Exploiting solar energy for heating the home – great idea, but financially impractical, right? Not so – a bit of lateral thinking and ingenuity can work wonders, as demonstrated by a solar furnace built from empty aluminium drinks cans and plexiglass. Chalk another one up for the garage inventors. [Engadget]

By now, you’ve probably heard the story about IBM simulating half a mouse brain using a supercomputer; it’s on New Scientist today, which means most of the MSM will be running it. This is an exciting development, for sure – the ability to accurately mimic the functional architecture of a brain is one of the crucial steps towards the Technological Singularity – but I feel obliged to point back to Jamais Cascio’s blog (where I first saw this story), which he has updated to make the point that the computer didn’t actually simulate a mouse’s mind, but instead ran a neural network that could theoretically support such a simulation. Even so, it’s an impressive feat, and an indicator of how quickly things are developing.

I used to live with a guy who had no sense of smell – true story, but feel free to apply your own punchline. At the time, the cause of this phenomenon (known as anosmia) was unclear, but recent research indicates that my friend may simply have had an overabundance of ‘death factor’ cells in his nasal mucus.

However, mucus has its uses – in unnatural noses as well as the real thing. A group of UK scientists have discovered that furnishing their ‘electronic nose’ with a mix of polymers that replicate the function of human snot vastly improves the device’s ability to discern different scents.

I was pretty sure this theory had been around for a while, but apparently a new study is suggesting that black holes may actually be wormholes leading to entirely new universes. Of course, this being an astronomy and physics theory, there’s little consensus on the validity of the results. Assuming it’s true, maybe we should be thinking about building a warp drive to get us to the nearest interdimensional gateway. But wait – if that’s possible, then there’s a chance that extraterrestrial intelligences have pipped us to the technological post, and are heading our way in a mighty battle fleet! But George Dvorsky says there’s little point spending any time worrying about what to do in the event of an alien invasion – it’ll be over before we know it’s arrived.

There’s no need to feel jealous of Google employees for getting to see lectures and presentations by the great and the good on work time – because the Big G has decided to share the wealth and let us lowly web-heads watch the events in video form. I knew they had to be buying YouTube for a reason …

Of most interest to genre fiction fans will be videos of Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, and the incredibly recent visit by John “If rocks stars can tour, so can I” Scalzi.

There’s lots of others interesting people in the selection too; I’ve not watched them yet, but I’m guessing that Lawrence Lessig and Chris “Long Tail” Anderson will be well worth watching, too – whether you’re already interested in copyright issues and internet marketing or not.

[Crossposted from VCTB]