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A major solar flare that occurred Tuesday at 7:28 p.m. EST may yield a substantial aurora borealis (northern lights) over the next couple of nights. Scientists predict another solar flare early in the morning on March 8.

The tweet, posted on September 1, 2011, by @qikipedia, read in its entirety: “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film.” Some detective work revealed that the statement originated with mechanical engineering professor James Hone of Columbia University, who said in 2008, “Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel. It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” The professor’s contention raises numerous questions, the first one being “What is graphene?” Microsoft Word doesn’t know--it keeps giving graphene the red squiggly underline, which means, “Surely you mean grapheme.” (I surely don’t, despite the fact that I’m littering this page with graphemes.) [More]

An African bike company builds bikes for the poor, funded by selling you a super-light sweet bamboo ride. In Zambia, bicycles grow on trees, or rather bamboo, the primary building material for many Zambikes .

Just as you've eliminated the last little bit of BPA in your life, now it's time to start getting worried about glymes, the industrial solvent that's already in your water and soon to be heavily regulated by the EPA.

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU, Germany) have built what is currently the strongest source of ultracold neutrons. Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) were first generated here five years ago.

We continue our examination of the business book First, Break All the Rules with an interview of author Marcus Buckingham. Why did he write the book, and why are managers more important than leaders?

When an earthquake strikes, the shaking doesn't start instantaneously. Instead, the most violent energy spreads out from the epicenter at a relatively modest 3.5 kilometers per second

WHAT'S HOT, WHAT'S NOT Sales increase for fitness and sports centers, the small-business sector with the strongest growth from 2009 to 2010: +13.62% Sales decrease for car washes, the small-business sector with the weakest growth from 2009 to 2010: -12.18% Sageworks TRENDS Among people who text, the average number of text messages sent per month: Men: 555 Women: 716 The Nielsen Company State of the Media 2010 THE WORKPLACE Area, in square feet, of workspace lost by the average office worker from 1994 to 2010: 15 International Facility Management Association HIRING The portion of small businesses hiring in 2010 that said they added fewer workers than they needed: 42% Reasons for hiring: Replace an employee who left: 41% Support growth or expansion plans: 21% Some other reason: 18% Don't know: 1% Revenue or sales has increased: 13% Economy is getting better: 5% Tax credit for hiring unemployed workers: 1% Wells Fargo/Gallup TAXES Lowest and highest overall tax burdens for entrepreneurs: South Dakota: 1st New Jersey: 50th Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council REALITY CHECK Retail price, per gallon, of black ink in the average printer ink cartridge: $4,371 PC World THE ECONOMY Increase in the sales of trucks and cargo vans—considered a useful indicator of small-business activity—in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared with a year earlier: 24% Edmunds.com

The massive magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck near the east coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, at 2:46 P.M. local time and unleashed a fierce tsunami claiming hundreds of lives is already being felt as far away as the west coast of North America, about 8,000 kilometers away. Much of this has to do with the depth of the ocean that the tsunamis waves traversed as well as the sheer size of the quake, which was the strongest recorded in Japan's history