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07/31/06 - Keep losing my connection from the rainstorm problem last week and its driving me nuts having to redial every 3-5 minutes...so back to TelMex to have them check it out...again... - JWD 07/31/06 - Noise can make you smarter Wired Magazine interviews Bart Kosko, author of Noise, a book that argues that adding noise to our signals can actually make them clearer. Can background music make you smarter? The more you can concentrate with background noise, the more it strengthens the brain. Isaac Asimov used to set his typewriter up in stores and other loud places to work. His claim was that you get really good at writing when you’re in a crowd. You want to be energized by that background noise, rather than distracted. 07/31/06 - India plans massive Solar Array and 'mining' Helium 3 for energy The solar array would have a five km by 10 km Photovoltaic Array fitted on a satellite in space that would deliver sun power from space to earth through SPS network. As it would be impossible to hurl such a huge system from earth in one go, it would be built in phases in space itself. A one km wide antenna on the earth, which would transfer power into high-tension lines, would trap the solar energy from satellites. Production of the same amount of energy on earth would need 130 sq km of space besides a huge quantity of fossil or nuclear fuel. Building such huge antenna was possible, though the biggest antenna India had built so far had a diameter of 14 metres. Advanced technology developed in the world during the past 30 years had really given hope that a solar array of such huge size could be made possible, he said. The cost of putting material in space, however, would have to be reduced for the project's success. At present every kilo of material transported to outer space would cost $25,000 to 30,000. The SPS could be made a cost-effective pollution-free energy source for the coming centuries. Helium-3, derived from a mixture of helium and deuterium in reactors built on the moon, could prove an extremely potent, non-polluting, non-radioactive energy source that could solve the energy shortage forever. One million tonnes of H-3 was enough to power earth for 1000 years. Just 25 tonnes of H-3 transported through a single voyage by a space shuttle could supply power to both the U.S. and India for one full year. One kg of H-3 burnt with 0.67 kg of deuterium gave about 19 MW of power. Though just one tonne of H-3 was expected to cost $4 billion in today's calculations, tapping this source of energy could become a reality in view of the advancements being made in space science, according to Dr. Shankara. 07/30/06 - Homebrew Self-guiding lawnmower Tom Read's just an ordinary guy, who like millions of Americans has a lawn that needs cutting. "It's just a mower I found along the side of the road and fixed up (laughter) No large investment." Just a few modifications which allow this 39 year old machinist to sit on his porch, and mow his lawn at the same time? "It's a self-propelled lawnmower that I have on a 75-foot cable with a spool in the middle with a piece of 4-inch PVC pipe, which is staked to the ground. He runs the cable back to the mower, starts it up, ties down the self-propel handle and away we go. "And it starts going around in a circle and each time it goes around it pulls itself in about 14 inches and winds itself around the spool." Though he came with this 3 years ago, it wasn't till this year that Tom found a way to stop the thing. "It took me a bit on that one till I thought, ooh know what I can do!" He used a light spring to reverse the safety so that when the angle on the cable is just right it combines with the weight of the mower.... "And when it gets to the middle it shuts itself off." He has no plans to patent it and make millions. 07/30/06 - Disease Sniffer to non-invasively ferret out early disease Theoretically, using existing technology, we should be able to build a "disease sniffer," to detect cancer and other diseases by simply sniffing the air around the patient. This air is then analyzed for certain chemical elements which directly indicate the metabolism of various diseases. You might ask, "How can a disease sniffer work? You can't smell disease in a person, can you?" But of course you can. The answer is actually quite simple -- you can smell disease in people, around people and on people. You can smell it from the gases emanating from their skin and from the gases they exhale from their lungs as well. Their respiration gives you a good clue about their level of overall health. How does this work? First of all, the skin actually does emit gas. A human being's skin breathes. The skin is the largest organ on your body, and it must breathe in order for you to live. In doing so, it emits gases that are circulating in the blood supply. Let's say, for example, you have too much carbon dioxide in your blood, or too much nitrogen, or even too much oxygen. Any of these gases, and of course many others, are going to be primarily exhaled through your lungs, but they're also going to be partially exhaled out of your skin as this blood is circulated to your skin cells and the skin begins to exchange chemistry with the surrounding air. The skin can absorb chemicals and water, it can also exhale chemicals, and it is this exhalation of chemistry that allows this invention to work. What the invention does, quite simply, is sniff the air around a person and subject it to chemical analysis to determine what chemicals are emanating from this individual. It then compares that chemical profile with a known list of diseases to determine what diseases the person is most likely to be suffering from, and from there, that patient would be asked to participate in more precise testing in order to confirm the diagnosis. This disease-sniffer technology would only be used as a simple, low-cost, non-invasive, first line of defense detection device. The cost to use it would be only a few cents per person. It's non-invasive, it's completely painless and it only takes a few seconds, so it would be an ideal item to use for mass disease detection on large populations. This invention, the disease sniffer, is based on available technology, a chromatographic analysis of the air around the person's body and the correlation of the chemicals found in that air with various diseases -- most notably, cancer. This device could be put together and sold right now, and it would not be difficult to scientifically correlate the chemicals in the air around a person with the diseases he or she might be suffering from. So why doesn't such a device exist? Well the answer is because, for some bizarre reason, conventional medicine doesn't believe that you can "smell cancer" on a person, even though dogs have been trained to do exactly that. Besides, mammography is wildly profitable, and the makers of mammography equipment give huge donations to non-profit cancer institutions, where they exert tremendous influence. And they, of course, don't want to see any new technology come along that makes their existing equipment less valuable. That is, unless they invent the new technology themselves. 07/30/06 - 60 minute Pop-Up Housing for emergency shelter (I LOVE THIS COMPANY AND PRODUCT! - JWD) Aquentium, Inc., services are uniquely suited to meet the "Global Disaster Relief Housing " needs of most countries. The company's disaster relief housing structures for hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, and floods housing system allows for quick and secure disaster relief in a simple, safe, easy to use and 60 minute re-deployable instant house structure format. The entire structure is fully assembled and shipped within a container, ready to be installed upon deployment. Their muti-use structures can be remotely located or re-located in time sensitive situations. The patented invention utilizes a 20 foot or 40 foot container that once fully deployed expands into a 450 foot - 900 foot house complete with electricity and plumbing. The deployable model unit includes a two bedroom with shower, kitchen appliances, and a living room. They are also developing many new areas of de-re-deployable containerized structures (both permanent and temporary); modular, site-built, and kit structures for all applications including first-response, military,commercial, municipal, retail and disaster relief; drinking water systems, non-chemical based sanitation systems; bio-diesel, solar and wind-powered electricity renewable energy, and insulated panels. Also in conjunctions with several global universities the are collaborating on the worlds first " "AUTONOMUS HOUSE" by 2010. 07/30/06 - Cool Breeze Shirt for the heat It is the ultimate way to beat the heatwave - a shirt with its own air-conditioning system built in. As temperatures soar above 30C (86F), it wafts a refreshing breeze around its wearer, whether in the street or an office. And the record-breaking hot weather this summer has sparked UK companies' interest in the Japanese invention. It works by helping the body's own cooling system. Normally, sweat is produced and evaporates, causing a cooling effect. Clothes interfere with this process by trapping the droplets. But the shirt, invented by former Sony technician Hiroshi Ichigaya, produces a layer of circulating air which enhances sweat evaporation. Two fans at the back pump fresh air around the wearer and out through the neck and sleeve ends. Moisture can also pass through the cloth. The 4in diameter fans are powered by AA batteries, which last for several hours, or by plugging into a computer using a USB cable. The electrical parts can be removed for washing. The only drawback is the balloon effect caused by the air flow. It's surprisingly light and the fans are unobtrusive but anything that restricts the air flow limits effectiveness, so you can't wear a rucksack. And you need to hold your arms so the air can go out through the sleeves. However, sweat dries immediately, except for a few patches, and the breeze to the neck and chin is particularly pleasant. At home, I can work without the air-conditioning unit on for the first time in weeks. 07/30/06 - 'No right to privacy' The average American business traveler now has less legal rights than Islamic terrorists. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on Monday that "border police may conduct random searches of laptops without search warrants or probable cause." Instead of being outraged by the White House's flagrant disregard for the Constitution it is supposed to honor, this week Congress is rushing to pass laws that make the Bush administration's crimes totally legal. It's as if Congress made burglary legal in 1974 rather than start impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon. Across the country, cops are arresting and jailing people for taking pictures with cell-phone cameras. "Today in the U.S., the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely," says Reagan Administration assistant treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts. "Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention." 