Pushing the boundary of blackness  

Reuters has an article on a new carbon nanotube based material pushes the boundary of blackness - absorbing more than 99.9 percent of the light that hits it, with potential for solar power applications.

Frauenhofer ISE has set a new record for inverter efficiency, using SiC transistors to increase the efficiency of solar PV systems.

Renewable Energy Access has an update on Octillion's NanoPower Window - a transparent glass window that can generate power.

Green Car Congress reports that a hybrid electric test vehicle equipped with a CSIRO UltraBattery system recently passed 100,000 miles (161,000 km) on the test track. "The UltraBattery combines an asymmetric supercapacitor and a lead acid battery in a single unit, creating a hybrid car battery that lasts longer, costs less and is more powerful than current technologies used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)".

Triple Pundit reports that both Toyota and Ford unveiled plug-in hybrid versions of their vehicles at this week's Detroit Auto Show.

Clean Break has a post on the ugly side of next-gen energy storage.

Wired has an interesting article reporting that Google is now hosting large scientific data sets (which are frequently "dark" and not available to the general public). Google are shipping large "suitcases" of disk drives to anyone who can provide a dataset to them.

The Washington Post reports that the coal industry is "plugging into" the US Presidential Campaign.

Our Future reckons that lobbyists for the fossil fuel industries are in panic mode about climate change.

TreeHugger reports that more than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants in the US are now on the back burner.

Jerome a Paris says that 2007 was a record year for US wind power industry.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Bay Area has the first major U.S. study of Morgellons disease. Old news for tinfoil addicts.

The Independent reports that the opium fields are spreading across Iraq.

The Guardian has an article on internet censorship in the UK, noting "Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave".

The Guardian also reports that Ron Paul placed second in the Nevada primary. You probably wouldn't know this if you watched or read the mainstream US press, in which Paul is now almost entirely invisible (unless some unbiased representative of the fourth estate wants to call him the representative of the "Al Qaida wing of the Republican Party" of course). You can read about him online of course. Until all the internet filtering is in place anyway.

Paul actually has it easier than Dennis Kucinich, who not only keeps getting banned by the TV networks from the debates for his anti-war stance, but got booted off the ballot in Texas as well, for not swearing a "loyalty oath". Thats "democracy" for you, I guess.