"Objective" Information from EU Project on Nanotech Provides Much Needed Laughs

These are serious times and as a result much of what you read is quite serious assessments of our problems and serious solutions.

But European Union projects on nanotech always seem to provide some light-hearted amusement even in the most serious of times, albeit unintentionally.

The latest is a project called observatoryNANO (I have never quite figured out why these European projects insist on odd capitalization), which is supposed to provide â''European decision-makers in government, industry, and finance lack objective information for their decisions when considering a rapidly changing field of technology such as N&Nâ'' [thatâ''s â''nanoscience and nanotechnologyâ'' to us uninitiated].

TNTLog had some great fun at the expense of this project by turning up some of the gibberish that it was publishing as â''economic dataâ''. The project must have become aware of some of the silliness that they had on their website and now the page is â''under constructionâ''.

But it was a bit too late. Some of the fun stuff can still be found on the TNTLog:

Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sunâ''s power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sunâ''s invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

And this

The primary driving force behind flexible displays is to solve the need of humans to interface with electronics that are undergoing continuous miniaturization.
The secondary push for flexible displays is the desire to place computers in objects that they previously did not belong. This could be shirts, golf clubs, or watches.

No matter how much money the EC poured into this project, it was all worth it when you can generate copy like that that really can put a smile on your otherwise dreary day.