"Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that a puzzling gap in the electronic structures of some high-temperature superconductors could indicate a new phase of matter. Understanding this "pseudogap" has been a 20-year quest for researchers who are trying to control and improve these breakthrough materials, with the ultimate goal of finding superconductors that operate at room temperature.

"Our findings point to management and control of this other phase as the correct path toward optimizing these novel superconductors for energy applications, as well as searching for new superconductors," said Zhi-Xun Shen of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), a joint institute of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. Shen led the team of researchers that made the discovery; their findings appear in the March 25 issue of Science.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency, losing nothing to resistance. Currently used in medical imaging, highly efficient electrical generators and maglev trains, they have the potential to become a truly transformative technology; energy applications would be just one beneficiary. This promise is hampered by one thing, though: they work only at extremely low temperatures. Although research over the past 25 years has developed "high-temperature superconductors" that work at warmer temperatures, even the warmest of them -- the cuprates -- must be chilled half-way to absolute zero before they will superconduct.

The prospect of being able to dramatically increase that working temperature, thus making superconductors easier and cheaper to use, has kept interest in the cuprates at the boiling point. But to change something you have to understand it, and a puzzle called the pseudogap has stood in the way.

One hallmark of a superconductor is a so-called "energy gap" that appears when the material transitions into its superconducting phase. The gap in electron energies arises when electrons pair off at a lower energy to do the actual job of superconducting electric current..."

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"So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion..."

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-- Chris Jordan's trailer to his upcoming film 'Midway', in which he documents the destruction that man-made materials are doing to natural wildlife. I've posted about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and also a similar floating landfill that was found in the Atlantic, - which is what fuels the decline of these islands and the wildlife they support.

These photos really show the devastating effects man-produced refuse, especially materials like plastic, have on wildlife, - Midway photos by Chris Jordan.

"China appears to be moving aggressively to plug holes in its "Great Firewall" censorship system, causing frustration for businesses and web users, foreign Internet companies and analysts said.

Google's email service Gmail has been heavily disrupted, as have several popular online services providing encryption software that many businesses and individuals depend on for web security and to get around the firewall.

The problems have followed a call for subtle, weekly "strolling" protests in China inspired by political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, and indicate the government is intent on nipping dissent in the bud, analysts said.

"They're testing new capabilities to see if there are technical means of dealing with the possibility of organised opposition," Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based political analyst, told AFP.

China operates an ever-expanding system of Internet control and censorship dubbed the "Great Firewall of China", aimed at snuffing out information or comment that the government considers a threat to its authority.

Gmail users have complained of access difficulties in recent weeks that have forced some to switch to other services such as Hotmail and Yahoo!, and Google points the finger at the Chinese government..."

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"Shooting for the stars will first require a lot of down-to-Earth elbow grease, as NASA's new 100-Year Starship project illustrates. The effort, to journey between stars in the 2100s, began with a workshop and now is in the study phase.

NASA's Ames Research Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are collaborating on the $1 million 100-Year Starship Study, an effort to take the first step in the next era of space exploration.

The study will scrutinize the business model needed to develop and mature technologies needed to enable long-haul human space treks a century from now. Kick-started by a strategic planning workshop in January, the project has brought together more than two dozen farsighted futurists, NASA specialists, science fiction writers, foundation aficionados and educators.

But for the moment, put aside all those Vulcan mind melds and get a grip. Launching a truly interstellar human voyage is a goal that will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources.

"The year-long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed," according to DARPA thinkers..."

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"Robots from other nations are joining in the efforts to stabilise the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

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"My other problem is me being an atheist, " "Unless I'm going to appear in people's visions and tell them I don't exist," part 3 if you're planning on just watching one of them for some odd reason... Why would you do that?

"Scientists probing the deaths of baby dolphins in the area affected by last year's BP oil spill have been ordered by the government not to speak about the project.

Wildlife biologists who have been contracted by the National Marine Fisheries Service to investigate a huge rise in dolphin mortality this year must keep their findings confidential.

The gagging order was imposed because the review of the deaths is part of the federal criminal investigation into last year's BP disaster.

A letter sent out to senior scientists who are not working on the project and are baffled by the silence, said: 'Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the investigative team without prior approval.'

About 90 dolphins died last year, but this year the toll has jumped to 200 already.Dr. Erin Fougeres, a marine biologist with the Fisheries Service, said: 'We are treating the evidence, which are the dolphin samples, like a murder case.

'The chain of custody is being closely watched. Every dolphin sample is considered evidence in the BP case now."

The secrecy has angered many in the scientific community who are used to making their findings public and the free flow of information, Reuters reports.

One biologist, who has been tracking dolphin deaths for more than 20 years and does not want to be named, said: 'This throws accountability right out the window. We are confused and angry because they claim they want team work, but at the same time they are leaving the marine experts out of the loop completely.' ..."

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"Scientists have brought a newly-discovered bug back to life after more than 120,000 years in hibernation. It raises hopes that dormant life might be revived on Mars.

The tiny purple microbe, dubbed called Herminiimonas glaciei, lay trapped beneath nearly two miles of ice in Greenland. It took 11 months to revive it by gently warming it in an incubator.

Finally the bug sprang back to life and began producing fresh colonies of purple brown bacteria.

Space scientists are excited by the find because it suggests alien creatures might be resurrected on other frozen worlds - especially the Red Planet.

NASA revealed in January that plumes of methane on Mars could be from living organisms. Some scientists believe that any microbes are lying dormant beneath thick underground ice on the Red Planet. A future space mission could dig them up and bring them back to life.

A European orbiting spacecraft, Mars Express, has identified other regions that may have sheltered primitive forms of alien life.

The new Earth bug was found by Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University.

The team showed great patience in coaxing the dormant microbe back to life. First they incubated their samples at 2�C (two degrees C) for seven months and then at 5�C (five degrees C) for a further four and a half months, after which colonies of very small purple-brown bacteria were seen.

The H. glaciei microbe is tiny - ten to 50 times smaller than E. coli. Experts say its small size probably helped it to survive in the liquid veins among ice crystals and the thin liquid film on their surfaces.

Dr Loveland-Curtze says that similar microorganisms could exist on other worlds and studying them in extreme conditions on Earth may provide insight into what sorts of life forms could survive elsewhere in the solar system..."

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"Qatari scientists claim to have cracked the problem of shade for crowded stadiums during the 2022 World Cup: Artificial clouds.

Local temperatures can poke upward of 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 Celsius), and relentless summer sun would be a big barrier to enjoyment for the hundreds of thousands of football fans expected to attend in person. The games were originally going to be moved to winter months, but FIFA has since reconsidered (no doubt pondering the disruption this could cause in competing nations' own football leagues). Air conditioning spaces for crowds, and practice arenas for the hundreds of players themselves, is a possibility of course, and will happen--but the environmental burden could be enormous, even with plans to use solar power to generate some of the energy needed by air conditioning units.

Hence, the idea by Qatari science teams to create huge artificial clouds and float them over venues to block direct sunlight. Essentially, the devices are massive dirigibles filled with helium, built of carbon fiber and super-light fabrics, and equipped with four solar-powered engines to move them into place and keep them stable even in changing winds. Each "cloud" would cost around $500,000, and unlike the Zeppelin-like blimps you're thinking of, the clouds would be large, flat, inflated platforms designed to produce maximum shade.

Naturally, we speculate that the underside of these huge structures will find a secondary use in the extraordinarily ad-centric affair that is the World Cup. After all, Goodyear does a good job of advertising itself with its conventional blimp, and the flat-ish underside of the artificial cloud would be absolutely ideal for giant, projected adverts..."

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