07/30/06 - Supercavitation for blinding underwater speeds Like a lot of other bizarre ideas, the supersonic sub came out of the cold war. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union had relatively slow, bumbling torpedoes that left its subs at a serious disadvantage. Rather than push conventional torpedo technology a bit further, the Soviets decided to try to leapfrog the Americans with a radical solution. Any object, no matter how streamlined, suffers resistance as it moves through a fluid. One source of drag is skin friction, the force required to shear the thin layer of fluid lying against the moving body's surface. This happens in air too, but water, being about a thousand times as dense as air, generates a thousand times as much drag. What's more, the power needed to overcome drag is proportional to the cube of an object's speed. So each incremental improvement in propulsion technology produces only a meagre increase in speed. In the early 1960s, Mikhail Merkulov at the Hydrodynamics Institute in Kiev realised that the solution lay in a phenomenon called cavitation. It was a daring idea, because naval architects usually see cavitation as a menace, rather than something that works to their advantage. When a body moves rapidly through a fluid, the pressure at various points on the body--at trailing edges, for example--is reduced, explains Rudra Pratap, a dynamicist who works on supercavitating bodies at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The faster the body moves, the lower the pressure becomes. "When the pressure reduces enough to equal the vapour pressure of the fluid, the liquid state is no longer sustainable," says Pratap. With not enough pressure to hold them together, the liquid molecules vaporise and form cavities, or bubbles, causing pitting and erosion. But supercavitation is a different matter. Under certain conditions, a single bubble or supercavity can be formed, enveloping the moving object almost completely. For a start, the body has to be going pretty fast--at least 180 kilometres an hour, or 50 metres per second. An unpowered projectile, with a carefully designed flat nose and fired from an underwater gun, broke the sound barrier in water. That's nearly 5400 kilometres per hour--or 1.5 kilometres per second. Lacking any onboard power to sustain its motion, the shell slowed rapidly, but this was still a vivid demonstration of the speeds that supercavitation makes possible. Already they aren't very far off the 2.5 kilometre-per-second speed record for conventional munitions in air, and NUWC scientists have calculated that their supercavitating projectiles should be able to match or even surpass this. 07/29/06 - No moving parts, no compression Hydrogen Separation Process FuelCell Energy, Inc. (NasdaqNM:FCEL), has developed a cost-efficient system to separate pure hydrogen from a gas mixture that then can be sold as fuel for hydrogen vehicles or industrial uses. Unlike other means of separating hydrogen, which rely on compression, the company's proprietary EHS technology has no moving parts. FCEL anticipates that their process to be significantly more reliable and efficient than conventional methods and to save up to one-half of the energy required when compared to conventional compression based-methods of hydrogen separation. A subscale prototype EHS unit is currently operating at the University of Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center. The subscale EHS system currently produces 1200 liters per hour of pure hydrogen. FCEL claims that its EHS system is the most promising way of meeting the targets set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to lower the price of hydrogen to be competitive with the cost of gasoline. Currently hydrogen is three to four times as expensive to produce as gasoline according to the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy statistics. Whether it be used for generating hydrogen for an energy station or for an industrial customer, being able to produce hydrogen onsite through EHS would eliminate the complex issues involved with transporting and storing hydrogen. 07/29/06 - How much gas is wasted idling in traffic? One researcher has worked out how much of the earth's ancient natural resources it took to make the gallons you're guzzling. Incredibly, University of Massachusetts Boston ecologist Jeffrey Dukes estimated that it took more than a hundred tons of fossilized plant matter - close to the typical 104-ton payload of the Space Shuttle - to make a single gallon of the gas. "It's an enormous amount of ancient plant matter that went into every single gallon of gasoline that we burn today," says Dukes. The problem is, we're blowing through our cache way too fast. We've burned "the amount of fossil fuel that would have come from all the plants on Earth for 13,300 years" in less than 300 years. Scary, considering that these deposits - 83 percent of which Dukes says power the world - are finite. "We've got this bank account of solar energy that we're drawing on like crazy," he says. "And we don't really know how big the account is. We don't know how much we're spending, how fast we're spending and when we're going to run out. There are going to be some real consequences of running out... so, when you're sitting there pumping gas, it might be good to think about what future generations are going to do when… it's no longer feasible to use these fossil fuels because of environmental consequences [like global warming]. How are we going to get around then?" 07/29/06 - Smooth a scratched DVD with Pledge (Earlier reports said you could use toothpaste to remove scratches on CD/DVDs. - JWD) Last night at a critical point in the movie, iDVD stopped short and said, "Error reading disc. It may be scratched or dirty." Rats! A thorough wiping and several more tries yielded the same result. On close inspection, the disc was indeed scratched. This past MacGyver tip suggested using toothpaste to fix the disc, but I wasn't sure I had the right toothpaste (Mentadent.) Commenter cenoxo had said: Spray a little Pledge furniture polish onto the scratched CD, then gently wipe it all off with a soft micropore cloth (the kind used for eyeglasses). Just like on furniture, the clear wax should fill in the scratches and make the CD playable. Spray a little Pledge furniture polish onto the scratched CD, then gently wipe it all off with a soft micropore cloth (the kind used for eyeglasses). Just like on furniture, the clear wax should fill in the scratches and make the CD playable. Genius! (And a little more intuitive than toothpaste.) A spritz and a rub got iDVD happily spinning away again. 07/29/06 - BioFuel Energy If biofuels are the energy of the future, they're going to have to come from something other than what's being used now. Whether you are fueling your vehicles with something refined from oil, extracted as biofuel from plants, or harnessed from the sun using photovoltaic cells, you have to use energy to make that energy. But, if you can't make more energy than you put in, and do so more cheaply than competing energy sources, then that fuel isn't likely headed into widespread commercial production anytime soon. "When we make a biofuel," says University of Minnesota Professor of Ecology David Tilman, using corn as an example, "we have to spend energy growing the crops, so we have to fertilize the corn, we have to plow the land, we have to till it, harvest the crop, dry it, haul it to a processing factory. That takes a lot of energy. And then, we have to convert the corn into energy, which also takes a lot of energy." Biodiesel from soy is far better at it than ethanol from corn. The study found that ethanol from corn produces 25 percent more energy than was used to create it, while biodiesel from soybeans produces 93 percent more. However, neither has the ability to replace gasoline as a major fuel source because we need the crops to both feed us and to feed livestock. Additionally, says Tilman, "If we use all of our corn and all of our soybeans just to make biofuels, we'll only be meeting about ten percent of our national transportation gasoline and diesel demand." Tilman and Hill's study also looked at the environmental costs of the two fuels. Again, the study found that growing soybeans fares better than corn. Soybeans generate a smaller impact than corn in terms of using nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollution. While both fuels reduce greenhouse emissions, ethanol produces 12 percent fewer emissions while biodiesel from soybeans produces 41 percent fewer emissions. 07/29/06 - Clean sticky CD's with baby shampoo If you've got a CD or DVD that feels slimy or sticky, try this tip from technology blogger Amit Agarwal: If the DVD surface feels sticky or greasy, mix some baby shampoo in lukewarm water and use cotton or soft cloth to gently rub the CD surface with this solution. Make sure the CD is completely dry (no water drops) before putting it back in the jewel case. If the DVD surface feels sticky or greasy, mix some baby shampoo in lukewarm water and use cotton or soft cloth to gently rub the CD surface with this solution. Make sure the CD is completely dry (no water drops) before putting it back in the jewel case. This actually really works; you can also use plain old liquid dish soap if you have nothing else on hand. 07/29/06 - Spray-on Skin Relieves Emotional Trauma For Child Burn Victims A study has shown most children reported an improvement in the appearance of their scars and were happier when they used the product, called Microskin. The new liquid spray-on skin technology, which binds to the topmost layer of skin, is a world first Australian invention. It is waterproof and sweat-resistant, with one application lasting three to four days. "Eighty percent of children felt happier or 'mostly' happier, as well as more confident, when they had Microskin covering their scars," Ms Swannell said. Twenty children, with an average age of twelve years were involved in the study. The vast majority of children indicated they enjoyed social outings more when wearing Microskin. Most children could not feel Microskin on their skin. The study also showed that use of the product lead to improvements in how the patient's family functioned. "Children with burns can experience emotional difficulties as a result of physical disfigurement. This product can help alleviate these difficulties and help with a patient's overall recovery and rehabilitation," he said. 07/29/06 - Shoot Sulphur into the air to battle Global Warming? The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. It also releases sulfur that cools the planet by reflecting solar radiation away from Earth. Injecting sulfur into the second atmospheric layer closest to Earth would reflect more sunlight back to space and offset greenhouse gas warming, according to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. Crutzen suggests carrying sulfur into the atmosphere via balloons and using artillery guns to release it, where the particles would stay for up to two years. The results could be seen in six months. Nature does something like this naturally. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in1991, millions of tons of sulfur was injected into the atmosphere, enhancing reflectivity and cooling the Earth’s surface by an average of 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit in the year following the eruption. 07/29/06 - Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later? "This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?" The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get? 07/29/06 - Writing new laws to skip responsibility under older ones An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts. Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. "The military has lived with" the Geneva Conventions provisions "for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?" asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq have been accused by the Army of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First. The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by troops ignoring their orders. 07/28/06 - String Ribbon Solar cells more efficient Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR), manufacturer of solar products using its String Ribbon(TM) wafer technology, said today that it has landed its largest sales agreement to date, a $200 million deal to SunEdison, LLC, a Baltimore company that sells solar-generated power. In the String Ribbon technique, two high temperature strings are pulled vertically through a shallow silicon melt, and the molten silicon spans and freezes between the strings (diagram left). The process is continuous: long strings are unwound from spools; the melt is replenished; and the silicon ribbon is cut to length for further processing, without interrupting growth. This advantage in material efficiency means String Ribbon yields over twice as many solar cells per pound of silicon as conventional methods. Additionally, the resulting distinctive shape of the solar cell allows for a high packing density. 07/28/06 - Spyware Disguises Itself as Firefox Extension "The antivirus specialists at McAfee have warned of a Trojan that disguises itself as a Firefox extension. The trojan installs itself as a Firefox extension, presenting itself as a legitimate existing extension called numberedlinks. It then begins intercepting passwords and credit card numbers entered into the browser, which it then sends to an external server. The most dangerous part of the issue is that it records itself directly into the Firefox configuration data, avoiding the regular installation and confirmation process." 07/28/06 - NmG (No more Gas) electric cars for $24,000 The NmG is the nation's only all-electric, highway-legal vehicle that can hit 70 mph and costs less than $25,000, said Dana Myers, founder and president of Myers Motors. The NmG is a fully enclosed for all weather driving, single passenger vehicle with two front wheels and a single drive wheel in the rear. Charging takes four to six hours. It costs about 2 cents a mile for the electricity used to charge the batteries. Most people drive fewer than 12 miles to work, so the NmG can be useful for commuters. It also can be driven in a high-occupancy-vehicle lane. While it drives like a car with a low center of gravity, the NmG is considered by the U.S. Department of Transportation to be a motorcycle. Myers calls it a PEV, or Personal Electric Vehicle, since it transports only the driver and the labels “car” and “motorcycle” do not fit perfectly. Meyers commented that shrinking oil supplies and high gas prices, along with public concerns about global warming, will contribute to his eye-catching car's success. A down payment reservation is $1,000, balance of purchase price is $23,900. Order information can be found on the web here. Myers said he is trying to drop the price of his vehicles below $20,000. Myers has sold 10 or 11 NmGs to customers in Columbus and Cleveland, Wisconsin, Florida, California and New York. 07/28/06 - Chemical In Many Air Fresheners May Reduce Lung Function New research shows that a chemical compound found in many air fresheners, toilet bowl cleaners, mothballs and other deodorizing products, may be harmful to the lungs. Human population studies at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a part of the National Institutes of Health, found that exposure to a volatile organic compound (VOC), called 1,4 dichlorobenzene (1,4 DCB) may cause modest reductions in lung function. 07/28/06 - Rubber Sidewalks More than sixty cities around the US, including New York and Washington DC, have installed some rubber sidewalks made from recycled tires. The material is manufactured by Rubbersidewalks Inc. From the Associated Press: Since 2001, Rubbersidewalks has been grinding thousands of old tires into crumbs, adding chemical binders and baking the material into sidewalk sections that weigh less than 11 pounds a square foot, or a quarter of the weight of concrete. The panels are available in two shades of gray and a terra cotta orange. Many of the squares have been installed in areas where damage from tree roots, weather and snow removal have required sidewalk replacement or major repairs every three years, said Lindsay Smith, founder and president of Rubbersidewalks. Rubber sidewalks are expected to last at least seven years, Smith said... The panels are firmer than a running track or a rubberized playground, but far more resilient than concrete. 07/28/06 - Earth defenseless from greenhouse gases, aliens, robot invaders NASA officials removed the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from their mission statement over political pressure from global warming naysayers, says one NASA scientist: That statement was repeatedly cited last winter by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who said he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions. But NASA officials told The New York Times the elimination of the phrase that was used by Hansen was "pure coincidence." 07/28/06 - Heating and Cooling from the Sun Harnessing the heating - and cooling - powers of the sun from PhysOrg.com Imagine heat radiating from the walls of your home on a cold winter night, or the glass in your home's windows emitting cool temperatures on a scorching summer afternoon. Now imagine these systems operating on an endless supply of affordable energy - the sun. Three years ago a team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers began developing an "intelligent" heating and cooling system that made these seemingly too-good-to-be-true scenarios a possibility. Developed by Steven Van Dessel, assistant professor of architecture at Rensselaer, the patented Active Building Envelope (ABE) system uses a photovoltaic (PV) system to collect and convert sunlight into electricity. That power is then delivered to a series of thermoelectric (TE) heat-pumps that are integrated into a building envelope (the walls,windows, and roof). Depending on the direction of the electric current supplied to the TE heat-pump system, the sun's energy can actively be used to make the inside space warmer or cooler. An energy storage mechanism is also integrated to collect extra energy for use when little or no sunlight is available. 07/28/06 - Fuel Cell cars most likely to take off in China first If ever fuel-cell cars are going to hit the mass market, it's going to happen first in China and expand globally from there. From my point of view, that's a simple fact of life. An article in the Boston Globe talks about a recent deal between Shanghai Fuel Cell Powertrain Co. and Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems to supply fuel-cell stacks for a 100-car demonstration fleet owned by the Shanghai Municipal Government. "The Shanghai government hopes to have its 100 fuel-cell cars operating by the end of 2007. Those models mark the first phase of the plan to put 1,000 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on Shanghai's roads by 2010, with 10,000 operating by 2012," according to the article. "That kind of aggressiveness in the development and deployment of hydrogen fuel-cell cars and trucks could make China a world leader in hydrogen fuel-cell technology, Ballard officials said." 07/28/06 - Can 'Small-Mart' Replace Wal-Mart? What would the world be like without Wal-Mart? It's not a simple answer. For those who love the $312-billion-a-year behemoth retailer, the answer will likely touch on the 1.8 million jobs it provides as well as the company's low prices, which make life's necessities and luxuries more accessible to those with limited incomes (a large part of Wal-Mart's 176 million weekly customers). For Wal-Mart haters, the answer will likely refer to the "externalities" of those low prices -- the environmental degradation caused by sourcing cheap goods, the public services (food stamps, welfare) required by low-paid employees unable to make ends meet, and the poor labor conditions under which many of its suppliers' products are made -- that aren't covered by the prices of goods sold in the stores. Love it or hate it, a world without Wal-Mart would be a different place. But what would replace it? Small-Mart, perhaps? That, at least, is the foundation of Michael Shuman's new book, The Small-Mart Revolution. "Small-Mart" refers to locally owned businesses that are, in aggregate, more reliable generators of good jobs, economic growth, tax dollars, community wealth, charitable contributions, social stability, and political participation, according to Shuman. 07/28/06 - Corn plastic may not be as green as you might think ..PLA is said to decompose into carbon dioxide and water in a “controlled composting environment” in fewer than 90 days. What’s a controlled composting environment? Not your backyard bin, pit or tumbling barrel. It’s a large facility where compost-essentially, plant scraps being digested by microbes into fertilizer-reaches 140 degrees for ten consecutive days. So, yes, as PLA advocates say, corn plastic is “biodegradable.” But in reality very few consumers have access to the sort of composting facilities that can make that happen. (PLA manufacturer) NatureWorks has identified 113 such facilities nationwide-some handle industrial food-processing waste or yard trimmings, others are college or prison operations-but only about a quarter of them accept residential foodscraps collected by municipalities... Wild Oats accepts used PLA containers in half of its 80 stores. “We mix the PLA with produce and scraps from our juice bars and deliver it to an industrial composting facility,” says the company’s Tuitele. But at the Wild Oats stores that don’t take back PLA, customers are on their own, and they can’t be blamed if they feel deceived by PLA containers stamped “compostable.” (The president of compost research lab Woods End, Will) Brinton, who has done extensive testing of PLA, says such containers are “unchanged” after six months in a home composting operation. For that reason, he considers the Wild Oats stamp, and their in-store signage touting PLA’s compostability, to be false advertising. 