Microsoft’s chief strategic thinker, Craig Mundie, believes the United States’ situation with broadband access represents a “total policy failure.” In an interview with the Washington Post, Mundie decries the fact that, by some measures, the U.S. ranks 14th in the world when it comes to rolling out broadband Internet service. He says Internet access in Tokyo is much faster, and much cheaper, than it is in Seattle. (That fits with last month’s report from Cambridge, MA-based Akamai that said Washington state has the largest percentage of slow Internet connections in the U.S.—Eds.)

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Millimeter Waves Promise Faster Wireless

While fiberoptic cables can carry data at speeds of 10 gigabits per second, or even higher, the fastest wireless communications top out at a few hundred megabits. But engineers at Battelle, an R&D firm in Columbus, OH, have demonstrated a system that transmits at 10 gigs, based on millimeter waves, which are shorter wavelength versions of microwaves. Technology Review reports that the Battelle team used off-the-shelf components, so their system may actually be practical for real-world use.

Spoofing GPS Could Cause Disasters

Computer scientists from Cornell and Virginia Tech are warning that devices based on global positioning systems can be spoofed, tricked into displaying the wrong information. As the Discovery Channel reports, the consequences could be anything from criminals with tracking bracelets around their ankles being able to hide their location from police, to planes crashing and electrical generators exploding.

Hydrogen Sponge Could Help Power Cars

One of the limiting factors in building automobiles that run on hydrogen fuel cells is how to store the hydrogen gas. New Scientist tells us that researchers in Greece have come up with a material that can absorb and hold much more hydrogen than previous materials. The sponge consists of sheets of graphene—single-atom-thick layers of carbon—separated by pillars made of carbon nanotubes.

Solar Paint Could Generate Electricity

Buildings could become solar power collectors, thanks to a new photovoltaic paint that can be coated onto steel plates. Renewable Energy World says that the Corus Group, an Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturer, is pouring tens of millions of euros into a venture with British university researchers to develop the paint. The paint consists of four layers, an undercoating, a layer of solar cells, an electrolyte, and a protective film.

Fluorescent Bulbs May Reduce Mercury Pollution

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) worry environmentalists because they contain mercury, which can get into the environment if the bulb breaks or is just tossed in the trash. Now a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology says that, depending on where you live, you may put more mercury into the world by using an ordinary incandescent bulb. The problem is that it takes a lot more energy to light up an old-fashioned fluorescent bulb than a CFL, and if your electricity comes from a coal-fired power plant, burning the extra coal sends more mercury into the atmosphere.

States Upgrade E-Voting for November

In just a few short weeks, the regular folks of Main Street, God bless ‘em, will be choosin’ the next president. In anticipation, states that use electronic voting machines are taking steps to avoid problems that cropped up last time they used the devices, Computerworld reports. Some touch-screen machines, for instance, have been modified so voters receive a printout of their votes. And election officials are making sure they have plenty of paper ballots on hand.

No Condom? Try Diet Coke?

Scientists who demonstrated that Coke and Pepsi make effective spermicides (and for some reason, Diet Coke works best), were the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry in the annual awards given out by the Annals of Improbable Research. MSNBC reports that other winners, in an award ceremony that parodies the Nobel Prize, include an economist who showed that expensive fake medicine has a stronger placebo effect than inexpensive fake medicine, and a psychologist who discovered that strippers earn more when they’re ovulating. Or was that undulating?

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Technique Predicts Wi-Fi Dead Zones

A graduate student at Rice University has developed a technique to predict holes in a city’s Wi-Fi coverage. Ars Technica reports that Joshua Robinson found that dead zones could be as small as 10 meters in diameter. He also found that adding more access nodes doesn’t necessarily fill in all the holes.

Broad-Spectrum Vaccine Might Fight Next Pandemic

Public health officials worry that a strain of bird flu or some other version of the influenza virus might mutate so it spreads rapidly among humans who have no resistance. The current method for making flu vaccines takes months and is not always effective against the strain of the virus in circulation. But Technology Review says that scientists have developed a DNA-based vaccine that could protect against a variety of strains, and they hope to begin testing in humans soon.

Google Wants Clean Energy by 2030

Google, which is into everything these days, has released a proposal for getting to clean energy by 2030. On its public policy blog, the company outlines three broad steps it feels should be taken immediately. These are to reduce demand through increased efficiency, develop renewable energy that’s cheaper than coal, and electrify transportation while reinventing the energy grid.

Search Engines Add More Graphics to Results

While Google is out saving the world, other search engine companies are working on developing better search engines. CNET News reviews half a dozen new entries, all of which are trying to make the results better by adding graphics. The reviewer didn’t like a couple of the offerings, but thinks others are definitely worth trying out.

Socialtext Brings Social Networking to Business

A Web 2.0 company called Socialtext, of Palo Alto, CA, is trying to provide businesses with a more grown-up version of popular social networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter. For instance, as the New York Times reports, Socialtext Signals is just like Twitter, but for internal company use only, so people can use it to communicate with their colleagues about what they’re working on.

The Cure is in the Mail

Federal officials have a proposal for getting antibiotics to tens of thousands of people in the event of an anthrax terrorist attack—mail them. Since the Post Office has a system for delivering items to the whole population already in place, officials say it makes sense to have them deliver pills in case of an emergency. The Washington Post reports that the mailmen would be asked to volunteer, with the incentive of a guaranteed supply of antibiotics for their families and a police escort on their rounds.

MIT Students Become Tree Pluggers

Chemistry students at MIT have figured out how to get electricity out of trees, enough to power a small sensor, perhaps. As MSNBC explains, the students found that a difference in the acidity level of the tree and the soil creates a small current they can tap into. With some additional equipment, they were able to get 2.4 volts from trees.

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DOE Plan Would Cut Emissions from Buildings

The U.S. Department of Energy says that, with proper building techniques and renewable energy installations, a majority of commercial buildings could reach zero emissions of greenhouse gases within 20 years. Now the DOE is kicking in $15 million to give companies access to its scientists and engineers to help achieve that goal, Ars Technica reports. The plans apply both to new buildings and to the retrofitting of existing structures.

Software Tracks Stolen Laptop but Hides Owner

Security experts are always concerned about the theft of laptop computers, which have led to both national security breaches and the theft of private financial information. There’s software available to keep track of where a laptop is, but privacy advocates worry that it can also be used to spy on the laptop’s owner. Now, Technology Review tells us, encryption specialist Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington has developed software that tracks a laptop only after it’s been stolen, thanks to the use of an encryption key that only the rightful owner can unlock.

Click It Before You Tick It

Better buckle up on Election Day. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says traffic deaths tend to go up on Election Day, with an average of 24 more fatalities than on other Tuesdays in October and November. According to the Associated Press, the researchers cited, as possible reasons, people rushing to get to polls before and after work, driving on unfamiliar roads, and being distracted by thoughts of the choice they had to make. (The study did not examine whether despair at the prospect of the wrong guy winning played a role.)

