Jerry Decker's Twitter Updates and breaking news

Check out these YouTube clips - Updated with 6 new Youtubes 01/24/09

1) - The Physics of Crystals 2) - History of the EV Gray Motor 3) - Browns Gas Water Torch Research and Applications 4) - Getting there and Saving on Gas Costs 5) - Shape Power and Gravity Resonance Phenomena 6) - The World of Free Energy 7) - The Dark Side of Amateur Science 8) - The Konehead Pulse Motor 9) - Aether, ZPE and Dielectric Nanostructure Arrays 10) - A Method of Stimulating Energy

03/20/10 - Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen
"Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport." - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Quad-copter controlled with voice commands
In the video above you’ll see two of our favorite things combined, a quad-copter that is voice controlled. The robot responds to natural language so you can tell it to “take off and fly forward six feet”, rather than rely on a cryptic command set. The demonstration shows both an iPhone and a headset used as the input microphone. Language is parsed by a computer and the resulting commands sent to the four-rotor UAV. This makes us think of the Y.T.’s robot-aided assault in Snow Crash. Perhaps our inventions strive to achieve the fiction that came before it. / This autonomous helicopter has been equipped with voice activation technology. A user can give voice commands to the helicopter and the helicopter is able to respond or navigate to a requested location. More info here: http://du.tkollar.com/ - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Cro Magnon skull shows that our brains have shrunk
A new replica of an early modern human brain has provided further evidence for the theory that the human brain has been shrinking. The skull belonged to an elderly Cro Magnon man, whose skeleton is called Cro Magnon 1. The entire skeleton was discovered in 1868 in the Cro Magnon cave in Dordogne, France, and has since become one of the most famous Upper Palaeolithic skeletons. Using new technology, researchers have produced a replica of the 28,000-year-old brain and found that it is about 15-20% larger than our brains. The finding doesn’t suggest that humans today are less intelligent than earlier humans. Although previous studies have found a very small relationship between brain size and intelligence, many other factors affect brain intelligence. For instance, different parts of the brain have different functions. The researchers found that the Cro Magnon brain appears to have had a smaller cerebellum - the brain region linked to motor control and language - than our brains today. The researchers explain that this finding shows that some parts of the brain are more “compressible” than others, while other regions seem to provide a benefit by growing larger. Although scientists don’t know for sure why our overall brains are shrinking, some researchers hypothesize that our brains are becoming more efficient as they grow smaller. Having a large brain comes at a cost, so smaller brains have an advantage since they enable the body to use the extra energy for other purposes. On the other hand, perhaps a large skull had certain advantages for earlier people. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - obama Administration Withholds FoIA Requests More Often Than bush's
"Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008. Amusingly, the Associated Press has been waiting three months for the government to deliver records on its own Open Government Directive." / Among the most frequently cited reasons for keeping records secret: one that Obama specifically told agencies to stop using so frequently. The Freedom of Information Act exception, known as the "deliberative process" exemption, lets the government withhold records that describe its decision-making behind the scenes. Other exemptions cover information on national defense and foreign relations, internal agency rules and practices, trade secrets, personal privacy, law enforcement proceedings, supervision of financial institutions and geological information on wells. One, known as Exemption 3, covers dozens of types of information that Congress shielded from disclosure when passing other laws. In provisions often vaguely worded and buried deep in legislation, Congress has granted an array of special protection over the years: information related to grand jury investigations, additives in cigarettes, juvenile arrest records, the identities of people applying restricted-use pesticides to their crops, and the locations of historically significant caves. All can be legally withheld from the public. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - High-Tech Research Moving From US To China
"The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years." - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Company Sued, Loses For Not Using Patented Tech
"A man was recently awarded $1.5M in a jury trial after his hand was injured by a Ryobi table saw. The saw did not include the patented 'Saw Stop' technology that the plaintiff argued would have prevented all the problems." 60 similar cases have now been filed nationwide. TechDirt makes the argument that this jury decision is completely crazy: "If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place." If the decision stands, not only will the price of table saws go way up, but other hungry patent-holders will probably get a gleam in their eye. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - China Facing Major Water Shortage as Their Economy Grows
A bigger economy means more factories and power plants, all prodigious users of water for processing and cooling. Big cities are getting bigger, using more drinking, shower and sewage water. People are eating better, and growing more food requires more water. They crave entertainment, too; the Beijing area has 100 golf courses and a dozen ski resorts with man-made snow. The result has been a scramble for water that is pitting downstream communities against upstream ones, farmers against factories, and people concerned about the country’s environment against those worried that water shortages might be the mighty Chinese economy’s Achilles’ heel. Unlike oil needs, which can be supplemented with imports, water needs pose a much more intractable threat to China’s rise. “China is facing two prominent challenges: water shortages and pollution,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based group. On top of that, “what’s not receiving attention is the destruction of the river ecosystem, which I think will have long-term effects on our water resources.” The water diversion project, inspired by a 1952 suggestion by Mao Zedong, would have siphoned off about 5 percent of the Yangtze River’s water volume, a massive amount equal to six times the crude oil consumed worldwide. The plan involved three routes, and official cost estimates have run as high as $75 billion. Two of the routes — in the eastern and central parts of the country — are moving ahead, though the central one is well behind schedule. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - The End of Prisons? – Alternatives to Incarceration
The U.S. currently boasts the highest rate of incarceration of any country at any time in history, a full 25 percent of the world’s prison population. We also have the greatest number of laws of any country at any time in history, laws created by nearly 90,000 separate governmental entities. This spaghetti mess of rules and regulation is so complicated that virtually any person can get tripped up by them. One simple mistake may very well result in incarceration, and it goes downhill from there. Incarceration is a system that breeds failure. On the prisoner level, an incoming prisoner is instantly immersed in an “us-vs-them” mindset as their surrounding community is transformed into the worst of all possible social circles. On the operational level, success in the prison industry is not measured by how many lives have been improved, but rather on occupancy levels, the number of prison incidents and escape attempts, and how well the budget is managed. Fact is that people coming out of the system are worse than when they went in, and virtually all of them will eventually make it back into society. There are no ways of measuring the toll it takes on society and on an individual level, the relationships it severs, the dreams it shatters, the cost of opportunities lost. Individuals who enter the prison system lose their jobs and their ability to earn an income. The spillover effect is severe. In most instances it has major repercussions on their spouse, their children, parents, siblings, and friends. For the victims it offers little resolution. Each imprisonment creates a blast zone of destruction that is difficult to recover from.

03/20/10 - A New Way to Buy and Sell Ideas
Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures is trying to create a capital market for patents, inventions and intellectual property, one that would use the venture capital and private equity markets as a model. Is Myhrvold's brave new world of investment firms trading the rights to a better mousetrap feasible, or even ethical? Amar Bhidé, author of The Venturesome Economy, is a high profile critic of Myhrvold's vision. Invention, to him, is akin to writing a book: what if authors had to buy licensing rights for every idea they cited, instead of simply giving credit in the footnotes? Many of the best new products, he argues, are combinations of countless ideas, some patentable, some not. A patent attorney writing under the pseudonym "Sawyer" laments:

