The Year in Energy

Capturing more light: A startup called 1366 Technologies says that it has found a way to significantly increase the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Ordinarily, the flat wires on the surface of solar cells that are used to collect electrical current prevent light from reaching the active material in a cell, reducing efficiency. The company’s new design traps much of the light that would have been reflected. In the picture, some of the red light from a laser is redirected from the wire to areas on the cell where the light can be absorbed. The new approach dramatically helps improve the performance of solar cells without increasing costs.
Credit: 1366 Technologies

When oil prices shot to $145 per barrel this year, supporters of alternative-energy technologies of all kinds cheered. Spirits fell, however, especially at some advanced biofuels companies, after oil prices plummeted to $40, a contingency considered at the beginning of this year in our realistic assessment of biofuels.

Yet the year has seen some remarkable advances in energy technology, and many of the innovators in this area remain hopeful that the coming decade won't be like the 1980s, when a drop in oil prices snuffed out interest in alternative energy.

A number of improvements to wind turbines could increase the amount of power that they produce and make wind power cheaper. Among the improvements were new blade designs inspired by whales, as well as better generators and a new enclosed design that could double power output.

Electric vehicles and plug-ins also took steps forward with better batteries, as well as with an ambitious plan by a company called Better Place to develop a vehicle-charging and battery-swapping network that will begin in Israel and Denmark. More recently, the same company has announced projects in Australia, California, and Hawaii. One of the cars that could be a part of this system was announced by Renault--indeed, all of the major automakers have confirmed projects for plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

Solar panels continue to improve. Experimental solar concentrators could make solar power as cheap as electricity from coal. Modifications to conventional solar cells could lower prices even sooner. A basic research finding could lead to a cheap way to store solar power--and, for that matter, any other source of electricity. That could be a boon to the power grid and allow renewable sources to supply much more of our electricity. (See David Talbot's "Lifeline for Renewable Power.")

Meanwhile, as the United States lurches along without an energy policy, oil-rich sheikhs in the Middle East are pressing forward with the construction of a car-free, zero-emissions city in the desert.

While predictions of a deep recession, as well as continuing low oil prices and credit woes, during the upcoming year remain worrisome, the United States has a new administration that, going by its rhetoric and cabinet appointees, will strongly support alternative energy. And already, technological advances have made renewable-power prices competitive with prices for conventional power in many places worldwide, allowing sources such as wind and solar to thrive even without government support.

Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

youtube.com — This is a well-known version of 'Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World', by Israel Kamakawiwo Ole. I think this is absolutely the most beautiful video, set to his music. The song reminds me of simpler times.

WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kamakawiwo Ole

First time I heard this song was at the end of the movie, 50 First Dates. You can see how many times this song gets used.

here http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0436377/

A day at the beach: Mesmerizing time lapse video

Helpless from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Time travel happens all the time

By Peter Becker/Gatehouse News Service

By NASA/European Space Agency
This picture shows nebulous wisps of a supernova remnant, from a star that exploded thousands of years ago. Nicknamed the Pencil Nebula, it was formed by a shock wave encountering dense interstellar gas. The bright star in center is a foreground star, in the constellation Vela.">

By NASA/European Space Agency

This picture shows nebulous wisps of a supernova remnant, from a star that exploded thousands of years ago. Nicknamed the Pencil Nebula, it was formed by a shock wave encountering dense interstellar gas. The bright star in center is a foreground star, in the constellation Vela.

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Westwood - Time travel seems like stuff of science fiction, but in a sense, astronomers do it all the time. The night sky before us is a vista of time, as we look further and further back in the hundreds or thousands of years it takes starlight to reach our eyes. Another record of time is etched on the sky by way of “light echoes.”

Sky and Telescope reports that astronomers have found away to examine the light from a supernova blast that erupted, and faded away, more than 400 years ago. The astronomer’s time machine is his or her telescope, attached with a spectrograph that splits the light into its rainbow of colors and records the data the spectrum contains.
Supernovae are stars that blow up. That doesn’t sound scientific enough, but that’s what happens. Not all stars blow up, thank heavens. Those that do briefly outshine the galaxy and make a show for the broader Universe to see, a grand finale of a star’s time to shine. On the average, one will occur every 50 years or so in the Milky Way Galaxy and the only reason we don’t see them very often is the enormous plane of cosmic dust that acts as a veil on much of the stellar background.

