Dutch Company Siphoning Heat from Asphalt for Energy Uses

Treehugger reports on how a Dutch company is collecting solar energy from a road and parking lot to power an apartment complex.  To quote: the heat stored from 36,000 sq ft of pavement during the summer helps keep a 160,000 sq ft-industrial park warm in the winter.

Can’t find it on Google, but I recall an article on the mechanism of using solar energy to heat underground silos filled with water.  Under pressure, the water could receive nearly unlimited amounts of heat during the summer, which would pump through the stadium in winter to both warm the air and keep the soft dome inflated.  Adding to that, my elementary school principal gave me a tour of his retirement home, showing how he had water pumped beneath the ground and through his walls to receive or transfer heat and to add extra insulation.

Three different levels, and price points, for using natural forms of heat for efficiency.  Seems a combination of these could easily be adapted to all forms of habitat and architecture.  Especially given the amount of pavement every region of North America, Asia and Europe currently own.  Finding a way to put it all to use would certainly create a gain for the world’s energy pool.

Synthetic Biology: It’s Not What You Learned, But What You Made

I’ll not pretend to understand all of this article, but I can get enough to believe engineers are looking for methods to build synthetic DNA strands by hacking natural methods.  Read about the ‘Black box’ methadology and the simplification of understanding the process by ignoring the complexity of the natural process between input and output.  Certainly some questions to ask about how science will approve these procedures for public access.

The best quote is from Tom Knight, describing the history and future of science behind electronics research.

Two articles on Boeing military laser development.  One involves a jet based missile-destroying laser rig and the other is mounted on a Humvee for destroying IEDs.

The Religious State of Islamic Science

Salon has an interview with Taner Edis, a Turkish-American physicist, on the state of modern science within Muslim cultures.  Certainly an enlightening interview given the current state of affairs in what is being perceived as a growing cycle of strife between Islam and The West.  If any religion is capable of such limitations on intellectual development, the divide between the cultures will only grow through the coming decades and centuries.  We should already be considering the ‘digital divide’ as more than an element of economics and include the limitations based on culture and society.  If any group is limited in the ability to compete with other groups for income (and thus stability), it could maintain an ongoing feud between the “haves” and “have nots”.

The quote I think best sums up this scenario:  “It permanently locks the Muslim world into a subordinate position in those aspects of modern life that depend on creativity in technology and science. And this is a huge swath of modern life.”

Though, we can replace the term ‘Muslim’ with one of many others as a way of describing the risk of widening the gulf of communication between disparate human groups.

Honey Doll Has Touch Sensors, Maons, Has Fake Orgasms

NSFW

There is no doubt the sex ‘bots are coming (no pun intended) and the land of the Rising Sun is leading the R&D.  Honey Dolls (http://www.honeydolls.jp/) offers pose able robots purely for sex.  Looking over their (creepy) site, it shows that the mouth is designed to maximize oral stimulation of the male, is water washable, contains sensors built into the breasts which trigger a “vocal” (mp3-based) response, and “Softness comparable to a real girl.”

Overall, there is nothing surprising from this and these might even be the ‘bots used in Lars and the Real Girl.  May be best to watch the movie to get an impression of the social impact on humans as these become more prevalent.

The scary part of this is yet another method in which “beautiful” women are commoditized for sexual use.  Our media has done an excellent job of extracting “personality” from attractive women and now average women will need to compete with the male fantasies based on real-world interaction with an attractive, perfectly proportioned, forever young and vocally responsive “female”.

One final point:  Kazi, Aki and the new “teen body” appear very young and, based on the marketing on the site, for a purpose.

Apocalypse Scale on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

This is awesome. Jamais Cascio has created a qualitative scale by which to judge the level of damage to humanity, civilization and even the planet. Level X is quite stunning. I can sort of envision large scale damage to the planet, but Earth is so permanent. I honestly have never considered a situation where the entire planet would cease to exist.

Xerox Corporation News Release

Xerox creates the photocopy machine, resulting in waves of trees being destroyed to fuel the requirements of governmental triplicate forms. They now rebuild their karma with reusable paper. I love this idea, which, along with biodegradable plastics (great page with niche uses of biodegradable plastics here), will curtail a great amount of waste filling landfills on an ongoing basis.