A negawatt is a unit in watts of energy saved. It's the opposite of a watt, basically. Leave a light on all day, you may burn 100 watts. Keep it off all day, you save 100 watts. In the key note address, Lovins explains that: "... every unit of electricity you save at the point of use saves typically three or four units of fuel, namely coal at the power plant." This speech if from the late 80s, so that amount of fuel savings is probably higher.

You may be skeptical. After all, a negawatt isn't a thing; it's the absence of a thing. But "generating" negawatts, that is being energy efficient, has a tangible by-product: wealth. Save energy; save money. And that goes for everyone from the individual homeowner to the large-scale power plant.

Generate some negawatts now, by:

1. Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.
2. Turning off or unplugging electronic devices when not in use (printer, computer, DVD player, television, etc.).
3. Setting your thermostat 5 to 10 degrees F cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer.
4. Turning down the thermostat on your water heater to 120 degrees F.
5. Insulating hot-water pipes.
6. Buying energy efficient appliances.
7. Purchasing renewable electricity from your utility company.
8. Generating your own electricity by purchasing stand-alone, off-the-grid equipment.

Get more tips on the Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy web site.

If you're more interested in the business end of things, there's also a piece about the top 10 companies expected to be leaders in the smart grid industry.

One of the stories that popped up in my in box today helps answer that question and others about the smart grid with a short Q&A. It's from CNET and it answers the following seven questions:

1. What is the smart grid?
2. What would a smart grid be able to do that today's not-so-smart grid can't?
3. What are some examples?
4. Who are the companies participating in the smart grid?
5. OK, so the smart grid is supposed to reduce wasted energy, give consumers better information, and allow the grid to use more solar and wind power. What's the hold-up?
6. Is the smart grid more secure?
7. So when will I have my smart grid?

It's a short article and worth reading to get a solid understanding of what this is all about.

This type of numerology is not so much done by professional mathematicians, more by amateurs, but that does not diminish its surprise.

Mathematicians look at it rather as a curiosity. But there an be some interesting combinatorial problems as you mention like how many times do such situations occur in dates. One also bent the rule a bit in this case: the date 12:34:56.7.8.9 certainly occurred in 1909 and will again in 2109. To make the date surprising, we have taken the centuries out when counting the years.

But you are right that such dates with the consecutive numbers 1,2,3,...9 in the same manner appears only every 100 years. So, mathematicians are not so interested in the combinatorics.

The movie "The Number 23" sheds some light on how "surprising" numbers can be.

An other example is the movie "Pi," where one see how crazy this can become.

Humans like patterns and see surprising patterns. A nice story is told by Hardy about the Mathematician Ramanujan. When Hardy mentioned that he came with a taxi with the boring number 1729, Ramanujan pointed out that it is the smallest number which can be written in two different
ways as the sum of two cubes: 1^3+12^3 = 10^3 + 9^3. Such numbers are
today called "taxi cab numbers". See section 8 in this seminar.

I thought it was just a kid thing. But apparently, even adults are fascinated with this sequence of numbers. There's all kinds of chatter about today's digital date, which at 12:34:56 (this morning and this afternoon), the day was 12:34:56 07/08/09. And at 4:56 this afternoon, the digital date will be 4:56 07/08/09.

But it's not just the appearance of this sequence in the date that gets people al goose-bumpy. This person is impressed with a car's odometer that has reached 123456789.

These people seem freaked out by the fact that this number shows up on their caller ID.

This guy has figured out a mathematical calculation that produces a sum of 100.
It's this: 1/2*3/4*56+7+8*9

And these people have a web site devoted to it.

Why are we so obsessed with this sequence?
I called 1-234-567-8900 just now to see if anyone would pick up and explain it to me. But the line was busy.

Photo: iStockPhoto

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Photo: iStockPhoto

Geneticists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have a found a way to use Sudoku to sequence more than a hundred thousand DNA samples.

Until now, only a single DNA sample could be sequenced at a time.

Not only does the new method save time and improve efficiency, but it dramatically cuts cost. A sequencing project that uses conventional methods can cost $10 million. But that figure can be cut to $80,000 or less by using the Soduku method.

You can read the original paper, which was published in Genome Research here.

The news of Michael Jackson's death yesterday threw me off. At first I thought it was a rumor. But alas, no. I grew up with his music and have many favorite songs. Indeed, I consider him the King of Pop. His death was a big surprise, but then this morning, another surprise: Jackson had a patent.

The title: Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.

It's a system that consists of a special shoe that has a hitch designed to attach to a projection in a stage. When the shoe engages with the component in the stage, the performer can lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity.

Why did he invent it? According to the patent, he had dance steps in his video performances where he and members of his dance crew would appear to lean forward beyond the center of gravity. This illusion was achieved by using cables attached to each dancer's waist. But the set up required stage hands to help out and was too clumsy for use during live performances.

The solution: The shoes. The video shows the anti-gravity shoes in action, live:

What an amazing performer. A genius musician and this idea shows that his intelligence and creativity went beyond music.