07/28/06 - Write on Water A circular tank developed by Mitsui Engineering in Japan called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), allows users to "write" letters on "stationary waves" of water. This remarkable display device consists of fifty water-wave generators surrounding a cylindrical tank 5 feet wide and a foot deep. The wave generators move vertically to produce cylindrical waves. These "pixels" are about 4 inches in diameter and 1.5 inches in height; these form lines and shapes. The AMOEBA device can form all of the roman alphabet, as well as some kanji characters. It takes about 15 seconds to produce each character, according to livescience.com, and the wave generator's maker will sell units to amusement parks in a science-entertainmnet package that combines sound, lighting, and water fountains. 07/28/06 - Printkey direct to printer PrintKey allows you to execute the Print Screen command with just one push of a button. Ordinarily, if you hit the Print Screen button, your images will go to a graphics program (and not instantly to the printer). PrintKey does away with all that, effectively cutting out the middleman. You can also do some very bare-bones editing, including a grayscale function, image rotation, size change, and a bit of color scheme tweaking. PrintKey is a free download, Windows only. (via lifehacker.com) 07/28/06 - Hydrogen powered Scooter A hydrogen-powered scooter has been created as a working prototype by a student at Delft University of Technology. It currently runs on a lithium ion battery, due to permitting regulations surrounding the development of hydrogen-powered engines, but the design is ready to roll following the unsnarling of permitting processes. According to the press release: The scooter has an electric in-wheel motor that derives its power from a (Li-)ion battery. This battery (primarily when the scooter is stationary) is charged by a compact fuel-cell system, which derives its energy from hydrogen (from a tank) and oxygen (from the air). The battery moreover stores up energy when the scooter brakes...Apart from being environmentally friendly, the Fhybrid performs better than regular petrol powered scooters during test drives. The Fhybrid has a top speed of 65 km/ph, accelerates faster than regular scooters and can travel approximately 200 km on a full tank of hydrogen. 07/27/06 - Electricity to accelerate healing IT MAY sound like something out of Frankenstein, but electric currents applied to the skin could potentially speed up wound healing. Ironically, though the phenomenon was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since. Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas. Cells and tissues essentially function as chemical batteries, with positively charged potassium ions and negatively charged chloride ions flowing across membranes. This creates electric field patterns all over the body. When tissue is wounded this disrupts the battery, effectively short-circuiting it. Penninger and his colleagues realised that it is the resulting altered fields that attract and guide repair cells to the damaged area. The researchers grew layers of mouse cells and larger tissues, such as corneas, in the lab. After "wounding" these tissues, they applied varying electric fields to them, and found they could accelerate or completely halt the healing process depending on the orientation and strength of the field (Nature, vol 442, p 457). "For many years there have been anecdotal reports of the effects of electrical currents on wound healing," he says. "This paper not only demonstrates the effects of electrical currents on cellular migration to wound defects, it also provides a mechanistic understanding of how such signals alter cell behaviour." 07/27/06 - Spaceport to be built in Texas The 2200 residents of Van Horn, Texas, US, seem to be embracing the idea of having a spaceport in their backyard. Blue Origin, a company headed by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has applied to build a launch site for its planned New Shepard space rocket about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Van Horn. A prototype of the rocket could make up to 10 suborbital test flights in 2006. And the rocket - which would take off and land vertically - could be ready to take passengers to the edge of space and back by as early as 2010. The region already sees a fair amount of tourists who visit the nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Big Bend National Park. But a spaceport could bring even more tourists - and their dollars - to the area. The assessment shows that at least three tourists could fly on the rocket, which would consist of a propulsion module with a crew capsule on top. Tourists would experience a flight lasting nearly 10 minutes. The rocket would fire its engines for two minutes, then coast to an altitude of 99,060 metres. Should something go wrong during launch, the crew capsule could detach from the propulsion module and parachute back to Earth. But if the launch was successful, the rocket would then fall back to Earth. It would restart its engines at an altitude of several hundred metres, when it was less than 15 seconds from landing. The company aims to have its rocket make a precision, vertical landing on a concrete pad 6.1 kilometres (3.8 miles) away from the launch pad. It also says it could make about one suborbital launch per week depending on market demand. 07/27/06 - Claim of solution to Bessler's self-running wheel (again not built) (Thanks to Jean-Paul Pilard for this interesting link. - JWD) (Systran translation- the problem of Bessler is very simple. It made without the knowledge, the first heat pump, the first movement hot air, and the noisiest metronome. The dissymmetry of the wheel rests on the fact that the time of relaxation is longer than the time of compression. It was the first converter of ambient heat in autonomous mechanical energy. At its time, it could not understand, Newton reigned as an absolute Master. Himself thought of controlling gravity. Everyone broke out during century to dig but at the bad place. The unit was composed of 6 or 8 tubes acted in pairs according to the models. The tubes were composed of a mass dimensioned, other a closed tube, in which a ball was locked up. The tube swivelled on itself in the first dial high left or right, according to the direction of rotation. The fixed mass being heavier than the ball, this one actuated the tube during a complete rotation. The combined movement of the wheel and the tube which swivels on itself, led to have a time of expenssion longer than the time of compression. Thus when the tube with finished its revolution and that it is blocked by a hook, the ball did not fall down yet at the bottom of the tube. This resulted in having one moment of force higher than the image of the tube acted in pairs. This imbalance involves the wheel, until a new tube takes the relay. Today it is of course possible to create power stations, using ambient energy, much more powerful and especially less noisy. 07/27/06 - Who killed my electric car? I drive an electric car. Not a hybrid -- a gasoline-powered car that gets some help from an electric motor -- but a full electric vehicle. I plug it in at night and can drive 100 miles the next day and go faster than 80 mph on the highway. So don't think "golf cart"; these cars have power and pick-up. While you won't see many electric cars on the road, they've been around longer than you might think.My current electric vehicle, a Toyota RAV4 EV, also was discontinued a few years ago. This car costs me the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon to run. I never need to get a tune-up, change spark plugs or add water to the batteries or oil to the motor. The only maintenance for the first 150,000 miles is to rotate my tires. This car is quiet, fast and emission free. I plug it in every night at home, and it charges on off-peak energy. Even if it were getting power solely from electricity derived from coal -- a common criticism of electric cars -- my vehicle uses 50 percent less carbon dioxide than a 24 mpg gas car (for a summary of more than 30 studies on the emissions of electric cars, hybrids and plug in hybrids, go to www.sherryboschert.com/FAQ.html). When I have to get new batteries, which I expect I'll will be when my car is 10 years old, the old ones will be over 90 percent recyclable. The concern I hear most often about electric vehicles is their range. Well, at 100 miles per charge, my electric vehicle fulfills 98 percent of my driving needs, and I live in a city where everything seems to be 40 minutes away. 07/27/06 - Tesla fact as Fiction? In 1905 physics genius Nikola Tesla submitted his US patent 787,412 which describes “The Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums”, and includes a design for a series of worldwide generators. It is beyond doubt this patent led to the construction of the “Omega” network of radio transmitters erected around the world between 1963 and 1982, officially for the purpose of global navigation, though navigation is the least important function of the Omega network. Tesla was eloquently misleading in some of his patents and this is probably the ultimate example. Although until recently Omega did offer very-low-frequency navigational services they were only a secondary function: a “security cover” for the network’s real purpose of subtly manipulating the resonant frequency of the earth itself, and the resonant frequency of the earth-to-ionospheric gap. Anyone able to manipulate resonant frequencies between five and fifteen cycles per second, to three decimal places of accuracy, can influence every dynamic electromagnetic activity on the face of the earth and beyond, including global weather patterns, human thought and thus human behaviour. Put simply, Omega is the most powerful integrated global strike and C3i (Command, Control, Communications intelligence) network ever constructed. "... three requirements are essential to the establishment of the resonating condition... The earth's diameter passing through the pole should be an odd multiple of the quarter wave length - that is, of the ratio between the velocity of light, and four times the frequency of the currents... the frequency [of the transmitter] should be smaller than twenty thousand cycles per second ... "The most essential requirement is that irrespective of frequency the wave or wave-train should continue for a certain period of time, which I have estimated to be not less than one-twelfth or probably 0.08484 of a second and which is taken in passing to and returning from the region diametrically opposite the pole over the earth's surface with a mean velocity of about 471,240 kilometres per second [292,822 miles per second, a velocity equal to one and a half times the "official" speed of light]." 