Monthly Archives: March, 2012

Our 20th Century Space Legacy – Part 5: America Goes to Venus

The 1960s were not only the era of Apollo and the race to the Moon, they were also a time for experimenting with technology...

Material Science Update – The Promise of Self-Healing Plastics

Recently in a blog focused on the evolution of materials for automobiles I wrote about the future of  shape memory polymers, self-healing nanoparticle-based plastics...

Mastering Space Beyond Near-Earth – Part 2: How We Got Started – The American Story

From the ashes of Germany's Second World War V-rocket program, the United States and Soviet Union developed space programs of their own. They did...

Climate Change Update – Probability Not Certainty is the Cautionary Conclusion of European Climatologists Studying Recent Weather History

Does the recent warm spell over the eastern half of North America reflect climate change induced by increased greenhouse gases? When Europe experienced an...

Biomedicine Update – Skin Cells Converted to Stem Cells Point Way to Tissue Regeneration

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Germany have created somatic stem cells from mouse skin cells.  Hans Schöler and his...

Urban Landscapes and Agriculture Update – New Technology to Assess Water Stress

In a new study conducted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to be published in the journal Computers & Geosciences, in May 2012, ,...

Robotics Update – Biomimickry and a Jellyfish named Robojelly

People who study Biomimetics look at biological processes and try to mimic them in technology. After all nature has tooled around with DNA-inspired creations...

Mastering Space Beyond Near-Earth – Part 1: How We Got Started – The Soviet Story

How do you tackle the subject of space, a significant contributor to our technological progress in the 20th and 21st century? In my previous...

Urban Landscapes Update – Seattle Building Designed to be Autonomous and Green for 250 Years

Creating "living buildings" requires a new approach to design and construction that recognizes the need to reduce our energy footprint. With this in mind...

Our 20th Century Space Legacy – Part 4: Transporting Humans into Near-Earth Space

After the American landing on the Moon, human space flight returned to low-Earth orbit. The cost to launch a kilogram of payload into near-Earth...

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