Amesj's Odditorium

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/travel/b...,2416747.story

Greek legends
Exploring three cities of the ancient world where myths are set in stone

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon
Big Microsoft Study Supports Small World Theory

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 2008; A01

Turns out, it is a small world.

The "small world theory," embodied in the old saw that there are just "six degrees of separation" between any two strangers on Earth, has been largely corroborated by a massive study of electronic communication.

With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.

The database covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network in June 2006, or roughly half the world's instant-messaging traffic at that time, researchers said.

"To me, it was pretty shocking. What we're seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity," said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who conducted the study with colleague Jure Leskovec. "People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore."

In recent years, the massive databases yielded by cell phone records have been exploited by researchers to better understand human movements and social networks. Stripped of text messages and personally identifiable information, the records indicate users' location and patterns of contact.

The Microsoft research focused on the popular concept that has inspired games such as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and a well-known play by John Guare. A "degree of separation" is a measure of social distance between people. You are one degree away from everyone you know, two degrees away from everyone they know, and so on.

But proof of the theory has been thin.

Its origins lie in the work done in the '60s by Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers. In an oft-cited 1969 work, they put the figure at 6.2, though they never referred to it as "degrees of separation."

Their finding was based on asking 296 people in Nebraska and Boston to send a letter through acquaintances to a Boston stockbroker.

The subjects were told to send the letter to an acquaintance who could best advance the letter to the target, but most failed: Only 64 of the original 296 letters reached the stockbroker. Of those letter chains that were complete, the average number of degrees of separation was 6.2. The high failure rate, and the possibility that the incomplete chains reflected much more distant relationships, led some to question the results. Also, all of the subjects were in the United States. What would happen if the test was expanded to the planet?

The idea was taken up again, this time on a global scale, by Columbia University researchers in a 2003 report of an e-mail experiment. More than 24,163 volunteers agreed to try to send an e-mail through acquaintances to one of 18 target persons in 13 countries. Only 384 of those 24,163 letter chains were completed. Of those completed chains, the average number of steps was 4, and using statistical techniques, the researchers estimated that the average length in all of the chains was between five and seven steps. Still, it was an estimate.

The Microsoft Messenger project, which was presented at a technical conference in Beijing in April, went further.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time a planetary-scale social network has been available to validate the well-known '6 degrees of separation' finding by Travers and Milgram," the researchers said.

For the purposes of their experiment, two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had sent one another a text message. The researchers looked at the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect 180 billion different pairs of users in the database. They found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less.

Some pairs, however, were separated by as many as 29 hops.

"Via the lens provided on the world by Messenger, we find that there are about '7 degrees of separation' among people,'' they wrote.

Microsoft Messenger use is most intense in North America, Europe and Japan, and in the coastal regions of the rest of the world. While the study sample is huge, there is little way of knowing whether Microsoft Messenger users are as socially connected as the rest of humanity.

Why does it matter that people from around the world are closely tied together? Researchers said that the knowledge might have applications for political organizations, charity efforts, natural disaster relief and missing-person searches.

"They could create large meshes of people who could be mobilized with the touch of a return key," Horvitz said.

It also means that, strictly speaking, six degrees of separation might be just a bit off. It's closer to seven, at least in their study.

"For a piece of folklore, it wasn't bad," said Duncan J. Watts, one of the Columbia researchers, now at Yahoo Research. "It was off only in its detail."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/...iOnoiyQ14iANEA

Researchers may have found cosmic Rosetta stone

WASHINGTON - Star light, star bright. The first star grew fast, but began slight. The first cosmological object formed in the universe was a tiny protostar with a mass of about 1 percent of our sun, according to U.S. and Japanese researchers who spent years developing a complex computer simulation of what it was like after the Big Bang that formed the universe.

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The single hair that could FINALLY prove the Yeti really exists

He is 8ft tall and has a roar that could start an avalanche.

Despite this, the yeti has always managed to remain abominably elusive.

But yesterday, claims that the legendary beast really does exist took a giant step forward.

Scientists have used microscopes to analyse of strands of hair found caught on some rocks in jungle near the India-Bangladesh border.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...Story/National

Foot found on Lake Huron beach in U.S.
Discovery prompts Michigan police to seek help from RCMP in B.C. where five feet found in last year

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http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/01/hmm-8/

Friday, August 1st, 2008

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project sends the photo below. It’s from a series of L.A. Times photos from a federal raid on a medical marijuana clinic in California. I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from it. But it is a little disconcerting.

