Science from overseas
The National Academies of Science produces regular reports on the state of scientific research in the US. Their latest effort along these lines has just been released, and the academy has put the spotlight on physics in a report entitled "Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics: The Science of the World Around Us". The problem here is what is described as the inability to meet "grand challenges" of physics, which is likely to hurt US competitiveness
But aparently they are not doing so bad there in the states. Recently there were some rumours about the possible discovery of the Higgs boson by Fermilabs, fact that was very much concerning the developers of the LHC back here in Europe, given the fact that the device was being built with this main purpose in mind. Finally, the discovery has been a different one, and always welcomed! Fermilab physicists discover "triple-scoop" baryon.
Another milestone has been reached in the US. Scientists from Spectrolab have recently published their research on the fabrication of solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency — the highest efficiency achieved for any photovoltaic device. Their results appear in a recent edition of Applied Physics Letters.
And finally, ScienceHack is a unique video search engine for science videos. Every video is screened and approved based on accuracy and quality by "their scientists". So far they indexed: Physics, Chemistry, and Space (coming soon: Geology, Psychology, Robotics and Computer). ScienceHack does not host videos, they only index videos from other sites like YouTube and MetaCafe. Their database is relatively small, however, so you can help by submitting videos to the database.
posted by Goto @ 11:36
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