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05/31/07 - Team Discovers "Throttle" For Solar Wind
"Because helium nearly vanishes from the solar wind at its minimum speed, the researchers believe helium might somehow set the minimum speed. Helium is not accelerated efficiently by any process thought to be propelling the solar wind. Instead, it has to be dragged along by the hydrogen: Solar wind hydrogen atoms exert a small electric field that drags the helium out along with it, according to the team."
05/31/07 - WaveTech - Re-Inventing the Engine
 Inventor Brad Raether says he has developed a more efficient way to transform linear power - the drive of a piston or the stroke of a bicyclist's leg - into rotary power - the motion needed to drive wheels. The idea looks simple. Rather than hooking the bottom of a piston rod to a crook in a crankshaft, which is the way piston engines have converted linear motion into rotary motion for 300 years, Raether's model uses a crossbar that runs inside a race in the cylinder wall to twist the piston rod with each stroke. The bottom of the rod spins a gear, which connects directly to a drivetrain, eliminating the crankshaft altogether. The design of the race gives the piston more leverage throughout its stroke, transferring about three times more of its power than a conventional piston, Raether said. Among the potential results: Production automobiles that get 75 to 100 miles per gallon, with minimal changes to their standard engines. Or possibly more efficient bicycles, pedal-powered cars, or small pedal-powered airplanes. Or possibly more efficient power production plants. More efficient compressed air-driven vehicles, used extensively in mining and manufacturing where sparks can be deadly. And standard internal combustion engines that could run at lower RPMs because they transfer their power more efficiently, dramatically reducing fuel usage, waste-heat and engine wear and tear. Raether says his tests have shown so far that any of those outcomes are possible with his invention, if he can get it to market. His patent is pending but, as with most inventions, commercializing it is not an easy task.
05/31/07 - WaveTech Engine - US Patent Application - 20070079791
 Raether; Bradley - April 12, 2007 - WaveTech engine / Abstract - Reciprocating engine construction wherein a rotating assembly converts the linear motion of the piston into rotational motion more efficiently, therefore yielding more torque and working power while using less fuel. The rotating assembly is three components working together, an interchanger unit with track rollers mounted at both ends and attached at it's center to the connecting rod by bearings allowing it to rotate while reciprocating, a stationary cylindrical unit having opposing wave shaped races (tracks) encircling it's perimeter with slopes of at least 45 degrees to convert the reciprocating motion to rotational motion on a one to one ratio 90 degrees perpendicular to the axis of the interchanger as the track rollers follow the slopes of the races, a rotating carrier that keeps the track rollers aligned and transfers the converted rotational motion to the output shaft by means of gears.
05/31/07 - Computers Outperform Humans at Recognizing Faces
"According to the recent Face Recognition Grand Challenge, The match up of face-recognition algorithms showed that machine recognition of human individuals has improved tenfold since 2002 and a hundredfold since 1995. 'Among other advantages, 3-D facial recognition identifies individuals by exploiting distinctive features of a human face's surface--for instance, the curves of the eye sockets, nose, and chin, which are where tissue and bone are most apparent and which don't change over time. Furthermore, Phillips says, "changes in illumination have adversely affected face-recognition performance from still images. But the shape of a face isn't affected by changes in illumination." Hence, 3-D face recognition might even be used in near-dark conditions.'"
05/30/07 - Stove cooks, chills and powers your mobile
A stove that uses acoustic technology to cook and cool, and generates its own electricity, is being designed for developing communities in Africa and Asia. A person can spend two hours a day collecting wood to burn in a fire that is so wasteful that 93% of the energy generated, literally, goes up in smoke. The efficiency comes from a technology known as thermoacoustics, which produces sound waves from heated gas and then converts them to electricity. Wood is placed inside the stove and burned. The fire heats compressed air that has been pumped into specially shaped pipes located inside the stove's chimney and behind the stove. The heated air begins to vibrate and produce sound waves. Inside the pipes, the noise is 100 times louder than a jet taking off. Because the pipes are stiff and do not vibrate, the sound waves have nowhere to go. So outside the pipe, people hear only a faint hum. At the end of a pipe, the sound waves vibrate a diaphragm attached to a coil of metal wires sitting inside a magnet. As the wire coil vibrates, about 50 times per second, it generates an electrical current, which is captured by wires and converted to the proper voltage. The stove has electrical sockets, where homeowners can plug in, for example, a mobile phone for charging. Or they can sell the electricity as a phone-charging service. For refrigeration, the heated, compressed air is sent through a different part of the pipe, where sound waves cause the air to expand. And as it expands, it cools to a temperature that can produce ice. It takes about 2 hours of stove use to produce enough ice that will keep the fridge cold for 24 hours. But homeowners have the option of producing more ice to sell for income. In five year's time, they hope to be churning out about 1 million stoves a year that each sell for US$30-40.
05/30/07 - The Quantum Physics of Remote Viewing
 Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who was to become later one of the fathers of the “Manhattan Project” that developed the first US A-bomb during WWII, used in 1913 the theory of “quanta” of energy in order to prove that the whole world of atoms was full of “quantum” jumps. An electron could jump from one level of energy (so-called orbit) to another without appearing in-between these states. Discontinuity had been introduced in our equation of the universe! In the strange world of quantum physics, particles dematerialized themselves into waves (such as in transistors) and rematerialized themselves later into particles. This depended on the type of experiment they were subjected to, and most importantly: the choice made by a conscious observer as to how he or she would view these particles. To most theorists, the phenomena of nature existed only as determined states as a conscious observer witnessed them, either directly, or through the artifacts of a measuring device. Quantum mechanics was born, and with it our view of reality would be forever changed. we make a potential reality manifest itself by our choices, even retroactively through time and immediately across the perceived infinite space, as the two experiments mentioned hereafter have proven, to the surprise of most physicists. Or, in other words, volition and free will operate outside the confines of time/space, and our impression of making choices is but a delayed awareness of events that higher levels of our minds have already made for us and therefore project to our awareness (ego) as a holographic packet of sensory information, post facto. Very advanced “remote viewers” know at which points volition is part of the higher levels of one’s self and at which points it is made available to the lower (conscious level), as the quantum self or higher self merges with the lower self (ego). If we are co-creator of our reality by mere thought, the natural imbued skepticism of many scientists and their methodologies introduce a negative bias in the results that they would obtain in thought experiment such as “remote viewing” etc. In other words, in order to achieve 100% success at proving the efficacy of “remote viewing or influencing ” one would need to deal with scientists and tests subjects that are of the firm belief of the easy achievement of such mental feats, which would automatically be called a bias experimental protocol by the skeptical scientific community. That is why the best results at remote viewing were always achieved within intelligence and military secret units that pragmatically only cared about bridging time and space effectively using mental technologies, and were not the least concerned about peer recognition and the fear of being ridiculed.
05/30/07 - Researchers develop low-cost, low-energy desalination process
 A low-cost water desalination system developed by New Mexico State University engineers can convert saltwater to pure drinking water on a round-the-clock basis and its energy needs are so low it can be powered by the waste heat of an air conditioning system. A prototype built on the NMSU campus in Las Cruces can produce enough pure water continuously to supply a four-person household, said Nirmala Khandan, an environmental engineering professor in NMSU's Department of Civil Engineering. The system utilizes the natural effects of gravity and atmospheric pressure to create a vacuum in which water can evaporate and condense at near-ambient temperatures. Two 30-foot vertical tubes - one rising from a tank of saline water and the other from a tank of pure water - are connected by a horizontal tube. The barometric pressure of the tall water columns creates a vacuum in the headspace. At normal temperatures, Khandan said, evaporation from the pure-water side will travel to the saline side and condense as the system seeks equilibrium. "That's nature," he said. "We want it to go the other way." Raising the temperature of the water in the headspace over the saline column slightly more than that of the freshwater column causes the flow to go in the other direction, so that pure, distilled water collects on one side and the brine concentrate is left behind in a separate container. A temperature increase of only 10 to 15 degrees is needed, Khandan said. "That's the trick of this vacuum," he said. "We don't have to boil the water like normal distillation, so you can use low-grade heat like solar energy or waste heat from a diesel engine or some other source of waste heat." Potentially a desalination system using this method could be coupled to a home's refrigerated air conditioning system, Khandan said. "When you air condition a house, you are pumping the heat outside the house, and the heat is wasted into the atmosphere," he said. "We want to capture that heat and use it to power this desalination system." The 30-foot-tall NMSU prototype is powered by a solar panel. Khandan and his research assistant, civil engineering doctoral student Veera Gnaneswar Gude, have modified the process originally developed by Florida researchers to incorporate a thermal energy storage device that allows the system to operate around-the-clock, using stored energy at night. The Institute of Energy and Environment housed in the NMSU College of Engineering helped them instrument the system. (via cleantechblog.com)
05/30/07 - Plasma could turn old tyres into new
 Blasting old tyres with super-hot gas offers a way to turn them back into new ones, say UK researchers. This would tackle one of the world's biggest waste disposal problems. Old tyres are piling up in landfill across the world because they are so difficult to dispose of, or reuse. The options for recycling are limited because the rubber used is vulcanised, meaning it has been combined with another chemical, usually sulphur, to improve its overall strength and durability. But vulcanised rubber does not melt, and is therefore difficult to reform and reuse. So many tyres are simply dumped in landfill, a process that releases heavy metals and other pollutants and risks starting dirty, long-burning fires. Now, David Isaac and colleagues at Swansea University, UK, have shown that spinning ground-up tyres, called rubber "crumb", inside a chamber filled with ionised oxygen gas plasma could provide a solution. "It makes the surface of the crumb much better at sticking onto new rubber," Isaac explains. "Without treatment, the interface between the old pieces and new rubber is very weak." The treated rubber particles can then be added to fresh non-vulcanised rubber to make new tyres. Laboratory tests show that tyre rubber recycled in this way has similar tensile strength and other mechanical properties to completely new material. Isaac says the plasma treatment appears to create reactive oxygen species - small, highly reactive molecules - on the surface of the rubber by opening up carbon bonds. This reactive surface adheres well to fresh rubber. But it will not stay that way for ever, so the researchers have to add it to new rubber straight away. In the long term, they hope to find a way to make the plasma treatment last longer. "Around 65% of the world's rubber production is for tyres," Isaac told New Scientist "Tyre rubber is recycled into products like flooring, but it makes sense to try and recycle them into more tyres."