That very dust, however, has allowed astronomers to detect light from the supernova of November 11, 1572, which was noticed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who was startled to see a bright new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. He watched it night to night as the star grew brighter than Venus, and was visible in the blue daylight sky for two weeks. The mysterious star took 16 months to fade away from view, in the age before telescopes.

This event alerted Tycho that the stars were not eternal and unchanging, but there was a lot more to seek out and understand.

All that is left of the actual site of the supernova is a wisp of expanding debris which astronomers can best detect from radio emission, infrared light and X-rays given off. The evidence suggests this was a classic type of supernova known as “Type 1a” which involves a runaway thermonuclear blast of a white dwarf star. These type of supernovae have an intrinsic luminosity- they give out a certain amount of light more or less common to them all. Knowing this output and the faintness of the light they see in their telescope, astronomers can use them to deduce the distance. This is invaluable for estimating the distance of far away galaxies, where on occasion, a supernova will be revealed.
In September, a team from Germany, Netherlands and Japan did some time traveling. They were able to identify the light echo of the original supernova light, reflecting off a nebula of cosmic dust. This expanse of dust is many light years to the side and rear of the supernova Tycho saw 436 years ago, far enough away to give the supernova light 436 years of time to reach the nebula and then reflect back to our eyes in the year 2008.
This light echo is extremely faint, but the researchers were able to detect it and resolve a spectrum of colors, complete with the identifying lines of elements that made up the exploding star. Those elements absorb a thin slice (frequency) of the light depending on what type of element. Like an identifying fingerprint, dark lines in the spectrum of color tell us what the source of the light is made of.

From this study, Tycho’s supernova does appear to be a classic “Type 1a.”
As the decades and centuries go by, that light echo will reach further in the dusty plane of the galaxy, presumably allowing future generations of astronomers, hopefully with more advanced technology, to further examine the stellar wonder of November 11, 1572.
Although far beyond our reach today, perhaps some day someone will be able to detect light echoes that reflected off the Earth in the distant past and take a look back into time. Maybe they’ll see me typing away this column, though I doubt it since I’m inside a building and not near a window and its cloudy today anyway... just in case, I’ll remember to smile!

DIY Video Poker Table

Know When to Hold 'Em: courtesy Jason Kiely

Every Friday night, about 10 regulars gather at my place in Perth, Australia, to play Texas Hold 'Em. I'm the co-founder of a technology-services company, L7 Solutions. I'm also a chronic tinkerer and a poker lover.Last fall I decided to up the ante, so to speak, and started planning a table that could generate a video display showing what cards each player has, how much they bet, and their chances of winning the hand. It makes our humble games look just like the tournaments you see on TV.

Of course, some of my mates were skeptical that it wouldn't come out looking cool, so I resolved to build something that would really wow them. I spent three months on the project, integrating radio-frequency-ID antennas and a central reader unit into a custom-built table to track the movement of tagged cards and chips. I also hooked up four video cameras and capture devices to record the action, and connected it all to my PC. Then I wrote software to generate graphics from the game data and lay it on top of a live video feed. It's streamed to a high-def big screen, so the defeated players can watch the rest of the game in my viewing room -- or, as I call it, the Losers' Lounge.

See how the video poker table works.

How The Video Poker Table Works: Paul Wootton

How The Video Poker Table Works

3 months; $8,500

Capturing the Action
Four cameras (two dome, two rail) record the game, and capture devices convert the video to MPEG4 format and load it onto the PC. A custom software application combines the video files with RFID data from the tagged chips and cards to create a simulcast. (Televised tournaments instead use concealed cams to peek at players' hands.)

Following the Money
The RFID reader tracks what cards are played and what chips have been bet. Milner's Game Engine program reads that data and applies the rules of poker to come up with each player's chance of winning the hand and to generate graphics to lay over the video. When a player dumps his cards over the antenna into the "muck" pile, the application notes that the player has folded.

Putting it Onscreen
A commercial library of code called TVideoGrabber contains instructions for getting the video from the capture devices to stream onscreen. The video-processing engine uses information from the Game Engine -- such as who's in, who's out, who's up and who's down -- to determine which camera feed to show during a hand. When only two players are left, the cameras zoom in on those players.

Better Luck Next Time: Losing players watch the rest of the game in another room courtesy Jason Kiely

Twins born on separate days, months, years

One was born just before midnight on New Year's, the other just after

The Associated Press

ROCHESTER, Mich. - They're twins, all right, despite what their spanking new birth certificates say.

