ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

The little robot shown in the linked video is called Nao, developed by a company called Aldebaran in France. Alok Jha of the The Guardian writes that this robot 'develops and displays emotions' and 'form bonds' with people depending on the person's mood. It looks to me as though the people at Aldebaran have programmed a few emotional postures and that those emotional postures are triggered by very specific cues from the user. This falls short of the claim.

Bill Nelson, a US Senator from Florida has proposed the creation of 5 'space capital' investment zones within the United States. This proposal is outlined in an amendment to the 1986 Internal Revenue code titled 'Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act 2010'.

The bill would set aside 5 locations, to be determined by the Commerce Secretary, which would provide investment monies and a 20% tax break for qualified 'commercial space entities'. The areas to be designated must have 'high unemployment and economic dislocation in the public space sector' and 'well developed human and capital infrastructure and the capacity to effectively use Federal tax incentives to promote progress in commercial space capability, including crew and cargo transportation systems, research and technology development and other potential activities in low-Earth orbit.'. There are a few other sections of the Bill that dictate the potential locations for the economic zones.

On August 16th, Tracy Dyson and Douglas Wheelock successfully installed a new cooling pump on the International Space Station. The installation took two weeks and three spacewalks to complete. The repair was initially scheduled to take two spacewalks, but the old cooling pump released some ammonia after being unstuck from the station. This hazardous ammonia release was concern for caution during the installation.

There are two cooling pumps on the Space Station. If the second pump had failed before the repair was completed, the space station would have been abandoned because the station would not have been safe for the astronauts. When the first cooling pump stopped functioning, many of the experiments and machinery on board needed to be shut down.

According to the International Energy Agency, China has overtaken the US as the world's largest energy consumer. The United States still blows them out of the water with our per-capita demand for juice.

According to Jonathan Watts in the UK Guardian:
China's use of coal, oil, wind and other sources of power more than doubled in the past decade to reach the equivalent of 2.26bn tonnes of oil in 2009, creeping past the US total of 2.17bn tonnes

China is currently a major importer of coal from Australia. Presently, 50% of the nation's oil is imported. This could, and according to the Guardian, does have major ramifications for international energy markets. The Chinese have becomes a huge driver in the price of energy world-wide. In the same vein, the Chinese could become a major global driver for clean energy technologies such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear.

Gorilla Glass is a product from Corning. Originally developed in 1960, it was then called 'Chemcor'. Corning made only two changes to the composition of the glass in order to re-release it as Gorilla Glass in 2008.

What makes this glass neat is that it is wicked strong. The glass is 2 to 3 times stronger than other versions of lime-soda glass, even at half the thickness. According to Corning's website, "Currently, Gorilla glass is available as-drawn in thicknesses ranging from .5 mm – 2.0 mm." This additional thinness can make products such as televisions lighter and less expensive to ship. It is currently in use in some handheld and touch screen devices.

The process by which the glass is made sounds pretty neat too:

"Corning devised an ingenious method called "fusion draw" to make super-thin, unvaryingly flat glass. It pumped hot glass into a suspended trough and allowed it to overflow and run down either side. The glass flows then meet under the trough and fuse seamlessly into a smooth, hanging sheet of glass.