05/30/07 - Methane tested as new rocket fuel
 The trouble with exploring the solar system is that there just aren't any rocket fuelling stations out there. That won't be the case if future planet-hopping astronauts are equipped with a new kind of rocket engine that burns two gases already in good supply on several other planets: methane and oxygen. "It's not as nice as kerosene," says XCOR Aerospace's Aleta Jackson. "But it's available on Mars and other parts of the solar system." That abundance on other worlds is crucial if spacecraft are ever going to break free of dependence on Earthly fuels and still travel at speeds that will get them to other planets in a timely fashion. The 5M15 engine works by combining liquid oxygen with liquid methane to burn at supersonic speeds and generate 3400 kilograms of thrust. Most rockets use liquid oxygen and hydrogen, or solid fuels. Another advantage is the higher temperatures at which methane is a liquid. Hydrogen used to launch the space shuttle needs to be kept at -253°C, whereas methane is liquid at -162°C.
05/30/07 - Revealing Hidden Secrets of Youthfulness
 One recent study published by the journal of the Canadian Public Library of Science, PLoS One, found that energy-producing skeletal muscle cells called mitochondria can be revitalized with weight training exercises. "There's accumulating evidence to show that mitochondria are involved in the aging process and if the mitochondria don't work very well, the energy, the endurance and the strength of muscles become diminished," study co-author Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University, who was located in Hamilton, Canada. Co-Author Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky stated of the Canadian study, "The main, novel finding [of our study is] that we could bring that aging mitochondria pattern back towards a younger person, almost reversing the aging signature, pretty much by 40, 45 years with six months of weight training." He added "What's cool about that is that this aging is reversible - maybe not 100 per cent - but at least at the cellular level, we're seeing a significant reversal of accumulated damage over a long period of time." Breaking out in a sweat like Arnold used to do is not the only answer, although its benefits may be much more quickly realized than non-impact exercises such as tai chi. But, these low-intensity exercises can reap bountiful rewards. In fact, Steven Wolf of Emory University says, “… it takes three months of tai chi for someone who is really frail to regain strength and flexibility.” He added, “In Western medicine, we expect instant results. But, that’s not what happens here.” "Patients [in the intervention group] took part in activities, sat at the table together during mealtimes and served themselves food from bowls, encouraging them to be more independent and interact more with other patients" stated Ms. Mamhidir. The results were that the intervention group markedly increased weight, by as much as 15 pounds in one case, during the term of the 3-month study. The actual point of the Swedish study is missed by those analyzing it. The point is simply this: we are all animals and like animals in the wild if we don’t keep hunting we die, whether that hunting is experiencing the strain of a new tai chi position or, as in the Swedish study, simply making an elderly person fill their own soup bowl instead of catering it to them.
05/30/07 - Eating Radiation: A New Form of Energy?
 In a bizarre alternative to photosynthesis, some fungi "eat" radiation--with the role of chlorophyll taken by melanin, a chemical also found in human skin. Here's a possible solution to both the energy crisis and what to do with highly radioactive waste from nuclear reactors: use the radiation as food. It sounds like something out of a comic book, although scientists already know that fungi will eat asbestos, jet fuel, and plastic. It has also been shown to decompose hot graphite in the ruins of the Chernobyl power plant, which melted down in 1986. The plant's release of large amounts of radiation appears to have attracted black hordes of fungi. But how does it work? According to Ekaterina Dadachova and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City, the fungi Cryptococcus neoformans and two other species use melanin, also a pigment found in human skin, to transform radiation into energy to use as food for growth. Researchers believe that melanin is present to protect fungi from stress, such as radiation, and that certain species use this molecule for metabolic reactions. Dadachova's lab discovered that exposure to radiation caused the melanin in these species to change shape, increasing its ability to impact metabolism and growth. One other interesting aspect for humans: using melanin raises the possibility that this chemical also converts radiation from the sun into food for our skin cells, but only in minute amounts.
05/30/07 - Rules 'hiding' trillions in debt
 Liability $516,348 per U.S. household. The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year - far more than the official $248 billion deficit - when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss - equal to $11,434 per household - is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006. "We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting.
Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined. Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest. This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government's financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years.
05/30/07 - Email Tax Coming
(Ron Paul SAVE US from these CROOKS! - JWD) The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful. State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other Internet-service connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.
05/29/07 - This magnet helps keep food fresher
 EVERY day, tonnes of uncooked meat in our supermarkets, restaurants and hotels are destroyed before reaching their recommended shelf life. Even with refrigeration, meat still spoils easily because the temperature is not always consistent and has to be thrown away. Last year alone, almost half-a-million tonnes of food waste were incinerated. Now, thanks to a local company, Esmo Technologies, the amount of spoiled raw meat can be cut by about a third, simply by placing a specially modified magnet next to it in the refrigerator. It also helps preserve other foodstuff. The palm-sized magnet, called an EsmoSphere, is a world-first invention by Dr Richard Chua, 42, who has filed for patents both locally and internationally. When plenty of food is stored together, the food will deteriorate even faster, Dr Chua said. With the EsmoSphere, refrigerated food can remain fresh because the magnet emits a dome-shaped magnetic field (see graphics at right) that strengthens the bonds between water molecules in the food. With stronger bonds, water loss is reduced, so raw meat which is placed within the EsmoSphere's protection zone does not become dehydrated. The EsmoSphere's magnetism also delays bacterial growth and slows down oxidation, which causes discoloration. The EsmoSphere, which comes in different sizes and costs between $40 and $80, does not require an electrical source and its magnetic field remains effective for three years. 'The EsmoSphere's magnetic strength is like that of a fridge magnet or handbag with a magnetic catch.' In a supermarket trial conducted over three months from the end of last year to early this year, the EsmoSphere helped save an average of a few thousand dollars per outlet. Meat remained fresh for three days, which is the recommended shelf life. Before the EsmoSphere was used, meat had to be thrown after just two days. In addition, 40 per cent less seafood was thrown away. For more info, go to www.esmotech.com
05/29/07 - Magnet Food Saver uses primarily South Pole Energy
 Device and method for treating a perishable object. WO2006083232 - A method and device for treating a perishable object. The method comprises exposing the perishable object to a south magnetic field created by magnetic interference of a plurality of magnets. / [0006] In the decomposition of all living cells, such as in fish and meat products, there are several chemical and biochemical processes taking place. These processes include: (1) enzymatic spoilage that is caused by the tissue enzymes of the fish or meat itself; (2) oxidative deterioration that results in foul, rancid odors and color changes; (3) spoilage due to bacterial growth from its secondary products, primarily from the enzymes that cause the decomposition of proteins. These chemical-related deterioration processes are conventionally controlled by the reduction of ambient temperature by means of refrigeration processes. However, such refrigeration devices require electrical supply, which may not be available in some circumstances. / [0007] Further, even if refrigeration devices are available, it may be desirable to help prolong and/or enhance the freshness of food and beverages stored in a refrigerator for a longer period of time and to retain moisture of the food. SUMMARY / [0008] In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of treating a perishable object, the method comprising exposing the perishable object to a south magnetic field created by magnetic interference of a plurality of magnets. / [0009] The perishable object may comprise a food item, a beverage item, or both, and the exposure maintains the freshness of the food item, the beverage item, or both. / [0019] The method may further comprise shielding a north-pole side of the magnets. / [0020] The magnets may be permanent magnets or electromagnets. In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention there is provided device for treating a perishable object, the device comprising at least one panel defining at least a portion of a space for containing the perishable object; a plurality of magnets housed within the panel and arranged such that a south magnetic field created by magnetic interference of the plurality of magnets extends into the space for containing the perishable object.
05/29/07 - "Sit a spell, that can wait."
