Super-Slippery Material

Based on research into the pitcher plant, a flesh eating jungle plant, a researcher has created synthetic materials that are 10 slicker than existing slippery materials. Obviously has a wide range of applications, go to Discover for the article. 

Carbon Nanotube Muscles Strong as Diamond, Flexible as Rubber

Cool stuff from wired http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/nanomuscle/

My current favorite authors

Charles Stross
Richard K Morgan
Peter F Hamilton
Walter Jon Williams
Joe Abercrombie

Eternal energy source for cars - Thorium based

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/tiny-block-thorium-could-power-car-forever-203442766.html

E-reader ownership doubles in six months according to Pew

The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011 from 6% in November 2010. E-readers, such as a Kindle or Nook, are portable devices designed to allow readers to download and read books and periodicals. This is the first time since the Pew Internet Project began measuring e-reader use in April 2009 that ownership of this device has reached double digits among U.S. adults.

Tablet computers—portable devices similar to e-readers but designed for more interactive web functions—have not seen the same level of growth in recent months. In May 2011, 8% of adults report owning a tablet computer such as an iPad, Samsung Galaxy or Motorola Xoom. This is roughly the same percentage of adults who reported owning this kind of device in January 2011 (7%), and represents just a 3 percentage-point increase in ownership since November 2010. Prior to that, tablet ownership had been climbing relatively quickly.

Read the rest on the Pew site

Personal Responses To Large Scale Collapse

Great article over on www.FuturePundit.com about how to respond to disaster and/or the collapse of civilization. A brief excerpt is below, full article here.

"A proposed collapse response typology:

-Stay put and live defensively.
-Migrate.
-Hide in plain sight (this can be added to either of the first two options).
-Form a defensive perimeter for an armed camp.
-Form a raiding gang.
-Hide out of sight.
-Tunnel down and surrender the surface to nature."

Global Poverty is Decreasing at a Dramatic Rate

The Brookings Institute has just published a report called The Changing State of Global Poverty.

Socialists have to be pretty unhappy about the results, as the shift to market economies in many places throughout the world continues to improve the lives of the people and clearly show that when markets are allowed to work, nearly everyone benefits.

Comments from Next Big Future below:

"Our results indicate that the world has seen a dramatic decrease in global poverty over the past six years, and that this trend is set to continue in the four years ahead. We estimate that between 2005 and 2010, the total number of poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion people, from over 1.3 billion in 2005 to under 900 million in 2010. Looking ahead to 2015, extreme poverty could fall to under 600 million people—less than half the number regularly cited in describing the number of poor people in the world today. Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history: never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.

Over the past half century, the developing world, including many of the world’s poorest countries, have seen dramatic improvements in virtually all non-income measures of well-being: since 1960, global infant mortality has dropped by more than 50 percent, for example, and the share of the world’s children enrolled in primary school increased from less than half to nearly 90 percent between 1950 and today.5 Likewise there have been impressive gains in gender equality, access to justice and civil and political rights. Yet, through most of this period, the incomes of rich and poor countries diverged, and income poverty has proven a more persistent challenge than other measures of wellbeing. The rapid decline in global poverty now underway—and the early achievement of the MDG1a target—marks a break from these trends, and could come to be seen as a turning point in the history of global development."

Heads up display on goggles and glasses - this will be big

Imagine this display on glasses and sunglasses with a bluetooth or near-field connection to your smartphone. I believe that this will happen within 3 years or so.

Which countries match the GDP and population of America's states

Very cool graphic from the Economist comparing US States to the nearest country in terms of GDP.

Hornet's Can Convert Sunlight to Electricity

An analogue to photosynthesis in the animal kingdom http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13661