“Physics” on The Daily Caller

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea appears to have ramped up its propaganda war against South Korea and the U.S. by turning to Twitter and YouTube — websites that most citizens of the reclusive communist country are banned from viewing. (more)

With less than two weeks until the August recess, the U.S. Senate has a lot on its plate. In addition to Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan’s hearing, the Senate will consider a number of bills covering topics ranging from taxes to food safety to my favorite topic, energy. (more)

Efforts in Congress and by the White House to limit carbon dioxide emissions appear to be dead for this year, and the likely election outcomes this November suggest that dead they will remain for many years to come.  Instead, the current Congressional majorities may attempt to enact a far more modest package of subsidies, regulations, and other meddling designed to increase the production of “renewable” energy. (more)

Many of the so-called solutions the green movement proposes consist of turning back the clock and relying on technology we left behind decades, even centuries ago: They want us to use windmills and railroads, use more land for crops (and thereby less for forests), and burn plants to make energy. Now, there has come along a fellow who thinks air conditioning is a bane rather than a boon and hankers for the offices of the 1940s. (more)

As teacher layoffs ripple across Georgia, the cuts mean financial stress among thousands of households, but also trouble for the larger economy. (more)

China, powered by years of rapid economic growth, is now the world’s biggest energy consumer, knocking the U.S. off a perch it held for more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency. (more)

As state forensic scientists savor their success in using DNA to nab the alleged Grim Sleeper, a federal court is considering shutting down a DNA collection program the state says has helped solve several violent crimes. (more)

A Nature paper co-authored by Steven Chu, Nobel laureate and Energy Secretary of the United States, describes a big breakthrough in the science of the very small: a method of optical microscopy that can image at resolutions as small as half a nanometer, a full order of magnitude smaller than the previous finest optical resolution. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iranian scientist sought refuge in the Pakistani Embassy compound and asked to go home, an apparent defection gone wrong that could embarrass the U.S. and its efforts to gather intelligence on Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. (more)

In February of this year, President Obama announced his support for billions of dollars in loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. This is the first nuclear power plant project to break ground in nearly three decades. (more)

A millimeter-sized diamond bullet fired from a linear accelerator could produce nuclear fusion when it collides with a chunk of solid methane, according to a study by Chinese researchers. (more)

Not so long ago, quantum physics at room temperature was found mostly in classroom discussions or over science-geek cocktails. But the mind-bending mechanics seems to be present in many everyday phenomena — including photosynthesis, the driving force behind life’s harvest of solar energy. (more)

A dangerous and record-challenging heat wave will affect much of the East this week as a once-delightful air mass turns ugly. (more)

Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have moved a step closer to their aim of unlocking the mysteries of the Universe. (more)

Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson when they are produced at the Large Hadron Collider. (more)

Dropping ultra-cold quantum gas down an elevator shaft could help prove Einstein wrong. Scientists have shown that it’s possible to keep sufficiently close tabs on quantum mechanical objects in free fall to tell whether two such objects experience gravity the same way. (more)

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco could soon start requiring retailers to post notices showing how much radiation is emitted by the cell phones they sell. (more)

In a rush to take advantage of U.S. stimulus money, utilities are quickly deploying thousands of smart meters to homes each day–smart meters that experts say could easily be hacked. (more)

Even before the BP disaster in the Gulf, there have been countless fallacies reported in the media about offshore drilling, but they have gotten even worse. One of the talking heads suggested that by moving to green sources, including nuclear, would lessen our dependency on oil so that we could stop drilling off the coastline. It was quite a solution, unfortunately it doesn’t quite add up. To start with, nuclear power is used to generate electricity, whereas drilling oil is used to refine gasoline for our cars. (more)

The Department of Energy continued to dole out stimulus money last week as a part of the Weatherization Assistance Program, even as the first 16 months of the program have fallen far short of expectations. (more)