 (What a wonderful IDEA to restore a lost American tradition! - JWD) “Sit down a spell. That can wait.” That's the mantra of the Professional Porch Sitters Union, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek organization founded in 1999 by Claude Stephens of Louisville, Ky. The Union got its start when Stephens and a group of friends gathered on his porch after a busy day of meetings on behalf of an organization to which they belong. “We had just sat through these meetings with agendas,” he says. “Then we came to the porch and we were sipping bourbon and drinking lemonade and talking, and we all felt we were getting more done there - just sitting casually - than we had in the meetings.” So the Union was born, and its mandate was simple. “There are no rules. There are no dues. You don't have to attend meetings. You don't have to do anything. Well, you do have to sit on your porch, whatever that means to you,” Stephens says. “People have abdicated their responsibility for creating their own entertainment to other tools,” Stephens explains. “Television and air conditioning are two of the biggest tools - they drove people inside, away from the porch, which used to be the pleasant place to be when the house was hot. When that happened, when people began staying inside, communities began failing. To return to the porch is to return to community. It's the interface between your private life and your community.” Martha Conn thinks he's on to something. “I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that porches bridge the gap between inside and out,” the New Londoner says. “People often comment that the only time they meet their neighbors is when there is a blizzard and people join in to help dig each other out.  Porches allow for that sort of casual contact during spring, summer and fall, with folks walking their dogs, strolling their babies or sitting across the street on their own porches. The contact might only consist of waving and maybe a little small talk about the weather or the dog or the baby, but over time you get to know each other and become real neighbors.” And Kim Thompson of Waterford has certainly found that to be the case. Since replacing their old porch with a new wraparound version, they've been sitting outside almost nonstop and meeting people at the same pace. “We're on the porch when I'm not cooking and when we're not working,” she says. “Even in January - year-round, we're out there. And somebody's always stopping by: people walking by, people who are working on their own houses will stop by to talk about it, people who drive by will beep ... We've made a lot of new friends.” All three porch enthusiasts have suggestions for what makes a porch perfect. Says Stephens, “My opinion is hat it has comfortable places to sit, and that it is protected from weather, and that it is between your private world and your community. A deck in the back isn't going to do it. If it also has amenities like the ability to have nice music, maybe wind chimes, a place to put some favorite reading material, places to set drinks ... that's nice, too.” Thompson's take: “It's got to be inviting. You need the rocking chairs and the flowers and the plants. It needs to be friendly-feeling. You've got to have the lounging area.” And Conn adds, “I think the only real requirement for a good porch is that it must have room for a few chairs, including at least one rocker. A transistor radio is handy for ballgames, too.” She now lives in the home she grew up in and her porch-sitting prowess was honed early on. “The porch has always been our most important 'living room' during the summer months. We continue my parents' tradition of relaxing out there after work most every day in the summer, and frequently cooking and eating our dinner there as well. When there were babies around, there was always a porch swing, and we also used to have a hammock strung between two posts, with a rope to tug every once in a while to start the swinging again. “Our favorite time to head to the porch is after work, around sunset and up until dark. It's a great place to share the news of the day and unwind with a glass of wine or beer and a bowl of peanuts. Other than evenings, if I get up in time, I love to sit in the early morning sun with a cup of coffee and read my paper.” She may not know it, but her time on the porch has an impact on her environment, according to Stephens. “That simple act (of sitting on your porch) helps repair communities,” he asserts. “It does other things, too. It reduces crime. I don't know of specific studies, but I bet you could prove that in communities where people sit on porches there are fewer crimes because there are eyes on everything. And children have a much larger range of allowable activity. If it's just you that watches a child, you can only let them go so far. But if you know your entire neighborhood is going to be watching that child, you'll allow them to go a little farther. It's not just children, it's senior citizens. If you don't see them on the porch for a few days, you might go over and discover they're not well. It's a communication safety net. “A porch, to me, is not necessarily an architectural feature,” he continues. “It really helps develop a community.” / Contact Info - (via impactlabs.com)
05/29/07 - HK invents pain-free device to measure blood sugar
Hong Kong scientists have invented a device to help diabetics measure their blood sugar painlessly for the first time - without pricking their fingers. The size of a mobile phone, the instrument emits a weaker form of infrared, or near-infrared, which penetrates the skin on the finger and homes in on the bloodstream. Out of the many components in the blood, the beam is able to identify bits of glucose through the frequency, or wavelengths, they transmit and the amount of blood sugar present would be displayed on the instrument in 10 seconds. "There are different types of cells in the blood vessel ... red blood cells, white blood cells, other compounds, protein, glucose, cholesterol but our model selects the one for glucose and tells you its levels," Joanne Chung, professor and associate head of research at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's School of Nursing, said in an interview. Diabetes is a condition when the pancreas produces too little or no insulin. Unable to store sugar, the person loses a key source of energy and is at risk of heart disease, kidney failure, nerve damage, blindness and other eye diseases. According to the World Health Organisation, 180 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes and this figure will more than double by 2030. In 2005, 1.1 million people died from it. For decades, diabetics have monitored their blood sugar using conventional instruments, which require them to prick their fingers and draw blood, up to several times a day. While these have an accuracy rate of around 80 to 85 percent, the process is less than ideal. "From a nursing perspective, everyone has the right not to suffer any pain, even if it is a very small finger prick," Chung said.
05/29/07 - Formula cleans sewer water to drink and removes smell
 Ramiro Rosas, 48, who has lived in Pharr for the past five years, said he developed his solution by accident while he was building a model volcano for a science project and later learned that the solution breaks down harmful bacteria. He won’t reveal its ingredients, but he said the solution is made out of all natural products, including orange juice. “The dirtier the stuff is the more (the solution’s ingredients) like it,” said Rosas, who attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic school in Mission when he developed the formula. Rosas spent years spreading the word about his solution. Local people would have him pour the solution in their septic tanks. He also developed air filters using lava rocks soaked in the solution and installed those in some homes, including his own. He also created a system using the solution-soaked lava that helps remove the stench from wastewater treatment plants. The rocks are placed in poly vinyl chloride pipe and the pipe is lowered into the water. The cities of Pharr and Rancho Viejo, which Rosas approached with the solution, have used it for some of their wastewater lift stations. Sharrieff Mustakeem, president of MCX Environmental Energy Corp., the company that is marketing Rosas’ product, said the company plans to incorporate Rosas’ system in infrastructure products in several African countries where the company is doing work. Some projects include reducing odor in water and making contaminated water potable, Mustakeem said. Mustakeem said what he likes about Rosas’ product is that it is all natural. He said much of what causes bad odor in water is bacteria. Using a natural substance to eliminate the bacteria is better and more effective than using chemicals, he said.
05/29/07 - Simple Story, Profound Message
 (This arrived in my email tonight and is too good to not post. Thanks to whoever sent it. - JWD) A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: "If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. "While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress." What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups." "Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it." Don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee instead.
05/29/07 - Wind, sun and tides power Biorock, rehab for recovering coral reefs
 First-Step Coral recently won a $7,500 award in the MIT IDEAS competition and is one of eight semifinalists in the 2007 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition "development track" for advancing low-income communities in developing countries. Winners will be announced May 16 at an awards ceremony at 7 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium. "I've seen the natural ecosystem get worse and worse. It's overused, overexploited," la O' said. "The fishermen throw sticks of dynamite into the water and the sonic waves cause the fish to die and make them easier to catch. It also shatters the coral and causes it to slowly die off. It's akin to carving a hole in the center of the Amazon and denuding it, but the coral reefs are less visible because they're underwater." The coral reefs help provide more than 60 percent of the animal protein consumed by the Philippines' population of 80 million. The declining fishing industry then puts more pressures on the land, which must support more agriculture as people move inland in search of a new food supply. Goreau's invention, called Biorock, uses an electrochemical process to deposit calcium carbonate, also known as white limestone, onto a common iron building material called rebar. Rebars are used for construction supports and can be fashioned into any shape. The students make it into curved structures that resemble small Quonset huts. After the calcium is deposited on the black metal, it turns white, and clumps of living coral that the volunteers tie to the metal begin to grow and attach themselves to the framework. In trials in the Pacific islands, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, corals attached to Biorock grow three to five times faster than native coral and have an increased survival rate. The MIT students' innovation is to power the electrochemical process with wind turbines, tidal power and solar panels. During a trip to the Philippines in January, the First-Step Coral team installed 500-watt solar panels donated by Shell and Sunpower to power Biorock in the Carbin and Molocaboc islands in the Sagay Marine Reserve. The team plans to study the effect of the cyclical nature of the renewable sources on the growth and development of the coral. / Contact Info
05/29/07 - Energy-saving innovators
There are a lot of eurekas being heard around Florida lately as entrepreneurs and investors look for profit in the nation's quest to reduce its energy use. Some innovators are evolving mom-and-pop operations competing for state and federal grants to reach commercial viability. They include Brown's newly patented high-efficiency Hydronic Clothes Dryer, a process to turn citrus peel waste into ethanol, a methanol-powered fuel cell, and a fuel-efficient car that runs on a mix of gasoline and water. / Mike Brown says his invention dries clothes 41 percent faster than existing dryers, and uses 53 percent less energy. He believes it will be the first dryer to receive an Energy Star rating from the Department of Energy, the ultimate consumer recommendation for energy efficiency. Brown's process works by passing air over a heat-transfer liquid, called Paratherm, a specialty thermal oil which, when it heats up, has a capacity to stay hot longer than the metal heating element found in conventional dryers.
Brown points out that his dryer is also much safer as it uses a noncombustible heating system.
"The hydronic system will not ignite dust or lint because we are using a liquid source of heat, " he said. Brown has shown his system to engineers at the leading manufacturers, including Electrolux, Bosch and Haire. / STEPHEN LUSKO aQUGEN, A GAS MADE FROM WATER - His Clearwater company believes it has discovered a hydrogen gas that, when injected into gasoline, improves fuel economy and reduces toxic emissions.
05/29/07 - Video - Is Bush an Idiot?
 Is the President of the United States, George W. Bush, an idiot? Scarborough Country asks the forbidden question. They look at his inability to speak correctly, not at his inability to lead correctly, however. Of course the real question is, is the Republican Party full of idiots because they nominated the sucker, and continue to blindly follow his crap? Is the US full of idiots, because they elected the sucker and have not begun demanding better until recently?
05/28/07 - Wind Power Runs Into Zoning Rules
 Some communities have outlawed residential turbines. Others entangle applicants in so much red tape that they simply give up. Standoffs between cities and green-minded homeowners are becoming more common as interest grows in residential turbines. Backyard windmills are already an $18 million-a-year industry in the U.S., and manufacturers think that could triple if wind got the same local acceptance and federal incentives as solar energy systems, which typically involve nothing more intrusive than panels on the roof. Zoning boards and neighborhood associations have heard complaints that the windmills would be unsightly, that the blades could break loose and fly into someone's yard, that a twister could knock a pole down or send it flying like a missile, or that the spinning blades would make too much noise. (Unlike big industrial wind turbines, the backyard varieties are barely audible.) Residential windmills start as low as about $12,000, and industry officials say one can cut household bills anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent, depending on the wind and the height of the tower. Michael Bennett, general manager of the Bear Valley Springs homeowner association, said the community's environmental board just recently began drafting rules that would enable the community to catch up to the rest of the state. "The No. 1 concern has been visual blight," Bennett said, "and No. 2, the noise level."
