The world has too many nasty old cigarette butts. On the other hand, the world could use some supercapacitors , the high-tech replacements for batteries that could potentially charge in seconds. Scientists in South Korea have found a simple process to turn used cigarette filters into high-performing material that works better than graphene or carbon nanotubes in supercapacitors. Read more…
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Old Cigarette Butts Can Be Used As Material For Supercapacitors
Welcome to Reading List , Gizmodo’s weekend collection of the best writing from around the web. Today we’ve got pieces from The Daily Dot, Motherboard, Medium, and more! Read more…
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How a Stoned Teen’s Wikipedia Hoax Is Still Fooling Scholars and Experts
Big Bertha was all set to dig a nearly two-mile tunnel in Seattle, but just 1, 000 feet into her journey she hit a mysterious object that halted her progress. Now, crews are beginning the process of rescuing her, in what could be the world’s largest recovery mission . Read more…
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The Enormous Mission to Rescue the World’s Largest Tunneling Machine
You’ve heard all about the wonder properties of graphene, so come meet its one dimensional cousin, carbyne. A chain of single carbon atoms to graphene’s two-dimensional layer of atoms, carbyne has some pretty amazing properties of its own. By one measure, it’s the strongest material in the world (over graphene!), and a new study finds it has the strange ability to go from conductor to insulator with a small stretch. Read more…
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World’s Strongest Material Goes from Conductor to Insulator When Stretched
schwit1 (797399) writes “Over 20 years after being smuggled out of Russia, a trove of KGB documents are being opened up to the public for the first time. The leaked documents include thousands of files and represent what the FBI is said to view as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source.” The documents include KGB information on secret Russian weapons caches, Russian spies, and KGB information on the activities of Pope John Paul II. Known as the Mitrokhin Archive, the files are all available as of today at Churchill College’s Archives Centre.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Thousands of Leaked KGB Files Are Now Open To the Public
In the days of the Soviet Union, western antibiotics couldn’t make it past the Iron Curtain. So Eastern Bloc doctors figured out how to use viruses to kill the bacteria infecting their patients. Now, with antibiotic-resistant bacteria vexing modern medicine, that eerie yet effective method might come our way. In post-antibiotic world, infection is cure! Read more…
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Soviet Doctors Cured Infections With Viruses, and Soon Yours Might Too
Russia Toda y has unconfirmed reports that Russia announced today a plan to shut down all 11 American-run GPS stations within Russian territory starting June 1st. Russia has also threatened to stop supplying the rocket engines the U.S. uses to launch military satellites into orbit. Read more…
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Report: Russia Will Shut Down All U.S. GPS Stations Within Its Borders
For centuries, before refrigeration, an old Russian practice was to drop a frog into a bucket of milk to keep the milk from spoiling. In modern times, many believed that this was nothing more than an old wives’ tale . But researchers at Moscow State University, led by organic chemist Dr. Albert Lebedev, have shown that there could be some benefit to doing this, though of course in the end you’ll be drinking milk that a frog was in. Read more…
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How to Keep Milk from Spoiling Without Refrigeration
jones_supa (887896) writes “In Russia, the State Duma (lower house) on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to write off the bulk of North Korea’s debt. It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of Sept. 17, 2012. Russia sees this lucrative in advancing the plans to build a gas pipe and railroad through North to South Korea. The rest of the debt, $1.09 billion, would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal installments every six months. The outstanding debt owed by North Korea will be managed by Russia’s state development bank, Vnesheconombank. Moscow has been trying to diversify its energy sales to Asia away from Europe, which, in its turn, wants to cut its dependence on oil and gas from the erstwhile Cold War foe. Russia’s state-owned top natural producer Gazprom is dreaming shipping 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually through the Koreas. Russia has written off debts to a number of impoverished Soviet-era allies, including Cuba. North Korea’s struggling communist economy is just 2 percent of the size of neighboring South’s.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Russia Writes Off 90 Percent of North Korea Debt
When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn’t tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. “My husband here’s the one who invented that barcode, ” she’d occasionally say. And the check-out people would look at him like, “you mean there was a time when we didn’t have barcodes?” Read more…
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The Untold History of Where Barcodes Come From