Warren Ellis interview: RED, RED 2, Jonah Hex, Gravel, screenwriting and more

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/772097/warren_ellis_interview_red_red_2_jonah_hex_gravel_screenwriting_and_more.html

"When Alan Moore started out, and was getting known in the 80s, pretty much the first thing he did when he got the opportunity, is he set up a column in one of the British comics he was working on, The Daredevils at Marvel UK, where he could review fanzines and things.

Reading that as a kid, I kind of got the impression that that was part of the job. How once your profile got to the point where people actually paid attention to what you were saying, you should use that to direct their attention to things that are worth knowing about, by people who don't have that profile yet. I got the sense that that was what you did.

So, once my profile got to that point, that's what I did. And it didn't dawn on me till later that not everybody does that. And I was never interested in just limiting it to comics, because I'm interested in more things than just comics."

Robots to get their own internet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12400647

"Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones."

Ruskie Shooting Water-Filled Milk Jugs Point-Blank With Guns Of Varying Calibers

"This is a video of some crazy Ruskie (whose accent alone makes the video worth a watch) demonstrating the effects different caliber bullets have on water-filled milk jugs."

DNA engine observed in real-time traveling along base pair track

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-dna-real-time-base-pair-track.html

"Resembling a monorail train, the system relies on the self-assembly properties of DNA origami and consists of a 100 nm track together with a motor and fuel. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), the research team was able to observe in real time as this motor traveled the full length of the track at a constant average speed of around 0.1 nm/s."

Word of the Day: Cataphile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphile

"Cataphiles are urban explorers who illegally tour the Paris "catacombs", the term popularly used to describe a series of underground tunnels that were formerly a network of stone mines."

Breakthrough nanotape tech promises cooler chips

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/1/24/new-nanotape-tech-promises-cooler-chips/

"The new material promises a lot: featuring a thermal conductivity comparable to copper but a flexibility and ability to expand and contract as a result of temperature changes without breaking that is more like a foam, its creators believe that it could be a major breakthrough in the race to create ever-smaller and ever-faster devices."

Tuning Graphene Film So It Sheds Water

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201155628.htm

"Windshields that shed water so effectively that they don't need wipers. Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through the water more efficiently than ordinary hulls."

A 240-Year-Old Map Is Reborn

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/17/nyregion/20110117-map-restoration.html

"In May 2010, a tattered and brittle map was discovered in storage at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Experts identified it as a rare item, a Bernard Ratzer “Plan of the City of New York” map in its 1770 state. Until then, only three copies were thought to exist. After a painstaking restoration to remove layers of shellac and grime and repair dozens of breaks, the map is now behind plexiglass and ready to be displayed to the public."

Steampunk Palin

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/20/steampunk-palin-comic/

Robama: Sarah, before you rush off, you need to know... Big Oil And Nuke have taken over Alaska and are mining it's natural resources. It's no longer the idyllic place it once was, and the Russians have a force at the border that is not to be trifled with.

Steampunk Palin: Obama, don't even think of getting in my way. Big Oil And Nuke and the Russians have gone to far and must be stopped.

Taurus 28 Gauge Revolver

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2011/01/25/big-gun-short-lived-taurus-28-gauge-revolver/

Star Trek writers and Wolverine director pen script to Ender’s Game

http://io9.com/#!5747043/star-trek-writers-and-wolverine-director-pen-script-to-enders-game

"On Friday, Kurtzman tweeted, "Ender's Game! Us(K/O), Oddlot, and Gavin Hood taking his amazing script to the town! Who wants some?""

Robotic Ghost Knifefish

The Incredible Robot Fish from Northwestern News on Vimeo.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-robotic-ghost-knifefish-born-video.html 

"The team then created a computer simulation that showed that when these “inward counterpropagating waves” are generated by the fin, horizontal thrust is canceled and the fluid motion generated by the two waves is funneled into a downward jet from the center of the fin, pushing the body up. The flow structure looks like a mushroom cloud with an inverted jet."

Battlestar Galactica Series Bible

http://www.harvardwood.org/resource/resmgr/hwp-pdfs/battlestar_galactica_series.pdf

"The Series Arcs run through the life of the show, dealing with long-term stories such as the Cylon pursuit of our fleet, while the Multi-Episode Arcs allow us to spend 2-4 episodes dealing with a specific crisis, say on one planet discovered by the Galactaca, and the Episodic Arcs provide closed-end narratives for each show and giving any viewer a chance to watch this week's episode. By employing this structure, we gain the benefits of long-term story-telling, embroidering on the existing tensions and situations in the premise which have already hooked our audience and thereby delivering a richer and more compelling experience to the dedicated viewer, while at the same time making allowance for hooking the more casual viewer who may not be familiar with the long-term tales but is drawn Into this week's episodic storyline."

Project Iceworm

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/project-iceworm.html

"A fully-functioning "underground city," Camp Century even had its own mobile nuclear reactor—an "Alco PM-2A"—that kept the whole thing lit up and running during the Cold War."

Ultralight Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Aerogel

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nn102246a

"We have fabricated the lightest free-standing monolithic MWCNT aerogels with a density of 4 mg/cm³. The strong chemical bonding interactions between MWCNTs played a key role in the fabrication, which was proved both experimentally and theoretically. The MWCNT aerogel has an anisotropic macroporous honeycomb structure with straight and parallel honeycomb channels and mesoporous honeycomb walls. The MWCNT aerogel is a hierachically porous material with a surface area of 580 m²/g and electrical conductivity of 3.2 × 10⁻² S·cm⁻¹ (0.67 S·cm⁻¹ after high-current pulse treatment). The MWCNT aerogel demonstrates excellent compression recovery property. The unique anisotropic honeycomb structure combined with the hierarchical porosity with large surface area, compression recovery property, and high electrical conductivity makes the MWCNT aerogel promising for applications as chemoresistant vapor sensor and ultrasensitive pressure sensor. Other potential applications of the MWCNT aerogel may include catalyst supports and novel electrodes."

Word of the Day: Anthropocene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene

"The Anthropocene is an informal geological epoch that serves to mark the recent extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems."