Free Republic

The three major-party candidate for governor turned up the volume on their criticism of each other tonight during a debate on Twin Cities Public Television's Almanac. After more than two dozen debates, DFLer Mark Dayton, Republican Tom Emmer and the Independence Party's Tom Horner appeared for the last time together on TV before Election Day. The final debate is Sunday afternoon on MPR. Dayton criticized Emmer's cuts-alone approach to erasing a projected $5.8 billion state budget deficit as a recipe for local property tax increases. He said Emmer's reductions in health and human services would have human consequences. "We're talking...

Nanowire Generates Its Own Electricity ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2007) — Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well. Charles M. Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, and colleagues created the nanowire out of three different kinds of silicon with different electrical properties. The silicon is wrapped in layers to create the wire. When light falls on the outer material, a process begins due to the interaction of...

Researchers say the electricity generated by mud-dwelling bacteria from a lump of sugar could power a mobile phone for four days. According to a report in October's Nature Biotechnology Magazine, searchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have persuaded mud-dwelling bacteria to generate electricity from sugar. Fuelled by this unfashionable high-carb diet, the recently identified bacterium, Rhodoferax ferrireducens, releases the energy in sugar molecules by removing electrons. In their natural habitat of Vancouver bay sediment, the bacteria pass on the electrons to iron compounds, but in the lab the bacteria have been persuaded to donate them to an electrode as...

<p>SACRAMENTO - Not since Gov. Jerry Brown was linked to pop diva Linda Ronstadt more than two decades ago has Sacramento generated so much buzz.</p> <p>Now that it looks as if the recall of Gov. Gray Davis will be on the ballot, California's anything-may-happen atmosphere has everyone from Beltway political junkies to People magazine fixated on the notion that Arnold Schwarzenegger could become the state's next governor. But that's just one of many possible recall scenarios making the rounds.</p>