Wind Turbines Not Bad for Birds, Study Finds

Wind turbines do not drive away birds from an area, according to a study by Newcastle University in England. The researchers measured the population density of 23 bird species at different distances from the turbines and found that the machines made no difference, Reuters reports. The one bird that is apparently affected, however, is the pheasant.

U.S. Lags in Broadband Growth

The U.S. has the largest raw number of subscribers to broadband Internet connections, but China will soon surpass it, and Europe has faster growth, according to an analysis by the research firm Point Topic. GigaOm reports that Germany and the United Kingdom have the fastest subscription growth, and about 26 percent of Belgium’s citizen have broadband connections. China, by contrast, hasn’t yet hit 6 percent of its 1.32 billion population.

Google Tells You Where to Vote

Google, which seems to have a hand in everything these days, is hoping to help get out the vote in the presidential election. As the company says on its public policy blog, its U.S. Voter Info Guide is already up and running in Ohio, which has started early voting, allowing people to type in their home address and find out where to register and where to vote. Google hopes to have the information available for all 50 states by the middle of this month.

New Flu Test Speeds Results

If a deadly new strain of flu emerges, public health officials can be right on top of it, now that a faster genetic test for flu strains has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The Los Angeles Times reports that the test can identify a strain of the flu within four hours, instead of the four days required by older tests. Between 20 and 30 state laboratories should be ready to perform the test by the end of the year.

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Cloud Computing: Stupid or Genius?

Richard Stallman, a computing expert and founder of the Free Software Foundation, thinks that cloud computing—running applications over the Internet using distant machines—is a lot of hype and poses a serious risk to privacy. Others, such as tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, however, acknowledge some challenges but see cloud computing as the future of the Internet. Ars Technica talks to experts and questions whether Stallman’s pessimism is warranted.

Engine Could Provide Energy for Hybrid Vehicles

Engineers are looking at an alternative to hydrogen fuel cells or conventional engines in hybrid vehicles, an efficient design called a free-piston engine. As Technology Review explains, a free-piston engine has no mechanical connection between the piston and the crankshaft, which reduces friction and makes for a more efficient engine. In fact, researchers believe it could be far more efficient in producing electricity than either conventional generators or newer fuel-cell technology.

Power from Osmosis and Other Green Ideas

Plenty of people are coming up with and patenting ideas for alternative energy sources, and New Scientist takes a look at some recent innovations. For instance, an osmotic power generator uses a membrane to separate fresh water from a solution of ammonia and carbon dioxide in water, and the resulting pressure drives a turbine to produce electricity. Another company has come up with a wireless headset that recharges its battery as the wearer moves her head.

Web Influences Political Discourse

This year’s presidential election is unprecedented in the amount of influence the Web seems to be having on disseminating both news and opinion about the candidates (as well as a fair share of mockery). BusinessWeek attributes the trend in part to a fundamental shift in how people follow news. The magazine includes its list of the 25 most influential people on the Web, a survey that includes Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

Take a Fast Cable to China

A fiberoptic cable running under the Pacific from the U.S. to China was completed Monday. CNET News reports that the cable, which runs 18,000 kilometers and costs upwards of $500 million, was put in place after the 2006 earthquake that caused a deadly tsunami severed several undersea data lines. The cost was split among six phone companies.

Magnifying Glasses Make for Cheap Solar Energy, Firm Says

A startup claims it can make solar power as cheap as coal power by using glass panels that focus sunlight onto photovoltaic cells. Sungri, of Hollywood, CA, says it wants to be the Wal-Mart of solar energy. The trick, according to Wired, is an innovative cooling system that prevents the concentrated sunlight from melting the silicon in the solar panels.

Don’t Believe Your E-mail

Psychologists have long known that people find it easier to lie in writing, where there are no visual clues to give away their deceptions. Now two studies, at Lehigh, Rutgers, and DePaul universities, say people are more apt to mislead in e-mail than in traditional pen-and-paper communication, CNN reports. On the other hand, we have it on good authority that the Minister of the Treasury in Nigeria is absolutely reliable.

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Doubts Raised About Broadband Competition

The Federal Communications Commission is in the midst of figuring out how to allocate spectrum for wireless broadband transmissions, while Google and M2Z Networks push for regulations to allow an alternative broadband service. A columnist at GigaOm argues that indecisiveness at the FCC could wind up delaying any competition, which could increase options and bring down prices, for years to come.

Structures Could Render Islands Invisible to Tidal Waves

There’s been a lot of talk about the possibility of creating an invisibility cloak by building tiny structures that guide light waves around objects and through to the other side. Now a French scientist points out that the same principle applied to larger structures could have a similar effect on ocean waves, diverting them from vulnerable islands and coastlines and preventing destruction from tsunamis. New Scientist reports that a ring of concrete posts could render islands and offshore oil rigs essentially “invisible” to the waves.

Skyscraper Farms Could Save Energy

Instead of spending all that energy to plant and plow fields and then truck the produce from the country to the city, why not grow food right in a city, in a glass tower with different floors for different crops and livestock? A Columbia University professor tells Scientific American that such “vertical farming” would bring fresh food to urban dwellers with less fuel expended on shipping, and would allow farmers to heat or cool the environment as needed to grow crops all year round.

Reach Out and Conference With Someone

Teleconferences have moved from speakerphones on desks to flat screens projecting the image of the people in other locations who are joining your meeting. Now RoboDynamics, a company in Santa Monica, CA, is promoting a more interactive meeting tool, a mobile robot that provides what it calls telepresence. As described by TechCrunch, a caller’s image is displayed on a screen that tilts and turns to face anyone that person wants to speak to, making meetings more naturally interactive.

Wi-Fi Takes the Bus

There’s no need to be off the Internet, even if you’re on a bus traveling between cities. As Salon reports, Wi-Fi services are showing up on more buses, both in the U.S. and abroad. Buses traveling routes from Boston to Washington are increasingly using Wi-Fi availability to compete with other bus companies.

Buildings Could Become Greener and Smarter

At the West Coast Green 2008 exhibit in San Jose, CA, a number of companies were showing technologies that could make buildings more environmentally friendly while also providing new services. CNET News lists some of the companies and their technologies. For instance, Element Four says it condenses moisture out of the air and turns it into drinking water for a home’s inhabitants, while Intelligent Forms makes a high-end outdoor lounge table whose surface is a set of solar panels.

Auction Sets Carbon Emissions at $3.07 per Ton

The country’s first auction of emissions permits set the price of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at $3.07 per ton. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of 10 states in the Northeast, held the first U.S. cap-and-trade auction last week and announced the results today, the Associated Press reports. Under the program, companies buy permits to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases, and if they reduce their emissions they can sell the permits to other companies for a profit.

