Toshiba has reported that it plans to launch a new range of SCiB batteries in March 2008 that charge up to 90% capacity in just five minutes and have a lifetime of 5000 charges without much reduction in charge (an effective lifetime of 10 years). The two versions, 2.4V and 24V, shouldn’t explode either, which is always a bonus. Although this battery is designed primarily for the hybrid car and electric bicycle market, as Engadget and DailyTech comment this would be incredible in the laptop market…
Monthly Archives: December 2007
Humans are evolving faster than ever
Thanks to the magic of the wire services, this story is all over the web like a rash – you can read the abstract of the paper that’s caused the hoo-haa on the blog of John Hawks, one its authors.
But the nutshell quote is this one:
“The massive growth of human populations has led to far more genetic mutations, and every mutation that is advantageous to people has a chance of being selected and driven toward fixation. We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals.”
As an early commenter points out on the inevitable MetaFilter thread, faster evolution doesn’t mean we’re improving as a species, because evolution selects for ‘reproductive fitness’ rather than any quality that we might describe as being ‘better’ from a rational point of view.
But it’s an interesting story nonetheless; I’d always thought evolution was a glacially slow process. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the implications are … not to mention the spin that the ‘Young Earth’ folk will try to put on it. [Image by KevinDooley]
[tags]human, evolution, anthropology, biology[/tags]
Another barrier to space colonization: the common cold
With the US, Japan and China all actively talking about permanent settlements on the Moon and Mars, not to mention the prolonged stays of astronauts on the International Space Station, attention is being focused on a well-known but little understood fact: the human immune system actually degrades in weightlessness.
The human immune system, which [is] as complex as the central nervous system, includes an arsenal of responses to invading bacteria, viruses and other pathogens – ranging from first responders such as neutrophils and microphages to more sophisticated T-cells and B-cells that act on a molecular level. Although research into the workings of these infection-fighters during space missions remains limited – because of technical problems with collecting samples in space, very limited crew time and, more recently, deep funding cuts – [many] key infection-fighting molecules appear to be less available to people in space.
Not only are people more susceptible to sickness inducing microbes in zero gravity, but it also appears that some microbes, such as salmonella, become significantly more virulent in weightlessness.
UK makes massive step towards wind power
The Secretary of State for Business, John Hutton is announcing a huge sea-change in the UK’s approach towards future power plants, with a massive 25Gw of offshore wind proposed to add to an existing 8GW of planned construction. This vast increase in wind power, in addition to the wave and tidal projects being tested in the Orkney islands, could power all of the UK’s homes by 2020.
It’s interesting to see this being portrayed not only as an environment issue but as a security issue, with Hutton saying:
With the North Sea oil and gas fields decreasing rapidly in production, the UK is losing its resource power. By investing in new renewable technology it can continue to be an important world power. Denmark invested in wind over the last decade and now has a £2billion industry. If only more nations would have this level of foresight.
[story and picture via European Tribune]
UPDATE: As requested in the comments, here is a more up to date (and more detailed) analysis of Danish wind power and their plans up to 2030.
Doris Lessing’s Nobel speech: is the internet destroying reading?
Doris Lessing was unable to attend the ceremony where she was to be awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, but her editor delivered a speech on her behalf, which The Guardian has published in full (and is well worth the time to read). [Image from Wikipedia]
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Nicholas Carr highlights the following passage, among others:
“What has happened to us is an amazing invention – computers and the internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: “What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?” In the same way, we never thought to ask, “How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?” “
Mrs Lessing is hardly the first to raise this argument (or something similar), but her current position in the spotlight means that it once again becomes the topic du jour of bookish folk.
I think it’s reasonable of me to assume that Futurismic’s readership is fairly bookish, but it is also plain that they engage closely with the web as well. So what do you think of Lessing’s speech? I think we can all agree that the internet is a revolution, but is it the sort of revolution that burns the fields behind it?
[tags]literature, reading, internet, education, Doris Lessing[/tags]