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[Osmosis Jones]

Goddamn I hate paywalls. Most of the big stuff I need for my articles is accessible through my uni or my work, but if you want conference proceedings? Or some obscure german journal from the 20's? Square out of luck.

That Upsalite stuff is pretty cool... maybe we can finally have dessicator boxes that actually stay dessicated!

[Virex]

There doesn't seem to be much published on the topic, but a two year old PhD thesis covers what appears to be the early work on this and suggests it's more than possible the claim is true. Or at least partially true.

You're looking in the wrong places then. The amount of research being conducted on organic electronics (the largest subclass of printable electronics) is absolutely massive, with the main journal being Advanced functional materials. Other influential journals that often have papers related to organic electronics are, among others, JACS, Advanced materials, Physical review B and Nature materials.


Also, while the group you linked to is the only one I know of that is seriously working on printing transistors that small, there are several research groups working on the printing of solar cells, such as Flexible electronics group of CSIRO Australia in Melbourne and the Holst Centre (also works on printable LEDs and sensors) in Eindhoven,

[palsch]

Printable electronics research is one thing. This particular angle is unique as far as I can tell, and not particularly well publicised. Getting details on a particular advance is very different from getting a background on an entire field.

Not to mention that I don't have access to Advanced Materials or any of the other journals right now. I can usually turn up a given paper in a few minutes, but general background searches get considerably harder when there aren't publicly visible reviews and citations.

[Sheb]

I guess most of you know it already, but typing "filetype:pdf "ArticleName" " on Google sometime works for paper you don't have access to.

[Scoops Novel]

I'm sure you all know about this, and for those who don't. It's on the decline of bees, by the way.

The video claims (probably quite reliably) that neonicotinoids, a form of nicotine derived pesticides, are prime offenders, alongside a host of other environmental factors which I'm sure you can all think of. The decline figures are said to be as follows (with a link to the approval of said pesticides): "Beekeepers used to report average losses in their worker bees of about 5-10% a year, but starting around 2006, that rate jumped to about 30%. Today, many large beekeeping operations are reporting that up to 40 or 50 percent of their swarms have mysteriously disappeared." Europe has recently banned them, and whilst I'm certain there are hosts of articles on the subject it does beggar belief that they were approved in the first place.  On a scale of planned for to girding down for the apocalypse how fucked are we*?

*Only one batman joke allowed.

[Sheb]

Pesticides are tested on bees, and neonicotinoids, on their own, aren't enough to kill healthy swarm. The idea is that they weaken swarm that can then be killed by any other number of factors.

By the way, the EU did not ban those pesticides. It imposed a 2-year moratorium, which is a joke as those pesticides stay longer than that in the environment: in two years time the agrotech companies will be able to say "See? the bees keep dying, it wasn't our fault" and continue selling their crap.

[Lagslayer]

I've read recently that they are considering replacing them with Blue Orchard Bees, but I can't attest that they would be any better off in regards to pesticides.

In the end, I've done a bit of reading, and the arguments on both sides reek of politics. Then again, what doesn't these days?

[Frumple]

Yeah... that came up on the forum a while back, with a minor(? Memory's fuzzy.) connection to Monsanto the Legitimately Evil. As for the scale of fucked, consensus at the last discussion was "utterly", because some ridiculous proportion of the biosphere relies on bees for propagation. As bees go, so does the living ecosystem, apparently. So we've got good odds at seeing a near total ecological meltdown, fairly soon. One more for the pile, I guess.

[Scoops Novel]

Two things from Science Magazine, a journal i was previously unaware of but seems to warrant discussion in nature as the link shows. Firstly, we have apparently successful experiments creating false memories in mice. Here is the Science link, and here is a BBC article. Secondly, two distinct giant viruses achingly nicknamed Pandoraviruses have been discovered, certainly containing many previously undocumented genes and possibly indicating new forms of life, with a article from The Scientist, the paper published in Science and the discussion in Naturethe discussion in Nature.

[Lagslayer]

I've also read about the "false memories in mice" thing, and I am not impressed. It looks much closer to classical conditioning, except they are poking the brain directly instead of indirectly through the external sensory organs.

[Virex]

In the end, I've done a bit of reading, and the arguments on both sides reek of politics. Then again, what doesn't these days?

Politics doesn't. It reeks of mud and bullshit.

[Levi]

http://www.gizmag.com/n-fix-nitrogen-fixation/28482/

Kinda neat.  Apparently they've come up with a bacteria that can be put into plants to make it so they absorb nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.  This means they don't need nearly as much fertilizer.

[Loud Whispers]

http://www.gizmag.com/n-fix-nitrogen-fixation/28482/

Kinda neat.  Apparently they've come up with a bacteria that can be put into plants to make it so they absorb nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.  This means they don't need nearly as much fertilizer.

My mind is blown and I hope this is as true as turnips, this could be Mankind's lifeline to ensuring a population collapse does not happen at all.

[Lagslayer]

It's interesting, but it's bound to get the same flak as fertilizer. Instead of "contaminating the water supply" it will be "tampering with the atmosphere".

[Loud Whispers]

It's interesting, but it's bound to get the same flak as fertilizer. Instead of "contaminating the water supply" it will be "tampering with the atmosphere".

Ha ha what? Over three quarters of our atmosphere is nitrogen. The contamination part is insignificant compared to the issue of where we get the fertilizer from. No reliance on methane or oil means that any collapse in oil supply won't screw over the modern world, which is only possible due to the British agricultural revolution and the green revolution. This could be one more of those revolutions. High hopes. It also won't screw with the soil quality either, since most of the nitrogen will come from the air. With a bit of tampering, I reckon they could even make plants other than legumes be nitrogen fixing in the soil! Humanity won't collapse just yet. It also helps reduce our impact on the ecological world. There is NO way playing God can never end with Godly results.