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"Signs that the auto industry recovery is likely to continue this year are everywhere at the North American International Auto Show — massive two-story video screens, dozens of futuristic concept and previously unseen vehicles and thousands of car parts suppliers and vendors." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has resolved to take an online computer coding course. The mayor is joining more than 180,000 people currently taking part in Code Year, a campaign to encourage more people to program." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The future of the U.S. Global Positioning System is taking shape in a vast white room south of Denver, where workers are piecing together the first of more than 30 satellites touted as the most powerful, reliable and versatile yet. The new generation of satellites, known as Block III, will improve the accuracy of military and civilian GPS receivers to within three feet, compared with 10 feet now, according to the Congressional Budget Office." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

That's way too big to fit in my car. - Akiva

"The headlines should come somewhere between December and March 2012 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if all goes as expected, will okay building up to four new nuclear reactors. The licenses for two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at Southern Co.'s Plant Vogtle in Georgia, followed quickly by two more at SCANA's Summer station in South Carolina, will be the first granted since the 1970s" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"2012 Mazdas will be fitted with a new kind of regenerative braking system called i-ELOOP. This invention of Mazda is the first of its kind in the world to use a capacitor, and it results in 10 percent better fuel economy." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The candidates explained that keeping foreign-born students who study science, technology, engineering or math in the U.S. was an important step in creating new technologies, new industries and new jobs." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"General Motors' plans to reopen a Tennessee assembly plant next year could lead to the first new hires at the automaker's Michigan factories since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"There is growing talk and momentum for an IPv6 week tentatively set for june 2012. If all goes well, this could be when the content providers will leave IPv6 accessibility on. This would likely result in a rather fast and massive IPv6 traffic growth considering the growing traffic contribution by the top tier content and network providers." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"When the wind blows into a conventional three-bladed, single-rotor wind turbine less than 40 per cent of its energy is converted into electricity. The rest escapes, much of it in the air wake that’s created behind the blades. That wake spins in the opposite direction (i.e. counter-clockwise) to those blades. If a second rotor with another set of blades is right behind the first rotor, and if it is designed to also spin counter-clockwise, it can capture energy from that wake. The end result is a turbine system that harnesses much more energy from the initial flow of wind." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The good news is that a huge, 100-year source of cheap gas will make plenty of winners as well." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Last summer a Halliburton executive did the unthinkable: He took a big ol' swig of hydraulic fracturing fluid. No, he didn't have a death wish. And yes, he appears to be doing just fine. He did it to prove a point: fracking fluid need not be toxic. What the exec drank was a new formulation of fracking fluid made with ingredients sourced from the food industry rather than the chemical industry." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"With the deal, ExxonMobil becomes the first oil major to do business in the Kurdish region" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Facebook's chief operating officer has some advice for federal immigration officials. Sheryl Sandberg said she blames U.S. immigration laws for failing to help keep talented foreign students, especially engineers, in the United States. She said that rather than send foreign students back to their home countries after they graduate from top-tier U.S. universities, immigration officials should consider "stapling a visa to every high-tech diploma."" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"United Airlines, the world's largest air carrier, will make the first U.S. commercial flight using an "advanced biofuel" on Monday, algae-based biofuel maker Solazyme Inc (SZYM.O) said. The flight from Houston to Chicago will take the Boeing (BA.N) 737-800 from the former home city of Continental Airlines to the base of United, which took over Continental last year to form United Continental Holdings Inc (UAL.N)." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Encouraged by the availability of inexpensive and cleaner domestic gas, some electric utilities are replacing their coal- burning capacity with gas-fired units. Energy-intensive manufacturers of chemicals, plastics, and steel are beginning to bring home operations that they exported years ago." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Power companies are switching over from coal to natural gas at an accelerating rate" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The ability to quickly build and track a 3D model of the environment (as we and Bill Gates both found amazing) is combined with the ability to display synthetic information onto the real environment. The result? The digital simulation of the world is overlaid on the world, in real time, and it’s utterly insane." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"State Transportation Secretary Robert St. Onge is reorganizing the Department of Transportation and has picked an engineer who headed a regional office to oversee the agency’s troubled finances." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"One of the cooler, yet practical devices in the various Star Trek series was the tractor beam: a beam of light that enabled the Enterprise to either tow disabled ships or push away objects. Now, it appears, NASA would like to make the tractor beam a reality." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Energy producers are using technology and new drilling techniques to find crude and coax more production from old wells." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"With natural gas running $1.50 to $2.75 equivalent gallon cheaper than diesel, even before tax rebates, he said the shift is being driven by economics." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Libya's transitional government picked an engineering professor and longtime exile as its acting prime minister Monday, with the new leader pledging to respect human rights and international law. The National Transitional Council elected Abdurrahim El-Keib, an electrical engineer who has held teaching posts at the University of Alabama and Abu Dhabi's Petroleum Institute, to the post with the support of 26 of the 51 members who voted. El-Keib emerged victorious from a field that initially included 10 candidates." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Facebook is dead serious about building common standards for efficient hardware in the data center. On Thursday, the social networking giant launched the Open Compute Foundation, an industry association that aims to reduce the cost and environmental impact of the computers that run great swaths of the Internet. The foundation formalizes an effort the social media giant began in April, when it started the Open Compute Project (OCP)." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Wind turbines in motion have a bad habit of mimicking aircraft on an air traffic controller’s radar screen and that can cause the kind of confusion that could lead to a near miss or tragic end. Enter Aveillant, a new startup that has developed tech to provide accurate radar data and remove a barrier — and a growing criticism — that has plagued the wind industry." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Several hundred thousand pieces of waste, commonly known as space junk, litter low-Earth orbit, potentially causing hazardous conditions for rockets and satellites. A group of scientists would like to shoot this junk from the ground with high-powered laser pulses. The heat from the laser blasts would vaporize a minuscule part of a piece of space junk, resulting in a plasma jet that could slow the object down enough to bring it out of Earth orbit." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Biofuels face their biggest test yet -- whether they can power fighter jets and tanks in battle at prices the world’s best-funded military can afford. The U.S. Air Force is set to certify all of its 40-plus aircraft models to burn fuels derived from waste oils and plants by 2013, three years ahead of target, Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary Kevin Geiss said. The Army wants 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The Navy and Marines aim to shift half their energy use from oil, gas and coal by 2020." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"NASA's new technology offices - there's one at every center including Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center - are gearing up to spend millions looking for answers to those questions and more. And they're looking to universities, students, companies and even other government offices for help." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"A Russian rocket launched the first two satellites of the European Union's Galileo navigation system Friday after years of delay in an ambitious bid to rival the ubiquitous American GPS network." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Google's Android 4.0 operating system, better known by its tasty nickname "Ice Cream Sandwich ,"or ICS, is far from a mere mobile OS update. Ice Cream Sandwich is a complete OS overhaul that includes tweaks ranging from the geekily esoteric (widget resizing!) to the most surface-level of interface improvements (think "shinier," care of faux-polished surfacing effects). It's also destined for both Android smartphones and tablets, unifying Google's mobile OS platforms for the first time." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The countryside is often a man-made landscape, not a natural idyll, and wind turbines are just part of that tradition, writes Will Self." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet