…Plastic Batteries, NYC Smart Buildings, the Adventures of an Obnoxiously Massive Dell in the City, and More!

Admiration
Space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts glided to a safe landing in darkness early yesterday, ending a mission to the international space station whose smooth success was briefly upstaged by the high drama caused by mysterious floating debris.

The landing was a day later than planned because NASA ordered up more inspections of the spacecraft’s delicate skin to make sure it was safe to come home. The fear was that one of the mysterious objects might have hit the shuttle.

After numerous cameras above and below — some of them maneuvered robotically by the shuttle astronauts — NASA proclaimed the spacecraft damage-free.

Admiration, Pt. II
Geologist Andrew Okulitch this week said he was reinstated as a scientist emeritus with the Geological Survey of Canada, reports the Canadian Press, after having been fired for lampooning an order to call Stephen Harper’s Tory government “Canada’s new government.”

The government memo ordered the 64 year old, who has worked for the federal government for 35 years, to use the phrase “new government of Canada” on official correspondence from the Geological Survey of Canada. Okulitch immediately fired off an e-mail saying civil servants are not paid to mouth political slogans.

He said the policy was “ridiculous and embarrassing” and said he will use Geological Survey of Canada in any official correspondence “as opposed to idiotic buzzwords coined by political hacks.”

Condemnation
Graduate business students in the U.S. and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields, according to a new study of 5,300 graduate students in the two countries.

The research, according to Reuters, found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

In a disheartening second place: graduate engineering students, 54 percent of whom admitted to cheating. Runners-up include physical science students (50 percent), medical and health-care students (49 percent), law students (45 percent), liberal arts students (43 percent) and social science and humanities students (39 percent).

The study, published in this month’s issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education, defined cheating as including copying the work of other students, plagiarizing and bringing prohibited notes into exams.

Condemnation, Pt. II
As if they aren’t struggling enough, Ford and General Motors are among six automakers charged in a groundbreaking suit that contends the companies cost California millions of dollars due to vehicle emissions.

On Wednesday, California sued six of the world’s largest automakers — GM, Ford, Toyota, DaimlerChrysler AG, Honda and Nissan — over global warming, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles’ emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

3x the Couch Potato Goodness
Warner Brothers engineers Alan Bell and Lewis Ostrover have filed a patent for a disc that has Sony’s Blu-Ray format inscribed on its top layer, with a Toshiba HD-DVD-compatible layer stashed beneath it. Flip it over and the other side is a standard DVD for carrying low-resolution footage.

Is the battle over standards for the next-generation high-definition DVD about to be resolved? Netflix addicts hold their breath…

Plastic Batteries Last 100x Longer Than Alkalines
Brown University engineers have created a new battery that uses plastic, not metal, to conduct electrical current — of particular interest to the energy, defense and aerospace industries, which are looking at more efficient ways to deliver electricity.

In their experiments, Tayhas Palmore and Hyun-Kon Song took a thin strip of gold-coated plastic film and covered the tip with polypyrrole and a substance that alters its conductive properties. The process was repeated, this time using another kind of conduction-altering chemical. The result: Two strips with different polymer tips. The plastic strips were then stuck together, separated by a papery membrane to prevent a short circuit.

Like a capacitor, the battery can be rapidly charged then discharged to deliver power. Like a battery, it can store and deliver that charge over long periods of time. During performance testing, the new battery had twice the storage capacity of an electric double-layer capacitor and delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery.

The only problem is that as of now, the hybrid batteries lose their capacity quickly after being recharged a number of times. As soon as they get kinks like that worked out, look forward to not having to recharge your cell phone after talking on it for a half an hour.

Bada-Bing, Bling and Beer Pong Officially Words. Linguistic Purists Shudder.
The Oxford English Dictionary has added “pop people,” “polysexuals” and “hard-asses” to its online edition, according to United Press International.

Among the 1,000 entries announced by Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower this week are “bada-bing” (“suggesting something happening suddenly, emphatically, or easily and predictably”), “carpet bombing,” “beer pong,” “Wi-Fi,” “plumber’s crack” and — ::sigh:: — “bling.”

Overcompensating
The folks over at LAPTOP Magazine recently did a bit of social experimenting, lugging one of Dell’s 18-pound XPS M2010 beasts, a 20.1-inch system through the streets of midtown NYC — subway, a Starbucks and a park — in search of reactions from Manhattanites.

Reports the editor for the consumer tech magazine in the October issue:

Despite its prominent handle, the 18.3-pound system isn’t designed for carrying around crowded city streets. It’s also not designed for tiny coffee shop tables, nor the human lap — even as a 5’11″ male, I had a fair bit of trouble keeping the thing steady on mine, a situation not improved by the fact that the keyboard detaches automatically.

Check out the full recap of the Manhattan adventure. (Via engadget)

NYC Gets Smart…Buildings
Well, we recently covered REALLY “smart” buildings, and lately we’ve been hearing things around the city about an upscale property on the Upper East Side (of Manhattan) that can use an IP telephone and touch screen to control lighting, play music and raise the temperature in their units. Then we found this: Buildings With Brains.

Apparently, what we’ve been hearing is true, due to the apartment complex running a single IP-based network for building-management systems and IT.

“Think about an office building,” says Jim Young, co-founder and producer at Realcomm, a San Diego-based trade group for the commercial real-estate industry. “You’ve got networked computers, servers, printers,” “Now look around. Look at the lights, the doors, the locks, the [emergency] sprinklers. Imagine the opportunity that comes with networking all of that. Where you had 20 or so IP addresses before, you now have thousands of them.”

This is Neither Light Nor Funny…
A plan in the early 1970s to create a massive artificial reef off Fort Lauderdale has turned into an environmental mess with the U.S. Navy, Broward County and other groups trying to figure out how to remove about two million tires covering 36 acres of ocean floor, reports The Miami Herald.

The tires came from Goodyear and junkyards, bundled on barges to be dumped at sea. The idea was that an artificial reef — called Osborne Reef — would form from the stacked tires.

But it didn’t work.

What was intended to lure game fish now is damaging sensitive coral reefs and littering Broward’s tourist-populated shoreline. Metal clips holding the tires together corroded, and the tires spilled across the ocean floor. Unlike sunken barges also used to build artificial reefs, the tires moved with the tide, and marine life never formed. Environmentalists say strong tides — especially during hurricanes and tropical storms — cause the loose tires to knock against coral reefs, disrupting the ecosystem. In some cases, tires have washed ashore.

Now the U.S. Navy, Broward County and a few other groups are looking at a three-year plan to remove the tires.

Bug-Sensing Napkins
Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, have attached a variety of bug-sensing molecules to highly absorbent “electro-spun” fabrics, which have a large surface area. These novel napkins could detect surfaces that are contaminated with pathogenic strains of E. coli or the superbug MRSA. After wiping a surface in a hospital, for example, dipping the cloth in a disclosing liquid makes it change color if a certain pathogen is present. (via New Scientist)

How to Prep the BBQ in 2 Seconds…

Picnicking engineers + Grills + Liquid oxygen = a Web classic and video goodness!!

Cheers.