MORE: I’m not implying Blackwater is doing actual federal drug policing in the U.S. (though they’re doing plenty of drug war mercenary work overseas). As far as I know, that wouldn’t be legal. But given what the group is doing overseas, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with them training drug agents for work here at home, either.

UPDATE: Well now that’s interesting. The L.A. Times has pulled the photo from its website.

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http://io9.com/5024479/a-new-explana...t-of-your-skin

A New Explanation for Morgellons, the Disease that Makes Wires Grow Out of Your Skin

If you've been growing blue and red wires out of sores on your skin like hundreds of Morgellons disease sufferers have (pictured), then you may actually have a nano-fiber chemtrail infection. Or so says the "chemtrail activist" community, a group of amateur scientists who study the "fibers" that they claim are raining down out of chemtrails in the sky. For those unfamiliar with conspiracy-speak, chemtrails are clouds of chemical substances created by hush-hush government experiments that I'm sure we'll hear more about when Fringe hits the airwaves this fall. So how is this all related to Morgellons?

According to a recent article by chemtrail activist Carolyn Williams Palit:

Chemtrail activists collect evidence that the chemtrail spray contains not only germs but conductive metals, blood cells, carbon powders, sedatives, nano-particulates, crystalline substances, alumina particulates, barium powders, and a kind of polyethylene-silicon fiber . . . The chemtrail fibers are a kind of infant, “pre-Morgellons” fiber. The Morgellons fibers are more developed, but the fibers are related to the type of nanotechnology that assembles nanowires.

So you're breathing in fibers from secret experiments, and then those fibers are self-assembling in your body and growing out of your skin. Also, Palit, reminds us, scientists have said that nano-fibers can enter your bloodstream and go INTO YOUR BRAIN. I think you know what that means.

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Originally Posted by amesj523

The single hair that could FINALLY prove the Yeti really exists

He is 8ft tall and has a roar that could start an avalanche.

Despite this, the yeti has always managed to remain abominably elusive.

But yesterday, claims that the legendary beast really does exist took a giant step forward.

Scientists have used microscopes to analyse of strands of hair found caught on some rocks in jungle near the India-Bangladesh border.

http://www.oxfordmail.net/news/headl...s_examined.php

'Yeti hairs' examined

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http://discovermagazine.com/2008/aug...fing-out-liars

The Science of Sniffing Out Liars

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http://theparanormalpastor.blogspot....on-attack.html

Gremlins on the Attack

This brought to mind an old story that the late Charles Berlitz wrote about in his book “Charles Berlitz’s World of Strange Phenomena” on page 209 in the short article “A Massacre in Flight” Mr. Berlitz describes a story with an eerie similarity.

“Something terrifying happened in the air one day in the late summer of 1939-and to this day the incident is shrouded in secrecy.

All that is known is that a military transport plane left the Marine naval Air Force Base in San Diego at 3:30 one afternoon. It and its thirteen man crew were making a routine flight to Honolulu. Three hours later, as the plane was over the Pacific Ocean, a frantic distress signal was sounded. Then the radio signal died.

A little later the plane limped back to base and made an emergency landing. Ground crew members rushed to the craft and when they boarded, they were horrified to see twelve dead men. The only survivor was the copilot, who, though badly injured, had stayed alive long enough to bring the plane back. A few minutes he was dead, too.

All of the bodies had large, gaping wounds. Even weirder, the pilot and copilot had emptied their .45 Colt automatic pistols at something. The empty shells were found lying on the floor of the cockpit. A foul, sulfuric odor pervaded the interior of the craft.

The exterior of the airplane was badly damaged, looking as it had been struck by missiles…The incident was successfully hushed up and did not come to light for fifteen years, when investigator Robert Coe Gardner learned of it from someone who was there. They mystery of what the crew encountered in midair that afternoon in 1939 has never been solved.”

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http://www.stlmag.com/media/St-Louis...g-the-Octopus/


Stalking the Octopus
For 20 years Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press has been tracking the oily tentacles of world conspiracy — and shaking readers out of their reality tunnels

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7505286.stm

Could water really have a memory?

_____

Interesting is how this guys work might give a different POV or an inclination into this "water memory" thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2006/10/22.html

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/10/11.html


"Water Theories
First hour guest Dr. Masaru Emoto and his English interpreter joined George in the L.A. studio to discuss some of Dr. Emoto's surprising theories about water.