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Boeing Begins Jet Biofuel Initiative

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has teamed up with 10 airlines, including Air France, Continental, and Virgin Atlantic, to form a Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group. Flightglobal reports that the group will look for ways to make renewable jet fuel, with the goal of at least partially replacing fossil fuel used in airplanes with biofuel by 2013. Boeing is funding two studies on making jet fuel from algae or the plant jatropha, being done at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Yale.

Digitizing Health Records Still a Challenge

Healthcare could be dramatically improved if every doctor a patient ever saw had access to all that patient’s health records, which could happen if the records were all digital. But only 15 to 18 percent of U.S. doctors use electronic records, partly because of the upfront costs of going digital. Technology Review talks to Karen Bell, who’s in charge of promoting digital records at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about what the problem is.

Bacteria Can Produce Plastic

Not all of the fossil fuel we use goes to power our cars or heat our homes: Some is used to make plastic. The Discovery Channel tells us that researchers at Genomatica, a company in San Diego, CA, say they’ve developed bacteria that make an important ingredient of the plastic that’s used in products from Spandex to car bumpers. The company says it can go into production as early as next year, and that its product will be cheaper even if the cost of oil drops as low as $50 a barrel.

New Method Produces Stem Cells from Adult Cells

A new method of producing stem cells from adult cells may provide a route to new therapies without the controversy of stem cells derived from embryos. New Scientist reports that researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have been able to turn liver cells from an adult mouse into stem cells, which now have the potential to become any cell in the body. Earlier this year, Japanese scientists also turned adult cells into stem cells, but their method used a virus that left behind genes that could lead to cancer.

Activists Say, Put Debates on the Internet

When the presidential and vice presidential candidates debate, they should take advantage of the Internet, say people on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. A group including liberal activist Arianna Huffington and the director of Newt Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions, signed a letter calling for the candidates to put footage from the debates on the Internet, and to take “Town Hall” style questions submitted online. CNET News reports that the group says that effective use of the Internet ensures “bottom-up democracy.”

Leaders Plan to Wipe Out Malaria in Seven Years

Malaria is one of the world’s greatest public health problems, killing more children than any other disease. Now world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, say that better science, improved record-keeping, and increased philanthropy make them believe they can reduce the number of malaria deaths to zero by 2015. The Washington Post reports that donors have given more than $3 billion to the Global Malaria Action Plan.

Tracking System Could Make Social Sites Profitable

Google is applying a system similar to its PageRank system for ranking websites to profiles on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. BusinessWeek says the system looks at how often people post to others’ pages and measures whether users convince others to read a news story or watch a video clip. If it works, the system should allow advertisers to target ads more precisely, allowing the sites to charge more.

Obama Releases Science Funding Plan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has released an 11-page “plan for science and innovation.” Nature reports that the plan calls for doubling the funding of the National Institutes of Health over 10 years, and spells out science policies in more specific details than had been released previously.

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Obama Addresses Questions About Science

The British science journal Nature posed 18 questions related to science and policy to the two presidential candidates, but received written answers only from Democrat Barack Obama. Nature prints his answers, along with statements on the topics from Republican John McCain when they could be found from other sources. Among the issues, appointing a science advisor, how to address climate change, and what to teach children about evolution.

Google to Fund World-Saving Ideas

Google has announced a project to solicit ideas that can have a positive impact on humanity, and to fund those it deems most promising. The project, dubbed 10^100 (10 to the hundredth power), will dole out up to $10 million to the winning idea or ideas. As CNN reports, Google is open to any sort of idea that helps people in some way, from providing food and shelter to promoting clean energy.

Gluing the Internet to Everything

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, says the next step in the online evolution is to “glue the Internet platform to the evolved client platform.” In other words, he tells Technology Review, he wants everything from desktop PCs to mobile phones to car dashboards to provide the same Web-based services.

Nanotech Could Help Fight Drug-Resistant Tumors

Cancers that grow resistant to drugs pose a problem for patients, but identifying the genes responsible for the resistance is offering scientists new ways to combat the problem. The Discovery Channel reports that one scientist at Pennsylvania State University is using basketball-shaped nanoparticles to target resistant cells. The particles carry small snippets of RNA that can turn off the genes, making the cells once again vulnerable to drugs.

Push Toward Hydrogen Cars Continues

Mass produced cars fueled by hydrogen will not be widely available to the public for at least 10 years, but automakers are increasing their efforts to develop the vehicles. The New York Times reports that Honda is planning to lease about 200 custom-made FCX Clarity cars in California over the next three years, and Shell and other companies are installing hydrogen fueling facilities at some gas stations. Other car companies are working on prototypes, but all are facing the chicken-and-egg problem of creating a market for the cars while building a fueling infrastructure to support it.

First U.S. Carbon Auction Held

A group of 10 Northeastern states is holding the first U.S. auction of rights for power plants to emit carbon dioxide. Reuters reports that the results of Thursday’s auction will be given to the bidders on Monday, and released to the public in October. The auction is offering 12 million permits to emit one ton of carbon per permit. Plants that cut emissions can sell their permits to other plants for a profit.

System Will Track Groups that Try to Help

There are plenty of organizations, both non-profit and for-profit, that strive to fight poverty and improve health around the world, but it can be hard for donors or investors to tell if they’re really doing any good. Now a group of foundations has come up with an online database, the Portfolio Data Management System, that focuses on these “social entrepreneurs” and tries to measure what they do. BusinessWeek reports that the idea is to provide for these private groups the same information regulatory filings provide for publicly traded companies.

Rhode Island Looks to Offshore Wind for Power

Rhode Island has selected a New Jersey firm, DeepwaterWind LLC, to build a wind farm off its coast. The Associated Press reports that the project, which will cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, could generate 15 percent of the state’s energy needs in the coming decade. If the project ultimately receives regulatory approval, it could be the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

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Narcissists Easy to Spot on Facebook

Psychologists at the University of Georgia wondered if they could use online profiles to identify the personality traits of the people who posted them and found that, for narcissism at least, it wasn’t hard to do. As Ars Technica explains, the researchers had students take a personality test to identify narcissistic personalities, then looked at their Facebook pages for both objective and subjective clues. Then they asked other students to spot the narcissists, and the students did, focusing on items like the number of friends and the self-promotional value of the profile photo.

Consumers Want Companies to Fight Climate Change, Survey Finds

Companies should take the lead in fighting global warming, say the majority of 28,000 Internet users from around the world surveyed by the Nielsen Company. Reuters says that 51 percent of those asked felt it was very important for firms to take steps to improve the environment, while another 36 percent called it somewhat important. And 40 percent said government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Web-Linked Appliances Could Cut Energy Use

Tying your refrigerator, washing machine, and hot-water heater into the Internet could save energy and money. GigaOm reports that a number of startups are selling items such as in-home energy displays that tell how much energy a home is using and what it’s costing. A pilot project by Whirlpool that let devices decide when to turn themselves off, based on price and what they are doing, found that 98 percent of participants thought the program worked well.

