General consensus seems to be that our planet is in trouble, even if we’re still arguing over the cause (which is a bit like asking who left the gas on while your house burns down). But we’re starting to look at ways of fixing the problems – and scientists are starting to consider science fictional technologies as potential tools in these efforts. Man-made volcano, anyone? [Advanced Nanotechnology]

Things are definitely changing in the world of creative media. Oh, you want proof? How about George Lucas’s Lucasfilm outfit sponsoring a Star Wars fan fiction movie contest, then? [SlashDot]

That’s not my buzzword, either – that’s exactly what Nanoident are calling their new environmentally-friendly semiconductor production systems, which create electronic circuits by printing them instead of growing them the old-fashioned (1.0) way. They’re claiming that printed circuits will soon be as ubiquitous as the normal kind are today, and I can’t see many reasons to doubt it.

Some people say it’ll take decades for us to completely jump from dead-tree books to reading long form fiction on computer screens – although Cory Doctorow takes a more evangelical opposite view. I’m inclined towards Cory’s position, myself – and the arrival of free open-source software that not only makes the on-screen experience more like a paperback book, but also acts as an interface with the Gutenberg Project library, suggests that other people are thinking the same way. Not convinced? Think back to how we used to mock people with mobile phones in the 80s … [LifeHacker]

It seems like only yesterday that astronomers started being able to spot planets around stars other than our own, by using advances in technology and technique to their advantage. According to Centauri Dreams, pretty soon we’ll be able to tell which extrasolar planets have oceans, too.