Elliot Chang writes "A team from UCLA has developed a new transparent solar cell that has the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. In short, they've created a solar power-generating window! Described as 'a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC)' that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light instead of traditional visible light, the photoactive plastic cell is nearly 70% transparent to the human eye — so you can look through it like a traditional window."

An anonymous reader writes "The inaugural G-Prize contest, conceived and exclusively sponsored by Gen9, was launched to foster creative and innovative approaches for using synthetic DNA libraries to constructively advance industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, biofuels and agriculture. Winners of the inaugural G-Prize will receive a free library of up to 500 GeneBits DNA constructs. Each GeneBits construct is a double-stranded gene fragment from 500 to 1,024 base-pairs in length, with error rates better than 1:2,500."

zacharye writes "Staples (SPLS) president Demos Parneros has gone on record in stating that Amazon (AMZN) has plans to introduce as many as six new Kindle Fire tablets. A new report on Monday says that Amazon has plans to add up to five or six new tablet SKUs to its lineup. According to the claim, Parneros confirmed that the Kindle Fire tablets will vary in size, and will include at least one 10-inch tablet model."

NormalVisual writes "When the Jack Daniels distillery recently became aware of a book whose cover they felt substantially infringed their trademark, they didn't go into instant 'Terminator mode' — instead, they wrote a very thoughtful, civil letter to the infringing party, and even offered to help defray the costs of coming into compliance. I believe plenty of other companies (and many in the tech world) could use this as an example of how *not* to alienate people and come off looking like a bunch of greedy jerks."

hypnosec writes "Just days after it was officially made available on Google Play, Google's Nexus 7 16GB version has been sold out and is not available for order. Google's probable answer to Amazon's Kindle has been selling like hot cakes from day one, and was available with two different amounts on-board storage: 8GB and 16GB. Considering that people now-a-days want more space on their portable computing device, the 16GB version was selling more than its 8GB sibling. Another reason for the 16GB to outsell the 8GB variant is that the price difference between the two is just $50."

bs0d3 writes "Right now what is lacking across Europe is a standard law to handle notice-and-take-downs of illegal sites like the U.S.'s DMCA. Right now illegal content across Europe is subject to non-standard takedown letters, some of which include no mention of what law was allegedly infringed, nor in which jurisdiction in Europe it's infringed, or who to contact in your jurisdiction to challenge the claim, or even which company it is that is being represented by the law firm that gets in touch with the [site owner]. They need a system so that the notices would have to include information that makes them verifiable as correct." Perhaps that will change; "The EU is holding a public consultation discussing notice-and-take-down laws."

Diggester writes "While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent killer is actually Hepatitis C, killing over 15,000 people yearly in the U.S. since 2007 — and the numbers continue to increase as the carriers increase in age. While there is no vaccine, there is hope in nanoparticle technology. The breakthrough came from a group of researchers at the University of Florida, creating a 'nanozyme' that eliminates the Hep C 100% of the time; before now, the six-month treatment would only work about half the time. The particles are coated with two biological agents, the identifier and the destroyer; the identifier recognizes the virus and sends the destroyer off to eliminate the mRNA which allows Hep C to replicate." Reader Joiseybill adds a link to coverage in the IEEE Spectrum, and points out that the 100 percent success rate, while encouraging, is so far only in the lab.

beaverdownunder writes "Many Aussies across New South Wales and South Australia had a bit of a shock this morning when they received an SMS threatening them with assassination. Although somewhat varied, the messages have typically read, 'Someone paid me to kill you. If you want me to spare you, I'll give you two days to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, you will die, I am monitoring you', and signed with the e-mail address killerking247@yahoo.com. Police and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have warned that the messages are almost certainly fake, and that no dialogue should be entered into with scammers." I hope "almost certainly" is droll understatement.

An anonymous reader writes "7,500 Black Hat USA 2012 attendees may have been surprised to get a fake password reset e-mail sent to accounts they used to register for the conference. Black Hat has apologized and explained the lame phishing spam attempt."

An anonymous reader writes "I am choosing a smartphone for work, moving up from a long history of just-a-phone phones. This coincides with moving into an environment where I will have a desktop machine in my office, rather using my laptop — so I'll VPN in from home, and am looking forward to not trucking my laptop around everywhere. BUT ... this means I now won't have my laptop all the time. I have gotten used to scripting various little things that make my life easier, and would like to carry that over to the phone. For example, periodically check that a certain machine is online and backing things up the way it is supposed to; if the lab monitoring system sends me an email that the -80 freezer is up to -50, play a sound and run the vibrate system in a specific, arbitrarily chosen pattern; when I press this button, record an MP3, when I release it prep an email with it attached, that sort of thing. Does such a beast exist? Has anyone used one and if so what do you think? Bonus points if you know if I can use it with Rogers (Canadian wireless provider used by my workplace)." I've heard good things about (but never used) the payware Android app called Tasker; what other recommendations do you have for running the world from a smartphone?

A widely carried Associated Press article (here, as run by the Wall Street Journal) reports that some of the convincingly scientific-sounding claims of opponents of fracking don't seem to hold up to scrutiny. That's not to say that all is peaches: the article notes, for instance, that much of the naturally radioactive deep water called flowback forced up along with fracking-extracted gas "was once being discharged into municipal sewage treatment plants and then rivers in Pennsylvania," leading to concern about pollution of public water supplies. Public scrutiny and regulation mean that's no longer true. But specific claims about cancer rates, and broader ones about air pollution or other ills, are not as objective as they might appear to be, according to Duke professor Avner Vengosh and others. An excerpt: "One expert said there's an actual psychological process at work that sometimes blinds people to science, on the fracking debate and many others. 'You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them,' said Mark Lubell, the director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis. Lubell said the situation, which happens on both sides of a debate, is called 'motivated reasoning.' Rational people insist on believing things that aren't true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views, he said."

Bismillah writes "The 'Skynet' copyright act has been in effect for six months in New Zealand and rights holders reckon it halved the number of infringements in the first month. Even so, they're not happy and say over forty per cent of Kiwis continue to infringe online. The fix? Rightsholders want the current NZ$25 infringement notice processing fee payable to ISPs to be dropped to just a few dollars or even pennies, so that they can send out thousands of notices a month. ISPs want the fee to increase four times instead, to cover their costs. Unfortunately, the submissions for the review of the infringement notice fees are kept secret by the government."

theodp writes "Apple may have killed off Ping, its attempt at a music social network, but the USPTO on Thursday disclosed that Apple has patent-pending plans for a hearing aid-based social network. So, if Apple's granted patents covering its Social Network for Sharing a Hearing Aid Setting and method of Remotely Updating a Hearing Aid Profile, will it use them to 'go thermonuclear' on Google when the search giant gets around to improving its current offerings for the hard of hearing?"