Eye-Tracker Gives Surgeons an Extra Hand

A device that tracks eye movements to aim a surgical laser or other equipment could give doctors better control over procedures they’re performing. New Scientist reports on a device being developed that shines an LED onto a doctor’s eyes, and uses a camera to track where her eye is looking, then tells a robot to reposition a laser or an endoscope. The device frees surgeons, whose hands tend to be full, from having to move around additional equipment.

Planned Community Demonstrates Eco-Friendly Possibilities

An abandoned military base near San Francisco is being transformed into a new community, and planners are designing it to be a particularly “green” neighborhood. The area, known as Treasure Island, will have its street grid oriented to give rooftop photovoltaics maximum exposure to sunlight, while an organic farm would use fertilizer generated by the island’s waste treatment plant. Scientific American says this is just one of several projects planned in the U.S., China, and Abu Dhabi that aim to reduce the environmental costs of city living.

Oracle and Intel Collaborate on Cloud Computing

Oracle and Intel have announced they’ll work together to accelerate the development of cloud computing, in which software runs on an Internet-connected network of servers without regard to who actually owns them. The companies want to push computing and data storage into the cloud by improving the efficiency and security of such operations, CNET News tells us. Improving data encryption technologies will be a large part of the effort.

Game Hopes to Predict the Future

A new online game called Superstruct started running this week, and challenges players with “superthreats” such as disease pandemics, refugees displaced by global warming, and evil computer hackers, that threaten civilization. As Discover magazine reports, the game, from the Institute for the Future, hopes to harness the so-called wisdom of crowds to predict doomsday scenarios and come up with ways to deal with them.

Solar Panels Enter Black Market

Solar panels are becoming increasingly popular, with thieves who resell them on eBay, according to the New York Times. Although no one’s compiled statistics, police departments in California say they’re seeing a rash of such crimes. Outside of California, where fewer panels have been installed, thefts are rarer, but growing, the paper says.

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Suniva Promises Cheap, Efficient Solar Cells

An Atlanta, Ga-based startup, Suniva, says it can make solar cells that are more efficient than existing devices and do it much more inexpensively. Technology Review says the company’s solar cells convert about 20 percent of sunlight into electricity, almost as much as the best solar cells on the market. But their manufacturing process, which resembles silk screening for T-shirts, and the fact they use less pure silicon, could bring costs down significantly once production is scaled up.

Wireless Costs Are All About Control

Yesterday we linked to a BusinessWeek story saying that costs for wireless access are going up because of bandwidth limits. A writer at GigaOm takes issue with that conclusion, and argues that the real reason is that wireless carriers want to maintain control over the services their users enjoy. If the carriers can control the distribution of services for music, photo sharing, and social networks, they could potentially make a lot more money, she writes.

Blogs Make Money, Report Finds

The average blog that runs ads is actually making money, according to a report from Technorati. The report found that mean annual revenue for blogs is $6,000, well over the mean annual cost of $1,800. As TechCrunch tells us, with a note of skepticism, blogs that draw 100,000 or more unique visitors each month are earning $75,000 and up.

Will the Volt Jolt the Car Industry

General Motors unveiled the Chevy Volt last week, and a columnist at Salon wonders if it will wind up as the new new thing or the Edsel reborn. Though he quotes one reviewer who calls the electric car “the 1984 Apple McIntosh on wheels,” he also cites skeptics who don’t like the design and worry that the price will be too high.

Multicore Chip Increases Computing Power

Instead of always striving to make processors faster, computer chip makers are also improving performance by putting more, slower processors on a single chip, creating multicore chips. While Intel and AMD are still offering four-core chips, a San Jose, CA-based startup called Tilera has just introduced a 36-core chip. CNET News reports the company already had a 64-core chip, which it updated, but wanted the less expensive, smaller device to broaden into markets such as video conferencing and network and security applications. By running programs, such as image processing software, in parallel on slower processors, the multicore chip accomplishes tasks faster than chips with fewer cores.

Support for Tidal Power Swells

The pursuit of power generated by the movement of tides has faced obstacles, such as the wave power machine that sank off the coast of Oregon last year. Despite such setbacks, the New York Times reports that ocean power companies are making a new push to develop the technology. The paper says there are roughly 100 small companies around the world that hope to turn the tide to electricity.

Candidates Agree and Disagree on Climate Change

Both candidates for U.S. president agree that climate change is important for the country to address, and both support emission cap-and-trade systems, private sector involvement, and an international approach to tackling the problem. The Wall Street Journal reports that surrogates for Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain debated the issue during a panel on climate change in New York. Where’d they disagree? The Republican wants the federal government to oversee emissions rules, whereas the Democrat likes programs that have been started by California and 10 northeastern states.

People Follow Parties on Global Warming

Where you stand on global warming can be predicted by your political affiliation, a study in Environment has found. Scientists looked at data from the Gallup poll over the past decade and found that Democrats and Republicans diverged in their beliefs about climate change, Science News reports. For instance, in 1997, 27 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans thought global warming was exaggerated. In 2008, the percentage dropped to 17 percent among Democrats, but rose to 59 percent among Republicans.

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Simple Process Converts Biomass to Gasoline

Several companies are trying to engineer microbes that will turn biomass into hydrocarbon-based fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Now scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they’ve come up with a process that sidesteps the microbes. Technology Review reports that the researchers use catalysts at high temperatures to do the conversion thousands of times faster than microbes can.

Infrared Light Might Illuminate Lies

Police and courts don’t like to rely on polygraph tests because they’re notoriously inaccurate. New Scientist reports that a researcher at Drexel University has come up with a lie detector that he thinks is much better at spotting falsehoods. The device shines infrared light through a suspect’s skull and measures how much is reflected by oxygen in the blood. That tells him, he says, how active the brain is in certain areas, which in turn shows if the suspect is lying.

McCain Budget Would Freeze Science Spending

If John McCain is elected president, he’ll place a one-year freeze on discretionary domestic spending, including money for science, a senior advisor to his campaign says. Ike Brannon told a coalition of scientific and professional societies the freeze would allow McCain to evaluate every program to see if it were worthwhile, ScienceNOW reports. Aides to Barack Obama told the same group he would aim to double spending on science over 10 years.

Technology Frees the Mind, Writer Argues

We’ve mentioned an article in the July issue of the Atlantic that posed the question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” People have been debating the issue ever since, and a writer in the New York Times weighs in with his opinion that new technology doesn’t dumb us down, but frees our minds. He argues that most technologies have been feared when first introduced.

