Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings. Via Yglesias

 ...take a moment to sit back and try to appreciate the stupendous difference in your quality of life that comes to you courtesy of indoor plumbing.

Yglesias

...scientists from Caltech announced the invention of a device that directly measures the mass of an individual molecule...  "it now allows us to weigh molecules-one by one-as they come in” -- Smithsonian

Now all they need to do is hire Maxwell's Demon.

Wind generated slightly more than 3 percent of total U.S. electricity in the United States during the 12-month period ending in May this year... a decade ago, it was one-tenth that.

Via Daily Kos

"We've essentially put a monster truck on Mars"

-- NASA engineer Brian Cooper

Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism

A team led by Markus Covert, assistant professor of bioengineering, used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world's smallest free-living bacterium.

Stanford ( Read more... )

Every time I try to retweet or, mostly, send a tweet, or DM, I get

Your account may not be allowed to perform this action. Please refresh the page and try again.Of course I have refreshed, and tried the old log out and log back in multiple times. Google suggests that others have encountered this problem but because they are approaching some limit ( Read more... )

Liquid living worms survive space

BBC

Scientists have invented a new material that is so lightweight it can sit atop a fluffy dandelion without crushing the little fuzzy seeds ( Read more... )

Solar energy photovoltaic (PV) companies manufactured a record 24,000 megawatts of PV cells worldwide in 2010, more than doubling their 2009 output.

Evwind.es