Letzte George C. Dimitriou, Consulting Services News Smashing Atoms at CERN and the Hunt for the ‘God’ Particle. On Wednesday, after 20 years of work by 10,000 scientists and engineers, researchers start the hunt for the God particle, or the Higgs boson, which could help explain the origin of mass in the universe. The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory [...] A Quasi-Political Explanation of the Higgs Boson. From David J. Miller, Physics and Astronomy, University College London, for Mr Waldegrave, UK Science Minister 1993. (Cartoons courtesy of CERN). 1. The Higgs Mechanism Imagine a cocktail party of political party workers who are uniformly distributed across the floor, all talking to their nearest neighbours. The ex-Prime-Minister enters and crosses the room. All of the workers [...] US Wind Turbine Market to be Worth $60 Billion in 2013. According to a new technical market research report from BCC Research, the US market for wind turbine components and systems will be worth $60.9 billion in 2013. This represents an increase from the 2007 market value of $7.9 billion and the estimated 2008 market value of $11.2 billion. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between [...] Google to Release Open Source ‘Chrome’ Browser Google announced Monday that it has been hard at work on an open source browser known as Chrome, a beta version of which will be released in 100 countries today. “Why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web,” [...] STEM Professionals: Between Cyclical Shortage and Structural Change. DB Research issued the following publication “STEM professionals: Between cyclical shortage and structural change”, which is available at their website. “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are becoming less interesting for students in almost all advanced industrial countries. This causes concern that the corporate sector may lack the right professionals and that the technological edge [...] Google Drills $10.25M into Geothermal Technology. Today, Google.org announced more than $10 million in investments and grants in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technology. EGS expands the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot [...] Russia-Georgia Conflict, and More from CRS. Noteworthy new and updated reports from the U.S. Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following: · Russia-Georgia Conflict in South Ossetia: Context and Implications for U.S. Interests, August 13, 2008. · Stability in Russia’s Chechnya and Other Regions of the North Caucasus: Recent Developments, August 12, 2008. · Russian [...] China’s Clean Revolution. China is already the world’s leading renewable energy producer (In terms of installed renewable capacity, China leads the world, reaching 152 Gigawatts in 2007) and is over-taking more developed economies in exploiting valuable economic opportunities, creating green-collar jobs and leading development of critical low carbon technologies, says a new report to be published by The [...] Europeana: Digital Paintings, Books, Films and Archives. Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. The prototype will be launched in November [...] Georgia CyberWarfare. As Russian bombs rained down on towns in separatist towns of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, hackers mounted a digital assault on the nation’s top Web properties this week, knocking government Web sites offline and defacing others. According to reports from security experts who have been monitoring the ongoing cyber attacks, the Web site for [...]