Doctors Perfecting Scarless Surgery

Surgeons are working on new experimental techniques to avoid of scarring by working with the openings that already exist in the human body. The Washington Post says doctors have started using flexible endoscopes to, for instance, remove gallbladders through the mouth, and are experimenting with appendectomies and stomach surgery. Some, though, question the need for new procedures, when there are already safe and minimally invasive practices in use.

Candidates Brand Each Other in Online Searches

Here’s yet another way the presidential campaigns are using new technologies in their quest for the White House. Both campaigns are using Google’s AdWords program to link their ads to particular searches, says Wired. For instance, the McCain campaign bought the term “Joe Biden” so that users searching for the Democratic vice presidential candidate will see an ad that links to a video of Biden criticizing Barack Obama. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, linked “economic crisis” to an ad that criticizes McCain as being “out of touch.”

As Wireless Demand Goes Up, Providers Clamp Down

With the growing popularity of wireless devices such as the iPhone, wireless service providers are raising their data fees. BusinessWeek says this may be just the first step the companies take to try to moderate consumers’ use of wireless services, as they struggle to keep up with the demand for bandwidth. Companies are also starting to place monthly limits on how much data mobile phone users can download.

Microbe Could Help Recycle Plastic

All those billions of plastic bottles you’re drinking your designer water and energy drinks out of could be recycled into a biodegradable plastic that could replace the cellophane in food packaging, Science News reports. The trick is to heat the plastic so it breaks down into constituent parts, including an acid. Feed the acid to the right kind of microbes and they turn it into a new, biodegradable plastic.

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Chicago Plans to Cut Greenhouse Gases

The City of Chicago wants to cut its emission of greenhouse gases to three-quarters of 1990 levels by 2020, and one-fifth of 1990 levels by 2050. The Associated Press reports that the plan includes updating the city’s building code to improve insulation and heating and cooling systems in all buildings, increasing recycling and carpooling, and promoting alternative fuels. Chicago emits 34.6 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.

Scientist Automates Nanotube Production

Carbon nanotubes hold the promise of making lighter aircraft, splitting hydrogen from water to use as fuel, and making high-density batteries, among other innovations. But it can takes researchers hours of fussing with tiny adjustments to a nanomaterial-building furnace to make enough of the little buggers to perform experiments. Now Wired tells us that Stephen Steiner, a graduate student at MIT, has written a program based on English syntax and fuzzy logic to automate the furnace and produce longer and more uniform nanotubes.

Researchers Synthesize Cancer Protein

Scientists trying to cure cancer have a new tool in their arsenal, thanks to researchers who have figured out how to synthesize a protein that plays an important role in some types of cancer and immune system diseases. Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have applied for a patent on a protein known as a chemokine, UPI reports. The researchers say having the protein available will allow them to perform studies on new methods of treating cancer.

Web Running Out of Early Adopters

With all the users of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and their associated applications, developers of new Web 2.0 services are facing application overload, a column in the New York Times warns. Developers are finding that there are so many applications out there, getting people to try your new one often means convincing them they should drop one they’re already using. This may explain why I haven’t looked at my Friendster account in months.

Future May Bring Intelligent Cloud

Over at the official Google blog, Google employees are speculating about what the future holds for development of the Internet. An engineer and a research scientist look at the growth of parallel-processing computer clusters becoming increasingly linked and handling more and more data, and suggest that the computing cloud may develop a form of intelligence. I’m pretty sure I read that in a Heinlein novel, and it didn’t work out so well for the builders of the computer.

IBM Looks Ahead to Even Smaller Transistors

Computer chips have become more powerful by cramming more and smaller transistors into the same space, and the industry right now is moving from technology where the key size measurement is 65 nanometers to 45-nanometer technology. But as CNET News reports, IBM is looking a couple technology generations ahead, to 22-nanometer devices. The challenge they’re tackling: Technology to produce such small features doesn’t yet exist, and it’s not obvious how to create it.

New Device Could Replace Batteries in Electric Cars

Capacitors, which store energy electrically instead of chemically, the way batteries do, may be better than batteries in electric vehicles because they can charge and discharge energy much faster. The problem is that they don’t typically hold very much of a charge. Now Chinese scientists say they’ve designed an ultracapacitor, based on an array of carbon nanotubes, that can store enough energy to be practical for use in a car, New Scientist reports.

Web Science Aims to Study the Internet

The development of the World Wide Web has brought about developments that nobody predicted back in the early days of the Internet, from the rise of social networking to the increase in identity theft. As Scientific American tells us, in an article co-authored by WWW creator Tim Berners-Lee, a new discipline known as “web science” is arising. The aim of web science is to discover how society-changing effects arise on the Web and to try to harness them for the common good.

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National Academy Advises Candidates on Science

The National Academy of Sciences has issued a report advising the presidential candidates on how to deal with science-related issues. According to Ars Technica, the NAS says that most major issues for government, including climate, healthcare, and intelligence gathering, have some science and technology components. The group is calling for the next president to appoint a personal science advisor in his early days in office.

Obama Reveals Science Advisors

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is right on top of the science advisor issue. The campaign told Wired that the candidate is getting science advice from five noted scientists, including Nobel laureates Harold Varmus and Peter Agre. The magazine says Republican nominee John McCain has ignored repeated requests to identify his science advisors.

Software Teases Out Campaign Spin

Obama is a master of political spin, while McCain gave it to them straight during his convention speech, according to a computer scientist who claims his software can detect spin in political speeches. New Scientist reports that David Skillicorn of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, has developed an algorithm to analyze word usage in a speech. Among his assumptions: “I” is more honest than “we” and action verbs tend to indicate greater levels of spin.

FDA Issues Rules on Genetically Altered Animals

The Food and Drug Administration is issuing regulatory guidelines on the genetic engineering of animals, which experts say should help spur development in a potentially huge field. The Washington Post says the rules will let biotech companies know what the FDA expects to know about the development of bioengineered animals, from which snippets of DNA are being inserted into their genome to what is done with their bodies when they die. Biotechnologists hope to improve animals for food, as well as use them to produce medically useful substances.

Rural America Lagging in Broadband Access

Individuals and businesses in rural parts of the country are stuck with slow dial-up connections to the Internet because access providers don’t find it economically feasible to provide broadband access in sparsely populated areas, BusinessWeek reports. Only 38 percent of households in rural America have high-speed Internet connections, compared to 57 percent in cities and 60 percent in suburbs. Now a group called Connected Nation is trying to boost broadband availability, following the model of old rural electrification programs.

U.S. Exports Harmful E-Waste, Report Finds

Your old computer monitor may be contributing to pollution in Asia, according to a report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The GAO report found that many U.S. electronics recyclers are shipping cathode ray tubes overseas in violation of Environmental Protection Agency rules, and that other potentially toxic electronic waste is not even regulated, PC World reports.