03/20/10 - At Last, ATM Skimming is History
New Australian invention offers a revolutionary PIN system, called FlexiPIN that makes ATMs Skim Proof and Online Banking secure. Personal Identification Number (PIN) is a static security code, while FlexiPIN changes. In fact FlexiPIN changes automatically and neither an additional device nor a list of PINs are involved. Skimming, computer viruses and "phishing" emails are no longer threats. Complex software programming resulted in having a user friendly application that will not only able to create a completely new style of PIN, but allows users to design their own FlexiPIN on a computer screen whether be online or in a bank. Instead of having a PIN with 4 to 6 digits to memorise, with FlexiPIN, you only need to remember two numbers and a simple formula which gives you the additional numbers. As with old fashion PINs, both the computer and you have to memorise the same 4-6 digits and when you key in your PIN, the computer authenticates by matching the two. Interestingly with FlexiPIN, the computer doesn’t store your access code, but knows the arrangement you made and will work out your FlexiPIN when you press enter. Similarly, you will have to work out in your head your FlexiPIN before you press enter. Can you add two small numbers together? If yes, FlexiPIN and you have a future, a much safer future with regards to accessing funds and information. Setting up FlexiPIN is easy. First you select your two favourite numbers. Secondly, choose from a selection of formulas and give your usage preference. That’s it, but like with all new things, this will take a few logons to get used to”. You could even do this: “Go to the ATM for me, here is my card and PIN”. Your account would be safe, as the same PIN will not work in the future. Same goes for computer viruses, the keystrokes they record and transmit will not be any value in the future. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Good Vibrations Promise Cheap Wind Power
Shawn Frayne devised the Windbelt, which doesn't require lots of space, wind, or money. The system generates power from the vibrations created when even a tiny amount of wind hits a strip of material connected to a magnet. Windbelt isn't exactly a new invention—it was named by Popular Mechanics for its 2007 Breakthrough Awards—but Frayne was able to create a start-up based on the technology (Humdinger Wind Energy LLC). Three variants of different sizes are scheduled for a demo within this year. The microWindbelt is a 5" x 1" self-contained unit that generates enough power for sensors or small electronics, while the one-meter long Windcell produces 3 to 5 watts of power. The large-scale Windcell panel, built by bunching Windcells together, will produce 100 watts and cost $1 for every square meter taken up. That's more than enough power to drive a netbook. A Windbelt still requires sufficient wind to for maximum generation (6m/s or 13mph), but the system can still create power at lower wind speeds. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Robotic cognitive spy cam tips up
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unveils details about its latest invention; a self guided drone camera which can get around by itself and beam back visual intelligence from behind enemy lines. This latest project, dubbed "The Mind's Eye," is the closest thing to an intelligence gathering robot yet, and the agency hopes it will come in especially handy in replacing real life human spies, who are notorious for their dry martini habits, womanizing, fast cars and casino antics, which makes their information all the more fallible. But for those thinking "big deal, it's just a camera on wheels," well, you'd be wrong. Because not only can Mind's Eye film a scene, it can also understand what is going on and even describe it back to its human controllers. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Scoot-Along Lawn-Mower Lazier Than it Seems
The Lawn Mower Scooter has an electric motor which drives both the blades and the scooter itself. As you stand on the rear footplate and desperately try not to lose your balance, the mower chugs forward, filling the grass-box until the trimmings come into view through the window on top. At this point, you will actually have to use some energy, perhaps calling one of the kids over to empty the box. It’s a rather flimsy-looking design, and disappointing that it isn’t more human-powered. The Lawn Mower Scooter currently only exists in the garden seen above, and in the fevered, neat-freak mind of the inventor Vicky Petihovski. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Windpipe transplant success in UK child
A 10-year-old British boy has become the first child to undergo a windpipe transplant with an organ crafted from his own stem cells. It is hoped that using the boy's own tissue in the nine-hour operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital will cut the risk of rejection. The world's first tissue-engineered windpipe transplant was done in Spain in 2008 but with a shorter graft. Doctors say the boy is doing well and breathing normally. Doctors had previously operated to expand his airway but in November last year he suffered complications from erosion of a metal stent in his windpipe or trachea. In order to build him a new airway, doctors took a donor trachea, stripped it down to the collagen scaffolding, and then injected stem cells taken from his bone marrow. The organ was then implanted in the boy and over the next month, doctors expect the stem cells to transform into specialised cells which form the inside and outside of the trachea. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Consumer Goods Suck Up Surprising Amounts of Water
Humans need water to live, but they tend to take the cheap commodity for granted, especially in industry. The $1 bag of refined sugar in many American kitchens requires more than 283 gallons of water to produce. A $20 bag of dog food takes more than 4,000 gallons of water to make, in a show of how industry and the world can take water for granted. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Britain ‘four meals away from anarchy’
MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”. In other words, the security agency believes that Britain could be quickly reduced to large-scale disorder, including looting and rioting in the event of a catastrophe that stops the supply of food. The maxim will provoke debate over whether MI5 is over-egging the threat, partly to justify its rapidly growing budget. It also opens a wider question as to whether civilised societies could so quickly revert to primitive behaviour. MI5 — whose motto is “regnum defende”, defend the realm — uses the “four meals” rule to assess the threat levels from attacks on strategic installations, such as computer networks and power stations; natural disasters; or widespread strikes and civil disobedience. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Power Walking - literally
In a recent paper in the journal Nano Letters, scientists report that they have developed an innovative rubber chip that has the ability to harvest energy from motions such as walking, running, and breathing and convert it into a power source. "It opens up a lot of possibilities," says Caltech graduate student Habib Ahmad, a coauthor on the paper. "We all dissipate energy as we move our bodies around, and conceivably that energy could be put to work charging small electronic devices like an iPod or a cell phone." The key to this development is a class of materials known as piezoelectrics, which are substances—chiefly crystalline and ceramic—that respond to stress or strain by producing a charge, essentially converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. ("Piezo" derives from a Greek word, meaning to squeeze or exert pressure.) “What made this latest result particularly exciting," says Ahmad, "is that a piezoelectric material sitting on a rubber substrate is malleable enough to be worn with relative comfort in your shoe or like a sweatband around your arm.” And because PZT generates energy nearly 100 times more effectively than quartz, “it’s got the capacity to take advantage of the body’s natural motions throughout the day.” “At the moment, we’ve basically got a one-centimeter chip with about 1,000 wires packed together,” Ahmad says. “That’s a very efficient use of space, but the energy that’s produced is still relatively minimal. But there’s no reason, technically speaking, why this can’t be scaled up to a surface area on the order of 2 by 2 inches,” at which point you can start looking at real-world applications. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - How going green may make you mean
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics". Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - The Dropout Economy
Middle-class kids are taught from an early age that they should work hard and finish school. Yet 3 out of 10 students dropped out of high school as recently as 2006, and less than a third of young people have finished college. Many economists attribute the sluggish wage growth in the U.S. to educational stagnation, which is one reason politicians of every stripe call for doubling or tripling the number of college graduates. But what if the millions of so-called dropouts are onto something? As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that won't exist, we're on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new ways to learn and new ways to live. It's important to keep in mind that behavior that seems irrational from a middle-class perspective is perfectly rational in the face of straitened circumstances. People who feel obsolete in today's information economy will be joined by millions more in the emerging post-information economy, in which routine professional work and even some high-end services will be more cheaply performed overseas or by machines. This doesn't mean that work will vanish. It does mean, however, that it will take a new and unfamiliar form. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Delhi Unveils Giant Public Air Freshener To Scrub Atmosphere
Officials in Delhi have unveiled a radical solution to tackle the increasingly noxious smog hanging over the city: a giant public air freshener that scrubs the atmosphere clean. The seven-tonne Systemlife Citta costs about 25 million rupees (£357,000). It sucks in 10,000 cubic metres of dirty air an hour, subjects it to a filtering process, and then emits clean air… A brown haze often lingers over the Indian capital — a smudgy cloud linked by analysts to increasing rates of asthma. Only in Cairo is the air grimier. Another Indian city, Calcutta, is in third place. Globally, air pollution claims about two million lives a year, according to the World Health Organisation. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Humans could regrow body parts like some amphibians
Regrowing amputated limbs, broken backs and even damaged brains could one day be a reality after scientists discovered a gene that is key to the almost magical ability. Researchers have found that the gene p21 appears to block the healing power still enjoyed by some creatures including amphibians but lost through evolution to all other animals. By turning off p21, the process can be miraculously switched back on. Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like regenerating embryonic stem cells rather than adult mammalian cells. This means they act as if they creating rather than mending the body. They turned off the gene in mice which had damaged ears and they regrew them. While they say it is early days, there is nothing theoretically different about applying the same process to humans. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - You can keep your jetpack. I have a rocketship...and for $200k
At $200,000, a flight to the edge of space is cheap. That’s well within the budget for a lot of people on this planet. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will probably be the first company to launch private citizens into space. They have already sold 300 seats and have deposited $39 million in advance sales! At the meeting, Steven Attenborough with VG said that they expect Space Ship 2 to do a "drop test" (literally be hoisted up to 50,000 feet and dropped by an airplane for a test landing) in the fall of 2010, and undergo its first power tests by the end of the year. Humans will then be loaded up and sent into space in 2011. That’s next year. People always lament that we’re past the year 2000 and we still don’t have flying cars. Personally, I don’t trust 95% of the people driving on the ground, let alone in the air. But it doesn’t matter, because the future is here. It’s now. Next year, people will be flying into space. Into space. This is beyond cool. This is fantastic! - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Pregnancy the Fountain of Youth?
For the first time in the world, Jerusalem researchers have discovered that pregnancy has the remarkable ability to promote the regeneration in elderly mice of damaged livers and muscles. They have also managed to mimic the state of pregnancy using specific molecules that trigger the regeneration and growth of livers in older rodents. This basic new concept from Hadassah University Medical Center and the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School could eventually be relevant to other tissues and organs and lead to the ability to stimulate their regeneration in elderly, sick patients. The authors of that article had connected young mice to other young mice by uniting their blood vessels; old mice to old mice; and young mice to old mice (this procedure is called parabiosis). If a mouse was either young or old and attached to a young mouse – and it suffered liver damage – the connection via blood circulation led to regeneration of tissue in the damaged organ. In aging rodents and elderly people, regeneration of the liver and other tissue is slow or even impossible. Laufer said that when a young animal loses two-thirds of its liver, it can regenerate the lost tissue in a few days. But if it is old, half of the mice would die due to stress on the organ. Of those that survive, much less tissue would be regenerated. But if the mouse is older and pregnant, its tissue regenerates as if it were young. The regenerative capacity of tissue declines with age, and healing in response to injury is delayed, he said. This effect is observed in liver, skin, bones, blood vessels, nerves, muscles and other tissue. The reason is that ageing alters the function of many biological processes such as changes in growth factors, the accumulation of damage to DNA in the cells and the increase in oxygen free radicals in the cells. They learned that the repair mechanism was a kind of switch within the cells, and that it can be made to work with specific molecules (drugs) to stimulate and repair them. The significance of this, explained Laufer, “is that part of the liver can be removed from old animals, they can be given drugs and this will cause the remaining liver to regenerate as if they were pregnant but without actually being pregnant.” - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Cheap, Portable Negative Pressure Wound-Healing Device
Danielle Zurovcik and her collaborators hope the device, which costs about $3, will provide a way to improve care for patients after the emergency phase of relief efforts, including life- and limb-saving surgeries, has ended. Even after many of the emergency medical teams leave the disaster zone, the dangers of chronic wounds remain high. "My experience in Haiti and other major earthquakes is that after the acute medical response, such as amputating limbs and setting fractures, the major disease burden is wounds," says Robert Riviello, a trauma surgeon at Brigham and Women's, and Zurovcik's collaborator. Negative-pressure therapy decreases the need to change wound dressings from one to three times per day to once every few days, a major benefit when medical staff is in short supply. Negative-pressure devices, which act like a vacuum over the bandaged wound, have become a central part of wound therapy in the United States over the last decade. They speed healing up to threefold, depending on the type of wound, and in some cases eliminate the need for plastic surgery or skin grafts. A number of commercial versions are available in the U.S. and are used to treat burns and chronic wounds such as bed sores or diabetic foot ulcers. While scientists don't exactly know why this treatment accelerates the healing process, it likely helps by removing some of the fluid and bacteria that accumulates at the injury site and by increasing blood flow to the wound. The pressure itself may also help healing by bringing together the edges of the wound and delivering mechanical pressure, which has been shown to spur cell growth, says Dennis Orgill, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's who was not involved in the project. - Full Article Source

03/20/10 - Scotland Aims to Be the “Saudi Arabia of Marine Energy”
Scotland is getting ready to capitalize on something the country has plenty of: fierce, stormy waves. About 750,000 Scottish homes expect to be powered by ocean technology by 2020, as the Scottish Government announced that 10 wave and tide power schemes capable of generating up to 1.2GW in total would be built around the Orkney islands and on the Pentland Firth on the northern coast of the Scottish mainland [Guardian]. The 10 projects will comprise the world’s first commercial-scale wave and tidal power scheme. With this project, Scotland plans to produce the same amount of clean energy as a small nuclear power station, and hopes to start on a path to becoming the “Saudi Arabia of marine energy.” Some of the strongest tidal currents in the world race around UK shores and there’s some of the highest energy in the waves that roll in from the Atlantic. And while wave power is, to an extent, dependent on the weather, tidal power has the tremendous advantage of being totally predictable [Channel 4]. It will cost about $7.6 billion in total to install and maintain the structures used to generate power from the strong waves and tides, and to transmit the energy back to land. - Full Article Source

03/19/10 - Lee Crock, R.I.P.
CALDWELL - Leander E. Crock, 85, of Caldwell, Ohio, passed away Tuesday (March 16, 2010) at the Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. He was born in Noble County, Ohio, a son of the late Roman and Sophia Schafer Crock. Lee is survived by his wife, Bonnie Crock of the home, whom he married May of 1991; daughters, Judy (Jack) Robinson and Vickie Sawyer, all of Caldwell; sons, Don (Julie) Crock, Dennis (Thomasina) Crock, Edward (Kathy) Crock and Dan (Vanessa) Sawyer, all of Caldwell and extended family.

