Can Incandescent Bulbs Compete on Efficiency? from The New York Times The race to find more efficient lighting technologies appears to have an unlikely dark horse: the incandescent light bulb. While traditional incandescents will soon be phased out in the United States and abroad, researchers are plugging away to create more efficient versions that comply with looming new standards — while also providing an alternative for consumers who find compact fluorescents objectionable. Full Article Astronomers Seek New Home Closer to Home from The Washington Post The nearest Earth out there in space? It might be right next door, galactically speaking. Two teams of astronomers, one from the United States and one from Europe, are in a race to find a planet orbiting our near neighbors Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, twin stars that appear from Earth as a single point of light. Full Article

Teenager Discovers Simpler Proof
from University World News
A 19-year-old student, Karim Ghariani, has discovered a new way of mathematically proving Bernoulli's theorem, an equation applied to calculations about speed and pressure of fluids. Full Article

Fusion Dreams Delayed
from Nature News
ITER — a multi-billion-euro international experiment boldly aiming to prove atomic fusion as a power source — will initially be far less ambitious than physicists had hoped, Nature has learned. Full Article

Seismologists Monitor North Korea's Nuclear Blasts
from USA Today
North Korea's nuclear test last week started one army on the march — seismologists bent on capturing the exact size of the blast. Full Article

Dark-Energy Particle Spotted?
from Nature News
Cosmologists don't usually take their lead from the animal kingdom. But a model that postulates the existence of a 'chameleon' particle — which would change its mass depending on its surroundings — is gaining attention. Full Article

A Billion-Year Hard Drive
from ScienceNow
That embarrassing home movie of you naked in the tub could still be around millions of years from now, along with your less-than-eloquent posts on Facebook and Twitter. Researchers have developed a new technology based on carbon nanotubes that promises to permanently preserve individual bits of data, such as those found on computer hard drives and DVDs. If so, the technology could lead to data archives holding the entirety of human thought and communications potentially forever. Full Article

Converting Garbage into Fuel
from Technology Review
Waste gasification, a process for converting garbage into fuel and electricity without incinerating it, may be a step closer to large-scale commercialization. Last week, Houston's Waste Management, a major garbage-collection and -disposal company, announced a joint venture with InEnTec, a startup based in Richland, WA, to commercialize InEnTec's plasma-gasification technology. Full Article

Laser Energetics Launches Dazer Laser Non-lethal Laser Weapon
from Laser Focus World
Laser Energetics (Mercerville, NJ), developer of strategic lasers for applications in industry, science, medicine, homeland security, and the military, launched its Dazer Laser Light Fighting Technologies: Non-lethal laser weapons to fight enemies and threats. Laser Energetics has had a primary focus on its Alexandrite laser technology. Full Article