This does sound pretty good. The most important factor in what this does is it frees up usable land for other things. The land used by solar panels and factories to make them as well.

There are problems with this idea (and other space-based systems that transmit collected energy back down to the Earth's surface).

The atmosphere diffuses all energy going through it, no matter how attenuated the energy is. The energy being transmitted from these satellites will have the same percentage of that energy diffused as the energy coming from the sun.

Why is this a problem? Solar power systems doing the transmission convert infrared and visible light energy to microwave energy. The former part of the spectrum doesn't heat things up much. How much more microwave energy heats water up is well-known. That's a very significant consideration since over 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water as well as some of it being suspended in the air.

Solar power is better than other sources of energy by the lack of environmental impact that it causes. Transmitting that energy down from space via microwaves destroys that usefulness. Massive utilization of such a system will negate any benefit the system provides.

Remember that usable land that would be freed up by moving the solar panels off the surface. You'll lose that and more from the rising sea level that this form of energy transmission would easily exacerbate.

Bad connection, eh? Sounds like IRL half-drunk (or fully-drunk) surgeons, which is hardly new. Just a new flavor for problems that way.

As to power failure, those also happen without robotic surrogates. When it happens during a surgical procedure, it's almost always deadly. Which is one reason why hospitals have backup generators. The remote site will have backup generators as well. Maybe not because the people doing it think of it at first, but regulations will require it eventually.

And as always, if it's mission critical, have a backup. Aside from generators, that means medical personnel with at least basic training where the patient is located. Backup personnel for surgery is already SOP in good hospitals.

It's been discovered that Graphene can be used as an optical capacitor.

Add in the rest about chips patterned after the brain but otherwise have no other connection to it.

If you RTFA, you'll note that no one actually says this is happening yet.

This is about a complaint filed with the FCC to prevent the use of this technology. One company, SilverPush, is cited as having developed the technology and details about it are in the public view, but that's the only case where there's even anything to cite about this form of intrusive technology.

You can let your hackles go back to their normal position now.

And you, sir, need to get a /. account, so your useful comment won't be rated so low, when it should be higher.

It is indeed as you say, and properly quote for context.

You are correct, sir, in that I have not done my part in keeping /. as it was, can, and should be. I implied nothing about the current editorial staff, nor did I wish to do so, regardless of my views on such matters in private. I would like to live up to my own perceived responsibilities as a member of the /. community. Based on my past history, however, that is unlikely to happen. I will, however, keep the thought of making such contributions closer to the fore, thanks to your comment. I can only hope that others take similar encouragement.

Yes. The article also continues to further explain that the cadmium-free dots are less efficient, which makes them less-desirable to the display manufacturers.

Also, to GP, the CEO of the profiled company notes in the article that they do not release any Cadmium in the production of the quantum dots, but they have no control over how the displays are disposed of when they are no longer wanted. Considering the environmental consciousness that they are stated to show, I'm sure the company would love to get those dumped displays and get that Cadmium back, rather than letting it being lost in the environment.

I have been reading /. for far longer than my ID # indicates. IIRC, it was 1999 when I happened upon the site, I just didn't bother to join, because I never had anything useful to say. Back then it was "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." Unfortunately, that guiding mantra no longer adorns the /. bannerhead and we are poorer for it.

This submission is a perfect example of "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." The summary doesn't tell you everything, you have to click through and read the article to get the true value of it. I read the article and it was very informative. I learned interesting information from it. It wasn't just interesting, I might actually use that information in the future.

Thank you for perking up my day with interesting information and giving me hope that /. will continue to be a site to return to for quality information and news.

Yeah, that's weird.

They should do things like we do here in the US. Our high-value currency is imprinted on paper, making it easy to carry around large amounts of it so it's convenient to spend more.

Actually, Oxytocin is destroyed in the gastrointestinal tract in humans. It's normally administered via intravenous injection or nasal spray. So, body spray could actually be useful for getting it to work on people.

However, it doesn't have the same effect in humans as it apparently does in mice.

In humans, Oxytocin creates and/or promotes social bonding. It does not create a sexual response in humans, but levels of it become heightened during and after sexual activities.

So, people can drop the immature sex jokes (or waste their time and keep posting them) as using it on the opposite gender won't automatically cause them to want to have sex.

OTOH, it could be used to make people like each other. World Peace drug, anyone?

Cybertron

Please, RTFA!

The scientists in this article are classifying the characteristics of a new heterogeneous material, which is a necessity as the time for breakdown of this material may make it a significant part of the fossil record.

The scientists are not saying it is a new form of rock. Only possibly the submitter or samzenpus are (mistakenly) saying this.

To repeat: RTFA, no new rocks here!

Sadly, considering where that originates from, it's true.

Channeling a magnetic field through a ferromagnetic metallic "skin" (hull plating) will deflect or scatter charged particle weapons or hazards.

Similarly, one could "paint" one of the various forms of materials whose optical properties can be altered by passing electrical current through it. It could be made to be 100% optically absorbent (the same as using two polarized optical filters set at a 90 degree rotation with respect to each other) in order to prevent you being spotted when you're in space. If someone sees you (since you just passed in-between a light source and them), and they shoot lasers at you, you change the polarization to make the material 100% optically reflective, thereby bouncing the laser off your ship.

Any laser much higher or lower in frequency than the visible spectrum (as in beyond IR and UV, which could also be affected by a very small subset of the materials which handles the visible light frequencies) is fairly difficult and inefficient to produce, therefore making it extraordinarily unlikely to be used as a weapon.

You should re-read the abstract to see what it is really saying.

The end result is that they were able to get normal-looking offspring from all four strains tested. However, there was an excessive number of failures in the process in order to get that process. The important line over-looked indicating what it took to get those end results: "cloned offspring were born at a 2.8% birth rate". If you check table 1 of the full article it shows there were a total of 651 embryos cultured in order to get their end results.

This is very far from a 100% success rate.

The aim of the experiment was to see if a clone could be produced from more commonly available cell types. This was a desirable aim due to the fact that it would be less harmful (and/or painful) to the donor than other methods of harvesting material for cloning (which may result in permanent damage or death to the donor).

The viability rate for this method of cloning is still no greater than any other method of cloning in use. It's simply a more humane/ethical method of cloning, nothing greater.

When you read the article, this isn't actually too controversial. All that's being done is changing the timing of of when the measurements are taken and when the intermediate photons become entangled. It's really just using the entanglement process to spread out the time over which the quantum state data is transmitted. You basically have a quantum data historical record.

I can certainly see this opening up useful new capabilities in quantum computing and measurement of quantum phenomena, but it doesn't change our understanding of quantum events and how they interact with our "everyday notions of space and time.".