03/17/10 - Solar energy with jewel-like curtains on windows
Dyson heads the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, or CASE, a research consortium that wants to turn office windows into multifaceted solar power generators. Their "integrated concentrating dynamic solar facade" consists of grids of clear pyramids that help focus the sun's rays to generate energy. It would essentially make buildings look as if they were draped in giant jeweled curtains. Each clear pyramid — with facets less than a foot square — has a lens to focus sunlight onto a tiny solar cell. The concentrated cells are designed to be more efficient in generating energy than traditional cells. And the pyramid modules rotate to track the sun. Pumped water keeps the solar cells cool to maximize efficiency. The cooling water also "captures" that waste heat for other uses, such as hot water or radiant heat for the building. The pattern of pyramids also would deflect and diffuse the sun's rays, meaning office workers with eastern exposures could work in natural light all morning instead of drawing the blinds against the glare. Windows will still provide a view, albeit one obstructed a bit where the patterns of pyramids are placed. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Vanguard Sciences page updated
Cleaned it up and added a few new items to make them easier to find. Including two of my favorite science fantasy books, 'The Annotated Dweller on Two Planets' and 'The Annotated Etidorpha'. If you see pictures in your head when you read, like I do, you'll really get a kick out of these two books. Only $6 each for quick download and I can put them on CD if you want for a bit more. And if you are into interesting experiments, the Physics of Crystals DVD and the two LeBon books on CD will give you a lot of new ideas. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Hydrokinetic Power Developers Face Hurdles in Bid to Tap Tides
(Would you believe SciAm spelled 'hurdles' as 'hurtles'? - JWD) - Renewable hydrokinetic power comes from a number of different sources, including the up-and-down motion of waves and the smooth flow of the tides caused by the sun and moon's gravitational forces on Earth's bodies of water. Tidal power is seen as a promising source of energy because of its predictability and from the potential to draw it from ocean currents and estuary channels that connect rivers with the sea. One of the more advanced tidal power operations in the U.S. is taking place in New York City's East River, where the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project has been testing windmill-like turbines since 2006. Led by Verdant Power, the project installed six windmill-like turbines—each five meters in diameter and anchored to the bottom of the East River, about nine meters in depth—in the water next to Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land 3.2 kilometers long by 240 meters wide in the river between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens. "Verdant went with a design that looks like a conventional wind machine—an open rotor with three blades," says Roger Bedard, an EPRI researcher who has studied water current–based energy generation. This was a calculated move, given that wind is very commercially mature in terms of renewable energy sources, he adds. After logging about 9,000 operational hours since being installed, all six original turbines were removed earlier this year and are being disassembled so Verdant can study their seals, bearings and other components for signs of wear. In the meantime, Verdant is developing its next-generation turbines that will be very different from their predecessors. Whereas Verdant's original tidal turbines sat anchored individually to the riverbed, looking something like a field of underwater windmills, the new design will have three turbines operating on a triangular frame positioned on (not anchored to) the bottom of the river. The company plans to place 10 triangular frames—a total of 30 turbines—on the river bottom. Each of the new turbines will produce 35 kilowatts of power at the rated water speed, meaning that the 10-frame installation should produce up to about one megawatt of power (enough to provide electricity to roughly 800 homes). This is, of course, if the company can get permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Verdant has been operating with a preliminary FERC license and by August plans to apply for its full license, which the company needs in order to produce, deliver and sell one megawatt of commercial power. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Can You Live Under the Sea? (Nov, 1953)
Yes, the light in space around you is controlled, and so is the air you breathe. So accurate are the controls when the motors begin to purr and the actual descent begins, that you do not even notice the change. People used to swell up at the joints and die trying to do what you are doing now. Thanks to science, you are enjoying the thrill of vertical descent to the ocean floor in perfect comfort. The vision of almost unlimited periods of submersion has now become a fact, with the actual development of an apparatus which manufactures oxygen from purified sea water. The Navy has awarded a $150,000 contract to a company to build the device for use in submarines. With a continuous supply of freshened air, and fuel from an atomic pile, submarines will be able to remain submerged for two years at a time without having to surface at regular intervals to revive the atmosphere and charge batteries. The adaptation of these principles to other structures surely removes the aura of fantasy from the possibility of a city under the sea! Until fairly recently it was thought that the bottom limit for safe “skin diving” was thirty-five feet and that a diver going farther might come up with a terrible case of “the bends.” The cause was the rapidly increasing pressure of the water with increasing depth. Nineteenth-century British Admiralty researches placed the increased water pressure with each foot of descent at .44-pound per square inch. No human organism could stand it. In experiments at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Max Gene Nohl, Captain John Craig and others built their own laboratory pressure chamber and lived in it to test on their own bodies the possibility of breathing new atmospheres containing inert gases other than nitrogen. An oxygen-helium atmosphere was found best because helium did not “occlude” in the blood. Further research showed that the effects of carbon dioxide, which can accumulate disastrously in the lungs at depths of 200 feet and lower, are surmountable by proper pressurizing. Thus we have learned to avoid the so-called “rapture of the deep” from which less experienced divers have suffered —an intense and intoxicating dizziness which may cause the diver to ignore danger by going down still farther after his attack or even losing his breathing and other mechanical equipment and plunging to death. Some undersea men have advocated the fish’s breathing method for man—the inhalation of oxygen directly through the water by means of artificial gills. But the human organism cannot endure straight oxygen, and the technical problem of blending it with an inert gas such as helium has not yet been mastered. In certain deep ocean areas lies the primordial ooze, an eight- to ten-foot film thought to contain the makings of plastic materials. Portions of it are radioactive. Samples already entrapped prove that this layer is a rich source of oil. It is now believed that nearly half of the oil remaining in the earth is still stored in large pools beneath the oceans, within ancient coral or shell reefs and in “traps” under the sea floor. The triumph of undersea science is not one primarily of new gadgets and devices, although these are important, but of recognition of a set of laws apparently different from the natural laws which govern life on land. “Drop” an object undersea and it rises instead of falls. The force of gravity becomes the force of levity—the more so the deeper one goes, and very rapidly more so. The scientist is learning to use these phenomena to advantage—and in many respects his job is an easy one. Underwater lighting, for example, is much simpler than dry-land lighting because the heat generated by a burning electric bulb in an ordinary air medium is tremendous, whereas water cools the bulb so that a 1,000-watt bulb under the sea need be no larger than a 60-watt bulb on land. Man has conquered practically the final obstacles standing in the way of his new adventure. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Robot mini space shuttle is go for April
The X-37 began life as a NASA project, intended perhaps to lead to a manned "lifeboat" re-entry craft for the crew of the International Space Station (ISS). In the event NASA did little more than get the ball rolling, and the ISS lifeboat is actually an ordinary Russian Soyuz capsule. But the X-37 project at Boeing carried on, passing from NASA into military hands and becoming a robotic spaceplane able to remain in orbit for substantial periods before re-entering the atmosphere and coming in for a runway landing automatically. It is now run by the US Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which at one point hoped to make the first space flight as early as 2008. The X-37 has already flown in various in-atmosphere tests, sometimes being dropped from high in the stratosphere by the "White Knight" mothership used to carry the famous X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne suborbital rocketplane on the first stage of its journeys. The X-37B has the requirement to be on-orbit up to 270 days. Actual length for the first mission will depend on the meeting the mission objectives, which consists of checkout and performance characteristics of the spacecraft systems. Objectives of the OTV [Orbital Test Vehicle] program include space experimentation, risk reduction and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies. The X-37's cargo bay is believed to be a large-coffin sized 7' by 4'. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Both Alcohol and Tobacco worse for you than Illegal Drugs
A scientifically compiled ranking of drugs, assembled by specialists in chemistry, health, and enforcement, published in a prestigious medical journal two years earlier. The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title “Mean Harm Scores for 20 Substances,” ranked a set of common drugs, both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness of different substances. That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for saying out loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking, and LSD is less damaging yet. Nutt says he didn’t see himself as promoting drug use or trying to subvert the government. He was pressing the point that a government policy, especially a health-related one like a drug law, should be grounded in factual information. In doing so, he found himself caught in a crossfire that cost him the advisory post he had held for a decade. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Eco-Friendly Homes Made From Recycled Plastic
Making use of a patented low energy cold process, Affresol converts the plastics into concrete, waterproof, fire retardant TPR panels. These panels form the load-bearing frame of the house and can support brick, block or stone, when it’s properly insulated and plastered. The roof is tiled with recycled materials. When the inhabitants abandon their living place – estimated life of the house is 60 years – the remnants of the TPR could be recycled again. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - NASA cuts back while India Invests 1.25 Billion in Space Programs
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will receive 57.78 billion rupees ($1.25 billion) for 2010 — a 38 percent increase over last year — under the budget approved Feb. 26 by India's Parliament. The bulk of the funding, some 21 billion rupees, will go to launch vehicle technology development, while satellite technology development will receive 10 billion rupees, a 45 percent increase over the 2009 level. ISRO's manned space program will receive 1.4 billion rupees for the new budget year, which begins April 1, to continue development of a space vehicle designed to carry two astronauts to a 250-mile (400-kilometer) orbit and return them safely to Earth, according to ISRO documents. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Personal Rocket Copter
Swisscopters US in Arizona has built a lightweight rocket copter, the Dragonfly DF1, for which they’ve completed test flights (videos below) and obtained airworthy certificates. It’s powered by two rocket motors (made by Tecaeromex) placed on the end of each rotor. It runs on 70% hydrogen peroxide fuel. The rockets propel the rotors directly, reducing vibration and providing much improved stability. Best of all, because there is no motor torque, a tail rotor is only required to rotate the helicopter, not prevent it from death-spiraling into the ground. The basic idea has has been around since 1950 and the US Navy were even experimenting with them for use as helicopter backpacks. This copter has a 40 mph cruising speed and 115 mph max speed,and can travel 50 minutes at cruising speed on its standard tank (with an additional tank optional). It weighs 235 lb when empty and can carry a payload (including pilot and fuel) of up to 500 lb.. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Cape turbine failures during storm stir up concern
When the 100-foot-tall wind turbine at Bartlett's Ocean View Farm hurled one of its broken blades nearly 200 feet Jan. 18, it was a statistical anomaly. Wind energy experts claim, and statistics seem to show, failure rates are low. But when a second 100-foot-tall turbine, this time in Marstons Mills, shed its blades in a northeaster this Sunday, it seemed to some the start of a troubling trend. This weekend, the gusting winds, at times measuring over 60 mph, prompted Conrad Geyser to check in on the turbine he owns at Peck's Boats Inc. on Route 28 in Marstons Mills. "I was looking and listening, and I didn't see anything off the chart," he said yesterday. "The thing was going like crazy and moving around a lot, but nothing any more extreme than we'd seen already." Geyser said he believes sometime in the early morning Sunday a big gust may have hit especially hard and knocked the blade tips off. He's not sure how far they landed from the tower. Wind turbine blades can be subjected to enormous pressures, especially in the Cape's notoriously stormy weather. "They're light," he said. "But anytime you have something falling from the sky, there is concern." Of greater concern are the relatively heavy blades on larger models. But, of course, the larger the turbine, the greater the level of sophistication and safety features built in to avoid just such a scenario. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - 3D printing on a much larger scale
The end goal of this giant rapid prototyping machine is to print buildings. We’re not holding our breath for a brand new Flintstones-esque abode, but their whimsical suggesting of printed buildings on the moon seems like science fiction with potential. The machine operates similar to a RepRap but instead of plastic parts, it prints stone by binding sand with epoxy. This method is not revolutionary, but hasn’t really been seen in applications larger than a square meter or so. It’s fun to see the things we dabble in heading for industrial production applications. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Apple Doesn’t Own “i”
Apple has been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter ''i'' as a prefix for its products. A trademarks tribunal has refused Apple's bid to stop a small company from trademarking the name DOPi for use on its laptop bags and cases for Apple products. The California-based technology company argued that the DOPi name - iPod spelt backwards - was too similar to its own hugely popular portable music player, which has sold more than 100 million units worldwide. While the case does not affect Apple's current trademarks, companies wanting to use the ''i'' prefix will now have a better chance of getting away with it, according to lawyers. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Scaring Confessions Out Of Criminals

U.S. Patent 1749090 (from 1930): Apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions and photographically recording them.

