Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created 5 hours ago | popularity 3.6 / 5 (5) | comments 7 | with audio podcast weblog

GPS court ruling leaves US phone tracking unclear

A US Supreme Court decision requiring a warrant to place a GPS device on the car of a criminal suspect leaves unresolved the bigger issue of police tracking using mobile phones, legal experts say.

Technology / Telecom

created 6 hours ago | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Anonymous briefly knocks CIA website offline (Update 2)

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was briefly inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

Technology / Internet

created 23 hours ago | popularity 4.7 / 5 (15) | comments 24

Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets

Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.

Technology / Internet

created 21 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Medicine & Health / Research

created 23 hours ago | popularity 4.9 / 5 (10) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Navy to begin tests on electromagnetic railgun prototype launcher

The Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Electromagnetic (EM) Railgun program will take an important step forward in the coming weeks when the first industry railgun prototype launcher is tested at a facility ...

Technology / Engineering

created Feb 06, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 82 | with audio podcast

New power source discovered

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (39) | comments 20 | with audio podcast

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (13) | comments 15 | with audio podcast report

Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (16) | comments 27 | with audio podcast

Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 2010, Svante Pääbo and his colleagues presented a draft version of the genome from a small fragment of a human finger bone discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. The ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (57) | comments 43 | with audio podcast

FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain, reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science, show t ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (50) | comments 20 | with audio podcast

Quantum physicist explains $100K offer for proof scaled-up quantum computing is impossible

(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (13) | comments 34 | with audio podcast weblog

Hydrogen from acidic water: Researchers develop potential low cost alternative to platinum for splitting water

A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (15) | comments 19 | with audio podcast

Soraa LED light may dim 50-watt halogen rivals

(PhysOrg.com) -- Soraa, a Fremont, California company founded in 2008, this week launched its first product, a light that uses LEDS (light emitting diodes). The "Soraa LED MR16 lamp" is the "perfect" replacement ...

Technology / Semiconductors

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (19) | comments 22 | with audio podcast report

California hits wind energy milestone: About 5 percent of power from wind

California now gets about 5 percent of its electricity from wind power, according to data released Tuesday by the California Wind Energy Association.

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 34