According to Emoto, water is 'alive' and can be affected by positive and negative energy (vibrations). Good words and music cause water molecules to assemble into hexagonal-shaped crystals, Emoto explained, while bad vibrations cause water to form ugly, mal-formed shapes. Emoto also noted that there is a discernable difference in taste between good and bad water: good water has a sweet flavor, bad water is bitter. "


See also:

http://www.orangemane.com/BB/showthread.php?t=59051

http://www.orangemane.com/BB/showthread.php?t=56468

http://www.orangemane.com/BB/showthread.php?t=58234

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http://www.livescience.com/animals/0...frequency.html


'Bizarre!' Frog Tunes Ears to Specific Frequencies

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 22 July 2008 04:30 pm ET


An unusual Chinese frog can tune its ears to different sound frequencies, making it the only known animal that can actively dial up something like its local radio stations.

The species, called Odorrana tormota or concave-eared torrent frog, lives near the noisy Yellow Mountain hot springs in central China, and communicates by chirping audible and ultrasonic calls.

A new study found that the frogs have selective hearing, enabling them to listen to the high frequency range when the low frequency background noise of rushing water is too intense for them to pick out the calls of potential mates or rivals.

The frogs do this by opening and closing canals in their eardrums called Eustachian tubes to adjust the range their ears are sensitive to. When the researchers shined a light underneath the frog's chin, they could tell the animal's tubes were open when the light was visible through the eardrum. When the Eustachian tubes closed, circles of light glowing out through the ears disappeared (see video).

"We said, 'Whoa! This is bizarre!'" said University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher Albert Feng. "In all textbooks on sound communication and hearing in frogs, it is plainly stated that the Eustachian tubes are permanently open!"

The discovery, described in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help researchers design better hearing aids for humans that can hone in on important frequency ranges.

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This one i found interesting:

http://thefirstchurchofmutterhals.bl...-revision.html

Defining Female Chauvinism
Ariel Levy got it wrong. In the feminist author’s 2005 book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Levy posits that female chauvinism entails a celebration of sex at the expense of one’s dignity. She sites soft-core porn offerings, such as Girls Gone Wild, as evidence of the feminist movement’s inadvertent effects and bemoans the fact that women are now empowering themselves through sexual exploitation. While I could pen reams of criticism on the ill effects of so called “raunch culture”, I must find fault with Levy’s definition of female chauvinism. In my estimation, female chauvinism is what feminism has become.

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http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1531



Released: July 23, 2008

Middlebury Institute/Zogby Poll: One in Five Americans Believe States Have the Right to Secede

Survey finds 18% would support a secessionist effort in their state

UTICA, New York -One in five American adults - 22% - believe that any state or region has the right to "peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic," a new Middlebury Institute/Zogby International telephone poll shows.

I believe any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic:


Agree


22%

Disagree


73%

Not sure


5%

The level of support for the right of secession was consistent in every region in the country, though the percentage was slightly higher in the South (26%) and the East (24%). The figures were also consistent for every age group, but backing was strongest among younger adults, as 40% among those age 18 to 24 and 24% among those age 25 to 34 agreed states and regions have secession rights.

Broken down by race, the highest percentage agreeing with the right to secede was among Hispanics (43%) and African-Americans (40%). Among white respondents, 17% said states or regions should have the right to peaceably secede.

I would support a secessionist effort in my state:


Agree


18%

Disagree


72%

Not sure


10%

Politically, liberal thinkers were much more likely to favor the right to secession for states and regions, as 32% of mainline liberals agreed with the concept. Among the very liberal the support was only slightly less enthusiastic - 28% said they favored such a right. Meanwhile, just 17% of mainline conservatives thought it should exist as an option for states or regions of the nation.

Asked whether they would support a secessionist movement in their own state, 18% said they would, with those in the South most likely to say they would back such an effort. In the South, 24% said they would support such an effort, while 15% in the West and Midwest said the same. Here, too, younger adults were more likely than older adults to be supportive - 35% of those under age 30 would support secession in their state, compared to just 17% of those over age 65. Among African Americans, 33% said they would support secession, compared to just 15% of white adults. The more education a respondent had, the less likely they were to support secession - as 38% of those with less than a high school diploma would support it, compared to just 10% of those with a college degree.

To gauge the extent to which support for secession comes from a sense that the nation's current system is not working, a separate question was asked about agreement that "the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections." Nearly half of respondents agreed with this statement, with 27% who somewhat agree and 18% who strongly agree.

I believe the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections:


Agree


44%

Disagree


53%

Not sure


3%

The telephone poll, conducted by Zogby International, included 1,209 American adult respondents. It was conducted July 9-13, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.9 per cent.

