1. One thing that helpsPortable Tidal Energy[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d9zs0W9u2A[/embed]Orbital O2. The name sounds like a band. It looks like a spaceship ready to fight aliens. But O2 is neither. It is a machine used to harness tidal energy and bring it back to shore. Tidal energy has a global capacity of up to 100 gigawatts and could power up to 80 million homes - more than enough for some countries’ whole population. However, harvesting this energy is still expensive as there are limited installation sites. So instead of building a permanent structure and just waiting for the tide to come in, Orbital Marine Power developed O2 to go with the flow (tide). Comparable in size to a Boeing 747, the O2 can be towed to a suitable location then anchored. It lowers its bi-directional rotors and starts to capture tidal energy. The rotors can produce up to 2 megawatts per hour at optimal tidal flow. Unlike wind energy, tidal energy is predictable so we know exactly what time to lower the rotors for go, and what time to schedule maintenance and downtime. This innovation is bringing tidal energy closer to the cost of running wind farms.Orbital Marine claims that O2 will work with river currents, providing a power source to far-flung communities close to a river. The future looks bright for another arrow in the quiver of green energy.2. One to be wary ofTrial by WikiAre judges' decisions influenced by user-generated Wikipedia articles? The answer is yes.Wikipedia is probably your default information source, and judges and clerks working on cases are scouring its pages too. A team led by MIT’s Neil Thompson conducted a study to see whether Wikipedia entries are being used by judges as a resource. They employed law students to create 154 new Wikipedia entries regarding decisions by the Supreme Court of Ireland. Half were uploaded and half were not. They then tracked how many times the articles (or cases the articles were about) were cited in judicial decisions. To their surprise, there were 20% more citations for the cases uploaded to Wikipedia. Scarily, they also found that the language used in the articles influenced the arguments used in the courts.As the authors of the study state:“Collectively, our study provides clear empirical evidence of a new form of influence on judges’ application of the law—easily accessible, user-generated online content. Because such content is not authoritative, our analysis reveals a policy-gap: if easily-accessible analysis of legal questions is already being relied on, it behooves the legal community to accelerate efforts to ensure that such analysis is both comprehensive and expert.”3. One to amazeRoboFlyIf drones aren’t enough, would you fancy a remote controlled fly? I’m not talking about robot flies, actual real life flies!Researchers from Rice University have hacked a fly’s brain to make it move its wings. Flies were genetically engineered to have neurons that activate when heated, sending a signal to perform a specific action. Iron oxide injected in the flies’ brains is designed to react to a magnetic field and cause the neuron's ion channels to heat up. When researchers turned on the magnetic field, triggering the reaction, the flies spread their wings within half a second.It’s a proof-of-concept showing that we can cause specific neurons to activate artificially. The hope is to apply the same technique to restore sight in patients with visual impairments by targeting neurons instead of the eyes. Failing that, I might use it to send signals to my kitten's brain to stop scratching up my couch!