Dec 05 Watch For Wind Energy’s Future, Researchers Look High in the Sky The next major innovation in wind power might not involve big, white turbines dotting the countryside. KQED QUEST reports on research being done on "tethered airfoils" that could capture wind energy more efficiently that earthbound turbines. This report is part… Continue watching
Dec 05 Researchers Discover Monstrous Supermassive Black Holes Researchers have discovered a monster black hole that appears to be the most massive found to date, as massive as 21 billion suns. This is one of two black holes found in elliptical galaxies some 300 million… Continue reading
Dec 02 Quantum Entanglement Links Two Diamonds Usually a finicky phenomenon limited to tiny, ultracold objects, entanglement has now been achieved for macroscopic diamonds at room temperature Diamonds have long been available in pairs--say, mounted in a nice set of earrings. But physicists have now taken… Continue reading
Dec 01 Watch For Frequent Fliers, How Big a Concern Is Backscatter Body Scan Radiation? As millions of Americans take to the skies for holiday travel, some scientists have raised concerns about the small dose of ionizing radiation emitted by backscatter full-body scanners used to screen passengers at U.S. airports. In partnership with ProPublica, Miles… Continue watching
Dec 01 Behind the Backscatter: The Health, Security Implications of Body Scanners EmbedVideo(2089, 482, 304); On Thursday's NewsHour broadcast, Miles O'Brien reports on the safety of the latest backscatter body-scanning machines that are widely used in American airport security. Hari Sreenivasan caught up with Miles this week… Continue reading
Nov 30 Watch Behind the Backscatter Hari and Miles on the latest full-body security scanning machines. Continue watching
Nov 30 Occupy DC’s ‘Roving Kabaret’ Photo by Elizabeth Shell. Recently, Puppet Underground and Occupy DC hosted a 'Roving Kabaret' ('K' as in K St., which is one of the locations where the organization has set up tent) of various theatrical troupes that support the… Continue reading
Nov 30 Worms in Space: Will Invertebrate Astronauts Help Us Get to Mars? C. elegans worms, pictured above, are a model organism for studying cell behavior in space. Photo by Flickr via snickclunk. In December 2006, the Discovery space shuttle launched into orbit carrying a seven-member crew, its first Scandinavian astronaut… Continue reading
Nov 28 Watch New Climate Change Deal to Succeed Kyoto a Long Shot What's behind the long struggle to reach a new international agreement on reducing greenhouse gases? Margaret Warner and The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin preview the U.N.'s annual climate conference. Continue watching
Nov 28 Weekly Poem: ‘The Radioactive Dating Game’ Mala Radhakrishnan is an assistant professor at Wellesley College and is the author of a book of poems about chemistry called "Atomic Romances, Molecular Dances." Her aim is to use poetry, but also easy-to-understand analogies to teach such subjects as… Continue reading