Tariq Griffin entered the world at 12:17 a.m. on New Year's Day at Crittenton Hospital in Rochester, Mich. Twin brother Tarrance was born a bit earlier — 26 minutes to be exact.

That means the boys have the unique distinction of having been born on different days, months and years.

Their dad, Tarrance Sr., is also a twin. The parents say the boys are doing well, which is their main concern.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Mini SLR

Little Shot: A concept camera from Olympus squeezes the workings of an SLR into a pocket-sized body. Courtesy Olympus

The big news in cameras is actually pretty small. A new format with the wonky name “micro four thirds” (referring to the image sensor’s size and 4:3 aspect ratio), combines the interchangeable lenses of an SLR with the compact body of a point-and-shoot. The first model, Panasonic’s G1, is about the size of the most petite SLRs but uses even smaller lenses. A design concept from Olympus shows the potential for more-diminutive future models.

Get It: Panasonic G1: $800 with lens; panasonic.com Courtesy Panasonic

To shrink the cameras, the companies removed a key part of SLRs—the mirror that sits behind the lens and reflects images into the viewfinder. The downside is that you have to compose shots using an LCD screen, which isn’t as accurate as looking right through the lens of an SLR.

On the upside, you get the other benefits of an SLR in a compact package. The G1’s 12.1-megapixel image sensor, though smaller than most SLR’s, is about six times as large as a high-end point-and-shoot’s. Bigger sensors absorb more light to capture richer details and colors, especially in dim settings. And the ability to change lenses lets you shoot anything from extreme close-ups to wide shots to a warped fish-eye view. Best of all, you’ll finally have room to pack all those lenses in your bag.

Pharaoh's Feminine Physique Explained

Peek Inside: A CT scan of the skull of King Tut, who may have been his son, shows the same abnormal head shape. K. Garrett/National Geographic

The Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton’s voluptuous body shape and elongated head and neck, recorded in ancient depictions of the male ruler, have long perplexed historians. But now Irwin Braverman, a professor of dermatology and an expert on visual diagnosis at the Yale University School of Medicine, is offering a theory on the characteristics, which are not found in representations of other pharaohs: Akhenaton may have suffered from two genetic disorders that affect body shape.

King Tut: Paintings and statues of Akhenaton suggest that he suffered from genetic diseases. K. Garrett/National Geographic

Akhenaton, who ruled from 1353 to 1336 B.C., is shown in paintings and statues as having prominent breasts and buttocks—indications, Braverman says, of a hormone disorder. An overproduction of the enzyme aromatase, which is instrumental in the body’s production of the hormone estrogen, is the likely culprit. In males, the disorder results in the development of feminine traits by puberty. Depictions that show Akhenaton’s prepubescent daughters with breasts support the genetic hormone-disorder theory.

Another genetic disease, craniosynostosis, which can result in the joints in the skull fusing too early, could have caused the pharaoh’s elongated head and neck. Egyptologists sometimes refer to the shape, which was common among 18th-dynasty royalty, as “royal head.” Illustrations of Akhenaton’s daughters also show the elongated head, as do mummies of his progeny. One such descendant: child-king Tutankhamen, who some believe may have been Akhenaton’s son. Akhenaton’s mummy has yet to be found, but Braverman hopes that DNA analysis of mummies of the pharaoh’s descendants may one day confirm his theory.

Huge Sonic Fan gets Ban on Hedgehogs overturned

11-year-old fights city hall, and wins

Story by Chad Lawhorn

4:34 p.m. Friday, January 2, 2009

This little guy changed Lawrence law...Or maybe it was this little guy

11 year-old Judson King became so enamored with the blue video game character Sonic the Hedgehog, he decided he needed a real one.

Then . .

"I got the breaking news they were illegal and that kind of made me really mad," Judson said.

Lawrence's animal code has long prohibited the fury rodents in the city limits, a fact that didn't particularly upset Judson's mother.

"I thought, that's my out. Now I don't have to get him one. Then he said, 'How do we make them legal?'" mom Rebecca Weeks said.

And that began a three year effort, perhaps crusade is a better word, to make hedgehogs legal in the city.

"I pretty much did research every single night for the past three years, and I daydreamed about having them. I had about 5,000 pictures of them," Judson said.

After the research, Judson sent a letter to city commissioners in January 2008, essentially asking them why they didn't like hedgehogs.

