I found this video the other day and had to share:

I’ll have more to say on this soon, but for now give it a watch (or three) and tell me what you think.

Scientists and Engineers at the National Ignition Facility in California have completed construction of the world’s largest laser system and will be using it to investigate nuclear fusion:

“With NIF, scientists will be able to evaluate key scientific assumptions in current computer models, obtain previously unavailable data on how materials behave at temperatures and pressures like those in the center of a star, and help validate NNSA’s supercomputer simulations by comparing code predictions against observations from laboratory experiments… It could also help scientists better understand the makeup of stars and giant planets both within and outside our solar system.”

Very cool stuff. A proper fusion study facility could help answer all kinds of questions about the processes going on inside of stars, and maybe help move us towards using fusion as an energy source. Once this thing starts firing, expect to hear some squawking from the same people who harbor fears that the Large Hadron Collider is going to create a black hole and destroy us all! (Thanks to Korman for the original link.)

2008 was a good year for investment in renewable energy technologies.  Over $150 billion was invested, much of it directly funding the construction of new projects worldwide, according to a report from New Energy Finance, the people who crunch the numbers of the UN’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative.  Considering the economic climate, the numbers are both encouraging and surprising.

Solar energy continues to be the fastest growing sector, but the most encouraging stat is that worldwide investment in renewable enregy  quadrupled between 2004 and 2008.  Check out the link above for more highlights from the report, or download it here.

Psychologists at Cornell have found a link between high disgust sensitivity and conservative political views, lending support to the idea that emotion (rather than some form of reason) is the driving factor behind our sense of morality:

“To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers then surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS (Disgust Sensitivity Scale), as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues.”

This is an interesting issue, because the disgust reaction is believed to have evolved as a mechanism to help humans avoid disease, and yet here it is playing a part in how we define moral ideas of purity.  One of the more interesting results of the study is that people who generally fit the tag of liberal tend to weigh the moral worth of an act by the actual good or harm it does, and less by their emotional reaction to it, while conservatives seem to be very much the opposite.