In The News

Solasta, Chapter One

David Reich March 10, 2011
Tech startups often involve suspenseful tales about the race against time. Inventors must produce fast results or risk losing funding. Such was the case with Solasta, a startup photovoltaics company started by three Boston College professors, including two US immigrants who grew up in Poland and China. The product aimed to transform solar cells: nano-scale antennas, coatings and conductors,...

India Needs a Sputnik Moment

David J. Karl March 4, 2011
Competition is a great motivating force for individuals and nations. In the global battle to innovate, the preferred weapon of choice is education. Warning his nation that India and China produce more engineers and scientists, US President Barack Obama calls for a Sputnik moment, harkening back to the 1950s when the Soviet satellite launch spurred new investments in education and technology. But...

World’s Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway

March 4, 2011
By over-hunting, over-fishing, over-heating the planet, humans may have triggered the sixth known mass extinction in the history of Earth, notes a paper in the journal Nature and reported on by the news agency AFP. In early mass extinctions, most animal species were destroyed. Mammal species, typically a rare event, are on a decline, struggling against human encroachment on their habitats. If...

Global Warming Blamed for Heavy Snowstorms, Record Floods

March 3, 2011
Melting polar ice, evaporating oceans and rising temperatures influence global weather patterns in volatile ways. Climate scientists warn that even as winters gradually shrink in length, Earth’s inhabitants can expect heavier rainstorms, snowfalls and flooding. Climate-change skeptics argue that heavy snows are evidence against global warming, but climate researchers point out that average...

Activists Go on Warpath Against Transgenic Crops—and Scientists

Richard Stone February 28, 2011
Chinese activists, restricted from political protests, lash out with ferocity in other areas such as the environment. Activists known as Wu You Zhi Xiang, or Utopia, are influenced by international organizations like Greenpeace, writes Richard Stone Science Magazine. Claiming to protect the rural poor in the tradition of Mao, the activists reject government tests and policies on safety...

China Takes Lead in Race for Clean Nuclear Power

Richard Martin February 2, 2011
In the race to develop new sources of green energy, China pursues research on thorium – more abundant than uranium – for nuclear power. “While nearly all current nuclear reactors run on uranium, the radioactive element thorium is recognized as a safer, cleaner and more abundant alternative fuel,” writes author Richard Martin for Wired.com. “Designing a thorium-based molten-salt reactor could...

A New Rice Revolution on the Way?

John Berthelsen January 19, 2011
New research from Asia has produced strains of rice that can withstand a range of disease, soil and weather conditions. Developed over 12 years, the process “holds out the hope of a scientific method of increasing yields of other crops, making them hardier and more resistant to disease and insects and cutting the use of fertilizers and pesticides without resorting to genetic modification,”...