Saturday 13 December 2008

Mystery saboteur breaches UK power station












"No new coal" was the the calling card of the mystery saboteur the Guardian describes as a 'green Banksy', who broke into a power station to protest about coal-fired electricity generation.

The £12m defences of the most heavily guarded power station in Britain were breached by a single person who, under the eyes of CCTV cameras, climbed two three-metre (10ft) razor-wired, electrified security fences, walked into the station and crashed a giant 500MW turbine before leaving a calling card reading "no new coal". He walked out the same way and hopped back over the fence.

The Guardian controversially claimed the activist's actions "reduced UK climate change emissions by 2%", something virulently debated by readers and scientists.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/11/kingsnorth-green-banksy-saboteur

Wednesday 10 December 2008

Scientists Make First Paper-Based Transistor

A team in Portugal have produced the world's first field-effect transistor based on paper. The paper layer acts as an "interstrate", with the actual FET components being fabricated onto both sides: so the paper holds the transistor together and acts as an insulator. 

In tests the paper transistor performed better than amorphous silicon transistors and even approaches the performance of state-of-the-art oxide thin-film transistors.

Source:
http://www.physorg.com/news135927474.html

Cosmology: Top 10 articles from 2008

Here, for your entertainment, are the New Scientist's top picks of good cosmology reads from 2008, including:

Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
The void: Imprint of another universe?
The hunt for the Un-universe
Does time travel start here?
Is the dark matter mystery about to be solved?
Dark energy may just be a cosmic illusion
Black holes may lurk in unexpected places
Inflation deflated

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16231-cosmology-top-10-articles-from-2008.html