03/17/10 - An example of how government produces sloppy work
Did you get your census form yet? We got ours today, and I'm already stuck. The cover letter, dated March 15, 2010, says Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today. Question 1 asks: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? What do I do? I can't lie. I have to fill it in and mail it today. I can't predict the future. I'm not even an illegal alien and I'm already confused and terrified over this thing. (And they can fine you up to $5,000 if you refuse to fill it out or give incorrect answers. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Alternative Sources Of Income
Stop a moment and ask yourself where your life is heading in relation to your income. Are you currently working to produce multiple sources of revenue, or is it just to keep a steady income which greatly depends on the amount of time and effort invested? Is it just earned and then spent almost immediately? Have you given any thought for the exact reason of having alternative sources of income? Does it depend mainly on the time and effort or is it to raise higher profits? We enjoy a lifestyle that consumes all of our income which in most cases is obtained from employment. As soon as monies are earned from our modes of employment or occupations, 'the list of needs' too start to grow – properties to acquire, getting tangled in the 'spending web' etc. Then immediately we are faced with the situation of raising a substantial income to meeting our rising expenses. We work hard, spending a lot of our time and energy to raise the required monies to meet our expenses. Work opportunities are limited but our needs are increasing – so we look for changes in effort and time, all for the sake of earning more income. A single source of income, which is frequently unstable, struggles to survive in this world of rising costs. Thus people are looking for constant changes in employment, utilizing most of their available time, resources and energy to generate alternate sources of income to live a comfortable life. It is only you who would know what is your path to prosperity. Whether it is staying in your current employment or to design a business where you can get yourself fully involved. Investing in stocks, developing projects on the Internet, entering the property market, or turning your hobby into a thriving enterprise are among some of the many options to consider. Your personal interests and tastes as well as your knowledge and intuition will tell you the right path to choose. You can yet continue to have your current job and start on your own project by investing part of your time. Make sure that you always select something compatible with your tastes and interests. Think, investigate, and create in it, basically do by yourself. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year. Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more. Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices. Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come. Social Security's shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program's finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits. "This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We're here," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. "We are not going to be able to put it off any more." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Abuse shortens Telomeres and Lifespan
Suffering physical or emotional abuse as a child shortens telomeres accelerating adult cellular aging. Audrey Tyrka and her colleagues from Butler Hospital and Brown University examined the DNA of healthy adults who had a history of childhood maltreatment and found they had shorter telomeres than those who did not experience child maltreatment. Dr. Tyrka explained that the findings “suggest the possibility that early developmental experiences may have profound effects on biology that can influence cellular mechanisms at a very basic level and even lead to accelerated aging.” - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Your Skin Bacteria is as good as Fingerprints
Forget fingerprints, now you can be identified by the unique genomic profile of bacteria living on your skin. The researchers extracted bacterial DNA from numerous samples taken from the three keyboards and sequenced more than 1,400 copies of bacterial ribosomal gene from each sample to identify the individual species of bacteria each sample contained, finding they could match the three individuals with the keyboards they used. They then took swabs from computer mouses of nine different people. When they compared the bacteria found in the samples to a database of microbial communities found on 270 hands of people who had never touched any of the computer mouses, the researchers found that the bacteria on each person's mouse was more similar to that on their hand than to samples in the database. So far, Fierer notes, the technique is extremely preliminary, but it could one day be as accurate as techniques like DNA or fingerprint analysis, he says. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Attack of the Killer Electrons
"At the peak of a magnetic storm, the number of highly energetic 'killer electrons' strong enough to damage electronics and human tissue can increase by a factor of more than ten times, posing a danger to spacecraft, satellites, and astronauts. Killer electrons can penetrate satellite shielding, so if electrical discharges take place in vital components, a satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable. For many years, the mechanism by which killer electrons are produced has remained poorly understood, in spite of physicists' attempts at solving this puzzle. Now the ESA reports that data shows the increase in the creation of a substantial number of killer electrons is due to a two-step process. First, the initial acceleration is due to the strong shock-related magnetic field compression. Immediately after the impact of the interplanetary shock wave, Earth's magnetic field lines began wobbling at ultra low frequencies. In turn, these ULF waves effectively accelerate the seed electrons (provided by the first step) to become killer electrons. 'These new findings help us to improve the models predicting the radiation environment in which satellites and astronauts operate. With solar activity now ramping up, we expect more of these shocks to impact our magnetosphere over the months and years to come,' says Philippe Escoubet, ESA's Cluster mission manager." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - China To Connect Its High-Speed Rail To Europe
"China already has the most advanced and extensive high-speed rail lines in the world, and soon that network will be connected all the way to Europe and the UK. With initial negotiations and surveys already complete, China is now making plans to connect its HSR line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe in order to connect to the existing infrastructure in the EU. Additional rail lines will also be built into South East Asia as well as Russia, in what will likely become the largest infrastructure project in history." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - YouTube Won’t Film Her
YouTube is a video hosting website... in other words, they are a website that allows people to use their service and upload homemade videos and store them. YouTube then allows people to view those videos. At Yahoo Answers: How to get youtube to film you? -

"I have been calling, calling, and calling YouTube like crazy to come film some videos for me but they won't come. I do not understand how other people get there videos on YouTube. YouTube needs to come film me cuz i have some funny things to show the internet." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Japanese Turning To "Therapeutic Ringtones"
"A host of young Japanese are drawn to the allure of 'therapeutic ringtones' — a genre of melodies that promises to ease a range of day-to-day gripes, from chronic insomnia to a rotten hangover. Developed by Matsumi Suzuki, the head of the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, an eight-year-old subsidiary of the Japan Acoustic Laboratory, the tones are a hit with housewives as well as teenagers." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - The State of Robotic Surgery
"Robotic surgery is experiencing explosive growth in America's operating rooms, and the unquestioned industry leader in this field is the DaVinci robot, made by Intuitive Surgical. Only 14% of prostate surgeries in the US last year took place not using the DaVinci. Installations have grown from 210 systems seven years ago to 1,395 today. Although typically used for smaller surgeries like prostate removal and hysterectomies, the system was recently used for a kidney transplant, and more complicated procedures are expected in the future. The DaVinci is really just the first wave of robotic surgery as technology continues to push clumsy human hands out of the operating room." - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Advances In Sewing Needles
Spiral Eye Needles, an innovation in sewing. Why...were there so many gadgets out there to thread a needle, yet no one stopped to say, wait a minute, it isn't me that has a problem, it is the design of the needle? Needle threaders are great, if you can find the eye to put the thin metal wire into it. And if you can keep track of where the threader is. And if you have a needle with an eye big enough to pull a double piece of thread through it. - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - Study Finds That Video Games Hinder Learning In Young Boys
"Researchers at Denison University in Ohio have shown that giving PlayStations to young boys leads to slower progress in reading and writing skills. Quoting: 'The study is the first controlled trial to look at the effects of playing video games on learning in young boys. That is to say, the findings aren't based on survey data of kids' game habits, but instead on a specific group of children that were randomly assigned to receive a PlayStation or not ... Those with PlayStations also spent less time engaged in educational activities after school and showed less advancement in their reading and writing skills over time than the control group, according to tests taken by the kids. While the game-system owners didn't show significant behavioral problems, their teachers did report delays in learning academic skills, including writing and spelling.'" - Full Article Source

