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Printed Plastic Delivers Solar Power
Long considered a scourge of the environment, plastics have been getting a green makeover. Solar company Konarka just gave that change another push with its new technology. Its solar-powered plastics could spell a bright future for everything from advertising to more serious applications, such as wireless sensors.
The company has been working on putting solar power in plastics for a while. But it just recently demonstrated a manufacturing method that can create rolls of solar-powered plastic using an inkjet printing process. This could enable Konarka to fit its embedded solar cells into literally hundreds of products, such as soda bottles and windows.
Konarka's chairman and founder Howard Berke expected the company to start making its first shipments to customers later this year. He envisions portable solar chargers for devices and self-powered sensors and lights for the short term. Long term, he hopes to see solar windows and power-generating cloth come from Konarka's products. It's important to note that plastic solar cells are only about 25 percent as efficient as solar panels with silicon cells; then again, they won't be put to the same uses, so they may not need to be as efficient.
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Cassini to Brave Icy Plumes of Saturn Moon
The Cassini probe has made some amazing discoveries on its mission to Saturn. Among these are the mysterious, icy jets that spurt from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus at high speeds - more than 400 yards per second (or close to 900 miles an hour). In a bid to get more information about the jets, and scoop up some of their substance, this week Cassini will risk its life to fly closer to them than ever before.
Scientists don't rate the mission as a high risk, since particles from the plume will be too small at Cassini's planned distance to damage the probe. But the flyby could help shed light on the answer to a question that has been bugging mission scientists since July 2005, when the jets were first discovered. Does Enceladus support a liquid water ocean, and possibly life, beneath its surface?
The icy jets were a surprise on several levels. Enceladus was widely thought to be too small to contain enough internal heat to support this kind of volcanic activity. Before reaching the plumes, Cassini will get within about 31 miles of the satellite's surface, and then fly down the length of the jet's outer regions. By the time it reaches the moon's south pole, Cassini will be about 122 miles from the surface, which is still extremely close and "requires exquisite technical finesse," notes Alan Stern, NASA's science chief. Assuming all goes well, we could have a much better picture of the plumes' composition - and the likelihood of life outside our planet.
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Build Your Own YouTube
Everybody knows that you can copy and embed videos from YouTube
on your own web pages. But the wildly popular video sharing site
is taking things one step further. It is giving away its APIs to
developers, allowing them to tap into YouTube's database functions.
This means that programmers will be able to build their own "YouTubes," without the YouTube branding. Developers will also be able to access much of what makes YouTube special: its tremendous video library and global audience. Anyone building a site using these APIs will be able to fetch video feeds, comments, responses and playlists from YouTube for their site; they'll also be able to upload videos straight to YouTube.
Anyone developing a site using these APIs will be able to let visitors rate videos or add them to a favorites lists on the site itself. They'll also be able to customize the Flash player through which videos are viewed. Developers can even let users publish videos to their site directly from their mobile phones. We may soon see a million YouTubes bloom.
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