Chemists Promise Photosynthesis in Lab as Fuel Source

Chemists are working on an artificial version of photosynthesis that could be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, which could then be used to power fuel cells. Nature says they’re optimistic—one MIT professor guarantees he’ll have a device for cheaply producing hydrogen in less than five years. A cheap source of hydrogen could revolutionize energy supply the professor, Dan Nocera, claims.

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The Internet is For…Facebook?

More people are using the Internet for social networking than are surfing for porn, says the author of a new book that analyzes the type of Web searches users are doing. Porn, which accounted for 20 percent of searches a decade ago, has dropped to 10 percent, says Bill Trancer, author of “Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters.” Trancer tells Reuters that analyzing searches can provide insight into how people are communicating and what’s on their minds. Which apparently no longer includes Pamela Anderson videos.

Powdered Methane Could Provide New Energy Source

Methane holds a lot of promise as a fuel source—there’s enough in two deposits off the coast of South Carolina to power the United States for a century—but it’s difficult to store and transport. Now chemists in England have come up with a simple way to turn the natural gas into a sugar-like powder that would be cheaper and easier to store than current methods allow, the Discovery Channel reports. The researchers turned the gas to a powder simply by mixing it with water filled with fine particles of silica.

Should Taxpayers Subsidize the Chevy Volt?

General Motors unveiled its much-hyped hybrid electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, this week and was immediately faced with questions about who was going to pay for it, the Los Angeles Times reports. The auto industry is asking the federal government for $25 billion in low-interest loans to help it move toward higher fuel-efficiency standards. Critics call the loans a bailout.

Open-Source Principles Applied to Prosthetics

Engineers developing better prosthetic hands and arms for amputees are hoping that applying the open-source model from the software industry will spur advances. Scientific American explains that innovations in the field have been rare, because the market for such limbs is small and the cost of development is high. Now a group of engineers in the Shared Design Alliance has started a website, www.openprosthetics.org, to encourage users and engineers to share ideas in a discussion thread entitled “Pimp My Arm.”

Gates Invests in Algae Energy

Bill Gates’ personal investment group, Cascade Investments LLC, has put an undisclosed amount of money into Sapphire Energy, a San Diego-based startup that’s trying to use algae to produce refinery-grade crude oil that can be made into fuel. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company hopes to build a 10,000-barrel-a-day facility, but that there is still widespread skepticism about whether algae can serve as a viable source of fuel. The Journal also already made the pond scum joke.

Homeland Security Can’t Handle Cyber Threats, Group Says

The Department of Homeland Security has done a poor job of handling threats to cybersecurity, so the responsibility should be taken away and given to someone else, a group of experts says. Members of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Congress that the country lacks a coherent strategy for dealing with online attacks from hostile powers, according to PCWorld. A spokesman for the federal Government Accountability Office says the GAO shares the group’s concerns.

Khosla Calls for Pragmatism in Energy

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who invests in a variety of alternative energy startups, says practical steps are what’s needed to combat carbon emissions. Speaking to an alternative energy conference in California, Khosla said people need to embrace whatever technology works and is cheaper than fossil fuels, Seeking Alpha reports. For instance, even if corn-based ethanol drives up food prices, it’s reducing emissions and paving the way for more efficient cellulosic ethanol, he said.

Free Wireless Grows in San Francisco

The effort to provide free WiFi connections for low-income residents of San Francisco is proceeding apace, the city says. Mayor Gavin Newsom and wireless router company Meraki said this week they’re adding wireless coverage to 12 low-income housing projects in the Tenderloin neighborhood, CNET News says. Meraki says about 150,000 of the city’s 860,000 residents are on its network, and it will be a few more years before the entire city is covered.

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Berners-Lee Creates Web Foundation

The man who invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has launched a new foundation to promote open and expanded access to the Web. Ars Technica reports that the World Wide Web Foundation has $1 million in seed funding from the Knight Foundation. Specific goals of the project have not yet been announced.

DNA Machine Advances Personal Genomics

One of the hopes for the revolution brought about by the sequencing of the human genome is that doctors will one day be able to customize medical care to individual patients’ based on their genetic makeup. Technology Review reports that a Menlo Park, CA, company, Pacific Biosciences, has developed a machine for quickly and cheaply sequencing DNA. The company hopes to make the process fast and inexpensive enough that sequencing can become a routine procedure in doctors’ offices.

Chamber of Commerce Decries Carbon Regulations

Regulation of carbon dioxide would affect more than 1 million businesses and could stifle economic innovation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says. Reuters tells us that the Chamber is releasing a report claiming that any business that spends more than $70,000 a year on oil or natural gas would be affected by proposed regulations. But a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council calls the report an attempt to stir up anti-regulatory hysteria.

Engineer Demonstrates Robot Prius

Tired of the stress of stop-and-go driving? An engineer in San Francisco has a proposed solution, a robot-driven car that makes the decisions for you—speeding up, braking, staying in the lane all on its own. CNET News reports that the engineer, Anthony Levandowski, demonstrated the system he built into a Toyota Prius by having the car navigate its own way through San Francisco last week.

Comparing the Candidates on Science Issues

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has answered a series of questions posed to him by a group called Science Debate 2008. The New York Times summarizes his positions, along with those of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who answered them in late August. Not surprisingly, Obama’s answers stress the role of government while McCain focuses on business in addressing some of the nation’s main science-related challenges.

Link Found Between Plastics, Heart Disease

A chemical used in some food and drink containers may increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their urine were three times more likely to have cardiovascular disease and 2.4 times more likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest levels, Nature reports. The story cautions that the study does not prove that the chemical causes these diseases, but quotes an epidemiologist as saying that it “puts a scientific question mark” over the substance.

U.S. Losing its Lead in IT

The United States still has the world’s most competitive information technology industry, but that lead is slipping, according to a new study. BusinessWeek says the Business Software Alliance ranks 66 countries in six areas, including the availability of skilled labor and friendliness to innovation. The U.S. ranked number 1 in only three categories, and had an overall ranking lower than last year’s.

Google Goes to Sea

As if Google’s dominance in cyberspace weren’t enough, the company is now thinking of taking its mainframes to the bounding main. The Times Online reports that the company is considering placing the supercomputers that power its search engine on barges anchored up to seven miles offshore, where it could use wave energy to run and cool the machines. Let’s just hope the data doesn’t end up in Davy Jones’s locker.

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Most Countries Unready for Future Broadband Needs

A group of MBA students has developed a Broadband Quality Score for 42 countries and found that the only country with enough bandwidth capacity to meet its needs in the next three to five years is Japan. Ars Technica reports that the score includes upload and download speeds and other measures. The United States, the study found, has slightly more capacity than it needs right now, but not enough to handle future demands, which will include visual networking, high-density streaming, consumer telepresence, and large file sharing.