03/17/10 - The Bloodhound Will Stay On the Ground At 1,000 mph
"BBC reports that engineers designing the world's fastest car, the Bloodhound SSC, built to smash the world land speed record of 763 mph set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997, believe they have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground at 1,000 mph after initial iterations of the car's aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle's rear. John Piper, Bloodhound's technical director, said: 'We've had lift as high as 12 tonnes, and when you consider the car is six-and-a-half tonnes at its heaviest — that amount of lift is enough to make the car fly.' The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic. 'At Mach 1.3, we've close to zero lift, which is where we wanted to be,' says Piper. In late 2011, the Bloodhound, powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will mount an assault on the land speed record, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa." - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Adios Peter Graves!
Peter Graves, the tall, stalwart actor likely best known for his portrayal of Jim Phelps, leader of a gang of special agents who battled evil conspirators in the long-running television series "Mission: Impossible," died Sunday. Graves died of an apparent heart attack outside his Los Angeles home, publicist Sandy Brokaw said. He would have been 84 this week. Graves appeared in dozens of films and a handful of television shows in a career of nearly 60 years. The authority and trust he projected made him a favorite for commercials late in his life, and he was often encouraged to go into politics. "He had this statesmanlike quality," Brokaw said. "People were always encouraging him to run for office. But he said, 'I like acting. I like being around actors.'" Star of 'Mission Impossible', the show ran on CBS from 1967 to 1973 and was revived on ABC from 1988 to 1990 with Graves back as the only original cast member. The actor credited clever writing for the show's success. "It made you think a little bit and kept you on the edge of your seat because you never knew what was going to happen next," he once said. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - New charging method could greatly reduce battery recharge time
Part of the headache of having to constantly recharge batteries is not just how often they need to be charged, but also the time it takes to charge them. In a new study, researchers have proposed a charging method that could greatly reduce the charging time of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in everything from electronic devices to electric vehicles. The new method uses an additional oscillating electric field (besides the charging field) that should be capable of charging a lithium-ion battery in a fraction of the time compared with traditional methods. In the charging process, lithium ions first diffuse within the battery’s electrolyte until they reach the graphite anode. At this interface, ions must overcome an energy barrier in order to be intercalated into the anode. In their simulations, Hamad and his team found that an additional oscillating electric field can lower this energy barrier, enabling lithium ions to intercalate more quickly into the anode. The oscillating field also increases the diffusion rate, which helps further reduce the overall charging time, albeit to a lesser extent. Specifically, when the scientists applied an oscillating square-wave field with a frequency of 25 GHz and an amplitude of 5 kCal/mol to the graphite sheets in the anode, the lithium ions intercalated into the graphite sheets within an average time of about 50 nanoseconds. By changing the amplitude of the oscillating wave, the researchers found that they could further improve charging time by lowering the energy barrier and speeding up intercalation. Their simulations showed that the dependence of the intercalation time on the amplitude is exponential, meaning that a small increase in amplitude leads to a large increase the intercalation speed, which offers the potential for very fast charging times. In the future, the researchers plan to further investigate the new method, including analyzing how changing the frequency of the oscillating field effects the charging time. They noted that the new method might provide an increase in battery power densities, as well. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - The Story of Bottled Water
http://storyofbottledwater.org The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industrys attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to take back the tap, not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Scientist tests 'Goasis Waterboxx' water condenser
A Dutch scientist, author and major exporter of lilies and flower bulbs from Holland is bringing an innovative tree-growing approach to the harshest, most arid areas of the high and low deserts. Pieter Hoff's “Goasis Waterboxx” invention produces and captures water from the air through condensation and rain. He describes it as an “intelligent water incubator” that uses no energy, prevents water from evaporating from the soil and distributes water to saplings, seeds and, eventually, trees in small doses. Although the Waterboxx is a relatively simple-looking device that resembles a plastic, rectangular bucket and is about the size of a motorcycle tire, its inner technology is more complex and surrounds saplings or seeds that are planted in the soil and distributes water in small doses. Trees that get a head start and tend to survive in the toughest environment. The Waterboxx, which can be used up to 10 times and is built for less than $10 , also protects roots against sun, wind, weeds, rodents and some animals. Anyone interested in viewing animations about the science of growing trees or the Waterboxx can visit www.groasis.com/page/uk/animation.php. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Deering Man's New Invention In Wind Energy
It’s got a small front set of wings, three blades, that actually spiral. Dan Parker stands outside Blanchard Machine Development in Hillsboro. He’s holding onto a pole that’s attached to his new invention. Parker calls it the Spiralairfoil. You can see she’s very responsive to the wind, it will find the wind every time. The Spiralairfoil is a funnel-shaped wind turbine that’s six feet in diameter and 10 feet long. This prototype has plastic blades that spiral in the wind like a corkscrew. A lot of the wind spills over the front blades and then wraps back in and collapses into the back set of blades. As a result of the spiral, Parker says the contraption pivots itself into the wind like a weathervane. Parker has spent the last three years trying to perfect the turbine. He says they’ve tested different types of materials for the turbine’s blades-- from stainless steel to plastic. We’re looking into a carbon composite material which a lot of traditional three bladed windmills use a carbon composite material which is very rugged, we’re told that material can be colored so it can match a person’s house if they wanted it to.” But what makes this windmill different from much of the rest…it functions at a much lower wind speed. Parker says it starts up at just one point six miles an hour. “So we’re actually gaining power earlier than everybody else, so it will produce more power on a given day than anybody else’s wind turbine.” Squeezing more power from available wind is ideal for customers who may not live in extremely windy locations. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - New use found for 'world's most useful tree'
A recipe for using "the world's most useful tree" to purify water is being offered for free download, in the hope that this will help get clean drinking water to billions of poor folk around the world. The tree in question is the Moringa oleifera ("oily moringa") aka the horseradish or drumstick tree (also "Mother's best friend" in some places). The Moringa is cultivated across the tropical world and furnishes food in the form of apparently highly nutritious* pods, leaves and flowers. It also yields oil which can be used as lighting or cooking fuel (or to make biogas). You can even make a highly effective crop fertiliser out of the miracle Moringa. Handily, the trusty tree is also drought resistant and tolerant of poor soil. But that's not all, it turns out. You can also use Moringa products to inexpensively purify dirty drinking water. “Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia. It could be considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees,” says Michael Lea, a Canadian water-purification researcher. “Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.” The method in outline involves crushing the tree's seeds to powder and making a solution with this. When the solution is added to turbid, dirty water it causes the suspended gunge to rapidly stick together into bigger flecks and so sink rapidly. Almost all contamination is thus carried down quite quickly into a sludge at the bottom of the container, allowing nice clear water to be decanted or siphoned off from the top. The Moringa-seed technique, according to Lea, isn't foolproof - there are various bacteria and viruses which will not be affected by it. But it makes water much safer and more pleasant to drink, and Moringa treatment is hugely better than no treatment at all, which is the norm for far too many people. “This technique does not represent a total solution to the threat of waterborne disease," concedes Lea. "However, given that the cultivation and use of the Moringa tree can bring benefits in the shape of nutrition and income as well as of far purer water, there is the possibility that thousands of 21st century families could find themselves liberated from what should now be universally seen as 19th century causes of death and disease. According to Lea, despite the fact that Moringa is widespread in the very regions where bad water is a serious problem, the seed-paste purification method is little known. Thus his paper on just how to do it is being published for free online. Now all that's needed is for the knowledge of the recipe to spread. We don't suppose we have all that many readers in regions where it would be useful, but perhaps some of you can pass it on. ® * The leaves of the Moringa are said by some sources to be several times as rich in the relevant desirable vitamins and minerals as orange juice, bananas, carrots and milk. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Buy Older Leafy Greens to Get More Nutrients
There's an informal assumption that spinach and other leafy greens lose nutrients the longer they sit on grocery store shelves, and it's actually backwards. A plant physiologist in Texas says supermarket lighting actually boosts the vitamin content in your salad fixings. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Underground Lightning GPS
News has emerged of a secret US military programme intended to let troops navigate about inside huge underground enemy tunnel complexes by measuring energy pulses given off by lightning bolts. The project is known as "Sferics-Based Underground Geolocation", or S-BUG, and is focused on building "a mapping and navigation system that provides Global Positioning System (GPS) equivalent accuracy in underground environments". Not only does a deep tunnel complex shield an organisation from the prying orbital eyes, it is also good protection against a sudden bombing raid of the sort which destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 or smashed a possible nuclear facility of some kind in Syria during 2006. Thus the world's superweapon projects, secret bases, command and control HQs etc have tended to move underground more and more: and thus the US military/spook/special-ops community has tended to ponder subterranean operations more and more. DARPA boffins have noted that one of the few kinds of wireless signal which can penetrate underground is low-frequency radio. Unfortunately such signals are quite hard to generate at the required power levels. A network of lo-freq RF nav stations widespread enough to offer decent accuracy would probably be impossible to deploy. But the right kind of signals are generated naturally by lightning strikes, which cause the emission of "atmospheric" ("sferic" or "spheric") radio pulses. An underground receiver could perhaps be built capable of detecting sferics from lightning bolts hitting the surface hundreds of miles away. It could be informed of the positions of the strikes over LF comms by a single specialised surface base station, similarly far off, and thus calculate its own position from sferic data coming in from several directions. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Best Fluid Motion Pictures Named...
Fluid motion can move the observer even when static... Resembling a river valley seen from the air, this two-dimensional, computer-generated picture—one of the American Physical Society's best fluid-motion images of 2009—illustrates what's known as a von Kármán vortex street. Named after Hungarian aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, a vortex street occurs when an airstream flows around a body—in the above image, a hollow cylinder—and breaks behind it into a series of wakes and eddies. The purple-blue regions show where the resulting waves have met, and the red regions show where the airstream will split in the future, according to the winning team of scientists from the Zuse Institute in Berlin, Berlin Institute of Technology, and Northeastern University. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - The One True Cause of All Disease
Alternative practitioners constantly claim that conventional medicine treats only symptoms while they treat underlying causes. They’ve got it backwards. Nope. Not true. Exactly backwards. Think about it: When you go to a doctor with a fever, does he just treat the symptom? No, he tries to figure out what’s causing the fever. If it’s pneumonia, he identifies which microbe is responsible and gives you the right drugs to treat that particular infection. If you have abdominal pain, does the doctor just give you narcotics to treat the symptom of pain? No, he tries to figure out what’s causing the pain. If he determines you have acute appendicitis, he operates to remove your appendix. I guess what they’re trying to say is that something must have been wrong in the first place to allow the disease to develop. But they don’t have any better insight into what that something might be than scientific medicine. All they have is wild, imaginative guesses. And they all disagree with one another. The chiropractor says that if your spine is in proper alignment, you can’t get sick. Acupuncturists talk about the proper flow of qi through the meridians. Energy medicine practitioners talk about disturbances in energy fields. Nutrition faddists claim that people who eat right won’t get sick. None of them can produce any evidence to support these claims. No alternative medicine has been scientifically shown to prevent disease or cure it. If it had, it would have been incorporated into conventional medicine and would no longer be “alternative.” Are these practitioners treating the underlying cause, or are they simply applying their one chosen tool to treat everything? - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Wind resistance
MIT analysis suggests generating electricity from large-scale wind farms could influence climate — and not necessarily in the desired way. A new MIT analysis may serve to temper enthusiasm about wind power, at least at very large scales. Ron Prinn, TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, and principal research scientist Chien Wang of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, used a climate model to analyze the effects of millions of wind turbines that would need to be installed across vast stretches of land and ocean to generate wind power on a global scale. Such a massive deployment could indeed impact the climate, they found, though not necessarily with the desired outcome. In a paper published online Feb. 22 in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Wang and Prinn suggest that using wind turbines to meet 10 percent of global energy demand in 2100 could cause temperatures to rise by one degree Celsius in the regions on land where the wind farms are installed, including a smaller increase in areas beyond those regions. Their analysis indicates the opposite result for wind turbines installed in water: a drop in temperatures by one degree Celsius over those regions. The researchers also suggest that the intermittency of wind power could require significant and costly backup options, such as natural gas-fired power plants. Prinn cautioned against interpreting the study as an argument against wind power, urging that it be used to guide future research that explores the downsides of large-scale wind power before significant resources are invested to build vast wind farms. “We’re not pessimistic about wind,” he said. “We haven’t absolutely proven this effect, and we’d rather see that people do further research.” - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Has Blogging Peaked? Twitter Is So Much Easier
First there were BBS's. They were supplanted by Internet message forums and newsgroups. Which where then done in by blogs. Which are now going the wayside as Twitter, Facebook take over. So, what's next? / There is increasing evidence that the art of blog writing is losing ground to even faster forms of communication, from 140-character Twitter blasts to one-sentence status updates on Facebook and MySpace. Nielsen Media Research estimates that of the 126 million blogs counted by its crawlers, the vast majority are rarely – if ever – updated. Many longtime bloggers say that the blog is entering a period of important transition – from one-size-fits-all soapbox to just one more tool in the cluttered Internet toolbox. Facebook and Twitter, and not the blog, are now "the glue that holds online communities together," says Dylan Wilbanks, a Web producer in Seattle. Gone are the days when Mr. Wilbanks would take to his blog to describe quotidian events or record passing fancies. "Sharing small pieces of data like links over blogs was like owning a heavy-duty pickup that you only used to pick up bread and milk at the grocery store," he says. "Blogs are meant for people for whom being a writer, being a creator, is a passion, or perhaps a requirement of life. They're meant for people for whom Facebook's 'What's on your mind?' question can't always be answered in 500 characters or less." As Wilbanks is quick to point out, not everyone has that passion, which is why blogging is losing its luster. ( via fark.com ) - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - The Marble Lifting Machine
This is a wooden marble machine. It is 6 feet tall, and is powered only by potential energy, a little kinetic energy and gravity. there are no motors, batteries or cranks. It uses a 3/8 inch diameter steel marble, which starts at the bottom, and goes to the top, and then returns to the bottom,making this trip about 1,300 times in 24 hours. - (This reminded me of Uncle's Perpetual Motion Toy except that with this machine, he has to preload some of the devices like cocking a spring, etc..so it's not self-running as the Uncle device was claimed to be. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - The Man Who Plucks All the Strings
String theory explains what you might see if you zoomed in without limit, past the cells that constitute your body, past the atoms that make up those cells, past even the electrons and gluons that those atoms are made of, all the way to the scale of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a centimeter. At that level, according to the theory, lies the foundation of all the particles and forces in the universe: one-dimensional strands of energy, or “strings,” vibrating in nine dimensions. That may seem wildly counterintuitive, but many scientists agree it is the most promising approach to explain the laws of physics. Columbia University physicist Brian Greene has become the public face of string theory. He has provided insight into the topology of those additional dimensions, and in 1999 he introduced the theory to nonscientists in a best-selling book, The Elegant Universe. As scientists we track down all promising leads, and there’s reason to suspect that our universe may be one of many—a single bubble in a huge bubble bath of other universes. And you can then imagine that maybe these different bubbles all have different shapes for their extra dimensions. This suggests a landscape of different universes with different forms of extra dimensions and therefore different properties within those universes. If that is true, our universe would be one of many, and then the question becomes why are we in this one and not in some other one. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Smart Windows: Good for Seeing Through, Generating Electricity Too
PV panels aren't exactly the most attractive of household additions, in their typical "we just bolted these suckers onto your shingles" installation (though they are much more visually attractive than the solar heating units the come with the ugly cylindrical water tanks on the top.) There are fresh re-inventions that are tackling this problem, like the neat PV solar roof tiles, but they're not universally suitable. Whereas every home has windows. And this fact has led Dutch company Peer+ to create Smart Energy Glass panels that generate current from the sun while also acting as like those old-fashioned devices that lets you see right through a wall. But that's not all. Similar to the other up-and-coming LCD glass treatments that let you blank a window at the flick of a switch (removing the need for curtains, blinds or shutters,) these smart windows also have selectable darkness. Darkest is the highest privacy mode, and thanks to a trick of the optics concerned, also leads to the most efficient power generation from solar input. And you can even choose between a range of shades for the glass and also incorporate logos or text into the panels, which will appeal to countless businesses. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Plastic solar cell a boon
A Université Laval discovery has led to the invention of a tiny plastic solar cell that will allow people to charge cellular phones as they sit in a bag, or to recharge a laptop from a sun umbrella. Leclerc discovered a family of plastics that can conduct energy. Konarka used that discovery to develop a plastic film that has the capability to capture outdoor and indoor light and convert it to energy. The technology is being evaluated by the U.S. army for lightweight and portable battery charging. It has also been incorporated into Neuber's Energy Sun-Bags, solar energy bags that can power cellphones, MP3 players and cameras. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Nokia Seeks Patent For Kinetic Battery Charger
Nokia's invention makes use of piezoelectric elements, which absorb energy as the device is moving around in a pocket or purse, and transforms it into electricity, the company said in an application filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As electronic devices add ever more complex features they also require more energy, so extending the battery life is getting increasingly difficult, Nokia said in the patent application. The kinetic power generated by the new application will probably not be strong enough to charge a mobile phone on its own, according to Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant, but it could provide supplemental energy. The piezoelectric effect, by which certain materials when bent or compressed generate an electrical charge, is the same phenomenon that powers quartz watches. Still, Durrant said the patent application is a lengthy process. The patent application was filed back in August 2008, and it is still uncertain whether the invention will eventually end up on the market. It typically takes around six years from application date until a patent is granted by the U.S. authorities, he said. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - How to Make a Lava Lamp the Easy Way
http://www.sciencebob.com has detailed instructions for making this easy lava lamp. Chances are you have almost everything that you need at home, so try it out and let us know how it goes. We used fizzing antacid tablets that go by the brand name alka-seltzer here in the US. I'm not sure what they may be called in other countries. Have fun! - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - JPL Background Check Case Reaches Supreme Court
"A long-running legal battle between the United States government and a group of 29 scientists and engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has now reached the US Supreme Court." At issue: mandatory background checks for scientists and engineers working at JPL, which they allege includes snooping into their sexual orientation, as well as their mental and physical health. - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec
Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, now this! - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive?
"Over the last couple of years I've been slowly getting deaf. Too much loud rock and roll I suppose. After flubbing a couple of job interviews because I couldn't understand my inquisitors, I had a hearing test which confirmed what I already knew: I'm deaf. So I tried on a set of behind-the-ear hearing aids. Wow, my keyboard makes clacks as I type and my wife doesn't mumble to herself. Then I asked how much: $3,700 for the pair. Hey, I'm unemployed. The cheapest digital hearing aids they had were $1,200 each. If you look at the specs they are not very impressive. A digital hearing aid has a low-power A-to-D converter. Output consists of D-to-A conversion with volume passing through an equalizer that inversely matches your hearing loss. Most hearing loss, mine included, is frequency dependent, so an equalizer does wonders. The 'cheap' hearing aids had only four channels while the high-end one had twelve. My 1970 amplifier had more than that. I suppose they have some kind of noise reduction circuitry, too, but that's pretty much it. So my question is this: when I can get a very good netbook computer for under $400 why do I need to pay $1,200 per ear for a hearing aid? Alternatives would be welcome." - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - $79.90 Songbird Hearing Aid lasts 6 Months
The doctor-recommended Songbird flexfit™ is the world's first digital disposable hearing aid for people with mild to moderate hearing loss; especially those who feel they may not need hearing help all the time. Use it at meetings, when watching TV - or anytime you want to hear better. Conversations will be easier. You'll notice the difference, and others will too. Songbird is an affordable and hassle-free way of receiving outstanding digital sound without having to pay the high costs of traditional hearing aids and their maintenance. With a built-in battery that lasts up to 400 hours of active use (or up to 6 months, depending on usage patterns), Songbird eliminates the hassles of battery replacements and professional cleanings. Once the battery runs out, simply discard and begin using a fresh new flexfit™. Songbird is truly Better Hearing Made Easy

