Free Republic

GE says its new machine could make the hydrogen economy affordable, by slashing the cost of water-splitting technology. Among the many daunting challenges to replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen is how to make hydrogen cheaply in ways that don't pollute the environment. Splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from energy sources such as wind turbines is one possibility -- but it's still far too expensive to be widely practical. Now researchers at GE say they've come up with a less expensive, easy-to-manufacture apparatus that can directly produce hydrogen via electrolysis for about $3 per kilogram -- a...

I snuck out of Hungary in 1973, one week after I was told that if I ever wanted to advance as an engineer, I would have to join the Communist Party. Being a good party member was far more important than your skill level, and so my boss was a man who had been a pig farmer. After decades spent raising hogs, he suddenly was supervising dozens of machinists, most of whom had engineering degrees and had built bridges and buildings until we were reassigned to "practical and useful" work -- making parts for factory machines. Working for Carly Fiorina...

Who Invented G.S.?Technology Review retracted two articles after deciding a key source was fictitious. The troubling question: whether this is a one-time screw-up by the writer, or a recurring pattern.by David Goldenberg on March 22 at 06:13 PM Michelle Delio is a journalist based in New York City. That much we do know. Whether her articles are accurate or not has become unclear. Two of Delio’s articles for the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's magazine, Technology Review, were disputed by their subject, Hewlett-Packard, which claimed it had found that an anonymous source she described within the company couldn't...