Rhode Island Renewable Energy owner Dave Anderson said promoting turbines in some wind-fertile areas can be almost futile, since neighbors there "want to be green, and they think it's a great idea and, you know, we've got to do something about the Middle East. But `Just don't do it in my backyard.'" "There's a lot of people who don't want to go through the hassle of fighting town hall," Anderson said. "They say, `We're not going to fight that fight.'"
05/28/07 - Diesels set to out-strip hybrids in accelerating US Growth
At present, hybrid gasoline technology appears to be the preferred route in the US, not least due to its attraction as a visible badge of green awareness amongst higher income purchasers. Many OEMs plan to launch hybrid products in the next few years, but the report highlights that this technology faces substantial manufacturing cost penalties which are unlikely to be eroded even in mass production. Diesel has a clear cost advantage over hybrid, even when fitted with the type of complex exhaust after-treatment technologies necessary to meet future, more stringent emissions regulations.
05/28/07 - Climate Monitoring Station Proposed on the Moon
 A University of Michigan study indicates the perfect place to monitor Earth's climate system would be the surface of the moon. The side facing us is a perfect location to monitor temperatures and weather patterns here on our planet. "On the near side of the airless moon, where Apollo 15 landed, surface temperature is controlled by solar radiation during daytime and energy radiated from Earth at night. Huang showed that due to an amplifying effect, even weak radiation from Earth produces measurable temperature changes in the regolith. Further, his revisit of the data revealed distinctly different characteristics in daytime and nighttime lunar surface temperature variations. This allowed him to uncover a lunar night-time warming trend from mid-1972 to late 1975, which was consistent with a global dimming of Earth that occurred over the same period and was due to a general decrease of sunlight over land surfaces."
05/28/07 - Video - Neodymium + Electromagnet Osc (Low Freq Pulse System)
 Using a homemade wirewound nail as an electromagnet, a coin shaped neodymium supermagnet and 4 AA batteries in series (6vdc), this inventor discovered an interesting oscillating effect between the rare earth and the electromagnet. When the magnet vibrates it produces a spark between the coil and the batteries.
05/28/07 - NASA looks to private sector to help it go lunar
NASA is in the market for commercial relationships and private capital as it gears up for its next manned missions to the moon. "If somebody says 'I have this really great way to be able to extract water ice from lunar regolith (lunar rocks) that I've developed on my own dime' we would be interested," Woodward said. "If we could be in a commercial relationship with somebody who has the capability that's fine because in many cases they can do it for less money than we can," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a space development conference in Dallas. NASA's lunar plans envision the building of an outpost on the moon which would be continuously manned like the International Space Station is now. "Maybe at that point there will be commercial exploitation and we won't be sending missions there but some of the commercial companies here will start sending people there," Woodward said. "One thing that keeps getting batted around is a fuel dump in orbit, in low Earth orbit. If someone was to build one of those and said do you want NASA to be a customer we would say yes because if you do the math it turns out that it would be an advantage to us," Woodward said. "We're trying to help some commercial entities demonstrate that they can do low Earth orbit resupply to say the space station and once they can do that we can contract with them and then we don't have to do it ourselves anymore."
05/28/07 - Magnets May Make The Brain Grow Stronger
 In mice, stimulating the brain with a magnetic coil appears to promote the growth of new neurons in areas associated with learning and memory. If the effect is confirmed in humans, it might open up new ways of treating age-related memory decline and diseases like Alzheimer's. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been used experimentally to treat a range of brain disorders, including depression and schizophrenia, and to rehabilitate people after a stroke. TMS uses a magnetic coil to induce electric fields in the brain tissue - activating or deactivating groups of neurons, although the exact mechanism has remained unknown. One theory was that it aided learning and memory by strengthening brain circuits through a process called long-term potentiation (LTP). They confirmed that TMS enhanced LTP in all areas of the brain tested, by modifying key glutamate receptors so that they stayed active for longer. The team also saw large increases in the proliferation of stem cells in the dentate gyrus hippocampus. These cells divide throughout life and are now believed to play a crucial role in memory and mood regulation.
05/28/07 - Video - Bush drinking again - Hilarious and could explain a lot!
05/28/07 - Some Soft Drinks May Damage Your DNA
 (Interesting that many Mexicans here in central Mexico tell me they don't drink Pepsi because they believe it causes diabetes. - JWD) "The Independent is reporting new findings that indicate a common additive called sodium benzoate, found in soft drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max among others, has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA in a cell's mitochondria. From the article: 'The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it - as happens in a number of diseased states - then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA - Parkinson's and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of aging.' European Union MPs are now calling for an urgent investigation in the wake of these alarming new findings."
05/28/07 - Video - Prediction of August 2007 Nuclear War in the Middle East?
 A prophecy of war in 2007. Astrology and Bible Prophecy prediction of a nuclear war in the Middle East in August 2007, when Muslim armies and Islamic terrorists of Osama bin Laden and Al qaida, and possibly Iran also, could attack Israel and possibly the U.S. with nuclear weapons and biological weapons. This could be the Battle of Armageddon as described in the Bible's Book of Revelation. From the Revelation13.net web site. But these Muslim armies will be destroyed.
05/28/07 - 700 meter Wifi Hack
A military adaptation of civilian wi-fi equipment has been developed to use in boarding operations on the high seas. Modifications to normal off-the-shelf gear can result in a range of over 700 meters, allowing information to be passed through on-shore internet connections. "The main reason for all this was to speed up the transmission of passport photos and other personal data back to the ship, so that it could be run through databases to check for terrorists or criminals. This wi-fi hack cut several hours off the time required to check documents. The Expanded Maritime Interception Operations (EIMO) wireless system was developed last year, to provide several kilometers of range to the original wi-fi gear (which has been in use for over three years). Each pair of wi-fi units costs about $1400 to construct, using common parts to add more powerful antennae to standard 802.11g wi-fi equipment."
05/27/07 - Filipino - HydroGasifier European Patent WO2007008091
 (Courtesy of Robert Nelson at Rex Research) Inventor Roberto V. Celis (article below) - A fuel saving device and method for dissociating water into its constituents hydrogen and oxygen gases by utilizing the hot exhaust gases of an engine between 710 degrees F and 950 degrees F. The method consists of replacing the exhaust pipe directly below the exhaust manifold of an engine with an expanded exhaust pipe that encases the water dissociation device, consisting of a long, spirally formed superheater, preferably stainless steel tubing to have vast area of contact to maximize heat transfer to the passing water. The spirally formed tubing causes the passing water to turbulently move in circular manner, superheat, exert great pressure on the inner wall of the superheater tubing, discharges and expands in the large dissociation chamber into its constituents hydrogen and oxygen gases that are immediately sucked into the combustion chamber of the engine to cause efficient combustion of the fuel, reduce emission, add power and speed, increase mileage and release oxygen.
05/27/07 - Filipino invention stops global warming
 A Filipino invention may yet be the answer to stop global warming. Roberto V. Celis, 74, said it took him 14 years to develop his invention called "Hydrogasifier" using water as supplemental fuel for all kinds of internal combustion engines that use gasoline, diesel, natural gas, hybrid or bio-fuel, eliminating deadly pollutants from spreading into the atmosphere. "It utilizes the hot exhaust gases from the engine to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen gases that are immediately introduced into the combustion chamber to completely burn the fuel," Celis said in an exclusive interview with the Philippines News Agency in his shop in Marikina City. Celis said that when he perfected the development of the "Hydrogasifier" as an anti-pollution device, it turned out also as an engine enhancer, increasing power of the vehicle and at the same time cutting down fuel consumption. "Fuel saved from gas or diesel is from 30 to 50 percent and that is a lot of savings," he added. Using the "Hydrogasifier" would save the Philippines some US$ 2-billion of fuel annually, he said. Celis said that carbon emission is near zero during a series of laboratory tests by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) "that makes this device a potential carbon eliminator to prevent global warming that's threatening man's health." To prove his invention works perfectly, Celis installed the device to test its effectiveness in a Ceres Liner Bus, a Jeep Star Bus, and jeepney operated by Ryan Transport Services, all based in Bacolod City last March and came up with the following results: the 174 horsepower (Hp) of the Ceres Bus increased to 199 Hp, while emission from 9.6K down to 0.21K, cutting down emission by 94 percent; The Jeep Star Bus from 137Hp to 144.83 Hp and from 9.9K to 2.29K or emission reduction by 76 percent; and The Ryan jeepney from 83 Hp to 87 Hp and from 9.9K to 0.82K or a reduction by 90 percent of its emission. A Pajero installed with "Hydrogasifier" saved fuel by 40 percent in city driving, and by as much as 87 percent in highway driving, Celis said. He said a 1994 Toyoto Corolla car using the device saved fuel by 50 percent in highway driving and up to 30 percent in city driving. He said his invention can also be installed in factories to control pollution. He said that vehicles using the device are like trees, which helps lower carbon emission in the environment, as these release only 6.5 percent to 7.6 percent oxygen from the tail pipe to make cities clean and healthful. / Also invented; CELIS, ROBERTO V - IMPROVED DOUBLE ACTING RECIPROCATING STEAM ENGINE - Marikina, Phillipines / and Patent 4392875 Smog Eliminator - 1983
- A device for eliminating carbon particulates from smoke including recirculating pressure water sprays within a spray booth mounted on a smoke stack, a conical deflector and a water collecting means mounted therein; the collected spray water being cleaned in a two compartment tank, partially filled with sand, and returned to the spray booth via a recirculation pump and a pressurized water reservoir.
05/27/07 - Additional information about the inventions of Roberto V. Celis courtesy of Robert Nelson of Rex Research
Here's the Celis HydroGasifier Patent and a couple more that look interesting: GAS SAVING DEVICE AND METHOD FOR DISSOCIATING WATER Inventor: CELIS ROBERTO V (PH) Applicant: CELIS ROBERTO V (PH) EC: IPC: C25B1/04; C25B1/00 Publication info: WO2007008091 - 2007-01-18 / AN IMPROVED DOUBLE ACTING RECIPROCATING STEAM ENGINE Inventor: CELIS ROBERTO V Applicant: ROBERTO V CELIS EC: IPC: F01B1/00; F01B1/00; (IPC1-7): F01B1/00 Publication info: PH19263 - 1986-02-21 / Smog eliminator
Inventor: CELIS ROBERTO V (PH) Applicant: CELIS ROBERTO V EC: B01D47/06; F23J15/02D IPC: B01D47/06; F23J15/02; B01D47/06 (+2) Publication info: US4392875 - 1983-07-12 / SOLAR SUPER HEATER Inventor: CELIS ROBERTO Applicant: ROBERTO CELIS EC: IPC: (IPC1-7): F24J3/02 Publication info: PH14181 - 1981-03-25
05/27/07 - Sorry, but building Atomic power stations is the only way
 Make no mistake, atomic power - a controversy from another age - is back on the agenda. Nuclear power is not the answer to all our problems - but it is an answer, a vital part of the energy mix. Electricity is not like the air or the sea - it isn't just "there"; it has to be made. And, for the most part, that means finding a way of boiling water to make steam, and using that steam to whirl turbine-driven dynamos and make electricity. The question is, what do we boil the water with? Currently, we make most of our electricity by burning gas and coal and also - about a fifth - from nuclear power. Nuclear power is, essentially, a non-polluting technology. Atomic stations generate carbon dioxide when they are built and a little more to ship in the uranium fuel, but once running they produce only small quantities of the greenhouse gas. So we have options. We could do nothing. That will probably mean power cuts, stratospheric electricity bills, and ever more reliance on gas from former Soviet republics. We can save electricity. We can lag our lofts, install quadruple glazing and so on. But this will not solve the problem. Then there are the Greens' beloved renewables. Wind, tides, waves and so on. Nuclear power is the cleanest, most non-polluting and certainly the safest means of generating electricityon a very large scale ever devised. Not one person has ever been killed by a radiation leak from a power station in normal operation. Of the two largest nuclear accidents, no one died at Three Mile Island in the U.S. and Chernobyl has, to date, killed fewer than 100 people. Compare the thousands killed in coal mining, and in ordinary power stations. A growing number of Greens accept that, in comparison with climate change, nuclear power is the lesser of two evils.
05/27/07 - Passengers drive you to distraction
 A new study has found that drivers with passengers were almost 60% more likely to have a crash resulting in hospitalisation than those who hit the open road solo. There was an even greater increase in risk when researchers simply considered all types of collisions. "The likelihood of a crash was more than doubled in the presence of two or more passengers," says Suzanne McEvoy of the George Institute for International Health, who led the study, which appears in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.
05/27/07 - Baking as cure for Dog ills is tried in Germany - May 1924
 (Russian research has revealed that healthy tissue can survive high temperatures without damage, whereas diseased tissues will self-destruct. A heater is placed in the rectum because of the large surface area for exposure to a maximum volume of moving blood, and the temperature is slowly brought up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It is claimed to cure all viral and bacterial diseases. - JWD) Ills of dogs are being treated by baking in Germany. For this purpose, and to aid in scientific research, gas ovens have been installed in the Berlin veterinary university’s clinic. The application of heat to animals is said to act in the same way that a steam bath does to the human body.
05/27/07 - Ever Had Your Colon “House Cleaned?” - November 1934
 Large Per Cent, of All Ills and Ailments Have Their Source in the Neglected “Cellar” of the Human Body. IT’S only natural to neglect the cellar of the house, the part you don’t see. Yet, as a matter of fact it’s more important to keep the cellar clean and airy than any other part of the house. The colon, or large intestine, may be called the cellar of the human body. It’s there the rubbish or waste matter from digested food collects for passage out of the body-only the body waste is no mere rubbish, but highly toxic or poisonous waste. This waste can’t stay in the body too long. When it does, self-poisoning literally sets in. When the colon is normal it acts vigorously through muscular contraction in moving the accumulated waste matter along its way and out of the body. When the colon becomes “inert” or semi-paralyzed, the poisonous waste collects in the colon, and cakes itself to the walls of the colon and in the folds and crevices, like so much concrete. The muscles of the colon then become “cemented” and can only feebly move. More and more waste collects and hardens and soon there is left only a small passageway for the waste. The retention of the waste matter then that follows plays havoc with human health! The poisons of the waste-the toxins of decay, fermentation and putrefaction-are absorbed by the blood. They are carried to all parts of the body. They affect your brain and nervous system and make you mentally depressed and melancholic. They affect your heart and make you weak and listless. They affect your lungs and make your breath foul. They affect your digestive organs and make you bloated, “belchy” and distressed with gas. They affect your muscles and joints and make you lame and sore. They undermine your whole health, in truth, make you old long before your time and cut years from your life. Many Are Victims! A half-dead colon is what ails many people today. Our modern mode of living is at fault. It is all out of accord with Nature. We eat too much prepared and bland foods. We don’t get enough bulk or roughage to get the right response from the colon. We don’t get enough vigorous exercise. The result is the colon “lays down on us” and we are half invalids. Virtually every one suffers in some degree from a clogged colon, and for this reason nearly every one can stand an occasional thorough “house-cleaning” of the colon. Laxatives are often futile. They frequently aggravate the situation. An enema is only partly efficient, for the colon is shaped thusly-^-and an enema reaches only to the first bend.
A True “Internal Bath”  The only effective means of thoroughly cleaning out the colon is to get a fluid up there, throughout the whole length of the colon, that will loosen the accumulations from the walls and folds of the colon, break them up and flush them out, leaving the colon clean and wholesome and the muscles free to resume their normal functioning. In other words, an internal bath. This is exactly what you get in the use of the J. B. L. Cascade, that marvelous invention of the eminent Dr. Charles A. Tyrrell, who perfected it to save his own life. This appliance holds and injects into the colon a flood of pure, warm water, especially treated with a wonderful cleansing tonic. The fluid fills the entire length of the colon and reaches into every tiny fold and crevice. The action of the especially treated warm water loosens all accumulations from the colon walls and folds and induces a natural muscular action of the colon that drives all the waste out. There is complete cleansing of the colon without pain or discomfort. Glorious Relief.  The feeling following a J. B. L. Cascade treatment is one of grateful relief. You just know something beneficial for your health has been done! Taken just before retiring, an “internal bath” with the J. B. L. Cascade sends you to bed with that delightfully relieved feeling that insures a night of sound, restful slumber. And in the morning! You feel like a new person with a new appetite for break- fast and a new zest for life! You fairly radiate “pep” and energy! If you want to see how this treatment can take years off your shoulders, just try one “internal bath.” / More Info (really interesting!) - Dr. Tyrell developed the J.B.L. (Joy, Beauty, Love) Cascade Syringe. This was a large rubber hot water bottle with a nozzle mounted on the side, which when placed flat on the toilet seat with the nozzle vertical, enabled a 4 quart enema to be taken at home by the person sitting on it. It was even considered to be safe for the use by children, as the lesser weight of the child enabled a safe pressure to be applied to completely fill the colon. Over one million of these syringes were sold between the years 1900 and 1950. / (Years ago, a friend of mine ran a Colonics clinic. He told me they often 'extracted' stringy plastic residue from clients who often ate plastic packaged food cooked in a microwave but left in the plastic wrapper. He said molecules of the plastic melted into the food and was eaten along with the food, to cause a host of problems. - JWD)
05/27/07 - English speed cameras go digital
 The Gatso speed camera has been the bane of British drivers for the past couple of decades, but they at least had the hope that when they saw the flash the camera might be out of film. Amazingly enough, the British speed cameras still use this antique technology, but not for much longer. The Dutch company that builds the cameras for the British government has developed a digital imaging module to upgrade the cameras so that they will never run out of film again. The new units have 11-megapixel sensors and can monitor four lanes of traffic at once. They can also store thousands of images compared to the 200 for the film units. So now the traffic enforcers can ticket more people with less effort.
05/27/07 - Recovering Oil drenched Soil
Russian scientists have developed a new agent for recovering soils, contaminated with petrol and oil refinery products. Joint think-tank from Saint Petersburg and Serpukhov has developed a special agent for remediation of soils, polluted with oil and its products. The agent is based upon the complex of specific microorganisms - oil destructors - with a biological substrate, which works as a carrier - various biological fertilizers can be used for this purpose, for instance. Authors claim it’s the innovative combination of microorganisms and biological substrates, which can not only eliminate hazardous contaminants from soil, but also restore its fertility.
05/27/07 - Running Cars on Hydrogen Made from Starch
 A new way to make hydrogen from corn or potatoes could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical. Using a stew of enzymes culled from several organisms, researchers have developed a way to convert starch, available from numerous sources including corn and potatoes, into hydrogen gas at low temperatures and pressures. The method produces three times more hydrogen than an older enzymatic method does, suggesting that it might be practical to use such enzymes to produce hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles. The researchers combined 13 commercially available enzymes isolated from yeast, bacteria, spinach, and rabbit muscle. The work is available online in PLoS ONE, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. The hydrogen comes from two sources: the starch and the water used to oxidize the starch. The enzymes facilitate chemical reactions in which the water and starch can be completely converted into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The new system produces a higher yield of hydrogen than previous experimental systems that used enzymes for converting sugars into hydrogen. But while the yield of hydrogen is high, so far the rates at which the gas is produced are extremely low. That's in part because the researchers used off-the-shelf enzymes and have not optimized the system, Zhang says.
