flickering pictures

A California company called LS9 says it has done the impossible: come up with cheap, homegrown, renewable “carbon-negative” oil to satisfy the world’s growing fuel needs. With bug poo.
From the Times:

To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs -– very, very small ones –- so that when they feed on agricultural waste such […]

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On October 26, 2007, the CBC ran a story on the ZENN, a clean, silent, fully electric car made in Quebec. The award-winning car was being sold in the U.S., Mexico and Europe, but had been waiting a staggering 18 months for Canadian safety approvals to come through. Two weeks after the CBC […]

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From Science News:

You bite into a piece of candy and find a cricket leg. Eewwww. Or notice that raisin in a bowl of cereal has legs and wings. Bam, down the disposal it goes. Such filth in foods is supposedly illegal, but the Food and Drug Administration’s actual tolerance is far from zero. FDA rules […]

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Computerworld reports that Xerox is showcasing its new reusable paper — an eco-friendly innovation with special molecules that automatically erase text after 24 hours, leaving the paper blank and ready for printing once again. This sounds great for those executive types who still feel they absolutely must print out every single e-mail they receive.
No […]

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British Columbia’s forests are being ravaged by a scourge of tiny pine beetles, which are turning lush green trees into rotting pulp at an alarming rate. The beetles are killing so many trees that the greenhouse gases released by decomposing wood are expected to outweigh all similar gases emitted by BC’s 4.5 million residents […]

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I admit it, I like lists. List of strange things, cool objects, bizarre coincindences, you name it. Usually I spare you guys the full extent of my geekiness, but this one was too neat to pass up.
The good people at the aptly named List Universe have compiled images, descriptions and causes of some […]

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We’ve been hearing a lot lately about alternative energies — particularly biofuels of questionable value like ethanol — but in December a really neat pilot project seems to have passed, for the most part, under the radar.
Pacific Gas & Electric, a major player in California’s energy industry, is backing a Canadian-made power plant prototype that […]

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