Free Republic

~snip~ The details behind the new fuel cell The new fuel cell uses stainless steel in place of platinum and rare metals. Johanna Wellington, advanced technology leader at General Electric Global Research and the head of General Electric's fuel cell business, states: "The cost challenges associated with the technology have stumped a lot of people for a long time. But we made it work, and we made it work economically. It's a game-changer. The new fuel cell can generate electricity at any location with a supply of natural gas. It can get going quickly, does not need new transmission lines...

The magnets cluttering the face of your refrigerator may one day be used as cooling agents, according to a new theory formulated by MIT researchers. The theory describes the motion of magnons — quasi-particles in magnets that are collective rotations of magnetic moments, or “spins.” In addition to the magnetic moments, magnons also conduct heat; from their equations, the MIT researchers found that when exposed to a magnetic field gradient, magnons may be driven to move from one end of a magnet to another, carrying heat with them and producing a cooling effect. “You can pump heat from one side...

Sales of the Chevy Volt in the US have been fairly stable for the last few months (between a low of 1,478 and a high of 1,777 since March), but in Europe, the Opel Ampera (sister-vehicle of the Volt) has been trending downwards. The sales decline is prompting discussion that the vehicle will be killed off in Europe, according to Automotive News Europe. The car was a relative hit back in 2012, when it was named the European Car Of The Year and sales topped 5,200 units. Compared to 2012 numbers, which were good, Ampera sales dropped 40 percent to...

Tech pioneers in the US are advocating a new data-based approach to governance – 'algorithmic regulation'. But if technology provides the answers to society's problems, what happens to governments?... Compared with the impressive police gear of today – automatic number plate recognition, CCTV cameras, GPS trackers – Operation Corral looks quaint. And the possibilities for control will only expand. European officials have considered requiring all cars entering the European market to feature a built-in mechanism that allows the police to stop vehicles remotely. Speaking earlier this year, Jim Farley, a senior Ford executive, acknowledged that "we know everyone who breaks...

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the first successful live-fire tests of the military’s first smart, self-guided bullets. In a video released by DARPA Thursday, Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance (EXACTO) .50-caliber bullets maneuvered independently mid-flight to accurately strike targets purposefully offset from where the firing sniper rifle was aimed. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the first successful live-fire tests of the military’s first smart, self-guided bullets. In a video released by DARPA Thursday, Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance (EXACTO) .50-caliber bullets maneuvered independently mid-flight to accurately strike targets purposefully offset from where the firing...

Apple has patented a method for building devices with all-glass outer casings (via AppleInsider), by fusing pieces together for a completely seamless final look. The all-glass device casings could be used to hold the internals of an iOS device or to house a TV or monitor, too. The all-glass structures are designed for maximum durability but also weight savings, with designs that fuse pieces together to avoid having to use a single heavy block of material, and internal structures like fused-on ribs and reinforcement points, also made of glass, placed at key points where structural integrity could be weaker. Unlike...

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

An independent privacy and civil liberties board says the NSA’s massive collection of internet data passes constitutional muster and employs “reasonable” protections designed to ensure that private American communications are not misused. In a report released Tuesday night, the bipartisan, five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board examined a set of NSA surveillance programs disclosed by leaker Edward Snowden …

If you fancy yourself as a .guru or any other newfangled Internet address, Google wants you to try out its new domain name registration service. The search giant quietly launched Google Domains on Monday as an invite-only beta service. It’s being billed as an easy way to set up an address on the Web with simple management tools. Until now, Google has told people looking to register that it “doesn’t register or host domain names.” It referred them to partner companies including GoDaddy and eNom. Google Domains, though, has features that might make people think twice before going with other...

Based on data obtained from the Large Hadron Collider, the CMS Collaboration at CERN provided evidence for the first time that the particle assumed to be the Higgs Boson decays into fermions, a broad class of particles that includes many atoms and nuclei. "We made this big discovery back in 2012—we confirmed the particle, its [lack of] spin, everything was consistent," says Marcus Klute, a professor of physics at MIT a coauthor on the study. "What was missing were the fermions."