Comcast Explains Bandwidth Caps to Customers

Comcast has begun sending emails to its subscribers to explain its cap on bandwidth use, which is set to go into effect October 1. The company says it is trying to put its 250-gigabyte monthly cap into perspective, saying that amounts to 50 million plain text e-mails, 62,500 songs, or 125 standard-definition movies. GigaOm reprints the full text of the e-mail.

Chemists Make Common Products a Little Greener

New regulations, growing consumer demand, and a fear of future lawsuits are leading companies that make consumer products to find ways to make them less toxic and more environmentally friendly. The Los Angeles Times reports that green chemistry is emerging in a variety of areas, from plastics and pesticides to toys and nail polish. While some makers of cosmetics and household cleansers are leading the way, others are lagging behind.

Contact Lens Delivers Drugs to Eyes

Dosing eyes with drugs to fight eye diseases is difficult, as eyes are very good at washing out foreign substances. Now an engineer at Auburn University in Alabama has developed a new material to make contact lenses that can absorb greater amounts of drugs than previously possible and release them slowly into the eye. New Scientist says that he has set up a company, OcuMedic, to commercialize the idea.

Virginia Court Tosses Anti-spam Law

The Virginia Supreme Court has overturned that state’s wide-ranging anti-spam law, ruling that it violates First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The Washington Post reports that the ruling also overturned the conviction of a man described as a prolific spammer. The law had outlawed all forms of unsolicited email, not just commercial junk mail.

Airplanes Remain No-Call Zones

Airlines have started providing Internet hookups on their flights, but at least one says that passengers won’t be allowed to use voice-over-Internet-Protocol to make telephone calls over the connections. The New York Times says that service-provider Aircell and American Airlines block Skype, Vonage, and similar programs, because they worry the conversations will annoy other passengers. No airline so far plans to allow phone calls.

Researchers Beam Solar Power Across Space

Researchers have collected solar power on a mountain-top in Maui and beamed it 92 miles to the big island of Hawaii. The experiment, by former NASA executive and physicist John Mankins, demonstrates how an array of solar power collectors in Earth orbit could transmit energy to Earth, Wired reports. Mankins predicts that such an orbital system, where solar energy is undimmed by clouds and atmosphere, could be put up in 10 to 15 years.

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Marijuana Could Fight Resistant Staph

Substances found in marijuana plants may provide a new weapon to fight drug-resistant bacteria, Technology Review reports. Scientists in England and Italy discovered antibacterial compounds in the plants and tested them against six strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which causes hard-to-treat skin infections that can be fatal in the very sick. The compounds killed the bacteria, and the most effective of the compounds didn’t have the psychoactive effects of marijuana. Which means it should be possible to clear a patient’s infection without blowing his mind.

The Reason Wine Fights Heart Trouble

Scientists say they may have found the mechanism through which red wine helps reduce heart-attack-related death. As explained by Scientific American, alcohol triggers cells to produce an enzyme that removes the alcohol from the cells. Researchers found that same enzyme also clears away toxic byproducts produced during a heart attack, allowing more heart cells to survive. The researchers hope they can use the enzyme to develop a drug to treat heart problems, and perhaps even fight some other effects of aging in cells.

Warrant Required to Trace Cell-Phone Locations, Court Rules

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling requiring police departments to get a warrant before they can get records of the movements of cell phone users. Cellular phone companies can tell where a caller is located by seeing which cell towers the signal goes through, and police could use records of that data to trace a suspect’s movements. Ars Technica reports that there’s been no decision on whether to appeal the ruling.

Spy Planes Morph Into Medical Aides

The unmanned aerial vehicles that the military uses to fly reconnaissance missions over enemy territory can benefit civilian medical care. According to New Scientist, engineers have converted the craft to carry medical samples of blood, urine, or sputum, or up to two units of blood, for between hard-to-reach clinics in parts of South Africa and distant medical labs. Use of the vehicles should speed up diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as tuberculosis.

Podcars Provide Alternative Transportation

With 70 million Americans nearing retirement age, the number of people isolated as they lose their ability to drive is expected to increase dramatically. In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, a University of Southern California professor touts a system she says would provide private transportation for these people, as well as cutting down on pollution and traffic. The system uses podcars—small, four-passenger cabs that travel on a monorail system and, unlike a subway line, are available on demand.

iPhone App Follows Presidential Race

FoxNews and NPR not enough for you to keep up with the race for president? Now there’s an application for your iPhone that will bring you the latest news, as well as biographical information about the candidates, and even let you register to vote, TechCrunch tells us. The application is available from iTunes for 99 cents.

VCs Pour Money into Thin-Film Solar Companies

Companies that make thin-film solar cells are reaping millions from venture capitalists. The New York Times lists Solopower, Nanosolar, AVA Solar, and Miasole as among those getting upwards of $100 million in investments. Thin film panels are cheaper to install than silicon-based panels, but they’re not as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.

Carpooling Becomes a Web 2.0 Activity

With gas prices rising and more people looking to share rides to work, governments and iPhone apps are offering ride-matching services to link riders with drivers. BusinessWeek tells us that a number of companies are springing up that use Web 2.0 interactivity to do a better job of match-making, with some even offering to verify users’ identity to make the process safer.

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Is There a Wind Bubble Coming?

Wind power is booming, with capacity last year growing by 45 percent and wind power companies being bought and sold. The Atlantic displays an interesting map showing where the wind and the windmills are, but worries that the current optimism in the wind market may turn sour. It cites two problems: the poor capacity of transmission lines to carry the electricity from the sparsely inhabited, windy areas where it’s generated to the big cities that need it, and the variability in supply caused by changes in the weather.

Cable Might See Problems from White Space Devices

There’s an ongoing debate about whether the Federal Communications Commission should allow devices to use the empty parts of the broadcast spectrum between television channels, the so-called “white space.” Such mobile, wireless devices are supposed to scan for local broadcasts and tune to frequencies that won’t interfere with those broadcasts, but now the National Cable and Telecommunications Association is warning the devices may cause local interference with cable channels, the Washington Post reports. The concern is the devices won’t notice the signals coming in over coaxial cables, and pick frequencies that will knock out a person’s cable service.

Study of 9/11 May Bring Stronger Steel

No scientific advance could make up for the tragedy of the Twin Towers’ fall seven years ago, but some small good may come out of the disaster in the form of better steel for future skyscrapers. Sergei Dudarev of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority studied the steel in the towers and concluded that impurities in the metal caused the steel’s magnetic field to change at high temperatures, causing the steel to become soft, says the BBC. Dudarev hopes a better understanding of the process can lead to steel that maintains its structure at high temperatures, which could be used in the future to build hoped-for fusion reactors that would run extremely hot.