07/27/06 - Genesis and the future space hotel Only a few space tourists will be content with a short ride into orbit followed by a uncomfortable stay inside a cramped spaceplane or capsule. They will want at least a semblance of the kinds of comforts available on the cheapest package vacation. Therefore the “space hotel” is the minimum system needed to give the industry a chance to grow beyond just a limited number of hardy adventurers. A space hotel will be the one place where tourists will be able to relax and enjoy themselves without suffering from the embarrassments and claustrophobia that are inevitable when someone with minimal training flies into orbit in a capsule or small vehicle. Aside from the thrill of just being there, the main attraction for most people will be looking down at the fantastic spectacle of our ever-changing planet. This means that any space hotel will have to have a number of fairly large windows. Yet, as spacecraft designers have discovered, windows are a vulnerable point. Last year, for example, there was a problem with one of the windows on the International Space Station. In order to make sure that their future space hotels’ windows will not be a constant source of problems, Bigelow Aerospace decided that they would incorporate windows into their test module right from the start. Even though the thickness of the module’s skin is less than half of the skin of a full scale space hotel, putting a window into it is a good way of gaining experience and insuring that the design, especially the seals, are genuinely spaceworthy. The Genesis designers installed a camera on the inside that does nothing but monitor the window. Instruments on board include dosimeters, microphones, and interior cameras that will, on future missions, record the weightless antics of items that the public will be send up via Bigelow’s “Fly Your Stuff” program. It will be interesting to see if this catches on; in any case, it’s an indication that the company is looking to generate some cash flow even before it has its first paying hotel guest. 07/27/06 - Memory chip threat to hard discs Hailed as "the most significant memory invention of the decade", magnetoresistive random-access memory or Mram could one day overthrow hard discs and flash memory. What would be lovely is a type of memory which is both fast to write, and non-volatile. So, along comes something called magnetoresistive random access memory or Mram. Put simply, Mram stores data magnetically, in the same way a hard drive does. This makes it non-volatile. It is also very quick, and does not wear out over time. So it seems to have the advantages of both RAM and flash, with none of the disadvantages. 07/27/06 - Oil: We're addicted A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water. Oil transports us, powers our machines, warms us and lights us. It clothes us, wraps our food and encases our computers. It gives us medicines, cosmetics, CDs and car tyres. Even those things that are not made from oil are often made with oil, with the energy it gives. Life without oil, in fact, would be so different that it is frightening to contemplate. We are addicted, and it is no comfortable addiction. Like other drugs, oil comes with a baggage of greed, crime and filth. Worse, it is smothering the planet. The recent increase in the oil price will, in itself, make available extra oil. That happens from both directions. The higher price will make it worth recovering parcels of orphaned oil from, say, old and depleted fields in the North Sea, which were too expensive to extract when the price was $20 a barrel. Higher prices also cause involuntary conservation as people choose to use less fuel or businesses move into less energy-intensive industries. The oil shock of the 1970s reduced demand and brought on extra supply with the result that the price fell to $10 in 1986. It is possible that some mechanism will be discovered to break the link between energy use and prosperity. It is also possible that the most desperate oil addicts, like ordinary junkies, will take to thieving. In embracing petroleum so comprehensively in the 20th century, humanity confounded freedom with mobility and may end up without either. 07/27/06 - What’s the value of space? One of the long-running challenges faced by proponents of space exploration has been finding compelling reasons to sell such efforts-particularly big-ticket government programs-to the general public. This is a challenge in large part because, at least in the United States, there are few coherent attitudes about space. The prevailing attitude, though, might best be classified as apathy: most people pay little attention to space on a day-to-day basis-and have little reason to do so. “I still don’t see the value in it,” one person said. “What is our true goal?” asked another. “What is the purpose of exploring new worlds?” asked a third person. The most successful commercial space applications, like direct-to-home TV and satellite radio, have been successful not because they’re space-based, but because they provide a service that is better and/or less expensive than competing options. While these companies may occasionally use space imagery in their advertising (usually in the form of a satellite in orbit), that’s not the message that wins over consumers. People sign up for DirectTV because they can get a better deal than from their cable company. “By and large, the public is disconnected from everything in their lives that is brought to them by space,” said Brett Alexander, vice president of government affairs for Transformational Space Corporation (t/Space). “Their use of ATMs, the credit card at the gas station, the weather service, GPS, all of those things, don’t say ‘space’ to them, nor do I think they should say ‘space’.” He noted that the value provided by space is like the value provided by the Internet: people don’t care how they get Internet access so long as it works and allows them to do what they want online. The public, Alexander added, identifies space primarily with human spaceflight programs, and secondarily with robotic science missions. 07/26/06 - Electromagnetic space travel for bugs? (Could this technique be scaled up for space transport? - JWD) Life on planets such as Earth or Mars could have been seeded by electrically charged microbes from space, suggests a new study. Tom Dehel calculated the effect of electric fields at various levels in the atmosphere on a bacterium that was carrying an electric charge. He showed that such bacteria could easily be ejected from the Earth's gravitational field by the same kind of electromagnetic fields that generate auroras. And these fields occur every day, unlike the extraordinarily large surface impacts needed to eject interplanetary meteorites. Charged microbes could also be propelled outwards from a planet at high speed by “magnetospheric plasmoids” - independent structures of plasma and magnetic fields that can be swept away from the Earth’s magnetosphere. Hitching rides on these structures could accelerate microbes to speeds capable of taking them out of the solar system and on to the planets of other stars. 07/26/06 - Underpaid, overworked and ageing faster AS if being bottom of the social pile isn't bad enough, it now seems that it also makes the body's cells age prematurely. People from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to die earlier than people in non-manual jobs from heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Unhealthy habits such as lack of exercise, excess weight, smoking and poor diet account for around a third of these deaths. Now, a study on white blood cells from 1552 female twins suggests that cells from women with more menial jobs age faster, even after taking these factors into account. On average, their cells were seven years "older" than those from women of the same chronological age with non-manual jobs. To estimate cell ageing, Tim Spector of St Thomas' Hospital in London and his colleagues measured the lengths of telomeres, the repeating DNA motifs that cap and protect the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres grow shorter each time a cell divides, so the shorter the telomeres in a cell, the more times it has divided, and the more stress it is likely to have been under. They found that telomeres were on average 140 DNA base pairs shorter in manual workers than in non-manual workers of the same age. Since around 20 base pairs of telomere DNA are lost on average each year, this makes the cells from the manual workers about seven years older. "The greater psychological stress of being in a low social class, with more people above you in the food chain and less control over your life, is the unseen hand that might mean more stress at cellular level," he says. "Oxidative stress does make telomeres shorten." He expects to see the same effect in men. 07/26/06 - There's a change in rain around desert cities Urban areas with high concentrations of buildings, roads and other artificial surface soak up heat, lead to warmer surrounding temperatures, and create "urban heat-islands." This increased heat may promote rising air and alter the weather around cities. Human activities such as land use, additional aerosols and irrigation in these arid urban environments also affect the entire water cycle as well. Although the urban heat-island effect has been known to affect large cities such as Atlanta and Houston, effects on arid cities such as Phoenix, Ariz. and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were relatively unknown. These cities both experienced explosive population growth. "We think that human activities, such as changing the landscape, can affect the flow of the winds associated with the U.S. southwest's monsoon and rising air and building storms on the east side of mountains," said Shepherd. The weather in Phoenix, in fact, is affected by both, and that can change where the rains fall. Cities in arid areas or desert cities have shown great growth only in the last 30-50 years because of new methods of irrigation and ways to obtain water for daily use. Cities tend to be one to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (.56 to 5.6 Celsius) warmer than surrounding areas. Shepherd had access to a unique 108-year-old data record for Phoenix, and for the first time confirmed a significant change in rainfall took place in certain areas of the city from the late 1890s to the present. Understanding rainfall changes in arid cities is very important. One United Nations estimate projects that 60 to 70 percent of all people will live in cities by 2025, and many of the fastest-growing areas for city growth are in arid areas. "The results showed us just how sensitive the water cycle can be to human-induced changes, even under arid or drought conditions," Shepherd said. These findings have real implications for water resource management, agricultural efficiency and urban planning. 