05/26/07 - The trouble with New Yorks Hybrid Taxi Plan
 New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered all New York City's taxi companies to convert to all-hybrid cars within five years. Sounds like a great idea. Here's the problem. Some hybrids, like those from Honda, kick into electric mode during acceleration, then gas mode while cruising -- which will save gas for lead-footed New York cab drivers. Other hybrids, however -- most conspicuously Toyotas (including the popular Prius) -- kick into gas mode during acceleration. You can get over 50 mpg, but only if you accellerate slowly. That means cabbies driving Priuses and others using the Toyota-style system won't really see huge improvements in gas mileage or big cuts in pollutio unless they drive like aging hippies in Marin County. (via therawfeed.com)
05/26/07 - 10 'Swiss Army Knife' Camera Phone tricks
Here are ten useful tools you can find inside your camera phone right now: 1. Handheld Scanner 2. Screen-Capture Utility 3. Photographic Memory 4. Contact Database Enhancer 5. Automatic Personal "City Guide" Creator
6. String Around Your Finger 7. Driving Directions Maker 8. Personal Security Device 9. Liability Reducer 10. Morale Booster
05/26/07 - Record any audio with MP3myMP3 Recorder 2.0
 Windows only: Freeware app MP3myMP3 records audio from any source piping through your PC. Record internet radio and save to mp3 or wav. Record streaming audio from the Internet, microphone, or any other source for that matter. MP3myMP3 Recorder works directly with your system sound card - if you can hear it, you can record it! Select any input source and MP3myMP3 Recorder can save it to WAV or MP3 formats. Since it doesn't restrict the length of your recordings, MP3myMP3 is an ideal candidate for turning documents into MP3s, recording Skype calls, or digitizing cassettes among other things. MP3myMP3 Recorder is a free download for Windows only. (via lifehacker.com)
05/26/07 - Gallup: 31% of Americans Believe the Bible is Literally True
About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word. This percentage is slightly lower than several decades ago. The majority of those Americans who don't believe that the Bible is literally true believe that it is the inspired word of God but that not everything it in should be taken literally. About one in five Americans believe the Bible is an ancient book of "fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man." Belief in a literal Bible is strongly correlated with indicators of religion, including church attendance and identification with a Protestant or other non-Catholic Christian faith. There is also a strong relationship between education and belief in a literal Bible, with such belief becoming much less prevalent among those who have college educations...
05/25/07 - Fla. Man Invents Machine To Turn Water Into Fire
 A Florida man may have accidentally invented a machine that could solve the gasoline and energy crisis plaguing the U.S., WPBF News 25 reported. Kanzius, 63, invented a machine that emits radio waves in an attempt to kill cancerous cells while leaving normal cells intact. While testing his machine, he noticed that his invention had other unexpected abilities. Filling a test tube with salt water from a canal in his back yard, Kanzius placed the tube and a paper towel in the machine and turned it on. Suddenly, the paper towel ignited, lighting up the tube like it was a wax candle. "Pretty neat, huh?" Kanzius asked WPBF's Jon Shainman. Kanzius performed the experiment without the paper towel and got the same result -- the saltwater was actually burning. The former broadcasting executive said he showed the experiment to a handful of scientists across the country who claim they are baffled at watching salt water ignite. Kanzius said the flame created from his machine reaches a temperature of around 3,000 degrees Farenheit. He said a chemist told him that the immense heat created from the machine breaks down the hydrogen-oxygen bond in the water, igniting the hydrogen. "You could take plain salt water out of the sea, put it in containers and produce a violent flame that could heat generators that make electricity, or provide other forms of energy," Kanzius said. He said engineers are currently experimenting with him in Erie, Pa. in an attempt to harness the energy. They've built an engine that, when placed on top of the flame, chugged along for two minutes, Kanzius told WPBF. "This was an experiment to see if I could heat salt water, and instead of heat, I got fire," Kanzius said. Kanzius said he hoped that his invention could one day solve a lot of the world's energy problems.
05/25/07 - Additional information for the machine used in the Kanzius Water to Fire system courtesy of Robert Nelson at Rex Research
 Here are the patent #s for John Kanzius' inventions: (Results are sorted by date of upload in database) / 1 ENHANCED SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RF-INDUCED HYPERTHERMIA II in my patents list Inventor: KANZIUS JOHN (US) Applicant: THERM MED LLC (US); KANZIUS JOHN (US) EC: IPC: A61N1/40; A61N1/40 Publication info: WO2007027620 - 2007-03-08 / 2 ENHANCED SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RF-INDUCED HYPERTHERMIA in my patents list Inventor: KANZIUS JOHN (US) Applicant: THERM MED LLC (US) EC: A61B18/14; A61N1/40T; (+1) IPC: A61N1/40; A61B18/14; A61F2/00 (+3) Publication info: EP1758648 - 2007-03-07 / 3 Enhanced systems and methods for RF-induced hyperthermia in my patents list Inventor: KANZIUS JOHN (US) Applicant: EC: IPC: A61F2/00; A61F2/00 Publication info: US2006190063 - 2006-08-24 / 4 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RF-INDUCED HYPERTHERMIA in my patents list Inventor: KANZIUS JOHN (US) Applicant: THERM MED LLC (US); KANZIUS JOHN (US) EC: A61B18/12; A61N1/40T; (+1) IPC: A61B18/12; A61F2/00; A61N1/40 (+4) Publication info: WO2005110544 - 2005-11-24
05/25/07 - Can Centaurs and Talking Pigs Be Far Behind?
 The United Kingdom Department of Health reverses its proposed ban on chimeras, saying that Parliament should allow the fusing of humans and other species. Nobel laureate and famed geneticist Sydney Brenner once delivered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek lecture to students at Cambridge University about how to nonsurgically create a centaur. He concluded that one day soon it might be possible to create such a six-limbed vertebrate. Mermaids and other mythical hybrids might be on the way, too, as well as human-dog drudges trained to cook omelets and happily perform useful tasks around the house, like changing the light bulbs. This day has not yet arrived, but it may be inching closer with a recent amendment to a bill in the British Parliament that would legalize human hybrids for research. This legislation, offered by the British Department of Health, is a U-turn from government ministers who said last December that they supported a ban on creating chimeras. Wilmut and the other United Kingdom scientists are not interested in making mermaids--or mermen, either. They want to use animal eggs to grow human stem cells by cleaning out 99.9 percent of the animal materials from the eggs and injecting them with human DNA. These hybrids would provide a solution to the severe shortage of pure human eggs needed for embryonic stem-cell research, which now depends on human volunteers to provide eggs. Are hybrids inevitable?
05/25/07 - Museum Exhibition Reveals Science Behind Mythical Creatures
Entitled "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids," the exhibition traces the possible origins of some of the world's most famous "imaginary" beasts, as well as their lesser-known counterparts. The exhibition deftly combines nature and myth, paleontology and anthropology, and delightfully campy models of mythical creatures with real fossils. "Mythic Creatures" borrows specimens and artifacts from the fossil, art and anthropological collections of the AMNH and other museums, and examines how such objects might have - through imagination, misidentification, speculation or outright deception - given birth to such fantastical creatures. "Faced with awesome nature, our imaginations might create something to be revered, something beautiful, something to be gently feared or something simply whimsical and playful, perhaps even magical," Futter said. "I trust that this exhibition will show you a little of all of these."
05/25/07 - How to win the Energy War
America's current energy condition, however, is a spectacular example of failure. Consider four facts: No. 1: The United States is very vulnerable to the interruption of its imported oil supply. No. 2: This dependence on oil has a huge effect on the country's foreign, military and economic policies. No. 3: America could have reduced its vulnerability if it had taken decisive action after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. (In 1973 America imported 35 percent of the oil it used; today that figure is greater than 60 percent.) No. 4: The United States has never adopted a credible plan to reduce its dependency principally because of a lack of political will. Here we are, 30 years later, with oil prices higher than ever and greater dependence on imported oil. Since one of the current presidential candidates will inherit this mess, shouldn't we ask each of them to spell out the details of his or her energy plan? I'll lay out some ground rules. Any credible strategy needs to reduce oil consumption and increase other energy supplies. All of the measures in the plan need to add up to a significant reduction in imported oil in the relatively near term, say, within 10 to 12 years. To ensure that price signals are consistent and clear, we could levy a truly substantial gasoline tax - something like 50 cents per gallon to start, followed by 50 cent increases in each of the following three years - with rebates for lower-income taxpayers. The revenue from this levy could be used to pay for tax credits for fuel-efficient autos. We should also have automakers improve their corporate average fleet economy - commonly called CAFE standards - by at least 4 percent per year. Increasing tax incentives for the production and purchase of alternative-fuel vehicles would also help. The other major way to wean us from oil is to resume construction of nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy is the cleanest and best option for America's electric power supply, yet it has been stalled by decades of unproductive debate. Our current commercial nuclear power plants have an outstanding record of safety and security, and new designs will only raise performance. The basic elements of a responsible energy policy are not complicated, but the politics are horrendous. Still, we can't continue to throw empty rhetoric at the issue, using the oil companies as political punching bags and relying on our troops to keep the oil flowing.