Eleven months later, commissioners put his issue on a city commission agenda.

"I was just playing with hedgehog pictures and then my mom comes in and says, "You are going in front of the city commission on Tuesday. I thought I would faint," Judson said.

At city hall, Judson arrived in a suit and tie and armed with personalized folders full of hedgehog facts for each of the commissioners.

It was no contest. Commissioners could not find a good reason why they were banned in the first place.

Judson King one, city commissioner nothing.

"I loved having him. I think he ought to run for commission in April," City Commissioner Sue Hack said.

Judson may not have the time.

Three years after he first asked for it, Judson got his hedgehog, Little Luke, for Christmas.

"Oh, it has been really worth it," Rebecca said.

Judson says all is going well with his new pet. But because hedgehogs are nocturnal, Little Luke's stirring frequently wakes Judson in the middle of the night.

Saltwater Rising

Rising sea levels cause problems as they erode and flood coastlines and as they mix salt water with fresh water: Getty Images

Dear EarthTalk: With all the talk of rising seas, what could happen to the rivers that flow into the oceans? Will they reverse flow? Will rising seas back up into fresh water lakes? And what happens to our groundwater should saltwater flow backwards into it? -- Sandy Smith, concerned Michigander

The intrusion of saltwater from the sea into rivers and groundwater is a serious issue, but the threat is not from a reversal of flow, and our far inland lakes and rivers are not expected to be directly affected by the salty water of our oceans. However, the sensitive areas around the edges of our continents, where fresh water meets salt water, are at risk, and greater efforts must be taken to protect them. Some 40 percent of world population lives less than 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the shoreline.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average sea levels should rise eight to 34 inches by the year 2100, a much faster pace than the four-to-10 inch increase of the past century. Seas rise because of higher global temperatures, melting mountain glaciers and polar ice caps, and other factors. Higher temperatures also cause thermal expansion of ocean water, intensifying the problem.

Rising sea levels cause major problems as they erode and flood coastlines and, yes, as they mix salt water with fresh. A November 2007 article in ScienceDaily posited that coastal communities could face significant losses in fresh water supplies as saltwater intrudes inland. And whereas it had been previously assumed that salty water could only intrude underground as far as it did above ground, new studies show that in some cases salt water can go 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.

Salty water invading groundwater can reach not only residential water supplies but intakes for agricultural irrigation and industrial uses, as well. Economic effects include loss of coastal fisheries and other industries, coastal protection costs, and the loss of once-valuable coastal property as people move inland.

Estuaries at the mouths of rivers have in the past handled rising ocean levels. Sediment that accumulates along the edge of an estuary can raise the level of the land as the sea levels rise. And mangrove swamps, which buffer many a coastal zone around the world, flourish in brackish conditions. But because of our preference for living in coastal areas, and our habit of re-engineering our surroundings accordingly, humans make matters worse by preventing natural processes from managing the change. On the coast, we build roads and buildings, and replace natural buffers like mangrove swamps with dikes and bulkheads to control flooding, which make the problem worse by preventing beach sediment from collecting. And as we dam rivers and create reservoirs, we trap the sediment that would naturally flow down to the sea.

In some places, changes are happening. Governments are beginning to restrict or prohibit building in setback zones along the coast where risk of erosion is the greatest. A newer policy of “rolling easements” is also being tried, where developers are allowed to build in restricted zones but will be required to remove the structures if and when they become threatened by erosion. The IPCC recommends more drastic actions, such as creating more marshes and wetlands as buffers against the rising level of the sea, and migrating populations and industry away from coastlines altogether.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E - The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881 USA; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek ; or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Panasonic to launch world’s first fully paperless fax machine

by Serkan Toto on January 2, 2009

Yes, it’s true that people (and especially businesses) still use fax machines, even in Japan. The market seems to be big enough to make Panasonic Japan develop what’s reportedly the world’s first fax machine that enables users to both send and receive messages without having to use paper.

Panasonic will offer several of these devices under the KX-PW 608 series [JP], which will be available in Japan January 23 (there is no announcement regarding sales outside Japan yet). Just like sending emails on a cell phone, users can use the built-in keypad to type messages.

Alternatively, it’s possible to send documents saved in Word or other formats without having to use a PC. All fax messages can be read and forwarded through a built-in screen without having to print them on paper first.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Spinning Silk into Sensors

Fiorenzo Omenetto on the steps of the Tufts bioengineering building, where he makes silk optical devices. Credit: Porter Gifford

Multimedia See how cocoons are turned into optical devices. Watch Fiorenzo Omenetto explain his work in silk optics.

