Blackest Black
Scientists have created the blackest material on Earth, absorbing more than 99.9 percent of light, from carbon nanotubes. The material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.

"All the light that goes in is basically absorbed," says Professor Pulickel Ajayan of Rice University, whose team's work will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters (via Reuters/ScienceDaily).

"It is almost pushing the limit of how much light can be absorbed into one material," according to Ajayan, who says it could one day be used to block defense signals or create highly efficient solar panels.

(Fun fact: The Indian-born Ajayan holds the 2006 Guinness World Record as co-inventor of the smallest brush in the world.)

Wal-mart Uses Diapers for Decorative Moldings
Say what you will about Wal-mart's business tactics (labor violations, anyone?), the mayor retailer sure is pushing its PR-tastic "eco-friendly" plan.

The latest: diapers as decoration.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the first of Wal-mart's new "high-efficiency" stores is slated to open Jan. 23, in Illinois. It's part of Wal-mart's massive plan to make its stores 25 percent to 30 percent more energy efficient by 2009.

To that end, the store features "decorative floor boards and moldings are made from the material leftover from making the leg holes in disposable diapers."

We weren't aware that producing "leg holes" resulted in a lot of waste, but we sure are happy to hear that it's being put to good use.

I Spy with My Bionic Eye
Some engineers at the University of Washington have developed contact lenses that have the ability to display details of all the incoming calls that you receive on your mobile phone.

ScienceDaily reports:

Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

The group embedded an electronic circuit and red light-emitting diodes (LEDs) directly into contact lenses. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the animals showed no adverse effects. Though the circuit is not functional and the lights don't light up, the development shows that potential applications like direct video to the eye may indeed be likely.

Image via TechShout
Click image for larger view.

Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering, and his research team anticipate powering the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens. Ideally, installing or removing the bionic eye would be as easy as popping a contact lens in or out, and once installed the wearer would barely know the gadget was there, Parviz said.

When the technology materializes and becomes fully functional, applications could include drivers to display the speed of the vehicle and pilots to view the plane's condition while flying, among others.

The results were presented this week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems.

Terror for Those Already Paranoid
Quite possibility, your boss already monitors your productivity and cyber ADD via keystroke software and the like. Now, "police state" may be the phrase du jour, but your "workplace privacy" (no such thing) could soon take another hit on the basis of a computer's assessment of your physiological state — from a worker's heartbeat to a guilty smirk.

The Times reports that Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software "capable of remotely monitoring a worker's productivity, physical wellbeing and competence."

The U.K. paper claims to have seen a patent application filed by the company for "a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism.

"The system would allow managers to monitor employees' performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure."

This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces. It's enough to make you stay at home and work from there — as long as your colleagues don't object...

Telecommuting Hurting Office Morale
While the health, life, and work benefits for those who can telecommute are undeniable, a new study says the practice of telecommuting is making work harder for non-telecommuters.

Ars Technica reported on Sunday of a study on telecommuting from the point of view of those who come to the office every day. The study, from an associate professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management & Technology (via Slashdot), discovered that telecommuting can have adverse effects on the office-bound.

Researcher Timothy Golden found that:

[In-office] employees took less satisfaction in their jobs and felt less of a relationship and obligation to their company as the number of telecommuting coworkers grew. In-office employees in his study became disappointed at having fewer and weaker relationships. They also got frustrated at a perceived increase in workload and difficulties that telecommuting can present to finishing projects and building strong working relationships.

About 37 percent of companies in the United States have adopted some kind of flexible work arrangement, and that rate is reportedly growing by 11 percent each year, according to the article.

The Rat King
"Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist." Thus spoke Westley in The Princess Bride over two decades ago.

Recently, however, fossil hunters uncovered a one-ton behemoth that bestrode the swamplands of South America some four million years ago.

The newly identified species is the greatest-known member of the order Rodentia and, by comparison, makes the biggest rodent alive today — the 132-pound capybara — "look like a pygmy shrew," according to PhysOrg.

In a study on Wednesday, palaeontologists reported that the skull of the extraordinary beast "was found in a broken boulder on Kiyu Beach on the coast of Uruguay's River Plate region." The skull, which measures a freakish 21 inches, has massive incisors several centimeters long.

Despite the fearsome look, though, the creature was not carnivorous and looked more hippo-like than rat-like.

Bill Gates' Life After Microsoft
Matthew McConaughey, Jay-Z, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, Bono, Brian Williams, Steven Spielberg and a slew of top Democrats — here's a video from a Consumer Electronics Show 2008 keynote, Bill Gates' last for the foreseeable future:

Cheers.