A joint UK-US team of researchers claim to have created a new type of organic polymer which could supercede silicon compounds as the standard material for making certain types of electronic system. The major edge it has over silicon is that it can be manufactured at low temperatures with little waste. It could also be ‘printed’ as a fluid using conventional inkjet technologies, putting an end to expensive and error-prone lithography techniques and enabling it to be used on flexible substrates. Maybe ‘electronic paper’ won’t be vapourware forever.

Scientists from the UK’s Norwich University have taken a novel approach to building nano-scale objects. They are using a plant virus as a scaffold on which to assemble iron-rich compounds into an electronically active particle that acts like a tiny capacitor.

Space.com is featuring an article about space settlement and evolution of planetary bodies and the seriousness of impacts that a planetarium is showing that seems very interesting.

…and it costs less than $20,000. Of course it has a couple of drawbacks. It’s a three-wheeler, it only seats two, and it doesn’t exist yet.

The city of East Orange, New Jersey, is implementing a new community watch type program that allows community residents on two troubled streets to email the police department to point their video cameras at suspicious activity in progress. I’m not sure whether to be creeped out by the Big Brother implications or impressed by the diffusion of power to the community.