Silkworm cocoons shipped by the boxful from Japan to an optics lab at Tufts University will meet a different fate from those headed to textile factories around the world. Rather than being woven into curtains or clothing, the strong protein fibers that caterpillars once spun around themselves will be used to build optical materials that can serve as the basis for sensors and other devices. Bioengineer Fiorenzo Omenetto, who creates the devices, ultimately hopes to build implantable, biodegradable sensors that could help monitor patients' progress after surgery or track chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Omenetto realized that silk was good for more than shirts and ties, he says, when he got to talking with David Kaplan, the head of Tufts's biomedical-engineering department, with whom he shares a hallway. Kaplan turns silk proteins into cell-friendly scaffolds for engineering biological tissues, including corneal implants. The strongest natural fiber known, silk is favored by tissue engineers because it's mechanically tough but degrades harmlessly inside the body.

Trained as a physicist, Omenetto figured that if silk made good artificial corneas, it might also make good optical devices. As it turns out, he says, the silk devices he's making work as well as those made from traditional optical materials like glass and plastic--in some cases, even better. And unlike those materials, silk doesn't need to be processed at high temperatures or with harsh chemicals.

That's one reason that silk is so well suited for use in biosensors: because silk devices can be manufactured in a gentle environment, it's possible to incorporate additional biological molecules (such as proteins) into them as they are being built. These molecules serve as sensors that, once integrated into the silk devices, can remain active for years. In the devices that ­Omenetto and Kaplan are developing, proteins embedded in the optical material efficiently bind to a target such as oxygen or a bacterial protein; when they do, the light transmitted by the sensor changes color.

Optical Recipe
Omenetto's recipe begins with cocoons spun by the silkworm Bombyx mori. First, he says, "you cut the cocoon and remove the worm--much to the chagrin of vegans." Senior research technician Carmen Preda then boils the cocoons in a solution containing the salt sodium carbonate. This helps dissolve sericin, a gluey glycoprotein that holds the cocoons together but causes immune reactions in humans. After the silk fibers dry, they're dissolved in a solution of lithium bromide. When it cools, Preda uses a syringe to load it into a dialysis cartridge. She sets this inside a beaker of water, which draws out the salt.

What's left in the cartridge is a clear, viscous solution of the purified protein silk fibroin. Preda removes this silk "syrup" from the cartridge with a syringe and loads it into a row of test tubes; this is the starting material for Omenetto's optical components. If he wants to use the components in a biosensor, he can add a protein targeting a particular molecule--say, oxygen-binding hemoglobin--at this stage. "You have this nice water-based solution that you can mix anything into," Omenetto says.

Hemoglobin is a relatively stable ­protein, but the silk materials can also preserve the activity of less resilient proteins, such as enzymes. As a test case, the Tufts researchers have made silk structures containing a volatile horseradish enzyme called peroxidase; glucose sensors might incorporate hexokinase, an enzyme that binds to the sugar.

The molds used to shape the silk-protein solution into optical devices are patterned with nanoscale features. Such fine detailing is important in optics, since light interacts best with features at a scale no bigger than its own wavelength--about 400 to 700 nanometers in the case of visible light. In the ambient light of the lab, the plastic molds' nanopatterned regions shine softly, like the inside of an abalone shell.

One device the researchers have made is a hologram, demonstrating that silk has the same versatility as other optical materials. At the lab bench, postdoc Jason ­Amsden uses a pipette to deposit silk solution onto a mold etched with the Tufts logo. He leaves the mold on the counter at room temperature for about eight hours--long enough for the proteins to set into a flexible, irregular oval displaying the logo in a three-dimensional pattern of iridescent pinks and blues.

In other molds around the lab, different types of optical devices have already finished drying. Amsde­n selects one and gently peels it from the mold using tweezers. The device is a translucent red card impregnated with hemoglobin and patterned with several optical elements, including a diffraction grating that splits white light into its component colors.

Silk Sensors
The card acts as a simple oxygen sensor: light passing through it changes wavelength slightly, depending on how much oxygen has bound to the embedded hemoglobin. These changes can't be seen with the naked eye but can be detected by a photo­diode, a chip that turns light into electrical current. When a drop of oxygen-rich blood is placed on the sensor, for example, the hemoglobin draws in oxygen from it, and the wavelength of light registered by the photodiode shifts.