07/26/06 - Heat may be key to cancer therapy Researchers believe they have found out why so many men with testicular cancer survive against the odds. Experts at John Hopkins University say the cells are super-sensitive to body heat making them more vulnerable. And heat therapy may be used to combat other cancers they write in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The testes are a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body as sperm are sensitive to heat and tend to die when they are placed at the normal body temperature of 37C. Several pieces of evidence suggest that testicular cancer cells may also have this sensitivity to heat, making them more amenable to treatment, a phenomenon they term the 'Lance Armstrong effect'. So, when the cells spread to other areas of the body, they may be weakened by higher temperatures, becoming more susceptible to chemotherapy or radiotherapy than other types of cancer. Professor Getzenberg said heat, or hyperthermia, is a very old form of cancer therapy but in order to make it a successful it needs to be targeted specifically at cancer cells. "Some groups are doing localised heating of tumours but the real advance would be to move this into people with systemic disease. These are not big golf ball size tumours they're small tumours that you can't really see." 07/26/06 - Ethanol's Promise Isn't False The July 2 op-ed by James Jordan and James Powell, "The False Hope of Biofuels," painted a bleak portrait of the potential for corn-based ethanol as a long-term solution for meeting our future transportation fuel needs. But although their piece contained various statistics and metrics that appeared to be credible, the article overlooked other important factors that contribute to ethanol's chances of becoming a viable, long-term alternative fuel solution. Although production costs are commonly used to determine ethanol's benefits, those figures can be misleading in long-term forecasts because technological advances will continue to increase the efficiency of converting feedstock materials into ethanol, contributing to lower production costs. Further, while corn and corn stover are two of many different types of feedstocks used to produce ethanol, converting them into fuel is comparatively inefficient and costly. Cellulosic ethanol, however, can be made from a greater variety of feedstocks -- virtually any plant matter or municipal waste -- and its production is highly efficient and cost-effective. Studies have shown that costs associated with the entire production chain and use of cellulosic ethanol can be equal to, or even less than, that of gasoline. The notion of biofuel crop farms encroaching on farmlands used to grow food is an aging argument that has become less of a concern. Ethanol feedstocks such as switchgrass can be planted and harvested very quickly, yielding numerous crop cycles each year and thus greatly reducing the amount of land needed for growth. Many biofuel advocates and agriculture analysts believe the farming of biofuel crops will invigorate and benefit farmers in Midwestern states, as well as contribute to the sustainable development of some of the poorest countries in the world if they choose to farm ethanol feedstocks. Ethanol is in a prime position to become the alternative fuel of choice for transportation. 07/26/06 - Hydrogen Farms promise limitless power PLANS are under way to grow the fuel of the future in "hydrogen farms" in Wales. With the world starting to panic over rocketing temperatures and oil prices, hydrogen has a simple, seductive appeal. Hydrogen promises limitless energy with no pollution, drinkable water being the only emission from its use. But the barrier to a hydrogen economy is production because, to release hydrogen from water, an electric charge is necessary and most electricity is produced by fossil fuels. But now the Carmarthenshire Energy Agency is embarking on a joint project with Ireland to produce hydrogen from trees in a series of farms in West Wales. The Wales and Ireland Rural Hydrogen Energy Project aims to release hydrogen contained in fast-growing willow trees. Hydrogen from renewable resources like trees can be obtained by the use of microbes to break down the willow into methane and hydrogen gas. Or, alternatively, willow can be used to fuel electricity to produce hydrogen, the growing crops "paying back" the atmosphere for any carbon dioxide produced in electricity production. Another possibility includes the use of solar power to release hydrogen into its useful molecular form as a gas. "The Hydrogen Farm concept was identified as part of the Objective One-funded 'Hydrogen Wales' project and it provides an ideal route for the development of research performed in Wales into technologies which can provide social and economic benefit to rural areas. "It will also address national and international issues such as security of energy supply and global climate change." The hydrogen would power cars and other vehicles through the use of fuel cells. 07/26/06 - Growing plants upside down Having just spent several weeks fashioning - and fixing, and re-fixing - a homemade trellis for my tomato garden, the Topsy Turvy upside down tomato planter absolutely blew my mind. TIME magazine named it as one of the best inventions of 2005: No longer will you have to cage, stake or weed your tomato plants or battle cutworms and other ruinous critters to put fresh tomatoes on the table. The Topsy-Turvy planter allows you to grow beefsteaks, cherries or any other variety upside down on your balcony or deck. Simply fill the bag with potting soil, add a young seedling--almost any vine-growing fruit or vegetable will do--and let the leafy part hang out. No longer will you have to cage, stake or weed your tomato plants or battle cutworms and other ruinous critters to put fresh tomatoes on the table. The Topsy-Turvy planter allows you to grow beefsteaks, cherries or any other variety upside down on your balcony or deck. Simply fill the bag with potting soil, add a young seedling--almost any vine-growing fruit or vegetable will do--and let the leafy part hang out. At under 20 bucks... (via lifehacker.com) 07/25/06 - State Offers Incentive for Home Solar-Power Units Solar pioneers who have been feeding electricity into the Northwest power grid have until July 31 to apply for retroactive incentives under the state's newest alternative-energy law. The law provides a payment of 15 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity that backyard producers have sent into the grid. "People will get their money," he said, "but only if they know to apply for it, and then apply for it now." By comparison, Puget Sound Energy and Seattle City Light charge about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour as a basic rate, then boost the rate to about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Under the new program, utility companies will take a tax credit for the money they pay to small electrical producers. The new program also will allow those who adopt alternative-energy systems for their roofs and backyards to justify their investments sooner than before. Until now, a $20,000 photovoltaic system needed several decades to realize a "payback" date. Beginning Aug. 1, backyard producers of the future will be able to earn kilowatt-hour money if they install equipment manufactured in this state. To help that along, the new law offers tax incentives to manufacturers. Already on the state's books are laws forgiving the state sales tax on the purchase and installation of alternative-energy equipment and a law that requires "net metering" of independently produced energy. "Net metering" is when energy produced on one's roof spins the meter backward. "Money talks," Poulsen said. "When people try to decide whether or not to install a system in their home, these payments should make a difference. They are the most progressive renewable incentives ever passed in America and the model that made Japan and Germany the world's leaders in renewable energy." 07/25/06 - Lithium coated Fullerene to hold more hydrogen “We need an energy source that is abundant, cost effective and renewable, burns clean and does not pollute,” he said. “Today, approximately 75 percent of the oil currently available is used for transportation alone. Any solution to the energy crisis has to take into account the amount of energy we spend on transportation.” Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and considered an ideal energy carrier. When hydrogen burns, it produces only water and thus, does not pollute the atmosphere. For this reason, it is considered an ideal alternative when discussing theoretical alternatives to fossil fuels. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, published online July 6, Jena and his team describe the theoretical composition of a material - a lithium-coated buckyball - that may have the potential to serve as a storage vessel for hydrogen atoms. A buckyball is a soccer ball-shaped nanoparticle containing 60 carbon atoms. Essentially, the lithium buckyballs absorb the hydrogen, which means that one lithium atom can store five hydrogen molecules. According to Jena, the theoretical buckyball, which was designed using computer modeling, has 12 lithium atoms and can store 60 hydrogen molecules. “The biggest hurdle in a hydrogen economy is to find materials to store hydrogen,” Jena said. “The storage materials in question need to have the ability to store hydrogen and allow us to take it out, which means the system must be reversible and operate under moderate temperatures and pressures.” 07/25/06 - Claim of free energy 'patent' What has been described as "The missing Tesla Patent" has been posted on the web site. The Fluxite patent has not been filed with any patent office. In general it describes a method and apparatus that wobbles a high strength magnetic field using low voltage Tesla Coils. According to the inventor, a person that has numerous core patent applications both granted and pending, "the United States Patent Office rejects all patents applications that claim to produce excess electricity, thus making its allowance impossible anyway." 