03/15/10 - Morons with Signs
Why? Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. I believe in this whole-heartedly. And I appreciate anyone who has the gumption to protest despite their handicapped abilities to articulate what they oppose. Their right, and ours, to a freedom of speech is something few in this world can savor. Another right we should not forget to savor, though, is the right to mock them. Some of these signs have been floating around the internet for a while and could be called classics, others are new. They just needed to be collected in one place. Please enjoy, and share it with your friends. - (I'd think if you have a point to make and take the time to create a sign, you'd at the very least make sure the spelling was accurate. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Former Astronauts Call Obama NASA Plans "Catastrophic"
"Talking to the BBC at a private function held at the Royal Society in London, former astronauts Jim Lovell and Eugene Cernan both spoke out about Obama's decision to postpone further moon missions. Lovell claimed that 'it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology,' while Cernan noted he was 'disappointed' to have been the last person to land on the moon. Said Cernan: 'I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership ... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the essence of human existence.' Neil Armstrong, who was also at the event, avoided commenting on the subject." - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Air Force Spaceplane Readying For Launch
"The US Air Force is currently preparing for the launch of the secretive X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) spaceplane, which was transferred from NASA to DARPA back in 2004 when NASA opted to focus its budget on lunar exploration. The reusable unmanned spaceplane is set to launch in April on top of a commercial Atlas V rocket, orbit for up to 270 days while testing a number of new technologies, reenter the atmosphere, then land on auto-pilot in California." - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - What is Wrong with Israel?
One thing is claiming to be the victim all the time, over centuries. Another is acting in the same way, or worse, as those that are criticized for treating Jews badly. Those nations which do not behave as members of the international community, logically, should forfeit their rights to membership, just like a member of a sports club is banned if (s)he does not pay the fees or breaks the rules. So why is Israel always playing the victim card, when it violates international law? And if Israel accepts the notion “an eye for an eye” then it cannot complain when inevitably the type of violations it commits daily go full cycle and are visited upon Tel Aviv. Can it? - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - Classmates.com Settles Lawsuit Over Phony Friends
"Techflash reports that Classmates.com has agreed to pay up to $9.5 million to its users to settle a lawsuit that accused the social network of sending deceptive emails that made people believe their old friends from high school were reaching out to connect — only to discover, after paying for a membership, that their long-lost buddies were nowhere to be found. Lawyers for the plaintiffs asserted that Classmates had 'profited tremendously from their false or deceptive e-mail subject lines and related marketing tactics.' Under terms of the proposed settlement, Classmates.com members who upgraded to premium memberships after receiving one of the 'guestbook' emails will be able to choose either a $3 cash payout or a $2 credit toward the future purchase or renewal of a Classmates.com membership. Classmates.com is also among companies that have come under scrutiny for their use of 'post-transaction marketing' tactics — in which customers are given additional offers as part of the online payment process, sometimes in such a way that they aren't aware they're also signing up to pay more. A November 2009 US Senate Committee report said Classmates made more than $70 million through its relationship with post-transaction marketing firms. The Classmates Media unit posted $58.8 million in operating profit for 2009, up more than 24 percent from the previous year, making Classmates 'the most profitable social network in the world,' according to CEO Mark Goldston." - Full Article Source

03/15/10 - the Get Some Scam
If you have delicate sensibilities, you don't want to follow this link. It happened to me yesterday and I found it so outrageous and funny that I just had to post it on my Hellboxer blog. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - A Sign of the Times

03/12/10 - Nanotube cuff is 'solar cell' for exhaust pipes
The hot gases passing through a vehicle's exhaust could be tapped to generate power, using "cuffs" made from a new carbon-nanotube-based material. The "thermocell" produces electricity at a similar cost per watt as commercial solar cells. The basic design is simple. Each thermocell contains two electrodes, positioned at either end of a temperature gradient: for example, one right next to a hot pipe and the other closer to the surrounding cooler air. In between is a chemical mix, in which the heat encourages chemical reactions that push electrons around an external circuit. Ions in the mix shed electrons at the hotter electrode and pick up electrons at the cooler one to complete the circuit. One of the team's thermocell designs is intended to be wrapped around a hot pipe, inspired by the fact that heat leaks out from such structures in many situations, such as chemical factories and power plants. "You could harvest energy from the tailpipe of a car," adds Baughman. The "hot" electrode wrapped around the pipe is surrounded by a heat-resistant layer, which is itself encased in a 'cold' electrode. An aqueous solution can move through pores in the heat-resistant layer, allowing ions to circulate between the reactions at the two electrodes. In tests, a prototype thermocell functioned well for 90 days. With an electrode temperature difference of 60 °C it produced energy for $5.14 per watt based on materials costs for the prototype – comparable with that of mass-produced silicon solar cells. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Propeller-Drive CAR has VANE Control (Sep, 1931)
CARRYING the development of air driven automobiles a step farther, Emil Sohn, a Berlin aviation engineer, has invented a motor car that secures high flexibility of control from power of an airplane motor and twin propellers located in the rear, in the position of the rumble seat. The propellers are mounted horizontally, the windstream being directed by means of adjustable vanes like the blades of a steam turbine. The powerful windstream tends to push the car forward at a tremendous speed when the vanes are set for “forward,” that is, slanting toward the rear. To go in reverse, the vanes are slanted forward, so that wind-stream pushes the car backward. Chief among the advantages offered by this method of propulsion are: utmost economy; the ability to climb steep mountain grades; smooth passage over roughest of roads; and the elimination of all danger of skidding on wet or icy streets, due to downward pressure on wheels exerted by upward windstream. - (Now this is a simple yet fascinating ducted fan method of propulsion. Imagine this with a jet engine. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Twice-Monthly Half Mortgage Payments Might Save You Money
Some financial planners advise making two half payments on your mortgage each month instead of one full sum. The idea is that homeowners will save thousands of dollars over the years in interest payments. Does this idea hold water? Finance blog The Simple Dollar posits that, assuming your lender allows you to split your monthly payment without penalty, the plan just might work. Your next job, then, is to find out when your interest gets compounded. If it's only monthly, then half-mortgage payments won't do a thing. If, however, your interest compounds based on the average monthly balance, paying it down partially mid-month will end up saving you money over time. ... A superior method of doing this would be to simply make a payment equal to half of the amount of the monthly mortgage bill every two weeks. Over the course of a year, this adds up to one extra full payment: since there are fifty two weeks in a year, you'd make 26 half payments, and thus 13 full payments. - Full Article Source

DVD - the Physics of Crystals, Pyramids and Tetrahedrons
This is a wonderful 2 hour DVD which presents one man's lifelong study of pyramids, crystals and their effects. Several of his original and very creative experiments are explained and diagramed out for experimenters. These experiments include; 1) transmutation of zinc to lower elements using a tetrahedron, 2) energy extraction from a pyramid, 3) determining mathematic ratios of nature in a simple experiment, 4) accelerating the growth of food, 5) increasing the abundance of food, 6) how crystals amplify, focus and defocus energy, 7) using crystals to assist natural healing, 8) how the universe uses spirals and vortexes to produce free energy and MORE... - $20 DVD + S&H / Source to Buy and Youtube Clip

03/12/10 - Cellphone Popcorn Trick again and debunked
WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INJURIES CAUSED BY THIS EXPERIMENT. =] - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Unbelievable - ATV Lake Skimming - 400 feet, doesn't sink!
Danny skims his Raptor 700R 400 feet with ease! Water is about 15-20' deep. He's Able to do this because he has paddle tires on the rear, additionally he's running low pressure in the stock fronts. No paddle tires in the back and high pressure in the front = bad things. / Walking on Water - "Although molecules in a liquid are electrically neutral in nature, there are often small attractive forces between them. These attractive forces (called Van der Waals forces) are caused by the asymmetrical charge distribution inside the molecules. Within a body of a liquid, a molecule will not experience a net force because the forces by the neighboring molecules all cancel out. However for a molecule on the surface of the liquid, there will be a net inward force since there will be no attractive force acting from above the molecule. This inward net force causes the molecules on the surface to contract and to resist being stretched or broken. Thus the surface is under tension and has Surface tension. Due to the surface tension, small objects will "float" on the surface of a fluid. When an object is on the surface of the fluid, the surface under tension will behave like an elastic membrane. There will be a small depression on the surface of the water. The vertical components of the forces by the molecules on the object will balance out the weight of the object." - (Thanks to Jerry Draughon for the headsup. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
So, the headlines say somebody else has died due to video game addiction. Yes, it's Korea again. What the hell? Look, I'm not saying video games are heroin. I totally get that the victims had other things going on in their lives. But, half of you reading this know a World of Warcraft addict and experts say video game addiction is a thing. So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it? Oh, hell yes. And their methods are downright creepy. / #5 Putting you in the Skinner Box / #4 Creating Virtual Food Pellets For You To Eat / #3 Making You Press the Lever / #2 Keeping You Pressing It... Forever / #1 Getting You To Call the Skinner Box Home - The danger lies in the fact that these games have become so incredibly efficient at delivering the sense of accomplishment that people used to get from their education or career. We're not saying gaming will ruin the world, or that gaming addiction will be a scourge on youth the way crack ruined the inner cities in the 90s. But we may wind up with a generation of dudes working at Starbucks when they had the brains and talent for so much more. They're dissatisfied with their lives because they wasted their 20s playing video games, and will escape their dissatisfaction by playing more video games. Rinse, repeat. And let's face it; if you think WoW is addictive, wait until you see the games they're making 10 years from now. They're only getting better at what they do. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Is the Web Making Us Passive?
Popular culture expert Adam Hanft - CEO of the branding firm Hanft Projects, co-author of The Dictionary of the Future: The Words, Terms and Trends That Define the Way We'll Live, Work and Talk, who blogs for the Huffington Post and FastCompany and has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - recently said: Even during the most heightened emotional outbursts, when people were mad over the bonuses being given to Wall Street, the people haven't reacted. I wonder if with the Internet, we're given the ability to vent and rant, and that releases everyone's energy, and then people keep doing what they're doing anyway. It seems like a curious psychological phenomenon. While the web is spreading long-buried truths for millions to see, it also may be bleeding off the energy we need to do something about the truth we've learned. Indeed, the passivity-inducing potential of the Internet will probably increase in the future. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - The green revolution sweeps into the bathroom
Environmentally-friendly "NoMix" toilets that separate urine and faeces could help to reduce pollution and save water. And support is growing for the adoption of the techno-toilets, CNET reports. NoMix toilets collect urine at the front and faeces at the back. Separating urine before it reaches sewage treatment plants could reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients entering rivers and triggering algal blooms, according to a paper in Environmental Science and Technology. The collected urine could also be recycled as agricultural fertiliser, conserving water. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology reviewed surveys of 2700 people across Europe, and found 80 per cent supported the idea of the toilets. What's more, three-quarters of those surveyed said they found the comfort, smell and cleanliness of the new loos equalled that of conventional toilets. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Energizer USB battery charger contains backdoor?
The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has warned that the software included in the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access. When the Energizer UsbCharger software executes, it utilizes the UsbCharger.dll component for providing USB communication capabilities. UsbCharger.dll executes Arucer.dll via the Windows rundll32.exe mechanism, and it also configures Arucer.dll to execute automatically when Windows starts by creating an entry in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run registry key. US-CERT said that Arucer.dll is a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access via accepting connections on 7777/tcp. Here’s the major risk: An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user. Anti-malware researchers at Symantec have posed a detailed write-up of the Trojan discovery. - (Why the heck do we need a simple battery charger to be connected to a computer??? - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Hate Paying for Cable? Here’s Why.
Love grousing about cable TV? Then I’ve got a list for you. It comes from industry analyst SNL Kagan, and I came across it via a research note Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente sent out last week. DiClemente was arguing that the bundled approach to cable TV–whereby subscribers get dozens or even hundreds of channels for one big fee, no matter how many networks they actually watch–wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time. If ever. But if you’re the kind of person who thinks we’re headed for an a la carte model in which programmers compete directly for consumer dollars, you can use this as fodder for your argument. Because you can see just how much you’re paying for stuff you don’t want.

