pregnancy in the case of "legitimate rape."

His evidence? "That's just my guess. I don't have any proof of that." *

These are the people who are helping to set our country's science policy. The committee is currently considering bills on nuclear energy, rare earth metals, biofuels, cybersecurity, and a response to the current drought. It's also responsible for the budgets of groups like NASA and the National Science Foundation. Recent hearings have focused on tech transfers from universities, as well as NASA's commercial crew efforts.

In short, the committee can play a key role in setting the science and technology agenda, and help inform the entire House about key technological issues.

TeachtheFacts.org

The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation's independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. He called them his “trinity of three greatest men.” If anyone can discover the truth by using reason and science, Jefferson reasoned, then no one is naturally closer to the truth than anyone else. Consequently, those in positions of authority do not have the right to impose their beliefs on other people. The people themselves retain this inalienable right. Based on this foundation of science—of knowledge gained by systematic study and testing instead of by the assertions of ideology—the argument for a new, democratic form of government was self-evident.

FuelCell Energyis one of a handful of companies investigating how to address one of the biggest barriers in trying to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants for later storage underground, an unproved concept. The problem is called parasitic load. It refers to the phenomenon that a typical carbon capture system requires a great deal of electricity and thus saps power from a power plant and can cause electricity costs to spike by 70 percent or more.

The Danbury company's potential solution for this problem is fuel cells. The company says that fuel cells have the potential to essentially reverse parasitic load and cause a carbon capture system to generate as much as 40 percent more electricity for a power plant, rather than take away power.

As they're devising new tools and techniques to make wires narrower than a particle of smoke, they're also creating ways to build them in flexible materials and package the electronics in waterproofing layers of durable plastics.

The team of engineers, who specialize in different fields, ultimately aims to build flexible electronics that bend with the realities of life: Health-monitoring sensors that can be worn on or under the skin and foldable electronic devices as thin as a sheet of plastic wrap. And, further down the road, implantable nerve-stimulating electrodes that enable patients to regain control from paralysis or master a prosthetic limb.

Thinking bigger, the team believes the technology could be used to crank out rolls of thin-film solar panels that stand up to decades in the elements. Current thin-film panels are plagued with short life spans due to seepage between layers.

Children at Risk of Being Bullied