Carbon Molecule Could Lead to Advanced Electronics

A chemistry professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute has built a new type of carbon molecule that could lead to advances in computing and provide a new type of organic semiconductor with valuable properties. Harry Dorn built a buckyball, an arrangement of 80 carbon atoms, and filled it with the rare earth metal yttrium, which gave it unusual electronic properties, according to Daily Tech. The material might be used to build quantum computers, which would be far faster and more complex than today’s machines, or provide a new type of flexible computer chip.

Cities Cooperate to Fight Climate Change

San Francisco and its neighbors, Oakland and San Jose, are working together to develop a regional climate change compact. The agreement, not yet done, will include pledges to use more renewable energy and generate more “green” jobs, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Company Gives Old Turbines a Second Wind

A startup in Plymouth, MA, hopes to provide affordable wind power to medium-sized projects by refurbishing old turbine blades for reuse. The Boston Globe says that most wind turbine companies are building equipment for large-scale projects, leaving farms, small businesses, and schools that would like to use wind power with nowhere to go. Aeronautica Windpower repairs old equipment and is able to provide it to these smaller projects much faster than they could otherwise get it.

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Software Could Aid in Hurricane Evacuations

Researchers at MIT are testing new software that uses vast amounts of information to guide officials in planning how and when to evacuate a city if a hurricane is coming. After Katrina, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency started using software that estimates how long it would take to evacuate a city. But according to Technology Review, the new MIT computer model goes much further, combining information about current weather conditions and projected hurricane paths with data on how many elderly, hospital patients, and tourists have to be moved, and makes recommendations based on those inputs.

White Roofs Could Combat Global Warming

One simple way to counter the warming effects of greenhouse gases would be to paint a certain percentage of roofs white, reflecting sunlight back into space, says a researcher from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Physicist Hashem Akbari told the Climate Change Research Conference that he’s quantified the effect for the first time, and that changing a 1,000-square-foot roof—the average on an American home—from black to white would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The Los Angeles Times reports that, if the world’s hundred largest cities painted their roofs white and replaced asphalt with more reflective concrete, the cooling effect would be massive.

Campaigns Trade Barbs on Stem Cell Research

The public policy debate on what research, if any, to perform with embryonic stem cells is heating up. The New York Times reports that Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is going on the offensive against a Republican Party platform that opposes any form of such research, even that approved by the Bush administration. The McCain campaign accuses Biden of using the issue to attack vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose youngest son was born with Down syndrome.

Cell Phone Pics Can Help Fight Crime

The New York Police Department has upgraded its 911 emergency system to allow it to accept pictures and video from cell phones or computers, CNET News reports. Now 911 callers can tell dispatchers that they’ve got an image to go with their complaint, and a detective will call back and have them upload the data. The system also allows non-emergency hotlines to get images of other city issues, such as potholes.

YouTube Videos Led to RNC Arrests

Anarchist groups that were raided by police just prior to the Republican National Convention came to the attention of authorities when the groups posted a video suggesting they were planning to disrupt the convention. Ars Technica reports that, according to police affidavits, another video, this one appearing to highlight protest targets, also piqued police interest. Police also targeted a group that uses video to monitor the interaction between police and activists during protests.

Techies Split on Obama vs. McCain

A survey of information technology professionals finds that 43 percent of them think the outcome of the presidential election will affect the decisions their companies make about IT. For instance, the Wall Street Journal says, stricter environmental policies might lead to spending on more energy-efficient systems, while immigration policies will affect their ability to hire foreign workers. Asked who they preferred as president, 28 percent said Obama, 28 percent said McCain, and 22 percent said neither.

Online Dating Could Aid Endangered Species

Biologists worried about some rare species dying out have a new tool to help them match breeding pairs, even in zoos far removed from one another, CNN reports. Taking a cue from online dating services, more than 200 zoos are using a website that contains information on an animal’s sex, age, and weight, and even lets zookeepers add information about an animal’s personality that might help them find the right match. No word on whether the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo will be allowed to create profiles.

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Debate Continues on Biofuels Versus Food

Some critics of biofuels contend that the growing demand for ethanol made from corn is helping to drive up food prices and could divert farmland from growing food to growing fuel. Others argue that much of the recent spike in food prices was caused by soaring oil costs and drought. Policy Innovations says that, if production costs come down enough, ethanol could eventually be a winning fuel source.

New Bacteria Could Ease Cellulosic Ethanol Production

One complaint about making ethanol from corn kernels is that it’s inefficient; all that effort (and water and fertilizer) goes into growing corn, and then most of the biomass—the leaves and the stalks—gets thrown away. Adding enzymes to break down the cellulose allows all the biomass to be used, but drives up costs. Now Technology Review tells us that researchers at Dartmouth say they’ve developed a microbe that can digest the cellulose and turn it into ethanol with less need for enzymes.

Google, Others, Invest in Satellite Internet

Google is one of a group of investors pouring $60 million into a startup company that hopes to use satellites to deliver Internet access to developing countries. O3b Networks, based in the U.K.’s Channel Islands, plans to launch up to 16 satellites by the end of 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal. The satellites could provide service to Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America.

High-Bandwidth Access Coming, But Not to America

In the Netherlands, Internet service providers are on the verge of providing customers with download and upload speeds of 1 gigabyte per second. In the U.S., meanwhile, service providers are talking about caps on how much data users can download. GigaOm argues that high-bandwidth fiber-optic access to the home is coming around the world, and that American service providers will make their money back sooner if they bite the bullet and invest in fiber-to-the-home connections.

Making Clouds Could Fight Global Warming

How’s this for an innovative way to counter global warming? Build a fleet of 1,500 automated ships that travel the world sucking up seawater and spewing it into the atmosphere to create denser clouds that reflect more sunlight and cool down the planet. Scientific American says atmospheric physicist John Latham, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, is floating the proposal, which could cost upwards of $2.6 billion.

America Catches Up on Wireless Innovation

Time was when the U.S. lagged well behind Europe and Asia in the use of cell phones and the kinds of wireless applications that were available. But now, according to BusinessWeek, the U.S. is catching up, thanks in part to its strength in software development. Just this past year, the magazine reports, the U.S. surpassed Western Europe in the number of subscribers to high-speed 3G networks.

Company Claims Unclonable RFID Chips

Radio frequency identification tags, implanted in everything from products to pets promise a way to digitally keep track of the physical world, but there’s been concern that hackers could mess with the system by cloning chips, copying their data to other chips. Now a Palo Alto, CA, company, Verayo, says it has made chips that can’t be cloned, reports Daily Tech. The technology, developed at MIT, uses the physical features of a chip to create a unique code that must be input for the chip to work.

Bank Hopes to Make a Splash with Tidal Energy

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has increased its investment in the development of tidal energy systems. The bank says its tidal project developer, Current Resources, has been acquired by Singapore-based Atlantis Resources, a maker of tidal turbines, Earth2Tech reports. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but it makes Morgan Stanley the largest shareholder in Atlantis.

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