NO SPACE FOR TRASH: At the moment if you can get off planet you're pretty much free of laws and regulation. You can litter as much as you like, and just generally do anything you can afford. Now at last the US is joining existing European efforts to create an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. The Code aims to establish guidelines for the responsible use of space, including cleaning up our space environment. Section One: no storing or sharing files in space. Details at Network World.
SUPERBUS: Big cities need to move a lot of people around, so forget your piffling city bus that carries maybe 50 people to work in the morning. Go big: China's Youngman JNP6250G superbus is 25 metres long and can carry 300 people. It has two bending sections to allow it to go around corners, and five doors. The buses will be used on Bus Rapid Transit in Beijing and Hangzhou. Maybe they'd be useful in Auckland
too. China Tech Gadget has more.
SUGAR PHONE: The Smart GlucoMeter from iHealth is a detachable dongle for an iOS device that helps track blood sugar levels. Add a small sample of blood to a test strip and insert the strip into the dongle. The iHealth app records the level and produces various charts and alerts. Our health in our own hands. More at Wired.com.
PUT THIS IN YOUR PIPE: Researchers in California have found a way to use cheap plastic to remove CO2 from the air. One of their goals was to filter out CO2 from the air being used by iron-based batteries. They added inexpensive polyethylenimine to the surface of fumed silica and created a material that was good at absorbing CO2 from humid air at comparatively low temperatures. Sounds like we should attach these to the exhaust pipe of every vehicle on the road. Science Now has details.
FOUR BY ONE: Silicon wires just four atoms wide and one atom tall can carry as much electrical current as copper wires, according to researchers from Australia and the US. The wires are made from chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal. This could be very useful for creating actual quantum computers. They must surely have much wider application than just quantum computers. PhysOrg has more.