37,000-year-old tools found in South Carolina
June 19, 2008
A local man has unearthed two ancient stone tools in an archaeological dig in Allendale County, S.C., a rare find that could provide more information about how early Americans lived.
And if more evidence proves the artifact is a new type of tool and one archaeologists haven’t found before, it could be named after Matthew Carey of Hilton Head Island. » Read more
Towards a 3D internet – Community challenge
June 18, 2008
Seeing all the commercial ventures aimed at 3D environments for social and business purposes (2nd Life, etc), the free and open source projects are found to be lacking in ease of use and development.
To remedy this situation, I propose the following to the community in the hopes that working together we can achieve a free 3D environment for the masses.
In a nutshell, we take an existing 3D gaming engine ( Quake III or other) and implement the ability to load BSP’s (level files) via the web and integrate mozilla web engine. Website owners could create the BSP’s via any of the free community tools to edit such files, upload the file to the server and voila people can now access the level and interact with others within that level environment.
Users download the 3D engine. Load it up and it acts like a regular browser until it encounters a BSP file, then it goes into 3D mode.
The engine would ship with generic tiles, models etc for building content. Customized tiles, models etc could be loaded off a server as indicated in the BSP file that is being loaded.
Flags could be added to indicate the level of interaction allowed between visitors (ie. games, pvp, exploring, chat, etc).
BSP files can be daisy chained allowing cross-site experiences and content pooling. BSP’s can be made/flagged private/members only/closed.
Solar cells price cut in half, cheaper than the grid
June 18, 2008
While solar power is clean and green, the great drawback for it has always been cost: it is more expensive than coal or gas-generated electricity. But could that finally be about to change? Researchers at ANU certainly think so. They’ve invented a new kind of solar cell that will slash the cost of solar panels. People will chose to put solar on their rooves, they say, because the panels will provide cheaper electricity than power from the grid.
The new kind of solar cells are called sliver cells, and the reason they are so cheap to manufacture is because they use 90% less silicon than standard solar panels. One of Australia’s largest utility companies is so convinced of the technology’s potential they have bought the rights to it and have already built a pilot factory to produce the new solar panels. » Read more
New Fuel Cell System ‘Generates Electricity with Only Water, Air’
June 16, 2008
Genepax Co Ltd explained the technologies used in its new fuel cell system “Water Energy System (WES),” which uses water as a fuel and does not emit CO2.
The system can generate power just by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, respectively, the company said at the press conference, which took place June 12, 2008, at the Osaka Assembly Hall. » Read more
New Material Absorbs Light Completely And Generates Electricity
June 16, 2008
A partnership between Duke University and Boston College turned out to be very beneficial for the science world, as they obtained a metamaterial that absorbs all the light it gets (no, it doesn’t make things invisible), thus capable of generating more energy even than the solar cells. » Read more
5000-year-old anthropomorphic figures found in Lima
June 16, 2008
Lima, Jun. 08 (ANDINA).- In the last days, a team of archaeologists headed by Ruth Shady has discovered a number of anthropomorphic figures believed to be some five thousand years old near the district of Vegueta in the province of Huaura on the coast north of Lima. » Read more