The sponsor of the poll was the Middlebury Institute, a think tank for "the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination," based in Cold Spring, NY. Their website address is: MiddleburyInstitute.org.

For content, contact: Kirkpatrick Sale, Director, Middlebury Institute, at 845-265-3158 or Director@MiddleburyInstitute.org

For methodology, contact: Fritz Wenzel, 315-624-0200 ext. 229 or 419-205-0287 or fritz@zogby.com

For a detailed methodological statement on this survey, please visit:

http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1324
(7/23/2008)

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12308.html

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2195892/

Crimes and Misdemeanors
By Emily Bazelon, Kara Hadge, Dahlia Lithwick, and Chris Wilson
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET

Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!).

The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal.

And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.

Mouse over the scandals, and click on the scandal titles and the names in the diagram for more detailed information.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08...lar_pope/?HaHa

Knights Templar to Vatican: Give us back our assets

The Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France.

If the Holy See doesn’t comply, the warrior knights, renowned for liberating the Holy Land, will deploy that most fearsome of weapons: a laborious court case through the creaking Spanish legal system.

The Daily Telegraph reports that The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ has launched a court case in Spain, demanding Pope Benedict “recognise” the seizure of assets worth €100bn. The Spanish-based group of Templars apparently says in a statement: "We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order." This might come as a surprise to those who believe that the order of warrior monks – also credited with possessing the Holy Grail and laying the foundation of the European banking system - was smashed in 1307 by Pope Clement V and Philip IV of France.

At the time, the order was accused of a multitude of crimes, including two medieval biggies - sodomy and heresy.

However, recently discovered Vatican papers showed that the order had never been declared heretics, burnings at the stake for the leadership not withstanding.

Rather, it appeared that the order’s suppression was more a piece of realpolitik on the pope’s part to pacify Philip, who was somewhat irked by the prospect of the powerful order increasing its continental activities after Jerusalem fell to the Turks.

Despite the order’s brutal apparent suppression, its legacy has been claimed by numerous successor organisations, and besmirched by popular authors ad nauseum.

One of the successors, Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, is apparently recognised by Unesco.

We contacted the UK branch, otherwise known as the The Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England and Wales, to see if they could throw any light on the matter but they have yet to get back to us.

The Grand Priory’s website says the modern organisation is about humanitarian and charity work. There is no mention of the Holy Grail, though it does support the maintenance of the Holy Places.

And if you’re looking for esoteric rites or secret higher knowledge, you’re likely to be disappointed. The website says: “Please don’t expect to be enlightened with some supposed ‘secret’ knowledge, because nothing exists.”

Of course, any conspiracy theorist will tell you that’s exactly what you’d expect them to say. ®

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http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/12/the-best-of-2600/

2600 editor [Emmanuel Goldstein], has decided to publish The Best of 2600. It features some of the best essays on lockpicking, phone phreaking, social engineering, and other topics that the hacker quarterly had to offer.

Founded in 1984, 2600 was one of the major catalysts that got the modern hacker scene going. They published controversial articles on topics like red boxing and spawned monthly meetings. This firsthand account of the development of hacker culture will be released in July at The Last HOPE in New York.

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http://www.disinfo.com/content/story...ne-Application



Eight iPhone owners have joined an elite clan: Their Apple gadget is running a program that cost nearly $1,000.

When the iPhone first hit the market in June 2007, those who paid the $499 entry price — and signed the two-year AT&T contract — owned a status symbol. A year later, we have the iPhone 3G, Apple's speedier, sleeker and, most important, less expensive smart phone, which introduced a section for downloading third-party applications. Now that the phone is affordable enough for a wider audience, a new status symbol has emerged: a seemingly useless application called I Am Rich.

Its function is exactly what the name implies: to alert people that you have money in the bank. I Am Rich was available for purchase from the phone's App Store for, get this, $999.99 — the highest amount a developer can charge through the digital retailer, said Armin Heinrich, the program's developer. Once downloaded, it doesn't do much — a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext "I Am Rich." Once activated, it treats the user to a large, glowing gem (pictured below). That's about it. For a thousand dollars.

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Mystery Surrounds Leavenworth's Underground City

Some Leavenworth residents have been unknowingly walking around above an underground city, and no one seems to know who created it or why. Windows, doors and narrow paths beneath a title company at South Fourth and Delaware streets lead to storefronts stretching several city blocks and perhaps beyond. There are also several vaults around town. Some of have them been used for breweries.

