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Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar module manufacturer, closed its doors this morning, filed for bankruptcy, and promptly laid off about 1,100 employees.

After only six years since its inception, the company faced steep challenges from cheaper Chinese flat-solar panels that saturated the market and shut down operations despite its $1 billion in private funds, and $535 million from the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee program.

Those funds helped Solyndra expand its tube-shaped solar technology, which was touted alongside an easier and more cost-effective solar installation method. But silicon prices dropped, other competitors began making rival products, and investors who had bet on Solyndra's promise found themselves let down.

"Global economic and solar industry market conditions have forced the company to suspend its manufacturing operations," Solyndra said in a statement. "Solyndra could not achieve full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers."

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susolarcar /flickr

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Barely three feet tall and plastered with shiny panels, Xenith looks more like a spaceship for miniature aliens than a car. But the tiny vehicle is the pride and joy of the Stanford Solar Car Project, and will carry the group 2,000 miles across the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide in their bid to win the 2011 World Solar Challenge. More >>

​San Francisco's elected officials are worried that the radiation from cellphones will melt your brain. Our citizenry is certain that the radiation from PG&E Smart Meters will melt your brain. Our school board is terrified that irradiated meats will melt your children's brains. 

So the city's new policy of blasting all the tapwater with ultraviolet radiation will ... be fine! Just fine!

Actually, federal regulations now require cities to employ a second line of disinfection for their water systems. San Francisco already puts chloramine -- that's, essentially, chlorine and ammonia -- in its water. Now it's zapping it with UV radiation as well. UV systems have been used in Europe for years; along with our continental cousins' enjoyment of unpasteurized cheeses and offal meats, it's never been proven to do them a lick of harm.

Still, this is San Francisco. There's always someone worried his brain is going to be melted, right?

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My sensor saw it coming.

​The bad news: The Big One is coming. The good news: At least you can measure it. 

Geophysicists are looking for "citizen seismologists" in the Bay Area to install a tiny earthquake sensor in their home, classroom, or office this weekend as part of building the densest network of seismic sensors ever to learn about earthquake activity. The network is part of the Quake Catcher Network, based at Stanford University, which has already installed a web of sensors in earthquake-prone Chile and New Zealand, according to news reports.

The project will last three years, though the organizers say anyone willing to host a sensor for at least a year can volunteer.
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Dihydrogen monoxide can kill within minutes of entering a victim's lungs.

​Last summer, San Francisco Chronicle citizen blogger Yobie Benjamin covered the waterfront, denouncing perceived failures in BP's oil-spill cleanup, including its penchant for using the then-controversial oil dispersant Corexit 9500.

"I was disturbed to get another anonymous tip that Corexit 9500 also has dihydrogen monoxide, but I can't confirm this because Nalco will not reveal if dihydrogen monoxide is in fact a secret ingredient in Corexit 9500." he wrote.

He went on to say dihydrogen monoxide was "really bad and nasty stuff" used in explosives and poisonous compounds that could contribute to mutating DNA, denaturing proteins, disrupting cell membranes, and chemically altering critical neurotransmitters.

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A December 2010 protest against SmartMeter installation in West Marin

Despite its status as a tech hub where virtually every square inch of land is within range of a wireless Internet signal, San Francisco has proved hospitable over the years to people with all manner of fears about radiation from gadgets such as cell phones, radio towers -- and, in the latest object of righteous Luddite rage, SmartMeters.

A SmartMeter, for those of you who don't know, is a wireless device for measuring the use of gas and electricity. If you'd like to know more -- like, much, much more -- you can head to tomorrow's meeting of the California Public Utilities Commission, where folks opposed to PG&E's roll-out of these meters will be gathering to speak their minds.

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Calm down, people...

​Update 12/3: TSA slaps us on the wrist about using this picture. This is an old image. The newer ones look more like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Among the elements of paranoia and righteousness emanating from those opting out of TSA scans today, U.C. San Francisco radiology specialists say the fear of radiation should not be included. These are experts, folks, and their message is: You're not going to get cancer from these machines.

In fact, the radiation scientists told SF Weekly that the warnings about the scanners in a letter written by top U.C. San Francisco scientists earlier this year  were plain "wrong," and written by people who "are totally unrelated to radiation," in the words of Professor Ronald Arenson. Robert Gould, a physicist in the UCSF radiology department and member of the Radiation Safety Committee in the university's Office of Research, contends that the amount of background radiation a person is exposed to in a normal day is the equivalent of 85 screenings in a TSA scanner.

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Humans in gas masks just aren't the same

​A cow in a gas mask is a memorable image. That's probably why it was deployed, to great effect, in a recent exhibit on climate change at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. While this is the sort of thing that would doubtless please André Breton, dairy farmers -- never known for their surrealist leanings -- were livid, and have successfully lobbied aquarium officials to unmask the cow.

At issue was the display's premise that the livestock industry contributes substantially to noxious emissions that thin the ozone layer and heat the earth. This is true, as far as it goes. As KQED reported over the weekend in a feature on the exhibit, a 2006 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization asserted that the raising of cows, pigs, and chickens accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gases. But a more recent study states that the dairy industry is responsible for only four percent of emissions.

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The SoCal sickly are fare more likely to die in collapsing hospitals than San Franciscans

​Red-staters may fantasize about San Franciscans perishing in The Big One. But a recent California Watch report identifying which hospital buildings have the highest known risk of collapse suggests we get to fantasize, too! Los Angelinos -- at least the ones stuck in hospitals -- will be at an outrageously high risk of snuffing it in the event of a major earthquake.

Four of the high-risk hospitals making the list are in the San Francisco Bay Area, sure. But 10 are in greater L.A. Take that, SoCal.

In earthquakes, as in other natural disasters, it's the ill, wounded, and other immobilized people in hospitals at greatest risk of death. Readers taking issue with our gloating at the prospect of Los Angelinos perishing en masse under collapsing hospitals should go back to Southern California where they came from.

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WARNING! CODE RED!

​This June, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to require retailers to post information about how much radiation cell phones emit. Now, an Israeli company is capitalizing on the as-yet-unjustified anxiety surrounding cell phone radiation and allowing phone users to monitor their radiation exposure at every moment of every day -- via a mobile phone app.

The research on the dangers of cell phone radiation is still inconclusive. But tawkon employs an algorithm to take data from smart phones -- including the signal strength and where the phone is on a user's body -- and alerts users whenever the radiation reaches the "red level." This is actually an arbitrary cutoff, but if someone is talking on the phone, it will prompt them to put on headphones.

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