Canadarm2 and HTV-3
NASA – In the grasp of the International Space Station‘s robotic Canadarm2, the HTV-3 Exposed Pallet is moved for installation on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-3) currently docked to the space station. Earth’s horizon and the blackness of space provide the backdrop for the scene.
London – Some places always take a good picture – London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)
By Liam Vaughan – Every two months, representatives from the world’s largest banks meet at an undisclosed location to review the London interbank offered rate.
Who sits on the British Bankers’ Association’s Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee, the body that governs the benchmark for more than $300 trillion of securities worldwide, is a secret. No minutes are published. The BBA won’t identify any members, saying it wants to protect them from being lobbied. more> http://tinyurl.com/8zb3qfo
Reuters Point Carbon – Southern California Edison (SCE), owner of theSan Onofre nuclear power plant in southern California, announced on Monday night it will lay off 730 employees this year to cut costs, a move that comes as the plant’s owners acknowledged that it will be a long time before the carbon-free nuclear plant will fully return to service.
The 2,150-MW San Onofre plant has not produced electricity since January 31, when a radiation leak was discovered in one of the plant’s two units.
The outage has been a major driver of California carbon allowance (CCA) futures prices on exchanges this summer. more> http://tinyurl.com/cdoorqb
R&D Mag – Researchers have developed a self-charging power cell that directly converts mechanical energy to chemical energy, storing the power until it is released as electrical current. By eliminating the need to convert mechanical energy to electrical energy for charging a battery, the new hybrid generator-storage cell uses mechanical energy more efficiently than systems using separate generators and batteries.
“People are accustomed to considering electrical generation and storage as two separate operations done in two separate units,” says Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We have put them together in a single hybrid unit to create a self-charging power cell, demonstrating a new technique for charge conversion and storage in one integrated unit.”
The research was reported in Nano Letters. more> http://tinyurl.com/8b7ys5d
Computer Science circle
(Photo credit: afagen)
By Carolyn Duffy Marsan – The number of college students pursuing computer science degrees at U.S. universities rose in 2008 for the first time in six years, according to a just released study. Academia and policymakers are hailing the news, but the question facing CIOs and others in charge of IT hiring is: How much do computer science degrees matter? more> http://tinyurl.com/dd5ss7
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Tagged Computer science, Education, Industrial economy, Jobs, United States
