Wilhelm Reich was a psychologist turned researcher in the 40's and 50's. In the late 50's he was arrested and imprisoned by the US government for ignoring an FDA ruling that outlawed one of his inventions. After Reich's arrest all of his books and research papers were burned by the US government. Yes, burned.

Starting August 11, 2007 it will be illegal to possess a solution containing over 2.2% Iodine in the United States of America. Iodine will be a regulated chemical subject to tracking, approvals, import and export regulations. Certain exemptions to this rule have been granted by the government. It is be legal to possess 1 fluid ounce of Lugol's solution. Additionally "Persons handling regulated iodine materials are required to register with DEA, are subject to the import/export notification requirements of the CSA, and are required to maintain records of all regulated transactions involving iodine regardless of size." Farmers who regularly use up to 7% iodine solution for their livestock will fall under this monitoring and regulation, as will any manufacturing facilities. Amateur chemists will likely be unable to obtain Iodine legally (unless the are very familiar with US paper work procedures).

Here's a website that provides a nice, clear visualization of all known atomic elements. I found this site through Infosthetics. Each visualization shows the neutrons, protons, electrons, the spin of the electrons, orbital shells, and sub orbital shells - with the electrons mapped to each sub orbital shell. It reminds me of high school chemistry class, but better.

Sony released a video of their new flexible thin film display. The display is thin enough to bend like paper and displays full color images. The display is created using a combination of 'thin film transistor' and 'organic electroluminescent display' (OLED) technologies. At the moment Sony is not 100% certain what future applications to which the technology will be applied. However, I think that their wallpaper idea may have some wings. How great would it be to be able to repaint a whole room just by flicking a switch? Or even better, change the color based on the time of day?

The website says that these motors are great for running model cars, but I would imagine that a high torque motor would have some pretty decent applications in making amateur robots. At $15.95, it might be worth a test.

In a DIY project similar to the Fab@Home people, the Maker Faire will feature this 3D fabrication device. The device works similar to other 3D printing & prototype machines in that a solid object is built from a computer model by creating the model layer by layer out of a cheap substrate. The difference between this machine and others is that this machine uses what the makers call SHASAM, or selective hot air sintering and melting, to melt layers of sugar into an object. A hot air jet melts sections of a bed of sugar to form the various layers of a 3D object.

A nice documentary that lays out NASA's plan to build a space colony and the technology involved in the venture. In the video they cover the development and testing of new space suits, lunar habitats, mining the surface of the moon, extracting water and oxygen from lunar soils, and how the O

Researchers in Australia are using titanium dioxide to split seawater into oxygen and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas can then be used to generate electricity. Somehow I find claims such as these amusing the university team was confident it would be able to make the process efficient enough within 10 years for it then to be developed commercially. Although they also say that covering an area of 40 square kilometers with these generators would be enough to produce enough hydrogen for all of Australia's energy needs.

Shelly Minteer and her colleagues from St. Louis University has been working on prototypes of a sugar fueled fuel cell to power portable electronics. The fuel cell works by using an enzyme to break down the sugar and gain electricity for the system. She has used sugar water, flat soda, tree sap and drink mixes successfully in the fuel cell. Shelley is currently powering a hand held calculator with this device. She hopes that in the future she will be able to use this renewable and biodegradable source of power as a battery replacement. The US Department of Defense, who funded the work, hopes that she will be able to generate enough electricity to power their portable battlefield gauges and sensors.

Color OLED computer peripherals are on the market. This website has a few items for sale including the Optimus keyboard with OLEDs built into each key. This allows for the keys to be changed to any format you wish; enable your keyboard with buttons for Quake, Russian, or surfing the web.

OLED is short for organic light emitting diode. By embedding certain organic compounds into a plastic substrate and exciting the compound with electricity it is possible to reproduce images, in other words create a screen. One major advantage of OLED is that they do not require a backlight as LED screens do because the backlight is built into the pixel.

Aerogel is a class of materials characterized by its extreme lightweight, and solid state. It is made by replacing the liquid of a gel with gas. First developed in the 1930's, it has seen a revitalization since being used by NASA. Experiments have shown that "producing aerogel in a weightless environment can produce particles with a more uniform size and reduce the Rayleigh scattering effect in silica aerogel, thus making the aerogel less blue and more transparent. Transparent silica aerogel would be very suitable as a thermal insulation material for windows, significantly limiting thermal losses of buildings." -- from Wikipedia.

Experiments done with Bi-2212 as a superconductor may lead to a MR device with a major jump in resolution for hospitals and researchers. Bi-2212 is a bismuth containing compound that is superconductive at high temperatures -- in the world of superconductive materials this means 90 to 12 degrees Kelvin. The relatively low temperature (for non-superconductivity type people) of 12 degrees is achieved by using liquid nitrogen to keep the material cool enough to be used in a high magnetic fields. It is believed that by using Bi-2212 for the large magnets used in MR machines instead of the currently used niobium could increase the magnetic field from 21.1 Tesla to 30 Tesla without increasing the cost of the machines significantly. Following the current paradigm of niobium based high magnetic fields costs about 2 million dollars extra for an additional tesla unit. The higher the telsas of the magnetic field used in MR scans, the higher resolution the images produced will be and the more accurate the measurements obtained.