treehugger.com: by Lloyd Alter

Two years ago I was interviewed about the future of the green kitchen, and suggested it might look much like Donald Chong’s design , saying:

Local food, fresh ingredients, the slow food movement; these are all the rage these days. A green kitchen will have big work areas and sinks for preserving, tons of storage to keep it in, but will not have a four foot wide fridge or a six burner Viking range. It will open to outdoors to vent the heat in summer, to the rest of the house to retain the heat in winter. The dining area will be integrated into it, perhaps right in the middle. A green kitchen will be like grandma’s farm kitchen- big, open, the focus of the house and no energy from the appliances will be wasted in winter or kept inside in summer.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there have been a lot of new ideas in how you design a kitchen, what you put in it, where it goes when you are not using it. We look at some of the sliding, changing reinventions of the kitchen. [ more ]

guardian.co.uk: Beekeepers demand £8m for research into treatment against devastating viruses

Beekeepers have warned that most of the country’s honey bees could be wiped out by disease in 10 years unless an urgent research programme is launched to find new treatments and drugs. They are to launch a nationwide campaign, including protests, to force the government to fund the £8m research project which they say is needed to save the nation’s bees.

Ministers say they have no budget for such a programme, a claim rejected by keepers, who are to lobby MPs, gather at the House of Commons for a protest meeting and begin a letter campaign to raise support for research funds. [ read more ]

edge.org: BANAJI: What is remarkable about this test, which is called the Implicit Association Test—the IAT—is that it allows you to be a subject in your own experiment. Most scientists do not have the remarkable experience of being the object of study in their own research.

GREENWALD: The IAT provides a useful window into some otherwise difficult-to-detect contents of our minds. In some cases, we find things we did not know were there. It may be “an inconvenient truth” that what’s there is not what we thought was there or want to be there. But I think it is generally something we can come to grips with. [ read more ]

Scientific American: Talk about bouncing back from adversity. A new stretchy material can be cut and rejoined at the same spot just by pressing the broken ends together for a few minutes. The self-healing rubber stays stretchy even after being severed five or six times, or cut and left on the countertop overnight, French researchers say. A chemical manufacturer is already working to create large batches of the material for still hypothetical applications such as sealants and self-healing rubber duckies. [ read more ]

odemagazine.com: Reports of catastrophic declines in the bee population have scientists buzzing. Is it mites? GM crops? Mobile phones? Habitat loss? Here’s what the plight of the humble bee says about our own relationship to nature. [ read more ]

newsweek.com: It’s blasphemous, especially in America, not to believe that every New Year will be more wonderful than the year before—though in most years, that’s setting the bar low. Presidential candidates must always promise a brighter world, hucksters—other hucksters, I mean—must always offer the new and improved, the wizards of technology must never kick back and settle for the already perfectly adequate. [ read more ]

odemagazine.com: Four noble truths of connectedness.

When I was 15, a church sermon left its mark on me. The priest began with the question, “Where should we seek God?” Years later, I found my own answer. I believe what for centuries has been called “finding God” means finding meaning in our lives. A new perspective has emerged from neuroscience in the past 20 years. What gives life its richness does not come from reason and intellect. [ read more ]

lifeboat.com: In 2020, world population has grown to 7.5 billion people, the global economy is approaching $80 trillion, and the wireless Internet 4.0 is now connecting almost half of humanity. Synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (commonly known as NBIC technologies) have dramatically improved the human condition by increasing the availability of energy, food, and water and by connecting people and information anywhere, anytime. The positive effects are to increase collective intelligence and to create value and efficiency while lowering costs. [ read more ]

Lifeboat: First, I am trying to come up with a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual. [ read more ]

todaysthv: Bats in New York and Vermont are mysteriously dying off by the thousands, often with a white ring of fungus around their noses, and scientists in hazmat suits are crawling into dank caves to find out why. [ link ]