"They were stores of some type. We just don't know what they were selling, who was running them," said Jennifer Lemons, who works at the title company. Some speculate the underground town was created in the 1800s and could have been used during slavery or for fugitives.

"We know that it was pretty secretive, whatever it was that was down here, because not too many people know anything about it," Lemons said. Katy Ryan is the editor for LV Magazine and has been researching the mysteries below.

"You know, you just think of the underground as such a dark, spooky place, but to think that this could have maybe been some kind of vibrant economic center is just kind of baffling really," Ryan said.

Construction workers are in the middle of a streetscape project, and some worry the history will be erased.

"I think it would just be kind of tragic if no one knew what it was or if no one cared," Lemons said.

Some people who've lived in Leavenworth their entire lives don't know anything about the underground city, and those who do don't know the historical significance.

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http://www.cropcircleanswers.com/CC_Vacuum_Domain.htm

Originally published in UFO Magazine/UK in 2003 as:
Non-Manmade Crop Circles
As a “Vacuum Domain" Phenomenon
An Aspect of the Physics Involved?

Updated August 7, 2008 as:
Of Crop Circles, Firebirds, and 'Vacuum Domain' Physics

By Kris Sherwood

With additional research contributed by Ed Sherwood



___

This is interesting

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0807144311.htm

Meta-materials Mimic Ice And Illuminate Why Water-ice Doesn't Fully Conform To Third Law Of Thermodynamics

The Third Law of Thermodynamics is on the minds of John Cumings, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, and his research group as they examine the crystal lattice structure of ice and seek to define exactly what happens when it freezes.

"Developing an accurate model of ice would help architects, civil engineers, and environmental engineers understand what happens to structures and systems exposed to freezing conditions," Cumings said. "It could also help us understand and better predict the movement of glaciers."

Understanding the freezing process is not as straightforward as it may seem. The team had to develop a type of pseudo-ice, rather than using real ice, in order to do it.

Despite being one of the most abundant materials on Earth, water, particularly how it freezes, is not completely understood. Most people learn that as temperatures fall, water molecules move more slowly, and that at temperatures below 32º F/0º C, they lock into position, creating a solid—ice. What's going on at a molecular level, says Cumings, is far more complicated and problematic. For one thing, it seems to be in conflict with a fundamental law of physics.

The Third Law of Thermodynamics states that as the temperature of a pure substance moves toward absolute zero (the mathematically lowest temperature possible) its entropy, or the disorderly behavior of its molecules, also approaches zero. The molecules should line up in an orderly fashion.

Ice seems to be the exception to that rule. While the oxygen atoms in ice freeze into an ordered crystalline structure, its hydrogen atoms do not.

"The hydrogen atoms stop moving," Cumings explains, "but they just stop where they happen to lie, in different configurations throughout the crystal with no correlation between them, and no single one lowers the energy enough to take over and reduce the entropy to zero."

So is the Third Law truly a law, or more of a guideline?

"It's a big fundamental question," says Cumings. "If there's an exception, it's a rule of thumb."

Materials that violated the Third Law as originally written were found in the 1930s, mainly non-crystalline substances such as glasses and polymers. The Third Law was rewritten to say that all pure crystalline materials' entropy moves toward zero as their temperatures move toward absolute zero. Ice is crystalline—but it seems only its oxygen atoms obey the Law. Over extremely long periods of time and at extremely low temperatures, however, ice may fully order itself, but this is something scientists have yet to prove.

Creating an accurate model of ice to study has been difficult. The study of ice's crystal lattice requires precise maintenance of temperatures below that of liquid nitrogen (-321 °F/-196 °C), and also a lot of time: no one knows how long it takes for ice to ultimately reach an ordered state—or if it does at all. Experiments have shown that if potassium hydroxide is added to water, it will crystallize in an ordered way—but researchers don't know why, and the addition shouldn't be necessary due to the Third Law's assertion that pure substances should be ordered as they freeze.

To overcome these problems, scientists have designed meta-materials, which attempt to mimic the behavior of ice, but are created out of completely different substances. A previous material, spin ice, was designed from rare earth elements and had a molecular structure resembling ice, with magnetic atoms (spins) representing the position of hydrogen atoms. However, it did not always behave like ice.

*cont'd on site

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http://www.physorg.com/news137388314.html

High-flying kites tethered to generators could supply as much as 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 100,000 homes, according to researchers from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.

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http://www.physorg.com/news137648388.html

Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture abundant solar energy
Nanotechnology / Physics
Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.