Ever wish that you didn’t have to sleep some nights? Well, I’m one of those “lucky” people who don’t need as much sleep as the average person. That’s because I’ve had insomnia since the age of 13. Falling asleep has always been a problem.

Anyone that has experienced long bouts of sleep deprivation knows that it’s no picnic. That’s why my ears perked up when I read about a new drug that could eliminate sleepiness. It’s being tested by Darpa-funded scientists now.

A nasal spray filled with a natural brain hormone called orexin A is being tested in labs. Up to this point stimulants have been used to fight against sleep. Yet they are addictive, have terrible side effects and often become less effective over time.

Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, found that a lack of orexin A may cause narcolepsy (excessive daytime sleepiness). So what was the next logical step? Administer a double blind study where sleep deprived and narcoleptic monkeys are given orexin.

Results, although in their early preliminary stages, are amazing. Introducing the hormone has little to no side effect. It literally reverses the side effects of sleepiness without the edge that’s usually associated with stimulants. A scan of their brains revealed that they were awake and refreshed, just like after a nights sleep.

Little is known about long term sleep deprivation and its effects on the body. Although it’s obvious that long bouts without sleep are unnatural. Lets just say I doubt that it’ll ever be prescribed to students to pull all nighters. Yet can’t the same thing be said about caffeine?

Who knows, sometime in the distant future you may be ordering a bump of orexin at the equivalent of your local Starbucks? Then again, maybe not.

Move over Emerald City. It looks like the yellow brick road now leads to Moscow and ends at Crystal Island. It will be the world’s largest building, so big it will house a massive, sprawling city. Don’t get me wrong, just like any good American I know that bigger is better – but this building seems just a bit extreme, even for the Wizard.

It will dominate the Moscow skyline at 1,500 feet and hold a population of 30,000 residents. That’s split between the 900 apartments and 3,000 hotel rooms, a theatre, museum, school and cinema.

Panoramic views of the city are to be enjoyed on viewing platforms 980 feet above the earth. The glass at the peak will open in summer to an atrium. In the winter the surrounding area’s parks will be open for cross-country skiing and ice-skating.

A cool $4 billion will be needed to complete construction. For that price you can expect over 27 million square feet. Wait, lets put that in perspective. The Venetian in Macau, China claimed the record this year as the largest building by floor area. At the moment the record holder has over 10.5 million square feet of floorspace. Crystal Island plans to crush those numbers well over twofold.

The project has begun under the watchful gaze of its architect, Sir Norman Foster. You might recognize some of his firms’ other projects, the Hearst Tower in NY and The Gherkin in London. Differences with this project include sustainable design features such as solar panels and wine turbines.

If all goes according to plan, this behemoth will be built within the next five years. With the click of your heels and a small fortune maybe you’ll be enjoying views of the Kremlin from one of its floors.

Ever wish you could get your hands on Grays Sports Almanac from Back to the Future, rise to stardom and create your own version of Biff’s casino? There is no doubt about it, predicting the future has always had big bucks riding on it.

If you think your crystal ball is working well – in politics, economics, sports or even pop culture – you may want to check out Predictify.com. It caught my eye as an interesting concept after a friend of mine asked me to sign up last month.

It’s a simple way to pose deterministic questions to a large audience. The mob has their shot at predicting the future outcome of an event. If your prediction comes true you’ll get reputation points based on accuracy and, at times, a small monetary reward.

The more accurate your responses are the more reputation you’ll gain. But don’t bank on being the next Biff by answering questions correctly. The average payout of a correct response is $1. It may not be much, but it encourages participation and gets your appetite wet for staying in the game.

To be clear this isn’t a form of betting. It’s actually a pretty cleverly designed research tool. You can ask any question you want without putting up any dough. But if you do pay you can view graphs of profile data that include age, gender, education, political affiliation and race. With the paid method you can also choose to keep the results private.

Questions range from: Who will win the 2008 Presidential election?, How many touchdowns will Tom Brady throw this season?, to Who will win the upcoming season of American Idol?

The concept hinges on creating a competitive environment where regular Joe’s feel comfortable giving up their answer. As they’ve mentioned, studies show that a diverse crowds responses are often more accurate than a small group of experts at predicting future events. Plus they’re a hell of a lot cheaper at $1 a pop.

Steven LeRoy has shocking dreams. Some may even call them electrifying. He has developed a way to harvest lightening as an alternative power source. But it seems that he isn’t the only one sizzling over his invention. Alternate Energy Holdings is out to attack his research to benefit their bottom line.

After majoring in electrical engineering and mathematics he worked for several Fortune 500 companies as a technician. Later in his career he took up a research and development position. That is, until an epiphany hit him in 2002. An experience led him to believe in lightings’ potential to produce energy. His provisional energy patent was filed in 2003.

JK: How much energy can be produced by a bolt of lightening?

SL: No one really knows the exact figure on how much power lightning can convey into stored energy. Estimates range wildly. I’m sticking middle of the road, estimating a minimum of 10-20 megawatt hours for a weak to average strike. Other aspiring lightning wranglers give much higher estimates.

JK: How many homes will it power and for how long?

SL: The average power draw of most homes is 5 kilowatts continuous or less.

