This air-breathing solar panel stores its own electricity, cutting the cost of solar power significantly

It’s a solar cell! No… it’s a rechargeable lithium-air battery! No… wait… it’s both: It’s the world’s first all-in-one solar battery!

The new device, developed by Ohio State University, is essentially an air-breathing lithium battery that recharges via a built-in solar cell. This is significant, because one of the biggest problems with wide-scale solar power deployment is that you also need huge banks of batteries to store electricity — to even out spikes in generation when it’s cloudy or dark – and not only are those batteries expensive, but a lot of electricity is lost simply by traveling from the solar panels to external storage. An integrated solution is both cheaper and more efficient — about 25% cheaper and 20% more efficient, according to the researchers.

Musk’s million man march to Mars

With SpaceX now set to receive its$2.6 billion slice of the manned space travel pie, Elon Musk has sensed the time is right to set the Mars agenda. There is nowhere else on the planet where such private financial power, engineering resource, visionary clout, and now responsibility is concentrated into the will of one man. In short, Musk is US citizen number one right now, the mold for mankind.

Pluto to get its planet status back?

Harvard-Smithsonian Center debate comes to conclusion that Pluto IS a planet. There were once nine planets. Everyone lea8rned them, sometimes aided by a mnemonic: "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas." But back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union, arbiter of what is and what isn't a planet, stri8pped Pluto of its status, saying it was too small to pack sufficient gravitational punch. It was downgraded to a second-class status: "dwarf planet." So then there were eight: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, or "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos." 

Thailand, to combat bad Thai food around the world, creates robot ‘e-delicious’ tasting machine

Before she was ousted from office by a military coup in May, Thailand’s prime minister pushed an interesting initiative through government: To use robots to banish the world of bad Thai food. Apparently, as she traveled the world on various diplomatic missions, she was constantly bombarded by pale imitations of real Thai food — and I’m sure we can all agree, there’s nothing worse than being forced to consume a bastardized version of your country’s quintessential cuisine. Now, the first stage of the prime minister’s initiative is finally here: A robot that tastes your Thai food, and then compares its taste and smell against pre-programmed “standard” definitions of popular Thai dishes such as tom yum soup or green curry. Yes, the Thai government has created a database of how an authentic national dish should taste.

IBM leaves the x86 market at long last: Lenovo’s $2.1 billion acquisition approved

Lenovo has finally received approval from US and EU regulators for its acquisition of IBM’s low-end x86 server business. The $2.1 billion acquisition should be finalized by Wednesday this week (October 1). The original story, when IBM originally announced its intention to sell its x86 server group to Lenovo in January, remains below.

Hong Kong protesters turn to mesh networks to evade China’s censorship

The rather cramped streets of Hong Kong are currently lined with tens of thousands of people — the Umbrella Revolution. They are mostly students and members of Occupy Central, who are protesting for a fully democratic election process during the Hong Kong 2017 leadership election. The Chinese government, as always, has blocked and censored a number of social media sites so that mainland China can’t see what’s going on in Hong Kong. If the protest continues, the authorities might turn to more drastic measures — such as cutting Hong Kong’s internet connection, or turning off the cellular networks. The Hong Kong protesters won’t be so easily thwarted, however: They are already using a mesh networking app called FireChat, which allows the protesters to communicate freely without any kind of centralized cellular or WiFi network. Clearly, the Umbrella Revolution is in it for the long haul.