Obviously these are wholesale prices, not retail. But this gives you a very good idea of where the money goes–to a lot of channels you likely never, ever, look at. - (And while we are at it, NO COMMERCIALS, we are already paying for the cable service...jerks! - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Oxygen may lead to lighter Hangovers
Oxygen, it would seem, has an effect on the severity of hangovers. On March 1, a new study was published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, an academic journal, and researchers concluded that "enhanced dissolved oxygen concentrations in alcohol may reduce alcohol-related side effects." Researchers at Chungnam National University in South Korea found that when healthy subjects drank "elevated dissolved oxygen concentrations in alcoholic drinks," the metabolism and elimination of alcohol increased faster (30 minutes) than without the oxygenation. I had heard that pure oxygen breathed through a respirator is an amazing hangover cure. Here's proof... / It's unclear how oxygen-infused cocktails will be concocted, though one possibility may be that machines to oxygenate water will be used to transform well drinks into wellbeing drinks. Koreans may have figured it out with O2 Linn, a new oxygenated soju (traditional distilled alcohol beverage usually from rice or sweet potato) drink that will still get you drunk (if that's what you want) minus the hangover. The company claims O2 Linn will "help clarify your brain, energize your body cells and maintain healthy and resilient skin." The campaign is "O2 Linn for 3B (body, beauty, brain) and has above 22ppm of oxygen in each bottle touting an "exceptionally large amount of oxygen is dissolved in O2 Linn than any other liquor or soju." - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Vertical Prison Concept Hides Prisoners Up In the Sky
Alcatraz was designed to be impossible to escape from by being out on an island in San Francisco Bay. And this vertical prison concept has the same idea: if you want to escape, it's a long way down. It would use "pods" to transport people and equipment up to the top levels where everyone is, which is fun. And really, even if this just stays a concept, it might just inspire some filmmakers to include it in a sci-fi movie, which is almost better than it becoming a real prison. / Rehabilitation essentially involves both the offenders and community. to achieve this, we propose a prison where the criminals are taken off the street to a place within that community and while serving their sentences, they continuously contribute to that particular community yet remain separated; a vertical prison. Design to separate – a prison without wall the purpose of a prison is to isolate the inmates from society and a prison needs a barrier to do so. A vertical prison does so without a wall, instead it isolates the inmates through height, where jumping off the prison is the only option. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - As suspected, some Toyota acceleration cases have ulterior motives
Jalopnik reports that "James Sikes, the San Diego runaway Toyota Prius driver, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one anonymous tipster, we're also told he hasn't been making payments on his Prius." So was his story a fake? (props to boingboing.com) - Full Article Source

KeelyNet BBS Files w/bonus PDF of 'Keely and his Discoveries'
Finally, I've gotten around to compiling all the files (almost 1,000 - about 20MB and lots of work doing it) from the original KeelyNet BBS into a form you can easily navigate and read using your browser, ideally Firefox but it does work with IE. Most of these files are extremely targeted, interesting and informative, I had forgotten just how much but now you can have the complete organized, categorized set, not just sprinklings from around the web. They will keep you reading for weeks if not longer and give you clues and insights into many subjects and new ideas for investigation and research. IN ADDITION, I am including as a bonus gift, the book (in PDF form) that started it all for me, 'Keely and his Discoveries - Aerial Navigation' which includes the analysis of Keely's discoveries by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton. This 407 page eBook alone is worth the price of the KeelyNet BBS CD but it will give you some degree of understanding about what all Keely accomplished which is just now being rediscovered, but of course, without recognizing Keely as the original discoverer. Chapters include; Vibratory Sympathetic and Polar Flows, Vibratory Physics, Latent Force in Interstitial Spaces and much more. To give some idea of how Keely's discoveries are being slowly rediscovered in modern times, check out this Keely History. These two excellent bodies of information will be sent to you on CD. If alternative science intrigues and fascinates you, this CD is what you've been looking for... - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - New Fuel Injection System gets 64mpg
A California-based company called Transonic claims that its fuel injection system increases fuel efficiency by 75% while cutting emissions in half. No electric motors, no gimmicks… just a supercritical injection process. / Transonic Combustion successfully tested a new fuel injection system that gets 64 miles per gallon of regular gas during highway driving in a car weighing similar to a Toyota Prius. For comparison, the Prius is currently the most fuel-efficient car at 48 mpg highway. In your face, hybridouche. By heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber places it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion. This in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to run the vehicle. The gasoline is also treated with a catalyst to further enhance combustion. Unless that catalyst is something cheap that can be dumped right into the tank, that’s a problem. You can’t get “gasoline plus catalytic unicorn essence” at a regular pump. Not until I get my gas station and unicorn farm franchises up and running anyway. Dream the dream, people. / TSCiTM Fuel Injection achieves lean combustion and super efficiency by running gasoline, diesel, and advanced bio-renewable fuels on modern diesel engine architectures. Supercritical fluids have unusual physical properties that Transonic is harnessing for internal combustion engine efficiency. Supercritical fuel injection facilitates short ignition delay and fast combustion, precisely controls the combustion that minimizes crevice burn and partial combustion near the cylinder walls, and prevents droplet diffusion burn. Our engine control software facilitates extremely fast combustion, enabled by advanced microprocessing technology. Our injection system can also be supplemented by advanced thermal management, exhaust gas recovery, electronic valves, and advanced combustion chamber geometries. Our fuel system efficiently supports engine operation over the full range of conditions – from stoichiometric air-to-fuel ratios at full power to lean 80:1 air-to-fuel ratios at cruise, with engine-out NOx at just 50% of comparable standard engines. Our real-time programmable control of combustion heat release results in dramatically increased efficiency. Thus far 3 patents (#7444230, #7546826, #7657363) have been issued to Transonic from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to our technology, with another 14 patents pending. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Climategate: 3 of 4 Temperature Datasets Now Irrevocably Tainted
The warmist response to Climategate — the discovery of the thoroughly corrupt practices of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) — was that the tainted CRU dataset was just one of four independent data sets. You know. So really there’s no big deal. Thanks to a FOIA request, the document production of which I am presently plowing through — and before that, thanks to the great work of Steve McIntyre, and particularly in their recent, comprehensive work, Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts — we know that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) passed no one’s test for credibility. Not even NASA’s. In fact, CRU’s former head, Phil Jones, even told his buddies that while people may think his dataset — which required all of those “fudge factors” (their words) — is troubled, “GISS is inferior” to CRU. Really. NASA’s temperature data is so woeful that James Hansen’s colleague Reto Ruedy told the USA Today weather editor: “My recommendation to you is to continue using … CRU data for the global mean [temperatures]. … “What we do is accurate enough” — left unspoken: for government work — “[but] we have no intention to compete with either of the other two organizations in what they do best.” To reiterate, NASA’s temperature data is worse than the Climategate temperature data. According to NASA. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Magnet Skills
Zen Magnets are small but curiously strong rare earth super-magnets, 5mm in diameter. How powerful? 8 Times more powerful than the ceramic magnets driving your speakers. 30 Times more powerful than the average fridge magnet. Pull them into a chain, fold them into a fabric, and meld them into limitless shapes: both abstract and geometric, flat or 3D. Use them when you need to massage your mind, practice your patience, relieve some boredom or alleviate some stress. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - How obscure security makes school suck
DrJohn2005 Recently out of Virginia's public school system, youngster James Stephenson writes in to say that being a kid sucks. So what's new? A gauntlet of cameras, invasive searches and authoritarian security theatrics that don't make schools feel safer—but do tempt administrators into privacy abuses such as Lower Merion's recent webcam-spying scandal. Special feature: "Seen Not Heard: How obscure security makes school suck." - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Water-Scraper: Underwater Architecture
To create the more resilient cities of tomorrow turn sky scraper designs upside down and float them in the sea. The hO2 scraper proposes to break free of the urban fabric and functions as self-sufficient ambassadors in the sea. The hO2 scraper is an autonomous floating unit of livable, functional and self sustaining space which will function, in a collective manner, as a floating city. It is self sufficient as it generates its own power through wave, wind, current, solar, bio etc. and it generates its own food through farming, aquaculture, hydroponics etc. / The hO2+ scraper proposes to break free of the urban fabric and functions as self-sufficient ambassadors in the sea. The hO2+ scraper is an autonomous floating unit of livable, functional and self sustaining space which will function, in a collective manner, as a floating city. It is self sufficient as it generates its own power through wave, wind, current, solar, bio etc. and it generates its own food through farming, aquaculture, hydroponics etc. It carries with its own small forest on top its back and supports places for users to live and works in its depths. Its bioluminescent tentacles provide sea fauna a place to live and congregate while collecting energy through its kinetic movements. Such sustainability strategies aim to ultimately create and provide an oasis with ‘Zero’ negative impacts to the environment, not only that but also improves on it hence the ’Plus’. Aptly as poetic antithesis to a skyscraper which goes up into the heavens the hO2+ scraper goes down to the depths of the sea. The main components of the programme for the hO2+ scraper consist of resource generation (i.e. power, food, air etc), living, work, play, waste treatment and maintenance. The programme is spread evenly in accordance to the proximity of any specific required external resource i.e. the wind generators are placed of the roof garden island, the livestock farming component is also placed there, the living areas are placed just below sea level where the natural light is the best etc. The building itself is kept upright using a system of ballast and balancing tanks. The tentacles also serve as balancing elements as they, in generating their power, are constantly moving with the rhythm of the tide. The buoyancy and ballast controls are placed at the lowest portions to create the proper counterforce for keeping the building upright. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Ranking the Countries - Where best to live for you?
If life in your nation becomes untenable, how do you find the best alternative? One of the best tools available for evaluating nation states is the Heritage Foundation's Annual Index of Economic Freedom. The Foundation assigns a 1 to 10 score for each of ten criteria (Business Freedom, Trade Freedom, Fiscal Freedom, Government Spending, Monetary Freedom, Investment Freedom, Financial Freedom, Property rights, Freedom from Corruption, and Labor Freedom). Then the ten scores are totaled to obtain an overall rating for each of the world's nations. Other resources are the International Living Quality of Life, Doing Business Rankings and American University's Country Ranking Guide. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Protein ... and Now Fat
"The human tongue can taste more than sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein. Researchers have added fat to that list. Dr. Russell Keast, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, told Slashfood, 'This makes logical sense. We have sweet to identify carbohydrate/sugars, and umami to identify protein/amino acids, so we could expect a taste to identify the other macronutrient: fat.' In the Deakin study, which appears in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, Dr. Keast and his team gave a group of 33 people fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree." - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - This is one of the key things America is about, Free Speech
You might not agree, you might be offended, but according to the Constitution, he and everyone of us has the right to say whatever we want. Bill Balsamico, the outspoken owner of Casa D' Ice in North Versailles, PA is featured in this brand new short documentary film entitled 'Portrait of Bill'.

