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Cultured Meat: Feeding the Masses
By the end of 2011, the world’s population is estimated to reach 7 billion people. According to the U.S Census Bureau and the United Nations Population Division, there will be 9.4 billion people by the year 2050. As the world population reaches these new heights, there will be an increasing demand for food production. With only a finite amount of agricultural land, there will be a point where it is no longer economically viable to raise cattle for meat. Instead, it may become cheaper to grow our future meat products in the laboratory under sterile conditions. While it might sound unsettling at first, there are many advantages to laboratory grown meat over conventionally farm-raised and slaughtered cattle. Read more…
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Refrigeration With No Electricity
Many people who’ve experienced blackouts know that power outages tend to be one of the first things to happen during small scale natural disasters. Power cables strewn across long distances can be vulnerable to all sorts of failure (e.g., downed trees in a thunderstorm, vehicle collision, transformer failure, tornadoes and hurricanes, etc).
In the modern world, our dependance upon electricity has caused us to forget useful skills and technology of centuries past. Read more…
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Open Source Ecology Creates Tools For a DIY Civilization
Open sourcing, a practice that aims to remain free of intellectual property laws, has become increasingly popular over the past few decades and is seen by many as a triumph for community collaboration and innovation. Many open source software creations like Linux, Drupal, MySQL, Firefox, and WordPress, allow developers and users to be creative without having to pay exorbitant fees to use proprietary tools. In the past ten years or so, the maker community (see the Maker Faire) has spawned a plethora of open source hardware platforms for making all sorts of incredible technologies. Tools like the RepRap, Arduino, and Fab Labs have opened the flood gates to a new generation of inventors — inventors like Marcin Jakubowski. Read more…
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Dollar Doom: Protect Your Investments Before It’s Too Late
Anybody who follows the Forex markets probably knows the greenback’s value has been weakening against foreign currencies. In March, the U.S. dollar index hit a 15-month low. An article from The Motley Fool entitled, “Save Yourself From the Doomed Dollar” provided some interesting thought on how U.S. investors can protect themselves from the coming doom. However, protecting one’s proverbial ass is certainly not limited only to investors. Read more…
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Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security Loan Delinquency Reaches a New High
Eliot Brown from the Wall Street Journal Online reports that the March delinquency rate for mortgage-backed commercial loans has reached a new high of 9.42% delinquency in March. Read more…
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Backyard Methane Biogas: Building a DIY Anaerobic Digester
Many homeowners choose to pay local companies to supply gas (either natural gas or propane) for heating and cooking. Some people may not know that methane is actually the primary component of natural gas. Commercial natural gas is largely harvested from oil fields and natural gas fields. There are, however, alternative ways to produce methane (biogas) for personal use. Anaerobic digestion is a process in which biowaste is combined with bacterial culture in a low-oxygen environment to produce useful byproducts (like fuel and fertilizer). Read more…
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MIT Artificial Leaf Produces Hydrogen Fuel
Science magazine reported this week on a revolutionary new technology that uses a catalyst-coated silicone “leaf” to produce hydrogen and oxygen gas. A group of researchers led by Daniel Nocera at MIT have been working on the problem for the past several years. Nocera founded the company Sun Catalytix to commercialize the technology. Sun Catalytix is currently seeking a patent for the invention. Read more…
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USA Inc. – What if the US was a Corporation?
What if the United States was a corporation? What would the financial statements look like? Mary Meeker and other contributors decided to ask that question when they published a report called “USA Inc.” in February 2011. In the report, they generate income statements, balance sheets, net worth graphs, and “corporate” debt data for USA Inc. The report also goes into great depth about entitlement spending programs including unemployment, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Read more…
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Case-Shiller 2011 U.S. Home Price Indices Show No Hope In Sight for the Housing “Recession”
The Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller numbers for January have just been released today and they show some dire trends. Reuters has a copy of the S&P data here. While the eternal optimists kept saying, “See, the market’s recovering!” when the prices were climbing in 2009, many bubbleheads knew better — and it turns out we were right. The numbers indicate the market is heading toward a double-dip. Who know’s how low it’ll go this time. Read more…
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The New Era of McCarthyism: How Supporting Gold and Silver Backed Currency is “Domestic Terrorism”
Stop the presses! Raise the threat meter to max! Domestic terrorists are here and they want to destroy your country! They could be your next-door neighbors, your PTA leaders, your religious leaders, or *gasp* your children’s schoolteachers! Read more…
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