Oxygen is just one possible target for Omenetto's devices. Gratings with antibodies and enzymes embedded in them could sense just about any medically interesting molecule, be it glucose or a tumor marker. And the Tufts researchers envision not just lab sensors but implantable ones. One application Omenetto has developed will be particularly important: silk optical fibers for carrying light from the surface of the skin to the implanted sensors and back, so that it can be read by a photodetector. The sensors could be implanted during surgeries such as tumor resections and then used to monitor patients for signs of infection or recurring cancer. Omenetto and Kaplan also hope to integrate the sensors into future tissue-engineering structures that would help doctors track how well a new tissue is being incorporated into the body. The devices would dissolve harmlessly with the rest of the tissue's supportive structures.

Future sensors, Omenetto says, will have designs that lead to more dramatic color changes when the sensors bind to their targets. To create sensors that can be read with the naked eye, he drew inspiration from another insect, the morph­o butterfly. Its shimmering blue color is due not to pigments but to the way light interacts with nanoscale protein pillars on its wings. Changing the pillars' structure eliminates the color. Omenetto imagines a silk-based sensor patterned with nanoscale structures that make it appear blue; a target molecule binding to proteins in the sensor would subtly change the nano­structures, making the color change or disappear. Omenetto says that the basic technologies for doing this are in place; it's simply a matter of designing the right molds.

Sexiest Geeks of 2008

Hey, geek -- want to be sexy? Better start a video blog. That's the takeaway from the hot and heavy voting in Wired.com's 2008 Sexiest Geeks competition.

Vloggers Philip DeFranco (pictured above, center) and Marina Orlova (above left) harnessed their massive online audiences to shoot past actors, musicians and assorted brainiacs to become the top-rated sexy geeks in this year's extremely unscientific reader poll. Artist and MythBusters debunker Kari Byron (above right) came in No. 3 at the time of our official tabulation.

DeFranco, whose manic vlogging at PhillyD.tv and on YouTube (his user name is sxephil), has generated a huge fan base. His hop to the top of this year's Sexiest Geeks list is something of a shocker for a contest that's usually dominated by women.

Orlova's rise as top-rated female sexy geek is not so surprising. The busty wordsmith, whose HotForWords linguistic lectures regularly burn up the YouTube charts, leapt to No. 2 top-ranked sexy geek in this year's contest and walked away with top honors in 2007.

She said an intellectual challenge is at the heart of her sexy geekiness.

"I think that people like to have their brains stimulated, and my show does that," said Orlova in an e-mail interview. The vlogger was named "world’s sexiest philologist" by The New Yorker.

Orlova, who became the top-rated female sexy geek in 2008 thanks to a Christmas Day ballot-stuffing blitz that overwhelmed the eggnog-besotted elves monitoring Wired.com's user-driven nomination process, chalked up her strong showing to hard work.

"I am an actual geek," said Orlova, pictured above with a book that is presumably filled with hot words. "I am on my computer the second I wake up until the second I go to sleep.... I research, write, shoot, produce, edit, compress and upload all of my videos. And I do one every day, seven days a week."

Although DeFranco ultimately became top-rated and The Colbert Report funnyman Stephen Colbert also made it into the top 10, some Wired.com commenters took issue with the lack of male contenders on the user-generated list.

"OK, so where are the boys?" wrote Lina. "It seems that geek girls by far outnumber geek boys in terms of sexiness."

Others wondered about the nature of true geekiness.

"Although Summer Glau gets my vote, being a starlet on a sci-fi show doesn't make you a geek," wrote Jens. "Just being a Mac user is also stretching the definition.... For true geek cred you must have an intellectual pursuit, preferably obscure, of some kind. Such as ancient Egyptian algebra or Perl. Of course, according to Neal Stephenson, we're all geeks/nerds these days."

HotForWords' Orlova, who wears a hot pink bustier in her promo photo, said brains and beauty work together for the fully sexy geek package.

"Curves get your initial attention," she said, "but words will hold on your attention much longer!"

