“Researchers…have developed a new water-splitting catalyst that is easily prepared from earth-abundant materials (cobalt and phosphorous) and operates in benign conditions: pH neutral water at room temperature and 1 atm pressure…Although the new catalyst requires further work, it opens a very promising pathway for the development of systems that use artificial photosynthesis to store solar energy on a large scale in the form of O2 and H2 for subsequent use in a fuel cell….” Full Slice

“…”The field of schizophrenia genetics has been quite controversial for the last 20 years and some people would argue that no genes have really been found…But that era has now effectively drawn to a close because it is very difficult to dispute these new findings. These discoveries consolidate the field and make psychiatric genetics, after many false starts, one of the most exciting areas in the biological sciences.”…

The mutations were found to be present in some individuals with schizophrenia as well as those with autism and a range of other psychological disorders, suggesting that the two conditions are not as separate as previously thought.

…” Full Slice

“A team of researchers…has developed a vanadium boride (VB2)/air cell—a new renewable electrochemical energy system which stores more energy than gasoline and has an order of magnitude higher capacity than lithium-ion batteries…The energy capacity gap between gasoline and electrochemical storage systems has been a fundamental barrier to more widespread use of electric drive vehicles….” Full Slice

“Is global warming over?”  It is “freezing” again in the northwest.  Where are all the sunspots?  Does a little ice age approach?

“…As explained on our about page, an overall goal of EveryBlock is to point you to news near your block. We’ve been working hard to do a good job of this so far by accumulating public records, cataloging newspaper stories and pulling together various other geographic information from the Web. However, over the past few months as we’ve been building the site, we’ve come across a number of types of information that don’t exactly fit the EveryBlock mold….” Full Slice

“…In the same vein as the 1960s classic movie, Fantastic Voyage, where a crew of scientists are miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream, Sylvain Martel, director of the NanoRobotics Laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal, has successfully made travel through a living animal’s bloodstream possible. “This is really what we are doing, except that we don’t send tiny humans of course,” he says with a laugh…. Full Slice

As I read this article about using Facebook to organize dances, I started to think of the Larry Niven’s flash crowds, and wonder how in the world we will manage unexpectedly large crowds in the future.

“We had 1,000 kids trying to get in at once,” Sheckles said, recalling his April event, which had a GI Joe theme.

“It was a bad situation.”

This also makes me wonder about the emergent properties of this ability to instantly organize large numbers of people What happens in scenarios such as:

• some one proclaims a great injustice and called for like minded people to swarm an area
• Rumors spread of free housing in areas heavily impacted by the decline in the price of crappy homes. Nobody is going to buy these houses, so be in WayTooHotToLiveHere, AZ on this date…
• A real injustice occurs and people swarm on their own

Given 6 billion people on earth, how soon until 100 million swarm? What if you were willing to lose 100 million “soldiers” in a swarm (1 billion -100 million is still a LOT of people).

I’m kinda scaring myself.

“For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the administration of minute amounts of inhaled or intravenous hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, the molecule that gives rotten eggs their sulfurous stench, significantly improves survival from extreme blood loss in rats…”Our goal is to develop life-saving treatment for critically ill people suffering from acute, sustained blood loss, such as in a car accident or on the battlefield…These findings have obvious implications for the military, but they also have tremendous implications for the civilian population.”…” Full Slice

“A farm irrigation canal would seem a healthier place for toads than a ditch by a supermarket parking lot. But…scientists have found the opposite is true. In a study with wide implications for a longstanding debate over whether agricultural chemicals pose a threat to amphibians…zoologists have found that toads in suburban areas are less likely to suffer from reproductive system abnormalities than toads near farms where some had both testes and ovaries.

“As you increase agriculture…you have an increasing number of abnormalities.”…the study’s results may have important implications not only for other wild species, but also for people….” Full Slice

Link

If she visits a pub:

Pubs in Yorkshire have been ordered to ban people from wearing flat caps or other hats so troublemakers can be more easily recognised.