07/25/06 - Implanting False Memories Implanting false memories of a bad experience with alcohol could prevent people abusing alcohol later, a Canadian researcher has said. Participants' memories were manipulated by telling them that a computer had generated a personal profile based on a questionnaire about past eating and drinking habits. They were told they had become sick on rum in the past and they were asked to elaborate on that experience. About a quarter of the participants became more confident they had actually been sick on rum. "Between 30 and 40% increased their confidence for the item in comparison to a control group," he says. When asked to rate how much they liked rum they rated it less than before their memories were manipulated.Manipulating memory could also be used to prevent overeating, Bernstein saud. But prior bad experiences don't create an aversion to all foods and drinks, only those with a distinct or unusual flavour. 07/25/06 - Something going on with Bubble Fusion? "Purdue University launched an investigation last March into the questionable research behavior and actions by Prof. Rusi Taleyarkhan following his controversial claims of achieving bubble fusion. The investigation has completed but the results are being kept secret. The alleged behavior is remeniscent of another tabletop fusion incident from a number of years back. Coincidentally, Purdue University has just secured Federal money to open up a new energy center. A more cynical person than I might suggest that there is a connection between the two." 07/25/06 - 100 Degrees F, get used to it Britain experienced its hottest July day on record last week and forecasters say more is to come as climate change tightens its grip on the country. Global warming experts claim that by 2050 temperatures will regularly top 40C and warn that our health and infrastructure will be unable to cope. 07/25/06 - China to test its 'artificial sun' The first plasma discharge from China's experimental advanced superconducting research center -- the so-called "artificial sun" -- is set to occur next month. The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province, the Peoples Daily reported Monday. Scientists told the newspaper a successful test will mean the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation, the newspaper said. But Chinese researchers involved in the project say any radiation will cease once the test is completed. The experiment will take place in a structure made of reinforced concrete, with five-foot-thick walls and a three-foot-thick roof. 07/24/06 - Prodigy service in this area of Mexico has been glitchy since Saturday. I don't know what the problem is but it keeps disconnecting on me so this is all I could get on tonight. It's worked fine for 5 years now so just a glitch possibly due to the stormy weather. Will check into it manana at the phone company. - JWD 07/24/06 - Artificial pump replicates the heart's dual-chamber action (This might be useful for other pump designs. - JWD) A Hawke's Bay man has dazzled the medical world with the first artificial pump to actually replicate the heart's dual-chamber action. The revolutionary device, designed to offer life-saving support to people in end-stage heart failure, could be on the market within 10 years. The bi-ventricular assistance device, or Bi-VAD, has been designed to sit underneath the patient's diaphragm, drawing blood from the left and right ventricles of the diseased heart and pumping it around the body. The pump could transform the outlook for thousands of people around the world who die each year as a result of end-stage heart failure. It would allow them to live relatively normal lives while waiting for a transplant. At present, patients with the condition were treated with drugs, or hooked up to cumbersome machines that pump their blood for them. In some cases, single-ventricular pumps were implanted, but there were drawbacks, Mr Gaddum explained. "At the moment current implantable heart pumps focus heavily on supporting the left ventricle, as this side provides the highest workload, pumping blood to the whole body," he said. The left ventricle was the largest and most muscular chamber of the heart, but implanting a pump that only worked the left side of the heart could cause the right ventricle to fail as it became overworked. "But studies have found a need for right-heart support in a significant number of patients to help maintain blood flow through the lungs after the left-heart alone has suffered from heart attack." Mr Gaddum's pump is unique, featuring two hydraulic pumps which work together, in much the same way as the ventricles of a healthy heart. The BiVad unit would be powered by a single internal battery and two external wireless battery packs. 07/24/06 - DIY Tazer Gloves (This reminds me of a shocking ring device described in an old Electonics Illustrated article. The user wore rubber soled shoes and was brought to the zapping potential, but anyone he touched with the ring on his finger, via a handshake or flat palm, received a shock. - JWD) From simple everyday parts you can make this glove which has two modes. Mode 1 is a constant output of slightly over 300 v. while Mode 2 takes a few seconds to charge, but gives off a much more painful shock. All that voltage from a simple AA battery. Operation: To get the constant voltage, just turn on the main power switch, the indicator LED should illuminate and a steady supply of voltage will be supplied to the fingers. To charge it flip the other switch and push the button, you should hear the same high pitched charging noise that a disposable camera would make when it is charging. In a few seconds the capacitor should be fully charged and the fingertips will pack quite a punch. 07/24/06 - Lack of sleep saps men's brain power Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily. Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an "actigraph", to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart. Men and women fared differently. While men thought they slept better with a partner, and women believed they didn't, actually both sexes had more disturbed sleep, even when they did not have sex. Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men, and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day. However, the women apparently slept more deeply when they did sleep, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested. Their stress levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent. 07/24/06 - Near Frictionless Windmills from China There's been a big splash about newly-invented maglev wind turbines in Worldwatch's blog and Treehugger (for those that read Chinese, the original article was in Xinhua News). No, they won't be levitating off the ground, and no, they won't be frictionless, but they may be significantly more efficient than existing windmills. Here's the scoop, with some technical introduction and details you won't find in the articles others have written about it. 07/24/06 - Science may bring back Neanderthals RESEARCHERS are planning to reconstruct the genome of Neanderthals, the archaic human species that occupied Europe from 300,000 years ago until 30,000 years ago before being displaced by modern humans. Recovery of the Neanderthal genome, in whole or in part, would be invaluable for reconstructing many events in human prehistory and evolution. It would help address such questions as whether Neanderthals and humans interbred, whether the archaic humans had an articulate form of language, how the Neanderthal brain was constructed, if they had light or dark skin, and how big the Neanderthal population was. One of the most important results that researchers are hoping for is to discover, from a three-way comparison between chimp, human and Neanderthal DNA, which genes have made humans human. If Dr Paabo and 454 Life Sciences succeed in reconstructing the entire Neanderthal genome, it might, in principle, be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. This might be the best way of finding out what each Neanderthal gene does. Scientists are quick to point out the technical and ethical problems in such a venture. 07/23/06 - Big tests for fuel cells coming in 2007 Next year fuel cells could take a significant step forward, according to a CEO of one of the leading manufacturers of the technology. In 2007, the U.S. military will conduct field tests of hybrid power systems, which combine lithium ion batteries and methanol fuel cells, Peng Lim, CEO of MTI Micro Fuel Cells, said during an interview here Tuesday. The hybrid power systems will be squeezed into portable radar and other devices and will be tried out in remote sensors that pick up vibrations, sounds or movement in the field and radio the data back to headquarters. In hybrid systems, the small lithium ion battery provides peak power while the fuel cell recharges the battery or runs the equipment when less power is required to run it. Fuel cells harvest the energy from chemical reactions and then provide that energy (in the form of electrons) to devices. "Fuel cells will be there to refill your tank, and your tank will be lithium ion batteries," Lim said. "We will complement lithium ion. Over the next 10 years we could be a replacement." Overall, fuel cells can provide more power in a limited space of volume than lithium ion batteries, say fuel cell advocates. Lithium ion batteries in the lab can provide 0.4 to 0.5 watt/hours per cubic centimeter and about 0.25 watt/hours per cubic centimeter in everyday products, according to MTI. (A watt/hour is a measure of how much electricity will be produced over an hour.) A cubic centimeter of methanol can provide 1.3 watt/hours. The methanol has to be contained in a fuel cell, of course. Thus, if the fuel cell housing--a plastic and metal device with a membrane that converts methanol into water, carbon dioxide and electrons--is 20 cubic centimeters and it holds 10 cubic centimeters of methanol, the resulting fuel cell will perform as well as 30 cubic centimeters of a lithium ion battery. Manufacturers, though, can get a better ratio between methanol and the actual physical fuel cell itself than that, Lim said, resulting in more energy per cubic centimeter. 07/23/06 - Technical presentation on ethanol fuel I saw Vinod Khosla give a very similar speech this month. It's technical, but technical solutions are supposed to be technical. Now that I've heard the speech twice, this is actually starting to sound like a rational plan to me. It might, conceivably, actually work. It can't stop us from getting slammed with a series of city-wrecking Katrinas, but it might avert a scenario that's all Katrina, all the time. Choices: 1) Feed mid-east terrorism or mid-west farmers?, 2) Import expensive gasoline or use cheaper ethanol?, 3) Create farm jobs or mid-east oil tycoons?, 4) Fossil fuels or green fuels?, 5) ANWR oil rigs or "prairie grass" fields?, and 6) Gasoline cars or cars with fuel choices? 