05/25/07 - Sugar to Hydrogen
 "We need a simple way to store and carry hydrogen energy and a simple process to produce hydrogen, said Y.H. Percival Zhang, assistant professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech. Using synthetic biology approaches, Zhang and colleagues Barbara R. Evans and Jonathan R. Mielenz of ORNL, and Robert C. Hopkins and Michael W.W. Adams of the University of Georgia, are using a combination of 13 enzymes never found together in nature to completely convert polysaccharides and water into hydrogen when-and where-that form of energy is needed. Polysaccharides like starch and cellulose are used by plants for energy storage and building blocks, and are very stable until exposed to enzymes. Just add enzymes to a mixture of starch and water and "the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen," Zhang said. A membrane bleeds off the carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is used by the fuel cell to create electricity. Water, a product of that fuel cell process, will be recycled for the starch-water reactor. Laboratory tests confirm that it all takes place at low temperature-about 86 degrees F°-and atmospheric pressure. The vision is for the ingredients to be mixed in the fuel tank of a car, for instance. A car with an approximately 12-gallon tank could hold 27 kilograms (kg) of starch, which is the equivalent of 4 kg of hydrogen. The range would be more than 300 miles, Zhang estimates. One kg of starch will produce the same energy output as 1.12 kg (0.38 gallons) of gasoline. With hydrogen storage the largest obstacle to large-scale use of hydrogen fuel, the DOE's long-term goal for hydrogen storage was 12 mass percent, or 0.12 kg of hydrogen per one kg of container or storage material. But such technology is not available, said Zhang. Using polysaccharides as the hydrogen storage carrier, however, the research team achieved hydrogen storage capacity as high as 14.8 mass percent, which they reported in the May 23 issue of PLoS ONE, the online, open-access journal from the Public Library of Science.
05/25/07 - Small changes bring big improvements
Article on how small, incremental changes can yield huge results. (via lifehacker.com)
05/25/07 - O2 rises exceed worst-case scenarios
 The world's recent carbon dioxide emissions are growing more rapidly than even the worst-case climate scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say researchers. The team, led by Michael Raupach of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, looked at the growth of CO2 emissions and found that emissions growth suddenly accelerated in 2000. During the 1990s, emissions grew by 1.1% per year on average, but the number shot up to 3.3% between 2000 and 2004, when the study ended. When they compared the recent emissions trend to those the UN-backed IPCC drew up as its "worst case scenario", the team found the reality was at least as bad, if not worse. They concluded that the rise in CO2 emissions is not due to a growth in global population, but a reduction in global efficiency. "We are not getting more efficient at using CO2 in the way we projected," explains co-author Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia in the UK. "If you follow anything to do with global policy or global economy these results will not be surprising," says Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK. He says the results "turn the focus back to the process that is in place at the moment to create a new climate regime beyond 2012", when the Kyoto Protocol expires. He adds that drawing the conclusion that Kyoto has failed is "too crude an analysis".
05/25/07 - Darfur next battle for Oil
(Note, the USA borrows 3 TRILLION dollars A DAY from China - JWD) It's the Oil, Stupid…China and USA in New Cold War over Africa's Oil Riches. The case of Darfur, a forbidding piece of sun-parched real estate in the southern part of Sudan, illustrates the new Cold War over oil, where the dramatic rise in China's oil demand to fuel its booming growth has led Beijing to embark on an aggressive policy of-ironically-- dollar diplomacy. With its more than $1.3 trillion in mainly US dollar reserves at the Peoples' National Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa, the central region between Sudan and Chad is priority. This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit more cleverly than Washington. Darfur is a major battleground in this high-stakes contest for oil control. Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have left Washington furious. China is using no-strings-attached dollar credits to gain access to Africa's vast raw material wealth, leaving Washington's typical control game via the World Bank and IMF out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot?
05/25/07 - World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural
"A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007: For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural. According to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia, on that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural people. In the US, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s."
05/25/07 - The Landing Strip
Although it’s one of the cornerstones of an organized home, I’m amazed how many folks haven’t heard of the landing strip. The concept it very simple. Organization comes from things having a place and being in their place. Probably the time when this rule is least observed is when we come home. We come from work exhausted, often carrying our work bags, groceries, and the mail. All we can think of is changing into jeans and flip-flops. Stuff just gets tossed down and then later we’re too occupied to clean up. If instead you have a place to “land,” and a routine for doing so, you’ll avoid disorganization from the get-go. (via lifehacker.com)
05/25/07 - Most People Believe Gas Prices Have Been Manipulated
According to a recent poll on Daily Fuel Economy Tip, nearly 80% of people believe that oil and gasoline companies have manipulated the supply of gas in order to cause prices to shoot through the roof. When asked, “Do you believe oil and gasoline companies have manipulated the supply of gas to cause prices to increase?” 79% of respondents stated yes; 16% stated no; and 5% stated that they were unsure.
05/24/07 - Efficient, Clean, high power Steam engine
 Bruce Crower has spent a lifetime eking more power out of every drop of fuel to make cars go faster. Now he's using the same approach to make them go farther, with a radical six-stroke engine that tops off the familiar four-stroke internal-combustion process with two extra strokes of old-fashioned steam power. A typical engine wastes three quarters of its energy as heat. Crower's prototype, the single-cylinder diesel eight-horsepower Steam-o-Lene engine, uses that heat to make steam and recapture some of the lost energy. It runs like a conventional four-stroke combustion engine through each of the typical up-and-down movements of the piston (intake, compression, power or combustion, exhaust). But just as the engine finishes its fourth stroke, water squirts into the cylinder, hitting surfaces as hot as 1,500°F. The water immediately evaporates into steam, generating a 1,600-fold expansion in volume and driving the piston down to create an additional power stroke. The upward sixth stroke exhausts the steam to a condenser, where it is recycled into injection water. Crower calculates that the Steam-o-Lene boosts the work it gets from a gallon of gas by 40 percent over conventional engines. Diesels, which are already more efficient, might get another 5 percent. And his engine does it with hardware that already exists, so there's no waiting for technologies to mature, as with electric cars or fuel cells.
05/24/07 - Food Coloring Causes ADD?
When Paul was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, Liz wanted to alternative to medication. She decided to try the Feingold program -- an elimination plan where you take certain ingredients completely out of the diet. Those bright colors in cereal, candy, drinks, even vitamins appealing to kids, but could they also be life-altering? “I just started taking him to specialists because he was impossible to live with," says Sherborn mom Liz Parrish about his son Paul. When Paul was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, Liz wanted to alternative to medication. She decided to try the Feingold program. It’s an elimination plan where you take certain ingredients completely out of the diet. Liz had to remove products that included artificial coloring and flavors, certain food additives, aspartame (also known as NutraSweet) and aspirin, which occurs naturally in many fruits and vegetables. For people with sensitivity to these items, it can cause problems says Dr. Cathleen London, a family practitioner in Brookline. "There is something to this combination in bodies; it’s an irritant to the nervous system.” The diet requires work. You need to closely check labels. Even the colors in some toothpastes and the pink in medications like amoxicillin are out. The initial test period usually takes about two weeks, but Liz saw a difference in just days. “Our life has been so much better. Just his whole social interaction with kids and his school work.” But not everyone in the medical community thinks diet is the problem and that the Feingold program the answer. “The consensus is out on whether this works or not, “says Dr. Anne Wang-Dohlman, an allergist at Newton Wellesley Hospital. She says other factors may be at work besides diet. “I would want to figure out whether there were other types of triggers that I can document objectively before going right to the Feingold diet.” But Dr. London says it can’t hurt to try the program, “Isn’t it worth two weeks before we start medication that they may be on for the rest of their life?”
05/24/07 - Water wheels
 A Largo inventor says he's come up with a way to make vehicles run on H20. "I've been called a magician and a crackpot," says inventor William H. Richardson, the research and development director for Definitive Energy LLC and the original patent owner of a seemingly simple process for turning water into fuel. "There is so much opposition to it." Richardson calls this alternative energy source Aqualene and claims that the gas created from separating water molecules is better for the environment than any biofuel and less costly than hydrogen fuel-cell technology. For the last 15 years, he has championed Aqualene to NASA, the U.S. government and corporations small and large -- with no success. Now, a little dejected, Richardson looks to other uses for his patented gas, from powering a more effective cutting torch to purifying water in third world countries. Aqualene, he says, can even cook a mean steak. Richardson leads me to a glass bowl full of water sitting on a shop table and attaches two insulated clamps, connected by three 12-volt batteries, to a graphite rod. When he lowers the rod into the water, it produces a bright white light -- the "electric arc" -- furiously sending bubbles to the surface. Richardson places a funnel over the bubbles and ignites the gas spewing out of the narrow end, producing a solid orange flame. That gas -- a combination of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon -- is Aqualene. He claims 100 volts can produce 1,000 cubic feet of Aqualene per hour. Richardson reaches over for a balloon, fills it from a pressurized tank full of Aqualene and watches it float to the ceiling. "The gas will dissipate and fly out of the atmosphere," he says, filling another balloon and taking out a lighter. "And it's combustible." The explosion warms my face; Richardson burns the hair off his hand. Richardson says Aqualene could replace other combustible gases like acetylene and propane, both of which are less effective and produce more pollution. Richardson then directs my attention to a lawnmower engine mounted on a table with a tube connected to the tank of Aqualene. He pulls on the lawnmower cord and the engine starts. There's no smell of gasoline (or any other fuel) nor is there any kind of visible smoke or exhaust. "This engine is just like every other engine on the planet, except it runs on water," he says proudly. "They call it the engine that could." Later, Richardson shows me home videos of him driving a Ford Escort and Mustang that he says are running off Aqualene. Both cars appear to operate like any gasoline-powered car; in one clip, Richardson peels out in his parking lot with the Mustang, later claiming he's reached 110 miles per hour in the modified roadster. The only design problem, he says, is that Aqualene's water byproduct could easily rust the tailpipe. With Aqualene, the electricity used to separate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules -- itself created through fossil fuels -- may use more energy than is recoverable from the produced gas. Richardson has heard this all before. "Fundamentally, [many chemists and engineers] don't understand it," he says. "We're manufacturing a product that is above the normal chemistry findings." And, perhaps to his detriment, he quotes a line from Star Trek: "It's chemistry, Jim, but not as you know it." The opposition to Aqualene as a fuel source has led Richardson to other ventures and eight other patents. His latest is Aquaclean, a device using the heating properties of Aqualene to turn cloudy, polluted water (or salt water) into pure distilled water. "Presently we're working with some missionary groups out of Africa," he shares. "They're trying to drill holes for clean water, but it's expensive and it's hard to prove you're going to get clean water. But most villages have a source of water -- it's just not usually fit [to drink]. If they run it through this unit, it would be cheaper than drilling a hole in the ground and they would have an accurate supply of clean, drinkable water."
