To promote the DVD release of The Simpsons Movie in England, a giant inflatable Spiderpig was flown over London’s Battersea Power Station, parodying the cover of the 1977 Pink Floyd’s album Animals. Thirty years ago, the giant pig balloon broke loose and rose 40,000 feet up into the Heathrow-London Airport’s flight paths. This time, an SAS sniper was hired to take down the flying pig should it try to escape.

Spiderpig takes to the skies, Channel4.com

Holosonic is a company that makes “audio spotlights” that can focus soundwaves into a targeted beam. An amusing use of this technology is in an advertisement on Prince St. in NYC’s SoHo (or one in Watertown, MA). If you walk through the right spot, you can hear a woman’s voice asking “Who’s there? Who’s there? It’s not your imagination,” which may have some doubt their sanity until they notice the big billboard for A&E’s new show Paranormal State ‘73% of American’s Believe’. Originally intended for museums and libraries, where quiet is a priority, this is the first time this technology has been used on such a massive scale. This may lead to a whole new kind of noise pollution in the future. Somewhat disconcerting, it’s bad enough that with bluetooth and other headsets it’s hard to tell if people are talking to you, themselves, or on the phone, now you have to worry whether there is even a person behind the voice.

A&E’s Manhattan billboard ‘whispers’ at passersby with the Audio Spotlight, Holosonics.com

Stanford researchers have used silicon nanowires to increase the life of a lithiuim battery by 10 times. A normal lithium-ion (or Li-ion) battery’s capacity is determined by how much lithium fits in the battery’s anode, typically made of carbon. Silicon has a higher capacity than carbon, but it swells when it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging and shrinks during use, disintegrating over time. What Yi Cui and his team did was create a lattice-work of silicon nanowires, which can expand up to four times their size as they absorb lithium and still not fracture. This could increase the life of a laptop battery to 20 hours. Further, improved batteries can help to better store solar power, as well as make the electric car a more attractive option. “It’s not a small improvement,” said Cui, “it’s a revolutionary development.”

Stanford’s nanowire battery holds 10 times the charge of existing ones, Stanford.edu
High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires: Abstract, Nature.com

In an interface between nanoscale biophysics and evolutionary ecology, Juan Keymer and others created microscopic environments for e. coli bacteria on a microchip. The environment consisted of tiny separate rooms, each with a small local population of e. coli. Over time, the bacteria coupled with neighboring populations, and through local extinction and colonization processes evolved into a metapopulation, which differed from the original. By creating a pattern habitat, with small differences from room to room, this method allows the creation of an adaptive landscape. So, by architecting specific challenges, like stronger UV radiation, it is possible to guide the evolution of the bacteria. This evolution happens through adaptation to large-scale, low-quality (high-stress) areas. Jaun calls this practice nano-urban-biology. Below is an image of the e. coli fighting for survival. The rooms are 200x200x20 microns in a 40x40 grid.

Bacterial metapopulations in nanofabricated landscapes, PubMedCentral.nih.gov
Can bacteria compute? AIP.org

On Dec. 17, Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey, making it the first state to do so in over 40 years. Other states that came close this year include New Mexico, Montana and Nebraska. The eight people who were on NJ’s death-row now get life-imprisonment without parole. The bill was approved by a vote of 22-13 by the Sente on Dec. 10, and then 44-36 by the NJ Assembly on Dec. 13. NJ is now the 14th state to ban capital punishment, thereby extending the northeast life-zone that includes New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, as well as the DIstrict of Columbia. Maryland lost by a single vote this year.

The next day, Dec. 18, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution for a death penalty moratorium, third time’s the charm, as previous votes in 1999 and 1994 failed. Technically, the resolution is non-binding, but it does reflect the global sentiment, which has an indirect effect on policy making. It was hailed as "a bold step by the internation community" by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The vote passed by a vote of 104-54 with 29 abstentions, among those who opposed: China, Singapore, Iran, and somewhat ironically US.

New Jersey: A Death Penalty Trend?, Time.com
Executions in U.S. Decline to 13-Year Low, Study Finds, NYT.com
UN General Assembly OKs Resolution Calling for Death Penalty Moratorium, FoxNews.com

DeathPenaltyInfo.org

Toshiba’s new Micro Size Nuclear Reactors measure only 20 feet by 6 feet, making them small enough to fit in a basement, and produce 200 kilowatts, enough to power a remote village, small business, or secret laboratory. The reactor is fail safe, totally automatic, and will not overheat. It does not work with control rods like traditional reactors, but a new technology that uses liquid lithium-6 reservoirs, which connect to a vertical tube fitted into the reactor core. The end result is electricity for about 5 cents per kiowatt hour, which is half the price of grid energy (making the pricetag around $3,500,000). Lithium-6 is a controlled material because of its use as a ‘thermonuclear secondary’, that is, you cannot make a nuclear weapon out of Lithium-6 (primaries like Uranium or Plutonium are needed), however it can be used to deliver a greater nuclear yield from a smaller, lighter package, when part of a two-stage "dry" nuclear weapon. So, while Lithium-6 can make a nuke more powerful, having a micro nuclear reactor is not the same as sitting on a bomb. It is control over existing ‘primaries’ that is of greater concern. Moreover, a wider use of small nuclear reactors could help decentralize power production, thus reducing the risk of massive outages like the great Northeast blackout of 2003. Besides, of the 441 major nuclear powerplants in the world today, 104 are in the US supplying over 1,000 megawatts of power. The first reacor will be installed in Japan in 2008, with marketing in Europe and America to start in 2009.

Toshiba Seeks U.S. Approval for Micro Reactor for Rural Power, Bloomberg.com
Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor, NextEnergyNews.com