They would do it better

Why is that, are kids safer?

It's their History, leave'em alone

I don't agree with everything this guy posts but he does have the right to say it. (Thanks to Jerry for the headsup about this website. - JWD) - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking
"Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese." / Assembly Bill A10129, introduced last Friday, says, "No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off the premises." The measure proposes fines of $1,000 for each violation. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Cellphone photo of Barcode yields User Product Reviews
Never buy crap again, just snap any bar code with your smart phone's camera to get buyer reviews using the Stickybits application. It lets you scan any barcode and attach a message to that physical object. If only those cheaply made products at Walmart could warn you of their inferior quality. Well now they can. StickyBits turns any bar-code into a personal message board that can be accessed by photographing the bar code with your smart phone. You can even stick your own bar-codes on any objects around town and append virtual reality data to them that other users can access. / The app is free, but stickybits sells packs of 20 vinyl barcode stickers for $10. You also can download and print your own barcodes for free, or scan an existing one on a physical product like a can of Coke. (Future business model: charge brands to claim their barcodes and place their own messages first). Each barcode is programmable by the first person who scans it and and leaves a photo, video, audio, or text message. The next time somebody scans that barcode, the previous message will appear on their phone. Anyone can add a new message to the same code, resulting in a stream of messages connected to whatever object or place the barcode is stuck on. Each scan, and related message, is geo-tagged so you can see as an object moves around how its story evolves. - Full Article Source

03/12/10 - Researchers Beam 230Mb/sec Wireless Internet WIth LEDs
"A group of scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have devised a way to encode a visible-frequency wireless signal in light emitted by plain old desklamps and other light fixtures. The team was able to achieve a record-setting data download rate of 230 megabits per second, and they expect to be able to double that speed in the near future. While the regular radio-frequency Wi-Fi most of us use currently is perfectly fine, it does have its flaws — it has a limited bandwidth that confines it to a certain spectrum and if you've ever had someone leech off of your connection, you know that it also leaks through walls. LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides." - Full Article Source

DVD - the Physics of Crystals, Pyramids and Tetrahedrons
This is a wonderful 2 hour DVD which presents one man's lifelong study of pyramids, crystals and their effects. Several of his original and very creative experiments are explained and diagramed out for experimenters. These experiments include; 1) transmutation of zinc to lower elements using a tetrahedron, 2) energy extraction from a pyramid, 3) determining mathematic ratios of nature in a simple experiment, 4) accelerating the growth of food, 5) increasing the abundance of food, 6) how crystals amplify, focus and defocus energy, 7) using crystals to assist natural healing, 8) how the universe uses spirals and vortexes to produce free energy and MORE... - $20 DVD + S&H / Source to Buy and Youtube Clip

KeelyNet BBS Files w/bonus PDF of 'Keely and his Discoveries'
Finally, I've gotten around to compiling all the files (almost 1,000 - about 20MB and lots of work doing it) from the original KeelyNet BBS into a form you can easily navigate and read using your browser, ideally Firefox but it does work with IE. Most of these files are extremely targeted, interesting and informative, I had forgotten just how much but now you can have the complete organized, categorized set, not just sprinklings from around the web. They will keep you reading for weeks if not longer and give you clues and insights into many subjects and new ideas for investigation and research. IN ADDITION, I am including as a bonus gift, the book (in PDF form) that started it all for me, 'Keely and his Discoveries - Aerial Navigation' which includes the analysis of Keely's discoveries by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton. This 407 page eBook alone is worth the price of the KeelyNet BBS CD but it will give you some degree of understanding about what all Keely accomplished which is just now being rediscovered, but of course, without recognizing Keely as the original discoverer. Chapters include; Vibratory Sympathetic and Polar Flows, Vibratory Physics, Latent Force in Interstitial Spaces and much more. To give some idea of how Keely's discoveries are being slowly rediscovered in modern times, check out this Keely History. These two excellent bodies of information will be sent to you on CD. If alternative science intrigues and fascinates you, this CD is what you've been looking for... - Full Article Source

'The Evolution of Matter' and 'The Evolution of Forces' on CD
Years ago, I had been told by several people, that the US government frequently removes books they deem dangerous or 'sensitive' from libraries. Some are replaced with sections removed or rewritten so as to 'contain' information that should not be available to the public despite the authors intent. A key example was during the Manhattan Project when the US was trying to finalize research into atomic bombs. They removed any books that dealt with the subject and two of them were by Dr. Gustave Le Bon since they dealt with both energy and matter including radioactivity. I had been looking for these two books for many years and fortunately stumbled across two copies for which I paid about $40.00 each. I couldn't put down the books once I started reading them. Such a wealth of original discoveries, many not known or remembered today. / Page 88 - Without the ether there could be neither gravity, nor light, nor electricity, nor heat, nor anything, in a word, of which we have knowledge. The universe would be silent and dead, or would reveal itself in a form which we cannot even foresee. If one could construct a glass chamber from which the ether were to be entirely eliminated, heat and light could not pass through it. It would be absolutely dark, and probably gravitation would no longer act on the bodies within it. They would then have lost their weight. / Page 96-97 - A material vortex may be formed by any fluid, liquid or gaseous, turning round an axis, and by the fact of its rotation it describes spirals. The study of these vortices has been the object of important researches by different scholars, notably by Bjerkness and Weyher. They have shown that by them can be produced all the attractions and repulsions recognized in electricity, the deviations of the magnetic needle by currents, etc. These vortices are produced by the rapid rotation of a central rod furnished with pallets, or, more simply, of a sphere. Round this sphere gaseous currents are established, dissymetrical with regard to its equatorial plane, and the result is the attraction or repulsion of bodies brought near to it, according to the position given to them. It is even possible, as Weyher has proved, to compel these bodies to turn round the sphere as do the satellites of a planet without touching it. / Page 149 - "The problem of sending a pencil of parallel Hertzian waves to a distance possesses more than a theoretical interest. It is allowable to say that its solution would change the course of our civilization by rendering war impossible. The first physicist who realizes this discovery will be able to avail himself of the presence of an enemy's ironclads gathered together in a harbour to blow them up in a few minutes, from a distance of several kilometres, simply by directing on them a sheaf of electric radiations. On reaching the metal wires with which these vessels are nowadays honeycombed, this will excite an atmosphere of sparks which will at once explode the shells and torpedoes stored in their holds. With the same reflector, giving a pencil of parallel radiations, it would not be much more difficult to cause the explosion of the stores of powder and shells contained in a fortress, or in the artillery sparks of an army corps, and finally the metal cartridges of the soldiers. Science, which at first rendered wars so deadly, would then at length have rendered them impossible, and the relations between nations would have to be established on new bases." - Full Article Source

High Voltage & Free Energy Devices Handbook
This wonderfully informative ebook provides many simple experiments you can do, including hydrogen generation and electrostatic repulsion as well as the keys to EV Gray's Fuelless Engine. One of the most comprehensive compilations of information yet detailing the effects of high voltage repulsion as a driving force. Ed Gray's engine produced in excess of 300HP and he claimed to be able to 'split the positive' energy of electricity to produce a self-running motor/generator for use as an engine. Schematics and tons of photos of the original machines and more! Excellent gift for your technical friends or for that budding scientist! If you are an experimenter or know someone who investigates such matters, this would make an excellent addition to your library or as an unforgettable gift. The downloadable HVFE eBook pdf file is almost 11MB in size and contains many experiments, photos, diagrams and technical details. Buy a copy and learn all about hydrogen generation, its uses and how to produce electrostatic repulsion. - 121 pages - $15.00 - Full Article Source

Hypnosis CD - 3 eBooks with How To Techniques and Many Cases
If you have a few minutes, you might want to read my page on hypnosis and all the amazing things associated with its application. Included is an experience I had when I hypnotized a neighbor kid when I was about 14. As well the hypnotic gaze of snakes, the discovery of 'eyebeams' which can be detected electronically, the Italian Hypnotist Robber who was caught on tape with his eyes glowing as cashiers handed over their money and remembered nothing, glamour and clouding the mind of others, several methods of trance induction and many odd cases, animal catatonia, healing, psychic phenomena, party/stage stunts, including my favorite of negative hallucination where you make your subject NOT see something...much more...if nothing else, its might be a hoot to read. - Full Article Source

14 Ways to Save Money on Fuel Costs
This eBook is the result of years of research into various methods to increase mileage, reduce pollution and most importantly, reduce overall fuel costs. It starts out with the simplest methods and offers progressively more detailed technologies that have been shown to reduce fuel costs. As a bonus to readers, I have salted the pages with free interesting BONUS items that correlate to the relevant page. Just filling up with one tank of gas using this or other methods explained here will pay for this eBook. Of course, many more methods are out there but I provided only the ones which I think are practical and can be studied by the average person who is looking for a way to immediately reduce their fuel costs. I am currently using two of the easier methods in my own vehicle which normally gets 18-22 mpg and now gets between 28 and 32 mpg depending on driving conditions. A tank of gas for my 1996 Ford Ranger costs about $45.00 here so I am saving around $15-$20 PER TANK, without hurting my engine and with 'greener' emissions due to a cleaner burn! The techniques provided in this ebook begin with simple things you can do NOW to improve your mileage and lower your gas costs. - $15 eBook Download / Full Article Source to Buy

New Vanguard Sciences eBooks - Save a Tree! eBooks make great gifts!
Shape Power - Dan Davidson's analysis of the mysterious pyramid energies, Keely's aether force, Reich's orgone energy, Schauberger's diamagnetic energy, plus a host of others, and shows how shape and materials interact with the universal aether to modify the aether into electromagnetic, gravitic, and various healing energies... - Shape Power Youtube

The Physics of the Primary State of Matter - published in the 1930s, Karl Schappeller described his Prime Mover, a 10-inch steel sphere with quarter-inch copper tubing coils. These were filled with a material not named specifically, but which is said to have hardened under the influence of direct current and a magnetic field [electro-rheological fluid]. With such polarization, it might be guessed to act like a dielectric capacitor and as a diode...

$5 Alt Science MP3s to listen while working/driving/jogging
No time to sit back and watch videos? Here are 15 interesting presentations you can download for just $5 each and listen to while driving, working, jogging, etc. An easy way to learn some fascinating new things that you will find of use. Easy, cheap and simple, better than eBooks or Videos. Roughly 50MB per MP3. - Full Article Source

15 New Alternative Science DVDs & 15 MP3s
An assortment of alternative science videos that provide many insights and inside information from various experimenters. Also MP3s extracted from these DVDs that you can listen to while working or driving. Reference links for these lectures and workshops by Bill Beaty of Amateur Science on the Dark Side of Amateur Science, Peter Lindemann on the World of Free Energy, Norman Wootan on the History of the EV Gray motor, Dan Davidson on Shape Power and Gravity Wave Phenomena, Lee Crock on a Method for Stimulating Energy, Doug Konzen on the Konzen Pulse Motor, George Wiseman on the Water Torch and Jerry Decker on Aether, ZPE and Dielectric Nano Arrays. Your purchase of these products helps support KeelyNet, thanks! - Full Article Source to Buy

Want to make a difference? If you have the funds, check out;

The Vanguard Sciences Lab Project experiments in energy, transport, gravity and healing/rejuvenation

The Vanguard Sciences Gravity Control Project to Re-Discover how to control Gravity with related projects

Looking for 'PoP'
Proof of Principle

Chaos Converters

Rhythmodynamics

Who is Decker???

great magazine covers many topics

Bill Beatys'
excellent huge science site

Tesla Patents

Low cost Dental Work and Mexican Artesanias