Low-cost process produces natural gas from algae – “A new method for converting algae into renewable natural gas for use in pipelines and power generation has been transferred from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to the marketplace under a license between Genifuel Corporation and Battelle….”

Rich But Financially Inept – “Fast money doesn’t generally equate to long-term wealth. NBA stars are the perfect example. They make more money in a few years than most can hope to earn in a lifetime, yet over 60% of them go broke within 5 years after retiring. Such are the perils of many professional athletes: rich but financially inept…”

Air bike – Air-powered motorcycle:

Analyst: cyberwarfare arms race with China imminent – “A security expert informed Congress last month that the United States is entering a cyberwarfare arms race with China. Some of his information, however, seems to be misleading, especially about China’s “top secret” OS…”

In solar biz, simple and cheap are keys to success – “The promise of concentrated photovoltaic farms—so far unfulfilled—is that they can produce electricity cheaper than standard solar panels and can be built close to cities and power lines, unlike gargantuan solar thermal power plants typically located in remote deserts…”

Blame baby monitors, not congestion, for your WiFi woes – “UK regulators commissioned a study to find out whether WiFi’s connection issues in urban areas are related to congestion. Turns out they are not: WiFi has plenty of bandwidth for most locations, but it doesn’t work well with analog devices operating in the same band…”

The Machine that Changed the World (Documentary) – “The Machine That Changed the World is the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced. It’s a whirlwind tour of computing before the Web…”

Inside Google London – “Google has harnessed the power of the internet to change our lives. But could the world’s most powerful company change the way we work, too? Simon Usborne discovers the power of free beer, table football – and office dogs…”

Airman spots aircraft fuel leak at 35,000 feet – “A fuel leak on a civilian aircraft caught the attention of Staff Sgt. Bartek Bachleda, 909th Air Refueling Squadron boom operator, during a flight from Chicago to Narita airport, Japan. After alerting the pilots and aircrew, the ranking pilot made the decision to divert the flight to San Francisco….”

ISS and spacewalker seen from Earth – telescopic spaceflight images of Ralf Vandebergh – “These two frames, taken with a video camera and a telescope, reveal remarkable details of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting some 350 kilometers above planet Earth…”

White House Czar Calls for End to ‘War on Drugs’ – “The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use…”

Unofficial Software Incurs Apple’s Wrath – “Through the efforts of developers and hobbyists, the Web is teeming with unauthorized applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch (which does everything that the iPhone does except make phone calls and incur a monthly bill from AT&T), and there are even some independent online application stores….”

Quick video intro to Woldram Alpha

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life – “It’s not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life…”

Can Happiness Be Inherited? – “A new study suggests that our feelings in our lifetime can affect our children….”

Chimps knocked off top of the IQ tree – “ORANG-UTANS have been named as the world’s most intelligent animal in a study that places them above chimpanzees and gorillas, the species traditionally considered closest to humans….”

The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body – “You might think this sort of thing is increasingly rare, and limited to remote tribes. But according to Clifton Meador, a doctor at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, who has documented cases like Vanders, the curse has taken on a new form….”

Monkeys Ponder What Could Have Been – “It’s a good thing monkeys can’t gamble. New research shows these primates are capable of “woulda-coulda-shoulda” thoughts, like those that keep gamblers at the tables…”

Lift-off for European telescopes – “Europe’s Herschel and Planck telescopes have blasted into space on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou in French Guiana…”

Pentagon Preps Soldier Telepathy Push – “Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds…”

Software Problems with a Breath Alcohol Detector – “As we become more and more dependent on software for evidentiary and other legal applications, we need to be able to carefully examine that software for accuracy, reliability, etc. Every government contract for breath alcohol detectors needs to include the requirement for public source code….”

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