Category: Science & Technology
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Dogs and Cats Living Together!
Speaking of “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria” (see previous post)… Now comes a story that Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson does not believe in creationism. Here’s what he told a viewer on his “The 700 Club” show, according to CNN: “You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all…
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Technology, Metrics and ROI
Now that Virginia has about $800 million-per-year more to spend on transportation construction projects, what’s next on Virginia’s transportation agenda? We’ll have more money to spend, but how will we spend it? House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, has some heretical notions. While praising the bipartisan achievement in 2103 of increasing transportation tax revenues, he…
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Curry School to Launch Education Technology Accelerator
I like the sound of this news from Potomac Tech Wire: The University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education plans to launch a new education technology accelerator in Charlottesville, school officials said. … The news comes amid a sharp increase in venture capital for education technology companies in recent years, with UVA Curry spinning out…
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Coming to Virginia: Connected Vehicles
Over the next couple of years, a consortium of Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and Morgan State University will conduct 19 research studies of “connected vehicles” in real world traffic conditions. The work is almost ready to begin in Northern Virginia. Writes Jenifer Joy Madden with Greater Greater Washington: Researchers have attached tracking equipment…
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Suspicious Trading In Gas Ethanol Credits
By Peter Galuszka On the busy Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake, some 33 squat petroleum tanks sit just across the water from the giant cranes of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. The tanks, along with 31 other ones just south of downtown Richmond, play a role in an intriguing and mysterious…
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Charlottesville’s Surprising Start-up Strength
By Peter Galuszka It may be a throwback to the glam years of the 1990s, but there’s always been an aura about bright minds getting ideas and having the fortitude and guts to push them to fruition without the warm womb of a big corporation or university to keep them nice and safe. Finally, after…
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Virginia Does NOT Say Yes to Nuclear
By Peter Galuszka In his typical business-only fashion, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has named several nuclear energy industry executives to the new, 17-member, non-profit Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority set up this year just as the move to end the uranium mining moratorium was augering in for a crash. Hmm. Let’s check this out. State…
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Whatever Happened to Virginia Uranium?
By Peter Galuszka A big effort to mine uranium in Southside Virginia seemed stymied when the General Assembly failed to end a moratorium on such activity in the last General Assembly. It would seem that exploiting a large deposit of ore in Pittsylvania County by a wealthy local family and some obscure Canadian investors had…
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The Syria Conundrum
By Peter Galuszka Where I live in the piney woods of southern Chesterfield County, one can gauge U.S. foreign policy by sounds in the night sky. Listening to them, I was able to mark the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and later, in 2011, the SEAL Team Six mission against Osama…
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The LADEE and the Minotaur
By James A. Bacon The world of space junkies can be divided into three camps: those who think the United States should pursue a Mars first policy, those who think it should pursue a Moon first policy, and the killjoys who think all that human exploration is a waste of money and time. I belong…
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Good News on Virginia’s Offshore Wind Power
By Peter Galuszka News that Dominion Virginia Power has won an auction to lease about 113,000 acres about 27 miles off Virginia Beach for an offshore wind turbine farm is welcome, but don’t expect anything to happen right away. Dominion won the rights to develop the shallow waters from the Interior Department for $1.6 million.…
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Yikes! Driverless Cars in Blacksburg.
As usual, technology is evolving more rapidly than the ability of pundits, bureaucrats and politicians to absorb the implications — especially in the realm of transportation. Two more cases in point: Googleburg. Google is now testing its self-driving car on the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Smart Road in Blacksburg. Reports the Roanoke Times: The technology…
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Auto Revolution Update: Nissan
Japanese auto maker Nissan has joined Google in publicly pledging to develop self-driving cars over the next few years. Nissan will build a proving ground by 2014 to test its autonomous vehicle systems and aims to bring “multiple affordable, energy efficient, fully autonomous-driving vehicles to the market by 2020,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Most…
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“Near Certainty” on Humans and Global Warming
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Energy, Environment, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Here’s some red meat for global warming deniers: A draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there’s “near certainty” that humans cause global warming. This is the group of hundreds of scientists and other experts who review global warming data under the auspices of the United Nations and are…
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Where Teachers Make Money Like Rock Stars
If America treated its teachers like rock stars, the theory goes, we’d get better, more motivated teachers. And better teachers would lead to superior academic performance. Well, there is one country in the world where teachers have the potential to make money for nothing, even if they don’t get, in the immortal words of Dire…