Can stimulating plankton growth slow climate change? A crew from a company called Planktos is setting sail to find out.
Image: Plankton bloom

There's no doubt that one of the biggest threats to China's seemingly boundless economic growth is the prospect of protectionism in the US. Politicians in the US have a number of reasons for wanting to limit trade with China, including China's expanding reserve of US currency and the perceived "threat" of cheap foreign labor and goods. However, while politicians like to pander to worried voters (particularly around election time), many know that any protectionist measures would hurt the US economy equally, so they try to walk a fine line. The Chinese government is, of course, cognizant of all these political issues, so it'll do anything it can to present itself as friendly economic partner, as opposed to an adversary. Along these lines, a delegation of Chinese business leaders has announced that the country will by over $4 billion worth of technology goods from 27 US companies, including Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. At a ceremony, the the delegation was joined by California's lieutenant governor to trumpet the deals as an an important step in the relationship between the the US and China. Ultimately, though, this is all just a political show. $4 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the US' annual trade deficit with China. Furthermore, Chinese industrial firms have already been rapidly upping their investments in IT so as to better compete on the global stage, so it's likely that these deals would've happened anyway, even without the desire to address political concerns in the US.

Scientists work to uncover the molecular and cellular bases of neurodegenerative illnesses -- those that affect the brain and the spinal cord.

Researchers have found that eating certain plant substances can slow down the rate of ageing - and that females prefer mates that will be long-lived.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Just when you thought a $5,000 3D printer wasn't such a bad deal after all, the zany gurus at the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have put Desktop Factory's iteration to shame. The CandyFab 4000 is a homegrown printer that utilized a bevy of miscellaneous spare parts around the lab as well as the same sort of CNC hot-air control mechanism that we previously saw in the text writing toaster contraption. Their selective hot air sintering and melting (SHASAM) method allows the printer to begin with a bed of granular media (sugar, in this case) in which a directed, low-velocity beam of hit air can be used to fuse together certain areas repeatedly, eventually working the remaining grains into a three-dimensional object. The creators claim that while their CandyFab machine only ran them $500 in addition to junk parts and manual labor, even starting from scratch shouldn't demand more than a grand or so, so be sure to click on through for a few snaps of the fascinating results and hit the read link for the full-blown skinny.

[Via MetaFilter]

Continue reading DIY 3D printer utilizes hot air, sugar to craft random objects

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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