2008's top 10 Sexiest Geeks are, as of Wednesday's official tally:

1.) Philip DeFranco
2.) Marina Orlova
3.) Kari Byron: artist and MythBuster
4.) Jade Raymond: videogame producer and Electric Playground host
5.) Mila Kunis: actress and World of Warcraft fan
6.) Tina Fey: 30 Rock actress and Saturday Night Live's Sarah Palin impersonator
7.) Stephen Colbert: faux newsman
8.) Zooey Deschanel: actress, musician and singer-songwriter
9.) Danica McKellar: actress and math advocate
10.) Alyson Hannigan: actress

By Lewis Wallace

Man Can **FLY** If you watch one video in 2009, be it this.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Linkbait your Blog

From Wired How-To Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Illustration: Josh Cochran

Busting your butt on a blog that only a handful of people ever visit? (Thanks, Mom!) We asked Chris Garrett, coauthor of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, how to build a highly trafficked link farm.

Do Good PR.

Network with bigger bloggers—comment regularly. Email them your best stuff, then follow their tips. Link to them often, and they'll likely start linking back. The day that Boing Boing links to you, you're gold.

Create a Hook.

Scan the tabloid rack for headlines that make you want to shout, "Hey Martha, come see!" Try to create the same "must share this" effect in your own headlines. Really, who can resist "fembots and the geeks who love them"?

Piggyback.

You may not be able to break a juicy story ("britney shaves head—again!") but you can pontificate on it ("inside britney's shaved head"). Your post will show up in searches for the story, and you'll hoover up the hits.

Contributed by Daniel Dumas

Eye Fi on the IPhone

Wi-Fi photo transfers to PCs and uploads to Photo-Sharing Site

Eye-Fi just keeps going. In one year, they introduced the first Wi-Fi add-on for cameras via their 802.11-equipped SD card, added Geotagging software to said card, and now have moved to the iPhone.

The new application, still in development, provides what I think is the first wireless link between an iPhone and PC (aside from syncing both gadgets over MobileMe). Eye-FI says it will also allow uploads to any Web site – such as Flickr or Picasa. Maybe Facebook, too? They didn’t provide a lot of info in the nine-line email they sent to us. We’ll try to find out more.

[ Read Full Story ]

By Sean Captain Posted 01.05.2009 at 9:08 am 0 Comments

Stonehenge was 'giant concert venue'

A university professor who is an expert in sound and a part-time DJ believes Stonehenge was created as a dance arena for listening to "trance-style" music.

Last Updated: 10:10PM GMT 04 Jan 2009

An academic from Huddersfield University believes the standing stones had the right acoustics to amplify certain sounds Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The monument has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history but academic Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves.

Mr Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks., believes the standing stones had the ideal acoustics to amplify a "repetitive trance rhythm".

The original Stonehenge probably had a "very pleasant, almost concert-like acoustic" that our ancestors slowly perfected over many generations

Because Stonehenge itself is partially collapsed, Dr Till, from York, North Yorks., used a computer model to conduct experiments in sound.

The most exciting discoveries came when he and colleague Dr Bruno Fazenda visited a full-size concrete replica of Stonehenge, with all the original stones intact, which was built as a war memorial by American road builder Sam Hill at Maryhill in Washington state.

lthough the replica has not previously gained any attention from archaeologists studying the original site, it was ideal for Dr Till's work.

He said: "We were able to get some interesting results when we visited the replica by using computer-based acoustic analysis software, a 3D soundfield microphone, a dodecahedronic speaker, and a huge bass speaker from a PA company.

"By comparing results from paper calculations, computer simulations based on digital models, and results from the concrete Stonehenge copy, we were able to come up with some of these theories about the uses of Stonehenge.

"We have also been able to reproduce the sound of someone speaking or clapping in Stonehenge 5,000 years ago.

"The most interesting thing is we managed to get the whole space (at Maryhill) to resonate, almost like a wine glass will ring if you run a finger round it.

"While that was happening a simple drum beat sounded incredibly dramatic. The space had real character; it felt that we had gone somewhere special."

Pill link to infertile men, says Vatican

THE contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said.

The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations.

"Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association.

Hormones in the pill, such as oestrogen, "are present everywhere … in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," said Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology.

In October, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of artificial birth control.

Contraception "means negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with which the divine gift (of life) is communicated" the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics wrote on the 40th anniversary of a papal encyclical on the topic.

An encyclical is a letter usually treating some aspect of Catholic doctrine and issued occasionally by the pope.

The landmark document, with a translated title in English of On the Regulation of Birth, was published at a time when the development of the pill was giving new sexual freedom to women across the world.

Millions of Catholics distanced themselves from Rome as a result.

AFP