JK: Based on that logic, if a bolt has a 15 megawatt charge it would power 3,000 homes for an entire day. How will that energy be converted and stored?

SL: Storage can be in a number of different ways. I prefer the custom made trailer size capacitors that have been quoted for me by an overseas manufacturer. Originally I intended to use a ring oscillator of 6 35 kilowatt vacuum tubes to convert to phase corrected sinusoidal power. Now I favor solid state UPS on a low voltage block to block basis. Power cables at 230VAC can be very safely buried.

JK: Has anyone every tried to convert the power of lightening into energy before?

SL: To my knowledge, there are no actual lightning plants on line as of yet.

JK: How does your research differ from previous attempts? What makes you think that your method will be successful? Has it been properly field tested?

SL: My research is based on a small scale prototype, and if I had the funds I would first set up a mobile strike facility in a farm field just to take measurements. The lightning would be triggered with a cathode ray device scanning the lower atmosphere with a flood of electrons. The strike towers would be lowerable and short about 20 feet high surrounded by induction coils.

JK: Are capacitors the right answer? How do they vary from other methods of energy storage?

SL: Capacitors are fast charging and there is a way to delay the current surge over the R/C time interval to allow full charging. Voltage regulation would be employed along a voltage divider series. Some suggest superconductors for storage, but this requires cryogenic cooling and is very costly. The heat of adding the power to the superconductor without a delay circuit would boil off the liquid helium I’d guess. But thats just my opinion. Ionized gas tubes should be explored too.

JK: I understand you were applying for a grant in order to further your
research. That was until Alternative Energy Holdings had some negative things to say about your research. Why do you think they attacked your research? Do you think it simply came down to the bottom line?

SL: I have suspended my grant application due to the negative and vengeful PR spin by Alternate Energy Holdings. Everything in R&D on their website was created by me, but they claim it as their own research discovery. Of course it has to do with protecting their bottom line. I currently have an attorney working on this matter.

JK: What was your original motive in the creation of this technology?

SL: My original motive was to provide an experimental source of clean renewable energy. I am also focusing on regenerative superconducting transformers. I see real potential there, too.

JK: How will you proceed from here? What plans, if any, do you have to further research? Do you think you’ll continue in the field of alternative energy or move onto something else?

SL: As far as staying in the field of development, I have a civil matter to settle before I can proceed further. No one would want to be deliberately slandered. I have applied for apx. 20 patents since 1977, starting in energy field in 2002-2003.

JK: Thank you for sitting down with me and discussing your research in detail. Although it is disheartening that your old firm has been working against you, we hope to see the science and technology come to its full fruit at some point in the future. We’re long past due on an energy source that is clean, efficient and natural.

SL: Thank you, Jerad, for giving me an arena where I could speak openly. Just a further note to your readers, I am not accepting further investment funds at this time. Thank you for your generosity.

Scramjet engines would be capable of flying from New York to Tokyo in two hours. They’ve been in development for decades and governments from around the world – USA, Australia and China – are finally making them a reality.

So just how fast is a scramjet? You may need a bit of comparison:

• A Boeing 747 cruises at 567 mph (Mach 0.85).
• The Concorde was capable of speeds of up to 1,330 mph (Mach 2.02).
• An F-14 Tomcat maxes out at 1,544 mph (Mach 2.34).
• The SR-71 Blackbird holds the speed record: 2,511 mph (Mach 3.3).
• Scramjets are projected at Mach 15, that’s upwards of 10,000 mph.

The jet engines of today aren’t able to go faster than Mach 3 because they use turbines that would melt under the outrageous temperatures that occur beyond that speed. So how is it possible to weather the storm? Take out the turbines. Scramjets are force-fed air engines with no moving or meltable components.

Inaugural attempts at this technology began with Reagan announcing a public scramjet project called the National Aerospace Plane (Rockwell X-30) in 1986. Dreams of “a new Orient Express” scheduled to have the technology up and running to ferry passengers by the 90’s. President Clinton canceled the project in 1994 because of all of the barriers and problems the research had.

Yet, as usual, the lessons of yesteryear gave us insight for todays research. Instead of trying to create a plane that can takeoff and reach Mach 25 within moments researchers are slowly developing the engines to instead go off in stages.

The first field tested scramjet flight was in 2002 by Australian researchers, called HyShot. It was essentially a rocket with a scramjet engine strapped on it that was launched 20 miles above the surface of the earth. Upon it’s re-entry the engine fired for five seconds, reaching 5,000 miles per hour (Mach 7.6) before crashing into the ground.

In 2004 NASA’s X-43A, a rocket craft, was launched off a moving airplane and reached a jaw dropping 7,307 mph (Mach 9.6) after 10 seconds. The new goal is 100 seconds of continuous flight. The X-1 engine design is currently being tested in Langley and hopefuls think that its flight time is capable of being extended to an hour of continuous flight.

So when will you finally be able to enjoy the benefits of all this blazing, neck-whipping speed? Darpa’s HTV-3X Blackswift is an unmanned vehicle that is set to make it’s first flight in 2012. After that it’s all a matter of adding some seats and charging a hell of a premium.

[Popsi]