So it turns out there that something doesn't have to be true to be funny.Many a thinking American - who knows media bias - finds the following perversely appropriate.Young Get News From Comedy CentralTom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather ... and Jon Stewart?Readers over 30 might scoff at Stewart's inclusion - assuming they know who he is. For many under 30, the host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is, improbably, a source for news.Looking to further ride the wave (beyond just Real Time with Bill Maher), HBO hired away Comedy Central “reporter” John Oliver to anchor a new “news” show - Last...

COLUMBIA - Electronic medical records, or EMRs, have given some physicians joy and others nightmares. The federal government mandated all health care providers in the U.S. switch to EMRs by January 1, 2014. EMRs replaced the previous medical records systems done by hand on paper. The days of the 4-inch thick patient chart are over. "We knew it was coming, we knew we had to do it." said Tom Selva, chief medical officer at University Hospital. But University Hospital was always ahead of the game. It switched to an EMR provider 15 years ago when it started using Cerner, based...

Hewlett-Packard has kicked off an ambitious project that aims at nothing less than reinventing the basic architecture of computers. It looks like servers are its initial target, but HP is also working on an Android version that it says could lead to smartphones with 100TB of storage. HP said Wednesday it was working on a new computer architecture, dubbed The Machine, based on memristors and silicon photonics. Bloomberg Businessweek reports up to 75% of HP’s once fairly illustrious R&D division — HP Labs – are working on The Machine. In the words of HP Labs, The Machine will be a...

Apparently the good folks at the Central Intelligence Agency have decided that YOLO. On Friday, the CIA announced it was launching Twitter and Facebook accounts. And the public seems eager to associate with the nation’s best-known intelligence-gathering entity — the CIA Twitter account had nearly 150,000 followers less than three hours after launching.The agency’s first tweet: We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.— CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014

NASA is just about ready to test-launch its so-called flying saucer into the edge of space. The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator is literally a flying saucer. The original launch date of June 3 was scrubbed because of weather. The next potential launch date is Thursday, June 5, NASA said. "The agency is moving forward and getting ready for Mars as part of NASA's Evolvable Mars campaign," said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters, in a news release. "We fly, we learn, we fly again. We have two more vehicles in the works for next year."

Yesterday, I asked readers how they felt about setting up independent commissions to handle redistricting in each state. Commenter Mitch Beales wrote: "It seems to me that an 'independent panel' is about as likely as politicians redistricting themselves out of office. This is the twenty-first century. How hard can it be to create an algorithm to draw legislative districts after each census?" Reader "BobMunck" agreed: "Why do people need to be involved in mapping the districts?" They're right. These programs and algorithms already exist. Brian Olson is a software engineer in Massachusetts who wrote a program to draw "optimally compact"...

Full Title: Now Google is going to dominate space: Search giant to launch 180 satellites to provide internet access for the ENTIRE planet, sources claim The world wide web may seem like a global community, but two-thirds of the planet still remain without access. Now, Google is planning to change this by launching a fleet of 180 satellites to provide web access for the 4.8 billion people not yet online, according to sources close to the company. The California-based giant will spend more than $1 billion (£600 million) on the technology, which will rival Facebook’s efforts to connect remote regions...

Owners of iPhones and iPads have been targeted by a hacker who is freezing iOS devices and demanding a ransom of up to £55 to unlock them. ... "I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by 'Oleg Pliss' and he/she/they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)hotmail.com) to return them to me. ... "Such scams have been around for years. By using the credentials to access an Apple iCloud account, the attackers can enable the 'Find My iPhone' service - this is...

The popular notion that urine is sterile is a myth, new research finds. Yes, the myth that comes up every time someone pees in a pool (or drinking water reservoir) is actually false. In fact, bacteria do live in urine, Loyola University researchers reported this week at the general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston. "We need to reassess everything we think we know about urine," study researcher Evann Hilt, a graduate student at Loyola, told Live Science.

Inspired by fictional cyborgs like Terminator, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh has made the first bionic particles from semiconductors and proteins. "These design principles can be used to guide future designs for other bionic systems, starting from the primary building blocks of biological organisms and inorganic machines," Kotov said. "It is very possible that Terminator of the future would need to be constructed starting from such building blocks."