Science & Technology

Thomas Newcomen first developed his steam engine in 1712 to provide energy for pumping water out of Britain’s coal mines, enabling deeper, more-fruitful mining. Newcomen’s engine was the precursor to today’s coal-fired (steam) generating plants that, until just a few years ago, provided 50 percent of all electrical energy in…

Last Sunday, the Light Brigade, headed by Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), traveled to Washington DC to counter the Sierra Club’s “climate rally.” What was the Sierra Club & company’s target de jure? The Keystone XL Pipeline. What is their ultimate enemy? Industrial civilization and the…

The tragic case of the tainted medication produced by New England Compounding Center, which resulted in at least twenty-five deaths and hundreds sickened, highlights a little-recognized danger inherent in government regulation. As David Brown reported: “[Purchasing pharmaceuticals from compounding pharmacies is] like buying your electricity from a different supplier. It…

Earl Parson reviews FrackNation, written and directed by Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney, and Magdalena Segieda.

Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate are putting forward bills to repeal the medical-device tax in ObamaCare. As The Hill reports: A bipartisan group of 180 House members—consisting of about 40 percent of the House—has reintroduced a bill to end the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices that…

In 2009, in my home state of Colorado, a friend faced an estimated expense of $30,000 for necessary dental surgery, an amount far in excess of what he could afford. After doing some research, he opted to have the work done in Costa Rica, where he ended up paying $6,000…

Fans of Star Trek will recall Captain Picard placing an order for “tea, Earl Grey, hot”—and seeing a replicator instantly produce the tea, cup and all, on demand. Although such sophisticated means of replication remain beyond our reach (for now), today’s innovators are moving in that direction with 3D “printers.”…

Nick Goldman, Ewan Birney, and their colleagues at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute have, incredibly, developed a way to store data in synthetic DNA, the biochemical material that carries cellular genetic information. Most data storage mediums require a consistent electricity supply, and those that don’t often rapidly degrade. Goldman and his…

FrackNation—the new feature-length documentary that sets the record straight on the process of hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas—will debut on television tomorrow, Tuesday, January 22, on AXS TV. (See my recent post about the film here.) FrackNation presents real-life fracking success stories and shows that the process is…

The raw figures are extraordinary: From May, 2010, to November, 2012, the percent of Americans from teens to adults who owned an e-book reader grew five-fold, from 4 to 19. Meanwhile, the percent of Americans owning either a dedicated e-book reader or a tablet computer (popular for reading e-books) grew…