05/24/07 - How economic bubbles built America
In 1820, as calculated by the English economist Angus Maddison in The World Economy: Historical Statistics, the United States produced 1.8 per cent of the world's gross domestic product. China and India together produced 50 per cent. In 1920, the U.S. produced 15 per cent of world GDP, the same percentage as China and India. With 4 per cent of world population, the U.S. now produces 25 per cent of world GDP, twice the combined share of China and India. With a $13-trillion (U.S.) economy, the country now routinely increases GDP by hundreds of billions a year -- or more than the entire GDP of such dynamic economies as South Korea. What explains this explosive American growth -- uniquely sustained for two centuries? Normally, by way of explanation, people cite democratic institutions, the rule of law and free-market capitalism. But these essential attributes of most prosperous countries don't explain the profound differences between rowdy, expansive American growth and (for example) discreet, orderly European growth. In his 2005 book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot) of Success in America, Mr. Gartner says the U.S. gene pool endows an exceptional percentage of Americans "with energy, creativity, enthusiasm and a propensity for taking risks." He says these people are programmed "to leap at every wacky idea that occurs to them, utterly convinced that it will change the world." He concludes that market bubbles are a consequence of this biologically eccentric character trait but finds that entrepreneurial zeal and brilliant innovation are consequences of it, too. Now Daniel Gross, a columnist for Slate, picks up Mr. Gartner's premise and runs with it, though more in the tradition of conventional economics than speculative psychology. In his new book Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy, Mr. Gross argues that excessive enthusiasms - "outbursts of entrepreneurial id" - are indeed a defining aspect of the American Way. These outbursts invariably produce bubbles, he says, the long-term consequences of which are invariably good. All by themselves, bubbles have given the United States a huge competitive advantage and constitute one reason why the country was able to build itself "from almost nothing to become, for all its faults and failings, the most prosperous nation in the history of mankind."
05/24/07 - Death by Veganism
I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants. Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.
05/24/07 - Islam Beheaded
 The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets. For centuries, it has been virtually impossible to raise objections about the character of Muhammad in Muslim countries, for anyone who raised such objections would (following the example set by Muhammad himself) immediately be killed. Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam. But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam, and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret. The facts about the founder of Islam are spreading very rapidly, and Muslims are frantically scurrying to defend their faith.
05/24/07 - Exercise 'reverses' muscle ageing
A twice-weekly trip to the gym may not just give you stronger muscles - it may give you younger muscles as well. Research on over-65s has shown that regular resistance training appears to reverse signs of ageing in the muscles. Analysis of muscle tissue showed the molecular machinery powering muscle cells became as active as that in 20-year olds after exercise.
05/24/07 - How to $100 Super-Bright Flashlight for Under $10
 Detailed instructions (with video in Flash) on modding a $4 plastic flashlight to outshine a more expensive Surefire E2. / From what I understand you can overdrive an LED and you eventually get up to 100% of the possible light from it. It is an exponential curve with the flat spot on top. You also get 100% of the possible heat from it. If you drive a 3-watt at 1 or 1.5 watts, you get 80% of the light and much less % of the heat.
Whereas with an incan if you drive it at full rated voltage, you get a reliable light for a "normal" lifetime. When you overdrive it like this project does, you get a bodacious light output, but it might blink out on you at any moment. It will definitely not give you the same life as when run at the rated voltage or below.
05/24/07 - Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance
A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims. Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.
05/24/07 - Photovoltaic (Solar Panel) Costs to Decrease 40% by 2010
The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it a mainstream power option in the next few years, according to a new assessment by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2006, for the first time, more than half the world’s polysilicon was used to produce solar PV cells. Combined with technology advances, the increase in polysilicon supply will bring costs down rapidly -- by more than 40 percent in the next three years, according to Prometheus estimates.
05/24/07 - Decontaminating water with Solar Energy
 Haley Robinson says she got the idea for her project in Grade 9, when she was studying solar water heating options for Canadian homes. "I was really surprised at how fast the sun could heat water up and what high temperatures could be reached," she said. "I was thinking, 'How could I apply this to somewhere else where maybe more of an impact could be felt with little or no cost?' " The result? An teepee structure made essentially from garbage: Sticks, cardboard, plastic bags and aluminum foil. A container of water, covered in heat-insulating charcoal paint and plastic bags, is suspended by string in the middle of a cardboard funnel covered in foil. As the sun reflects off the foil, the water is heated to 55 C, where it must remain for several hours for all bacteria to die and make the water potable. Robinson said she tested her invention at home in April in 5 C weather and found the water reached a temperature of 61 C. That's good news for developing nations that receive hot sunshine all year, but don't have access to clean water, according to Robinson. "It's a huge energy saving that not a lot of people know about, because it's relatively new technology. In developing countries, there's year-round solar gain, so if they could just tap into this resource, then a lot of crises could be addressed," she said.
05/24/07 - US City Sustainability Ranking
The SustainLane 2006 US city rankings of the 50 largest cities is the nation’s most complete report card on urban sustainability. The rankings explain how people’s quality of life and city economic and management preparedness are likely to fare in the face of an uncertain future. These indicators gauge, for instance, which cities’ public transit, renewable energy, local food, and development approaches are more likely to either limit or intensify the negative economic and environmental impacts of fossil fuel dependence.
05/23/07 - 'Muscle noise' could reveal diseases' progression
 (Reminds me of Dr. Abrams 'Spondylotherapy' and the use of 'percussing' to determine the location and nature of physical problems. - JWD) A new non-invasive elastography technique that measures "muscle noise" could provide a way of monitoring neuromuscular disease without exposing the patient to radiation. The elastic properties of a muscle can reveal their condition. Muscles become harder, for example, when they contract during exertion. Neuromuscular disease also produces changes in muscle stiffness. So detecting these changes could provide a way to monitor the progress of the disease. Muscles also make noise as they contract. It is possible to hear the sound of the masseter muscle - a jaw muscle used in chewing - by placing your head, ear down, on the palm of your hand. The sound produced by a muscle comes from the shortening of actomyosin filaments along the axis of the muscle. During contraction, the muscle shortens along its axis and expands across the axis, producing vibrations at the surface. The researchers say it should be easy to monitor the progression of muscular diseases after analysing more muscles and building up a database of vibration responses. The key advantage of the new technique is that it is non-invasive. This means that it does not require external sources, such as indentation or ultrasound, to produce the propagating waves.
05/23/07 - Hydrogen breakthrough for carbon-free cars
UK scientists have developed a compound of the element lithium which may make it practical to store enough hydrogen on-board fuel-cell-powered cars to enable them to drive over 300 miles before refuelling. Achieving this driving range is considered essential if a mass market for fuel cell cars is to develop in future years, but has not been possible using current hydrogen storage technologies. Fuel cells produce carbon-free electricity by harnessing electrochemical reactions between hydrogen and oxygen. However, today’s prototype and demonstration fuel-cell-powered cars only have a range of around 200 miles. To achieve a 300 mile driving range, an on-board space the size of a double-decker bus would be needed to store hydrogen gas at standard temperature and pressure, while storing it as a compressed gas in cylinders or as a liquid in storage tanks would not be practical due to the weight and size implications. The UK-SHEC research has therefore focused on a different approach which could enable hydrogen to be stored at a much higher density and within acceptable weight limits. The option involves a well-established process called ‘chemisorption’, in which atoms of a gas are absorbed into the crystal structure of a solid-state material and then released when needed. The team has tested thousands of solid-state compounds in search of a light, cheap, readily available material which would enable the absorption/desorption process to take place rapidly and safely at typical fuel cell operating temperatures. They have now produced a variety of lithium hydride (specifically Li4BN3H10) that could offer the right blend of properties. Development work is now needed to further investigate the potential of this powder.
05/23/07 - Fly Ash 'Green' Bricks
 Researchers have found that bricks made from fly ash--fine ash particles captured as waste by coal-fired power plants--may be even safer than predicted. Instead of leaching minute amounts of mercury as some researchers had predicted, the bricks apparently do the reverse, pulling minute amounts of the toxic metal out of ambient air. Each year, roughly 25 million tons of fly ash from coal-fired power plants are recycled, generally as additives in building materials such as concrete, but 45 million tons go to waste. Fly ash bricks both find a use for some of that waste and counter the environmental impact from the manufacture of standard bricks. "Manufacturing clay brick requires kilns fired to high temperatures," said Henry Liu, a longtime National Science Foundation (NSF) awardee and the president of Freight Pipeline Company (FPC), which developed the bricks. "That wastes energy, pollutes air and generates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In contrast, fly ash bricks are manufactured at room temperature. They conserve energy, cost less to manufacture, and don't contribute to air pollution or global warming." Once colored and shaped, the FPC bricks are similar to their clay counterparts, both in appearance and in meeting or exceeding construction-material standards.
05/23/07 - Scientists join forces to work on solar energy
George Crabtree said his new project at Argonne National Laboratory near Darien is to make solar cells out of a common ingredient in paint and suntan lotion. “It’s everywhere,” Crabtree said of titanium dioxide. “People make it by the ton, and it’s incredibly cheap.” Finding cheaper ways to produce solar energy is the goal of a new research lab Crabtree is heading up with a Northwestern University chemistry professor Michael Wasielewski. Hydrogen has one other advantage in that it can be used to store solar energy for use at night or on cloudy days. Crabtree described current efforts to “split water,” or separating hydrogen from oxygen. “You can take a bucket of water and put an apparatus into it and as long as the sun shines, it’ll bubble up hydrogen on one side and oxygen on t |