07/23/06 - the Misyar Contract - Marriage Lite in Saudi Arabia Khaled and Zeinab are among thousands of people who choose misyar in this ultraconservative Islamic kingdom where contact between unrelated men and women is forbidden and extramarital sex regarded as a grave sin. Misyar also offers an alternative to cash-strapped men who want to avoid lavish weddings but would like a relationship, without incurring the wrath of the morality police. Under misyar, the husband is not financially responsible for his wife, and the marriage often ends in divorce. Misyar is allowed under Sunni Islam and it is legal in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. But it is traditionally frowned upon and the fact that it leaves the wife financially vulnerable has angered many women's activists and intellectuals. "Misyar reduces marriage to sexual intercourse," said Hatoun al-Fassi, a female Saudi historian. "For clerics to allow it is shameful for our religion." In regular marriages in Saudi Arabia, men must pay for expensive ceremonies, huge dowries and a home. If the couple divorce, he must pay alimony and child support. So misyar appeals to men of reduced means, as well as men looking for a flexible arrangement -- the husband can walk away from a misyar and can marry other women without informing his first wife. Wealthy Muslims sometimes contract misyar when on holiday to allow them to have sexual relations without breaching the tenets of their faith. A misyar is often one of the only options for older spinsters, divorcees and widows who often struggle to find husbands in a society where they are stigmatised. 07/23/06 - Gravity Hill pulls the curious to Oak Grove Joey Harris, a 29-year-old man from Birmingham, tossed a golf ball down Gravity Hill Road. It bounced twice and rolled with the momentum toward Alabama 280. It crawled to a stop. "Look!" said Jim Steadman, a 56-year-old coworker at Aflac Insurance. "Look at that. It is rolling uphill. That is crazy." Sure enough, the ball turned and rolled a few feet before stopping apparently slightly higher uphill. The two were heading back from a business meeting and figured they would do some experimenting on the hill in this tiny Talladega County town that sits just up the road from Sylacauga. The hill is moderately famous among locals and a must-see attraction for any out-of-towner who hears about it. The road appears to rise from its intersection, peak, and then head downhill to a half-dozen or so homes. Randy Sayers, who has lived on the road for three decades, said he regularly sees cars sitting near the intersection at what appears to be the bottom, then shifting into neutral and sliding backward. "It's just an optical illusion," Steadman said. "The old-timers say that it's the minerals, the iron in the soil, that pulls the automobile up the hill." That may seem like an odd assertion, but Oak Grove has a history of moving objects doing the unexpected. For example, the town is the site of the first known incident of an object from space hitting a person. On Nov. 30, 1954, a meteorite crashed through the home of Ann Hodges, who was asleep. It bounced off a radio console and bruised her side. No one's done any official scientific testing -- at least nothing more formal than the golf-ball test. That could ruin a good story. 07/23/06 - Printing Solar Cells for cheap power Today, the lion's share of solar cells are based on crystalline silicon, which is about three to five times too costly to compete with grid electricity, Zweibel says. Nanosolar's technology involves a thin film of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS) that absorbs sunlight and converts it into electricity. The basic technology has been around for decades, but it has proven difficult to produce it reliably and cheaply. Nanosolar has developed a way to make these cells using a printing technology similar to the kind used to print newspapers, rather than expensive vacuum-based methods. 07/23/06 - Conspiracies deflect responsibility It’s quite good fun coming up with theories about who REALLY runs the world, who’s just faked their death and is hiding on a desert island, and what’s been put in your food to control your thoughts. But if you take this stuff too seriously, you are probably borderline mentally unwell. I am not simply hurling insults at people who’s views I don’t agree with, but rather making a statement on the probable causes of conspiracy theories. It is no coincidence that people who smoke a lot of marijuana, or take other paranoia-inducing drugs tend to be big followers of conspiracy theories. These people are not clinically insane, or mentally ill, but they are showing symptoms. Conspiracy theorists make headway by recounting circumstantial evidence. As well as making for fun conversation pieces, what believing in conspiracy theories does for those who believe in them is actually quite profound: It hands control of your world to someone else. By believing that the forces that control the world are unknowable and beyond our control, we remove any responsibility for them ourselves. How can we feel like a failure, or gulity over something we have done, when a) it was someone else’s fault, and b) I will never be able to do anything about it, because this person is so powerful that (s)he is untouchable. If you are happy to live in a world that you cannot control, and that buffers you from pillar to post, then please continue to believe in conspiracy theories. However, if you want to take control of your life, and rid yourself of that feeling of impotency you have grown so used to, then start taking some of the painful truths of the world on face value. 07/23/06 - Cheap Ethanol from Biomass Producing ethanol fuel from biomass is attractive for a number of reasons. At a time of soaring gas prices and worries over the long-term availability of foreign oil, the domestic supply of raw materials for making biofuels appears nearly unlimited. Meanwhile, the amount of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere annually by burning fossil fuels is projected to rise worldwide from about 24 billion metric tons in 2002 to 33 billion metric tons in 2015. Burning a gallon of ethanol, on the other hand, adds little to the total carbon in the atmosphere, since the carbon dioxide given off in the process is roughly equal to the amount absorbed by the plants used to produce the next gallon. Processing ethanol from cellulose -- wheat and rice straw, switchgrass, paper pulp, agricultural waste products like corn cobs and leaves -- has the potential to squeeze at least twice as much fuel from the same area of land, because so much more biomass is available per acre. Moreover, such an approach would use feedstocks that are otherwise essentially worthless. Converting cellulose to ethanol involves two fundamental steps: breaking the long chains of cellulose molecules into glucose and other sugars, and fermenting those sugars into ethanol. 07/23/06 - Why AV software doesn't work "ZDNet Australia has a writeup about why AV apps don't work. The reason given is because the malware authors are writing code that will get around the signatures of the application by testing their code on the most popular anti-virus software before release." 07/23/06 - Lockheed Martin designing tiny "maple seed" spy plane Designed for release from a hover craft, and similar to the propeller-like maple seed, the one-bladed NAV should rotate in flight while a camera on board provides a "stable forward view and transmit images back to a small, hand-held display. The NAV should be equipped with a chemical rocket to power it 1,100 yards, yet it should weigh only 0.07 ounces." 07/22/06 - Blazing fast: infrared barbecues are red hot When Bill Best began experimenting with radiant heat energy back in the 1950s, he had no idea he would one day change how you and I grill our steaks. The founder of Thermal Engineering Corp. (TEC) of Columbia, S.C., was thinking more of helping auto makers find a faster way to cure the paint on their cars. So in 1961, when he invented a neat technology for generating infrared heat, TEC largely ignored the home market. It was only when the company's patent expired in 2000 that others jumped at the opportunity to apply Best's invention to backyard barbecuing. Infrared grilling is now the fastest growing form of barbecue technology, although it's still confined to the luxury end of the market. One-third of the high-end grills sold today have at least one infrared burner, industry experts say, and they predict that in 10 years 60% of all barbecues will be exclusively infrared. Why the excitement? Because according to the hype, infrared lets you grill a steak in half the time of an ordinary barbecue. Afficionados say you can prepare an entire barbecue- from the moment you turn the switch to the moment you slide the finished meat onto a platter - in 15 minutes or less. So what is infrared cooking anyway? Despite what many people think, it's not radioactivity. It's not even particularly unusual. Infrared is merely one form of electromagnetic energy, much like visible light or radio waves. The infrared energy of the sun warms your skin every day. The infrared energy from glowing charcoal is what cooks food on a traditional barbecue. Infrared barbecues create the same form of energy by using burning gas to heat ceramic burners through thousands of microscopic flame ports. The ceramic burners absorb the heat, then glow and emit infrared energy, which cooks food with the same intense, dry heat that charcoal does. But unlike charcoal barbies, an infrared model heats up in five minutes or less, doesn't add ash to your food and distributes its heat with absolute regularity. 07/22/06 - Energy from the Sea using Thermodynamics In the tropics, the oceans store an immense amount of energy from the sun. The band of surface water within 10º of the equator basks around at 80º F., while cold regions 3,000 ft. below are around 40º F. [OTEC] uses this thermal gradient, like the hot and cold terminals of a gas turbine, to generate electricity. The essence of the system is the circulation of a fluid such as ammonia or propane. Where it comes near the warm water it is brought to a boil and so expands; where it comes near the cold, it liquefies once again. In the course of its circulation from one place to another, it drives a power-generating turbine. A typical closed-loop system would include two exchangers (evaporator and condenser), a turbine, and a generator. Ship designs and structures used for offshore oil platforms have blazed the trail for the physical platform on which OTEC will be mounted. A general design goal is to isolate the platform as much as possible from the influence of the ocean surface, where the interaction of wind and wave can induce violent platform motions. A leading candidate is a large spar buoy configuration, with most of the platform mass several hundred feet underwater and a relatively small surfacepiercing mast for access; this would also give wa