Tennessee

From The New York Times:

Nissan will begin taking reservations for the Nissan Leaf in April, actual orders can be placed in August and cars will be delivered by the end of the year.  But a big question sitll looms - how much will it cost?

From The Guardian:

The Jaguar XT5 computer, housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Knoxville, Tenn. and owned by the Department of Energy was just named the fastest computer in the world by the TOP500 list.  It has a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops or quadrillions of calculations per second and that power is being focused on solving the issues of climate change.

This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."

But this blockbuster is not a movie.

It is "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," a video game that Activision Blizzard Inc. is releasing Tuesday. Fans worldwide are expected to spend at least half a billion dollars on the game in the first week.

Bruno Maddox in Discover:

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released their third annual state energy efficiency scorecard yesterday and the most energy efficient state was, no surprise, California, while Wyoming was ranked dead last.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.7 million grant to an eight-state consortium of technology centers and community colleges that is working to block cyber attacks and stop the loss of high-tech jobs in the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

A massive Dell Inc. computer assembly plant once seen as a job generator worthy of the promise of more than $300 million in state and local inducements will go dark in four months, a victim of new corporate calculations and changing customer tastes.

Dell announced Wednesday it will close its desktop computer manufacturing plant near Winston-Salem by the end of January, shedding 905 workers. The announcement came two days after the plant, which produces desktop units primarily for business customers, marked four years in operation.

Our own Morgan Meis in The Smart Set: