Bloom Box

One of the most heavily funded projects in the Silicon Valley inspite of the recession- the bloom box clean energy solution is now already installed in Google and e-bay campuses. It is the size of a cardboard box and supplies 1KW of SILENT power.

Comprising layers of ceramics and nanocomposites(magic sauce). Dr. Sridhar was a member of faculty here at University of Arizona, Tucson.

further

Science and fundraising

A candid piece in PLoS Biology about grantsmanship and its ills, the stifling of creativity due to insecurity and poor criteria for evaluating proposals etc.

Ownership of ideas vs. the value of collaboration in scientific research

This is something that has been troubling us for the past while: What to do with ideas that you are not paid to come up with? Can we work on them in our own time? What if the idea requires validation from data you do not have access to, or critical commentary from someone who pays you to think about something else?

Here is a suprisingly frank debate I came across.