Harness volcano power, energy experts say – “Volcanoes and hot springs could supply up to 25 per cent of America’s power needs, energy experts have said…”

Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift – “Is Darwin due for an upgrade? There are growing calls among some evolutionary biologists for just such a revision, although they differ about what form this might take. But those calls could also be exaggerated. There is nothing scientists enjoy more than the prospect of a good paradigm shift…”

10 Things To Do In Europe That Will Make You Smarter – “Combining academia with cultural immersion: surely this is the ultimate education?”

Alberta’s mission: convert oil sands skeptics – “Two years ago, the Alberta government parked a huge dump truck on the National Mall in Washington, announcing to U.S. lawmakers Canada was about to become the next big thing in global energy…”

No ice at the North Pole – “It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year…”

Most Powerful Visualization System Ever Is Faster than 600 Consoles – “What you see here is not a simple array of LCD displays. This is NASA’s hyperwall-2, the world’s highest resolution visualization system. At 23 by 10 feet wide, hyperwall-2 uses 128 screens driven by 128 graphic processing units with a total of 1,024 processor cores capable of displaying quarter billion-pixel graphics…”

Nature’s Enclave in a Japanese Metropolis – “The insane architecture you see above is the aftermath of a baseball stadium being abandoned in Osaka Japan; a new opportunity revealed itself and brought a bit of green regeneration to the urban jungle….”

Why the cloud cannot obscure the scientific method – “Every so often, someone (generally not a practicing scientist) suggests that it’s time to replace science with something better…”

Breakthrough in efficiency for dye-sensitized solar cells – ” This breakthrough in efficiency without the use of volatile organic solvents will make it possible to pursue large scale, outdoor practical application of lightweight, inexpensive, flexible dye-sensitized solar films that are stable over long periods of light and heat exposure…”

Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug – “A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday…”

Buzz Aldrin: Invest in Nasa to beat the Chinese to Mars – “Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, has issued a stark warning that America must invest now in the space agency Nasa, or surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China…”

Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser – “Gardeners across Britain are reaping a bitter harvest of rotten potatoes, withered salads and deformed tomatoes after an industrial herbicide tainted their soil. Caroline Davies reports on how the food chain became contaminated and talks to the angry allotment owners whose plots have been destroyed…”

The German bunker in his backyard – “Our house is in an old quarry, and when we bought it five or so years ago, the previous owner told us that there was a tunnel built by the germans during WW2. He said it was big enough to drive into, and that his father had buried the entrance during redevelopments, but not before filling it with stuff that lying around the property (?). He showed me the rough location, and I’ve marked it on this little map with a red dot….”

New model ‘permits time travel’ – “If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth – even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated…”

An armchair astronomer discovers something very odd – “What this object might be was a complete mystery at first. It was initially thought to be a distant galaxy, says Chris Lintott, an Oxford University astronomer involved in the project. But after further study astronomers realised that there were no stars in it, and so it must be a cloud of gas. But why the gas was so hot (about 15,000ºC) was a mystery, because there seemed to be no stars to heat it up…”

New Nano Technique Significantly Boosts Boiling Efficiency – “A new study from researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude less energy is required to bring water to boil. This increase in efficiency could have a big impact on cooling computer chips, improving heat transfer systems, and reducing costs for industrial boiling applications…”

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