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Science, technology and digital culture review by Robin Fearon: journalist, film-maker
Modified Bricks Can House Energy, Too — Building Energy Storage into Buildings
What if building an emergency battery were as easy as painting conductive plastic onto bricks, stacking them, and charging them up? Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have done just that — they’ve created supercapacitors by modifying regular old red bricks from various big-box hardware stores. The bricks are coated in poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate […]
NASA to fly a football stadium-sized high-altitude balloon to study light from newborn stars — TechCrunch
July 24, 2020
NASA’s latest mission won’t actually reach space – but it will come very close, with a massive observation craft made up of a football stadium-sized high-altitude balloon, along with a special stratospheric telescope instrument that can observe wavelengths of light blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, cast from newly-formed stars. The mission is called the ‘Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths,’ but shortened to ASTHROS.
Fail We May, Sail We Must. Tribute to Andrew Weatherall from The Glade at Glastonbury 2020
June 26, 2020
Tribute to the chief Sabre from Glastonbury’s best dance stage, The Glade. Andrew Weatherall’s life and career celebrated by DJ mixes from some of his nearest and dearest friends and collaborators Superb dub mix from Blood Sugar/Sabresonic – no details on the DJ here, but Bim Sherman was a Jamaican singer and songwriter who recorded […]
Posted in: Music
Filmmaker Jonathan Bregel Captures the Chinese Citizens of Shanghai’s People’s Park
June 1, 2019
Filmmaker Jonathan Bregel’s beautifully observed documentary of 36 hours in Shanghai’s People’s Park is paradise for people watchers. There’s nothing quick about Jonathan Bregel’s 45 minute documentary on the pace of life inside Shanghai’s People’s Park. It’s not ‘Slow TV’ either. ‘People’s Park’ is a document of Chinese life in public places. Dancing, fishing, playing […]
Biodiversity Emergency: School Strikes for Climate, Extinction Rebellion and the Movement for Environmental Action
February 16, 2019
The planet is experiencing a biodiversity emergency brought on by the human race. This week in the UK schoolchildren took part in educational strike action to say ‘no more, fix the planet’. Extinction Rebellion, set up in 2018, has demanded governments tell the truth about our ecological crisis and create true participatory democracy to reduce […]
Japan’s “Society 5.0” Initiative is a Roadmap for Today’s Entrepreneurs — TechCrunch
February 4, 2019
Japan, still suffering the consequences of its ‘Lost Decade’ of economic stagnation, is eyeing a transformation more radical than any the industrialized world has ever seen.
Posted in: Artificial Intelligence, Society
Health Focus: Beyond Veganuary, plus Orphan Drugs for Rare Conditions
February 2, 2019
The VNutrition app helps you sustain a plant-based diet the whole year round. Plus, drug repurposing and how it provides new treatments for rare diseases. If you were one of the hordes trying out veganism as part of your new year’s resolutions, the VNutrition app aims to help you extend ‘Veganuary’ into a sustainable lifestyle […]
So What Do You Call a Gang of Tigers? Collective Nouns part II
December 31, 2018
One of the most popular posts on WeLove Digital is a relatively simple one. Collective nouns for animals or people are surprising and often poetic in their description – a ‘wilderness’ of monkeys for example. So here’s the second part of what you could loosely call a series. Attention! Troops of Mushrooms on display. Whether […]
Power Hour: The History of White LEDs
November 20, 2018
Compared to incandescent lightbulbs, LEDs produce a lot more lumens per watt of input power — they’re more efficient at producing light. Of course, that means that incandescent light bulbs are more efficient at producing heat, and as the days get shorter, and the nights get colder, somewhere, someone who took the leap to LED lighting has a furnace that’s working overtime. And that someone might also wonder how we got here: a world lit by esoteric inorganic semiconductors illuminating phosphors.
WeLove-Digital 
August 17, 2020
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